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“Don’t watch horror movies, OK?” he said before he left. “I don’t want you coming home with nightmares.”
“Oh, Dad!” I groaned. “Everyone in my class watches horror movies.”
“Listen,” he said, “I don’t mind an old Vincent Price film, or one of the less scary Dracula movies, but none of these nasty new ones, OK?”
“OK,” I promised.
“Good man,” he said, and drove off.
I hurried up to the house and rang the bell four times, which was my secret signal to Steve. He must have been standing right inside, because he opened the door straightaway and dragged me in.
“About time,” he growled, then pointed to the stairs. “See that hill?” he asked, speaking like a soldier in a war film.
“Yes, sir,” I said, snapping my heels together.
“We have to take it by dawn.”
“Are we using rifles or machine guns, sir?” I asked.
“Are you mad?” he barked. “We’d never be able to carry a machine gun through all that mud.” He nodded at the carpet.
“Rifles it is, sir,” I agreed.
“And if we’re taken,” he warned me, “save the last bullet for yourself.”
We started up the stairs like a couple of soldiers, firing imaginary guns at imaginary foes. It was childish, but great fun. Steve ‘lost’ a leg on the way and I had to help him to the top. “You may have taken my leg,” he shouted from the landing, “and you may take my life, but you’ll never take my country!”
It was a stirring speech. At least, it stirred Mrs Leonard, who came through from the downstairs living room to see what the racket was. She smiled when she saw me and asked if I wanted anything to eat or drink. I didn’t. Steve said he’d like some caviar and champagne, but it wasn’t funny the way he said it, and I didn’t laugh.
Steve doesn’t get on with his mum. He lives alone with her – his dad left when Steve was very young – and they’re always arguing and shouting. I don’t know why. I’ve never asked him. There are certain things you don’t discuss with your friends if you’re boys. Girls can talk about stuff like that, but if you’re a boy you have to talk about computers, football, war and so on. Parents aren’t cool.
“How will we sneak out tonight?” I asked in a whisper as Steve’s mum went back into the living room.
“It’s OK,” Steve said. “She’s going out.” He often called her she instead of Mum. “She’ll think we’re in bed when she gets back.”
“What if she checks?”
Steve laughed nastily. “Enter my room without being asked? She wouldn’t dare.”
I didn’t like Steve when he talked like that, but I said nothing in case he went into one of his moods. I didn’t want to do anything that might spoil the show.
Steve dragged out some of his horror comics and we read them aloud. Steve has great comics, which are only meant for adults. My mum and dad would hit the roof if they knew about them!
Steve also has loads of old magazines and books about monsters and vampires and werewolves and ghosts.
“Does a stake have to be made out of wood?” I asked when I’d finished reading a Dracula comic.
“No,” he said. “It can be metal or ivory, even plastic, as long as it’s hard enough to go right through the heart.”
“And that will kill a vampire?” I asked.
“Every time,” he said.
I frowned. “But you told me you have to cut off their heads and stuff them with garlic and toss them in a river.”
“Some books say you have to,” he agreed. “But that’s to make sure you kill the vampire’s spirit as well as its body, so it can’t come back as a ghost.”
“Can a vampire come back as a ghost?” I asked, eyes wide.
“Probably not,” Steve said. “But if you had the time, and wanted to make sure, cutting off the head and getting rid of it would be worth doing. You don’t want to take any chances with vampires, do you?”
“No,” I said, shivering. “What about werewolves? Do you need silver bullets to kill them?”
“I don’t think so,” Steve said. “I think normal bullets can do the job. You might have to use lots of them, but they should work.”
Steve knows everything there is to know about horror facts. He’s read every sort of horror book there is. He says every story has at least some bit of truth in it, even if most are made up.
“Do you think the Wolf Man at the Cirque Du Freak is a werewolf?” I asked.
Steve shook his head. “From what I’ve read,” he said, “the wolf-men in freak shows are normally just very hairy guys. Some of them are more like animals than people, and eat live chickens and stuff, but they’re not werewolves. A werewolf would be no good in a show, because it can only turn into a wolf when there’s a full moon. Every other night, it would be a normal guy.”
