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They didn’t normally allow such low-brow performances in the theatre as circus acts, but when the strange clown has shown up and proposed his show, the committee had been taken by his illusive behaviour and engaging weirdness.
Gogol’s first night had been in the smaller auditorium. Only a couple hundred people filled the seats to watch him carve himself open and fill the space with mayhem. He didn’t even use the speakers built into the auditorium, instead using several tiny wheeled gramophones set on tracks up the stairs alongside the seats. But still, these eccentric quirks only added to the mystery of his performance, from when he sprayed his own blood so high into the air it splashed onto the audience’s faces to the moment the gramophones revealed their purpose, spitting out the most unsettling tune and occasionally weak spurts of confetti.
Three shows later, and they’d had to move him into the main auditorium. All three thousand seats were taken and booked up for the next week until he moved onto the next city to disturb another population of unsuspecting victims.
They hadn’t meant to attend every single show, but aside from the fact his act changed dramatically each night, there was a member of the audience who had drawn their attention. A woman, hair half purple, half white, always took a seat in the very front row. Despite the amount of blood and water and various other messes that Gogol inflicted upon the audience, she always wore the most ornate ballgowns, with golden embroidery against the lilac of their fabric. The patterns were different each night; they had snuck close enough to her in the intervals to be sure. And, every night, they matched the theme of the performance.
She had to be Gogol’s wife. She never flinched at any of the surprises. Whether she was married to him or not, she was in on the secrets behind his impossible performances. Behind each illusion that seemed to shatter the laws of physics completely.
Once, after a night of blood, guts and screaming volunteers from the audience, they had waited at the stage door for Gogol to emerge. Just as they suspected, the woman came with him, arm linked with his. They murmured too softly for them to make out any words, but they did make out the brief kiss they shared before slipping into the shining white carriage that rode away each night, wheels drawn seemingly by nothing but the whimsy of Gogol’s shows.
It was the final night. Their last chance to try to unwrap the mystery of these ridiculous shows that contrasted so boldly with the grand setting of the theatre’s ornate art nouveau furnishings.
As usual, the house lights blinked out without so much as a warning.
A spotlight appeared into the stage, and a top-hatted silhouette stepped into it, black-and-white striped trousers the only thing even slightly distinguishable in the harsh glow of the spotlight.
This night, the light spread in a gradual, dawning movement across the stage, like a slow tsunami viewed from above until it stopped, the clean line between light and shadow halting in the woman’s lap, illuminating her skirts without any hint of her face.
“Welcome to the Circus!” Gogol crowed, voice bouncing eerily from all corners of the auditorium. “Tonight is our final night. You are all in for a treat!”
At those words, a small bang! Came from above. From the ceiling rained tiny wrapped sweets, all black and white spirals in clear paper packages. They caught one in their lap. Unwrapped it. Sniffed it. Its scent was sweet secretive in its ambiguity. They popped it in their mouth and sucked on the boiled sweet. Mint, and then strawberry. Then violets.
Then the hard shell melted away on their tongue. The soft sweet cream in its core was almost unbearably sweet, but its intensity faded in seconds.
They looked back to the stage and found it empty except for a small glass box. Its rims were as clear as the rest of it. They had barely looked away from the stage for a second, but somehow Gogol had silently vanished in that time.
The lid of the box – it had a hinged top now, though there had been no sign of it a moment ago – swung open with a deafening creak. It revealed no contents through its transparent sides, yet a gloved hand waved from its open top. The hand vanished for a moment, disappearing behind the glass, then reappeared, a colourful handkerchief in tow. It was the usual one, far below Gogol’s usual standard.
But as the disembodied hand began to pull out the endless string of hankies, tied amongst them were parts of a body.
An arm that had recently been attached to the moving hand twitched. A green hanky, now stained red-brown by darkening blood where it was tied to a rib poking out from Gogol’s suit blazer. An entire leg, with the blood painted in heavy-handed splashes up the striped trouser leg.
It took several minutes for the hand to extract the entire thing.
During those long minutes, someone in the audience gagged. Soon after followed the rancid stench of vomit. They might have emptied their stomach, too, had they not become a little more accustomed to such displays of gore over the past few nights.
