Wild Boy

  That night, the night the showman came, the moon was the color of mud.

  Above the houses the sky turned from black to dingy brown as a thick fog crept over the city. The monstrous mud-brown cloud rose from the river. It slithered over rooftops, curled around gas lamps and smothered their lights to ghostly orange globes. It crawled along the riverbank, swallowing the warehouses, workhouses, and tumbledown tarry-black houses that leaned over the dark water. Doors were bolted. Shutters slammed. Even the rats in the alleys froze in fright as the fog came rolling in. The fog swallowed everything — but not the showman.

  His gloved fist banged on the workhouse door.

  No reply.

  He banged again.

  There came a clunk, a thunk. A hatch in the door slid open and bloodshot eyes glared through. “Who the devil are you?” demanded a voice.

  “I’m here for the boy,” said the showman.

  The eyes in the hatch narrowed. “What boy? There are dozens of boys.”

  The showman leaned forward, revealing his face in the shadow of his crooked top hat. It was a terrible face, ridged with so many scars he looked like he’d been sewn together from patches of skin. There were whip marks, knife cuts, and scratches from nails. There were bite marks and burn marks and cuts from a saw. One long gash ran like purple war paint over his bony nose. He stroked it with a finger as he leaned to the hatch and spoke in a growl.

  “The boy,” he said.

  The bloodshot eyes widened. “Oh! The boy. One moment. . . .”

  Another thunk. Another clunk. The door swung open, revealing the owner of the bloodshot eyes — a plump, greasy individual who had been in the process of devouring a roast chicken. He wore the bird like a glove puppet, one hand inserted into its neck cavity so he could bite chucks from whichever part he pleased. Nibbling on a scab of skin, he eyed the showman warily.

  “My name’s Bledlow,” he said. “I’m the master of this place.”

  The showman didn’t reply.

  The Master swallowed the skin. “You got the money?”

  “Not till I seen the boy.”

  Composing himself, Master Bledlow unhooked an oil lamp from the wall. “Follow me,” he said.

  He led the way down a dark and dingy corridor. Cockroaches scurried into cracks. Damp glistened on bare walls. In a hall, a dozen boys in ragged gowns sat slurping bowls of gruel. One of the boys saw the showman and grinned wolfishly. “He’s here to see the monster!” he whispered.

  “Mon-ster!” the others chimed. “Mon-ster! Mon-ster!”

  With a flick of his arm, Bledlow sent his chicken carcass flying into the hall. Several boys pounced on it, snarling at one another.

  “Mon-ster! Mon-ster!” the others chanted.

  The Master raised his light and led the showman up a rickety flight of stairs. At the top was a wooden door with a warning scratched in charcoal. WILD ANIMAL! BEWARE!

  The Master glanced at the showman. “We keep him in here. On account of the fighting.”

  “Fighting?”

  “Because of how he looks.”

  The door opened with a groan, and they stepped inside. The room was musty and dusty and stank of damp. A ragged crow was perched in a narrow window, its eyes gleaming like black diamonds in the lamplight. Beside the window, another animal nested among a bundle of sacks.

  No, not an animal. It was a boy.

  The boy sat very still, staring out of the window.

  “That him?” the showman asked.

  Master Bledlow raised his lamp so its light fell on the boy’s back. “See?” he said.

  And now the showman saw.

  The boy was covered almost completely in hair. Dark-brown hair, matted and tangled with dirt. It grew all over his back, his shoulders, and his chest. A darker swath hung from his head, and a thick layer spread all over his face, smoothed and parted down the middle. It hid the boy’s features completely, apart from two big eyes, big like an owl’s eyes. Startlingly green, they sparkled even in the murky light from the moon. As the boy sat perfectly still, those eyes moved at incredible speed, watching the foggy scene outside.

  “Boy!” the Master said.

  The boy didn’t turn, didn’t even flinch.

  The Master reached toward him. “Stand up, boy!”

  The boy slid away. “Beat me again, Bledlow,” he said in a soft, parched voice, “and I’ll set fire to your coat.”

  The Master snatched back his hand. He giggled nervously. “Beat you! What talk! This is a charitable institution. . . . Stand up, will you!”

