"I wish I had skin like that," Sam said enviously. Then he turned to me. "How come you wear the same suit all the time?" he asked.
I looked down at the suit I'd been buried alive in. I'd meant to ask for some new clothes but had forgotten.
"I like it," I said.
"I've never seen a kid wearing a suit like that before," Sam said. "Not unless they were at a wedding or a funeral. Are you forced to wear it?"
"No," I said.
"Did you ask your parents if you could join the Cirque?" Evra said then, to distract Sam's attention.
"No," Sam sighed. "I told them about it, of course, but I figured it would be best to take it slowly. I won't tell them until just before I leave, or maybe not until I'm gone."
"So you still plan to join?" I asked.
"You bet!" Sam said. "I know you tried scaring me away, but I'll get in somehow. You wait. I'll keep coming around. I'll read books and learn everything there is to know about freak shows, and then I'll go to your boss and state my case. He won't be able to turn me down."
Evra and I smiled at each other. We knew Sam's dream would never lead to anything, but we didn't have the heart to tell him.
We went to see an old, deserted railroad station, about two miles away, which Sam had told us about.
"It's great," he said. "They used to work on trains there, repair and paint them and stuff like that. It was a busy station when it was open. Then a new station opened closer to the city and this place went bankrupt. It's a great place to play. There are rusty old railroad tracks, empty sheds, a guardhouse, and a couple of ancient train cars."
"Is it safe?" Evra asked.
"My mother says it isn't," Sam told us. "It's one of the few places she tells me to stay away from. She says I could fall through the roof of one of the cars or trip on a rail or something. But I've been there lots of times and nothing's ever happened."
It was another sunny day, and we were walking slowly under the shade of the trees when I smelled something strange. I stopped and sniffed the air. Evra could smell it, too.
"What is that?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said, sniffing the air next to me. "Which way is it coming from?"
"I can't tell," I said. It was a thick, heavy, sour smell.
Sam hadn't smelled anything and kept walking ahead of us. Then he realized we weren't beside him, Hopped, and turned to see what was going on.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Why aren't you—"
"Gotcha!" a voice yelled behind me, and before I could move I felt a firm hand grab my shoulder and spin me around. I saw a large, hairy face, and then suddenly I was falling backward, thrown off-balance by the force of the hand.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I fell hard on the ground and sprained my arm. I screamed with pain, then tried twisting away from the hairy figure above me. Before I could do anything, he was crouching by my side with a fierce look on his face.
"Oh, hey, man, I didn't hurt you, did I?" He had a friendly voice, and I realized my life wasn't in danger; the look on his face was one of concern, not anger.
"I didn't mean to freak you out," the man said. "I was just trying to scare you a little, man, for fun."
I sat up and rubbed my elbow. "I'm okay," I said.
"You're sure? It ain't broken, is it? I've got herbs that can help, if it is."
"Herbs can't fix broken bones," Sam said. He was now standing beside Evra.
"They sure can't," the stranger agreed, "but they can elevate you to planes of consciousness where worldly concerns like broken bones are nothing but minor blips on the cosmic map." He paused and stroked his beard. "Of course, they burn out your brain cells, too …"
Sam's blank face showed that even he didn't understand that long sentence.
"I'm okay," I said again. I stood up and rotated my arm. "I just twisted it. It'll be fine in a couple of minutes."
"Man, that's good to hear," the stranger said. "I'd hate to be the cause of bodily harm. Hurt's a bad trip, man."
I studied him in more detail. He was big and chubby, with a bushy black beard and long, scraggly hair. His clothes were dirty and there was no way he'd had a bath recently, because he stank to high heaven. That's what the strange smell had been. He was really friendly looking; it made me feel stupid thinking about how afraid of him I'd been.
"Are you guys locals?" the man asked.
"I am," Sam said. "These guys are with the circus."
"Circus?" The man smiled. "There's a circus around here? Oh, man, how did I miss it? Where is it? I love the circus. I never pass up a chance to see clowns in action."
"It's not that sort of circus," Sam told him. "It's a freak show."
"A freak show?" The man stared at Sam, then at Evra, whose scales and color pretty much marked him out as one of the performers. "Are you part of a freak show, man?" he asked.
Evra nodded shyly.
"They don't mistreat you, do they?" the man asked. "They don't whip you or under-feed you or make you do things you don't want to?"
"No." Evra shook his head.
"You're there of your own free will?"
"Yes," Evra said. "All of us are. It's our home."
"Oh. Well, that's okay," the man said, smiling again. "You hear rumors about those small traveling shows. You …" He slapped his forehead. "Oh man, I haven't introduced myself, have I? I'm so dumb sometimes. R.V.'s the name."
"R.V.? That's a funny name," I remarked.
