WE ARE STANDING IN DARKNESS, ARM LINKED IN arm, the circle we made in the Void unbroken.
“Where are we?” Remi asks softly. Before anyone can answer, there is a loud popping noise and a floodlight flashes on from high above us, angling down to illuminate our group. I hold up my arm to shield my eyes from the blinding whiteness.
“Ladies and gentlemen, do we have a show for you today!” comes a nasal voice through a loudspeaker. “Death-defying feats of bravery! Breathtaking spectacles of skill! Tonight and tonight only we plan to thrill, chill, and possibly even kill. And now for some madcap performances by your favorite merrymakers”—the voice lowers to a sinister growl—“the clowns.”
A tinny-sounding circus tune blares out of invisible speakers at a painful volume as a dozen spotlights click on, sweeping the circumference of the circus ring to follow a troupe of circus clowns riding unicycles. Though there are no spectators under the big top, the clowns wave wildly at the empty bleachers. One of them honks a horn as a signal, and half peel off and head in the opposite direction, weaving expertly in and out of each other’s paths. They fake near-crashes and wobble dangerously before righting themselves as they pedal around the ring.
“Is this your dream, Ant?” I yell over the deafening music.
“Yes,” he says. His face is almost as white as the clowns. A lump forms in my throat as I witness his panic.
“What happens?” Sinclair calls from Ant’s other side.
“They put on a show and try to kill everyone,” the boy responds, wide eyes trailing the clowns’ trajectory.
“Kind of figured it was something like that,” Sinclair says, licking his lips nervously.
We have stayed in our circle formation but face outward now, grouped together defensively.
The clowns are riding progressively closer to us, and are swinging lassos around their heads. They are making cowboy noises—yee-haw and giddyap—spinning the lassos until, all at once, they throw them and suddenly I can’t move. My arms are pinned down to my sides, and as the lasso tightens around me, I’m jerked off my feet, stumbling backward out of the harsh glare of the floodlight.
The clowns have abandoned their unicycles and are walking each one of us on the end of their rope. “Why don’t you take a load off,” screeches my captor, loud enough for an audience to enjoy, and from nowhere he produces a wooden chair that he shoves me into. He slips the lasso over the back of the chair and wraps the rope around and around until I am immobilized. After tying it off into a knot, the clown leans in close to my face, giving me a clear view of him for the first time.
He looks like the clown from that Stephen King book. A bald wig with red fuzzy hair glued to the back and sides, evilly stenciled eyebrows, red rubber nose. As he smiles, he reveals sharp yellow teeth. “You’re going to enjoy this show,” he says in the deranged voice of a clown from one of those old children’s television series—the ones broadcast before programmers realized how scary kids really thought clowns were. “I just know you’ll love it. Especially the ringmaster!”
As he flings his arm back to gesture toward a dark corner of the ring, a light flickers on and off, until finally it holds steady, illuminating a tall, thin clown in a top hat. Strings are attached to the clown’s arms, legs, and head, hanging down from the darkness at the top of the tent. His limbs flail around like a marionette. Black lines are drawn from either corner of his lips down to his jawline, making him look like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
“Our first show tonight will be the high wire,” he says, his mouth randomly falling open and snapping shut, unsynchronized with the words coming through the speakers. “Come on, little boy. Take it away!”
The rope pulls the marionette clown’s arm up, and his white-gloved hand points to a wire suspended between two wooden posts high above the ground. A white-faced clown is wrestling with Remi on one of the platforms leading to the wire. “I can’t!” Remi yells. “I’m scared of heights.”
“Then this should help,” the clown retorts. He jerks Remi’s head back with one hand and ties a blindfold around his eyes.
“No!” Remi screeches as the clown shoves him forward. The boy stumbles, his foot catching the wire purely by chance, and he windmills his arms to get his balance.
“There’s not even a net!” I scream at the ringmaster. “Get him down from there!”
“Oh, he’ll get down, all right,” says the marionette. “Sooner rather than later, from what it looks like!”
Holding his head erect, Remi shuffles forward, inch by inch. It’s amazing he hasn’t fallen yet, but it’s obvious he won’t make it far.
“Need some help, little boy?” asks the clown watching him from the platform, arms crossed impatiently. Pressing his oversized shoe on the wire, he gives it a bounce.
Remi screams and topples over, twisting and flailing and somehow catching the wire under both arms. He hangs there precariously for a second before whipping one hand up and ripping the blindfold from his head, and grabbing back on to the wire for dear life.
“Don’t let go!” George screams.
