Circus Solace (5 page)

The two of them worked with
a real sense of purpose and only ate lunch as an afterthought.

It was well into the afternoon w
hen the car pulled up outside the gates and Marcus climbed out. Matt didn’t feel particularly surprised. He looked over and saw Pa nod, as if the old man was somehow expected, even though they owned no phone and hadn’t made their way into town since their run-in with the clown. Matt took a deep breath and the idea that a plan, no matter how remote or strange, was coming together, spilled through his bones.

“I thought you might be running low on a few things,” Marcus said as he
walked down the driveway. There was a crate in his arms but it didn’t stop him from pausing long enough to tilt his neck to look at the house. “Huh. Looks straighter than the last time I saw it.”

“We’ve been dusting,”
Pa said, as he strode down the path and took the crate from the other man’s arms. “Much obliged for the supplies. You’ll come in?”

“Yes,” Marcus said, “I think I will.” Matt saw him hesitate slightly. A mist came over his eyes but Matt couldn’t decide if he was frightened or overjoyed to be stepping back into the old house. Maybe it was both, Matt thought.

“You’re always welcome,” Pa said as they walked back up the steps. Matt waved a greeting and Marcus nodded back, his long, thin mouth cracking into the merest hint of a smile. As the three of them walked inside, Matt thought he saw Marcus steal a glance towards the fields and beyond that, the forests and the trees.

“Looks the same,” Marcus said quietly as they wandered around the rooms. It was no formal tour, nothing as grand as that. Instead, they simply wandered from room to room, Marcus occasionally stopping to look at blank walls and unfurnished floors as if something caught his eye. Matt wondered if it was simply memories or if there were faint traces, clues and signs, like the trail of arrows on the roof for Matt, which only
Marcus could make out and understand. Apart from a few bed sheets from the store, they had changed nothing since setting foot over the threshold.

“You eat up on the roof with the moon?” Marcus asked, as they finally returned to the kitchen and the coffee pot.

“Every night,” Matt said and watched Marcus nod in approval.

“
It’s where food feels best. I once went up there with some plain old sandwiches and I swear it was the finest tasting food I ever had.” His eyes slipped to some faraway moment. “The moon gets into it, I think. You can taste it in the food.”

“
We found my wife’s message on the chimney,” Pa said. The old man jolted out of his reverie and looked hard to both of them.

“You saw
the scratched dream?” He looked around and Pa nod at him. “You can’t blame me for that, for what happened. I told you-”

“We’re not blaming anyone,”
Pa said.

“It…it broke my heart to see everything fall apart that way, disbanded and broken like it was just some
passing fad. It was real, you understand?” His voice began to shake and his hands began to shudder around his cup. “What we did, how we made people feel...it was
real
.” Pa reached over and put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. It calmed him in an instant.              

“I think we’re beginning to understand,” he said. “But we need to understand all of it, okay? We can’t do anything for her if we don’t have everything to use.”

“You’re thinking about Cirrus,” Marcus muttered and his skin paled a little more.

“I’m thinking about him, sure. He looks like a snake under all that pancake mix
. I want to have every angle on him if he makes trouble for us but I’m thinking about this place too.” Pa looked around as if seeing it for the first time.

“I want to bring back
everything
, you understand? Not just bits and pieces but all of it. If that’s what she wanted then I want to bring back everything she saw, everything she loved. I don’t want anything to be missing.” His voice hadn’t got louder but there was a force to it that Matt had never heard before. He wondered when Pa had spoken with such power before and imagined it must have been with his ma, when they were making promises or spoke about love. It wasn’t a voice that could be used about simple, everyday matters, Matt decided.

“You want to see it with ma’s eyes,” Matt said quietly and saw both men turn to him, stunned.
Pa opened his mouth to speak again but nothing came out. Instead it was Marcus, affording another half-crack of a smile who spoke.

“Out of the mouth of babes,” he said and looked approvingly over to
Pa, who began to grin. “I understand, boys, I do. We’ll make a plan of action and I’ll call on those I can trust and those who know what’s worth knowing.”

“Thank you,” Matt and
Pa said simultaneously.

“You’re welcome. Maybe it’s me who should be thanking you for opening my eyes and waking me up.” He shrugged and set down his coffee cup.

“If we’re to begin this, there’s a place we need to go to set everything in motion. I imagine if you’ve looked out to the fields you’ve probably seen flickers and hints and shades and shadows.” He looked over and nodded at their reactions. Matt felt his pulse quicken.

“Time to walk down to the woods, boys,” he said and winked
. The three of them walked over to the window and looked out to the fields. “You’ve seen him?”  
  

“I’ve seen something,”
Pa said.

“I’ve seen him,” Matt said, thinking of the perfect silhouette that almost reminded him of
Pa.

“If he’s allowed you to see him, we’re halfway there,” Marcus said. “Believe me, if he wanted to stay hidden, he’d sit undiscovered for a hundred years.”

“Do we just call in on him like neighbours?” Matt asked, as Marcus broke away from the window and back to the kitchen table.

“We do, yes,” he replied, looking down to the crate. “But first, we need to pack a picnic.”

                                          *

What do you pack in a picnic for an after dark meeting with a creature in the woods?

According to Marcus, it meant a lot of jam sandwiches and an array of cakes. Whatever it was, Matt thought, he must have one sweet tooth and then immediately decided to not think about teeth, sweet or otherwise, while they walked into the near-darkness of the forest. He wasn’t scared exactly but Matt was still young enough to see faces in swaying tree tops and imagine branches as clawed hands in the twilight. Nature at dusk could be a pretty thing but it could also be unsettling. Matt remembered his fairy tales well enough to recall sometimes they were safe havens and sometimes they were traps.

