The Sixteen Burdens (8 page)

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

T
HE
CIRCUS
TENT
in front of Gray looked like a living, breathing beast. It rustled and swelled from the heat of the lights, the steaming popcorn machines, and the breath of a thousand people.

They had lost Pickford’s Buick in the morass of cars in the dirt parking lot of Gilmore Stadium. The tent itself was pitched at the center of the lot.

Gray and Elsie stood on the outside of a green velvet rope.

Always on the wrong side of a rope.

They didn’t have tickets, or any money left to purchase them.

“Now what?” Elsie asked.

“Follow me.”

They weaved their way through a tangle of cars until they were on the backside of the tent. The canvas had once been striped red and white, but had faded to a sickly pink and a dirty brown. Given enough time, the two colors would meet at some putrid hue in-between.

With Elsie on lookout, Gray dug out one of the metal stakes. He then lifted the thick canvas, which was heavy as a sack of barley. Elsie knelt down on the muddy grass and crawled through on hands and knees. Gray followed.

They found themselves underneath rickety wooden bleachers, packed with excitable children and weary parents. Elsie’s white gloves were now soiled. She pulled them off and threw them to the ground with a little huff.

“I smell like a barnyard animal and this dress is ruined.”

The audience clapped at something, and Elsie clamped her eyes shut and grabbed her head. Gray saw flashes of color swirl around her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You got the female hysterics?”

“That’s not a thing!” she said. “There’s just a lot of people here. They’re all very excited. And my nails are filthy!”

She focused on picking out dirt from under her nails, and that seemed to calm her down. Gray frowned and turned away.

She’s crackers.

They sat through an acrobatics show they couldn’t see because their view was blocked by the bleachers. Bits of popcorn and peanuts fell upon them. Elsie grumbled and took to picking crumbs out of her hair.

“Who is it we’re looking for, exactly?” she asked.

Before he could answer, the lights went dark and drums rumbled. A spotlight turned on to reveal a person unlike any Gray had ever seen. He was more monster than man—big and burly, with arms thick as cannons and a torso the size and shape of an industrial ice box. His black mustache was bushy enough to house a family of nesting sparrows.

Someone shaved down King Kong and put him in the circus.

“That fella,” he said.

A thick steel chain was wrapped tightly around the man’s bare chest five or six times. He walked to the center of the ring, bowed to the audience, and then with seemingly little effort, flexed his chest and back muscles. The chains exploded off him and links clattered to the ground like loose change.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” an announcer shouted through a megaphone. “The person you have come here to see: Darko Atlas—the strongest man on Earth!”

The audience applauded.

“Aces!” Elsie said. “Now we know who it is. Let’s get out of here and call the police.”

She half stood under the bleachers but Gray grabbed her dress sleeve.

“Not yet.”

Atlas walked to the side of the ring and picked up a steel rod about three feet long and an inch wide. He bent it with his hands as if it were a piece of modeling clay. He created small loops, intricate and uniform. The steel began to take shape, an elegant flower on a stem with two leaves. He gave it to a woman in the front row, but it was too heavy for her to hold. The audience applauded.

As Gray watched, he noticed a glowing layer covering Atlas. It looked as if the surface of his skin were encrusted with translucent crystals.

Was this really the man abducting all the women? The man who Mary Pickford claimed was chasing her? Who knew things about Gray’s past? If Pickford refused to give him answers, maybe this Darko Atlas would.

“Calm down,” Elsie said. “You’re getting all worked up.”

“Don’t worry about me, dollface. Worry about your nails.”

What is she, a mind reader?

“For my next feat, I will need two participants from the audience,” Atlas said. People murmured to each other. Everyone seemed afraid to get near him.

“We’ll do it!”

The words had come out of Gray’s mouth before he knew what he was doing. People turned to see where the voice had come from.

“I’m not going out there,” Elsie said. “If he’s the Star Stalker, he’ll kill us.”

Even if Atlas were dangerous, they’d be safe in front of an audience. It was the perfect place to question him.

He tightened his grip on Elsie’s sleeve and dragged her out from under the bleachers with him.

“Who said that?” Atlas asked.

“I did,” Gray said.

Gray approached the rope blocking the entrance to the ring. It was thick and fibrous, the kind that might be used on a boat.

“This is madness,” Elsie said. “Let’s leave while we can.”

Gray stepped over, but had to unlatch it to drag Elsie into the ring.

Finally, he was on the inside of a rope.

“And what is your name?” Atlas asked as he met Gray and Elsie halfway from the center.

“Marlowe,” Gray said.

“Like the private eye?” Atlas asked.

Gray nodded and tipped his fedora.

“Then this must be your femme fatale,” Atlas said, smiling to Elsie. There was meat stuck between his big yellow teeth, a piece larger than most of Gray’s dinners.

“I don’t know him,” Elsie said.

“Do you two like the circus?” Atlas asked.

“Not especially,” Gray said.

Atlas leaned in close.

“Neither do I. Come along.”

Gray pulled Elsie with him to the center of the ring, where some assistants had brought out a thick steel barbell that had a large basket secured on each end.

Atlas addressed the audience.

“I will now lift these two young persons over my head with just one arm, using this special barbell.”

He turned to Gray and Elsie.

“Get in the baskets.”

Gray crouched down into one of the baskets. Elsie reluctantly followed suit. Atlas walked up to the bar that connected them and cracked the knuckles on his massive fists. Gray recalled how Pickford said his father had died:
He was punched.

