“So how are we gonna talk to him?”
“We’ll get him to come out to us.”
Brookins scratched his head, perplexed and agitated. “But what if he don’t come out?” he said, watching the crowd begin to enter the gate.
“Oh, mark my words, he’ll come out,” Quayle said confidently.
He jumped down from the wagon, then pulled the oilcloth covering back. The creature in the seaweed hissed at him, its eyes full of hate.
“There ya go, bucko, hold that thought,” he said to it, ignoring its withering glare as it struggled to reach him with its bent limbs.
He pulled the oilcloth covering over the creature once more, then stood up in the wagon, cleared his throat, and began calling in the barker’s voice he had used in his days as a monger on the wharf.
“Step rightly, lads and lasses, come one, come all—see the Amazing Fish-boy! A better freak you’ll not find within the show you’ve already paid for—and what’s more, it won’t cost you a thing!”
The crowd of onlookers heading into the Monstrosity continued streaming past him, though a few turned and looked in his direction.
Quayle tried again. “Come now, if you dare, look into the face of true monstrosity! Come and take a gander at a being who is half man, half woman, and half fish!”
A few men slowed their gait, but otherwise the crowd ignored him, hurrying to the tents.
Not to be deterred, Quayle addressed a heavyset woman strolling with her husband, a redheaded man with a barrel chest.
“You, madam! You appear to be a right brave soul. You want to be the first to see the real freak? Somethin’ so frightening that the Ringmaster of the Monstrosity himself is afraid to come out and see it?”
The woman paused, intrigued, and plucked at her husband’s arm. The man shook his head disapprovingly, but she dug in her heels.
“Come along, Percy, he picked me! I want to be the first!” she bleated. “Come on, now, love. Let’s have a look.”
“Yes, manny, listen to the little lady,” said Quayle in a manner he believed to be smooth. “You can look, too. And it won’t cost you nothing. Be the first! Or move on.”
The barrel-chested man cast a longing glance in the direction of the Monstrosity, then looked back at his wife’s expectant face and sighed.
“All right, Grita, but then we are late for the gate,” he said grudgingly.
Quayle clapped his hands together in delight. As he had expected, a small crowd had started to form, willing to delay for a moment their entry into the carnival of freaks in anticipation of what might be hiding in the wagon. The light from the torches cast long fireshadows that scurried across the oilcloth, making it seem like a menacing bog or a cave from which something hideous was about to appear.
“Come ’round this side, missus,” he said to the woman, who eagerly made her way around the wagon to the place where the fisherman had indicated; her husband followed her, exhaling loudly. Quayle glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the sideshow; as he expected, enough of the crowd had been diverted to have caught the attention of the hunchback at the gate. The ticket taker muttered something to one of the bare-chested guards, and the muscle-bound man slipped through the gate and disappeared into the Monstrosity.
Quayle returned his attention to the woman, who was dancing impatiently next to the wagon. He adopted as polite a tone as he could muster.
“Are you ready, missus?”
The woman nodded eagerly.
“Now, make sure you stay within grasp of your fine husband here. This is a savage beast.”
“Get on with it,” her husband growled.
Quayle glanced up at the small crowd once more, and, determining the size to be right, he nodded.
“Very well, then. Behold the Amazing Fish-boy.”
He grasped the oilcloth and tugged it up so that the woman and her husband could see inside, while the rest of the crowd around the wagon watched their faces.
The man and the woman peered into the depths of the wagon.
At first all they could see was darkness. The woman stood on her tiptoes and leaned in for a better look, while her husband crossed his arms, looking annoyed.
“I don’t see nothin’,” he said in a surly voice.
“Neither do—”
Just as the words left the woman’s lips, the creature in the wagon lunged at her with all its might, hissing and screeching ferociously. Black water poured from its gaping mouth, its lips fused in the center over its soft yellow teeth, its eyes, cloudy with cataracts, filled with unmistakable murderous rage.
Both of them reeled back in shock, then screamed in unison. The woman’s face went completely gray, and she darted behind her husband, sobbing; he could do little to help, as he seemed rooted to the spot, gibbering like a monkey.
The unveiling had its desired effect. The response was so genuine, the husband and wife so aghast, that it caused ripples of residual horror to wash over the small crowd, which gasped in fear, even without seeing the freak in the wagon.
Quayle chuckled at the shock on Brookins’s face; the ripple of terror had caught his dockmate unaware. He pulled the oilcloth back over the wagon.
“All right,” he called to the crowd around his wagon, which had tripled in the wake of the scream, “who’s next?”
Brookins, recovering, had been watching the gate. “Quayle,” he murmured, “he’s comin’.”
Without looking, Quayle nodded. “You, sir?” he asked quickly, pulling a tall, brawny man in from the wagon’s edge. A group of other people around him stepped quickly back.
The man was coaxed into place just as the Ringmaster and two of his keepers came into the circle around the wagon. Quayle timed his revelation to coincide with the Ringmaster’s arrival; when he was just a few steps away, the fisherman pulled the oilcloth off again, once again eliciting a strangled gasp and a cry of genuine horror rising from the brawny man’s viscera.
The crowd of peasants began to talk among themselves in an enthusiastic blend of excitement and fear. The Ringmaster shoved his way through the convocation, followed by his keepers, trying to talk above the din of chatter, endeavoring to convince the group to move on to the gates of the sideshow, but the promise of free viewing of what must be a heinous monster served to make them insistent upon seeing it for themselves.
“What do you think you are doing?” the Ringmaster demanded angrily of Quayle, who was watching the proceedings with a look of smug satisfaction on his face.
“Why, just giving your sideshow customers a little—a little—”
“Side show?” Brookins piped up.
Quayle chuckled. “That’s it! A side show to the sideshow.” He glanced from the boisterous crowd, which was now jockeying to see who would peer into the wagon next, to the livid Ringmaster and his bristling henchmen, and leveled an insolent stare at the man. “Now, don’t get uppity, Ringmaster,” he said patronizingly. “Remember, it’s you what stood me up. I offered you first crack at this freak, and you didn’t bother to come to our arranged appointment.”
The Ringmaster pushed his way through the crowd and came around to the side of the wagon where Quayle stood.
“Let me see it,” he demanded. He seized the edge of the oilcloth.
“Ah, ah,” Quayle chided, slapping his hand away. “It’s not free for you, Ringmaster. You charged me to come into your show. Seems only fittin’ that you should pony up a crown to see mine.”
The crowd, caught up in the excitement, began to babble in agreement.
Inhuman sounds began to issue forth from under the oilcloth.
The Ringmaster’s face slackened. “I don’t carry money,” he said sullenly.