The Troupe (8 page)

“Enough,” said Silenus. They all fell silent. He sucked on his cigar for a moment, then said, “What’s your name, kid?”

George badly wanted to say something about who he was and why he was there, but he could not muster the will to say anything beyond “George.”

“George, huh?” said Silenus. “Well, George, I’m going to grab your neck real tight right now. Are you ready for that?”

“What d—”

Silenus’s hand shot out and took George underneath the chin, his thumb painfully pressing up against the corner of his jawbone. George choked and tried to pull back, but the strongwoman held him still. Silenus’s blue eyes thinned into narrow slits, and he tilted his head up and down as he tried to get a better look at George.

“Hold still,” he said. “Just hold still, why don’t you?”

George tried, but Silenus’s hold was so strong and painful he couldn’t help but attempt to pull away. As the man examined him George got the queer feeling of being looked
through
, like Silenus
could see all of his lies and memories in the recesses of his mind, or perhaps feel the shape of them through the skin on his neck.

“Now, George, tell me the truth,” said Silenus. His voice was very low and soft. “Did those men in gray send you to gut any of my company? Or me?”

George coughed and shook his head.

“You here to sabotage us? To spy on us?”

He shook his head again.

“You’re not coming at us in any way at all?”

Again, he shook his head.

“Why are you awake, George? Why aren’t you sleepwalking like the others?”

“D-don’t… don’t know…”

Silenus examined him for a moment longer. He grunted to himself and removed his hand. George gasped and rubbed at his neck while Silenus watched, his face unreadable. “Ain’t this interesting,” he said. “Just when I wanted it least.” He nodded to the strongwoman. “Let him go.”

She released him. She stroked his back as she did so. “Sorry,” she whispered in his ear.

“Well, now,” said Silenus. “Unfortunately it seems this kid is telling the truth, or he thinks he is. Which ain’t comforting.” He sighed and stuck his head out the loading door to survey the crowd. “We don’t have much longer on these yucks. Here, I tell you what—Stanley, you take Colette and Franny and our props to the train station. Professor Tyburn and I will go to the hotel with this kid and see if he’s a nut or if he just happens to be right. We’ll find you at the train station, either way.”

The cellist, presumably Stanley, frowned at that, and reached into his bags. He produced a largish blackboard with a piece of chalk hanging from it by a string, and took the chalk and quickly wrote in a smooth, clean hand:
SAFE
?

“I can handle myself,” said Silenus. “Kingsley, you got your cannon?”

“I do,” said the professor. He patted his side.

“Well, keep it handy,” said Silenus. “Keep it trained on this kid, especially if he starts getting jumpy. I don’t know what we’ll see there—I can’t imagine how they could’ve caught up to us at the hotel—but something fishy’s going on and I don’t like the taste of it.” He looked at George and said, “You don’t mind coming with us on a trip, do you George?”

George angrily looked back. He’d never expected their first meeting to go like this, but still he shook his head.

Silenus smiled. There was no humor in it. “Good,” he said. “But before we do, run and fetch me my hat, will you? It landed somewhere in the back.”

George was irritated to be ordered about in such a fashion, but he walked to the farthest corners of the backstage to search. Once he was away the troupe began talking quietly.

He found the top hat behind the curtain rigging, and when he picked it up he noticed it was peculiarly heavy. He looked inside and saw that the lining was stuffed with many strange things: a thin, sheathed knife, several small lenses, and half a pack of playing cards with notes scribbled on them.

He looked up at Silenus and wondered exactly what this man was. Silenus was not paying attention to him, but George saw that someone else was watching: Colette, the girl in white and diamonds. Something in his chest flared hot, and he managed a wave and a feeble smile. She did not return them, but frowned mistrustfully and turned back to Silenus.

George returned with the hat. “Ah,” said Silenus, and he snatched it from him, flipped it smoothly, and fixed it atop his head. “Very good. Then let’s get going.”

Silenus, George, and Professor Tyburn left the others outside the theater and climbed aboard a streetcar. Silenus’s hand never left
George’s back, even when they took their seats. If they didn’t know better, someone would have thought the two of them dear friends who hadn’t seen one another in a long while. The professor sat opposite them, crooked in his seat as though his side pained him, but his hand never left his pocket. George guessed there was a pistol hidden there. He began to wish he had never come.

