Wild Boy Read online

  Before her husband ran off, Mary Everett had apparently been a beautiful woman. Wild Boy couldn’t imagine it now. She had the same fiery red hair as Clarissa, except it was greasy and straggly, hanging like wet straw beneath the brim of her battered top hat. Whether she also had Clarissa’s pale skin or freckles was impossible to say, for her face was covered with a thick layer of white makeup that fairground rumors said she hadn’t rubbed off since the day her husband disappeared.

  Wild Boy perched on a beam, waiting for one particular act. He’d never actually seen the circus show before, and he couldn’t believe how bad it was. Each time Mary Everett banged her crutch against a gong, another act stumbled into the ring. Drunken clowns broke into fights, trick riders messed up their tricks, and knife-throwers missed their marks with rusty blades. The audience booed. Someone even burst into tears.

  The crowd settled down as, high above, Clarissa strode along a tightrope. Sequins glimmered on her costume as she jumped into a somersault and landed again on the wire with barely a wobble.

  For a moment Wild Boy forgot all about the letter, as he watched in amazement. Clarissa wasn’t just good — she was astounding. All of the anger had vanished from her face, and her eyes sparkled with delight. Wild Boy wondered if this was her escape. Did she feel the same way doing this as he did spying on crowds?

  “She ain’t half bad,” he muttered.

  He focused his thoughts back on the letter. Most of the acts were over, which meant the person he was waiting for was due on next. He brought the letter from his coat pocket and read it again.

  So who was it written for? Obviously someone who lived at the fair in disguise, but that hardly narrowed the list. There were several people here whom Wild Boy suspected lived under false identities. A more helpful question was, who wrote it? He’d never received a letter in his life, but he assumed they were sent between people with shared interests. And on that subject, the letter presented several clues.

  1) The writer was wealthy. That was obvious from the paper, which was thick and grainy and clearly of fine quality.

  2) The writer was a heavy drinker. A red spot on the page smelled like wine, while variations in the shade of the ink showed he’d refreshed his quill three times — unnecessary for such a short note, unless he’d paused to drink his wine.

  3) The letter had been written near an open window. The ink had dried in one direction, suggesting a slight but constant breeze.

  4) The writer may have conducted scientific experiments. This much Wild Boy guessed from a tiny burn mark in the corner, which was too small and precise to have been made by a flame. It could have been a coal spark, but why light a fire near an open window? He wouldn’t have considered experiments as the cause, had it not been for an intriguing coincidence. . . .

  A flash of light dazzled Wild Boy. Down in the ring, a new act had begun. A man with a shabby leather bag stood beside a table that was cluttered with scientific objects — pairs of zinc and copper plates half submerged in glasses of golden fluid, silver wires strung between copper coils, glass cylinders mounted on wooden frames. He was a crooked old man with a monk’s ring of gray hair and round shaded spectacles perched on a wine-red nose.

  Professor Henry Wollstonecraft.

  This was the man, Wild Boy was was certain, for whom the letter was meant. It had been written to someone in disguise, and he suspected that was true of the Professor. He could tell the man had been wealthy once. His suits, now worn and crumpled, had been tailored for him and he wore an expensive-looking ring — gold with a raised letter G on its surface. Wild Boy wondered if that was an initial of the old scientist’s real name. . . .

  He watched as the Professor performed tricks with a mysterious new phenomenon called electricity. Sparks crackled along the wires and shot into the air like white-hot fireworks, reflecting off his dark spectacle lenses. The tricks were incredible, but the Professor’s act entirely lacked showmanship. When the old man finally looked up, he seemed almost surprised to see an audience, and utterly confused as to what he might say to them.

  By then they’d had enough anyway, and another chorus of boos filled the big top. Still without a word, the Professor packed up his bag and shuffled away through a fading haze of smoke.

  Wild Boy set off again through the scaffold. If he could climb close, he could drop the letter in the Professor’s path as he left the ring. But just as he got near, his coat snagged on one of the beams. He turned to tear it free, but he was already too late. Professor Wollstonecraft passed through a gap in the tent wall and out into the night.

