The Magpye: Circus (30 page)

"If you say so," said the cop,
licking something from the ends of his fat fingers. “If you say
so.”

Able swung his leg up and
dismounted the bike. He'd taken his time getting back to the
circus. He felt weak and drained, but purified by what he had done
at The Pit. He couldn't change who his father was, couldn't scrub
Adam King out of his DNA, but there was no good reason to keep the
bastard alive in his head. Adam's memories where gone, his voice
was gone, and now Able to get on with the business of forgetting
him completely.

Of all the ghosts, Adam was the
only one that Able didn't owe a damn thing.

Forgetting Adam didn't change
Able's plans, of course. It was Cane King who had ordered the
murder of Able, his family, and his friends. It was on Cane King's
orders that Able's home had become a charred graveyard. Cane was
the last piece on the chessboard, the last one that needed to be
put away, and preferably in a pine box.

Able picked his away through
the corpse of the circus, heading for the entrance to the
mausoleum. Hopefully Marissa was cooking. He needed food, or what
passed for food for Able these days, and sleep. Tomorrow, he would
wake up as Able Quirk and begin again.

In his head, his ghosts were
sullen and silent. It was understandable. They were no longer safe
in Able's head. They were no longer permanent. They had all seen
first hand that they could be evicted, exorcised by the power of
the Magpye at Able's command. Able could sense their fear. They
were no longer survivors, escaping death in Able's head. They were
prisoners, and they were trapped there.

When Able reached the hidden
door, he found it open. It was never left open.

He rushed in and down, taking
the steps two at a time.

"Marv! Marissa!"

There was no answer.

Able called forth his ghosts,
no longer caring about their fears or worries. Each and every one
responded, and innumerable eyes scanned the room. The group-think
of the Magpye took over.

"Blood here, on the steps."

"More, further up."

"Broken crockery, signs of a
confrontation."

"The old man put up a fight
then."

"Doesn't sound like Marv."

Able took control again as his
eyes hit a piece of paper pinned to the table. It was a newspaper
clipping, the front page of one of the papers that King controlled.
Stretching from the top of the page to the bottom was an image of
Cane's new casino hotel.

"They took him," muttered Able,
screwing up the paper and throwing it on the ground. It was
happening again. People in his life were getting caught in the
crossfire between him and the Kings. Marv was the closest thing to
a real father that Able had, despite everything that had happened,
and now he was at the mercy of Cane King.

"It's a trap, you realise that
don't you?"

It was the hyper-organised mind
of Rosa Blind, the eternal analyst, that spoke to Able.

"Cane will have that place filled with guys on his payroll
and surrounded by cops that he owns too. The only way you are
getting in there is
how
and
when
and
where
they want you to."

"What would you have me do?"
asked Able. "I won't abandon him."

"He abandoned us, remember?"
said Malcolm. It was unlike the trick shot marksman to get involved
in anything that didn't involve a bullet, and Able would never have
pegged him for someone to back away from a fight.

"We're not discussing this,"
said Able. "This is Marv. I'd still be out of my mind, running
around graveyards in the night if it wasn't for him. We'd all still
be at the bottom of that pit. He saved me, and he saved us."

"He saved himself," interjected
Dorothy. "He ran out on us and we died, or did you forget that?
He's as much to blame as Adam was."

"I said we're not discussing this," said Able forcefully.
"Marv's one of us, so we go to get him or
…"

"Or what?" asked Dorothy
pointedly. "Or we end up as some abortion in the bottom of the pit?
Is that how it is now? What happened to not wanting to rule over
us, Able?"

The phantoms in Able's head
began to push and jostle against each other to speak and Able's
head filled with incomprehensible white noise. He closed them out,
let them argue and rage amongst themselves for a moment as he
composed his thoughts. As the clamour of the dead subsided, Able
spoke again.

"I'm sorry, Dorothy. I'm sorry
for what I made you do, for what I made you a part of."