If it were true, maybe Gray could catch Atlas off guard.

“You killed my father,” Gray said in a low voice.

“What’s that?”

Atlas took a deep breath and yanked up on the bar. He dropped under it and caught it at chest level. Elsie let out a little yelp and Gray grabbed onto the sides of the basket for support.

The audience watched in silent wonder.

“I said you killed my father.”

In the center of the ring, no one else could hear them. Atlas took a deep breath as he adjusted his hand position.

“You’ll have to be more specific. I’ve killed a lot of people.”

With a sudden dip and then a jerk upward, Atlas thrust the barbell straight up over his head, locking out his arm. The crowd roared with applause.

Gray looked down and could see Atlas’s head just below him.

“His name was Harry. You punched him.”

The bar swayed suddenly and Gray’s hat fell off onto the dirt floor. Atlas regained control and with a careful descent he brought the bar to his chest and then lowered it back to the ground. People in the audience clapped and cheered, but Atlas only gave them a cursory bow.

Gray stood up in the basket. Atlas sized him up, taking in the gash on Gray’s brow. It had reopened under the friction of his fedora.

“Who are you?” the strongman asked.

Atlas looked at it with fascination, and Gray knew he was seeing the unnatural blackness of the blood, the way it seemed to both swallow light and reflect it at the same time.

“
What
are you?”

Gray reached to cover the cut but Atlas reached for his hand to pull it away. The moment they touched, Gray jolted. It felt as if electricity were running between the two of them.

“What’s this?”

Gray felt weak. He tried to pull away but was powerless against the giant man’s grip.

“Mr. Atlas?”

The voice rang out from the edge of the ring. Atlas looked up.

Mary Pickford, veiled in black, was standing inside the ring.

“You must be Mrs. Pickford,” Atlas said. “I was just sending a car for you.”

“I know,” she said, walking up to him. “I’m saving you the trouble.”

There was the sound of a shot fired, and Atlas looked down in surprise at his torso. There, buried in his chest, was a bullet. People in the audience screamed, and those in the front row were the first to stand up, unsure of what to do.

Atlas looked at Pickford, who was holding a gun camouflaged within the black folds of her dress.

“I’m the femme fatale you’re looking for.”

Pickford shot again, and this time it hit him on the right side of his abdomen. But instead of going through him, the bullet bounced off his skin and fell to the ground at Atlas’s feet. Gray had seen it hit the crystalline energy that was encrusted over the strongman’s skin.

Atlas reached down and picked at the first bullet still lodged in his chest. It pulled out easily and, underneath it, the skin was unbroken. The bullets weren’t any more harmful to him than soft peas.

Pickford held her gun up as if to figure out what was wrong with it. Women screamed and grabbed their children. Men shouted and grabbed their wives. Everyone in the audience scrambled for the door, trampling each other and pushing their way out.

Pickford turned her head slightly to look at Gray. Atlas followed her gaze.

“This young man,” Atlas said. “Which one is he?”

He grabbed Gray roughly by the collar of his jacket.

“You’re coming with me. Both of you.”

“We’re not,” Pickford said.

She reached for her veil and tugged it off her head. It dropped to the ground and, for the first time anyone had seen in public for more than a decade, Mary Pickford’s face and head were completely exposed.

She was beautiful.

That, of course, barely began to describe her. Pickford wasn’t beautiful so much as the very essence of beauty itself. She had porcelain skin and soft cheek bones that suggested sophistication, large brown eyes that communicated warmth and kindness, plump red lips, and a bob with the classic golden curls that had made her America’s Sweetheart so many years ago. Hers was a girlish beauty, coquettish and innocent at the same time. Gray couldn’t believe what he was seeing: She was the same Mary Pickford he had seen in old movies; she had certainly grown older, and yet somehow the years had only improved her looks. It defied logic.

Pickford smiled kindly at Atlas, and Gray saw beams of golden energy shoot from her face like a spotlight. Atlas basked in the glow of it.

“This is all a misunderstanding,” she said. “Would you be so kind as to let go of the boy?”

“But of course,” Atlas said. Gray felt Atlas give him a soft nudge toward Pickford.

Pickford took the gun, cocked it and shot at Atlas again. From the corner of his eye Gray saw the bullet simply glance off the strongman as if it were nothing more annoying than a gnat.

“You’re the one I’ve been looking for,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, aiming at his face. She shot again, and it landed squarely on his forehead. He took a half step back to absorb the shock, then picked the flattened bullet off himself.

“You’re beautiful,” Atlas said. “You make those other women look like dogs.”

“That’s not very kind to say.”

Pickford turned and caught a glimpse of Gray staring slack-jawed at her.

“Gray, look away.”

Gray felt someone tugging at his arm. Elsie.

“Let’s go.”

Gray pulled his eyes away and his mind suddenly became clear. What was that? Her beauty seemed to fill up his mind and push out the capacity to think about anything else. This wasn’t normal beauty. He had felt hypnotized. The only word that seemed appropriate was
spellbound
.

“We’ll be going now,” Pickford said to Atlas.

“I hope we see each other again some day.”

“We will,” Pickford said, “And next time I’ll kill you.”

She took Gray’s hand and began to walk backward, facing Atlas as they left.

“You promised you’d take that train,” she said to Gray.

“If you had ever raised a kid you’d know we’re all liars,” Gray said.