Part 25
"A New Show"
Lewis felt his stomach turn yet again. He stood by the entrance to the rollercoaster, glaring in the direction of the large, imposing gate separating the fun and exciting carnival from the spooky and horrifying freak show.
Queen Evalia carved anxious patterns overhead. "It's worse than we feared!" she jangled, using the noise of the ride to cover the sound of her voice. "It seems he has found a way to use the Gyth without the Chain!"
Lewis felt his cheeks burn with indignation. "He didn't bother trying to get the Gyth from me before, since he probably assumed it wouldn't work without the Chain. I'll bet that's the information he tortured out of Ashwyn, and once he knew that he could, he sent Adolf to steal the Gyth from me!" He had to shake the fury from his face as a fresh group of riders approached the coaster. Maintaining a welcoming manner became harder when he realized the three people in the front of the line were making plans to see the new show at the Phantasmenagerie afterward.
"I mean, I thought it was all just art displays and side shows," one of the girls said.
"It was," a guy responded, "but then one of the tents collapsed and shut the whole thing down for a couple days. You'll like the new show; I've already seen it twice today."
"What is it, like a bunch of puppets and animatronics? From what I hear, they're not using any live acrobats or stunt performers." another guy asked as they walked past Lewis to sit in the cars. He pretended to check his controls extra-thoroughly to let them finish their conversation.
A second girl asked, "So it's not like an actual circus show?"
"No, it's definitely circus-like, although it's got mostly animals performing tricks instead of people," said the first guy. "But the animals aren't like anything you've ever seen before. They actually look like mythical beasts spliced in a mad scientist's lab or something! It's crazy! They even have a 60-foot giant in the show!"
"I call hoax!" cried the first girl. "That one's still just a puppet, I think."
"Okay, but the gryphon hybrid is awesome!" said the guy with all the knowledge. "It looks just like the ones you've seen in pictures from Greek mythology, with a lion body and it actually flies through flaming hoops on eagle wings, and perches like a bird of prey."
"Now that I'd pay to see!" his buddy declared.
Lewis had heard enough. He flipped the switch to initiate the voice-over countdown and launched the group down the track. Flaming hoops? Spliced beasts? True, he and the gryphon hadn't started out on the best of terms, but he still felt sorry for the creature forced to perform like a prized pet.
He felt Queen Evalia settle on his shoulder while he stood alone. He could almost sense the waves of anxiety radiating off her tiny body.
"He really can control them somehow," Lewis whispered, reaching toward his collar to brush the Chain with his fingertips.
"No matter how much he tries, it still does not compare with the power of the True Phantasmagyth," said the Queen. "You must never forget that, Lewis."
The roller coaster returned, and Queen Evalia had to leave, but her words stayed with Lewis for the rest of the evening.
His shift ended as it was starting to get dark. The show had been announced several times, but as Lewis prepared to clock out and head to the food court for dinner, he heard the bullhorns announce that the final show of the night would begin in the customary twenty minutes' time.
Danielle joined him on his way to the food trucks. She smiled as he fell into step beside her.
"These extended hours make you really feel like summer is almost here, don't they?" she gushed.
Lewis nodded. "That, and all the final assignments we're doing!" he replied.
Lewis nodded. "That, and all the final assignments we're doing!" he replied.
Danielle laughed. "I won't miss those, for sure!" She broke away to order from the truck selling chicken fingers and french fries. As they waited, she asked, "Well, it's the end of the week, have you been to the new show at the Phantasmenagerie yet?"
Lewis shook his head, trying not to let the revulsion he felt show on his face. "No, I only come here to work. I haven't really had any interest in going there at all."
Danielle gave a shy half-grin. "Oh, the squeamish type? I get it; spooky vibes and horror stuff is not for everybody."
Lewis paused at the pizza truck and ordered a slice. "It's not that," he retorted.
"Then what?" Danielle prodded as they walked together to a table. "Do you have classes first thing tomorrow? If not, will you go with me? I was curious about the show, but I didn't want to see it alone."