None of which he mentioned as the three of them marched through the long grasses and
out to the clearing that evening. Marcus explained they had to wait until the last drops of daylight had been removed from the day before they could set out, though he did not fully explain why. It was a long walk and Matt watched the grasses bend and twist under the weight of the wind. Sometimes the blades settled and bunched on his open palm, other times they drew up high enough to brush his cheek. As the first stars crept up into the skyline, they reached the small pocket that led to the trees and the forest.

“Was it about here you saw him?” Marcus asked. Matt glanced around
and recognised the two large, looping ash trees that had cradled the silhouette. He nodded to Marcus.

“Okay, we’ll walk down this trail. It’ll either be left or right, but I have the feeling it’ll be right.” Marcus walked over the last of the fields and down into the dark tunnel of over-hanging trees
. He stepped over the scuffed rocks and disappeared down the cavernous pathway. Matt felt tightness in his palm and looked up to find Pa’s hand in his. It was a good strength, different from the light tickle of the grass tips but enough to make him feel brave. Matt stepped forward in sequence with Pa and the two moved onto the faint path; Matt’s heart beating hard and feeling as tight as Pa’s grip as the darkness swallowed them up.

It was strange to walk without light but somehow the three of them managed. Well, that wasn’t strictly true; Marcus managed
, as if it was something he’d done his whole life, while Matt and Pa stumbled and fumbled and bumbled along, not quite losing their footing but never walking as straight as the old man out in front. Matt thought it was peculiar, too, how there was never a sense of being lost or uncertain. Even though Marcus held little more than a pen light for a beacon, the light seemed to be pure and strong. There was no grip of panic that Matt had always associated with darkness. Instead, it simply felt as if they were stepping into a part of the night, a small sliver of the skyline that had sunk below their feet and offered itself as a soft, marshy carpet. Small flower petals, buds and heads sparkled with light and if this had been a dream, Matt would have sworn each of them were fallen stars gathered along the sunken trail of night sky.

It was as Matt’s senses were becoming attuned to the sounds of the dark trail that everything changed. Marcus disappeared for a moment
and when he called back his voice seemed far away. Instinctively Matt drew closer to Pa and they cautiously edged towards the next corner. Out of nowhere, a butterfly, its wings the size of coffee coasters, leapt into the air. The two of them edged closer and in the next moment, Marcus was calling their names, the sound bouncing and rippling into the air, letting them know they were in a safe place.

The space they stepped into was stuffed with lush green plants and vines and tubers.
Bougainvillea plants hung down in thick, blooming trestles, reminding Matt of tinsel on Christmas trees, or the flower garlands the Hawaiian girls would wear in old movies. It was everywhere, hanging, looping, climbing and swaying. It made the trail seem like a room or a house, Matt thought. Marcus called over and a part of the mossy tree behind the old man seemed to vibrate and shimmer. It was only as Marcus drew his arm back in a theatrical fashion did he realise that the mossy wall was actually what they had been looking for…or rather
who
they had been searching for.

“Boys, meet
Lucas,” Marcus said as the man-creature edged out into the moon-drenched floor. What appeared seemed as if it had climbed directly from the floor below. Lucas stood as tall as Marcus and everything about him was green, a rich jade colour, from the tubers that climbed over his limbs like veins to the skin on his cheeks, that matched the bougainvillea leaves perfectly. In amongst the green surface there was only one part of him that was markedly different; his eyes were a clear, piercing blue. 

“Nice to meet you,”
Pa said, his voice not giving away any shock or discomfort at what he saw. Matt tried to copy his tone but felt his own voice tremble a fraction, even against his will.     

“A pleasure,” drawled
Lucas. “Lucas Portiere. I’ve been keeping an eye out for you these last few days, since you arrived, in fact.” Despite his good intentions, Matt’s jaw dropped; he-and it was no longer a creature now, for sure-had a perfect southern accent, as if he were a Texan gentleman.

“Guess you thought I might only be able to moan and wail, huh?” he went on and grinned; his teeth were green but in a way that
didn’t suggest decay-they were gleaming, like freshly polished sequins. He waved Matt and Pa over. Amongst the leaves and vines, a few tree stumps poked out high enough to sit on.

“I see Marcus has been kind enough to bring some food over this way. Though
t we might break some bread and get to chin-wag a little,” Lucas went on, as Marcus flipped the picnic hamper open.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed and his blue eyes fizzed to an even brighter level than before. “Well, look what we have here. Marcus
, you’ve read my mind, such as it is…” in a flash he flipped a dainty iced finger cake into the air and wolfed it down in a single bite.

“Pardon me fellas, but having spent a long time eating leaves and roots, a sugar-cake’s like a
little slice of heaven.” He dabbed his mouth delicately and a few specks of sugar speckled along his teeth as if he’d just eaten snow.

“How long have you been out here?” Matt managed to ask after a few seconds
, as Marcus began to split up the food. Fat leaves made for plates and moonlight lit them all.

“It’s hard to say all in all but for a good long while. I tend to think in cycles and seasons now and not so much in minutes and seconds, you understand. All I know is it’s
been a spell which coincides with that no-good clown coming into power, I’ll tell you that much. I know he’s still ruling the roost; you don’t have to tell me that. I can sense his smear all over the town every time a strong breeze comes my way.” His eyes burned as he spoke and for a moment Matt saw flecks of red creep into the edges.

“Easy, Lucas,” Marcus said and put his hand on the thick forearm of his friend. It seemed to placate him and the raw colour of his expression seemed to cool down
a little. “You know why we’ve come, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Lucas said and Matt thought he sounded a little offended. “I can see her in the boy’s face and in the man’s eyes. You can’t hide all that hurt and all that love.”

“You’ve been waiting for us?” Matt asked. He watched, startled, as Lucas set his plate down and looked over to them both.