  Wild Boy cursed. What now? Could he sneak to the Professor’s caravan and leave the letter there? It was risky — if he was caught, the circus crew would think he was stealing. But this was not the sort of letter that could go undelivered. He ripped his coat from the beam, leaped from the scaffold, and rushed through the exit.

  It didn’t take long to find the Professor’s van. Because of the fire risk from his experiments, Wollstonecraft’s was the only caravan at the fair that was made entirely of metal — a rusty corrugated-iron box parked among the sprawl of prop carts and dressing wagons behind the big top.

  Tingling with fear and excitement, Wild Boy crept closer. He heard someone trudging along the path from the big top, and he quickly hid again behind one of the carts. Peeking around the side, he was surprised to see that it was Mary Everett. Why had the ringmaster left her own show? She looked even angrier than usual. Leaning heavily on her crutch, she swore and banged a fist against one of the vans.

  Every instinct told Wild Boy to run. But again he felt the page in his coat pocket. Someone was out to murder the Professor. He couldn’t just let it happen.

  All he needed to do was to get into that van and drop this letter. Just a few seconds, that was all — how much trouble could that cause?

  As soon as the ringmaster was gone, he darted across the path, up the caravan steps, and he was inside.

  Wild Boy eased the door shut.

  Moonlight streamed in silver shafts through joins in the caravan’s corrugated walls. Empty wine bottles littered the floor. The air was thick with the stench of booze.

  He brought the letter from his coat pocket and laid it on the floor beside the door. He knew he should leave, but again his curiosity took control. Surely there was time to snoop around a little, to see if he could find out what the letter was all about.

  The van was a mess. A clothes chest lay on its side, and books were scattered among the bottles on the floor. On a worktable against the wall was a jumble of scientific instruments — test tubes filled with golden fluid, coils of silver wire wrapped around copper rods, a rat cage with metal pegs attached to its sides — and piles of papers scribbled with notes.

  Edging closer, Wild Boy flicked through a few of the pages. He saw anatomical drawings of body parts — twisting muscles in an arm, a diagram of a skull, a human head bisected to expose its cauliflower brain . . .

  The hairs bristled on Wild Boy’s back. Time to get out of here, he decided.

  He turned to leave, but stopped.

  “The clothes chest,” he said.

  There was something strange about it — his eyes were drawn there instinctively. And now, as he stepped nearer, he realized why. The chest lay on its side, and he could see the base within. But it didn’t look deep enough when compared to the panel outside.

  Was it possible? His heart pounded faster as he crouched and slid a hand inside the chest. He groped the base until — click — one of the wooden panels hinged open.

  A wide grin spread across his hairy face. There was a secret compartment.

  He thought of pound notes, boxes of jewels . . . Whatever was in there, he’d just pinch enough to rent his own wagon, so he didn’t have to go back to Finch.

  His heart sank as he slid the contents out. It was just another sheet of paper, with technical diagrams and instructions for some sort of scientific contraption — a tangled sphere of cogs and pipes skewered on an ax
le between two wheels. Several lines, wires he supposed, trailed from the bottom of the sphere and connected to . . .

  Wild Boy leaned closer, hoping he’d seen it wrong. But he hadn’t. The wires were connected to human heads. They seemed to go into the heads.

  THUD!

  He jumped in fright, dropping the paper. Outside, something had crashed against the wall.

  THUD! THUD!

  Wild Boy stood very still, trying to listen over the manic thumping of his heart. He heard boots trudge through the mud. He crept to the wall and peered through one of the joins in the metal.

  He couldn’t see much, but there was no mistaking the crooked figure of Professor Henry Wollstonecraft, with his blood-blistered nose and shaded spectacles. The old scientist leaned against the opposite van. His golden ring glinted in the moonlight as he drank from a bottle of wine, spilling half of its contents over his crumpled suit.

  Old soak, Wild Boy thought, letting himself relax. With the Professor so drunk, he could easily sneak from the van unseen. But then he heard something else.

