Nightmare Carnival

Ichbon took Sprat’s cue and said, “In closing, I want to reiterate: the Demon will draw them, money will fill the coffers, and the Caravan of Splendors will rise from its economic hibernation to live again.” We clapped once or twice, I wouldn’t call it applause, and everyone made a beeline for the exit. Even the Maestro didn’t stick around. He walked in a stately manner followed by the Three Miserable Clowns pantomiming him in the throes of his speech. They followed him, and I followed them, back to his trailer, where I knew the Old Overholt would flow. It seemed that Maybell (the Rubber Lady) and the Falling Angel had the same notion as me. They were there, seated outside, passing the bottle with Ichbon when I arrived. A small fire burned in the center of their circle. There was an empty wooden folding chair and I joined them.

The next morning, I woke in my trailer, with a headache from the whiskey and coughing out of both sides of my head from Maybell’s harsh muggles. The only thing I could remember was the sight of Ichbon reeling drunkenly beneath the stars, going after the Three Miserable Clowns with a lion-taming whip. They were running around him, ducking and weaving, and he was snapping that thing in the air, like gunshots. They were all laughing hysterically. “Miserable bastards,” the Maestro bellowed and cracked the whip. When I left the trailer, hurrying to make it to breakfast on time, I nearly ran over Mirchland. He said, “The Maestro wants you in the tent in a hurry.”

I was hungry and the thought of facing the smell of the Dust Demon with a hangover didn’t sit well. Still, I went. When I got there, I found Ichbon standing next to the cage of the creature. His hat was off, his head was bowed.

“Yes, Maestro,” I said.

He nodded toward the cage. The beast was lying motionless. I stared for a long while, trying to notice the rise and fall of its breathing, but it was still. By that time, the flies had arrived, and although it seemed impossible the thing stunk worse.

“You see that on the floor of the cage?”

I nodded.

“That’s the future.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Considering I don’t first blow my brains out and if I had the money, I’d have that thing stuffed,” said Ichbon. “We could still make a fortune off the carcass with the right banner and bullshit in the towns, but a stitch job like that would sink us. I’m afraid we’ll just have to move ahead without it.” Never let it be said that the Maestro was a quitter. “The Dust Demon,” he said, as if picturing the creature rendered in full color bursting out of the ground toward an unsuspecting farmer’s wife. Just then, I glimpsed a black dot of an insect leap off the creature’s head and land on the back of Ichbon’s wrist. He looked down, brought his hand closer to his eyes, and squinted.

Moments passed and he continued to study it.

“What is that?” I finally asked.

“It’s a flea,” he said. “Quick, go get the professor and round up the clowns.” As I hurriedly left the tent, I saw, through the eyes in the back of my head, the Maestro cover the insect on his wrist with the opposite hand. He was smiling broadly. “When life is shit, make shit soup,” he yelled after me.

Professor Dunce was Jon Hibbler’s show name. He was the only one in the caravan older than Ichbon. Throughout his long life in the business he’d done nearly every act, once even passing as Jeez Louise, the Bearded, Tattooed, Fat Lady. He’d seen all there was to see on the road, and the Maestro kept him around as a sort of advisor. Still the creaky Hibbler had to pay his way, and so pretended for the crowds that he was an imbecile. Dressed in a graduation gown and wearing a dunce cap, the professor would sit in a chair, and Ichbon would stand next to him, calling the patrons over and beseeching, “Ladies and gentlemen, could anyone really be this stupid?” It cost three cents to ask the dunce a question, and I never ceased to wonder how many couldn’t wait to spend their pennies. Hibbler had a college degree, though, and had a rasher of high academic terminology that he would splice together to make a whirling lecture devoid of sense. The crowd loved their own love of his inanity.

The professor moved slowly, shuffling along amid the trailers in his black gown like some grim clergyman. The cold affected him greatly. He was pale as a ghost with a shock of white hair and a white beard. By the time I rounded up the clowns, Hibbler was just passing into the shade of the tent. Immediately, Ichbon ordered the clowns to go and bring back three glass jars with screw-on lids and eyebrow tweezers. Then he turned to the professor and said, “Do you remember, Jon, your act back twenty years ago, Hibbler’s Minions?”

Ichbon’s words took a moment to sink in, and then the professor smiled and said, “You mean the fleas?”

The Maestro stepped close to me and said, “This man, at one time, was the proprietor of the most renowned flea circus in the world. God, what a moneymaker it was.”