Mad Circus Readings

Seawall Fair is the city's way of trying to attract tourists to spend all their hard earned money on rides and games. It works. I came to the small city a couple of days ago with my mother begrudgingly. It's her hometown, and since my second semester at uni just ended, I really had no excuse to refuse her nostalgic visit. No tests, no labs – nothing. Not to mention, I have a pretty valid suspicion that mum's getting lonely since I moved away for school.

It's not like I haven't been here before. When I was ten-years-old, dad used to take me to this fair all the time when we'd visit Seawall during the summer. The grounds seemed much bigger then, but now I can squeeze through the crowds too easily to be enthralled. I'm staring up at the big ferris wheel, caught in the memory, when an elderly man clears his throat.

“Thirteen for a ticket, forty if you want the all day pass.” His voice is monotone, and he barely glances in my direction. I buy a ticket and thank him in a murmur, sure he doesn't hear me.

Seawall is going through some kind of expansion. Even though I recognize each shoddy sign and the whimsy tents scattered around the place, I know that nine years ago, I would have found more than a few familiar faces with every step. I think it has to do with fishing. The fishing market here is huge, and it doesn't take long to get rich. My grandpa still lives here, he used to thrive in this economy, but now he's too old and too cranky to see the market flourish.

I skillfully avoid the Ferris Wheel and walk past the game booths. Going to a fair is alone is pretty awkward, and I walk along with the crowd with my fists in my pockets, squinting against the twelve o'clock sun. I remember having a few friends that visited their grandparents too, years ago, but everyone is too old to care about the the little city anymore. Even me.

I buy a hot dog, and it's overpriced, but I chew it as I view the scene before me. Compared to where I go to school, Seawall seems like a wholesome place, and it's disconcerting. Sometimes I feel like these people are living in a box – or a tent.

A couple of giggling girls, probably just a few years younger than me, catch my attention. They're standing off to the side of the tent they've just visited, talking in a whisper and glancing at the silk-draped structure excitedly. From past experience, I know the tents are more or less the same every year. You get magicians, and clowns who make shaped balloons. Face painting, theatre shows ... the list goes on. But as I read the sign, I feel a stir of curiosity. I don't remember a gypsy tent.

Mad Circus Readings. I stare at the sign, wobbling in its hold, for a minute. There's a scrawl in paint that has the words in French. 'Cirque du Mal'. I snort, catching sight of the flimsy tent's entrance spiralling idly in the wind. Finishing my meal, I decide that it couldn't hurt to have my fortune read even if the smell of tea was stifling from all the way over here.

The draping slides through my fingers as I enter, and a musical voice comes spindling through the air. I cough as perfume clogs my nostrils, and walk further into the tent to find where it's coming from. Incense seems to be burning and releasing smoke, which in the closed up space, is more irritating than normal, and it takes a while for my eyes to stop watering so I can see the shadowed figure. I feel like laughing when I see the boy looking pointedly at me, one hand settled comfortably on a crystal ball, but think to myself that I shouldn't make his job worse than it already is.

He's dressed like a gypsy should, or how I figure they would, with a wide, and probably nearly inappropriate, v-neck. The sleeve of his resting hand is so loose that it falls back and reveals his forearm, but ruffles a bit at his elbow. He has fabric wrapped around his head, but it's thin and placed gently so that tufts of dark hair are visible, and there's a golden hoop dangling from one of his ears. He has an olive complexion, and has a slight Romanian look to him, which I find matches the kohl lining his hazel eyes. But he doesn't seem to be friendly by the way he's suddenly glaring at me, and I figure he's waiting for his money as a true gypsy would.

I grin, digging into my pocket with slender fingers and pull out a five dollar bill. “I don't remember seeing this before,” I say, sliding it over to him and he covers the bill with a thin hand mangled with rings.

“I just moved to Seawall,” he says distractedly, and then seems to catch himself and recovers the musical voice. I smirk, and crumple a hand through my hair, feeling that it's become damp. It's hot in the tent, especially with the incense sticks, and I wonder how he sits through it.

