The Carnival of Lost Souls : A Handcuff Kid Novel (15 page)

A deep guttural moan echoed from the distant woods. The Death Wranglers! Startled, Jack jumped to his feet
,
but when he stared down at himself, he was wearing Jabber’s black clothes and top hat. Mussini and Jabber tromped through the woods toward him, dragging a long chain between them. Jack couldn’t move, but could only watch them advance. Mussini wrapped the heavy links of chain around and around, cocooning Jack in the heavy metal
.

“Stop it! Let me go!” Jack screamed, but Mussini ignored his pleas and continued winding the chains from his feet to his neck. Off in the distance, the wooden doors of dozens of hatches to the labyrinth opened up at once. The huge, armored bodies of Death Wranglers poured out of the underworld with swords in hand. Cries of battle filled the air as they ran toward him faster than he thought beasts that big capable
.

“Let’s see how brave you are now.” Jabber shoved Jack, encased in his metal-chain cocoon, to the ground and covered him in a pile of dry leaves. The ground rumbled and shook under the heavy boots of the army headed right for him
.

“Fine, bring it on.” Jack squeezed his eyes shut but within seconds felt hands grabbing the chains and shaking him. But when he opened his eyes, it was Professor Hawthorne. “You came for me!” Jack exclaimed. “Hurry, Professor, the Death Wranglers are coming.”

The professor’s clothes were rumpled, his hair a wild mess. He yanked Jack up to a sitting position and looked
into his eyes, but he didn’t loosen the chains. “Listen to me. Stay out of the labyrinth, my boy. Don’t go underground. There is another way. Be cunning. Use Mussini’s magic against him.”

“
Help me, Professor. You can’t leave me here
.”

“I’m sorry, my boy. I can’t save you. They’re coming.” The professor’s image wavered. He drifted backward and melted into the forest. Jack thumped over into a pile of leaves, the chains weighing him down. His head hit the ground that trembled with the force of the approaching Death Wranglers
.

“Let me go! Let me go!” Jack yelled, and suddenly the shaking stopped. He was awake, lying on the ground, surrounded by strangely masked faces.

A sharp-beaked bird cocked its head to the side. “You fell asleep.”

“Must have had a bad dream.” A short gray mouse wearing a black jacket inched closer to him. A huge bear-masked kid wearing a T-shirt lifted him to his feet and dusted him off.

“Boxer, is that you?” Jack asked.

Boxer pulled off the bear mask. “Are you OK? You were calling out and shaking on the ground.”

Jack ran his hands through his sweat-drenched hair. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t worry. The nightmares go away eventually.” Runt lifted his mouse mask up off his face and gave Jack
a light punch on the arm. “The Halloween tour will take your mind off of it.”

“What’s the Halloween tour?” Jack asked, hoping that might explain the masks they were wearing.

“Our show just started our Halloween tour. We travel from town to town all leading up to the finale on October thirty-first,” Boxer explained.

“Halloween’s the best night! It’s the Night of the Dead,” Runt said. “When the living and the dead can hang out. No rules, just scary fun. I can’t wait. There will be magic and costumes and candy and music.”

“And mayhem and ghosts and goblins,” Violet said.

“Time to practice your act. Come on.” Boxer slung Runt over his shoulder and headed toward a clearing in the trees. Runt leaned up and yelled, “Don’t worry, Jack. You still have time to get your act together before Halloween.”

Halloween was weeks away, and Jack didn’t want to think about being stuck in the forest that long. He watched as the others went about their routines, preparing the sets and costumes for the show. The campsite looked like a carnival garage sale. The lids of trunks hung wide open, their contents strewn around the forest floor. Yards of crushed velvet stretched out, and colorful costumes, bicycle wheels, and musical instruments littered the leafy ground. A group of upended crates with a board on top formed a worktable, which was covered with tubs of
water and white paste. Gigantic forms, which looked like the skeletons of metal creatures with skinny metal bones, covered the makeshift table.

Jack looked at Violet. “What’s with the masks?”

“You put it on your face and you become something else,” Violet said, raising an eyebrow in his direction.

“I know what masks are, but what are you making them for?” Jack toyed with a thin strip of metal. On closer inspection, the finished masks were remarkably lifelike and decorated with brilliant colors and fabrics, fur and feathers. Wild animal masks and exotic long-beaked bird masks littered the table next to mythical beasts and glittery fairies.

“The masks are for the audience. It makes the dead feel like part of the show,” T-Ray said from his seat near the makeshift table. “Plus, it’s more fun to wear a mask. It’s a relief not to have to be yourself all the time.”

Jack motioned to a box of paper that T-Ray held in his lap. “What are those?”

“They’re part of the show.”

Jack dug his hand into the box and picked out one of the paper birds. The box was filled with frogs and dragonflies, butterflies and bears, all made of paper that looked like it had been torn out of a school notebook.

“You made these?”

