This is just part one of an estimated three. All comments and opinions are appreciated. ^_^
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[The Beggarboy]
It was the Beggarboy who found the body.
The Beggarboy had stood on the lip of the river with his fishing-stick, poking at dark shapes below the water in hopes of finding breakfast. And when nothing came, he sat with damp seeping through his trouser legs and watched the current tug leaves along the banks.
The sky was yellow and heavy with rain yet to come. He watched the clouds blow overhead, reflected in the troughs of waves upon the water.
Much to his surprise, a hat came down the river, all folded and dapper with its gold rope and leather bill. Shoes came second, a tie, third. They pitched along the surface and came to rest on the sand somewhere down the way.
The Beggarboy waited.
He waited with his fishing-stick entwined in his fingers until a mass of tattered clothes and sodden hair laid itself to rest on the shore. He tucked the stick into his belt loop and went to see.
It was the body of Crose, scattered about his belongings. His face was pushed into the sand, and what little skin unmasked there was hued grey and blue. His freckles had faded into bone.
Crose had his arms outstretched, his gaudy sleeve-cuffs stained and torn. His fingers full of rings had twisted themselves in death into claw shapes- reminiscent of what they had been in life.
The Beggarboy knelt beside the remains. Crose had never been one for charity. It was interesting they should meet in these circumstances.
He slipped his hand into Crose’s pockets and pulled out a sodden mass of currency, some of it paper, some of it coin. The paper fluttered on the sand where he had laid it to dry, nothing but little copper circles keeping it from blowing away.
He cut the gold buckles from Crose’s shoes with a rusted pocketknife and slipped the rings from their fingers. He pulled back the sleeve-cuffs on the right hand and screamed.
Naught but a ridge of bone where his wrist would have been remained. Flesh, torn away, hung limply, a small trickle of remaining blood trickling onto the sand.
The Beggarboy, with his heart making little cracks in his ribcage, clasped his own hands to his chest to make sure they were still there.
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[The Freak]
There was a funeral parade for Crose the next day.
They brought out all of the animals from his famous menagerie and lined them up two by two- the elephants, the tigers, the giraffes. The animals marched with red silk about their necks and the townspeople lined up on both sides of the street, dressed in somber clothing.
Only the children laughed.
The freak was at the end of the parade, standing on a golden platform with a baton in its twisted arms. It flung the stick above its head and watched it twirl once, twice, thrice- and it fell back into its hands.
They watched with mouths open as it danced, the beads on its mask shaking and shimmering. The mask covered all but its eyes, tiny, nervous things with the ring around the pupils blood red.
When the parade ended, the animals were tied to the church fence and the town slowly filed into the pews. The freak waited outside with the animals, the baton clutched in its twitching hands.
The giraffes' bodies were warm and smelled of sawdust. It pressed its ear against one of their bellies, in the middle of a brown splotch, just to hear the thing breathe.
The people cast it dirty looks as they past. It smiled with the remnants of a secret buried in its belly- a secret it knew better than they.
Its mother had been a circus girl- a tightrope girl, with a white sequined dress that flowed behind her like angel wings when she leapt from her rope and was caught by a man on a unicycle. Crose had been captivated, back when he was a University boy in a top hat and a coat with the red crest sewn into the lapel. He had sat on rough wooden seats with empty peanut shells tossed at his feet night after night, waiting for his chance to catch the tightrope girl flying from her bigtop perch.
The freak had been conceived in a dingy little halfway house by the side of the road. When it was born a month too soon, Crose was already off in a different town, married to a different girl.
The freak’s mother had taught it all it knew about circus performing- about throwing the baton, about showing people its eyes and how to doge apple cores. She had beaded it a beautiful mask of sparkling glass beads to hide what made it inhuman. She had taught it of its father.
She had been making a new mask for her wretched child when she died. She leaned over to pick up a bead rolling across the floor, and the needle she had been using pierced through her heart.
The freak found her on the floor and went to the ringmaster in the middle of the night. It had cried itself to sleep in his arms, blubbering the secret through sobs.
The ringmaster carried the freak to Crose’s doorstep and laid it to rest with a note pressed in its palm. This is yours.
Crose had put the freak in the menagerie and watched it dance. He gave it a baton and watched it twirl, in mesmerizing patterns above its head. He showed the freak off at all of the most fashionable parties, bidding it dance, dance, and dance one more time.
He had loved the freak.
It smiled in memory of Crose. One of the giraffes lowered its head to blow hot breath onto its hair as the last few people went up the church steps. It reached up and pressed two fingers against the giraffe’s nose, soft and wide.
The last man to enter stopped and looked. “You!” he shouted. The freak looked at the man, dressed in a black velvet coat. “Do you want to come in?”
It nodded its head and with its head bowed, followed him into the church. The man pushed it roughly toward the dark staircase that lead up to the choir loft.
The freak was careful to step carefully so that the metal steps wouldn’t ring beneath shoe soles. It sat in the bench in front of the organ, where cobweb lace was strung between the keys.
