The Resurrectionist

LIMBO COMICS: FROM ISSUE # 6: “The Roving Jubilee”

. . The purchase of the bus hadn’t left much of a bankroll. And Bruno had to deplete it even further the next day by buying a route card at their first gas stop.

The next week was one long blur of driving through farmlands and pastures and skirting the bigger cities. The freaks were hot and dirty and regularly hungry. They ate two meals a day, cooked hobo style on the roadside. Gehenna became a different land with each day that passed, and the extent of the differences from day to day suggested an enormity that began to awe them.

They stopped twice for provisions — once at a roadside produce stand and once at a blighted general store. Bruno knew they would run out of money for gas and food before they reached the interior plains, but he chose not to share that fact.

Chick had a couple of low-grade seizures during the trip, which bore a couple of names that, as usual, didn’t yet mean anything to anyone. But he did hear the Limbo voice, the father voice, mention a show title that was featured prominently on the route card. The Bedlam Brothers Present the Roving Jubilee, a Pious Entertainment for the Righteous and the Reborn sounded both impressive and a little frightening and there was some debate as to whether or not such a show would want a freak act on their bill. But the card said the Jubilee was playing a weeklong stand at the county seat, a village called Mach’pella, which, according to the map, was only a day or two away. So that was where the freaks were headed.

They almost made it, too.

The bus broke down just ten miles outside of town. When he felt the engine start its death rattle and the noxious, black smoke being spewed became too much to ignore, the strongman veered off the road and coasted to a stop in a field that stretched to the horizon, a field barren of anything but scrub weeds.

Bruno put his head down on the wheel and said, to himself, “I’ll drive it and I’ll sleep on it, but I’ll be damned if I’ll push it.”

Then he climbed out of his seat, stood in the aisle to stretch, and said to the freaks, “Looks like we’re walking to work this morning.”

No one complained. Like good soldiers, they filed off the bus and lined up by its side. They had no possessions to collect, no clothes to gather and pack beyond what was on their backs.

“Okay,” said Bruno, taking his place before them, “we’re on the hoof and you all know what that means. We stay together and close. I’ll walk lead. Chick’s behind me. Fatos will bring up the rear. Nadja, you hold hands—” He stumbled over the word, regrouped and rephrased. “You hold Antoinette’s hand. Durga, we’ll try to keep the pace moderate. But it’s all flat land, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble. Holler when you need a break.”

And with that, they began their march. It was blazing hot and, though the twins tried to sing as they moved, the day proved too buggy for even a short medley.

BY MIDAFTERNOON, the big tops became visible in the distance. The skeleton was the first to notice, though she was in the rear of the parade. Jeta had terrific eyes and when she spotted the flashes of painted banners and flags against the pale blue sky, she let out a shriek that brought the troupe to a standstill.

“That’s it,” said Bruno. “And, Jesus, it looks big.”

“A fest that large,” said Aziz, swinging on his hands in excitement, “they’re bound to have some annex shows.”

They started moving again now, their voices competing with the rush of their speculations. Did the Bedlam Brothers have their own freaks under contract? And if so, what was the makeup of that troupe? Would they be frauds or second-raters? And if not, would the Brothers hire the clan? And if they did, what would be the fee?

Bruno let them theorize. The adrenaline was nudging them forward faster than a whip could have. Even Durga’s abused knees seemed suddenly oblivious to the pain of ambulating.

“I’m spending my first envelope on pie,” the fat lady said. “That’s all I’ve been able to think about since we left home.”

The remark struck Chick as so wonderfully absurd that he found himself laughing. His beloved Kitty was so thrilled to see her paramour tickled that she, too, let loose with a burst of tittering. The chortling spread like a virus through the clan and soon everyone was venting their shared travails in a parade of unstoppable revelry.

But when they got close enough to read the bannerline on the main tent, Bruno began to shush them and asked them all to have a seat and settle in. The freaks fell into a natural circle on the ground.

Bruno stood behind Chick and said, “I don’t know how long this will take. The route card said that they open for business tomorrow, so things should be plenty hectic on the fairgrounds right now. I’ll search out the head canvasman first and see if they’ve got a sideshow annex. One way or another, I should be back before nightfall.”