Able felt the temper of the
ghosts soften, if only a little.

"But while Adam was a part of
us, none of us were safe. He was a poison. A parasite."

"So it's one down, one to go
eh?" The voice belonged to Terry Cooper. He'd been a quiet ghost
until now. A simmering, boiling presence just beneath the surface,
a pressure to act, a pressure to move against the Kings that had
been held in check by the other spirits. It seemed he waited for
this moment. "That's fine by me."

"Me too," said Malcolm.

Dorothy fell silent. "Looks
like I'm the only one who's seen enough blood."

"I've seen more than enough,
Dorothy," said Able. "More than enough. But we need to keep going.
For everyone we've lost, for everything we've lost. For the people
we can still save."

"None of this gives us a way
in," said Rosa. All business, she pulled the focus of the ghosts
with her, the rigour and control of her mind almost magnetic to
them, and antidote to the chaos of mixed memories that they
otherwise found themselves in.

"Well, that depends on who you
ask, miss."

The voice that had finally
found its way to the fore was the last one that Able expected. Zip
Nolan. The human cannonball and Able's bolt-hole psyche to hide
inside.

"I think I've got a plan."

From above, the city looked
like the milky way. A sprinkling of stars at the outskirts, tiny
lights against inky blackness, growing denser until the suburbs
gave way to the burning galaxy heart of the city itself. The docks
were a smoky nebula that clung to the fringes, and dark tracts of
industrial buildings that lay dormant punctuated the star-scape
with black holes and dark shards of the unknown.

From above, there were no
screams. No sirens. No death. Just the serene lights, fighting
their silent war against the darkness.

"It's beautiful," said Able. "I
never thought it could be."

"Perspective," replied Nolan,
the Irishman's voice clear in Able's head. "It's what flying gives
you. The world looks a lot different from up here. Simpler.
Cleaner."

"I can understand why you love
it so much up here."

Able could feel his hands
moving across the controls of the airship, but the movements were
all Nolan's. Able had always had an affinity with Nolan, an ability
to immerse himself completely in the Irish aerialist’s mind and
lose himself there completely. The Zen calmness of Nolan was a balm
to Able's tortured, fractured mind.

He felt the Irishman's supreme
confidence in control of the ship. Nolan knew, and so Able knew,
every single nut and bolt in the thing. It had been their great
project together, to make the old relic fly again, and now here
they were. The thing flew and it was majestic. More than that, it
was symbolic; something of the circus rising again to cast its
shadow over the city. The airship would have been, should have
been, the jewel in the circus' crown. But instead it had become
another ghost, an undead leviathan come to haunt the sky, and the
victory that Able and Nolan should have shared was tainted because
of it.

Able watched as Nolan's hands
moved again across the controls, pulling levers and adjusting
switches, adjusting the airship's flight through the inky black
sky. The engines spluttered and coughed, but somehow the beast
stayed airborne. The thing pulled itself upwards and the scattered
stars of the city vanished underneath grey clouds.

"Zip," asked Able, "How the
hell are we going to land this thing when we get there?"

The Irish ghost chuckled. "You
remember Mikey?" he asked.

"Of course," replied Able. Of
all of the guilt that he carried around with him, the guilt that he
felt for passing the pain of his healing in the pit on to Mikey
Bumch was especially painful and poisonous. He hadn't felt the
clown's mind again since that night and whilst he believed it was
possible that he had simply vanished back into the waters of memory
from which he had sprung, Able wondered in his darkest moments if
the clown was still being tortured by that pain somewhere. He had
called for the dead clown's spirit several times, but to no avail.
He had been too cowardly to forcibly summon the clown's spirit, for
fear of the worst. For all Able knew, Mikey Bumch had truly found a
fate worse than death.

"Well, after what Mikey did for
you, he found a a way out."

Able felt a prickle down his
spine; the creature, Magpye, stirring. Whatever Nolan knew had
gotten the dark thing's attention as well.