As they traveled Silenus asked him a variety of bizarre questions. Had George recently been forced to eat or drink something he would not normally consume? Had he found any scars on himself that he could not explain, especially under the left armpit? Had he ever been to southern Ireland in midwinter? Had he recently experienced any dizzy spells or feelings of weightlessness, and in these moments of weightlessness had he actually levitated several inches off the ground? Did he ever get the sensation that there was a small person forcing their way into the space behind his eyes? And did he have a curious predilection for shrimp that he had not displayed before?

When George had answered all the questions (the answer to each being no, except the first question, because he had politely eaten an odd, doughy bread of Irina’s), he asked how these things could possibly be relevant. “I know you think you’re telling the truth, kid, there’s no doubt about that,” said Silenus. “But there are methods of duping someone into saying what you want them to say, usually very nasty ones. That’s what I worry about. So what we’re going to do is go to the hotel and have a look-see, and if you’re right, well, then, you’re right. Why this boy felt the need to warn me about these gents in gray, well, that’s another question. But I won’t ask it now. Because it’s always possible that you are, unknowingly, a part of the machinations of my enemies.

“And I do have enemies, George,” he said calmly. “I got more enemies than there are stars in the fucking sky. A man can’t make a ripple in the ocean without another trying to give him the knife for it. And if you’re working for these enemies of mine, then we’re going to have to figure out what to do with you. See?”

“I see,” said George.

“Good,” said Silenus. “Smart kid.”

“Can I ask you something, Mr. Silenus?” said George, now angry.

“You can call me Harry, kid. And my associate here is Kingsley. You put someone through what we’re putting you through, might as well be cordial about it,” he said.

“All right… Harry,” said George. “Is this sort of behavior common in your troupe?”

Silenus smiled. “In our troupe, kid, it’s as common as rain. Wish that it fucking weren’t.”

They came to the stop closest to the hotel, hopped off, and began walking toward it, Silenus strolling out in front with his arm around George and Kingsley walking behind them, hand in his pocket. George miserably thought of all the fantasies he’d had of taking a friendly walk with his father, and reflected that he’d never imagined this would be how their first would go.

Yet the street ahead seemed curiously abandoned: not only was there no one on the sidewalks, but the houses and shops were dark and shuttered, like those within wanted passersby to think no one lived there at all. It’d been a busy scene when George had visited earlier that evening. Had he not seen a lady in a raincoat just over there, next to the hotel, pulling her coat tight about her chest as she shivered? And a group of children playing with a tin hoop in that alley? But now there was no one.

George stopped. Silenus looked at him and nodded back at Kingsley, who stood ready.

“What are you stopping for, kid?” said Silenus. “Come on.”

“You don’t feel it?” said George. “Or hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“That silence,” said George. “Before I heard it around the hotel, so that’s how I knew the men in gray were there, but now…”

“Now what?” asked Silenus.

George looked around them. The building faces on either side of
the street seemed gray and faint, and the streetlamps were sputtering as if fighting to stay lit. “Now it’s like they’re all around us…”

Silenus stared at him for a moment, and whipped off his hat and fumbled with the inside. “I hope you’re fucking wrong,” he muttered, and pulled out a large, scratched monocle. To George it appeared too scratched to see through, but Silenus held it up to one eye and looked through it at the hotel. Though George caught no movement in the windows, Silenus slowly took in a breath as if he did not like what he saw. Then he turned a full 360 degrees, taking in the streets around them through the monocle. “Well,” he said finally. “Things prove otherwise. You were right, my boy. Very, very, very right. As impossible as it seems, they were waiting for us. I sort of wish I had listened to you, kid, but I can’t be right every time.”

“So they are there,” said Kingsley. “Then it’s a good thing we didn’t go into the hotel.”

“They aren’t in the hotel anymore,” said Silenus, the monocle still stuck to his eye. “They were watching this whole neighborhood. Kingsley?”

“Yes?”