Remi hangs immobile for a moment, and then, summoning all of his strength, he swings one leg out and over the wire so that he’s straddling it and lying along it on his belly. His legs twist around the wire, his hands grasping it firmly, and forehead pressed to it for balance.
“Well, that was boring!” announces the clown on the platform and, grabbing on to a rope hanging from the pillar next to him, swings down to the sawdust-covered ring floor.
“Keep holding on, Remi,” I yell. “We’ll get you down!”
The clowns find this hilarious, and bend over in exaggerated laughs, slapping their knees and holding their bellies.
“Our next show will be provided by more of our courageous volunteers,” says the mouth of the ringmaster. “Bring in the beast!” A cage the size of my bedroom materializes in the middle of the ring, its metal bars rusty and bent. My clown appears in front of me holding a large butcher knife. Laughing evilly, he moves behind me. I frantically arch my neck to see what he is doing. He swings the knife high into the air, its blade flashing silver in the spotlight, and then brings it down, slicing through the ropes binding me to my chair.
I leap up and begin to run, toppling the chair over and stumbling in my effort to get away, but the clown catches me. Holding the knife to my throat, he says, “That’s no way to behave as the star of the featured act!” The blade nicks my skin, and I feel blood trickle down my neck.
He shoves me forward, his large floppy shoes flanking my Converse as he thrusts me across the ring and through the open door of the cage. A second later, Sinclair joins me, thrown in by his own gleeful clown.
The creepy circus music starts back up, and a string of horses prance out of the darkness to pace around the edge of the ring. On the back of each horse, a clown balances, waving at the empty bleachers with one hand and holding the reins with the other. The horses are a horror: emaciated, lifeless, with dull fur hanging from protruding bones. They clop wearily around the ring once, before exiting from where they entered: into the dark.
The macabre circus music stops and is replaced by a drumroll.
“Ant!” I call. “What’s coming?”
Ant and George sit side by side, bound to their chairs, on the far side of the cage from the ringmaster.
“Tiger. Lion. I’m not sure,” Ant says mournfully.
We don’t have to wait long to find out. Three clowns grimacing grotesquely enter the ring with a tiger on a leash. The large cat is as emaciated as the horses were. I glance at Ant. So this is what fills his nightmares: abused animals, murderous clowns, and powerlessness in the face of evil. For a kid who seems to have major control issues, this seems like a worst-case scenario.
One clown walks the tiger like it’s a dog, while the other two flank it, cracking whips at the pitiful beast to keep it moving. They swing open the cage door with a flourish, unclip the leash from the collar, shove the tiger in, and slam the door behind it, jumping with glee and high-fiving as they complete their task.
Sinclair and I back into a far corner of the cage. At first it seems like the tiger doesn’t see us. It paces slowly from one side of the cage to the other, watching the door like it hopes it will spring open on its own. Finally, when it realizes that’s not going to happen, it stops, sniffs the air, and slowly turns toward us.
The tiger’s ribs jut out, its mangy fur falling into the furrows between the bones. Its eyes bulge, too large for its face, and the sadness that seemed to sedate it dissipates as it recognizes prey. The eyes narrow, the chops draw back, and it bares its flesh-ripping teeth. It seems to be channeling its hatred for its captors into the gaze it directs toward us as it growls in a terrifyingly low rumble. A sharp ridge of striped fur rises on its back as it crouches, compacting its body into a concentrated ball of fury, tail whipping back and forth as it prepares to spring.
“Knives,” Sinclair whispers. I remember that the dagger Ant made for us is attached to the belt around my waist. Moving as imperceptibly as I can, I reach for the sheath and carefully pull the blade free.
Sinclair is holding his dagger in front of his face like a warning to the tiger. But the image of handsome Sinclair and his small blade confronting this enormous wild animal is ridiculous. It’s not even a contest.
Sinclair doesn’t seem to realize this, though, and as the beast springs, a strangled yell escapes his throat, and he lunges toward the animal. In my terrified state, it seems like one of those Japanese action movies where both fighters leap in slow motion, exchange a blow in midair, and then land, just as slowly, on opposite sides of each other, throwing sawdust into the air as they come back to earth. When the air clears, Sinclair has a four-claw scratch down one side of his face. Blood drips from it in bright red beads. On the other side of the cage, the tiger limps from a wound to its front leg.
A small voice comes from outside the cage. “Don’t hurt the tiger!” Ant yells.
“Don’t hurt the tiger?” Sinclair exclaims. “If we don’t hurt the tiger, it’s going to fucking kill us!”
I turn to see Ant crying, struggling against the ropes pinning his arms down to his sides. George sits bound beside him, trying to talk him down.