"What do you mean, a way
out?"

"I knew Mikey better than most of the others," continued
Nolan. "He was a lot like me. The revenge, the hate, all the
bloodshed
… it wasn't really
for him. In a lot of ways he was happier dead. I got that. My old
act, any night could have been my last. Death was something I came
to terms with quickly. The guy who trained me, back in the day...
He said the best way to avoid death was never to fear the bony
bastard. The point is, it's cramped in here, Able, and like souls
tend to stick together. We share our memories, share our space. We
share ourselves."

Able felt a sadness from Nolan,
something he'd never sensed before. A break in the dam that held
back Nolan's emotions, a tiny trickle of what might lay behind the
calm that Able had come to value so much. He'd never taken the time
to wonder what the ghosts did when they sank down to the places
where he couldn't reach them. He'd supposed that it would be
something like sleep, a dream at most, but perhaps not. Zip Nolan
and Mikey Bumch had continued their friendship into the afterlife,
and Able realised that that meant that Zip had lost another friend
because of him.

Another loss, another death.
Another for Able's tally of guilt.

"I'm sorry, Zip."

"Don't be," replied Nolan. "What Mikey did for you? He told
me that it made him feel complete. He'd never felt a single thing
in his whole life, can you imagine that? Well, that fucking thing
that lives inside all of us now, that god-damned
bird
… it made
sure
he felt what he took from you. Funny thing was, Mikey
didn't mind. After a lifetime of nothing, agony had a sweetness for
him. That's what he said."

"How long did it last?" asked
Able.

"Hard to be sure," replied Nolan. "Time is different for us
than it is for you. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. I won't
lie to you, Able, it was a
long
time. It was a
very long time, at least for Mikey. But, at the end of it, he was
happy. He said that it had made sense of everything that had gone
before, of every shitty thing that had ever happened to him. Every
bad day he'd ever had had been to bring him to that moment, to help
you, and to save us all from the pit. He said he'd done what he was
supposed to do, and that was the last any of us saw of
him."

Able felt the Magpye, spiteful
and vengeful creature that it was, twist and turn with anger inside
of him. Able had never wanted to claim dominion over the ghosts,
but the creature did. The creature believed that they belonged to
it.

"So there's another way
…" said Able. He couldn't help but smile. "You're not
trapped, any of you?"

"All we have to do is figure
out why we're here," said Nolan. "At least, that's my theory. I
mean, that's what people always used to say about ghosts right?
That we're dead people with unfinished business?"

"Unfinished business," repeated
Able. "Well, we've certainly got plenty of that."

He felt a ripple of acknowledge
from the other ghosts. Wherever they were as he communed with
Nolan, they could sense what was happening. The waters that Able
pictured in his mind, calm whilst he was joined with Zip, began to
froth and bubble again as they once had. Noisy spirits, vengeful
spirits, and a dark form underneath it all; the dark shape of a
bird, lurking in the deepest and most treacherous waters.

"But none of this tells me how
we're going to land this thing," said Able.

Able snapped back to reality
for a moment as Nolan's mind guided his hands across the controls
once more. Looking out through the wide glass windows, the city was
alive with light beneath them. Taller than anything else, a
ziggurat of neon and gold, stood Cane King's hotel. The sight of it
disgusted Able. It was as if Cane had been able to finally tattoo
his name onto the city itself, to carve his image onto it.

The nose of the airship dipped
and the old engines gave out an angry screech.

"Haven't you figured that out
yet?" said Nolan's ghost. There was laughter in the ghost's voice.
"While all the others have been arguing and fighting and raging,
I've been doing what I always did best. I've been preparing. I've
been getting ready to look the old bony bastard in the eye for a
second time around, and this time... I'm not going to blink."

Able watched as his hands
reached out, took hold of the two main control levers for the
airship, and rammed them forwards. The engines roared and the great
beast pitched forward.