‘No… all right. I’ll see them.’
The bald man pulled back the flap and said to Kieran and Kiera, ‘Go on. You can go inside. But remember that she is very delicate. I don’t want you to upset her, no matter what you think.’
Kiera ducked her head and went inside the pavilion, with Kieran right behind her. They found themselves in an airless living area lined with moth-eaten velvet drapes in faded maroon. On the right-hand side of the pavilion there was a gilded couch with maroon velvet cushions to match the drapes, and a gilded table with a bowl of black grapes on it. A ghostly-looking gray cat was sleeping on the couch, but as they came into the pavilion it opened its eyes and stared at them with suspicion.
But it was the tall gilded chair on the left-hand side of the pavilion that riveted their attention. It was more like a royal throne than a chair, and the woman who was sitting in it was wearing a coronet of dried flowers. She was startlingly pale, and very thin, and her hair was dead white instead of blonde, but there was no mistaking her resemblance to Kieran and Kiera. She had the same sea-green eyes and the same straight nose and the same sensual curve to her lips.
She was wearing a tight black velvet dress with a high collar and a row of small jet buttons all the way down the front. Her thin, bony hands were resting on the arms of the chair, with long black-varnished fingernails and silver rings on every finger.
The bald man joined them inside the pavilion and took off his hat, deliberately shaking the raindrops over the cat so that it flinched and hissed at him.
‘Here is Demi,’ he announced. ‘Demi, here is your twins.’
‘My twins?’ asked the woman. Her voice was weak but it was very clear. ‘How could I have children?’
Kiera could hardly breathe. The interior of the pavilion was very stuffy and here she was, face-to-face with the mother she had always believed to be dead.
‘Mom?’ she said. ‘It’s Kiera — Kiera and Kieran.’
The woman frowned at her. ‘My twins?’ she repeated.
‘That’s right, Mom. You had twins but they said you had a stroke and died.’
‘How could I have children?’
‘Because you had a husband who loved you, Mom. You had a husband who loved you and he’s been grieving for you all of this time.’
‘But, my dear,’ the woman insisted. ‘I can’t have children.’
With that, she started to unbutton the front of her dress, from the hem upward. As she did so, Kiera suddenly realized with a deep, cold feeling of dread that the woman had no legs. The lower half of her dress which was hanging over the seat of the chair was empty and flat.
She stared at the woman in alarm and said, ‘What are you doing? Mom — what’s happened to you? What are you doing?’
Kieran said, ‘Stop, Mom! Stop! We don’t need to see!’ But the woman carried on unbuttoning her dress, higher and higher, one small button after another.
Kiera turned to the bald man and said, ‘Stop her, please!’
The bald man remained impassive. ‘She is a sideshow. She is doing what sideshows always do. They show you what you paid to see.’
‘But we didn’t pay to see this, for Christ’s sake! We’re her children! Stop her!’
‘I cannot. I would not. She is explaining what she is. She needs to. And you need to understand.’
Now the woman had unfastened her dress all the way up to her breastbone. She was still staring at Kieran and Kiera — not defiantly, not truculently, but with a terrible look of pride in her eyes that almost made Kiera faint with horror.
She parted her dress with both hands to reveal a bony white midriff, and that was all. She had no pelvis, no hips and no legs. Her abdomen ended as a lumpy bag, with the criss-cross scars of sutures all the way around it.
‘You see, my dears?’ she said. ‘I could not possibly have children. I am Demi, the Demi-Goddess, the Half-Woman. I am surprised that you have not heard of me before. I am famous from coast to coast, isn’t that true, Zachary?’
The bald man nodded. ‘Coast to coast, Demi, my darling. Coast to coast.’
Kiera turned around and collided with Kieran. He grabbed hold of her sleeve, but she twisted herself away from him and pushed her way out of the pavilion. Once she was outside, she began to run back between the trailers and the caravans, past the trucks, past the horses, in between the tents.
She could hear herself panting and see the red lights jiggling in front of her eyes. She ran out of the carnival encampment and bounded down the sloping field, toward the lighted doorway of her bedroom.
‘Don’t close,’ she gasped. ‘Please don’t close.’
She turned her head around only once, to make sure that Kieran was following her, which she knew that he would, and of course he was. In fact he was less than twenty yards behind her, and gaining on her.
Soon the two of them were running side by side with the thunder rumbling all around them like heavy artillery and the long wet grass whipping at their ankles. They reached the bedroom doorway and Kiera ran straight into it without even breaking her stride. Kieran came hurtling after her and slammed the door behind him.
Kiera fell backward on the bed, whining for breath. Kieran stood beside her, bent forward, his hands on his knees. They stared at each other for a long time, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to think, hardly even daring to understand what they had just experienced.
‘That wasn’t a dream,’ said Kiera, at last. ‘Even if it was somebody else’s dream. That was a nightmare.’
Kieran pulled up his pajama pants. ‘Whatever it was, it really happened. I’m totally soaked through, and look at you — you are, too.’
Kiera looked toward the bedroom door. ‘Do you think it’s gone?’ she asked Kieran.
They both listened. The room was silent, except for the sound of somebody talking in the corridor outside. No rain, pattering against the other side of the door. No wind, blowing underneath it.
Eventually Kieran went across and turned the doorknob. He opened the door about a half inch and peered through it. Then he opened it wide. The sloping field had disappeared. The rain and the thunder and the rumbling tents had all disappeared, too. There was nothing but his hotel bedroom, with the bedside lamp tipped over on to the floor and all of his bedcovers dragged off the end of the bed.
‘That was mom, wasn’t it?’ said Kiera.
Kieran said, ‘Yes. I could feel it.’
‘So what do you think happened to her? And how did she get into that freak show? And where is that freak show? Do you think it really exists?’
Kieran shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But there’s one thing I do know. I’m not going back into the fricking bedroom tonight. You don’t mind if I sleep with you, do you?’
At about four a.m., Kieran was woken up by somebody singing, high and breathy. It was only when he had sat up in bed that he realized that it was Kiera, and that she was singing in her sleep.
‘In the good old summertime — in the good old summertime—’
FIVE
A Disturbing Visitor
David said, ‘You’re bushed. You need to take it easy. Why don’t you cancel this afternoon’s visit?’
‘Because I promised,’ Katie told him. ‘It’s Mrs Copeland’s birthday. And it’s only in Coral Gables. I’ll be fine.’
‘Seriously, Katie, I don’t think you’re fine at all. That hallucination you had in Cleveland — sure, OK, maybe it was caused by nothing more than exhaustion. But I really wish you’d let Aaron run some tests on you. I just want to make absolutely sure that you don’t have peduncular hallucinosis.’