He started to leave, turned back and said to Durga, “Maybe I’ll bring back some pie.”

IT TOOK BRUNO longer than he expected to make it to the fairground entrance. As he drew nearer to the run of canvas walls, he was able to read the bannerlines that advertised the show’s various headliners. He saw intricately drawn and wildly colorful notices for aerialists and animal trainers, fortune-tellers and firewalkers. It seemed to Bruno a standard collection of acts and one geared to a rural, less sophisticated crowd. That opinion changed, however, when his eyes landed on the biggest banners of them all, the ones posted on either side of the main entrance flaps. The panels depicted a magician dressed in what seemed to be Joseph’s own robe, a turban on the man’s head bound together with a ruby of heavenly brilliance. The man’s eyes had a definite satanic cast to them. On the left-hand canvas, the magician was depicted kneeling in an Edenic garden of greenery and rainbow flora. Around him circled an angry mob, its members outfitted with all manner of brutal weaponry, from crude cudgels and stones to gleaming axes and swords. On the right-hand panel, the magician was depicted in the same garden setting, but this time he was emerging from an open grave, caught in shafts of radiant light that gleamed down from above. The bannerline read

The Amazing Dr. Lazarus Cole,

The Resurrectionist

See him murdered by an angry mob

Watch as he is declared legally dead by a state-certified physician

Stand stunned as he is buried in a grave six feet beneath the earth

And be astounded as he rises from the dead on the last

day of the Jubilee.

Bruno stared at the banners, trying to decipher the trick. He had known packs of stage magicians, from the obvious to the baffling. And he had even assisted some of them in a pinch. But he had never seen anything like this. He dismissed the banner’s claims as this country’s love of hyperbole. But he could not walk away from the illustrations. There was something about the man’s eyes.

“Show doesn’t open till tomorrow.”

The voice came from behind him and he pulled himself out of his reverie, turning to look at a skinny old man dressed in overalls and carrying a hammer in his left hand.

“Looks like a big one,” Bruno said.

“You’re not from around here,” the old man said. “The Jubilee is the biggest show on the tour. They don’t get bigger than the Jubilee.”

Bruno nodded and gestured to the banners.

“You have an impressive lineup,” he said.

“Top drawer talent,” the man said. “Every one of them.”

Bruno smiled, took a breath and made himself say it.

“You got any freaks?”

The old man didn’t answer right away. He leaned his head from side to side like a deaf mongrel, sniffed and wiped at his nose.

“Not this time,” he finally said. “We tried freaks before. It didn’t work out. Maybe you heard about the problems, huh? Maybe that’s why you’re asking?”

Bruno began shaking his head vigorously.

“I’m show folk,” he said. “I’m looking for work.”

The codger’s shoulders slouched a little and he shook his head. Then he looked Bruno in the eye and said, “Well why the hell didn’t you say so at the start?”

The old man was named Forrest DeWitt and he said he was the best canvasman west of the Desirea Range. He took Bruno to the mess top and bought him a cup of coffee and a tin of slop. He waited until the strongman had finished his meal before he asked, “So what’s with you and the freaks?”

Bruno made the decision to level with DeWitt.

“The truth is,” he said, “I’ve got a troupe of them on my hands.”

“You?” said DeWitt. “I must be losing the knack. I would’ve pegged you for a musclehead.”

Bruno followed his meaning and nodded.

“I am,” he said. “Back home they called me the Behemoth.”

“And where,” asked DeWitt, “might home be?”

Honesty was a fine policy as long as it didn’t endanger you. Bruno said, “I’ve drifted so long, I’m not sure anymore.”

DeWitt loved the answer.

“I know that song by heart, son. Place I was born? It’s not even there no more.”

“So,” Bruno said, “just between two old road dogs like us, can you tell me where the Bedlam Brothers come down on the freak question?”

“Thing is,” DeWitt said, seeming to get a little squeamish, “this is a big stop for us. We play Mach’pella every year this time and we always leave with piles of loot. Not much in the way of entertainment in these parts and the folks are a little, you might say, repressed.”