“Oh,” I said. “What about the snake-boy? Do you—”
“Hey,” he laughed, “save the questions for later. The shows long ago were terrible. The owners used to starve the freaks and keep them locked up in cages and treat them like dirt. But I don’t know what this one will be like. They might not even be real freaks: they might only be people in costumes.”
The freak show was being held at a place near the other side of town. We had to leave not long after nine o’clock, to make sure we got there in time. We could have got a cab, except we’d used most of our pocket money to replace the cash Steve took from his mum. Besides, it was more fun walking. It was spookier!
We told ghost stories as we walked. Steve did most of the talking, because he knows way more than me. He was on top form. Sometimes he forgets the ends of stories, or gets names mixed up, but not tonight. It was better than being with Stephen King!
It was a long walk, longer than we thought, and we almost didn’t make it on time. We had to run the last half-kilometre. We were panting like dogs when we got there.
The venue was an old theatre which used to show movies. I’d passed it once or twice in the past. Steve told me once that it was shut down because a boy fell off the balcony and got killed. He said it was haunted. I asked my dad about it, and he said it was a load of lies. It’s hard sometimes to know whether you should believe the stories your dad tells you or the ones your best friend tells you.
There was no name outside the door, and no cars parked nearby, and no queue. We stopped out front and bent over until we got our breath back. Then we stood and looked at the building. It was tall and dark and covered in jagged grey stones. Lots of the windows were broken, and the door looked like a giant’s open mouth.
“Are you sure this is the place?” I asked, trying not to sound scared.
“This is what it says on the tickets,” Steve said and checked again, just to be sure. “Yep, this is it.”
“Maybe the police found out and the freaks had to move on,” I said. “Maybe there isn’t any show tonight.”
“Maybe,” Steve said.
I looked at him and licked my lips nervously. “What do you think we should do?” I asked.
He stared back at me and hesitated before replying. “I think we should go in,” he finally said. “We’ve come this far. It’d be silly to turn back now, without knowing for sure.”
“I agree,” I said, nodding. Then I gazed up at the scary building and gulped. It looked like the sort of place you saw in a horror movie, where lots of people go in but don’t come out. “Are you scared?” I asked Steve.
“No,” he said, but I could hear his teeth chattering and knew he was lying. “Are you?” he asked.
“Course not,” I said. We looked at each other and grinned. We knew we were both terrified, but at least we were together. It’s not so bad being scared if you’re not alone.
“Shall we enter?” Steve asked, trying to sound cheerful.
“Might as well,” I said.
We took a deep breath, crossed our fingers, then started up the steps (there were nine stone steps leading up to the door, each one cracked and covered with moss) and went in.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WE FOUND ourselves standing in a long, dark, cold corridor. I had my jacket on, but shivered all the same. It was freezing!
“Why is it so cold?” I asked Steve. “It was warm outside.”
“Old houses are like that,” he told me.
We started to walk. There was a light down by the other end, so the further in we got, the brighter it became. I was glad of that. I don’t think I could have made it otherwise: it would have been too scary!
The walls were scratched and scribbled-on, and bits of the ceiling were flaky. It was a creepy place. It would have been bad enough in the middle of the day, but this was ten o’clock, only two hours away from midnight!
“There’s a door here,” Steve said and stopped. He pushed it ajar and it creaked loudly. I almost turned and ran. It sounded like the lid of a coffin being tugged open!
Steve showed no fear and stuck his head in. He said nothing for a few seconds, while his eyes got used to the dark, then pulled back. “It’s the stairs up to the balcony,” he said.
“Where the kid fell from?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you think we should go up?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s dark up there, no sign of any sort of light. We’ll try it if we can’t find another way in, but I think—”
“Can I help you boys?” somebody said behind us, and we nearly jumped out of our skins!
We turned around quickly and the tallest man in the world was standing there, glaring down on us as if we were a couple of rats. He was so tall, his head almost touched the ceiling. He had huge bony hands and eyes that were so dark, they looked like two black coals stuck in the middle of his face.
“Isn’t it rather late for two little boys like yourselves to be out and about?” he asked. His voice was as deep and croaky as a frog’s, but his lips hardly seemed to move. He would have made a great ventriloquist.
