FREAKS by Klause Annette Curtis

Author:Klause, Annette Curtis [Klause, Annette Curtis]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Published: 2010-05-11T04:00:00+00:00

17

IT MUST BE THE HEAT, I THOUGHT as I sat down carefully on the crate and wiped my brow with the back of my hand. What a fool I was. “My apologies, madam,” I said to the mummy. “The sight of your beauty quite overcame me.”

I strained my eyes to read the faded copperplate writing on a yellowed card pasted inside the box near the feet of the mummy: UNKNOWN FEMALE, SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD, EGYPT. I examined her face and tried to imagine what she had looked like when alive. “You do have lovely, high cheekbones, but I’m sure you were not so tanned.” I smiled at my own joke.

How odd to see an Egyptian mummy in a tent in Iowa. A peculiar little shiver danced up my throat like fluttering wings, and my hand went to the ring, which formed a lump beneath my undershirt. No odder than to be given an Egyptian ring by a Siamese twin in Maryland. I frowned. I had the strange sensation of almost understanding something. I shrugged it off. The universe held many a fantastic and meaningless coincidence. I untied my shirtsleeves from around my waist and shook the garment out. Heat or not, if an audience was on the way, I could at least not greet them in my undershirt.

The hubbub of the crowd outside quieted as Mink launched into his pitch, inviting all to the “attractive, instructive, and elevating exhibition” inside the tent. This time he extolled the marvels of the children as well as the adults—all of them “alive, on the inside.”

“Frightened by a bear while carrying her child, a mother gave birth to a baby more ursine than human,” Mink said to describe Bertha. Willie, according to Mink, descended from natives who had mated with leopards to celebrate their god. I didn’t think Mr. Northstar would be amused. Mink called Little Beauty an amazing Oriental creature. He assured the audience that as she grew, she would develop incredible mind-reading skills because of the exceedingly large size of her brain. I chuckled. What balderdash.

I examined the jars set up on planks across trestles to my right. They were of the type used by doctors to preserve specimens, and when I saw the contents, I understood why. Within each floated a baby—waxy, pale, and distorted like a nightmare doll.

In the first jar was something labeled a mermaid—the lower two limbs were melded into one and had a single foot that faced backward like a flipper. The second jar contained what one could argue were two babies, except they had nothing from the waist down but each other. They were joined at one pelvis, with a head on either end instead of legs. The label called this a playing-card freak. I found the final baby the most disturbing, however. It had merely a dent between the shoulders where the head should have been; instead one could see the beginnings of a face peer out from its chest.

They were fine examples of lusus

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