By the time they made it to the interval, Gogol had fully reassembled himself and had launched an unsuspecting audience-member into the upper walkways of the technicians in the ceiling space with a feat of ludicrous power.
They might have been used to the violence by now, but still they could not bring themself to the usual drinks they selected in breaks between inspecting the latest spectacles the theatre brought in. Instead, with an empty stomach, they went in search of that elusive woman.
She sipped from a champagne flute with practiced delicacy, alone and at ease, her back to them as they made a charade of heading for the bathroom facilities.
On their way out, mere minutes before the second half of Gogol’s horrifying farce would begin, she turned and caught their eye. Before they had the chance to slip away into the crowd waiting to re-enter the auditorium, she cornered them.
“You’ve been here every night.”
It wasn’t a question.
They nodded. “As have you. You are Gogol’s wife, are you not?” No point in trying to hide their curiosity now.
“Indeed. And his husband. Has Nikolai’s enigma captured your interest, Mx. Theatre Manager?”
They nodded. “It is hardly the sort of entertainment we pride ourselves on hosting here, but I was outvoted by my associates. I can’t say I regret their decision. He has something rather fascinating in his character. I suppose you’d know better than I would, though.”
She chuckled. “He does make rather a mystery at times, I’ll admit.”
“I’m sure he’s great fun to follow round the country. It would be a nice life, trailing in the shadow of such a great performer,” they mused.
Perhaps it was a little imprudent to suggest such a thing so blatantly, but by approaching them, had she not done the very same thing herself? They scolded themself now; there was nothing suspect in approaching an obvious fan of one’s spouse. Nothing that they should have read more into than there truly was.
“Oh, you’d be surprised. He does have a habit of acting a little like a lost puppy on occasion. Perhaps you’d like to join us sometime outside of the performance arena. I’m sure with your penchant for acting, you’d get along quite well.”
They didn’t know how to respond to that. Nor did they get the chance to figure out a response. She pulled a small card out of her purse and handed it to them before vanishing into the auditorium once more.
Having returned to their seat just in time for the house lights to flicker out, they tucked the card into their breast pocket.
The stage lit up a fiery orange, the white of Gogol’s now-pristine suit flaming red in the light, matching the burning glow of his equally pale hair. Music from the various gramophones gathered in a swirling spiral around the auditorium until it reached a vibrant crescendo, making the very air itself vibrate with the sound of a hundred-piece orchestra.
Then silence.
And darkness.
The only illumination was a faint blue glow on the stage, catching the white of Gogol and seemingly a dozen other Gogols, writhing and slipping across the stage. It was as if they had descended a hundred feet below the surface of the ocean, watching a school of fish dancing in what little sunlight penetrated so deep down.
Even the air seemed to slow and congeal, floating around them like water, heavy, yet still possible to breathe in.
In the darkness, it took a few moments to notice the card floating in front of them. They grabbed it, and went to put it back in their pocket before they noticed.
It wasn’t just the card floating.
They had drifted off their seat, too. In fact, everyone in the auditorium seemed to have been relieved of the confines of gravity.
Tentatively, they reached their arms out in front of them, vaguely trying to assemble some memory of swimming. Their body followed them as they swum out from their seat, aiming for nowhere but somehow still transfixed by that view of a hundred clowns intermingling in the blue shadow of the stage.
This was beyond illusion. It was beyond, even, the impossibility of what Gogol had brought to his previous shows. This was magic.
But, as soon as every other act, it ended.
They didn’t simply fall back to the ground below them. The gravity that clawed and dragged at their body had somehow learnt their seat number and pulled them back to it, slow and gentle enough that they only realised they were seated again when the comfort of solid cushioned seat greeted them from behind.
After that, the rest of the evening’s performance was muddled, as if the abrupt change in gravity had messed with their brain. They remembered lights and blood, sparks and shadow. Screams and laughter. Tradition and horror.
They came to outside the front door of the theatre, their mind muddled and thoroughly overwhelmed. As they stared at the almost empty road in front of them, a white, horseless carriage rolled past.
The card they pulled from their pocket had no number, nor address. Merely a title. The Sky Casino. Its instructions were simply, look up.
They did.