“We…” Steve began, but had to stop and lick his lips before he could continue. “We’re here to see the Cirque Du Freak,” he said.
“Are you?” The man nodded slowly. “Do you have tickets?”
“Yes,” Steve said, and showed his.
“Very good,” the man muttered. Then he turned to me and said: “How about you, Darren? Do you have a ticket?”
“Yes,” I said, reaching into my pocket. Then I stopped dead in my tracks. He knew my name! I glanced at Steve and he was shaking in his boots.
The tall man smiled. He had black teeth and some were missing, and his tongue was a dirty shade of yellow. “My name is Mr Tall,” he said. “I own the Cirque Du Freak.”
“How did you know my friend’s name?” Steve asked bravely.
Mr Tall laughed and bent down, so he was eyeball-to-eyeball with Steve. “I know lots of things,” he said softly. “I know your names. I know where you live. I know you don’t like your mummy or your daddy.” He turned to face me and I took a step back. His breath stank to the high heavens. “I know you didn’t tell your parents you were coming here. And I know how you won your ticket.”
“How?” I asked. My teeth were shaking so much, I wasn’t sure if he heard me or not. If he did, he decided not to answer, because next he stood up and turned away from us.
“We must hurry,” he said, beginning to walk. I thought he would take giant steps, but he didn’t, he took short ones. “The show is about to begin. Everyone else is present and seated. You are late, boys. You’re lucky we didn’t start without you.”
He turned a corner at the end of the corridor. He was only two or three steps in front of us, but when we turned the corner, he was sitting behind a long table covered with a black cloth which reached down to the floor. He was wearing a tall red hat now, and a pair of gloves.
“Tickets, please,” he said, reached out, took them, opened his mouth and put the tickets in, then chewed them to pieces and swallowed!
“Very well,” he said. “You may go in now. We normally don’t welcome children, but I can see you are two fine, courageous young men. We will make an exception.”
There were two blue curtains in front of us, drawn across the end of the hall. Steve and me looked at each other and gulped.
“Do we walk straight on?” Steve asked.
“Of course,” Mr Tall said.
“Isn’t there a lady with a torch?” I asked.
He laughed. “If you want someone to hold your hand,” he said, “you should have brought a baby-sitter!”
That made me mad and I forgot for a moment how afraid I was. “All right,” I snapped, stepping forward, surprising Steve. “If that’s the way it is …” I walked forward quickly and pushed past the curtains.
I don’t know what those curtains were made of, but they felt like spider webs. I stopped once past. I was in a short corridor and another pair of curtains were draped across the walls a few metres in front. There was a sound behind and then Steve was by my side. We could hear noises on the other side of the curtains.
“Do you think it’s safe?” I asked.
“I think it’s safer to go forward than backwards,” he answered. “I don’t think Mr Tall would like it if we turned back.”
“How do you think he knew all that stuff about us?” I asked.
“He must be able to read minds,” Steve replied.
“Oh,” I said, and thought about that for a few seconds. “He nearly scared the life out of me,” I admitted.
“Me too,” Steve said.
Then we stepped forward.
It was a huge room. The chairs had been ripped out of the theatre long ago, but deck chairs had been set up in their place. We looked for spare seats. The entire theatre was packed, but we were the only children there. I could feel people watching us and whispering.
The only spaces were in the fourth row from the front. We had to step over lots of legs to get there and people were grumbling. When we sat down, we realised they were good seats, because we were right in the middle and nobody tall was in front of us. We had a perfect view of the stage and could see everything.
“Do you think they sell popcorn?” I asked.
“At a freak show?” Steve snorted. “Get real! They might sell snake eggs and lizard eyes, but I’ll bet anything you like they don’t sell popcorn!”
The people in the theatre were a mixed bunch. Some were dressed stylishly, others in tracksuits. Some were as old as the hills, others just a few years older than Steve and me. Some chatted confidently to their companions and behaved as though at a football match, others sat quietly in their chairs and gazed around nervously.