Lewis mulled the offer over. "I don't have Saturday classes this semester, but won't we miss the bus if we stay late? I seem to recall it tends to arrive right after we finish dinner."
"Yeah, normally," Danielle gestured with the fry in her hand. "But, c'mon, man! It's Friday night! There's another bus line that stops later a few blocks down the road, and it goes right by the main entrance to Browning Academy campus. We can take that one, ask the driver to drop us off there, and just walk to our dorms."
Lewis winced. "I don't know about walking around there so late at night..."
"Don't tell me you're scared that the creepy man and his weird dog will show up again," Danielle said as she rolled her eyes. "There are more cameras on that side of campus anyway, and we'll be walking together. Please?" Her gaze held his with a level of enticement that surprised him. "Just come; we might actually end up liking it!"
Lewis didn't want to tell her that he seriously doubted he would ever enjoy something so heinous, so he covered his hesitation with a bite of pizza.
Worse than we feared... The memory Queen Evalia's words returned. How hard he tries... he'll never match the power of the Real Phantasmagyth...
Lewis chomped a bite of pizza crust between his teeth. As much as he abhorred the idea of being a spectator to Krasimir's cruelty, he knew he couldn't sit by and ignore him as he tortured the Phantasmians into oblivion. In fact, agreeing to go with Danielle gave him an excuse he'd been looking for to go in there without having to sneak in. The time for keeping his head down and avoiding contact with the arrogant artist was coming to a close.
"All right," he said with a sigh, "I guess I can stay a bit extra tonight."
Danielle grinned and held up two tickets printed with admission to the Phantasmenagerie. "I was hoping you'd agree. Finish up and let's go so we can get good seats." She left to throw away her garbage.
Lewis touched the Chain around his neck. "Evalia, can you hear me?" He whispered under his breath. A flicker of light blinked twice, too bright and deliberate to be a random firefly. "Tell all the other fugitive Little Folk that we are sabotaging the show tonight, once and for all. For Ashwyn's sake, I'm going to try and use the Chain to save all the Phantasmians trapped in the circus. Maybe with the power I have, I can break his control from the audience." As he breathed the words, Lewis could feel his confidence building. He was feeling reckless, almost daring--
"Ready to go?" Danielle stood beside him.
Lewis smiled and wiped his greasy fingers with his napkin. "All set," he replied.
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The lights in the tent were sparse, but plenty of light illuminated the space. This was mostly due to the numerous glass orbs filled with swirling, flickering lights that appeared at first glance to be wandering sparks. On closer examination one might notice that the “sparks” had arms and legs. When one looked harder, one might see the dim shapes of tiny humanoids passed out from exhaustion at the base of the orb.
Krasimir brushed a dust mote off the lapel of his crushed velvet coat. He switched on the microphone clipped to his ear and declared to the crowd, “Welcome, one and all, to the mystical Phantasmenagerie, a place where the impossible takes shape!” He thought about the Gyth hanging around his neck underneath his shirt, and a warming burst of power reflected his attention. Armed with this power, he focused on his first team of goblins. They moved reflexively, switching on the floodlights to focus on Lisa the giantess.
The audience gasped as the goblins worked the pulleys attached to her limbs and head. Her arms waggled and her head nodded, sweeping her hair back so her expressionless face and hooded eyes were visible.
“Tonight you will see things that you could only imagine before!”
Krasimir cued the trolls flanking the large cage, and the gryphon burst out with an ear-piercing shriek.
“It’s flying!” somebody yelled.
Krasimir kept his gaze fixed on the creature, reaching into his shirt to hold the Gyth. “Perch on the platform, just like the rehearsal,” he whispered under his breath.
The gryphon gave another angry bellow and made an extra loop around the tent ceiling before landing on the perch as instructed.
“And now, for your viewing pleasure, a bit of a light show!” Krasimir waved his hand to signal the ogres standing in front of the cage full of fairies. The lights from their wings sparkled like glitter under the floodlights, and when the ogres pulled the lid off, Krasimir again held the Gyth and commanded them to come out in a shining cascade.
