Ned’s Circus of Marvels. Justin Fisher
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or cross. But it was who she’d been inside that made Terry’s eyes fill with tears. According to Ned’s dad, she had been kind and fierce at the same time. She would go out of her way to help a stranger, was passionate about the world around her, and had never told a lie, ever.
Ned stared at the photo frame on his bedside table. It was worn with both love and age, even though it was completely empty. Ned always made a wish on the night of his birthday and though he knew it would never come true, he always wished for the same thing: a photo of his mother.
And so, as he did every year, Ned made his birthday wish and waited for something to happen. But this year, unlike every other, as Ned closed his eyes and for a moment dozed off to sleep, something actually did.
***
Elsewhere, a tracker in a long, wax trench coat looked out across a forest. He had been there before. The beasts he hunted often used the old part of the wood, the part where shadows still moved with a will of their own, the part where one could hide, even from the hidden.
But this beast had grown too greedy, ventured too far, and now it had come under the watchful eyes of the Twelve and Madame Oublier. They would not allow it to continue. The two men stood beside him, with their matching pinstripe suits and carefully combed hair, had been watching this place for some time. When they were quite sure, they had called for the tracker, him and his animals. The hawk was his eyes, the lions his teeth, and the rest the tracker did himself. One of the pinstripes checked his pocketwatch, while the other made notes in a leather-bound book.
They needed to catch the haired one tonight before it could do more harm. In the branches above, the tracker’s bird called out to him.
“Lerft, roight … go!” the tracker breathed in a heavy Irish whisper.
His lions padded forward and in a moment were in the darkness and out of sight. The pinstripes nodded and he left them at their posts. His breathing steadied. Out here there was no time to be scared; fear could kill you as quick as claws.
Crack.
A broken branch, somewhere in the distance.
Crack. Crack.
Another and another.
The tracker paced forward, low to the ground. In a clearing in front of him a man sat by his tent and cried.
“Niet, niet,” moaned the tourist.
The beast circled him, growling, claws at the ready, saliva dripping from its hideous fangs.
The beasts were never found this far across the border. There were treaties with their kind written in blood, an oath as ancient as the forest it now walked. But something had changed, something had made them bolder, and this one was crazed with a hunger only the tourist and his warm, oozing blood would satisfy.
The boy pulled the silver from his pocket. A delicate chain could be as strong as a cage if handled the right way. He whistled to his lions. The beast was big and he was going to need them.
Ned had been having the exact same dream for weeks now. It started with grey. No sound, no texture, just a wall of pure grey. But the grey had a way of turning in on itself, of tumbling and changing, till a shape would emerge, boldly lumbering towards him to the rising brum brum brum of a deep bass drum. The shape scared Ned. It was large and indistinct and heavy-breathing. But today the dream was different. Today he could see the shape as it truly was.
The shape was an elephant with pretty white wings. The animal was ancient and also had terrible breath. He knew this because, as the drumming got louder, it started to lick his face.
Ned found that there were moments, between being asleep and awake, when sounds and senses were stretched, altered. The ringing of an alarm clock might become a siren in a dream. Often it was hard to tell what was dream and what reality, and so it was as the licking from the elephant changed to the prodding of Whiskers’ snout on his cheek, as if the little rodent were trying to wake him up.
Ned opened his eyes. He must have been asleep for hours because it was now dark outside. So it had all been a dream. And yet, the drumming had not stopped, or at least, had become something else, some other strange sound. A sound that Ned instantly knew was bad before he had any idea what it might be, because the hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and the nails on his fingers felt tight.
It seemed to be coming from downstairs. Short laboured scrapes, one after another, then a pause.
“Dad?”
The scraping continued. Whiskers scampered off the bed and sniffed at Ned’s door. Dad had always joked that he made the perfect guard dog. Too small to need a walk, but with the hearing of a bat.
“Dad …” Ned shouted, “if this is a birthday surprise, it’s not very funny.”
There was no reply. Ned opened his bedroom door and cautiously crept down the stairs, closely followed by his mouse. The scraping was coming from the sitting room’s patio doors. Something outside was trying to claw its way in.
Ned’s first reaction was to run, and Whiskers, who was already squeaking noisily by the front door, was clearly of the same mind, but Ned’s curiosity had taken a hold. He turned, inching his way towards the sitting room, and was about to flick on the light switch when he saw something that made his blood turn cold. Standing in the glass doorway, lit up in the cold glow of the garden’s security lights, was the scariest sight he’d ever seen.
It was a clown, though nothing like the ones he’d seen in books or on the telly. He had the same shrunken hat, oversized boots and orange curly hair one would expect, but he was caked in dirt. His make-up had cracked, like white clay left too long in the sun, and the few teeth he still had were gnarled black stumps.
The horrible scraping sound began again as the clown dragged a claw-like nail across the glass. Then Ned realised – scratched into the glass of the patio doors were four letters.
Y C U L
Ned ducked down out of sight behind the sofa, heart pounding, speechless with fear.
Suddenly from behind him Ned heard the sound of the front door being thrown open and a rather different Terry Waddlesworth than Ned was used to burst into the house.
“Dad!” Ned managed to croak over his shoulder.
“Ned? Ned!”
“Dad, there’s something …” But he was suddenly unable to speak, only point with a shaking finger.
“Thank goodness you’re all r …” His father’s voice trailed off as his eyes followed Ned’s hand. The only sound now was the continued scraping from the clown’s fingernails, who seemed not to have heard them through the thick, double-glazed patio doors.
When Ned’s dad at last spoke again, he did so in a slow, deliberate whisper. “Ned, it’s time to go,” he hissed, beckoning him back towards him on all fours then grabbing him by the arm and leading him into the hallway.
Ned was in a daze.
“It’s OK, Dad, no need to panic. I’ve figured it out, I’m still dreaming. I’ll probably wake up in a minute and you’ll tell me we’re staying in Grittlesby for good, because I like it here, and I’ve got actual friends and they’ve bought me presents and we’re going to start behaving like a normal family and everything’s going to be great and …”
Ned’s dad ignored his babbling and picked