  The boy rose. He wore a sack over his shoulders, and breeches that were so worn they looked like cobwebs around his thin, hairy legs. Beneath the sack and breeches, the dirty brown hair extended all over his short, slight frame.

  “Will he do?” said the Master.

  The scars across the showman’s face pulsed. He tossed Bledlow a pouch of coins. “He got kin?” he said.

  “Kin?”

  “Family what might want him back?”

  “Ha! Whatever family this boy had dumped him on my doorstep eight years ago. Ugly little baby too. Thought he was a drowned rat!”

  “What about a name?”

  “Never gave him one. What’s the point? Some of the boys had a few suggestions, though. Just for fun. . . . How about Hairy Harold the Human Doormat? Or Billy the Baboon Boy? Wait, this is my favorite — the Wolf That Ate Red Riding —”

  “Wild Boy,” said the showman.

  For the first time, the boy turned. His emerald eyes considered the showman, and he repeated the name softly. “Wild Boy. . . .”

  “You must be wondering who I am?” the showman said.

  It was not a question that expected an answer. But now the boy’s big eyes began to move again, taking in every inch of the showman — his boots, his top hat, and each scar on his shattered face. It was almost as if he’d fallen into a trance, so fast did his eyes move, so still was his head.

  The boy blinked. “You’re a showman in a traveling fair,” he said.

  “Boy!” the Master snapped.

  But the boy’s eyes remained on the showman. “You were born somewhere near the coast, with a birthmark covering half your face. Your dad beat you for it with a belt and a chain, so you ran off to the navy.”

  “Boy!”

  “But you were kicked out and whipped, probably for stealing. Since then you been in two gaols, seven knife fights, been garroted twice, and had half your ear bitten off by a —”

  “Shut up, boy!”

  The Master swung his lantern, striking the boy hard in the face. There was a burst of sparks, and the room plunged into darkness.

  A coil of smoke drifted through the dark, tinged with the scent of burnt hair. And then — scritch scratch — the lantern flint struck. A streak of light broke the dark.

  The showman felt the stub of his missing earlobe. For the first time his cold eyes thawed. He looked uncertain. Scared, even. “How the hell did he know all that?” he said.

  The Master gave another nervous laugh. “I . . . uh . . . I’m not sure. The other boys won’t even speak to him. They think it’s devilry.”

  The light grew brighter.

  “I’ll show him devilry,” the showman said. “Gimme that light.”

  “Light? I haven’t got the light.”

  The Master looked down and screamed. His coat was on fire! He sprung back, bashing himself against the wall to put out the flames. “He set fire to my coat!” he squealed. “He actually set fire to my coat!”

  In the corner, the boy burst into a wheezy laugh of triumph and delight. His green eyes twinkled and he clutched his stomach from laughing so hard. “I told you!” he said. “You mean old goat! I told you I’d —”

  And then — whump — the showman
kicked the boy hard in the chest. It wasn’t a mere whack like he’d had from the Master’s lantern — it was a brutal, rib-breaking blow. Even the Master stopped flapping and stared, shocked by the savagery of the attack.

  The boy slumped to the floor. He curled up, gasping.

  The showman leaned down and grasped the boy’s long hair. “You don’t know one thing,” he spat. “My name. It’s Augustus T. Finch, and they call me the Carnival King. Know why? Cos I show the most revolting freaks at the fair. And I reckon you might be the most revoltingest I seen yet. So here’s my offer. . . . Don’t pass out, boy! Look at me!”

  The showman tugged the hair harder.

  The boy’s eyes rolled. Blood glistened on his lips.

  “Here’s my offer,” the showman said. “Absolutely nothing. No pay, no holiday, and sure as blazes no treatment as generous as you’ve had from this here Master. All you’ll get is food, a roof, and work. Times you’ll wish like you was dead. Others you’ll feel like you was. You’ll get spat at, beat up plenty. One freak I showed got stabbed just for looking at a feller the wrong way. Joke of it was he had no eyes. So that’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”

  Tears soaked into the hair on the boy’s cheeks. But he gritted his teeth and fought back the pain in his chest. “Will I see things?” he whispered.

  The showman glanced at Master Bledlow, puzzled by the question.