“Repressed?”

“Little bit restrained, you might say. And more’n would do a person any good, if you follow. They’re a religious people out here on the plains. You have to understand that. We brought in a sideshow of freaks, what, three, four seasons back. It didn’t sit too well.”

“Not much draw?” asked Bruno, disappointed.

“Worse than that,” DeWitt said. “The crowd got, let’s say, uncomfortable, in their presence. Things were thrown, you see. Bottles. Rocks. It got a little bit ugly. The crowd drove those freaks right out of town. We never seen them again. And the kicker was, most of them weren’t real freaks at all. The bearded lady pasted on her beard. The monkey man was just a pygmy in a fur suit. And the rest of it was all pickled punks and shrunken heads.”

“Well, maybe that’s what got the crowd so riled,” Bruno said.

Forrest DeWitt simultaneously shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

“Hard to say anything for sure when it comes to the marks,” he said. “You know that.”

“Well, where does that leave us?” Bruno asked. “You think there’s any chance of us hiring on?”

DeWitt laughed.

“This is a goddamn carnival, son. There’s a chance of anything happening, isn’t there? I’ll tell you what. You go fetch your performers and bring them back to the fairgrounds. We’ll look them over and see what we see. How’s that sound?”

“That sounds,” said Bruno, standing up, “like the fairest words I’ve heard since I came to this country.”

He shook hands with the canvasman and left the mess top. And on his way off the fairground he thought for sure he smelled pie.

SOME OF THE FREAKS were still seated in a circle when he returned. Chick and Kitty were huddled together not far away and Durga was holding a sleeping Antoinette in her arms. All eyes were upon the strongman as he approached the clan. He didn’t want to make them overly optimistic. But at the same time, he didn’t want to kill the hopefulness that had been building since Jeta first glimpsed the tents.

Milena, of course, was the first to speak.

“So what’s the story?” s/he asked. “Are they hiring?”

“They might be,” said Bruno and all of the freaks looked at one another.

“What kind of an answer is that?” Aziz wanted to know.

Bruno shrugged.

“I think there’s a good chance we can sell ourselves,” he said. “The canvasman said this wasn’t historically a sideshow kind of crowd. But the owners might give us a tumble if we got the goods.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” said Nadja, getting to her feet and slapping her claws together.

They began the march to the Jubilee, Bruno in the rear this time and lost in thought. He didn’t notice that Chick had stepped beside him until he heard the boy’s voice whisper, “So, did you meet the Resurrectionist yet?”

Before the strongman could respond, Chick moved up to the front of the parade and stepped into the lead position.

THE LEGEND WAS that the Bedlam Brothers had started out as ordinary gazonies, signing on with a lower tier show when it passed through their hometown of Mt. Seir one summer’s day. And as far as anyone can tell, the legend is mostly true. Suffice it to say that the brothers worked their way up in the outdoors entertainment business. They approached the game like a problem to be solved, mastering each area of carny expertise and moving on to the next. In this way, they had done it all, been barkers and candy butchers, ticket hawkers and twenty-four-hour men. They had labored as concessionaires and cleaned up the most gruesome donnikers in the land. One brother was said to have served some time as a musclehead on the rural Athletics Show circuit. The other was known to have mastered an imposing array of skills in the magical arts. But through all these years of training and traveling, the brothers’ true genius lay in that most misunderstood of all arts: showmanship.

Gladys Bedlam’s boys were both masters of, and innovators within, the mystical art of the ballyhoo. They knew more about the techniques of hype and fanfare than entire generations of showfolk combined. This was their secret and their golden goose and it paid off in spades. The boys bought their first circus before they were out of their teens, a ragtag company long past its prime, staffed by reprobates and perverts and mangy, disease-ridden animals. But by the end of their first season, the boys had somehow transformed the cavalcade into a must-see event and word of its thrills passed from village and parish to town and county. Every night saw a straw house crowd and the brothers reinvested the bulk of the profits, adding more acts, upgrading the talent, and sprucing up the sets and the costumes.

