Hang Wire (23 page)

Which meant, perhaps, that while he had the light on his side and the coin in his pocket, he was matched by the monster standing somewhere over the edge of the bank. What if the light was shining on it, too? Joel had traveled the United States for half a century, following the light and following the leaking evil. He’d seen what it could do to the places where the pieces were hidden, the power radiating slowly, creeping like a cancer, corrupting the world around it. Here it had spawned a monster to guard it. It must be a powerful piece indeed, hidden here in the trees.

The monster – the protector? – pawed the ground near the trees just a few yards away.

Joel took a breath and closed his eyes and his head was filled with the screaming of the coin. He knew what to do. He just had to trust the light.

He took two steps, powering up the side of the bank, and then he dropped to his knees, free hand outstretched to balance himself against the bank. He cocked his head, listening.

The monster was moving away. It stamped on the ground and snorted like a hog and flapped its leathery wings. Then it moved away, the hoof thumps growing fainter and fainter.

Had it lost his scent after he fell in the creek? Was it even tracking him by smell?

Or… did it know? Did it know that he served the same master? That he had come to find the carnival, to bring it back together? To make it whole again so it could devour the world?

Joel climbed the rest of the bank at a low crawl, until he could see over the edge. There was nothing but pine trees and their needles, dead and brown on the ground.

He raised himself up, gun in hand, at the ready. He looked around. But there was nothing, no monster, no devil. He was alone in the Pine Barrens.

Joel let the hammer of his silver gun slide gently back to safety. He kept the gun in his hand, though. With the other he took out the coin and closed his fist around it. Then he turned and headed west, parallel to the shallow embankment.

He was close.

THE YEAR OF THE EARTH SNAKE

OCTOBER 17, 1989

There was a moment, just before the main jolt, when it felt like the world was held in equipoise, like the world was holding its breath. The moment before impact. The moment before calamity.

The city shook and buildings fell.

Bob was on the beach this time. As the earthquake rumbled, the sound like artillery firing in the distance, his dance partner screamed and grabbed hold of him, tight. He held her, cradled her against his chest, as they rode the pulsating ground. He pushed a little – just a little – against the power of the world so he could keep upright and keep his dance partner safe. Around them, people collapsed like bowling pins.

Then it stopped and the earth was still, and he touched down on the ground again, his dance partner too. Without his realizing it, they’d been floating an inch off the rolling beach. The fact that he had done it without thinking was a worry.

Not because he thought
They
would notice. He’d thought that while
They
had abandoned the world,
They
would be looking down on it, watching, observing their experiment to see what greatness humanity would achieve. But he was wrong.
They
weren’t looking.
They
didn’t care.

So he wasn’t afraid of
Them
, not any more.

He was afraid of himself. Of what he could do if he just gave in to the hunger that gnawed at his stomach like a parasite trying to burrow its way out.

“Oh, Bob, Bob,” cried the woman in his arms. Bob snapped out of it and led her back to her friends, who were picking themselves up off the ground. They seemed OK, although Bob could see a few minor injuries among the tourists who had fallen over on the concrete steps.

“An earthquake,” someone said. “It’s an earthquake.”

Bob looked to the southeast. Smoke rose over the trees of the park.

Where there was smoke, there was fire. It was happening all over again.

Bob pushed through the crowd, and ran.

The Interstate had collapsed. The higher tier of roadway had fallen onto the one below, crushing cars, killing dozens, and trapping hundreds.

Bob pushed his way through the chaos. There were police, ambulances, fire trucks there, but the response was still fresh, uncoordinated. People ran, people watched. The air was thick with dust and smoke. Bob pushed a little and floated up, just so he could see over the carnage. Nobody noticed.

There was a fire under the collapsed roadway. Maybe several, as the fuel tanks of crushed cars and trucks were ruptured, the kinetic energy of the earthquake and the overpass collapse converting to heat, enough for ignition.

Bob dropped to the ground. He had to help, like he had helped eighty-three years before, when the city had been a whole lot younger.