  “He likes to watch things,” Bledlow explained. “That’s all the little runt does. Just sits there staring out that window.”

  The showman released the boy’s hair, letting him fall back to the floor. “You’ll see plenty, all right,” he told him. “Only, where you’re going, ain’t much of it gonna be pretty.”

  “A freak show?” the boy asked.

  “A freak show,” the showman said.

  “Listen to him, boy,” spluttered Master Bledlow. “It’s the only work something like you could ever hope to find.”

  Slowly, painfully, the boy rose. His legs buckled, but he clutched the wall for support. Through a veil of hair, he looked the showman hard in the eye. “When do we leave?”

  It had rained for two days straight and Greenwich Fair was a washout. The showmen had lined the path through the fairground with straw, but the mud seeped through, forming a squelchy bog underfoot. At least the weather had finally cleared. Steamboats jostled at Greenwich Pier, packed lifeboat-tight with boozy revelers looking to make up for lost time. Drunken crowds streamed through the park gates, whooping and cheering, leaping on shoulders, shrieking like monkeys.

  All along the path, showmen laid tables and hung banners, frantic to catch the last of the day’s trade. There were peep shows, puppet shows, conjurers, and cardsharps. There were coconut games, merry-go-rounds, mesmerists, and magicians. Ventriloquists argued with evil-eyed dolls, and wine-nosed Punch squawked “That’s the way to do it” as he thrashed his wife with a policeman’s stick.

  Between the drinking booths and the circus tent sat a dismal line of wooden caravans that were peeling with paint and propped up with poles. Garish banners hung across their sides, painted with fantastically impossible scenes — a mermaid combing her hair, a giant towering over a lighthouse, a sheep with six legs, smoking a pipe. One of the signs read CABINET OF CURIOSITIES. Another said EXHIBITION OF ODDITIES. But most people called these vans freak shows. Top-hatted showmen leaned from their doors, speckling the air with spit as they called to the passing crowds.

  “Have you seen Bradley Sirkis? He’s a man with three eyes and no nose.”

  “She transforms from beauty to beast in front of your eyes.”

  “She walks, she talks, she wiggles, she giggles.”

  “He hops on the spot like a frog.”

  “World’s largest!”

  “World’s smallest!”

  “The greatest curiosity in the world!”

  Drunken eyes gazed at the banners. No one saw the small figure on top of one of the vans, or the wide green eyes that watched from above. . . .

  Wild Boy lay still on the caravan roof, his heart hammering against the wooden boards. From up here he could see all the way along the path that cut through the fairground, from the park gates to the circus tent, and all the stalls and shows between. His eyes moved with incredible speed, picking out details from the bustling scene. He saw a lipstick smudge on a starched collar. He saw marks from prison irons on a wrist. A speck of paint on a stovepipe hat. A flare in a cardsharp’s nostrils that said the man was cheating. A bulge in a lady’s bonnet where something stolen was stashed. A girl playing leapfrog who —

  Just then, the girl looked up and saw him.

  Wild Boy flinched back, ready to dive through the hatch in the van roof if the girl screamed. But the girl didn’t scream. Instead, a smile rose across her spotty cheeks.

  The hairs tingled all over Wild Boy’s body. Was she smiling at him? He shifted up and, very slowly, raised a hand in reply. But now the girl’s mouth curled into a malicious grin. She pointed at him and shrieked to her friends, “Look! Monster! Monster! I seen a hairy monster!”

  Wild Boy dropped to the roof, cursing himself. Of course she wasn’t smiling at him!

  In a puddle on the roof, he looked at his reflection. The girl was right; he was a monster. Only monsters looked like this — with dark, dirty hair all over his face, other than a thin line where it parted down the middle. The hair covered his hands too, and almost every part of his body. Thick clumps of it sprung from the sleeves of his coat, like a scarecrow bursting with straw.

  “Wild Boy! Wild Boy!” a voice cried. “Hear what they say about Wild Boy! He’s the missing link between man and bear!”

  Below, the showman Augustus Finch stood on the caravan steps. The scars across his face throbbed as he waggled a hand at the banner on the van — a lurid painting of a boy with glowing eyes and shredded clothes transforming into some sort of wild animal.