  “Henry,” a voice said.

  He shot to another crack in the wall. Outside, a shadow stretched long and monstrous across the mud. It was the hooded man.

  Wild Boy shifted to another crack. He still couldn’t see the face under the hood. He couldn’t see anything under that tattered leather cloak. The man moved fast, but with strange, awkward strides — loping and unbalanced, like a wounded creature. His voice was deep and vicious.

  “I have come, Henry,” he said.

  Before the Professor could reply, the hooded man attacked. A gloved hand shot from under the cloak. It grabbed the scientist by the neck and slammed him against the van.

  Finally, Wild Boy saw beneath the hood, and he had to bite his lip to stop himself from crying out. It wasn’t a man that he saw, but a mask. It was one of the carnival masks that were sold around the fairgrounds — a white porcelain doll’s face, eerily featureless except for a long, hooked nose, like a bird’s beak, that protruded from the center. Those masks had given Wild Boy the creeps ever since he heard they were modeled on costumes worn by plague doctors centuries ago. Masks of death, some of the showmen called them.

  Behind the mask, dark eyes glinted. The tip of the porcelain beak tapped the Professor’s spectacles as the hooded man leaned closer.

  “Where is it?” he growled.

  He struck the Professor around the face, shattering his lenses. With his other hand he lifted the old man clear off the ground. “Where is the machine?”

  Blood trickled down the Professor’s forehead. He looked at his attacker through cracked black lenses. But it wasn’t fear that Wild Boy saw in the man’s eyes, it was sadness. Infinite sadness.

  “I wish I had never built the thing,” the Professor said. “It is an unholy device. No one should have that power.”

  “It is too late for that now, Henry,” replied the hooded man.

  The Professor slid a shaky hand into his pocket. “No. Not too late. . . .”

  He thrust a knife at his attacker. But he was too drunk, and too weak. The hooded man twisted his hand and rammed the blade into the Professor’s stomach.

  Wild Boy reeled back in shock. He bashed against the workbench, and a copper rod rolled from the surface. “No!” he gasped.

  The clatter of the rod echoed around the caravan.

  Slowly he peered again through the wall.

  The hooded man was gone.

  He moved to another crack, then another. Where was he? Where the hell was he?

  The door handle turned.

  Wild Boy edged back, groping for anything to use as a weapon. His hand landed on one of the jars from the worktable. He held it closer, saw golden liquid bubble inside.

  The van door creaked open and moonlight trickled through. The hooded man appeared in the doorway — a ragged silhouette with a white-beaked face. “Is that you, boy?” he said. “Are you in here?”

  The jar trembled in Wild Boy’s hands. Fight, he urged himself. Fight while you still can!

  He sprung up and hurled the liquid. It splashed over the mask, and the man stepped back in shock. Seizing his chance, Wild Boy burst past him and hurled himself through the door.

  He tumbled down the caravan steps and crawled to where Professor Wollstonecraft lay curled in the mud. The old scientist’s shirt was torn and sopping with blood. Sliding even closer, Wild Boy pressed desperately on the wounds. Blood soaked the hair on his hands as he pressed even harder, crying out, “Professor! Wake up! Please!”

  But Professor Wollstonecraft was dead.

  “Boy,” a voice said.

  The hooded man emerged from the caravan.

  Wild Boy broke into a staggering run. He had to get help, had to tell someone what had happened. Barely thinking, he pelted past the circus pay box and into the big top. “Murder!” he cried. “There’s been a murder!”

  The clowns in the ring stopped tumbling and stared.

  The audience in their seats stopped cheering and stared.

  High above, Clarissa Everett stood on her tightrope, and stared.

  Wild Boy stumbled forward, breathless with fear. Professor Wollstonecraft’s blood dripped from his hands and stained the sawdust. He couldn’t stop shaking. He tried to speak, but the words didn’t come out properly. “There’s . . . Murder . . .”

  The tent dissolved into chaos. The scaffold shuddered and screams rang out as the audience fled their seats, terrified by this creature covered in blood.

