Part 5 (1/2)

'-that she's your tootsie-wootsie - in the good old summertime-'

Kieran walked out on to the stage and circled around. 'Anybody here?' he called out. 'Hallo there! Anybody here?'

Kiera said, 'For G.o.d's sake, Kieran. Supposing there is somebody here? We're trespa.s.sing!'

'I know - but they're not going to be mad at us, are they? Circus folk, they're always real friendly.'

'Oh, yes? And how do you know? You've never been to a circus in your life.'

'I saw Toby Tyler.'

'Oh, sure. And I saw Something Wicked This Way Comes.'

Kieran called out again. 'Halloo! Anybody here?' But again there was no reply.

'Come on, let's go,' Kiera urged him. 'This place really creeps me out. And don't forget that we have a rehearsal first thing tomorrow. We have to get at least a couple hours' sleep.'

'OK, OK. But I want to take a quick look around outside.' They were about to leave the marquee when they heard a sudden clattering of feet behind the tiers of seats. They turned around - just in time to see a diminutive figure in a yellow coat running across the other side of the marquee, a figure no taller than a six-year-old boy. It disappeared almost immediately behind a fold in the canvas.

Kieran seized Kiera's hand and pulled her across the stage and up the aisle between the seats.

'No!' Kiera protested.

But Kieran said, 'Think about it! He must know where Mom is!'

'Kieran, Mom's dead! This is crazy!'

'Don't tell me that you don't feel her!'

They reached the far side of the marquee and Kieran ran along the canvas wall, pulling it and thumping at it with the flat of his hand, trying to find the fold into which the figure in the yellow coat had disappeared. Kiera stood watching him, exhausted and afraid, but she knew better than to try and persuade him to give it up and come back to her hotel room. Once Kieran had his mind set on doing something, he always pursued it to the bitter end.

'Here!' he called out, lifting up the canvas to reveal an opening.

'Kieran-'

'Come on! Hurry!'

He pushed his way into the opening and Kiera followed him. They had a brief moment of battling with the canvas, and then they were out in the open again, amongst the trailers and the caravans, with the wind and the rain in their faces.

'Can you see him?' Kieran shouted. 'I can't see him anywhere!'

They walked quickly between the lines of trailers, looking left and right - even ducking down now and again to see if the figure in the yellow coat was crouching underneath. They reached the last trailer, and they were about to turn back when a dazzling flash of lightning lit up the whole encampment, and in that bleached-out flash they saw the figure in the yellow coat running toward one of the caravans and scaling the ladder at the back of it. The figure knocked frantically at the stable door, and the lower half of the door was immediately opened up. Before the figure scuttled inside, however, it turned its head toward them for a split second so that Kieran and Kiera caught a glimpse of it.

'Jesus,' said Kieran, and Kiera felt a terrible thrill of shock.

Although he was dressed as a boy, in his yellow tweed coat, the figure looked more like a giant rodent. His face was covered in brindled hair, even his cheeks and his forehead, and he had a long pointed snout rather than a nose, and protruding brown teeth. His eyes glittered as black as b.u.t.tons.

He vanished into the stable door, and slammed it shut behind him, and as he did so there was a shattering burst of thunder, as if the whole sky above their heads were collapsing.

'What the h.e.l.l was that thing?' asked Kieran.

'I guess he must be one of the freaks. Rat Man, or something like that. My G.o.d. We should really get out of here, Kieran. I mean it.'

'But Mom's here, Kiera. I know she is. What if we go back to your bedroom and this place disappears and we can never find it again?'

'You said it was somebody's dream.'

'I know, and I'm pretty sure that it is. But sooner or later they're going to wake up and it's all going to vanish. And what are the chances that they will never have the same dream again - like, ever? What's going to happen to Mom then? How will we ever find her then?'

Kiera squeezed her eyes tight shut and covered her face with her hands. This was all madness. How could the two of them be in somebody else's dream? How could their dead mother be in somebody else's dream?

Kieran laid his hands on her shoulders and said, 'Let's give it one last try, OK? Let's go over to that caravan and knock on the door and ask them if they know where mom is. If they don't know what the h.e.l.l we're talking about, we'll go right back to your room and close the door and try to forget this ever happened. Is that a deal?'

Kiera lowered her hands and opened her eyes. Kieran looked so much like her that she almost felt as if she were appealing to herself.

'All right,' she said. 'But be really careful, won't you? That Rat Man might bite you.'

'Oh, come on. The way he skedaddled off like that, he's probably a whole lot scareder of us than we are of him.'

They crossed over to the caravan into which the figure in the yellow coat had just disappeared. It reminded Kiera of Professor Marvel's caravan in The Wizard of Oz, except that it was varnished black and it had a frieze of carved wooden faces all the way around the overhanging roof - some of them leering, some of them scowling, some of them screaming. The rain dripped from every face as if they were all weeping, either with rage or disappointment or fear.

Kieran climbed the three steps up to the stable door. He glanced back at Kiera and then he knocked.

He waited, but there was no answer, and so he knocked again, harder this time. 'Is there anybody in there? We only want to ask you something, that's all! We're not going to hurt you or nothing!'

He waited again. He was just about to try knocking a third time when the shuttered windows in the stable door were both opened up. A bald, white-faced man appeared, wearing tiny wire-rimmed spectacles with mirror lenses. He had a silver ring through his nose and silver hoop earrings in each ear. He was wearing what looked like a silver satin cloak.

'What do you want?' he demanded, in a tired, impatient tone. He had an accent that sounded Eastern European. Czech, maybe.

Kieran said, 'We don't want to disturb you, sir, but we think our mom may be here someplace. In fact, we're sure that she is.'

The bald man looked Kieran up and down, and then looked at Kiera.

'What if she is?' he asked them.

'What do you think? We'd like to see her, of course.'

'And you think that this would do either of you any good?'

'Well, sure. We thought that she died when we were born, but if she didn't - I mean, we have seventeen years to catch up on.'

'You thought that she died?'

'That's what we've always been told.'

The bald man pursed his lips for a moment, as if he were sucking a very sour candy, or thinking. Then he said, 'I suppose it depends on your definition of dying.'

'What do you mean? Either she's dead or she isn't.'

'You think so? You don't know too much about dying then.'