What everyone shared was a look of excitement. I could see it in their eyes, the same light that was shining in Steve’s and mine. We all somehow knew that we were in for something special, the like of which we’d never seen before.
Then a load of trumpets blew and the whole place went quiet. The trumpets blew for ages and ages, getting louder and louder, and every light went out until the theatre was pitch black. I began to get scared again, but it was too late to leave.
All of a sudden, the trumpets stopped and there was silence. My ears were ringing and for a few seconds I felt dizzy. Then I recovered and sat up straight in my seat.
Somewhere high up in the theatre, someone switched on a green light and the stage lit up. It looked eerie! For about a minute nothing else happened. Then two men came on, pulling a cage. It was on wheels and covered with what looked like a huge bearskin rug. When they got to the middle of the stage they stopped, dropped the ropes and ran back into the wings.
For a few seconds more – silence. Then the trumpets blew again, three short blasts. The rug came flying off the cage and the first freak was revealed.
That was when the screaming began.
CHAPTER NINE
THERE WAS no need for the screaming. The freak was quite shocking, but he was chained up inside the cage. I think the people who screamed did it for fun, the way people scream on a roller coaster, not because they were actually afraid.
It was the Wolf Man. He was very ugly, hair all over his body. He only wore a piece of cloth around his middle, like Tarzan, so we could see his hairy legs and belly and back and arms. He had a long bushy beard which covered most of his face. His eyes were yellow and his teeth were red.
He shook the bars of the cage and roared. It was pretty frightening. Lots more people screamed when he roared. I nearly screamed myself, except I didn’t want to look like a baby.
The Wolf Man went on shaking the bars and jumping about, before calming down. When he was sitting on his backside, the way dogs do, Mr Tall walked on and spoke.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and even though his voice was low and croaky, everybody could hear what he was saying, “welcome to the Cirque Du Freak, home of the world’s most remarkable human beings.
“We are an ancient circus,” he went on. “We have toured for five hundred years, bringing the grotesque to generation after generation. Our line-up has changed many times, but never our aim, which is to astound and terrify you! We present acts both frightening and bizarre, acts you can find nowhere else in the world.
“Those who are easily scared should leave now,” he warned. “I’m sure there are people who came tonight thinking this was a joke. Maybe they thought our freaks would be people in masks, or harmless misfits. This is not so! Every act you see tonight is real. Each performer is unique. And none are harmless.”
That was the end of his speech and he walked offstage. Two pretty women in shiny suits came on next and unlocked the door of the Wolf Man’s cage. A few people looked scared but nobody left.
The Wolf Man was yapping and howling when he first came out of the cage, until one of the ladies hypnotised him with her fingers. The other lady spoke to the crowd.
“You must be very quiet,” she said in a foreign accent. “The Wolf Man will not be able to hurt you as long as we control him but a loud sound could wake him up, and then he would be deadly!”
When they were ready, they stepped down from the stage and walked the hypnotised Wolf Man through the theatre. His hair was a dirty grey colour and he walked with a stoop, fingers hanging down around his knees.
The ladies stayed by his side and warned people to be quiet. They let you stroke him if you wanted, but you had to do it gently. Steve rubbed him when he went by but I was afraid he might wake up and bite me, so I didn’t.
“What did it feel like?” I asked, as quietly as I could.
“It was spiky,” Steve replied, “like a hedgehog.” He lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed. “It smells strange too, like burning rubber.”
The Wolf Man and ladies were about halfway down the rows of seats when there was a big BANG! I don’t know what made the noise, but suddenly the Wolf Man began roaring and he shoved the ladies away from him.
People screamed and those nearest him leapt from their seats and ran. One woman wasn’t quick enough, and the Wolf Man leapt on her and dragged her to the ground. She was screaming fit to burst, but nobody tried to help her. He rolled her over on to her back and bared his teeth. She stuck a hand up to push him away, but he got his teeth on it and bit it off!
A couple of people fainted when they saw that and loads more began yelling and running. Then, out of nowhere, Mr Tall appeared behind the Wolf Man and wrapped his arms around him. The Wolf Man struggled for a few seconds, but Mr Tall whispered something in his ear and he relaxed. While Mr Tall led him back to the stage, the women in the suits calmed down the crowd and told them to return to their seats.