  “It’s a bear!” someone said.

  “Is it rabid? It’s rabid!”

  “No!” Wild Boy said. “Listen to me. . . .”

  Someone shoved him away, and he tripped and fell into the sawdust.

  “Everyone get back!” a voice roared.

  Mary Everett limped into the tent, one arm leaning on her crutch. In her other arm she held a shotgun, and it was aimed at Wild Boy.

  Wild Boy cowered, covering his head. “Don’t shoot!” he yelled. “I ain’t no animal!”

  The ringmaster didn’t shoot, but nor did she lower her gun. “It’s no bear,” she said. “It’s a bloody freak.”

  “Please . . .” Wild Boy said. He was desperate to explain, but now another voice called from outside.

  “Out here! Someone killed the Professor!”

  “Look! This freak’s got blood on him!”

  “No!” Wild Boy said. “It wasn’t me! Listen!”

  Mary Everett squinted at Wild Boy, and the crust of white makeup cracked across her face. “I can’t hear,” she said. “Come closer.”

  “Please,” Wild Boy said, scrabbling forward. “I saw what happened. . . .”

  “That’s close enough,” the ringmaster said.

  Wild Boy knew then that he’d been tricked, and his heart broke. He tried to slide back, but he was too late.

  Mary Everett swung her shotgun and smashed him in the face.

  A blinding white light filled his eyes, and then everything turned red as blood trickled down his face. He saw blurry crimson visions — of the circus crew crowding around him, of Clarissa watching from her high wire, of Mary Everett peeling one of his long hairs from the barrel of her gun. Through the haze of blood, the ringmaster’s powdered face looked like a raging ball of flames.

  “Gather the boys,” she said. “Tell them we caught the killer.”

  And then everything went black.

  Wild Boy woke in the dark.

  He heard heavy, rumbling breaths. Confused, he reached out a shaky hand, feeling wooden planks beneath him and then a cold metal shaft in front. He tried to focus, but his head whirled with dizziness. He tasted blood in his mouth, panic rising in his throat. Where was he?

  Yards away, something growled. He heard the soft padding of . . . paws.

  He slid forward but iron bars blocked his escape. He slid back but there were bars all around. To his horror he realized he was in a cage.

  A shaft of light broke the dark. Wild Boy flinched
away as the light grew into the roaring flame of a torch.

  A ghastly face glared at him from the gloom — charcoal-lined eyes and crusty white makeup. Mary Everett limped closer on her crutch, holding the crackling torch in her other hand.

  “What’s happening?” Wild Boy demanded. “Let me out!”

  A smudge of charcoal ran like a black tear down the ringmaster’s powdered cheek. “Thought you’d feel at home with the animals, freak.”

  She swept her torch through the dark. Its arc of flame lit a row of cages raised on wooden carts around the side of the big top. These were the homes of the circus’s wild beasts — a family of cowering chimpanzees, a pair of grinning hyenas, and a Bengal tiger curled against the bars, its amber eyes glinting in the torchlight.

  Around Wild Boy’s cage, more and more torches crackled to life. A dozen circus porters stepped from the dark. He could smell the booze on their breath, and see it in their bleary eyes.

  He shuffled forward and clutched the bars. “Listen to me,” he said. “There’s been a murder. . . . Professor Wollstonecraft —”

  “He admits it!” said one of the porters.

  “No, it weren’t me!”

  “Then who was it?” Mary Everett said.

  “I . . . I never saw his face. He wore a mask.”

  A ripple of laughter spread through the porters. The hyenas joined in, drool trickling from their shiny fangs.

  “Enough!” said Mary Everett, and everyone shut up — even the hyenas. “You were seen running from the Professor’s van,” she said. “But so was someone else. Who’s your partner?”

  “I ain’t got no partner, I swear. It was the hooded man. Listen to me, he walks funny and he —”

  The ringmaster jabbed her torch at the bars, causing a burst of sparks. Wild Boy cried out and tumbled back as the fire singed the hair on his hands and face.