The people of the town were spread beneath it in pews, heads bowed in prayer. Henry, one of the men who had attended Crose’s parties to watch the freak dance, stood behind the pulpit, waiting. His foot was tapping anxiously.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his voice echoing off of the waves in the ceiling. “We are gathered here today in loving memory of Lawrence Crose, our dear friend and neighbor.”
He continued, his voice growing strained by the minute. When he ended, his eyes were filled with tears and no one could hear his words.
Several people were lined up behind the pulpit to speak after Henry. The freak recognized most of them. It wondered if they remembered its dancing.
They were a second parade, one of forced laughter and glittering eyes.
“He was a good friend.”
“He knew how to have a laugh. Don’t you remember that time…”
“I have never cherished the company of a man so much as I cherished the company of Lawrence Crose.”
They all ended with a prayer and a whispered amen.
The priest was the last to speak. He crossed himself and stepped behind the pulpit, and the room fell to a hush.
“It is my regret to inform you that Lawrence Crose did not die of natural causes,” he said evenly. His eyes were tired, his hair tousled. The hems of his robes were stained with mud. “His murder was the work of something sinister- something demonic.”
A few of the mothers clapped their hands over their children’s ears with hushed urgency. “When they found him, they found him with his hand severed. Not cleanly severed, mind you- ragged, rough. Like teeth had bitten into the flesh. Indeed, my sons and daughters: the death of Lawrence Crose was not the work of a sickness, nay- it was the work of a monster.”
Several people gasped. The sound was ugly, like breath from someone who had been knocked in the stomach. “Sprinkle your doorsteps with holy water and lock your doors- lock them twice if you must! The Devil preys on idlers, for they are wicked in their laziness.”
He said something more and crossed himself again, but the freak could not hear what he was saying. Instead, it covered its own ears and tried to close its eyes with its mind free of monsters and devils, and waited for the church to empty.
The sun was setting as it left the sanctuary and ran home, to its place in the hay next to the bears. They were asleep, the remnants of ribbons still fastened round their necks.
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It was not long before men began to talk. Their walking sticks clattered against the glass menagerie floors, pulling the freak slowly out of sleep.
“The only way to catch it for sure is to lure it in and kill it,” one of them said.
“So we dress the pig up and put him out- but who will sit watch?”
“Not I.”
“Not I.”
“Not I.”
The freak heard the latch click on the pen door. One of the men kicked at its legs. “Wake up.”
The freak turned and looked at the man, who was still dressed in his funeral clothes. “Will you sit watch tonight, freak?”
“We’ll pay you, in silver and gold.”
The freak sat up and rubbed the back of its head. They laughed. “Money is too complicated for it,” the first man said.
“What…do?” the freak asked, slowly. They grimaced at the sound of its voice.
“You just sit with the pig tonight and wait. We’ll give you a gun and everything- it won’t be a problem.” Another one of the men was smiling at him sweetly. He pulled a pistol from its holster at his hip and handed it to the freak.
The freak took it cautiously in its hands. “You know how to fire a gun?”
It nodded. They looked relieved. “You wait here. We’ll be back in a little while, and we’ll take you to where you need to sit tonight.”
One of the bears shifted and rolled over in its sleep, its claws clacking against the bars of its cage.
They came back near an hour later with a pig on a lead. The pig was dressed in a frock coat and trousers- clothing that had been Crose’s. Clothing that was distinctly gaudy.
The freak held the gun by the barrel and stood, waiting for instructions. They looped the pig’s lead around its thumb and led them both out beyond the menagerie walls into the woods, where the trees were dark and sounded of breathing animals. They brought the freak and the pig in trousers to a rock, slick with rainwater. The freak sat, and the pig laid down at its feet.
“Wait here until morning,” they said. “We’ll bring the money with us when we come back.”
The freak nodded. The pig grunted its assent.
As soon as the footsteps of the men faded, the noises of the forest began to swell until they were almost deafening in the freak’s ears. Every owl cry and creaking tree limb was amplified. The pig began to squeal and tear at its clothing in its sleep.
But for the freak, sleep never came.
It sat perched on the edge of the rock, waiting and waiting and waiting, running its fingers along the sides of the gun.
It waited, and waited, and waited.
It waited until the breathing began- the breathing of something sinister, something inhuman. Deep, gasping breaths that sounded from within powerful lungs, whistling between fearsome teeth.
Something slithered through the leaves that coated the forest floor, the sound growing closer and closer. The pig awoke and began to squeal. The freak’s heart was about to burst, in the same way his mother’s had when the needle pierced between her ribs.
The breathing was louder. Wet smacking sounds rang out against the rock, and the freak bolted, the pig bleating and struggling along behind it, tugging at the lead connecting it to the freak’s thumb.
They dashed through trees and brush, the brambles tearing at their skin.
They ran until the river ran in front of them. The freak stopped just in time, its feet threatening to fall out from under him, pitching him into the dark water, where black rocks, like teeth, jutted out from its depths.
The pig flew forward, the rope connecting them snapping as it did so. Its trouser legs streamed out behind it and it landed on the rocks.
It thrashed and then fell still, the current gently tugging it away.
The freak stood at the edge of the river, horrified. It put its thumb in its mouth, where deep red burns from the rope remained.
And still, the breathing was growing louder.
!
