Wild Boy (8 page)

The door handle turned.

Wild Boy edged back, groping for anything to use as a weapon. His hand landed on one of the jars from the worktable. He held it closer, saw golden liquid bubble inside.

The van door creaked open and moonlight trickled through. The hooded man appeared in the doorway — a ragged silhouette with a white-beaked face. “Is that you, boy?” he said. “Are you in here?”

The jar trembled in Wild Boy’s hands.
Fight,
he urged himself.
Fight while you still can!

He sprung up and hurled the liquid. It splashed over the mask, and the man stepped back in shock. Seizing his chance, Wild Boy burst past him and hurled himself through the door.

He tumbled down the caravan steps and crawled to where Professor Wollstonecraft lay curled in the mud. The old scientist’s shirt was torn and sopping with blood. Sliding even closer, Wild Boy pressed desperately on the wounds. Blood soaked the hair on his hands as he pressed even harder, crying out, “Professor! Wake up! Please!”

But Professor Wollstonecraft was dead.

“Boy,” a voice said.

The hooded man emerged from the caravan.

Wild Boy broke into a staggering run. He had to get help, had to tell someone what had happened. Barely thinking, he pelted past the circus pay box and into the big top. “Murder!” he cried. “There’s been a murder!”

The clowns in the ring stopped tumbling and stared.

The audience in their seats stopped cheering and stared.

High above, Clarissa Everett stood on her tightrope, and stared.

Wild Boy stumbled forward, breathless with fear. Professor Wollstonecraft’s blood dripped from his hands and stained the sawdust. He couldn’t stop shaking. He tried to speak, but the words didn’t come out properly. “There’s . . . Murder . . .”

The tent dissolved into chaos. The scaffold shuddered and screams rang out as the audience fled their seats, terrified by this creature covered in blood.

“It’s a bear!” someone said.

“Is it rabid? It’s rabid!”

“No!” Wild Boy said. “Listen to me. . . .”

Someone shoved him away, and he tripped and fell into the sawdust.

“Everyone get back!” a voice roared.

Mary Everett limped into the tent, one arm leaning on her crutch. In her other arm she held a shotgun, and it was aimed at Wild Boy.

Wild Boy cowered, covering his head. “Don’t shoot!” he yelled. “I ain’t no animal!”

The ringmaster didn’t shoot, but nor did she lower her gun. “It’s no bear,” she said. “It’s a bloody freak.”

“Please . . .” Wild Boy said. He was desperate to explain, but now another voice called from outside.

“Out here! Someone killed the Professor!”

“Look! This freak’s got blood on him!”

“No!” Wild Boy said. “It wasn’t me! Listen!”

Mary Everett squinted at Wild Boy, and the crust of white makeup cracked across her face. “I can’t hear,” she said. “Come closer.”

“Please,” Wild Boy said, scrabbling forward. “I saw what happened. . . .”

“That’s close enough,” the ringmaster said.

Wild Boy knew then that he’d been tricked, and his heart broke. He tried to slide back, but he was too late.

Mary Everett swung her shotgun and smashed him in the face.

A blinding white light filled his eyes, and then everything turned red as blood trickled down his face. He saw blurry crimson visions — of the circus crew crowding around him, of Clarissa watching from her high wire, of Mary Everett peeling one of his long hairs from the barrel of her gun. Through the haze of blood, the ringmaster’s powdered face looked like a raging ball of flames.

“Gather the boys,” she said. “Tell them we caught the killer.”

And then everything went black.

W
ild Boy woke in the dark.

He heard heavy, rumbling breaths. Confused, he reached out a shaky hand, feeling wooden planks beneath him and then a cold metal shaft in front. He tried to focus, but his head whirled with dizziness. He tasted blood in his mouth, panic rising in his throat. Where was he?

Yards away, something growled. He heard the soft padding of . . .
paws.

He slid forward but iron bars blocked his escape. He slid back but there were bars all around. To his horror he realized he was in a cage.

A shaft of light broke the dark. Wild Boy flinched away as the light grew into the roaring flame of a torch.

A ghastly face glared at him from the gloom — charcoal-lined eyes and crusty white makeup. Mary Everett limped closer on her crutch, holding the crackling torch in her other hand.

“What’s happening?” Wild Boy demanded. “Let me out!”

A smudge of charcoal ran like a black tear down the ringmaster’s powdered cheek. “Thought you’d feel at home with the animals, freak.”

She swept her torch through the dark. Its arc of flame lit a row of cages raised on wooden carts around the side of the big top. These were the homes of the circus’s wild beasts — a family of cowering chimpanzees, a pair of grinning hyenas, and a Bengal tiger curled against the bars, its amber eyes glinting in the torchlight.

Around Wild Boy’s cage, more and more torches crackled to life. A dozen circus porters stepped from the dark. He could smell the booze on their breath, and see it in their bleary eyes.

He shuffled forward and clutched the bars. “Listen to me,” he said. “There’s been a murder. . . . Professor Wollstonecraft —”

“He admits it!” said one of the porters.

“No, it weren’t me!”

“Then who was it?” Mary Everett said.

“I . . . I never saw his face. He wore a mask.”

A ripple of laughter spread through the porters. The hyenas joined in, drool trickling from their shiny fangs.

“Enough!” said Mary Everett, and everyone shut up — even the hyenas. “You were seen running from the Professor’s van,” she said. “But so was someone else. Who’s your partner?”

“I ain’t got no partner, I swear. It was the hooded man. Listen to me, he walks funny and he —”

The ringmaster jabbed her torch at the bars, causing a burst of sparks. Wild Boy cried out and tumbled back as the fire singed the hair on his hands and face.

