This alone didn't strike him as any more suspicious than, say, Gonko's eagerness to use violence or Goshy's creepiness. But later, when the exhausted carnies slept—and while Jamie naturally couldn't—he crept among the tents, watching, listening.
Gonko had distributed the velvet bags—three for each carny, more for certain favored individuals like Curls. All of it received with simpering gratitude, many bows of thanks. It was like a boss delivering pay—exactly like that, in fact, only more so. So why would the bad luck, bad karma, et cetera of "tricks" be the carnies' pay?
Curls himself helped answer some of this, though everyone had clearly been told not to answer any of Jamie's questions. The dwarf took a bag and a little glass beaker with him and snuck off into the park, til he was over by the gazebo, now robbed of most of its wood. There was a swing set there attached to a slide. Curls climbed to the top of the slide, looking over his shoulder many times, but seemed unable to see Jamie the clown, with the night's darkness pulled about him.
Curls tipped the powder—it wasn't clear just how much—into the beaker, lit a match with trembling hands and held the flame to the glass. The firelight lit up his twitching face, the lips smacking and licking. "I wish," he said, and mumbled the rest.
Half a minute passed and nothing seemed to happen. Then Curls seemed to see someone Jamie could not see. The dwarf stared at the empty space beside him on the platform, reached out a hand and seemed to touch someone invisible. "No, taller," Curls said. "And fatter. So fat she'd break this slide." He spread his arms wide as he could. "And she's got to have a shock of black hair on half her head. And a little red dress."
The strangest thing then happened. Curls's face lit up in a moonlit leer. Down came his pants. He threw himself horizontal and began thrusting over something invisible. What made it strange was that Curls seemed to be hovering just above the surface of the platform. Jamie squinted, going closer. For just a second—and then another—he glimpsed the outline of an obese woman with her red dress rucked up around her belly, looking down the length of her torso at the vigorously moving dwarf, whose head was level with her sternum. She patted his head, then vanished, reappeared . . .
Jamie backed away from there, replaying all of it in his mind. "Superhero clowns," he whispered. "Superhero circus. Circus magic."
"Help, help!" a thin cry came from the direction of the freak show tent. "Help help help help help!"
A chill shuddered through Jamie. Something about the baby Goshy's cry was different from the way the things normally parroted the only word Doopy had taught them. Slowly and heavily his feet carried him to the freak show door.
The head in the case watched, scowling, now and then with a mutter of "Pish posh . . . nonsense. Medical science." Fatso lay on the ground inside his makeshift cage of monkey bar parts and wood, hands over his head, face to the floor. Sobs shook his jiggling flesh. The "living chair" watched on in horror as Goshy sat on a little stool. Blood covered his face. An empty flowerpot lay strewn at his feet, the soil spilled out, as were two tiny clown shoes with glistening stumps of mangled gristle poking through.
"Help, help, help . . ." wailed the little Goshy on the small round table. Goshy's eyes were unblinking. His small square teeth looked now larger than normal as he leaned slowly closer. Clackity-clackity-clack the teeth beat together. His shoulders shuddered. "Help, help . . ." Crotch first, he bit, bit, ate. "help help!" Goshy chewed, made a contented gurgle. A gaping bleeding mess was left in the thing's crotch. Goshy began on its thrashing arms, small fast bites. Tiny bones popped and broke in his teeth. The head he ate next, ending at last the horrible pleas, then worked through the torso til all was gone but two knobs of gristle above the soil.
Goshy stayed still, shivering. The solid slab of his head dripped sweat through the blood. A confused little whistle seeped out of him, asking a question of nobody and getting no answer. With a sudden jerk of his arm he knocked the flowerpot off the table, made a whining sound as clown tears fell through the blood caking his cheeks. Then he reached to his left, picked up the last flowerpot with the last baby Goshy inside it, placed it with stiff arms on the table, leaned back and battered his teeth together.
"Help!" it began, and Jamie had to leave. He knew all he could ever have wanted now about this circus of benevolent clowns. He'd stood frozen in horror and fear, a small part of him raging and screaming to stop the obscenity, but he couldn't, couldn't set a foot closer, couldn't even look for one second more, just couldn't. He therefore could not fathom why or how he ran in there, grabbed the flowerpot from the table and sprinted away. "Help. Help?" the tiny clown said.
From back in the tent came a blistering fire alarm scream: "eeeeee! eeeeee! eeeeeee!"
Tent doors opened, shouts rang out, feet scuffed across the turf. Someone somehow mollified Goshy, guided him out of the freak show and back to his bed—Jamie heard it all from down by the river's edge, holding the flowerpot to his chest like a newborn's mother. "Help," it said, though its tone had changed—no fear now, and a smile on its little face. Help now meant thanks, Jamie supposed, and it said it over and over.
Off by the swing set and slide, Curls's little body kept on moving; his wish was not yet complete and the noise hadn't fazed him. Jamie eyed the gate pieces, now in parts, to be reassembled by Curls and his crew in a couple of hours, back at the train station. When finally the commotion died down, Jamie hid the flowerpot among some tall weeds by the river, crept silently to the gate pieces and, wincing at every chime of metal on metal, assembled the parts just as the dwarfs had done. At any moment, Gonko's hand would grab his shoulder, spin him around and lay down some "slapstick" . . . but that didn't happen. Not sure whether the task was done properly or not, or whether it mattered, he stepped through the arch . . .
And was no longer in Wiley Park.
•
Curls, sweating and somewhat worn out, but most assuredly satisfied, jumped down from the slippery slide's platform, marking the end of his "rest break." A dwarf just has to take the edge off sometimes. His pocket watch told him it was time to amble back to the train station with the gate pieces, and he felt so good he wouldn't even rouse the crew to come help him. They needed their rest; he'd had them chewing his ears off all day about the danger they were in. If George below worked out something was wrong with this batch of tricks, and put the word on the ticket collectors, they had a useful though not bulletproof excuse: Gonko forced 'em. If all remained roses up here, the extra pay was worth a little danger. The crew would come around, he knew—they sure didn't complain so loud when the velvet bags came their way.
The plan: set up station gates, get below, set up exit gates, herd out tricks, sneak back up here. Except now he saw someone else had set up the gate pieces here in the campsite. Nervously he checked the formation—if it were off by much, whoever had passed through could have ended up in the Funhouse basement, or even further afield. Hell, if they went down there, wound up in the big boss's laps, the truth would be out in quick time and they were all screwed. The settings looked okay enough—the knobs and dials were on the same setting as before.