As he drew nearer, he felt a connection with the people he lived among. Here they were, in the middle of hell, the collapsed overpass in rubble around them. Another tremor and more could come down, killing them all. And yet here they were, scrambling out of cars, helping people up, digging through the rubble with their bare hands. As the trapped victims screamed, the rescuers – men and women in business suits, in jogging shorts, in jeans and skirts; the ordinary folk of San Francisco – shouted encouragement, shouted that they were coming, that everything would be OK.

Bob gently eased himself to the front, the air thick with smoke and dust. A couple of rescuers noticed him, noticed his chiseled torso, sweaty, dusty, and nodded. Here was a strong young man to help move rubble.

Bob pulled two triangular shards of roadway clear, then got a grip on a huge concrete slab about the size of a small aircraft’s wing, and lifted, revealing a large pocket beneath, half-choked with rubble. Just like before, so many years ago, nobody paid attention to his superhuman strength. The rescuers around him surged forward, reaching in to clear debris and get to the people trapped within. Flame licked at Bob’s bare feet. Nobody noticed.

One of the rescuers yelled something and was dragged into the hole. Others grabbed his feet and tugged him back, but their hands slipped on his pants. One shoe flew off, and then he vanished into the rubble.

Bob swore and lifted the slab higher. Then he saw, through the smoke.

Eyes, red, glowing.

Black hands reached out of the rubble. Greasy with soot, they waved like wheat in a field, fingers splayed, reaching, reaching. Bob yelled out for everyone to get clear, not to touch them, but nobody was listening. People reached for the black hands, and when they did, the black hands pulled them back into the rubble. People pulled, yelled for help, screamed in pain, and Bob stood, watching the red eyes in the smoke.

Something was moving. Again, like it had before. A power, down below. A thing beneath stirring in its sleep.

Bob held the huge fragment of roadway aloft with one hand, and reached down with the other, pulling the last trapped rescuer back by the waistband of his jeans. The people around him stood back, looking up at Bob, standing in the rubble in his bare feet, holding the slab up in the air with just one hand. He waved at them to get back, and this time they paid attention.

From the gap in the rubble came more grasping hands as the black things began to pull themselves out of the burned ground. They reached for the air, their red eyes burning.

Then Bob dropped the slab on top of them, sending up a billowing cloud of dust.

It was happening again.

Bob shouted for everyone to stand clear. They followed his instruction, no doubt fearful that more of the road was about to collapse. As the crowd backed away, Bob pushed down on the slab he’d dropped, and held it there, in case its massive weight was not enough to keep the golems trapped beneath.

Bob wished others were here, that there was no Agreement, no Retreat. But he was alone, and the city needed him again. Not just to rescue people from the calamity.

Once again, the city needed his protection.

Satisfied that the golems beneath the slab were crushed back into the dirt and ash from which they had been spawned, Bob called over his shoulder that the roadway was safe.

Work could begin again.

GODS OF THE MIDWAY

— XXV —

SHARON MEADOW, SAN FRANCISCO

This was it. The worst had happened, and it was the end of The Magical Zanaar’s Traveling Caravan of Arts and Sciences.

Nadine tapped at the laptop with little interest, scrolling through a vast spreadsheet of circus finances. They’d been doing well – very well, in fact. The San Francisco shows were their best ever, helped by the terrific location in Golden Gate Park and the addition of not one but two new acts – the Stonefire dance troupe and the mystery man himself, Highwire. Where Newhaven had found them, she didn’t know, but they were box office magic.

And now? Now it was all for shit. The last show had been a disaster. Jack, the Magical Zanaar himself, had run through his lines without any performance at all, like he was reading them off a script. The rest of the show was lackluster at best. Jack missed his cues, and when Jan and John started their trapeze act and it became clear that the star of the show, Highwire, wasn’t there, people started leaving. David and the clowns filled another gap left by the absence of Kara and Sara and then Stonefire came on.

