Cole baited the crankiest of the cranks. He found twelve marks, dyspeptic malcontents in this sea of happy revelers. And he goaded those twelve, poked at them, taunted them. He degraded and humiliated them. He seemed to have the ability to find their weakest spot, their particular hot button. And then he drilled into it.
And it was nothing short of agonizing and fascinating. A staged train wreck of human emotions. The freaks found it impossible to look away. In bursts of brilliant and, apparently, dead-on-target vituperative, invective and accusation, Cole abused his marks to levels of rage that were poisonous to behold. He stripped bare the dynamics of their damaged psyches and went to work on them with a verbal jackhammer, boring into their deepest fears with a diamond bit. The collective mood under the big top went from joyous and celebratory to furious and hateful. This was abuse comedy transformed into obscene sadism.
Five minutes into the routine, Kitty whispered into Chick’s ear, “What have we gotten ourselves into?” Five minutes later, Durga had to escort both Antoinette and Jeta back to the trailer. Milena, however, was more entranced than repulsed. And even the chicken boy felt the need to see where it was all headed.
When the twelve rubes were on their feet, red faced, adrenaline surging, larynxes close to rupture with the ferocity of their screams, their hands balled into fists of ire, Dr. Lazarus Cole folded his arms across his chest as if ennobled by their fury and asked, “Wouldn’t you love to kill me?”
And then, reaching into the interior breast pocket of his tuxedo, he produced a glass bottle, a classic seltzer dispenser. He held it up in the air for a second so that the crowd and the twelve rubes could inspect it. Then he took aim, depressed the dispenser’s handle, and began shooting streams of carbonated water into the faces of his victims.
It was like pulling the pins on a dozen live grenades. There was a moment of stunned silence when space and time appeared to freeze. And then the rubes screamed en masse and broke out of their seats, charging after the evil Doctor Cole, their tormentor. They snatched wildly at the air as the Resurrectionist led them through a wild chase up and down the bleacher aisles, through the bloodlusting crowd.
While the chase was transpiring, Chick looked away, feeling lightheaded, as if a seizure were on its way. In fact, he was reacting to the effects of the display he’d just witnessed. But by turning his head, he happened to notice the small gang of gazonies who had taken to the midway and began collecting from the circus rings a series of canvas tarps that he had not previously noticed. Beneath the tarps lay piles of rocks, bricks, lead pipes, and crockery. And all at once, Chick understood, too well, the intended purpose of these items and the intended outcome of this act.
He looked back to the bleachers just in time to see that Cole had run his gauntlet in such a way that his pursuers had been united, swept up into a single small mob. And with this accomplished, the doctor sprinted down from the stands and into the midway, where he was picked up by every spotlight in the house.
Now he dashed into the center ring, twirling and feinting until he manipulated his enemies into a circle around him. At which point, he held up his hands and came to a sudden stop. For a moment, the enraged dozen, and the audience, were unsure of what to do. It seemed the doctor might be about to give up and apologize, beg forgiveness for his abuse.
Instead, he put his hands on his hips, looked each man in the face, and said, “My God, you’re all too revolting to live.”
You could hear a single gasp somewhere out in the crowd. It sounded like a match being struck. And then the dozen rushed him at once, knocking Lazarus Cole to the ground, kicking him, punching him, stomping him. When a single gazonie ran from the sidelines into the ring, it seemed for a moment as if someone were attempting to rescue Dr. Cole. But the young man was only calling attention to the piles of pummeling material lying at hand, waiting to be used.
The attackers did not disappoint. They seized stone, block, tube, and plate and had at the prone doctor with the release of a dozen infuriated lifetimes. The crowd cheered the massacre. Kitty looked away, hiding her eyes in the feathers of her beloved. Bruno stared in disbelief. The other freaks muttered to themselves as if lost in a childhood nightmare they’d thought long past.
The batterers exhausted themselves before they exhausted their weaponry. In the end, as the cheering began to fade, one by one they lifted themselves from their work and staggered, blood drenched, out of the center ring, escorted by showgirls who would bring them to the bathhouse.
The body of Dr. Lazarus Cole lay in a messy heap, now illuminated by a single white-blue spot, a hot light that revealed a hideously disfigured corpse, something no longer identifiably human and surely, certainly, definitively dead.
The cardinal rule of all show business, and especially of the circus trade, is: keep things moving at all times. The fact that Ringmaster St. Clare broke this rule at such a terrifying moment only shows how deeply ran the confidence of the Bedlam Brothers.
Nothing happened under the big top for an uncomfortably long time. There was no music. There was no change in the lighting. Chick could feel the crowd squirm in unison. There was nothing to look at besides the amazing Lazarus Cole’s mutilated, mangled body, its flesh torn open and exposed to the world, its blood run into pools, flooding into puddles around the lifeless remains. The scene was appalling, ghastly, traumatizing. Now, at last, as the shock transformed itself into the apprehension of truth, came the sounds of children wailing. And as if on cue, Fatos, the mule, fainted dead away. Nadja knelt to tend to him but her claws were shaking.
Finally, Renaldo St. Clare returned to his ring and stepped into the spotlight. He looked down on the body of Dr. Cole, looked up at his audience, looked back down at the body, removed his top hat and held it against his chest, over his heart. The ringmaster closed his eyes and lowered his head. The crowd did the same. With his eyes shut tight, the ringmaster cleared his throat and in a trembling voice, so low that the crowd leaned forward in unison, he said, “Might there be a doctor in the house?”
Heads turned from right to left as all eyes swept the bleachers. In the very last row, a man stood and began to make his way, slowly, deliberately, down the steep aisle toward the performance ring. He was small and wide, with a large dome of bare, sweat-drenched skull and a crown of longish white hair, and he wore a long and ill-fitting white coat.
The doctor approached St. Clare, shook his hand silently, then got down on one knee and put two fingers on the throat of Lazarus Cole. After a moment, the doctor leaned his trunk down and placed an ear against Cole’s chest. Then he struggled to his feet with the help of the ringmaster, and addressed the crowd directly.
“I am Vernon Taber,” he said, “assistant medical examiner, Hazor County. And I officially certify that this man,” suddenly shouting and thrusting an arm out to point at Cole’s corpse, “is dead as dead can be.”
Taber let his pronouncement sink in, then he bowed at the waist toward the crowd, came upright, bowed his head toward the ringmaster, and waddled out of the spotlight.