“Scott, can you tell me who this man works for?” he called out.
Silence from the stage. What was happening now?
Then Scott spoke. “Sure, Jamie. He works for the Nightrise Corporation.”
The man smiled. “That’s absolutely right,” he said loudly, so the whole theatre could hear. But his voice was almost taunting Jamie, as if he didn’t care one way or another if the trick had worked. “The boy got it in one.”
There was even more applause this time. There were only forty-five people left in the theatre but they were genuinely absorbed. It was the only real mystery they had seen all evening. Days later, they would still be wondering how it was done.
And none of them had guessed the simple truth, even though it was the only possible explanation and was staring them in the face. There were no microphones. There were no hidden signals. There were no codes or messages being sent from off-stage. The trick was that there was no trick. The two boys could genuinely read each other’s minds.
But the Nightrise Corporation knew. That was why they had sent these men here tonight. To see for themselves.
It was time for Scott and Jamie Tyler to disappear.
BACKSTAGE
The performance was over. Scott and Jamie had half an hour until the next one began, so the two of them went back to their dressing room. A narrow, L-shaped corridor, lit by harsh neon tubes, ran all the way round the back of the stage with an exit door at the end. As usual, they had to pick their way past the costumes, baskets and props which were already set out for the next performance. Swami Louvishni’s bed of nails was propped up next to Zorro’s chains and straitjacket. A papier-mâché cow came next and then a broken piano missing most of its keys – these last two were left over from some other show. On one side, a bare brick wall rose ten metres up to the ceiling – this was in fact the back of the stage. On the other, a series of doors opened into small, square rooms. The entire area smelled of fried food. The theatre backed onto a motel with its kitchen directly opposite. Often when the boys left they would see the Filipino staff in their striped aprons and white paper hats, hanging around smoking.
As they made their way backstage, there was a sudden whining and a dog bounded out of one of the doors. It was a German shepherd, ten years old and blind in one eye. It belonged to Frank Kirby, who used it when he was pretending to be Mr Marvano, master illusionist. Twice a night, the dog sat behind a secret mirror, waiting to appear in the cage.
Jamie leant down and patted its head. “Good boy, Jagger,” he said. The dog had been named after the lead singer of the Rolling Stones. Jamie didn’t know why.
“Hey – Jamie!”
Frank Kirby was in his dressing room. Zorro was with him, sitting at a table with a glass and a half-bottle of whisky in front of him. Jamie hoped the escapologist hadn’t drunk too much of it yet. One night Zorro had been handcuffed on stage, tied up and locked into his chest where he had promptly fallen asleep. He’d lost a week’s wages for that. He and Kirby often hung out together. They were both divorced. They were both in their fifties. And – Jamie couldn’t avoid the thought – they were both losers.
“What is it, Frank?” Jamie asked. He leant against the door and felt his brother brush past behind him. Scott hadn’t stopped.
“There’s a rumour we may be moving.” Kirby’s voice was always hoarse. Smoking thirty cigarettes a day probably didn’t help. “I hear maybe we’re getting out of Reno. You know anything about that?”
“I haven’t heard anything,” Jamie said.
“Maybe you can ask your Uncle Don. He never tells us nothing!”
Jamie was tempted to say that Don White never told him anything either. But there was no point. Frank knew that anyway. So Jamie just shrugged and went into the room next door.
Scott was already there, lying on the single bed with its dirty mattress and striped blanket. There was another table and two chairs. All the rooms were the same: completely square with a window looking out onto the parking lot with the motel on the other side. Each one had a washbasin and a mirror surrounded by light bulbs. In some of the rooms, the light bulbs actually worked. Jamie glanced at his brother, who was staring up at the ceiling. There were a couple of old Marvel comics on the table and a half-empty bottle of Coke. That was it. The two of them never did anything between shows. Sometimes they talked, but recently it seemed to Jamie that Scott had begun to retreat into himself.
“Frank thinks we may be moving,” Jamie said.
“Moving where?”
“He didn’t say.” Jamie sat down. “It would be great to get out of here. Away from Reno.”
Scott thought for a moment. He was still gazing at the ceiling. “I don’t see it makes much difference,” he said at last. “Wherever we go, it’ll only be the same … or worse.”
Jamie took a sip from the Coke bottle. The liquid was warm and flat. It was like drinking syrup. He turned his head and examined his brother, lying there on the bed. Scott had unbuttoned his shirt. It hung loose at the sides, exposing his stomach and chest. The shirts looked good on the stage but they were cheap black nylon and made Scott and Jamie sweat. Scott’s hands were loosely curled by his sides. At that moment he didn’t look fourteen. He could have been twenty-four.
Jamie often had to remind himself that the two of them were exactly the same age. They were twins. That much at least was certain. And yet he couldn’t help thinking of Scott as his older brother. It wasn’t just the physical difference between them. For as long as he could remember, Scott had looked after him. Somehow it had never been the other way around. When Jamie had his nightmares, lying in some rundown hotel or trailer in the middle of nowhere, Scott would be there to comfort him. When he was hungry, Scott would find food. When Don White or his wife, Marcie, turned nasty, Scott would put himself between them and his brother.
