Hollow City

At the sideshow, a scruffy carnival barker was shouting through a megaphone, promising glimpses of “the most shocking errors of nature allowed on view by law” for a trivial fee. It was called the Congress of Human Oddities.

“Sounds like dinner parties I’ve attended,” said Horace.

“Some of these ‘oddities’ might be peculiar,” said Millard, “in which case they might know something about Miss Wren. I say it’s worth the price of admission.”

“We don’t have the price of admission,” said Horace, pulling a single, lint-flecked coin from his pocket.

“Since when have we ever paid to get into a sideshow?” said Enoch.

We followed Enoch around to the back of the sideshow, where its wall-like facade gave way to a big, flimsy tent. We were scouting for openings to slip through when a flap pulled back and a well-dressed man and woman burst out, the man holding the lady, the lady fanning herself.

“Move aside!” the man barked. “This woman needs air!”

A sign above the flap read: PERFORMERS ONLY.

We slipped inside and were immediately stopped. A plain-looking boy sat on a tufted stool near the entrance, apparently in some official capacity. “You performers?” he said. “Can’t come in ’less you’re performers.”

Feigning offense, Emma said, “Of course we’re performers,” and to demonstrate, she made a tiny flame on the tip of her finger and stubbed it out in her eye.

The boy shrugged, unimpressed. “Go on, then.”

We shuffled past him, blinking, our eyes adjusting slowly to the dark. The sideshow was a low-ceilinged maze of canvas—a single, dramatically torchlit aisle that took sharp turns every twenty or thirty feet, so that around each corner we were confronted by a new “abomination of nature.” A trickle of spectators, some laughing, others pale and shaking, stumbled past us in the opposite direction.

The first few freaks were standard-issue sideshow fare, and not especially peculiar: an “illustrated” man covered in tattoos; a bearded lady stroking her long chin-whiskers and cackling; a human pincushion who pierced his face with needles and drove nails into his nostrils with a hammer. While I thought this was pretty impressive, my friends, some of whom had traveled Europe in a sideshow with Miss Peregrine, could hardly stifle their yawns.

Under a banner that read THE AMAZING MATCHSTICK MEN, a gentleman with hundreds of matchbooks glued to his suit body-slammed a man similarly clothed in matchsticks, causing flames to erupt across the matchstick man’s chest as he flailed in fake terror.

“Amateurs,” Emma muttered as she pulled us on to the next attraction.

The oddities got progressively odder. There was a girl in a long, fringed dress who wore a giant python around her body, which wriggled and danced at her command. Emma allowed that this was at least marginally peculiar, since the ability to enchant snakes was something only syndrigasti could do. But when Emma mentioned Miss Wren to the girl, she gave us a hard stare and her snake hissed and showed its fangs, and we moved on.

“This is a waste of time,” said Enoch. “Miss Peregrine’s clock is running out and we’re touring a carnival! Why not get some sweets and make a day of it?”

There was only one more freak to see, though, so we continued on. The final stage was empty but for a plain backdrop, a small table with flowers on it, and an easel-propped sign that read: THE WORLD-FAMOUS FOLDING MAN.

A stagehand walked onto the stage lugging a suitcase. He set the case down and left.

A crowd gathered. The suitcase sat there, center stage. People began to shout, “On with the show!” and “Bring out the freak!”

The suitcase jiggled. Then it began to shake, wobbling back and forth until it toppled onto its side. The crowd pressed toward the stage, fixated on the case.

Its latches popped, and very slowly, the case began to open. A pair of white eyes peeped out at the crowd, and then the case opened a little more to reveal a face—that of an adult man, with a neatly trimmed mustache and little round glasses, who had somehow folded himself into a suitcase no larger than my torso.

The crowd burst into applause, which increased as the freak proceeded to unfold himself, limb by limb, and step out of the impossibly small case. He was very tall and as skinny as a beanpole—so alarmingly thin, in fact, that it looked as if his bones were about to break through his skin. He was a human exclamation point, but carried himself with such dignity that I couldn’t laugh at him. He studied the hooting crowd dourly before taking a deep bow.

He then took a minute to demonstrate how his limbs could bend in all sorts of exotic ways—his knee twisting so that the top of his foot touched his hip, then his hips folding so that the knee touched his chest—and after more applause and more bows, the show was over.

We lingered as the crowd filtered away. The folding man was leaving the stage when Emma said to him, “You’re peculiar, aren’t you?”