The cascade ended up as more of a gentle trickle in the eyes of the audience. Krasimir frowned at the cluster of docile fairies hovering in the center of the ring. Wasn’t it bigger when he rehearsed? He moved on with the performance, cuing the goblins in the sound booth to start the music, and waving his hand to guide the fairies into position. They made geometric designs, wove dancing and spinning patterns, and sparkled over the enchanted faces of the audience. As the music swelled, Krasimir swept the fairies into a group again and began cycling through the shapes—but as he did, there seemed to be a problem with the sequences. The gaps seemed bigger, the fairies seemed sparser, the shapes they made weaker and less defined. What was happening? The third pass confirmed that something was wrong; there weren’t even enough fairies to make the same number of shapes anymore. Krasimir hailed his goblin assistants with the Gyth.
“Let out the rest of the fairies,” he murmured.
“There are no more,” grunted the goblin as the music reached the middle of the sequence with only a mere handful of fairies left, compared to the vast amount that had started the show.
Krasimir squelched his frustration and signaled the sound booth. The music started fading and the artist directed the fairies back into their cage. The gesture took a bit longer than it had before, but Krasimir was too concerned about continuing the show.
“Behold!” he shouted to the crowd, “From the enchanted space between reality and dreams, a unicorn roams!”
He summoned the goblin dressed in disguise as a dwarf-sized human, perched in a small chariot harnessed to the gleaming unicorn, draped in sheer, tattered fabrics like decomposed funeral robes.
“But beware,” Krasimir’s amplified voice purred, “These dreams aren’t all sunshine and rainbows.”
The music took a darker turn, and the goblin cracked the whip in its hand, pushing the unicorn into a smooth run. The people applauded as the goblin yanked on the reins, pulling the unicorn into a rearing pose with a whinny that sounded more like a wailing scream. Krasimir watched with calculated glee. Finally his show was proceeding as it was supposed to, and getting the right response.
The music took a darker turn, and the goblin cracked the whip in its hand, pushing the unicorn into a smooth run. The people applauded as the goblin yanked on the reins, pulling the unicorn into a rearing pose with a whinny that sounded more like a wailing scream. Krasimir watched with calculated glee. Finally his show was proceeding as it was supposed to, and getting the right response.
In the middle of the unicorn’s run, the gryphon suddenly screeched and crouched on its perch, as if waiting to pounce.
“Stay!” Krasimir commanded, holding the Gyth. He needed the audience’s attention on the unicorn for a few minutes longer in order to get the flaming hoops into position without burning the gisnt or the unicorn in the process.
“Stay!” Krasimir commanded, holding the Gyth. He needed the audience’s attention on the unicorn for a few minutes longer in order to get the flaming hoops into position without burning the gisnt or the unicorn in the process.
The gryphon howled in protest, but did not rest on its haunches.
Krasimir opened his shirt collar so the Gyth could catch the light of the few lanterns, as if that could reinforce its power. “Do not move,” he remanded the creature.
Unfortunately, the gryphon’s desire to hunt seemed to supersede any submission to the Gyth. It launched over the heads of the audience, no longer playful nor grandiose, but a predator on the hunt. It looped the perimeter of the tent, flying low and honing in on something at the middle of the ring. It didn’t matter what Krasimir said, even if he was speaking directly to the Gyth itself, the gryphon narrowed in on its target: the disguised goblin.
“Nicht zuschlagen!” Krasimir spluttered, but it was too late. The gryphon’s talons reached out and caught in the ruffled costume. The goblin yelped as it was hauled into the air.
Panic settled into the audience, and at once they were on their feet and shoving to get to the nearest exit. The unicorn kicked with its silver hooves till the flimsy chariot burst into smithereens, and worst of all, the giant began thrashing and pulling the ropes that were no stronger than pieces of twine to a normal human.
Krasimir Schlimme surveyed the chaos with simmering anger. He had almost demanded that the gryphon drop the goblin, when he realized that doing so would reveal the hideous creatures to the public, and what a scandal that would be! Every attempt at using the Gyth to regain control of the situation only revealed the limits of his power: the only creatures that responded to his influence were the Underworlders, but they could not be seen by the carnival attendees. Everyone was already beside themselves over the freedom of the Phantasmians.
