Firetale (4 page)

He heard a clanging sound coming from
below the floor.

There was a basement, but Greg had missed
the door to it. He was angry at himself for such carelessness. The
flame burning inside became stronger. It seemed that if he did not
give it a way out, it would burn him alive. In his anger, he
momentarily lost his concentration, and the flame on his right hand
gripped his arm up to the shoulder, scorching the sleeve of his
shirt. Greg forced himself to calm down and regained his
self-possession. “Do not be distracted,” he whispered to himself.
“You need to find the door to the basement.”

He found the cellar door behind the
kitchen. It was locked.

Calmly and silently, Greg burned the lock
the way he had on the front door. The magician went down the
concrete stairs. There was a wall on one side of the stairway and a
high bookcase holding various implements on the other side, which
hid him from view. When he had not quite reached the bottom of the
stairs, Greg sat on a step and peered around the
bookcase.

In a corner of the
basement
, a
girl of seven or eight was chained to the floor. She was lying on
an air mattress and was either asleep or unconscious. Her mouth was
gagged, and the gag had traces of blood on it. Beside her lay a
bowl of food. Berry towered over the girl. He was completely naked.
In the weak yellow light of a single bulb illuminating the cellar,
his flabby body seemed made of wax. He stood in a winner’s stance,
with his legs apart and his hands on his hips. He shifted his gaze
from the girl to the wall, humming quietly and cheerfully. On the
wall hung a case for tools. It held hammers, saws, screwdrivers,
and wrenches.

Berry
went to the stand and picked up a
hammer. He turned it over and then put it aside. Returning to the
body of the girl, he stood over her and touched his flesh. His
breathing became deep and frequent.

Greg
had killed many people. The ball had
always shown him only killers. Maybe there were other sins in their
souls—robbery, violence, drugs, who knew? But his victims all
shared one trait: they were murderers. They took people’s lives,
and Greg took theirs. He believed he was doing good deeds, using
his strength to fight these abominations. He never thought about
what pushed these men to commit murder. Quarrels? Gambling debts?
Mafia orders? To Greg, murder was murder. Seeing Mr. Berry, Greg
thought that some murderers were more heinous than others. Greg had
no doubt that the girl on the floor wasn’t Berry’s first victim.
Among those whose lives the magician had taken, perhaps there were
other such maniacs, but Greg had never had evidence of it. Looking
at Berry, he lost his concentration again.

The wave of heat hit Berry in
the back with a
loud noise. He fell face down, and before he could scream,
someone turned him over and sat astride him. It was not a man. It
was a devil, a fiend from the belly of hell, wrought by fire. The
demon raised his fiery hand and slid it into Mr. Berry’s
mouth.

The maniac did not have time to
scream. Greg closed his fingers around Berry
’s tongue and burned it. Instead of a
mouth, there was a gaping hole with scorched edges. Berry’s eyes
filled with tears. He could smell burning flesh and feel a wild
pain. He tried to shake off the fire monster, but his hands
clutched only flames, sending more pain shooting through
him.

Berry
’s resistance annoyed Greg. The
magician grabbed the maniac’s shoulders, pressed them to the floor,
and squeezed hard. Berry’s moaning became louder. He tried to
move
his
hands, but couldn’t. The maniac shook his head, trying to figure
out what was wrong with his hands, finally realizing that they were
no longer attached to his arms. The inner flames were devouring
Greg. He wrapped his arms around Berry’s head. The magician dug his
thumbs into the killer’s tear-filled eyes and pressed. Berry’s
eyeballs
melted and began to sink into his skull. Berry was
thrashing around under Greg, trying, in a last desperate attempt,
to throw him off. The magician pushed harder, and his fiery fingers
broke through the last resistance and entered the maniac’s
brain.

