Henry looked down at his hand, pulling at a loose thread on the green satin gown. “I didn’t know,” he said softly. “I guess I never really wondered why he couldn’t talk.” He sat staring at the thread, then looked up at her. “Miss Bradley, I don’t know what to do. Honest to God, I don’t know what to do.”
“About what?”
“Angel.” His voice was tight, as if he were about to cry. “Haverstock won’t let him go, never let him get away. He’ll find him no matter what he has to do. And anyone who tries to help Angel get away is in danger, but if Haverstock finds him, I don’t know what he’ll do to him for trying to run away. Angel is in danger, Miss Bradley, no matter what we do. We have to try to help him, but we are putting ourselves in equal danger if we do. We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”
“What kind of danger are you talking about?” she asked, her voice pinched.
“Haverstock will kill anyone who gets in his way.”
She laughed nervously, unbelieving. “But that sort of thing doesn’t happen. You make him sound… We’ll go to the sheriff. He can’t keep Angel if he doesn’t want to stay. He can’t do things like that.”
“We’d just get the sheriff killed as well.” Henry looked across at the tent show as applause rattled inside. Then he looked back at her. “Miss Bradley, there’s so much you don’t know. You live in this nice little town, with nice ordinary people, doing nice ordinary things. You don’t know the craziness in the world. You don’t know what people with power are capable of, people with the kind of power Haverstock has.”
She sat on the porch beside him and folded her skirt under her knees. “You mean what happens in the show? What happened at the creek this morning? It’s all real?”
“Yes, it’s real. All that stuff in the show is done with, what do you call it? Telekinesis, or something. Mind over matter. Think what you can do with it, how easy it would be to kill. It’s not just making pretty stage-show tricks. You can stop a person’s heart, rupture blood vessels in their brain, any one of two dozen things so no one would ever know it was murder. It would just be a natural thing, a heart attack, a brain hemorrhage. No one would ever know.”
“And Angel can do all that too?” she whispered. Suddenly the waxy sweetness of the trumpet vine was overpowering.
Henry shrugged. “Not really. I mean, I guess he can, after what happened this morning with you, but he doesn’t know how. Haverstock hypnotizes him when they do the act. He can’t do it except when he’s hypnotized. He can never even remember what he does in the show.”
“What did Angel say about this morning? He did it this morning without being hypnotized,” she said.
Henry frowned. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since then.” He looked thoughtfully at the ground. “You know, Tim always thought that Angel was really the one, that Haverstock was using him to do the tricks, but that was just wishful thinking. I didn’t believe it, I thought it was Haverstock. I’ve seen too much not to know that he has the gift.” He turned to her with a puzzled expression on his face. “It looks like they both have it.”
“Where did Angel come from?” she asked.
“Who knows?” He shrugged. “Haverstock found him somewhere. One morning, he was there. He was about five years old, gmbby and dirty and dumb as a post. Haverstock never told us where he came from, and we weren’t curious enough to risk asking. We didn’t see too much of him. Haverstock kept him in his wagon most of the time. Then, when he was about fifteen or so, he started doing the act you saw last night. In the beginning it was mostly straight magician stuff, nothing as spectacular as it is now.”
“What about the others? Medusa and the mermaid, and the snake woman?”
“They were all here when I came. I was about your age. I ran away from home to join the carnival.” He grunted. “And look at me now.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, looking at the black cloud that filled the southern sky. “I guess I had things pretty good when I was your age. My family had money, not a lot, but all we needed. My father was a small-time politician, not nearly as important as he thought he was, but he was doing all right. My mother was a kind, simple soul who loved us and fussed over us. And I had a little brother who was thirteen, I think. I didn’t think much of him at the time, but I guess he was all you could expect a little brother to be. I think my father was a little ashamed of my mother. She didn’t really fit in with his political friends, so he sorta treated her like the housekeeper.
“But he was proud of me.” He stared into space and a wistful little smile formed on his lips. Evelyn sat quietly, listening to him, feeling his hurt and regret.
“I was my father’s fair-haired boy, all right,” he continued. “I was the best athlete in the city, had trophies all over the house. You may not believe it, but when I was eighteen I was as good looking and as well built as any of the boys Haverstock has with him now. Too well built, I guess. That kind always seem to run to fat when they get older.
“Yeah, I guess I had it pretty good, then something happened. I got into trouble. Not with the police or anything like that. Nobody knew about it except my father and… one other person. It probably wouldn’t be such a big thing nowadays, but that was before the war, in 1905, I think. Yeah, 1905. Women still wore long black dresses that brushed the ground.” He chuckled. “They’d just barely stopped covering up piano legs.
“My father didn’t exactly drive me out into the snow, but I guess it amounted to the same thing. I went back once, after the war. They were all dead. My brother had been killed in France. My mother died of influenza, and my father—” he snorted “—my father got drunk and was run over by a beer wagon. He must have hated that; a blow to his prestige almost as bad as I was.”
He looked at Evelyn and grinned warily. “Here I am chewing your ear off with things you couldn’t possibly be interested in.”
“No…” she said, but he hurried on.
“You asked about the freaks. There used to be a couple of others: a harpy, an ugly, smelly, very unpleasant woman with huge bat wings; and a hydra, a gigantic seven-headed snake. But they both died. I think the snake woman is about on her last legs too. Oh, well, it’ll be a blessing for the poor thing.
“No matter how human they may look, the snake woman and the mermaid are only animals. Medusa isn’t much better, but she can at least go to the toilet and eat with a spoon. I’m not sure about the Minotaur. Sometimes, I think he’s smarter than he acts. He can’t talk either. None of the creatures can talk except Tiny Tim, but he’s the only one that’s truly human.
“And he’s the one I really feel sorry for. He’s extremely intelligent and kind. I don’t know how he’s kept his sanity. I think if I looked like he does, only a foot tall, I’d’ve gone ’round the bend a long time ago. The invisible woman is just a trick, and Electro is whichever of the men isn’t busy at the time. I’ve even been Electro myself… a long time ago. The way that chair is rigged, you could do it yourself and not feel a thing.”
“But hasn’t anyone ever guessed? There are things in the show, especially what Angel does, that can’t be explained away as sideshow tricks.”
“You’d be surprised.” He smiled. “People don’t really want to believe it’s real. It would be too disturbing. Of course, the kids believe it, but who listens to kids? But Haverstock doesn’t take chances. That’s why Electro and I are in the show. Didn’t you wonder why those two very tired acts were included with the spectacular stuff?”
She shook her head, puzzled. “No. I really hadn’t.”
He shrugged. “People see a couple of obvious fakes, they assume that everything is a fake, no matter what their eyes tell them. And nothing could ever throw cold water on an inflamed imagination like my tawdry little act.”