The tiger turns its attention to me, and a rush of pure fear numbs my face and makes my fingertips sting like they’re being pricked by needles. Don’t dissociate, I think, but I don’t need this self-reminder. I dissociate when I feel powerless in a dangerous situation. That isn’t the case here. I can do something. This time I have the power . . . and the means . . . to hurt my aggressor. But I look into the face of the tortured tiger and I choose not to use it.
“Sinclair,” I say. “Let’s just try to escape. If we can work together to slip past the tiger, maybe we can get out the door.”
He looks like he’s thinking. “I’ll get the tiger to come this way,” he says. “You make a run for the door.”
“Okay,” I agree. “Once I’m out, I’ll go to the far end and try to lure it in that direction so you can have a shot for the door.”
“Deal,” he says, and going into this stupid-looking action-hero crouch. He makes a waving-forward gesture with his fingers, like the tiger’s some kind of thug that he’s going to fight in the school parking lot. The tiger looks from Sinclair to me and back. There’s a deranged look in its eyes: it’s probably mad from hunger.
“Hey, tiger,” Sinclair calls. “Come on. Come get me.” He flashes his knife around. The glint of the metal in the circus spotlights catches the animal’s attention and it lunges without even pausing to crouch and spring like it had before. I’m so shocked that I hesitate a second, but then I hear George scream, “Run, Cata!” and I throw my body across the space of the cage toward the door, ignoring the sounds of the struggle behind me.
I hurl myself onto the door, pushing with all my might. The rusty hinges groan as it opens just wide enough for me to slip out. Leaving it ajar, I sprint around to the far corner of the cage in time to see Sinclair tear himself away from the animal. His left arm hangs by his side, blood streaming from his shoulder. He grasps the knife in his right hand and slumps slightly, breathing heavily as the tiger retreats, readying for its next attack.
“Sinclair!” I yell from outside the bars. “The door is open. Go!” And then I stick my arm with my dagger through the bars and wave it around, yelling for all I’m worth to catch the tiger’s attention. The animal looks stunned for a moment, then takes a couple of steps toward me.
But instead of going for the door, Sinclair runs toward the animal, grabs a tuft of mane, yanks its head back, and pulls the knife across its throat. Blood sprays across my face, blinding me.
My muscles seem to dissolve and I fall limp to the ground. Screams come from behind me, cries of horror from Ant and George. I use my shirt to wipe the tiger blood from my eyes and stare aghast at Sinclair. He releases the tiger’s head and watches it slump to the floor.
“Why did you do that?” I shriek.
“What?” Sinclair says, looking confused. “I just saved us.”
“You didn’t have to kill it!” I cry. “The door was open. You could have gotten out.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Sinclair yells back at me. “It’s just a dream!”
We are interrupted by the arrival of the three clowns who had led the tiger into the ring. They flop up to the cage in their giant shoes and freakish smiles, clapping slowly, and swing the door wide to let Sinclair step out. One of them holds Sinclair’s injured arm up in the air. “Bravo!” the clown sneers.
Sinclair slashes at him with the knife, but the clown is faster and jumps out of the way while his two companions grab Sinclair by the arms, shove a chair under him, and tie him down.
“You’ve just won yourselves a front-row seat for the next show,” the clown says, and then, pointing to me, snaps his fingers, and in a split second I go from lying in the sawdust to sitting tied to a chair next to Sinclair.
Suddenly remembering Remi, I look up to the high wire to see that the boy has shuffled his way back to the platform and is watching us with wide eyes.
A spotlight flicks on, illuminating the puppet ringmaster. “Ladies and gentlemen, what a show that was!” says the nasal voice, as he walks toward us with exaggerated movements, strings moving his knees up and down to propel him forward. He claps a congratulatory hand on Sinclair’s shoulder. “This is the kind of hero every crowd loves.”
“You’re sick! You’re all sick!” I scream at the grotesque ringmaster, and struggle against the ropes binding me to the chair. The string holding his head slackens, lowering his face toward mine.
“Sick. That’s a funny word,” the voice says as the jointed mouth flaps, but the creature stares at me with an intensity that sends a shiver through my spine. There’s something familiar about those sea-green eyes. From beneath the velvet top hat spills chin-length black hair. And inked on the inside of the forearm is a Gothic-lettered tattoo reading “DFF.”
“Fergus!” I gasp. “Oh my God, you’re alive!”