That was how it had always been. Other kids had parents. Other kids went to school and hung out with their friends. They had TVs and computer games and went to summer camp. But Jamie had never had any of that. It was as if real life went on somewhere else, and he had been dumped outside.
Sometimes Jamie thought back to life before Uncle Don had come and introduced him and Scott to The Circus of the Mind. After all, it hadn’t been that long ago. But the days added up into weeks and then months, and now it was as if a single, long road had smashed through all his other memories and all that was left were shabby theatres and circus tents, hotels, motels, trailers and camper vans. Hours spent on the dusty highways criss-crossing Nevada, always on the move, often in the middle of the night, chasing the next dollar, wherever it might be.
He wondered how he had managed to survive the last few years without going mad. But he knew the answer. It was stretched out on the bed in front of him. Scott had been the one constant in his life, his only true friend and protector. They had always been together. They always would be. After all, it was only when the adults had tried to separate them that The Accident had happened – the beginning of this whole bad dream in which they were now trapped. Jamie examined his brother. Scott seemed to have fallen asleep. His bare chest was rising and falling slowly and there was a sheen of sweat on his skin. Jamie thought back to what Scott had told him, that night in the big tent where they were performing - just outside Las Vegas. It had been the end of the first week. The first public showing of the telepathic twins.
“Don’t worry, Jamie. We’re going to come though this. Five more years and we’ll be sixteen. They can’t keep us then. They can’t make us do anything we don’t want to.”
“What will we do?”
“We’ll find something. Maybe we’ll go to California. We can go to Los Angeles.”
“We could work in TV.”
“No. They’d turn us into freaks.” Scott smiled. “Maybe we could set up some sort of business … you and me.”
“At least we’d know what the competition was thinking.”
“That’s right.” Scott warmed to the subject. “We
could be like Bill Gates. Make millions of dollars and then retire. You wait and see. Once we’re sixteen, we’ll be unstoppable.”
They still had two more years. But Jamie was aware of a growing anxiety. It seemed to him that with every day that passed, the dream was fading. Scott was becoming more silent, more remote. He could lie still for hours at a time, not quite asleep but not awake either. It was as if something was slowly being drained out of him and Jamie was afraid. Scott was the strong one. Scott knew what to do. Jamie could go on performing. He could put up with Uncle Don and the casual brutality of his life. There was just one thing that scared him.
He knew he couldn’t do it on his own.
At the far end of the corridor, in a corner office with views in two directions, Don White was sitting behind a desk that he couldn’t possibly hope to reach. His stomach was too large. He was an immensely fat man with flesh that seemed to fold over itself as if searching for somewhere else to go. It was ice cold in the room – this was the one place in the theatre where the air-conditioning worked – but there were wet patches on the front of his shirt and under his armpits. Don sweated all the time. For a man his size, even walking ten paces was an effort – he looked permanently exhausted. There were dark rings under his eyes and he had lips like a fish, always gulping for air. He was eating a hamburger. Tomato ketchup was dribbling between his fingers, dripping down onto the surface of the desk.
There were two men sitting opposite him, waiting for him to finish. If they were disgusted by the spectacle in front of them, they didn’t show it. One was bald. The other had dark hair. They were both wearing suits. They both waited silently while Don finished his meal, licked his fingers, then wiped them on his trousers.
“So what did you think?” he demanded at last.
“The boys are very impressive,” the bald man – Colton Banes – replied.
“I told you. They can really do it. There’s no trick. It gives you the creeps, if you ask me. But it’s like they can get inside each other’s head.” Don reached out for a half-smoked cigar and lit it. The bitter smell of old tobacco rose into the air. “The other acts in the show … they’re nothing. But those kids are special.”
“I’d be interested to know how they first came to your attention.”
“I’ll tell you. I picked them up three years ago. They were about eleven then. Nobody has any idea where they came from. They were dumped when they were just a few months old. They were picked up by the child protection people some place near Lake Tahoe. No mum. No dad. Probably got Indian blood in them … you know, Native American. Paiute or Washoe or something. Anyway, they were fostered a few times but it never worked out for long. I’m not surprised. Would you want to have someone hanging around with you who could see into your mind?”
“They read other people’s minds as well as each other’s?”
“They can do it. Sure. But they pretend they can’t and I can’t make them. I mean … all right, on the stage. Party tricks. But never outside. Never in real life.” Don sucked on his cigar, then blew out smoke. “So they get bounced around a bit and they finally end up with my wife’s sister and her husband in Carson City. But that didn’t work out too well, I can tell you.”
“What happened?”
“They were there for about a year and then Ed – he was the husband – did himself in … committed suicide. Maybe it was something to do with the kids. I don’t know. They were on their way out anyway. He’d had enough of them.” He leant forward conspiratorially. “Ed always said there was something weird about them. Like, if you belted one, the other would feel the pain. Can you believe that? You whack Scott and it’s little Jamie who gets the bruise on his face. One of them always knew what was happening to the other one, even when they were miles apart. Ed couldn’t live with it. He used to say it was like being in an episode of The X-Files. So he was going to get rid of them, and the next thing I know, he’s dead, my wife’s sister is freaking out and nobody wants the boys.”