“Get outside and make sure the Phantasmians don’t escape!” he told the goblins on the catwalk. They followed his orders without question; but what use was their blind submission when he really wanted to control the creatures everyone could already see!
The gryphon screeched gleefully now that it could dive-bomb the heads of the few audience members who remained. The giantess had come detached from her harnesses, and although the reservoir remained strapped to her back, the hose had broken, slashed by the gryphon’s talons and now dangling in front of her face.
Krasimir withdrew into the shadows, heading for the secure back exit. Most of the crowd had made it out, it seemed, except a few in the foremost rows. His keen eyes noted one area of the bleachers the gryphon avoided in its attacks, and as soon as he married his gaze, he figured out why: the boy, his former janitor, the constant meddlesome thorn in his plans for ultimate control over these creatures he had claimed, sat there in tense concern. Lewis Grant! According to the captive fairy back in his lab, he carried the Chain on his person. That must be the reason the Gyth had failed. It was all Lewis’ fault! He pointed through the chaos of flailing giant and swooping gryphon. Those audience members left were too scared by this point to ever blab about what they might witness.
“Get him!” Krasimir roared, and the Gyth flared brightly over his chest. Goblins and ogres came crawling out of underground caverns and dropping from the tent rafters, but Lewis had already made his way out of the bleachers within the last of the crowd. Krasimir sneered; no doubt his command had reached the Underworlders outside and they would all be on the lookout for Lewis. He wasn’t getting away this time! Krasimir slipped away toward his vehicle. They would capture the boy and bring him to the lab, or they would not dare present themselves to him at all.
For his part, Lewis was only just beginning to realize the fatal flaw in his rescue plan. It had been deceptively simple to use the power housed in the Chain to overwhelm Krasimir’s influence over the fairies, a few at a time, so they could stop flying, drop to the ground, and simply walk away by virtue of being too small to see in the shadows of the tent. The gryphon’s rebellion hadn’t been intentional, but Lewis surmised it could have been helped by the Chain’s presence. When the show fell apart at the seams, Lewis had been elated, noting how the gryphon ripped the hose forcing venim down Lisa’s throat, and how the dispersing crowd would be the perfect distraction to allow him and the newly-freed captives to race out into the night…. and then what? Lewis watched Lisa thrash and demolish the tent above her as concern mounted over where a sixty-foot girl could hide in this flat part of the country—and he didn’t realize Krasimir had spotted him till it was too late. He saw Krasimir’s hand come up to point at him and he grabbed Danielle’s hand.
“Let’s get out of here!” he said to her.
“What is even happening right now?” she wailed at him.
Lewis fell in with the crowd and emerged under the night sky—and his heart lurched to see the vaguely humanoid shadows carrying jars with handfuls of lights in them. Some fairies had escaped for good, but not all of them. The Underworlders could move about in the darkness of nighttime without fear of being spotted by the terrified spectators racing for their cars and jockeying for the parking lot exit. Lisa’s body unfolded from the tent roof, yelling, “I’ve got him! Where do we go now?”
Lewis looked up to see Gathlen dangling rather ignominiously from her hand and knew he hadn’t done much to free his friends at all. Without anywhere else to hide and regroup, they were all just as trapped as they had been.
“Wait! That’s no animatronic!” Danielle shrieked.
A gruff voice barked, “Hey you!”
Lewis felt his body temperature drop and his skin grow clammy at the sound of Adolf’s snarl. He couldn’t let himself be caught again, especially with an outsider nearby! He released Danielle’s hand and pushed her toward the exit. “Head for the bus!” he told her. “I’ll be right behind you!”
She didn’t hesitate, abandoning him at once. Lewis turned to locate Adolf, but the werewolf wasn’t where he had been before. Lewis kept running, eyes scanning the shadows around him, but then he wasn’t watching where he was going. His shoe caught on something, sending him sprawling to the ground. He had just gotten his feet back under him when he heard the raspy cackle of an ogre and something hard connected with the back of his head, knocking him out completely.
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