Nightmare Carnival

Hibbler was back in old form and there was actually a spring in his step. He’d become the star attraction of the Caravan and was relishing it. “I rule them with an iron fist,” he told me. “They know they’d better listen.” But he dismissed me when I mentioned the fact that both the peacock and Brutus, the orangutan, had recently passed on. Both animals were withered and lethargic in their final days.

“Do you really believe that fleas could drain an orangutan of its life? Please, Janus.”

“There are only six,” I admitted.

“There were only six,” he said. “Now there are ten. But still, ten fleas?”

I lost my skepticism for a while in the success of the show. All the acts were doing well, what with the crowd Hibbler drew. Instead of being pleased with the money that flowed in, though, the Maestro seemed anxious. Sometimes he didn’t even wait for nightfall to start on the Old Overholt. “A tenuous thing, a flea,” he was overheard to say. When the Falling Angel asked him what he meant, Ichbon whispered, “It’s not the fleas I’m worried about in that act.” Then the anteater was taken by an acute malaise and in a matter of a week, became depleted and died. It was noted that the creature’s eyes were missing at the discovery of its death. With this my skepticism returned, and I feared the minions were behind it. Mirchland had the same idea, and we discussed it one night, standing under a full moon behind the mess wagon when neither of us could sleep for the phantom itching brought on by our knowledge of what was happening to the menagerie.

“All that’s left is the albino skunk,” he said. “Then what?”

By the next morning, the albino skunk had also gone the way of all splendors, and the Caravan was for the first time since its inception without a menagerie of any sort, save fleas. The burial of the poor creature was pathetic. Everyone was there but no one had anything to say. Finally, Ichbon took his hat off, cleared his throat, and spoke. “I, for one, have no regrets seeing this overgrown rat pass on. It bit me once. In fact, I celebrate the passing of the entire menagerie. Good riddance to the damn beasts. The whole thing was a crime I’ll now wash my hands of.” When he was finished, the fleas dragged a dandelion onto the grave. Hibbler said, “Now say your prayers.” I swear I saw them kneel all in a row and bow their heads. Mirchland looked up at me from the other side of the grave and carefully nodded. Beside me, I noticed the Falling Angel was looking pale, his once-skintight lavender outfit now sagging with wrinkles.

Performers on the circuit agreed, the Falling Angel, Walter Hupsh, had an act so simple it was beautiful. He took a ladder to a platform at the peak of the big top, twenty feet in the air. Then he bent cautiously forward, grimaced, and fell. He was tall and lanky and not well built for it, plummeting like a bird forgetting its gift. Granted, there were two old mattresses buried in the packed dirt beneath the ladder where he hit. They were covered over with sawdust, and the public never knew. But still, with each performance there was an impact. Hupsh was head rattled from a life of falling, that we knew, but a strange lethargy overtook him as we left Tulsa for Wichita. His trips up the ladder had become pathetic, his flights, as he called them, tragic. Mirchland and I kept tabs on him.

One afternoon, out of design, I sat next to him at lunch. “You look tired, Walter,” I said. “Not been sleeping well?”

“I think I busted my ribs,” he said, and a little drool of oatmeal issued from the corner of his lips. “And I got the itches something fierce. I wake up with the itches.”

“Are you being bitten by a bug, maybe?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said and went back to his oatmeal.

In the days that followed, Walter came to rival Jack Sprat for most emaciated, and Sprat challenged the Falling Angel to a duel for sole ownership of the title. Cooler heads prevailed. The Maestro took me aside and said, “The falling guy looks like shit. Reminds me of the peacock.”

I told him what I thought was going on and that Mirchland was onto it too. “Those fleas, whatever they are, drained the life out of all of the animals and now have turned to human blood.”

“You mean Hupsh?” he said.

“Of course,” I answered. “Look at him.”

Just then the man was practicing his act. We looked over toward the center of the tent. The Angel took the ladder as if he were gravity itself. I could feel the weight of each labored step, but up he went, a trooper. Ichbon smoked a cigarette in the time it took him to reach the platform. Once there, he inched out to the edge. He stumbled, grasped at his throat, and groaned pitifully in the descent. He hit with a rattle. The Maestro and I ran to him. There was nothing left but a flesh bag of broken bones covered in sawdust.

When Ichbon caught his breath, he turned to me and said, “Get the clowns.”