A lump of ash fell off the end of the cigar. It landed on Don’s sleeve but he didn’t notice.
“That was when I decided to take them in,” he went on. “I was running this show. At the time it was called Don White’s World of Illusion. But when I saw the boys, when I realized what they could do, I changed all that. I called it The Circus of the Mind and put them in as the final act. The strange thing is, everyone thinks there must be some trick. Hidden signals and codes – that sort of thing. It isn’t just the audience. Even the other performers don’t know how the boys do it. Isn’t that funny? Marcie and me, we think that’s hysterical.”
Banes had introduced the other man as Kyle Hovey. Now Hovey spoke for the first time. “Why haven’t you put them on television?” he asked. “You could have made more money that way.”
“Yeah. I thought about that. Marcie and me talked about it. But they get too well known, someone’s going to take them away.” He hesitated, not sure how much he should tell the two men. “You know how it is,” he went on. “We only got them in the first place because the foster care system is so overstretched. Too many files, not enough case workers. That’s what Marcie says. Right now it seems like everyone’s forgotten about them … and maybe it’s best to keep it that way.” He examined the cigar for a moment, gazing into the burning ash. “Anyway, it’s like I told you, they won’t do it. It was hard enough getting them to perform on the stage. I took a belt to them. Then I starved them. I told them, If you don’t work, you don’t eat. And even then they still refused.”
“So what did you do?” Banes asked.
Don White smiled. “I used one of them against the other. I told Scott that if he didn’t do what I asked, I’d beat Jamie till he bled. I told him I’d do worse than that. And so he agreed – to protect his brother. And Jamie did it because Scott told him to. That was the end of it. Now we get along just fine. I’m their Uncle Don. They do the shows and I look after them.”
“What about school?”
“They went to school in Carson City when they were with Ed, but it didn’t work out. So now they’re home-schooled. The state’s happy enough about that. They even pay us money to look after them. Marcie’s smart. She teaches them all they need to know.” There was about a centimetre of the cigar left. Don took one last puff, then ground it out on the plate which had held his hamburger. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted. “Maybe I should have put them on TV. I’m fed up with the theatre. Nobody’s interested. Nobody comes. Look at this place! We get more cockroaches than we get paying customers. I want out.
“So I was in a bar and I heard somebody talking about this corporation that was prepared to pay good money for information about ‘special’ kids. I went over to them and they gave me a name. I made a call and now … here you are. You’ve seen Scott and Jamie. You know they’re on the level. So what do you say?”
The man called Kyle Hovey glanced at his partner, who had been watching Don with empty eyes. Colton Banes nodded. “We want to take them,” Banes said.
“Take them? Just like that?”
“Children disappear all the time, Mr White. As you yourself have just told us, these children have no family and no friends. The state of Nevada has lost interest in them. We will look after them from now on and no one will be any the wiser.”
“What about the money?”
“We’ll pay you seventy-five thousand dollars.”
Don White licked his lips. That was more money than he had ever expected. But it still wasn’t enough. “Seventy-five thousand dollars … each?” he asked.
Colton Banes paused for a moment. But he had already decided. “Of course. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the two boys. But there is one thing you must understand. This figure is final. You will make no further enquiries about them, or about us. If you inform anyone about this transaction, you and your wife will also disappear. There is a great deal of sand in the desert, Mr White. You would not wish to find yourself underneath it.”
??
?When will you take them?”
“Tonight. Mr Hovey and myself will be inside the theatre. We will have two more colleagues outside. It would help us if you would ask the boys to remain behind when the show has finished, until the other performers have left. We will then remove them and pay you the money in cash. Is that acceptable?”
“Yeah. Sure it’s acceptable.” Don’s mouth was dry. But there were still some questions he had to ask. “Who exactly are you? I mean, I know who you work for. But what are you going to do with them? What do you want them for?”
“I don’t think you heard what I said,” Banes replied. “We are nobody. You’ve never met us. The boys no longer exist.”
“Sure. Fine. Whatever you say…”
From outside the office came the sound of pop music, blaring from the speakers inside the theatre. A single bell rang once, warning the performers.
The second show of the evening was about to begin.
THE NEON PRISON
“For as long as I can remember, we’ve known what’s been going on inside each other’s heads. That doesn’t make it easy when one of us is trying to pick up girls…”
How many times had he spoken those same lines? As Jamie began his second performance of the evening, he was suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness. He hated Reno. It was his prison. It was the island where he had been shipwrecked. But it would never be his home.
It felt empty. The streets were somehow too wide for the number of vehicles that went up and down them, stretching in a straight line for as far as the eye could see. The shops and offices were too far apart, separated by blank spaces that could have been building sites except that no building ever seemed to be going on. And there was never anyone around. They came every Friday – the tourists and the stag parties – but they were sucked into the casinos the moment they stepped out of their cars or planes only to emerge, bleary-eyed and broke, on Sunday night.