The Pilo Traveling Show by Will Elliott

Author:Will Elliott
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-63023-008-1
Publisher: Resurrection House
Published: 2015-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

9. ABOVE

The campsite was a bustle of activity, waking Jamie from a few hours of fitful sleep not easily come by in the clown tent. All night the weird noises and sleep-talking utterances of Doopy and Goshy had colored his dreams with sickly pink, red, and blue monsters rising from the depths of garish rainbow lakes to lunge at him with clattering teeth.

He rose and went to find Dean, who'd been helping dismantle tents and trying to act as naturally and fearlessly as he could. Jamie took him over near the gazebo, where they crouched from the carnies' sight behind a waist-high wall of hedge. Jamie said, "There's a circus down there, bigger than this one. I went through those gate things and saw it."

"Down where?" said Dean.

"I'm not sure. But it can be reached with the gates and with those elevators. The lifts can take you anywhere in the world. We'd just need to learn the number code of each location and to take one of those card gizmos they call pass-outs." Jamie related all he'd seen yesterday, including the run in with Steve and the apparent plan of Gonko's show: to starve out the show beneath and get George removed as boss.

"So how do we use this?" said Dean.

"See that's the thing. Gonko was terrified that I'd blabbed down there about what he's doing up here."

"Terrified?" Dean said skeptically.

"He expressed it with homicidal anger, but yes. So he has a weakness there, but it does us no real good. If they learn down there what he's doing, they'll punish him, maybe kill him, maybe kill us for helping him, then just put someone else in charge of the clowns. We'll be just as trapped beneath as we are up here. And having been down there, I can tell you, we're better off up here. At least we're not getting whipped all day like they are."

Dean scoffed. "Just the odd drowning up here, right?"

"You can't make Gonko mad like that. Obey him and you're fine. You shouldn't have gone up onstage."

"Wasn't me, like I told you. It has to be the face paint—it changed me. I came back to myself when it washed off."

"So here's what you do. Tell Gonko you don't want to be a clown, that you'll do some other job. Say sorry for yesterday, suck up to him, then ask if you can be a ticket collector."

"Why?"

"I just have a feeling it might be useful if you learn how those gates work."

"All right. But get me a tub of that face paint."

"Why, Dean?"

"Because I remember how I felt wearing it. Bulletproof. Hell, I even beat up a couple of those other clowns. And it felt like I could have taken on Gonko and won."

"Bad idea, Dean."

"Just telling you how it felt. Get me some of that face paint. I'll hide it until I need to use it. Okay?"

"Fine. How's Jodi?"

Dean's smile was grim. "You hear her screaming when they took the makeup off her? She freaked out, fought like a wildcat.

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