Read Online Hang Wire by Adam Christopher - Free Book Online Page A

stuff.”
    “Hmm?”
    Ted smiled as the crossing light went green. “Nothing,” he said.

— INTERLUDE —
    PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
1903
    “For the last time, Mr Duvall, we’re leaving. It’s over, finished. The circus is breaking up. Each of us is going his separate way, never to see nor speak to the others again. We have to do this. It’s over, Mr Duvall. Over .”
    There was no arguing with Mr R S Barnett. He was the boss, the ringmaster, the manager, the accountant. He was everything. The Great Barnett Show was more than just his creation, his livelihood. It was his life.
    Mr R S Barnett was shutting the circus down. It was hasty, thought Joel. A bad decision, the wrong decision. The circus was a wonderful thing, full of lights and music, life, laughter.
    “Mr Barnett, please,” said Joel. He held his hands out, pleading, to Barnett’s retreating back. To his credit, Barnett stopped, sighed, and turned around.
    “For God’s sake, Joel,” he said. “There’s been a murder. We can’t go on. We can’t.”
    The Great Barnett Show. Full of life, and laughter.
    Full of death and screaming.
     
    The night was cold and the sky was clear. Joel lay on the grass in the middle of the dark carnival, stared at the stars, wondered what he was supposed to do now. In his waistcoat pocket, the Double Eagle his daddy had given him felt heavy and cold. His imagination, of course. But it was his lucky coin, and when he carried it his daddy walked with him.
    Maybe the lucky coin was trying to tell him something.
    A star fell, high above the circus, a cat scratch of white against the heavens that faded almost as quickly as it appeared. And then another, larger, brighter, flaring for a second. And then it too was gone.
    Falling stars. They were either good luck or bad, depending whose folklore you followed. Joel hadn’t grown up with much in the way of folklore, or religion. When his daddy marched to war and never came back, it didn’t seem much like there was a god smiling down on His creation.
    Or maybe there was, and maybe it was a cruel and capricious master and the world and the people in it were merely toys, a distraction.
    Joel wasn’t sure he believed that. He didn’t believe in much.
    Not since the voice had started whispering in his ear.
    Well, no, it wasn’t a voice, he thought as he stared at the starry sky. It was a feeling, like there was someone over your shoulder, leaning in to mutter secrets. A breath in the ear and a tickle of hair. But there was nobody there. Joel was alone – always had been, ever since his daddy had left – and there wasn’t a voice, not really. It was the memory of a voice, like he’d been told something long, long ago in a conversation that had never happened, and then it swam back into his mind, making him dizzy like a dose of the déjà vus.
    It had started in Oklahoma. The thing he found, buried in the ground. The thing that had come from far, far away – from the stars, perhaps. Although he wasn’t really sure how he knew that for a fact, not really.
    Maybe there was something in the stories about falling stars bringing luck. Good or bad, maybe both. Comets too. Comets were omens, portents, inscrutable somethings that arced across the sky, seeding cold evil from stars wherever they traveled.
    It had told Joel how to build the machines. There was no instruction, no command; Joel just knew what he had to do, and he had an urge to do it like he had an urge to eat or drink or breathe or sleep. It was part of him. It had told Joel to cut the stones from the cave until he had two shining jewels, the red gems which were now the eyes of the carved wooden monkey which sat as the centerpiece of the carnival’s star ride, the great carousel.
    Joel turned his head on the grass, and looked toward the carousel. It was dark and still, but in the center he thought he could see the eyes of the monkey glowing softly in the night. Then he blinked and the red light was gone, and he returned