“See the Sickest Sideshowers on Earth!” a woman in an ill-fitting jacket and a bowler hat cried from nearby. “Wonder at the Walrus, a brute who lifts weights with his mustache! Watch the Spider-Lady weave her weirdo web! Feed nails to the Tattooed Baby! Torment yourself by talking to the Two-Headed Woman!”
There didn’t appear to be any admission fee to this tent, so Carter ducked inside. He followed a group of spectators through a dimly lit gallery lined with glass boxes: a half chicken, half pig; the world’s longest fingernail; a Venus flytrap whose bulb was the size of a cracked watermelon. Last was a glass coffin containing the skeleton of a mermaid.
As others oohed and aahed, Carter rolled his eyes. All these things were fake. He could see the seam where the chicken and the pig had been joined together, as well as the wood grain in the fingernail and dried paint on the Venus flytrap. One of the mermaid bones even had a price tag still on it.
A large velvet curtain gave way to another room, this one separated into a series of small stages, one after the other. Carter looked over his shoulder, but he didn’t see the security clown following him anymore. Maybe he was safe now?
He began to lose himself in the strange surroundings.
The first stage featured a plump toddler in a diaper whose skin was covered in tattoos. He sat in the middle of an enormous wooden playpen, giggling, drooling, and banging some blocks together.
“When is he going to eat some nails?” a spectator near Carter complained. The Tattooed Baby glared at the man, spit at the ground, then went back to banging blocks harder than before.
“Someone needs a diaper change,” Carter whispered to himself.
The next stage was completely black except for a giant silvery web strung from the front to the backdrop. On the web lounged a woman with a small, pale face and impossibly thin limbs, clad all in black. Carter did a double take when he realized she had two extra sets of arms extending from her sides. With a bored look, the Spider-Lady was painting her nails in fire-engine red polish, holding the bottle in her toes and the teeny brush in one of her mid-hands.
Thinking of some of his own tricks, Carter looked more closely. The extra arms were covered in the sleeves of her black sequined dress, but the hands were bare. The fingers didn’t move. It’s fake, Carter thought. They’re all fake. Since there wasn’t an admission fee, technically they weren’t breaking Carter’s Code; still, it didn’t seem fair to the audience. It seemed like something Uncle Sly would be a part of.
The next stage held an enormous glass aquarium, several feet wide, several feet long, and taller than the tallest man Carter had ever seen. He thought it was strange that there was no water in it. The glass was filthy and could barely be seen through. As people pushed their faces against it, they screamed or gasped. One woman nearly fainted. When it was Carter’s turn, he saw why. Inside sat the Two-Headed Woman calmly reading a book. The distorted view made her even more ghastly.
Carter spit on his sleeve to wipe away an inch of dirt so he could see better. Of course the glass is so dirty, Carter thought. The sideshow needs the audience’s view to be blurred. Inside, he saw one neck naturally joined, while the other wobbled awkwardly. The first face moved and blinked, while the other stared blankly. It was a mannequin head attached to a real person. More tricks, Carter thought. Part of him was relieved, the other part disappointed.
A third part gurgled again with hunger.
Carter blushed and then glanced around to see if any of the other spectators had heard him. There was still no sign of security, so he proceeded to the fourth and final display. This stage buckled under the weight of the heavy objects upon it—a diesel engine, an anvil, a refrigerator, and an upright piano. Center stage, a hairy-chested hulk of a man flexed his muscles. His ropy handlebar mustache hung down past his chest. This was the Walrus. He squatted in front of an iron bar with what looked like cannonballs on either end, each labeled 500 LBS. The tips of his mustache were tied to the giant weight.
With a roar as fierce as a lion’s, the man struggled to stand, the barbell swinging at his waist. The downward pull on his mustache disfigured his face into a ghoulish grimace. His nostrils flared. Carter couldn’t help but laugh. When the man brought the barbell to the ground, Carter saw that the man was staring at him with dark, piercing eyes.
Carter headed out of the tent, returning to the night air. He noticed others walking about mystified or horrified or astounded by what they’d seen. He managed to smirk to himself. People shouldn’t believe everything they see. It’s one of the first rules of magic.
Carter knew that.
Do you? A quick lesson: While showing you one thing (perhaps with a right hand), a magician will often be doing another thing that you don’t notice (probably with his left). This is called misdirection. It was one of the first things Carter had learned from Uncle Sly.
B. B. Bosso’s two-bit sideshow only reaffirmed Carter’s belief that there was no such thing as real magic.
Yet at this precise moment, something truly magical happened to Carter that he couldn’t explain. Something that would change his life forever.
He met Mr. Dante Vernon.
FOUR
Have you ever been so captivated by a sight that you have literally been unable to turn away? Maybe it was a sunset that filled the sky with spatters of color just as the moon rose over the horizon. Or maybe a rare animal somewhere out in the wild fearlessly approached you to make sure you were friendly. Or maybe it was a musician who was able to play five different instruments all at once. For Carter, seeing Mr. Vernon in the midst of the crowded carnival was just that spectacular.
The man wore a black-and-white suit, with his sleeves rolled up at the elbows. A cape hung from his shoulders, black on the outside and shiny red on the inside. His head was crowned with a top hat, floating on a cloud of white curls, which contrasted against his pitch-black mustache.
Yet it wasn’t merely the outfit that caught Carter’s eye. It was what the stranger was doing with a coin.
The quarter rolled across his knuckles, back and forth. But each time it got to the edge of his hand, it vanished, reappearing at the other side instantaneously.
The wheels and cogs in Carter’s mind spun, trying to figure out how the old man did the trick. But he couldn’t. For a moment, he wondered if his eyes were fooling him. Had his empty stomach made him so weak?
“How’d you do that?” Carter finally asked.
“Magic, of course,” the old man said.
Carter shook his head. “There’s no such thing.” He knew that he sounded confident, but inside, for the first time ever, he quaked with doubt. There was something special about this man. Carter couldn’t turn away.