Mary Everett used her torch to light a cigar. She took a long drag and blew smoke through the bars. “No, you listen to
me,
freak. You were seen running from the Professor’s van. And you got blood on your hands.”

Wild Boy had never been so scared. He thought of Clarissa — she knew about the letter, she could tell them why he was in the Professor’s van. But he feared her mother was crazy enough to put her on trial too. Clarissa was no friend of his, but he wouldn’t snitch on her.

Besides, these people didn’t care what he said. They just wanted to punish a freak. He had to stay tough, look for any chance to escape. “It ain’t true,” he said. “You got no evidence.”

A grin cracked across Mary Everett’s powdered face. It was as if she’d been waiting for him to say that. “Show him,” she said.

Two of the porters came forward. They took hold of the cart that held the cage and began to push it over the mud. The rest of the crew marched behind, flags of flame fluttering through the night.

Wild Boy slammed his shoulder against the side of the cage, swearing and spitting at the circus crew. “Let me out!” he yelled. “I ain’t done nothing!”

But again the porters just laughed. “Haw-haw! The monkey’s hungry. Throw him a nut!”

They steered the cart into the long stable hut. Horses whinnied behind stall doors and whips dangled from wooden rafters. One of the porters closed the doors and stood guard. The others crowded around Wild Boy’s cage — drunken, leering faces.

Too scared to fight, Wild Boy curled up in the center of the cage and pulled his knees to his chest.

“Enough!” Mary Everett called.

The group of men parted as she came forward.

“Let the freak see,” she said.

Wild Boy rose, brushing hairs from his eyes. What he saw made him gasp. “Professor Wollstonecraft!” he said.

The old scientist’s body lay in a heap against the stable wall. His arms were flopped by his sides and his mouth gaped open in a silent scream. A crow pecked at his rigid fingers, and Wild Boy noticed that his golden ring was missing.

Mary Everett kicked the crow away. “You say we got no evidence,” she said. “Well, how about this?”

With the end of her crutch, she flicked away some straw beside the body. Written in the mud were two words.

A gust of wind sent an eerie howl through the stable.

Wild Boy tried to whisper
It wasn’t me,
but the words got stuck with the fear in his throat.

Now Mary Everett used her crutch to turn one of the Professor’s hands. There, on the middle finger, was a streak of mud. But there was something else too. Gripped in the corpse’s stiff fingers was a clump of long brown hair.

The ringmaster looked at Wild Boy. “That yours?”

A trapdoor opened in Wild Boy’s stomach, plunging panic. “No,” he said. “No, I didn’t do it. The hooded man set me up.”

“Bloody liar!” one of the porters said.

“Shut your head!” Wild Boy yelled. “This is murder! The killer dumped the Professor’s body here and set me up. Ain’t it obvious?”

“How’s that, then?”

“Look,” Wild Boy said. “See the mud on his finger? It’s on his
middle
finger.”

“So?”

“He wouldn’t write with that finger, he’d use
this
one. And what about that hair? Look at it – it’s horse hair, not mine. And what about them horses too, and all their noise tonight?”

“The horses didn’t make any noise tonight,” one of the porters said.

“But they would’ve if there was a murder done here, wouldn’t they?”

Before Wild Boy knew it, his big eyes were scouring the ground for more clues. Among all the footprints, he spotted strange round impressions in the mud. They looked like marks from a walking cane, only wider and deeper.

“There!” he said. “See them marks? They go right up to the body. And look how deep they are. It was someone leaning on a cane or a stick. Remember, I told you the killer walked funny! And look! The Professor’s ring is gone. He was wearing a ring when I last saw him, a gold ring with the letter
G.
The killer must’ve pinched it. But I ain’t got it, do I? Search me, go on!”

A few of the porters peered at the Professor’s hand curiously, but Mary Everett waved them back with her crutch.

The ringmaster puffed her cigar. “I know a few things too, freak. Know about everyone on this traveling fair. I know you stole that coat from my band, for instance. I know you hide up on the vans, spying on folk. And I’m told you can see things no one else can. Ha!”

The porters chuckled with their boss.

Mary Everett blew another cloud of smoke through the bars. “He was a clever man, the Professor,” she continued. “A learned man. That’s why you hated him, ain’t it? Because you’re just a freak and can’t never be nothing else.”

“No, you’re wrong. . . .”

“We heard you were seen attacking someone last night with a knife.”

“What? No! He attacked
us.
He
had the knife.”

“Us? So you do have a partner. Which of the freaks is it? Tell me and maybe I’ll change your sentence.”

“Sentence? I ain’t done nothing!”

“You ran from the Professor’s van. You’re covered in his blood.”

“No —”

“He wrote your name.”

“It ain’t true —”

“You’re the only monster here.”

“I AIN’T NO KILLER!”

Wild Boy’s cry rang around the stable. He stared at the Professor’s body through watery eyes. He knew he could find more clues to prove his innocence, but what was the point? The hatred in Mary Everett’s eyes was clear. And these porters wouldn’t help him — they relied on her for their jobs.

But he wasn’t giving up either. He reached between the cage bars to the cart’s wooden floor, dug out a loose nail and gripped its end with trembling fingers. If any of these men opened the cage he would stab them with it, and try to get past. He’d spotted a hole in the stable wall that looked big enough to squeeze through.

Mary Everett turned to the porters. “One of our own has been killed,” she said. “We don’t need no busybody coppers around here. We take care of our own business, punish them what needs punishing. That’s Showman’s Law. That way everything stays right.”