They both jumped when the door slammed open. Lightning crackled behind the black spectre standing in the doorway. Thunder ripped through the sky. Haverstock stormed in, his face a study in fury.
“What’s wrong?” Henry asked, too startled to keep his mouth shut.
Haverstock didn’t answer him, didn’t seem to even notice him. He went to the cot where the Minotaur still slept with his hand cupping his genitals. A roar of rage tore from Haverstock’s throat. He kicked the Minotaur in the ribs. The Minotaur sat up slowly, rubbing his side, looking at Haverstock with big, soft, confused eyes.
Henry and Tim nervously watched the tableau. The Minotaur swung his hoofs to the floor and sat naked on the cot, looking inquiringly at the man frozen in rage over him.
“You damned freak!” Haverstock shrieked, finally finding his voice. “You damned animal! You couldn’t wait, could you? You couldn’t wait until we found some slut who was willing? You had to go and take one of the town girls! You stupid freak! Look at you!” He pointed at the Minotaur’s genitals. “You filthy animal. You didn’t even wash yourself. You’ve still got blood on you! Don’t you realize the danger this puts me in? I thought I made it clear the last time, it was not to happen again. Didn’t the little lesson I gave you make any impression at all? Didn’t my promise to cut it off, to turn you into a steer, get through to you?”
He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. “Well, it won’t happen again,” he said in a deathly quiet voice. “You don’t have to worry about castration. I’m sick to death of you freaks. I never want to see your hideous faces again. You do nothing but endanger my work.”
The Minotaur stood up, looking uncertainly at the shorter man.
“You couldn’t think of me or my work. All you could think of was your aching flesh. It won’t happen again. Never. Never, again.”
The Minotaur suddenly clutched at his chest and sucked in great gasps of air. His throat rattled and his eyes bluged.
Henry and Tim stared at the stricken Minotaur, then Henry grabbed Tim and ran as hard as he could.
The Minotaur staggered. His hoofs clumped uncertainly on the wooden floor. Haverstock stared at him with gleeful, burning eyes. The Minotaur’s massive body began to tremble. His satin skin became ashen. He held out a shaking, imploring hand and dropped heavily to his knees. Haverstock laughed and caused the Minotaur’s blood to rush to his loins. His phallus swelled and stood erect. His eyes grew glassy and confused, as if he did not know why he was dying. Blood trickled from his flat nose. His body was again seized by tremors and he clutched his arms to his chest.
The muscles in his arms and shoulders knotted and quivered. The Minotaur was incredibly strong and took a long time to die but, finally, his eyes unfocused and filmed. He toppled forward and crashed to the floor. His breath escaped slowly in bloody froth.
Haverstock turned, his own breath coming in gasps, an insane glitter in his eyes. He looked at Henry’s empty cot and a whine squeezed from his tight throat. He kicked over Tim’s crate and pawed through the contents. He swept the wreckage to the floor. He grabbed the lamp and hurled it against the wall over the Minotaur’s cot. The glass shattered and flaming kerosene flowed down the wall and across the floor, filling the wagon with fire.
Haverstock rushed out and went down the line of caravans. He opened a door. He raised his hand. A fireball formed around his fingers, burning like a little sun. He arched his arm and the fireball splattered in the wagon. The scattered bits clung to wood and cloth and flesh, eating and spreading with unnatural speed. The roustabouts awoke, screaming. Haverstock slammed the door but, even in his fury, did not fail to notice the wagon contained only five men. The door shivered as fists pounded on it, but it would not open even though it was not locked. The screens on the windows sang as fingers clawed at them. The frenzied, agonized screams died away. Flames ate through the supporting ropes and the window coverings slammed shut. Smoke seeped through the cracks, then flames jetted out.
The horses began to scream and pull at their hitch reins, their hoofs kicking clods from the hard-packed earth. Already nervous from the thunder and lightning, they broke loose and bolted. They swept around the tent in a drumming river. Some entangled themselves in the guy ropes and fell. One lay kicking and snorting, unable to rise again. Pegs pulled from the ground and a corner of the tent buckled, ballooned, and sagged.
Haverstock went to the next wagon and opened the door. Medusa raised up on her cot and looked at him, red reflections flickering in her eyes. The mermaid floated motionlessly in her tank. He saw the snake woman’s empty cage and growled. With extra fury he shot the fireball into the wagon.
Medusa ran past him, her robes flaming. Her mouth was open and her eyes stared. She ran across the lot with her arms outstretched, seeking something that did not exist. She left a trail of little fires in the grass. The snakes on her head writhed insanely, biting her face and neck and shoulders. Air escaped her gaping mouth in a silent scream. Then she stumbled and fell in a fiery heap. She died without uttering a sound.
The mermaid awoke and swam in tight circles within the narrow confines of her tank, her round fish-eyes glowing red from the flames surrounding her. She pressed against the glass, but drew back because it was too hot. She swam faster, sloshing water over the top of the tank. Her lidless eyes stared and her mouth opened and closed rapidly. In her panic she battered herself against the tank until the water was cloudy with her blood.
The water began to steam. Then the heat grew too great and the glass shattered. Water gushed across the flaming floor. The wagon was filled with white steam. The mermaid lay on the bottom of the tank. Her body trembled and then was still. Only her mouth opened and closed spasmodically, and soon that stopped. She died in agony and confusion.
Haverstock sent a flaming ball at the tent. It went up as if it were soaked in gasoline. He reached Louis’s wagon and found Louis standing outside, wearing a bathrobe, watching him. They looked at each for a moment, measuring, judging. Then Haverstock motioned for Louis to help him and turned back to his own wagon. Louis stepped back inside and returned with an armload of clothes and the frightened woman. She was only half-dressed, her mouth a little round hole and her eyes big. Louis gave a push and she staggered away into the darkness on bare feet.
Already the end of Louis’s wagon was beginning to smoke.
At Rose’s party, twenty giggling, gossiping girls rushed to the window and stared bug-eyed at the flames rising above the treetops on the other side of the square. With a great deal of excitement and confusion, they began to dress.
Finney and Jack had just changed into their nightshirts, getting ready to go to bed. They looked out the window when they heard the fire bell and clambered from the house without putting their clothes back on.
The crowd gathered around the fire like moths, some dressed and some with robes over nightgowns and pajamas. The men helped roll Haverstock’s wagon away from the flames. Louis drove the black Model-T Ford, his clothes beside him on the seat, a way down the street out of danger. Everything else was burning furiously. The flames rose so high from the tent they turned the bottoms of the black clouds to copper. Then they settled back as the tent was consumed.