“Now, did you want a traditional reading--” he rubs his hand over the crystal ball, and it lights up, showing a slow moving fog. “Or, perhaps you're thirsty,” he leans forward, his eyes bright, and I have to remind myself not to be too taken in with the dramatics as he closes his hand over the rim of a cup of lukewarm tea. “For something a little less orthodox.”

I have trouble thinking of any of this as orthodox, but have to admit that the whole atmosphere of the tent is extremely alluring. I smile back and feel the buzz of excitement crawl up my spine as I give my answer.

“The crystal ball is okay,” I mumble, catching the dark rimmed eyes and they look so serious, so foreign and somewhat foreboding, that I feel my breath hitch with something close to anxiety.

The candles behind him flicker as he swerves his hands up and over the crystal ball, smoothing out invisible creases on the glass with closed eyes. It's silent for so long that I'm surprised when he mutters something indistinct, his eyes falling open slowly. Then he's examining the crystal ball, and a believable, but utterly dramatic expression overwhelms his face.

“Have you – have you been surrounded by death in your life?” His voice is wavering, and I wonder if he actually believes in the gaudiness of it all or if he's just a good actor.

But I feel like someone's given me a punch in the gut. I know, and it's obvious, that for theatrics this would be the kind of question any circus gypsy would ask, but with the recent death of my father I'm suddenly shaking with some kind of irrepressible, inexplicable and foolish emotion. And it's a little like belief.

“I-- well,” I stumble over my words, my easy-going behaviour fading away as I hear the clink of the boy's rings on the crystal ball. “Somewhat,” I humour him, but really, I think I just want to hear what he'll say next.

The boy looks somewhat apologetic as he grabs a silk cloth and covers the object with it. “Look, I'm closing early,” he says hastily, and when he stands up I notice he's taller than I would have thought, but also more slender. “Sorry for the misfortune.” He shoves the bill back in my hand starts blowing out the candles. He gets through half of them, leaving us in a creepy kind of dim light, before I can't help myself and blurt out an awful question.

“Why? Is it that bad? Whatever you saw.”

The boy purses his lips, and pulls away from the candles. The fabric around his head is already somewhat unraveled, and the mussed hair pokes through, making him look comical and haunting at the same time in the shadowed light.

He sighs. “It's not over,” the boy is gathering his things, and I feel like he's all but pushing me out without so much as laying a hand on me. “There's more death to come.” he sounds resigned and I want to laugh. I think I would have if I wasn't so caught up in his serious gaze, in the whole environment with the sleepy candles and the glinting costume.

But when I'm about to reply, a shriek, a piercing shriek different to the usual good-natured screams of the fair goers, cuts me off. It's followed by a few more, and though the fair music finishes off several more notes, it eventually shuts off. Despite myself, I feel a chill down my body and stay rooted to the spot until the gypsy boy drops the items in his hands and hurriedly opens the flap to his tent.

My heart is racing when I peer out over his shoulder. There's a crowd gathered at the Ferris Wheel, and though we don't know what's going on, there's a heavy weight settled in my chest. People seem to be crying, or plainly shocked, and as we stare at the spectacle, I wonder how Seawall Fair could have gone from a wholesome place where I spent time with my dad, to the morbid news attraction it had become.

///

Terrence Muller is one of the boys I used to hang out with back in the day, so naturally, I feel winded when I walk home that night. He was a small guy, blonde and shaky, but overall exactly the kid you thought of when someone mentioned a small town boy, sans freckles. I feel overwhelmed with some kind of guilt that I never talked to him past elementary, even though I know his suicide can't be my fault.

It's weird to think that while I was talking about death with a part-time gypsy-boy fortune teller, Terrence Muller waited until his cart got to the very top of the ferris wheel and jumped to his death. So I try to think about it less as I walk home.

Dimitri, the boy, had left right away. He'd literally shoved me out of his tent and called me a bad omen before closing the flap and disappearing behind it. I had to ask the ticket holder for his name, just out of pure wonderment.

The next day at breakfast, mom looks at me knowingly while grandpa watches tv in the next room. “Do we need to talk about this, Dex?”