“Alive?” he murmurs, as if it’s a word he’s never heard. His face is unrecognizable: It’s the pasty white, painted-on face of every circus clown that ever existed, but there’s something wrong with it. It looks lumpy, like white dough has been pushed and pressed onto his skull in a haphazard manner. It looks like a face transplant. It is a face transplant, I realize with horror.
Unlike before, with the mouth flapping open and shut while the voice came from elsewhere, now it’s Fergus’s lips, not his jaw, that move. With great effort, he squeezes out a breath. “Help me,” he wheezes.
“It’s Fergus!” I yell, and strain against the cords binding my chest.
Immediately, his head is yanked up and one arm raises. He points a white-gloved hand toward our left where Ant and George had been sitting, and as his mouth flaps open and shut, the voice over the loudspeaker announces, “And for the final show, we have a thrilling display of death-defying knife throwing!”
A spotlight shines down on George, whose wrists and ankles are manacled to a round wooden target propped upright in the sawdust. She is dressed in a skimpy green outfit—like a one-piece bathing suit but made of shiny satin lined with black fringe—and is wearing a headpiece crowned with big green feathers.
Facing her is Ant, who is being restrained by two clowns. A third clown stands aside, brandishing a handful of knives. Ant thrashes, yelling, “No, I won’t do it!”
“It seems like we’re having a bit of a technical difficulty, ladies and gentlemen,” puppet Fergus says, taking an exaggerated step away from me toward the clowns. “I think we’re going to have to use some persuasion here to convince our knife thrower to cooperate.”
One of the clowns raises a hand and flourishes Ant’s notebook and pen. He holds them up high above his head. “Would anyone enjoy a magic show?” he asks in a voice that sounds like he’s been inhaling helium. He points a finger and the objects explode in a flash of light. A stream of smoke wafts upward in the harsh light of the spotlight as Ant gapes in shock.
“Maybe our brave knife thrower is ready to throw,” Fergus puppet says.
“I won’t!” Ant screams, red-faced.
“Assistants, more encouragement, please?” The clown holding Ant forces his hands forward as the other clown peels off the fingerless gloves. Ant thrashes and begins to tap his fingers even though there is no surface for them to touch. It looks like he’s doing Morse code in the air. The clown holds them up above his head, and in a poof of flame, they’re gone.
“And now. Are you ready to throw?” Fergus’s mouth moves, and the voice booms over the speakers.
“Never!” Ant screams.
“Good sirs?” the ringmaster says.
Ant throws himself forward, breaking free from the clown restraining him for one breathless second before the clown catches him again, and digs his clawlike fingernails into Ant’s arms. Ant screams in pain as blood blooms red on his skin.
The magician clown rips the hat off Ant’s head and dances around with it, whirling it around in the air. Ant screams and jerks away, jumping, arms stretched upward, trying to grab the hat back from the gleeful clown. The clown who was his captor grasps at his thin cotton shirt, shredding it with his sharp clown nails and ripping it from Ant’s back as the boy lunges for the hat.
The magician clown points his finger at the hat and it disappears in a flame that illuminates Ant’s face as tears pour from his eyes.
No, I realize with shock. Her eyes.
I stare, incredulous, at the thirteen-year-old kneeling on the ground, weeping. My eyes take in the short, spiky strawberry blond hair pulled back in glittery blue barrettes and the striped sports bra and it suddenly clicks. Ant is a girl.
“Let’s see if Antonia,” the magician clown says, accentuating the name in a way that makes it clear that speaking it is meant as its own form of torture, “is ready to throw the knives!”
“No.” Ant’s voice is quiet, but the silence of the big top makes it resound as if it were a gong.
“Gentlemen,” Fergus says, high-stepping over to where Ant is crouched, “I think we will need your assistance.”
The clowns grab Ant and force her to rise. The clown with the knives places one blade in Ant’s hand and closes her fingers around it. Another clown lifts her arm above her head into a throwing position. Ant isn’t even looking. She stares at the ground as sobs rack her body.
“Ant,” a voice says. My eyes race to George, who has been standing silently this whole time, pinnacled to the throwing board.
“Ant,” she says again, and Ant drags her head upward as if it is made of lead.
“It’s okay. Really,” George says, and glances at where her arm is cuffed to the side. My gaze follows hers to her tattoo, and as I watch, half of the yin-yang fades and disappears.
“No,” Ant weeps. “I can’t. I’m not ready.”
“And the first knife flies,” announces Fergus, who has jiggled over to stand next to Ant.
The clown holding Ant’s arm jerks it forward, stabbing her palm with his nails so that she lets go. The knife flies toward George. It lodges in her right arm, but she doesn’t even flinch, her gaze fixed firmly on Ant.