It was over.
Greg
’s inner
fire began to subside. He got off Berry’s body and lay on the
concrete floor of the basement, utterly drained. Greg’s clothes had
burned off him, and the floor was cooling down against his back and
hips. “Bastard, scum,” Greg muttered. He wondered when he had last
had such a flash. Only his first time, he realized. He knew he had
to stand up, reminding himself that not everything was done. He
approached the girl. She was still unconscious, but she was alive.
Greg melted the chain and removed it from the girl’s neck. The
magician examined Julia. There were no wounds on her body, and her
clothes were still intact. It seemed the blood on the gag was
Berry’s. The girl had most likely bitten his hand as he tried to
shove the gag in.

He didn’t do
it
, Greg
thought. Gently, he took the girl’s tiny body in his arms, carried
her upstairs, and set her on the sofa.

Greg considered burning the
house down but dropped the idea.
It would be too big an event for such a
small town. Local wags would make jokes about a fire magician from
a traveling circus who had performed a trick with a man whose house
had subsequently burned down. It would be safer not to leave any
traces. Greg knelt over the body of the killer. The magician’s
hands turned into fire again. He knew that physical contact of the
body with the heat would be more devastating, but he could not
overcome his disgust. He passed his hands over the body, taking
care not to touch the skin, heating it up and burning it to ashes.
When Mr. Berry had become a pile of ashes, Greg swept them into a
garbage bag and went upstairs.

He took some clothes from Berry’s closet.
The idea of wearing the maniac’s clothes was revolting, but there
was little choice. It was either that or leave the house naked. And
he still had a couple more things to do before returning to the
circus. After he got dressed, he wrapped the girl in a blanket,
took the bag containing Berry’s ashes, and left the house. He threw
the bag into a trashcan near a house a few blocks away from
Berry’s. Then he put the girl on the porch of a house a couple of
streets away, rang the doorbell, and disappeared. He did not know
where the local hospital was, and he did not have time to look for
it. But he was sure that the people in the house where he had left
the girl would take her to a hospital or to a doctor. Now there was
only emptiness in Greg’s head. He felt lousy. All he could think of
was that he wanted to see Martha.

Zinnober followed Greg from the
circus. H
e
had to prowl through the town, but Zinno did not care. His gut told
him that something was very odd. Whatever Greg did during his
absences apparently ran counter to the rules established by Mr.
Bernardius, otherwise the tentmaster would not have allowed Zinno
to leave the circus. Yes, it was very, very serious. Perhaps
Zinnober could use it to benefit himself.

When Greg went into the house,
Zinno hid in the shadows on the other side of the street, just
below the building where people were quarrelling, and watched. What
Greg did in the house was unclear, but when he came out, he was
dressed differently and was carrying something. Zinnober followed
the magician, hiding his
stooped figure in the shadows, until Greg got back
to the circus. Then the dwarf walked back the same way he had come
and found the trash bag Greg had dropped a few blocks from Mr.
Berry’s house. Many, especially the magician, underestimated
Zaches, and he knew it. Greg sometimes called him an asshead right
to his face. But Zaches was, in his own way, clever and cunning,
and he was clever enough to understand what had happened at
Berry’s. Oh yes, it would certainly disappoint Mr. Bernardius. If,
of course, Zinnober decided to tell him.

Record made 03/04/1877

Archivist: Faulkner

Tonight after the
show
, some
drunken loggers offered us information about a strange creature in
exchange for a few dollars. One of them said it was a demon, the
other that it was a ghost, and a third even called it a demon
ghost. This creature, like an ungodly cross between a goat and a
man, lived under a railway bridge somewhere in Louisville and by
night attacked tramps, young couples looking for privacy, and
daredevils who wanted to debunk the myth of the deadly ghost. The
loggers promised to say in what city and under what bridge the
monster lurked.

Mr. Bernardius did not give them
a penny.
We
already knew about the goat-man but were not planning to go after
him. Unhappy, distraught Derek. He will never set foot over the
threshold of our circus and, I’m afraid, will finish his days at
the hands of some village ruffian or a Judge’s silver bullet. I had
no doubt that the monster under the bridge, which pushed people
onto the rails, was Derek. Once he was a fine demionis,
intelligent, open, and responsive. But a year ago, everything
changed.