I know she thinks that I'm as affected as I am because of my dad's death, but as much as it clenches my chest to think about that, I know I'm thinking about the strange encounter and premonition instead. I force a smile and shake my head, sliding the newspaper with it's ugly headline away and continue on my cereal.

“It's fine,” I say curtly, balancing a cheerio on my spoon. “Anyway, I haven't talked to him for like, nine years. I barely knew him.”

The answer isn't the kindest, but it's the truth. There's something bothering me though, and while the three of us settle into our dreary routines, I can only think about Dimitri's calm voice calling me a bad omen, and the ferocity of his eyes as he says it. And even though it's a despicably stupid thought, even to me, I wonder if somehow I had caused my father's death.

I entertain the idea for a minute, and then shake my head to myself as if mentally trying to convince myself otherwise. But, once the idea is planted, it's hard to weed it away. I decide that I need to see Dimitri again, just to hear him take back his words if anything.

///

“What do you mean he's gone?”

The fair opens up again a week after the incident. Terrence Muller only disturbs Seawall for a single week.

The guy I'm talking to rubs his eyes tiredly, and he can't be much older than me so I get annoyed he's treating me like a kid asking for cotton candy. “Dimitri resigned last week, after ... you know.” He pulls the trigger to start the tilt-a-whirl, and I stare at dozens of happy little faces as they squeal and spin. “So, he's gone. Simple.”

He regards me suspiciously as I groan, my hands threading through my blonde hair in frustration. I look a mess, and I know it. I've been pulling at my hair for hours, waiting for the fair to open, and my answer is less than satisfactory.

“Alright.” I say through my teeth, and I have to wait for the ride to stop spinning before I can walk across the metal floor and out the gate. He calls at me suddenly, his face bemused as he collects the tickets from the new round of hyperactive kids.

“Look, I know his roommate. But if you turn out to be a stalker and I get into shit for this--” he hastily apologizes to one of the mom's who sends him an appalled look. Lowering his voice, he pulls out one of the used ticket stubs and clicks a pen to get the ink flowing. His brown eyes crinkle as he regards me, then he sighs. “15 Huewood Way,” he mutters, writing the full address down and using his knee as a makeshift clipboard. “You look harmless enough.” With one last glance, he sends me off and I'm on my way across the city because Huewood is the furthest place possible from here.

Huewood is a dingy avenue, along the “downtown” strip of clubs and bars of Seawall and I'm apprehensive as I park next to a small Chinese antique shop. Figurines watch me and I lock up my car quickly, shoving the keys into my coat pocket. Finally I make my way across the littered street to the string of apartments painted a red-brown colour.

This section of Seawall city didn't exist ten years ago. It's a side effect of the expansion and economic rise, and the class system apparent in every other urban city is slowly making its way over. Huewood is the shoddiest place yet, with the dim streetlamps and scoured alleyways, and I feel regret that so much has changed without me.

I try the intercom to apartment no. fifteen but it seems to be broken, if it ever even worked. I click it a few more times for good measure, before trying the door. It flings open easily on its hinges, and I'm immediately on the rubbery rug just inside. I have to climb up to the second floor, and I also have to admit that the apartments are quieter than I expected – and that's not necessarily comforting.

When I get to apartment fifteen, I'm panting from a mixture of exhaustion and anxiety. My life at this point seems surreal, especially compared to the onslaught of engineering courses and kraft dinner that it usually consists of back in my dorm. I'm about to come face to face with a gypsy-boy who thinks I indirectly kill everyone, and probably doesn't want to see me at all.

I knock anyway.

When the door creaks open, Dimitri is staring at me holding a mug that says “Virginia Pie Eating Contestant” and its steaming. His greenish eyes are void of the black outline, and his thick eyelashes are more visible. His outfit is dishearteningly normal, except for the moccasins on his feet and the seashell necklace drooping down his chest. After a minute of silence, he finally relents.

“I saw this coming,” he says dryly, and hands me a similarly tacky mug, pulling away to let me inside.

//

TBC