“Well thrown!” crows the ringmaster. “Knife number two!”
Ant is sagging in the arms of the clown. I would think she had fainted except she raises her head to look George in the eyes as the second knife is wedged between her fingers. The clown pulls Ant’s arm back and the knife flies, lodging into George’s right thigh. Streams of blood flow from where the two knives pierce her flesh, but still she doesn’t move, her gaze cemented on Ant.
“You’ll be fine on your own,” George says calmly.
“No,” Ant sobs. “I won’t. I never have been. I need you. You’re six. My sixth thing. My most important thing.”
“Yet again, another excellent throw,” comes the ringmaster’s voice from the speakers. “Knife number three! Let’s try for the head this time, why don’t we?”
The knife-holding clown hands another knife to Ant’s captor.
But something strange is happening to puppet Fergus, who has started to shudder. He’s moving his arms and legs slowly back and forth, straining like he’s stuck in honey, or in a giant spiderweb. The knife-bearing clown backs away in alarm. Fergus plucks a knife from his hand and, with zombielike jerking motions, slices through the strings attached to his arms and legs. He waves the knife over his head, cutting the string holding him up, slumps for a second, and then, regaining his strength, lunges toward George.
The clown holding Ant’s arm swings back and lets the knife fly toward George’s head. For a moment, it seems suspended in midair as clown-faced Fergus flings himself in front of George, shielding her. A trajectory that would have hit George in the forehead instead plants the knife firmly in much-taller Fergus’s chest.
“Fergus!” I cry, and Ant whips her head up to look at the marionette ringmaster, shoots a questioning look back to me, and then realizes who the knife has struck.
“NO!!!!” Ant screams.
And as she thrashes violently against her clown captor, a familiar boom rings out, shaking the tent around us and rattling the empty seats.
“The Wall!” Remi yells from high up on his platform. He scrambles down the ladder toward the floor.
Fergus stands there, frozen, his clown mouth posed in an astonished O shape. The face starts melting, dripping off in big white doughy chunks, and underneath is Fergus—high cheekbones, jade eyes, light brown skin. His teeth are bared, clenched in pain. He slowly reaches up and pulls the knife from his chest, and then collapses onto the ground.
As the second boom rings out, Remi runs up behind me and starts hacking at my ropes with his dagger. To our right, stretching beyond the edges and far above the crest of the big top, the black wall appears. And as it does, the clowns begin to deflate like balloons until all that’s left of them are empty piles of shoes and clothes scattered on the ground. The tiger carcass shrinks inside the cage, becoming a lump of fur and teeth and blood.
My ropes drop to the ground and Remi yells, “Go!” as he starts on Sinclair.
I fall forward out of my chair, catch myself and sprint toward the others. “Come on, you guys!” I bellow. “Quick! The Wall’s going to disappear!”
Ant is stretched out on top of Fergus, weeping as George looks on, her face twisted in distress. “Ant, get up and go!” she urges. “You have to get out of here!”
“Ant, try to get Fergus to the Wall, and I’ll work on getting George down!” I yell. Taking out my knife, I drive it under the manacle holding her arm, and use it to wedge the metal away from the wood.
“Thanks, Cata, but that’s not necessary.” George gives me a sad smile.
I pause and look at her like she’s insane. “What do you mean? I have to get you down.”
She shakes her head. “It’s been nice knowing you,” she whispers. And then, looking down, she calls, “Ant?”
The girl raises her head to look George in the eyes.
“Take care of yourself,” George says. And then she disappears, leaving only dangling manacles and bloodstains on the giant wheel.
“What the . . . ?” I yell. I glance around the circus ring, but George hasn’t reappeared anywhere I can see.
“Help me with Fergus!” Ant yells, tears streaming down her face as she tries to wrap his arm around her shoulder.
“What happened to George?” I ask.
“Just help me with Fergus,” Ant insists, and as the wind rises, the third boom shakes the tent so violently that it begins to cave in on one end, canvas plunging heavily toward the ground. Sawdust rises in a blinding cloud, and the spotlights crash down one by one.
Ant and I are trying to drag Fergus between us, but although he is semiconscious and mumbling, he is deadweight and we are barely moving. Sinclair and Remi run up behind us. “Ant, Remi, go!” Sinclair yells, and takes over for Ant. We lug him between us toward the Wall. Ant and Remi turn and wait for us at the edge of the darkness.
“Just go!” I yell. And as we reach them and plow with Fergus into the Void, I see the static monster out the side of my eye. It crouches by the edge of the Wall, reaching out toward us, its wails muted by the howling of the wind.