Now they were the preeminent circus owners in Gehenna and, with nothing left to accomplish, they had managed to turn their legend into myth. No one saw the brothers anymore. They still traveled with the Jubilee, but in a massive rig that was their home and office, a sanctuary declared off-limits to everyone. They continued to supervise every element of their extravaganza, but they did so through their puppet, an operatic ringmaster named Renaldo St. Clare.

It was to St. Clare that the freaks were presented by Forrest DeWitt. The ringmaster walked the parade line, which was set up along the hippodrome, inspecting each member of the clan silently but carefully, scrutinizing the extent of their anomalies and hunting for signs of fraudulence. St. Clare plucked a feather from Chick’s arm and held it up to the sunlight. He knocked on Antoinette’s skull, had her kneel so he could check for seams. He poked at the web of flesh that bound the twins together, put his fingers between Jeta’s ribs and even tried to pull off one of Nadja’s claws. But when he began to lift the hem of Milena’s makeshift dress, the hermaphrodite pinched the ringmaster’s cheek and said, “I’ll show you what you want to see. But if you try to touch anything, I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”

Bruno thought that display of cheekiness would kill any chance of employment. But when the ringmaster approached him, St. Clare was in good humor. When Bruno expressed surprise, Renaldo explained, “Every real he/she I’ve ever known was a ball-breaker. Your crew gets my vote. Now I just have to convince the brothers.”

And he disappeared into the massive black trailer that was parked at the end of the midway.

Twenty minutes later he was back, carrying Jubilee badges for the entire clan.

“Congratulations,” he said to the freaks, passing out the pins that would grant them admittance to the mess top and the bathhouse. Bruno got the key to the double-wide that they would all have to share until other accommodations could be arranged.

That night, the freaks slept like full-bellied lambs and used all of the next day to familiarize themselves with the Jubilee and get ready for opening night. By and large, the carnies treated them warmly. The clan had its run of the wardrobe trunks and was given a tour of the sideshow annex where they would be on display. They were pleasantly surprised to find that the facilities rivaled those of the Goldfaden. The stages were clean and ample and the lighting was first-rate.

Ringmaster St. Clare gave them a quick breakdown of the Jubilee method of sideshow performance.

“What you make, of course, will depend on your ability to fill the top,” St. Clare said, turning to Bruno and Milena, neither of whom could hide their shock. “And your ability to fill the top will depend on your talker. I’ve always been of the opinion that a freak is only as good as his bally. No matter how strange and terrible your performers, if you can’t get the marks into the annex, you can’t show them your wonders.”

He clapped Bruno on the arm and said, “But you look like a seasoned barker, my friend. I’m sure you’ll have no problem seducing the citizens of Mach’pella.”

“Barker?” Bruno said, suddenly confused. “I’m not a barker. I’m a behemoth.”

St. Clare looked at the strongman and then at the freaks.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re not their barker? I thought you told my canvasman that they were your act.”

“Well, they are,” stammered Bruno. “I mean, that is, I’m traveling with them. We’re traveling together. We used to perform together. In the same circus. That is. .” and he looked to Chick for help.

“Mr. Seboldt,” explained Chick, “was the strongest man in our homeland. He can pull a locomotive for over five hundred meters.”

St. Clare said nothing for a few seconds. He stood smiling and nodding, as if thinking of something else. Finally, he said, “That’s very impressive, young man. Quite a feat, I’m sure. But we don’t have any locomotives here.”

“What I’m trying to say,” Chick said, “is that Bruno is a strongman, not a barker. He’s never worked the bally.”

It came out sounding like an accusation.

Ringmaster St. Clare nodded his understanding.

“The trouble is,” he said, “we already have a strongman. And, with all due respect to our friend Bruno here, and meaning no insults at all, I assure you, we think our strongman is a fine one. He’s been with us for many seasons now. Micmac Shawnee. You’ve heard of him, perhaps? We call him the Chief. An authentic savage, strong as a dozen bulls and meaner than a cornered snake.”

St. Clare took a breath and shook his head.

