Circus of Death - Candace Wondrak Page 0,34

the tent, even if all the spotlights were off. This… this wasn’t right. This was too creepy, too spooky. I instantly didn’t like it.

Nigel’s head was tilted down, his hands held before his stomach, folded like a gentleman, as if he was dormant, standing there in wait. I could only see him, not the risers around me, not the stage behind him or the tent above us. Nothing but him.

Was there anything else?

I opened my mouth to speak to him, but either my jaw didn’t move or my voice didn’t come out. Either way, I said nothing, my feet drawing me closer to the stage in the darkness, closer to the immobile man standing on the wooden platform.

I blinked, and suddenly I was no longer on my feet. Suddenly I was in a box, situated before Nigel. My legs stuck out of the box, as did my head. Everything else was hidden. It didn’t take me too long to realize what this was: a magic trick, only I was pretty sure there were usually two people involved.

Turning my head, I was finally able to see Nigel’s eyes in the shadows, and for a second, they were a pure black color, no pupils, no whites; all black and totally inhuman. Fear settled within me, and I could not turn my head away.

Nigel blinked, his eyes returning to their normal blackness, their usual dark brown color that could be considered black. No wide, demon-y eyes anymore. His head was slow to tilt, a single spotlight shining down on me as he leaned against the box, glaring at me as if he hated me more than anyone else in the world.

I tried to say his name again, but something felt strange on my lips. I couldn’t touch them, since my hands were trapped in the box, but it felt… it felt almost like my lips had been sealed together. Like I still had them on my face, but they had become useless, almost like plastic.

He said nothing, but he did lift a hand, allowing me to see something had appeared in that hand, something he definitely didn’t hold onto before, when I’d first walked into the tent. Then again, the box I was currently in hadn’t been there, either. This whole day was turning out to be a disaster of epic proportions.

If Nigel wasn’t going to let me explain, what was the use? I might as well just shut up and take it; it wasn’t like I could peel open my lips and speak at all.

Ugh. Fuck him. Not literally, this time.

That thing in his hand that had suddenly shown up—it was a saw. You know, one of those long saws that magicians use to cut people in half. And by cut, I meant it was usually a flimsy thing that they put in the box to separate the two halves so when they showed the audience, they were able to see nothing.

Call me psychic, but the saw Nigel held onto was not flimsy or plastic in any way. It was a real saw, its metal shiny and shimmering, a saw that would easily cut me in half, since I was literally laid flat inside the box.

I tried to speak, but all that came out were muffled sounds, my lips refusing to move. Unless I was mistaken—which, maybe I was, since I was trapped in my body and unable to look upon this scene as an outsider—I was pretty sure my lips were caught in a smile, too.

Yeah. Great. Not creepy at all.

Nigel moved to the middle of the box I was in, setting the jagged edges of the saw on the wood. He paid me no attention as he started to cut, dragging that metal blade back and forth, its serrated edge sawing through the wood, the sound of the wood giving way filling my ears.

My struggling was useless; I could not get out of this box, couldn’t move, even though I tried desperately to. I couldn’t see much, having to rely on my ears and the sounds of the saw in the wood to know how far down he’d gotten. Soon enough, the sounds of the cutting changed, and I knew Nigel had broken through the top of the box, now sawing through the sides.

I probably had only a few seconds before that metal saw reached me and started to cut me in half, and I couldn’t lie here: I was scared. I didn’t want to be cut in half, didn’t