Chapter 1
What happened to Brickleback? It’s one in a multitude of questions that surround his curious carnival of curiosities but it is the most warranted of them. For those who hear of the carnival and the tales of it, the story of Brickleback’s disappearance is never explained. The strange need that takes over folks, pushing them to find the answer, and often create rumor, to this question is caused by a larger and more pressing question. Who is Victor Petrius, the leader of Brickleback’s curious carnival of curiosities?
Looking like a man on stilts, Petrius stalked around Brickleback’s with an air of disdain for his customers. Standing well over seven feet, Petrius looms over the crowd at the entrance for twenty minutes every night. His red eyes, a stark contrast to his pale skin, watches the trickle of locals from the towns visited by the carnival.
The question becomes more insistent when hearing Petrius during his introduction in the big top. His voice booms with a pride that can only come from ownership. The voice of someone who’d struggled to get the circus off the ground and now enjoyed seeing his baby flourish. Put simply, Victor Petrius was not the owner of Brickleback’s curious carnival of curiosities, but he sure as hell acted like it.
The question itself was not one that Bel Savvier asked as she watched the lock to the gate being opened, allowing the locals to enter the carnival. The wind blew her long black hair into her round brown face, temporarily obscuring the man who held her future in his hands from view.
Wondering if this was the best way to get what she wanted, Bel hesitated, stopping in the middle of the crowd. Her action caused the people behind to part around her, all still entranced with what the views beyond the gates had to offer. It also caused Victor Petrius to slowly turn his head in her direction. Then moving his head so slow that it looked painful, he lowered his cold swirling red eyes down to her.
Bel could almost feel Petrius’ probing her body and mind with hands not visible to those around them. Dropping her head, Bel sinched her rucksack and began to walk forward, trying to blend in with the surging crowd. She focused on appearing mundane while walking with her eyes locked on the steady puff of dust being pushed up by the shoes of the… “entrants”. Hoping that she was focused enough to cloud her true intentions, Bel made a right at the first available turn, putting some distance between herself and the scrutiny of the carnival’s ringmaster. She walked until the feeling of being probed subsided, then took a moment to orient herself. She spun around once, surveying her surroundings before choosing a new direction to take.
Within minutes Bel was no longer strolling through the area setup for the customers. She stood in front of the personal trailer for one of the circus attractions, checking the crumpled-up paper she’d retrieved from her pocket. The owner of the first name on the list given to Bel, was the person behind the door of a trailer that looked a lot like a subway car. Bel took a second to observe the area surrounding the trailer, before climbing the black, wrought iron steps that hung just in front of the door.
She stopped at the top of the creaky, wobbly, staircase; again, questioning the orders given that would get her on the road. The sound of a strange tune could be heard coming from somewhere in the room. Bel tapped on the door, lightly at first, but after a minutes’ wait, she knocked a bit harder.
“Enter.” Came a voice that clicked after every syllable. Bel craned her neck slowly to the left then right, to verify that no one was watching her, before opening the creaky door to the broken-down trailer.