“Now, what we didn’t have, until yesterday, was a genuine, state-of-the-art freak troupe or a barker that could sell them.”

Everyone stood looking at the ground and one another as if trying to solve a math problem that had been carved in the earth.

Finally, Bruno clapped his hands together and said, “Mr. St. Clare, you’ve been very generous with us and I want you to know how much we all appreciate that. If you say we need a barker, then we need a barker. And though I may not have any experience, I’ve been on the circuit most of my life and I’m a fast learner. And the truth is, I’d be proud to bally for my friends here.”

Renaldo St. Clare looked like he’d just dodged a hail of bullets.

“Excellent, Mr. Seboldt,” he said. “I look forward to working with you and your entire troupe. The show kicks off at sundown tonight with the opening ceremonies. You won’t want to miss that, I promise you. We’ll open the sideshow annex at seven. Should you have any questions or concerns between now and then, you can find me on the midway. Good luck to all of you.”

And he gave a little bow before exiting the annex.

“You?” Milena said immediately. “A barker?”

“I didn’t have much choice,” Bruno said. “He was getting ready to give us the heave.”

“But can you do it, Bruno?” Durga asked. “Can you run the patter?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Bruno said, “come sundown.”

THE INAUGURATION OF this season’s Mach’pella stand seemed to the freaks no different from the kick-off performance of dozens of other circuses they’d witnessed over the years. Professionals, they stood and sat away from the crowds who had flocked in full capacity to turn the midway into a straw house, standing room only, not a remaining ticket to be had. It seemed every man, woman, and babe in the county had come to the opening of the show, their hearts swollen with the promise of premier entertainment and who-knew-what thrills and surprises.

The ceremonies began with a meeting, under the big top and in the center ring, between Renaldo St. Clare, in full spangled costume, and the mayor of Mach’pella, who read a proclamation that officially declared this “Jubilee Week” in the town. The ringmaster enthusiastically thanked the crowd and then began a run of adjective-laden puffery that even Milena had to admit was impressive. Then the band began playing a rousing chorus of the Jubilee theme, written, St. Clare reminded all, by the Bedlam Brothers themselves—those mysterious ministers of modern magic and miracles, who just might be sitting next to you at this very minute!

And as the audience began to look right and left in the hope of spotting one the brothers, the opening processional began, led by a dozen Indian pachyderms, each one bearing a member of the Romero family, fearless trainers who could make any beast do their bidding. The costumes were splendid, trimmed with colored lights and bells, and the family’s boots gleamed with countless layers of French cream.

The acrobats and aerialists came next. Family units from around the globe, and all of them born with a magnificent talent for equilibrium and self-control. They marched with grace and vitality, ran up each other’s back and leaped off shoulders, flying ridiculous distances and landing like statues carved of the coolest marble.

Next followed an amalgam of contortionists, bird trainers, fireeaters, sword swallowers, hand walkers, stilt walkers, glass walkers, a trick pony, and an abundance of jugglers who made airborne everything from pitchforks and babies to fireballs and wagon wheels. The clowns took their turns, causing a very efficient mayhem at the tail end of the parade, driving tiny cars in circles, throwing buckets of water or confetti, honking horns and blowing balloons and running madly from mechanical mice. They proved a sharp contrast to the penultimate parader, the Jubilee’s lone strongman, Chief Micmac Shawnee, billed as “The Brawniest Brave on the Ballyhoo,” according to his bannerline.

“He doesn’t look so tough to me,” said Durga.

“Looks,” reminded Bruno, “can be deceiving.”

The Chief marched defiantly, decked out in tight buckskin pants, barefoot and bare chested, a crow’s feather lodged behind one ear and his bulging chest decorated with war paint tattoos. No one said it aloud, but he reminded all the freaks of the Goldfaden knife thrower, except for the fact that the Chief’s head was shaved clean to the skull. Shawnee glared at the crowd and a few brave souls let fly some good-natured booing. To which the Chief responded by plucking a hatchet from his pants and waving it in the air menacingly. That this brought a round of laughter and cheers did nothing, it seemed, to lighten Micmac’s mood.

