Circus Boy - Chapter 4

Hey, thansk for all your critiquing, please tell me how to improve this? x

Chapter 4

I can see the early sun filtering in through the cave archway. So much for writing this all in one night. On closer inspection, I seem to have fallen asleep onto my papers. My ink bottle has been overturned and the blue substance is spilling onto the solid rock ground. Good thing I keep two jars spare.

I am ashamed that I set myself a goal and did not keep to it.

But here I go again, rambling on.

Back to my tale.

Olga grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and pulled me close to her ugly face. As she spoke I noticed her teeth were small black and pointed, in several clumsy rows that would have given dentist nightmares.

“Don’t draw attention to yourself, you keep a hold of my grip until we get inside.” She hissed. I nodded meekly in reply, it wasn’t as if I could protest or, for that matter, know any better.

Olga booted open the carriage door with surprising force for someone as skinny as her. She seized a handful of the back of my waistcoat and yanked me behind her and we stepped outside.

Wrought iron lampposts lined the street with blue flames flickering inside the glass exterior. Seemingly identical black semi-detached houses ran along either side of the road, tall and thin with no windows and dirty red front doors. I was too bust gawping at the street and at the house in front of us (which was blazoned with a glowing green number to notice Olga conversing once more with the carriage driver. I turned around and gasped.

The carriage was nothing spectacular, plain black like everything else built around here it seemed, circle in shape with matching blackened windows. It was the things pulling the carriage that made Olga clamp her hand across my mouth to silence me.

The creatures pulling the carriage were around the same shape and size of antelope you may be used to on Earth, but their coats, matted and scarred, were striped black and purple and the horns on their heads were twisted and looked almost like solid silver. I looked down at their hooves, only to see their spindly legs ended in a sharp point, like pins. They were the source of the tapping as these bizarre creatures pawed the cobbled street anxiously.

A small, ugly creature was perched on the driver’s seat of the carriage, his short legs dangling down, whipped the ...things pulling the carriage to silence them. They gave the long whining note of the strained violin once more and remained motionless and quiet. The squat driver smiled. He had the rough characteristics of man, a knotted ginger beard and hair; terracotta skin; a thin lipped oily smile and long hooked nose, which was protruding over his lip and long pointed ears, which poked comically out of a red cap of which he seemed to have cut the holes and even made himself. The rest of his clothes seemed to give this away too, a clumsily sewn together long shirt which was far too big for him and hung just below his knees with knitted woollen socks hoisted up beyond sight.

He was talking to Olga and even though I couldn’t understand what they were saying I could recognise the sickeningly polite tone the creature had which was clearly fake and the short sharp replies Olga was giving him, firmly ushering me into number 8.

Instead of a key hole, she muttered a few words under her breath and the door swung open with a swift click. She nudged me with the toe of her boot so that I stumbled inside.

A long thin corridor stretched on before me, with what seemed like thousands of brass knobbed doors on either side. The walls were half panelled with mahogany that had long lost its glamour. The top half of the walls clumsily papered in William Morris fungus colour wallpaper, which was peeling like dead skin and damp patches of the paper were giving off a foul stench of rotten eggs.

A few brown and white photographs were hung lopsided on the walls, out of focus and with italic handwriting scrawled at the bottom, none of which I could read or understand. An oil lamp was strung from the ceiling, its flickering flame dimly lighting the entrance hall.

Olga gave me another sharp poke with her foot and so I tottered straight down the vestibule right to the very end. A tall stone archway towered above me which was quite out of place compared to the rest of the grotty hallway; it looked even more unwelcoming if possible.

Flagstone steps were leading down from it and out of sight; almost literally - the flame brackets that lined the grey brick walls hardly lit the staircase.

Olga bent down to my level.

“I am going to set instructions for the children downstairs. They shall not talk you, you shall not talk to them. During the day you will learn with me. When we are done, you return to your quarter. You eat, sleep and wash down there. You never come upstairs or enter any other rooms. Understood?”

“Yes, Olga.”

“You are to call me Mistress.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Any other questions?”

“Yes, hundreds!”

That is what I wanted to scream at her.

Instead I only questioned one thing.

“What were those things pulling the carriages?”

I could not get the image of their gaunt miserable faces out of my head, the desperate whinnying, their deadened blank white eyes….

“I already told you! Chasschevaux! Contrôleur, don’t you children listen to anything?!”