“Take that cannon out, and keep a sharp eye open.”

“Won’t people see it?”

“There won’t be anyone out,” said Silenus. He peered up at the sky and the surrounding buildings through the monocle. “When the wolves gather in such great numbers, things change… Light dies, the sky feels thin and stretched, and everything grows cold. No… no one will be outside with so many of them here. We’ll be alone. Which is what they want.”

“But we haven’t been spotted yet, have we?” asked Kingsley as he took out his gun.

“Oh, we definitely have. I’d say they had our scent the second we stepped on the street.” Silenus lowered the monocle and softly said to himself, “How did they resist it? Are they getting stronger, or are we weaker?” Then he put the monocle in his pocket and replaced his
hat, and turned around and started calmly walking back. “Here. Come on, both of you. Walk with me. And don’t run. Not yet, at least.”

Kingsley and George both took up places beside Silenus, casually placing one foot in front of the other. George glanced back and saw the end of the street darkening as streetlamps near the hotel began flickering out, one by one. It was as though someone were pacing from lamp to lamp, turning them off, but he could see no one there.

“Yes, they’re following us,” said Silenus. “Don’t look. You won’t see them. They don’t want to be seen, not now. But don’t look. Since we’ve just heard the song we have some amount of protection, but if you look at them, that won’t matter.”

“Do you have any ideas about how to get us out of this?” hissed Kingsley.

“Not yet,” said Silenus. “But I’m thinking very hard.”

They turned down a main street lined with shops. The people before them deserted the sidewalks, ducking into restaurants or buildings as though suddenly remembering other business. They did not seem to know what they were running from; it was an instinct, like smelling smoke and knowing to flee.

George looked to the side and saw the smaller streets and passageways were flooding with darkness, the far corners growing dark and fading entirely until everything was pitch-black. Soon it felt like the entire world had fallen away until there was nothing left but this small, colorless island of street intersections and building faces afloat in a dark sea. He realized he was shaking.

“Don’t worry yourself too much, kid,” said Silenus quietly. “They want me, not you.”

“What are they?” said George.

“They are shadows,” said Silenus. “True shadows. Not merely the absence of light, but of all things. Gaps in Creation itself, given minds and gnawing hunger, and how they hate the light…”

“What the hell have you gotten me into?” breathed George.

“If you’d keep your mouth shut, and let me fucking
think
, then I can get you out of it all the sooner,” said Silenus.

They continued walking down the street, trying their very hardest not to look at the gathering shadow behind and beside them. Then as they passed one side street a lamp came on, illuminating someone standing below. The light was painfully bright in this muted, shadowed world.

“Don’t look!” said Silenus quickly. “Don’t look at it!”

George caught himself just in time. He kept his eyes fixed on the street, but in the corner of his vision he could see a figure standing below the lamp, its hands primly fixed behind its back. It appeared to be a man in a gray suit and a black bowler, but now George sensed that this was just a picture in a very real way, a thin and flimsy skin with something hiding just behind it.

“Hey!” cried the figure merrily. “Hey you, kid! Hey, come here to us! Let us get a look at you!”

“Don’t listen to it,” said Silenus. “And don’t look. It will want you to look.”

“We remember you,” called the figure. “Do you remember us? We met outside of the theater. You were the fan, weren’t you? We said we’d pay you, but we never heard back from you, such a pity. Imagine meeting you here. Imagine that.”

“Oh, God,” said George.

“Just keep moving,” said Silenus. “Don’t look.”

“We’d still pay, you know,” said the man. “We saved up, just for you. Leave that liar and that dying man behind, and come here to us. We won’t hurt you. We can’t say the same for them, but you can be safe.”

“Bastards,” whispered Kingsley.

“Look at us, child,” called the man. “Would we hurt you? Would we hurt a nice young man like yourself?”

George shut his eyes and kept walking forward, guided by the faint footsteps of Kingsley and Silenus.

The man laughed. “But hey, you know what, we thought you
looked familiar. And now that you’re standing next to that awful liar, we see why! The resemblance is very faint, but we can see it! Family, how funny! But now, you know, maybe we can’t let you leave. Not if you are what it looks like you are.”