“Does anyone find it odd,” asked Milena, getting bored with the preshow festivities, “that we weren’t asked to march in the parade?”

“I told you,” said Bruno, “they had a bad experience with some bogus freaks a few seasons back. Besides, if they see you all in the parade, why would they pay money to see you again in the annex?”

This satisfied everyone but Chick, who decided to keep his unease to himself.

The parade seemed about to conclude when the ringmaster stepped back into a sudden hail of spotlights and the band abruptly played out the last of the Bedlam Brothers’ anthem, “Pandemonium (We Will Astound You).”

“And now,” bellowed St. Clare, projecting out past the farthest seats in the house, “to officially kick off the twenty-seventh visit of the Bedlam Brothers Roving Jubilee to our special friends in Mach’pella, the man you’ve all been waiting to see, a legend of colossal proportions, known and marveled at from the palaces of the Far East to the local grange halls, the wizard who has rewritten all the science books and put the undertaker on the dole, here he is, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to your town and your hearts, the one and only Dr. Lazarus Cole,” and here he screamed out the last two words, “The Resurrectionist!”

An explosion sounded at the entrance to the midway and a cloud of purple smoke mushroomed. The band’s drummer erupted with tympani and the percussion goosed every heart under the big top and focused all eyes onto the gust of vapor, out of which now emerged what seemed to be two creamy, brawny unicorns, pulling an open golden carriage festooned with luminous jewels of every hue. The man within the carriage held the reins with one hand. The other was pointed defiantly up into the air.

He drove the unicorns to the big ring and brought them to a stop. He stared up at the crowd for a long moment, a bemused look on his face, as if he had sized them up and found them all wanting. Then he roused himself, stepped out of the carriage and down onto the midway. He was tall and gaunt, dressed in formal attire, a black tuxedo with long tails, crimson shirt and cummerbund and a narrow black tie. He wore French cuffs and elaborate gold cufflinks and, on his head, an enormous white turban bound by a ruby.

He threw his head back and, into the silence of the crowd, he shouted, “I am Dr. Lazarus Cole,” paused and added, “the Resurrectionist.”

And then he bowed elaborately, one leg propped behind the other, knees bent slightly and the turban tipping close to the ground.

The crowd went berserk. The cheers and screams, the overflow of uncontrolled emotion, was unlike anything that Bruno and his freaks had seen through the course of their travels. The ovation went on for so long that Antoinette became agitated and Milena had to wonder, aloud, what kind of act could warrant such acclaim.

It didn’t take long to find out. And, at least in its early stages, it wasn’t what the hermaphrodite — or any of the others — had expected.

Aziz had pegged the guy as some kind of faith healer, who’d whip the hicks into a frenzy of righteous and woozy belief and then slay a few spirits by laying on those big, milky hands. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Because when the applause finally faded, what the Resurrectionist launched into was a kind of comedy act from hell.

First, he prowled the midway, giving a general introduction—great to be back in your wonderful town, we’ve got a great show for you tonight—taking the audience’s mean temperature, getting a read on the marks, singling out a few probable rubes. But then he went up into the bleachers themselves, like some common clown, and it didn’t take long for things to get ugly after that.

Chick saw that Lazarus Cole was possessed of a first-rate talent, but that it was vicious in nature. A natural insult comic, he raised the tease and the rib to torturous levels, a cruelty inherent in his barbs that the chicken boy had never before witnessed in his short life. It became apparent, quickly, that the Resurrectionist was a miner of outrage. He had a magician’s skill for sizing up the stooges but rather than focusing on the good-natured or the serene, the gullible or the naive, he seemed to be targeting the most aggressive, the most perturbed, and the most choleric individuals in the sizable crowd. And then, once he’d identified these human time bombs, he went to work on them with a daring and an expertise that would have made an abusive parent envious.

Cole baited the crankiest of the cranks. He found twelve marks, dyspeptic malcontents in this sea of happy revelers. And he goaded those twelve, poked at them, taunted them. He degraded and humiliated them. He seemed to have the ability to find their weakest spot, their particular hot button. And then he drilled into it.