“Yes, and I’ve gotten pretty good. When I first got here, all I could make were paper airplanes. But I
practiced really hard, and now I can make anything out of paper.”

Jack tried to imagine how long it would take to learn how to make the beautiful paper creatures. “How’d you get here? Mussini trick you, too?” Jack asked.

T-Ray pulled a worn-out Spider-Man comic book out of his back pocket. “It was all for him.”

Jack smiled. “What did Spidey ever do to you?”

“There was this comic book store near the apartment I lived in with my mom that I went to all the time. It used to be a magic shop before it went out of business, and the guy who owned it decided to sell comics instead. One day I noticed some old boxes in the storeroom, and I snuck back to see if the guy had some old comics that might be worth a lot of money.”

“Did you find any good ones?”

“No, but there were lots of leftover magic tricks and stuff. That’s when I found this really cool jewelry box with an
M
carved on the lid. My mom’s name is Meesha, and I thought she might like it. The owner of the shop wasn’t using any of that junk in the back. He probably wouldn’t have even missed it. So I took the box home and opened it. Turned out the
M
stood for Mussini. He came for me that night. I’ve been here ever since.”

“That stinks.” Jack shook his head. “The professor used a trunk to trap me.”

“I miss my mom. Do you really think—”

Jabber kicked through the leaves, cutting T-Ray off. “Jack, Mussini said I should help you out. Show you the ropes.”

Digging into his duffel, Jack pulled out three pairs of regulation handcuffs, the kind that cops use, nothing fancy or vintage, and set them on the table. Not what anyone would call an illustrious collection.

Jabber picked up one of Jack’s handcuffs and then tossed it back on the table, unimpressed. “This is all you’ve got?”

“Yep. That’s it.”

“Maybe we can get some more,” T-Ray said, slipping his fist into one of the cuffs. Jack closed the cuff around his wrist and T-Ray’s eyes widened. “Hey.”

“We’re going to have to. The act has got to be good. The dead have very discerning tastes,” Jabber said. “What do you really want? Mussini can get you anything.”

Jack pulled the Houdini picture out of his pocket. “What about these?” He pointed to the length of handcuffs that encircled Houdini’s wrist. There were seven vintage handcuffs total, beginning with the Russian manacle and ending with the Berliner. Jack didn’t expect that Jabber could really get them. Maybe he could dig up a Darby-style cuff somewhere. Maybe even one of the dead was still wearing it, locked around his guilty wrists. He suspected that a few of the criminal kind were among the dead in the forest.

Jabber and T-Ray stared down at the photograph as T-Ray still struggled to get the handcuff off of his wrist. “Those look impossible to get out of,” T-Ray said. “That’s a good act if you can do it.”

“A little ambitious, don’t you think?” Jabber asked.

“You asked me what I wanted. Can you get the handcuffs or not?”

“There’s nothing Mussini and I can’t get. I suppose you want the keys, too.”

“Of course I’ll need the keys. It’s not like I’m going to wave a magic wand to get out of them. The act is all one big trick, like Mussini said: half skill, half lie.”

“You should start with just a few. Maybe just one or two, and one of those easy ones that you brought.” Jabber motioned to Jack’s handcuffs. “We don’t want you falling on your face the first time onstage.”

T-Ray held up his manacled wrist. “Someone get it off of me.”

“Will you need anything else for your act?” Jabber asked.

“I’ll need a black box with a hole in the top and a curtain on one side.” Jack unlocked the handcuff attached to T-Ray’s wrist.

“How big should the box be?” Jabber asked.

“Big enough for me to fit inside.”

“You mean like a coffin.” Jabber smiled devilishly.

“Real funny, Jabber.”

As night fell, they packed up the wagon. Only one tent was left up for the boys to sleep in, while Violet slept in the wagon. Up ahead, Mussini, dressed in his long black traveling coat and black boots, slipped the gold mask of a hawk over his face. Half man, half predator, Jack thought as he watched Mussini sweep out into the night.

“Where’s he going?” Jack asked.

“He’s going to check out the next town. We’ll catch up with him in the morning. You better get some sleep. Tomorrow starts early, and the real fun begins.”

It was early morning when Jack rolled over to the sound of the wagon being closed up, and it felt like he had just fallen asleep. Still groggy, Jack leaned up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. The camp had been broken down, the chill of morning hung in the air. Violet handed Jack a biscuit wrapped in a handkerchief before she disappeared into the back of the wagon. Stuffing the biscuit into his mouth, Jack ran his hands through a bucket of water that had been left on the ground for him to wash up.

“Better hurry. We’re leaving in few minutes.”

Jack washed his face and changed his clothes. He tossed his duffel bag into the back of the wagon and stared around at the misty campsite. It was as empty as if they were never there at all. Climbing up, Jack sat next
to Jabber as he jolted the reins and the horses pulled the wagon to a slow crawl. He rubbed his arms to warm up a little and looked over his shoulder as the carriage rolled along, Mussini ahead of them, the wall behind them, and the Death Wranglers beneath.