While the crowd hesitated, the woman with the bitten-off hand went on screaming. Blood was pumping out of the end of her wrist, covering the ground and other people. Steve and me were staring at her, our mouths wide open, wondering if she was going to die.
Mr Tall returned from the stage, picked up the severed hand and gave a loud whistle. Two people in blue robes with hoods over their heads ran forward. They were short, not much bigger than me or Steve, but with thick arms and legs, and lots of muscles. Mr Tall sat the woman up and whispered something in her ear. She stopped screaming and sat still.
Mr Tall took hold of the wrist, then reached into his pocket and took out a small brown leather pouch. He opened it with his free hand and sprinkled a sparkly pink powder on to the bleeding wrist. Then he stuck the hand against it and nodded to the two people in the blue suits. They produced a pair of needles and loads of orange string. And then, to the amazement of everybody in the theatre, they started to stitch the hand back on to the wrist!
The people in blue robes stitched for five or six minutes. The woman didn’t feel any pain, even though their needles were going in and out of her flesh, all the way around the wrist. When finished, they put their needles and unused thread away and returned to wherever they’d come from. Their hoods never slipped from their faces, so I couldn’t tell if they were men or women. When they’d gone, Mr Tall let go of the woman’s hand and stepped back.
“Move your fingers,” he said. The woman stared at him blankly. “Move your fingers!” he said again, and this time she gave them a wiggle.
They moved!
Everybody gasped. The woman stared at the fingers as though she didn’t believe they were real. She gave them another wiggle. Then she stood and lifted the hand above her head. She shook it as hard as she could, and it was good as new! You could see the stitches but there was no more blood and the fingers seemed to be working fine.
“You will be OK,” Mr Tall told her. “The stitches will fall out after a couple of days. It will be fine after that.”
“Maybe that’s not good enough!” someone shouted, and a big red-faced man stepped forward. “I’m her husband,” he said, “and I say we should go to a doctor and then the police! You can’t let a wild animal like that out into a crowd! What if he’d bitten her head off?”
“Then she would be dead,” Mr Tall said calmly.
“Listen, buster,” the husband began, but Mr Tall interrupted.
“Tell me, sir,” Mr Tall said, “where were you when the Wolf Man was attacking?”
“Me?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Mr Tall said. “You are her husband. You were sitting beside her when the beast escaped. Why did you not leap to her rescue?”
“Well, I … There was no time … I couldn’t … I wasn’t …”
No matter what he said, the husband couldn’t win, because there was only one true answer: he had been running away, looking after himself.
“Listen to me,” Mr Tall said. “I gave fair warning. I said this show could be dangerous. This is not a nice, safe circus where nothing goes wrong. Mistakes can and do happen, and sometimes people end up a lot worse off than your wife. That’s why this show is banned. That’s why we must play in old theatres in the middle of the night. Most of the time, things go smoothly and nobody gets hurt. But we cannot guarantee your safety.”
Mr Tall turned around in a circle and seemed to look everybody in the eye while turning. “We cannot guarantee anybody’s safety,” he roared. “Another accident like this is unlikely, but it could happen. Once again I say, if you are afraid, leave. Leave now, before it is too late!”
A few people did leave. But most stayed to see the rest of the show, even the woman who nearly lost her hand.
“Do you want to go?” I asked Steve, half-hoping he’d say yes. I was excited but scared as well.
“Are you crazy?” he said. “This is great! You don’t want to go, do you?”
“No way,” I lied, and slapped on a shaky little smile.
If only I hadn’t been so scared of looking like a coward! I could have left and everything would have been fine. But no, I had to act like a big man and sit it out to the end. If you only knew how many times I’ve wished since then that I’d fled with all the speed in my body and never looked back …
CHAPTER TEN
AS SOON as Mr Tall had left the stage and we’d settled back into our seats, the second freak, Alexander Ribs, came on. He was more of a comedy act than a scary one, which was just what we needed to calm us down after the terrifying start. I happened to look over my shoulder while he was on, and noticed two of the blue-hooded people down on their knees, cleaning blood from the floor.