And it was nothing short of agonizing and fascinating. A staged train wreck of human emotions. The freaks found it impossible to look away. In bursts of brilliant and, apparently, dead-on-target vituperative, invective and accusation, Cole abused his marks to levels of rage that were poisonous to behold. He stripped bare the dynamics of their damaged psyches and went to work on them with a verbal jackhammer, boring into their deepest fears with a diamond bit. The collective mood under the big top went from joyous and celebratory to furious and hateful. This was abuse comedy transformed into obscene sadism.

Five minutes into the routine, Kitty whispered into Chick’s ear, “What have we gotten ourselves into?” Five minutes later, Durga had to escort both Antoinette and Jeta back to the trailer. Milena, however, was more entranced than repulsed. And even the chicken boy felt the need to see where it was all headed.

When the twelve rubes were on their feet, red faced, adrenaline surging, larynxes close to rupture with the ferocity of their screams, their hands balled into fists of ire, Dr. Lazarus Cole folded his arms across his chest as if ennobled by their fury and asked, “Wouldn’t you love to kill me?”

And then, reaching into the interior breast pocket of his tuxedo, he produced a glass bottle, a classic seltzer dispenser. He held it up in the air for a second so that the crowd and the twelve rubes could inspect it. Then he took aim, depressed the dispenser’s handle, and began shooting streams of carbonated water into the faces of his victims.

It was like pulling the pins on a dozen live grenades. There was a moment of stunned silence when space and time appeared to freeze. And then the rubes screamed en masse and broke out of their seats, charging after the evil Doctor Cole, their tormentor. They snatched wildly at the air as the Resurrectionist led them through a wild chase up and down the bleacher aisles, through the bloodlusting crowd.

While the chase was transpiring, Chick looked away, feeling lightheaded, as if a seizure were on its way. In fact, he was reacting to the effects of the display he’d just witnessed. But by turning his head, he happened to notice the small gang of gazonies who had taken to the midway and began collecting from the circus rings a series of canvas tarps that he had not previously noticed. Beneath the tarps lay piles of rocks, bricks, lead pipes, and crockery. And all at once, Chick understood, too well, the intended purpose of these items and the intended outcome of this act.

He looked back to the bleachers just in time to see that Cole had run his gauntlet in such a way that his pursuers had been united, swept up into a single small mob. And with this accomplished, the doctor sprinted down from the stands and into the midway, where he was picked up by every spotlight in the house.

Now he dashed into the center ring, twirling and feinting until he manipulated his enemies into a circle around him. At which point, he held up his hands and came to a sudden stop. For a moment, the enraged dozen, and the audience, were unsure of what to do. It seemed the doctor might be about to give up and apologize, beg forgiveness for his abuse.

Instead, he put his hands on his hips, looked each man in the face, and said, “My God, you’re all too revolting to live.”

You could hear a single gasp somewhere out in the crowd. It sounded like a match being struck. And then the dozen rushed him at once, knocking Lazarus Cole to the ground, kicking him, punching him, stomping him. When a single gazonie ran from the sidelines into the ring, it seemed for a moment as if someone were attempting to rescue Dr. Cole. But the young man was only calling attention to the piles of pummeling material lying at hand, waiting to be used.

The attackers did not disappoint. They seized stone, block, tube, and plate and had at the prone doctor with the release of a dozen infuriated lifetimes. The crowd cheered the massacre. Kitty looked away, hiding her eyes in the feathers of her beloved. Bruno stared in disbelief. The other freaks muttered to themselves as if lost in a childhood nightmare they’d thought long past.

The batterers exhausted themselves before they exhausted their weaponry. In the end, as the cheering began to fade, one by one they lifted themselves from their work and staggered, blood drenched, out of the center ring, escorted by showgirls who would bring them to the bathhouse.

The body of Dr. Lazarus Cole lay in a messy heap, now illuminated by a single white-blue spot, a hot light that revealed a hideously disfigured corpse, something no longer identifiably human and surely, certainly, definitively dead.

The cardinal rule of all show business, and especially of the circus trade, is: keep things moving at all times. The fact that Ringmaster St. Clare broke this rule at such a terrifying moment only shows how deeply ran the confidence of the Bedlam Brothers.