Nadine watched from the sidelines as the Celtic dancers entered the arena, not dressed in their customary leather costumes but naked, covered in black dirt and ash. David appeared by her side, yelling in her ear that they should stop the show, that they were going to lose their permit. Gone was the choreographed dancing and acrobatics. Stonefire danced to a simple, repetitive beating drum, a relentless rhythm that lacked any musicality. On and on the drum sounded, as Stonefire twitched and stamped their feet.

People started leaving, taking their children with them. Some accosted circus staff at the entrance, telling the ushers that they hadn’t paid to see this kind of show.

Then someone screamed, and the atmosphere in the Big Top changed. Stonefire had spread out, and one member had grabbed someone from the audience. The spectator tried to pull away, but the dancer yanked him bodily into the show. David and the clowns stepped into the arena. The dancer let go of his unwilling volunteer and tackled David, and the pair crashed to the ground. People in the crowd screamed, and then it was a stampede to the exits.

Jack watched it all from the shadows, oblivious to the chaos. He ignored Nadine when she tried to talk to him, didn’t even flinch when she slapped him across the face. Nadine waved at the lighting desk. They got the message and brought the house lights up.

The drumbeat stopped. David picked himself up and scrambled to Nadine, his chin wet with blood. Stonefire gathered around Malcolm. He stared at Nadine and David.

“Get out!” Nadine yelled. “Get out before I call the fucking police. This circus is fucking
over
.”

The group had stood a moment longer. Then Malcolm had snarled something in a language Nadine hadn’t heard them use before – Gaelic? – and the group had shuffled out.

That was last night. Nadine had locked herself in the Winnebago since then. Someone had knocked on the door – Jack, she guessed – but she hadn’t answered it.

Nadine thought about the stolen cable and felt sick. Jack had insisted they not report the theft, confident (he said) that they could handle it internally. Jack had insisted it was nothing to do with the serial killer who was now dominating the news; in a city the size of San Francisco, steel cable would be plentiful. Jack had been right, of course.

But now things had gone to shit, and Nadine wasn’t so sure there wasn’t a connection.

She tapped at the laptop again. The circus was closed, but… could they retool, rebrand, open next season, somewhere else? They’d need new acts – including a new ringmaster – need to get financing from somewhere to pay out the current contracts. But the show could go on. She and Jack were finished, that was for sure. But the circus was her livelihood. She ran the business side of things well. She enjoyed it. It provided jobs. It found talent. Maybe, eventually, when the sick feeling had passed, the show could go on.

Couldn’t it?

A drumbeat sounded, once, twice. Nadine looked up, moved to the window as the drumming picked up. She knew that sound.

Stonefire. The circus was in crisis, had fallen apart because of them, and they were fucking starting again.

It was a hot afternoon. Nadine stood in the motorhome’s doorway, squinting into the sun. The drumming was a fast beat now, and was joined by voices chanting, singing.

Smoke began to rise from over the tops of the tents. They’d damn well lit their fire.

Nadine hopped down the steps, the end of her rope most certainly reached.

They were dancing in front of the fire, and Nadine was ready to start yelling when she noticed the group looked larger than it should. Stonefire was two dozen dancers, male and female, plus partners and a few children along for the ride. But the group in front of the bonfire was much, much larger, twice that at least. Nadine realized the numbers were made up of the rest of the circus acts – the clowns, led by David the Harlequin, the jugglers, acrobats, and trapeze artists. The non-performing workers too. They’d all joined the Celtic group, even wearing the same costumes. Nadine shook her head, frowning. Only Jack and Joel weren’t among them, as far as she could see. Sara and Kara too. The pair of gymnasts hadn’t come back.

The bonfire was just catching, the teetering stack of old shipping pallets bought cheap from warehouses down by the water making an effective chimney as the flames took hold from the bottom. Maybe it was Nadine’s imagination, or the fact that the day was already quite warm, but the fire didn’t feel as hot as it should have.