“Sorry mistress.”

“Wait here, boy.”

And with a sweep of her cloak, she stormed down the stairs, head and mask held high.

My curiosity was burning, young child that I was, to know what was behind the paneled doors. Secrets? Money? Treasure?

I hastened a glance behind my shoulder. I couldn’t see or hear any sign of Olga returning soon.

I padded softly towards the nearest door and pressed my ear against it. Deeply saddening music met my ears, a music box. I didn’t know it was a music box at the time, the only music I had ever heard was chilling fanfare. The clinking mystical music was enticing. I was overcome with a hunger to know what it was, why it was there. I needed that music.

I reached out and, on tip toes, grasped the door knob. It slid open with ease.

You would think Olga would have locked the door.

I glimpsed a room, empty but for one spindly table where a small music box stood open, spewing out its tinkling music, the handle on the side turning as though by an invisible hand before I felt sharp claws dig into my back and threw me backwards and headlong into the corridor’s wall.

After blinking a few times to get rid of stars swimming before my eyes, I focused on my attacker.

It was the mangy cat I had seen with Olga when I first saw it. It had the rough outline of a cat, just massively oversized. Its huge yellow eyes bulged nastily out of its sockets; its bandy legs were about as long as my height; its fangs overlapped its pink lips and drool hung nastily from its mouth. Its fur was grey and matted, with the old piece torn out showing black leather like-skin. A piece of string was tied around its neck, with a luggage label suspended from it. Scrawled onto this was what I assumed was the beast’s name. Cuddles.

I couldn’t read this at the time.

But I’m sure every one of you readers exclaimed - Cuddles?! – in a truly disbelieving tone.

Cuddles hissed at me, bearing his long fangs menacingly. He looked perfectly capable to eat me, the door and the music box in one go and still have room to polish off Olga. But, I had been raised with tigers and lions.

Do you know what I did?

I growled back at the monster.

Cuddles seemed fairly surprised by this and stopped. He sniffed me, rather dog like of him, but still sniffed me.

I remained motionless, not daring to breath, just as I had been taught. I could feel blood trickling down the side of my head where I had hit the solid wall.

He gave me a contemptuous look and then stalked away, battered tail risen high in defiance.

I tried to clean myself up, but it was no use, I was streaming scarlet on the moss carpet floor.

I heard pounding on the stone steps and quickly returned to the spot Olga had left me. She leered around the arch at me, then did a double take.

“Your bleeding.” She stated, as if I couldn’t work this out for myself. She squinted at me, then her eyes darted to the open door, from which the music box’s melody was still flowing out of.

Without warning, she picked me up and flung me down the stairs.

“DON’T YOU EVER ENTER THAT ROOM! EVER! MAY CONTRÔLEUR HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL SINCE I CERTAINLY DON’T!” She screamed after me, her voice tuning in and out for me as a thudded heavily down each step, mainly painfully, head first.

The staircase spiraled downwards and soon I came to a halt. I gingerly got up for the second time that day and felt far worse than the first time. I set down the rest of the steps miserably, wincing in agony.

After what felt like hours of dragging my poor tired feet down the stairs, I came to a circular room, where around forty iron beds where placed, not in any order, almost as if someone had dumped them without really caring.

Thirty nine heads poked up from behind the ragged sheets, their eyes glowing bright in the darkness.

Some of them looked like miniature version of Olga, black teeth, violet, green or maroon skin, wild hair and grey blank eyes. Others had different coloured skin and teeth. None had my pale pink skin tone, small white teeth or mop of golden curls. They looked me probably as I was looking at them, like I was an outcast.

One lone bed stood empty.

I practically forced myself to it and crawled under the thin sheets. It felt horribly damp; which was soon explained by the steady drip drip sounds which splashed onto my head.

I was below a leak from upstairs.

Perfect.

I curled up into a ball and screwed my eyes tight shut, but even though I was so tired, sleep would not come.

I needed my mother to rock me gently, to sing me a soothing lullaby with her hauntingly beautiful voice, to hold me close to her so I could snuggle into her breast.

The other children soon drifted into sleep, their gentle snores and snuffles filled the stone chamber.

Some wailed in their sleep, some muttered under their breath.

I know now that I was one of the many that made their scraps of pillow sodden by sobbing uncontrollably into it that night.