  “Wild Boy! Wild Boy! Hear what they say about Wild Boy! He’s wild! He’s wonderful! He’s one of a kind! This way, ladies and gentlemen! You won’t see a more revolting freak at this fairground or any other, or your penny back — guaranteed!”

  Wild Boy sighed. That was his cue.

  As he turned to the hatch in the roof, he looked again down the path. The gang of girls had gone, laughing and leapfrogging toward the circus. Then, as he watched, the girl who had screamed at him tripped and fell face-forward into the mud.

  A grin spread across Wild Boy’s hairy face, and the sparkle returned to his eyes. “Good,” he said.

  He swung through the hatch and into the van. It was showtime.

  The caravan air was thick with the stench of sweat and rotting wood.

  Wild Boy hung by hairy fingertips from the hatch in the roof, his bare feet groping for the ladder on the wall. Not finding it, he let go and landed with a thud that shuddered the van and made the ceiling lamp sway on its hook.

  “Caught you!” a voice said.

  Wild Boy whirled around, fearing it was Finch. But it was just the showman’s assistant, Sir Oswald Farley.

  “Master Wild,” Sir Oswald said. “Mr. Finch would not be pleased were he to catch you sneaking around outside.”

  Wild Boy grinned. He’d lived with Sir Oswald for three years but still found it funny to hear his posh voice. “The old goat’s gotta catch me first,” he said.

  Sir Oswald muttered something disapproving as he helped Wild Boy up with one hand, his other pressed hard against the floor. Sir Oswald had no legs. Instead he got about on his hands, which were as tough and leathery as his wrinkled old face. But, despite his disability, he always looked immaculate in his tailcoat, top hat, and tie. There wasn’t a speck of dirt on his face, a rare achievement in a place as filthy as a traveling fair.

  “I wish you would not take such risks,” he fussed.

  It was a risk, Wild Boy knew — Augustus Finch didn’t allow him to go outside between shows. But it was worth it. The less time he spent in this van, the better. He didn’t mind the s
mell or the constant cold, or even the rainwater that leaked through wormholes in the roof. It was the stage that he hated — the upturned crates, and the tatty red cloth for a curtain. Propped beside them against the wall was a rusty camp bed with a strip of cloth hung between its legs. Its painted slogan read DEEP IN THE JUNGLE TERROR AWAITS!

  Sir Oswald rushed to the stage, his strong upper body swinging between his hands as his coattails dragged behind him along the floor. He hoisted himself onto the crates and hid behind the curtain. “Quickly, Master Wild,” he said.

  Wild Boy hesitated, glancing up at the hatch in the roof. He wished that he could climb back outside and hide there all day, watching the crowds. He wished he could do anything other than this; the sort of things that normal people did. It was the same dream he had before every show, but he knew it was just a cruel fantasy. He wasn’t normal, he was a freak. This was where he belonged.

  “Just get on with it,” he whispered.

  He rushed to the stage and joined Sir Oswald behind the curtain.

  Getting ready didn’t take long. Apart from his breeches, Wild Boy wore only one item of clothing — a long, red drummer-boy’s coat with gold tassels, which he’d stolen from a marching band last year. For the show, he simply unbuttoned it so the audience could see more of the hair all over his body.

  “Master Wild!” Sir Oswald said. “Look at this hair! Such a state. All this dirt and mud. . . . And is that horse dung? Don’t you ever wash?”

  It was horse dung, Wild Boy knew, and he never washed. Partly because there wasn’t much opportunity — clean water was rare at most sites where the traveling fair pitched. But, more than that, he didn’t think there was much point.

  “Why bother?” he said.

  “Why bother? Manners for a start, young man.”

  “Monsters don’t have manners,” Wild Boy said, with a grin.

  “Monsters indeed,” Sir Oswald said, brushing the long, tangled hair on Wild Boy’s chest.

  Wild Boy stepped suddenly back. A bolt of anger shot through him, and his hands curled into fists. “Don’t touch me!” he snapped.

  Sir Oswald slid away, staring at the marks he’d seen on the pallid skin beneath Wild Boy’s hair — old scars from the workhouse master’s belt, and from all his fights there with the other boys.