Nothing happened under the big top for an uncomfortably long time. There was no music. There was no change in the lighting. Chick could feel the crowd squirm in unison. There was nothing to look at besides the amazing Lazarus Cole’s mutilated, mangled body, its flesh torn open and exposed to the world, its blood run into pools, flooding into puddles around the lifeless remains. The scene was appalling, ghastly, traumatizing. Now, at last, as the shock transformed itself into the apprehension of truth, came the sounds of children wailing. And as if on cue, Fatos, the mule, fainted dead away. Nadja knelt to tend to him but her claws were shaking.

Finally, Renaldo St. Clare returned to his ring and stepped into the spotlight. He looked down on the body of Dr. Cole, looked up at his audience, looked back down at the body, removed his top hat and held it against his chest, over his heart. The ringmaster closed his eyes and lowered his head. The crowd did the same. With his eyes shut tight, the ringmaster cleared his throat and in a trembling voice, so low that the crowd leaned forward in unison, he said, “Might there be a doctor in the house?”

Heads turned from right to left as all eyes swept the bleachers. In the very last row, a man stood and began to make his way, slowly, deliberately, down the steep aisle toward the performance ring. He was small and wide, with a large dome of bare, sweat-drenched skull and a crown of longish white hair, and he wore a long and ill-fitting white coat.

The doctor approached St. Clare, shook his hand silently, then got down on one knee and put two fingers on the throat of Lazarus Cole. After a moment, the doctor leaned his trunk down and placed an ear against Cole’s chest. Then he struggled to his feet with the help of the ringmaster, and addressed the crowd directly.

“I am Vernon Taber,” he said, “assistant medical examiner, Hazor County. And I officially certify that this man,” suddenly shouting and thrusting an arm out to point at Cole’s corpse, “is dead as dead can be.”

Taber let his pronouncement sink in, then he bowed at the waist toward the crowd, came upright, bowed his head toward the ringmaster, and waddled out of the spotlight.

Long moments passed and a lion’s roar could be heard in the distance. When St. Clare opened his eyes, there were tears. When he spoke, there was a tremor in his voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “you have witnessed this evening the beginnings of a miracle.”

A handful of burly gazonies ran from the sidelines, shovels in hand, and began to spade over the bloody earth next to the dead magician. The ground had been prepared and the work proceeded quickly.

“I ask,” said the ringmaster, “that you remember what you have seen here tonight at the start of our Jubilee.”

When a grave of sufficient length and depth had been fashioned, four of the gravediggers dropped their spades, approached the body, and went down on one knee.

“For the Bedlam Brothers,” said St. Clare, his voice increasing with volume and enthusiasm, “intend to astound you to your very core.”

The diggers rose. Each took a hand or a foot. They lifted the heap that had been Dr. Cole and carried the corpse to its tomb.

“Each and every one of you is invited back to this festival a week from tonight, as guests of the Bedlam Brothers family.”

The pallbearers dropped the body unceremoniously into the ground, retrieved their shovels, and began filling in the grave.

“For in seven short days,” the ringmaster shouted, reclaiming his brightest bally, “you will see a man rise from the dead. The Amazing Dr. Lazarus Cole will live once again.”

St. Clare raised his hat in the air and waved it around to show the earnestness of his declaration. The crowd responded, hesitantly at first, but then the band struck up the Bedlam anthem again, the house lights came up, and the full troupe parade came back for another pass, all of the performers as bouncy and gusto-filled as ever. Balloons were released into the air and the trained monkeys began to run up and down the grandstand aisles dispensing candy. The elephants blew trunks of water at the clowns. The jugglers lit torches and began throwing them skyward in tall, spinning arcs.

St. Clare began to sing along with the anthem and then, lifting his arms into the air, encouraged the crowd to join him. And join him they did. They sang loudly and with emotion. They clapped and swung heads from shoulder to shoulder, stamped their feet and hollered with the joys of the spectacle laid out before them.

“And now,” shouted St. Clare above all the noise, “on with the show.”