Derek was a satyr, and when he
came to us, I immediately warned Mr. Bernardius that
t
he boy would
not be easy to deal with. Satyrs are conscious demionis; they think
and talk. But at the same time, their half-bestial mind causes them
many problems. Wild satyrs, devoid of communication with humans,
quickly degrade to the animal state, in which they are guided by
instinct rather than reason. Derek came to us very young and was
more receptive to learning. Thanks to Mr. Bernardius’s custody and
my lessons, he soon was little different from a human child.
Externally, today’s satyrs have not changed since the days of
ancient Greece, when they were portrayed as goat-hoofed creatures
with horns that grew bigger as they aged, sometimes reaching
impressive sizes.

Derek was agile and
strong.
He
was probably twice as strong as an adult, despite his young age. He
was indispensable during the installation and dismantling of the
tents. Even better, the young satyr played the flute and danced. I
think it is no exaggeration to say that our entire circus adored
Derek. What can brighten up a long day or a tiring journey better
than a good song? The satyr knew a lot of them. Audiences also were
crazy about his performances. They especially liked sikkinis, the
dance of the satyrs. In this dance was something unusual, something
available only to a demionis with an amazing flexible body, a move
that combined high jumping on goat legs with smooth, soft hand
movements. No man could dance the sikkinis.

Dancing Derek and his songs
always amused audience
s, but before the show in Kentucky, I never
thought about exactly how. After that show, a man with a girl
approached Mr. Bernardius. The man, who introduced himself as Mr.
Ridby, was terribly flustered, crushing his wide-brimmed straw hat
in his hands. He began to talk about how much his daughter had
enjoyed the performance. The girl’s name was Eleanor, and, as Mr.
Ridby explained to us, she had suffered from melancholia for more
than a year, ever since her mother died. Eleanor was eleven years
old but did not like to play with other children. She never smiled
and spent most of her day in silence. Poor Ridby was terribly upset
by his daughter’s condition. To treat Eleanor’s melancholy, doctors
had recommended that Ridby beat the girl more often, deprive her of
sleep at night, and wash her in ice-cold water. But Mr. Ridby was a
gentle man and could not do such things to his daughter.

On the day of the show,
Ridby told us, a
genuine miracle happened. Watching Derek perform, Eleanor had
smiled. Almost in tears, her father asked us to stay in the city a
little while longer so that Ellie might speak with Derek. Mr. Ridby
expressed the hope that talking with our boy would once again give
Eleanor her zest for life. In any other situation, Mr. Bernardius
would have adamantly refused. But Ridby’s heartfelt pleas so
touched the ringmaster that he could not deny him. I can testify
that I had never seen such somberness and detachment from the world
as I had seen in Eleanor that day. Meanwhile, it had long been
reported that there was information about the new demionis from
Astaroth, information we had to find.

Mr. Bernardius agreed to stay in
town for a few
extra days, and he told Mr. Ridby that the girl could come
to the circus and play with Derek. Lazarus’s only condition was
that Eleanor come alone, because our circus seeks to preserve our
trade secrets from outsiders. I was not worried that a human child
would be in the camp for several days in a row. I like children. I
believe that in some sense, their minds are much more open to
everything unusual. The rarities of our circus would be a miracle
for Eleanor, but for an adult, a dangerous deviation, an anomaly.
On the other hand, who would believe the girl when she discovered
that Derek’s legs and horns were no makeup?

The news that Eleanor would visit him for
a few days filled Derek with excitement and joy. He was a teenager,
and though he liked to entertain us with his pranks, the satyr
clearly had been missing the society of age mates. We told Mr.
Ridby that we would allow Eleanor to come to the circus in the
afternoon every day for five days, and Derek would entertain the
girl. Mr. Bernardius promised Ellie’s father that the children
would be supervised, because the circus, although it looks from the
outside like a place of entertainment, contains many dangerous
pieces of equipment and decorations behind the scenes. Mr. Ridby
agreed, and the next day at the appointed time Eleanor came to
us.