He coughed with embarrassment. "Well," he said, lowering his voice to a whisper, "it's short for Reggie Veggie."
"Reggie Veggie?" I laughed.
"Yeah," he said. "Reggie's my real name. Reggie Veggie's what they called me in school, because I'm a vegetarian. Well, I never liked that, so I asked them to call me R.V. instead. Some did, but not many." He looked miserable at the memory. "You can call me Reggie Veggie if you want," he told us.
"R.V. is fine by me," I assured him.
"Me, too," Evra said.
"And me," Sam added.
"Cool!" R.V. brightened up. "So, that's my name out in the open. How about you three?"
"Darren Shan," I told him, and we shook hands.
"Sam Grest."
"Evra Von."
"Evra Von what?" R.V. asked, as I had when I first met Evra.
"Just plain Von," Evra said.
"Oh." R.V. smiled. "Cool!"
R.V. was an ecowarrior, here to stop a road from being built. He was a member of NOP — Nature's Opposing Protectors — and had traveled the country saving forests and lakes and animals and stuff like that.
He offered to show us around his camp, and we jumped at the chance. The railway station could wait. This was an opportunity that wouldn't come every day.
He talked about the environment nonstop as we walked. He told us about all the crappy things being done to Mother Nature, the forests we were destroying, the rivers we were polluting, the air we were poisoning, the animals we were driving to extinction.
"And this is all in our own country!" he said. "I'm not talking about stuff happening somewhere else. This is what we're doing to our own land!"
NOP was fighting to save the earth from greedy, dangerous humans who didn't care what they did to it. I had journeyed up and down the country trying to make other people aware of the dangers. They gave out pamphlets and books about how to protect the environment.
"But raising awareness ain't enough," R.V. told us. "It's a start, but we must do more. We have to stop the pollution and destruction of the countryside. Take this place: They were going to build a road through an old burial ground, a place where people buried their dead thousands of years ago. Can you imagine that, man? Destroying a part of history, just to save drivers ten or twenty minutes!"
R.V. shook his head sadly. "These are crazy times, man," he said. "The things we're doing to this planet … In the future — assuming there is one — people will look back on what we've done and call us idiotic barbarians."
He was very passionate abo
ut the environment, and after listening to him for a while, so were Sam, Evra and me. I hadn't thought about it much before, but after a couple of hours with R.V., I realized I should have. As R.V. said, those who don't think and act now can't complain when the world crumbles around their ears later.
His campsite was an interesting place. The people — twenty or so — slept in handmade huts that had been built out of branches and leaves and shrubs. Most were as dirty and smelly as R.V., but they were also cheerful and kind and generous.
"How did you stop the road from being built?" Sam asked.
"We dug tunnels under the land," R.V. said. "And we sabotaged the machines they sent in. And we alerted the media. Rich dudes hate having cameras pointed at them. One TV news crew is as good as twenty active warriors."
Evra asked R.V. if they ever fought hand to hand. R.V. said NOP didn't believe in violent confrontation, but we could see from the look on his face that he wasn't happy about that. "If I had my way," he said, "we'd give as good as we got. We're too nice sometimes. Man, if I was in charge, we'd give those turkeys a taste of hell!"
R.V. invited us to stay for lunch. It wasn't very good food — there was no meat, just a bunch of vegetables and rice and fruit — but we ate a lot to be polite.
They had lots of mushrooms as well — big and oddly colored — but R.V. wouldn't let us eat any of those.
"When you're older, man," he said with a laugh.
We left soon after lunch. The members of NOP had duties and jobs they had to do, and we didn't want to be in the way.
R.V. told us we could come back any time, but that they'd probably be moving on in a couple of days.
"We've almost won the fight here," he said. "Another few days and it'll be time to strike out for new pastures. Battles come and go, man, but the war is never-ending."
We waved good-bye and headed for home.
"That R.V.'s weird," Sam said after a while. "Can you imagine giving up everything to go off and fight for animals and the countryside?"
"He's doing what he believes in," Evra said.
"I know," Sam said. "I think it's cool that he's doing it. We need people like him. It's too bad there aren't more of them. Still, it's a weird way to live, don't you think? You'd have to be pretty dedicated. I don't think I could become an environmental warrior."
"Me neither," I agreed.
"I could," Evra said.
"You could not," I scoffed.
"Why not?" he asked. "I could take my snake and live with them and fight with them."
"You just couldn't," I insisted.
"Why not?"
"Because you're not smelly enough!" I laughed.
Evra made a face. "They were a little on the crunchy-granola side, weren't they?" he admitted.
"They smell worse than my feet when I haven't changed my socks for a week!" Sam exclaimed.
"Still," Evra said, "I can think of lots of worst-ways to spend my time when I grow up. I'd kind of like to be like R.V."
"Me, too," Sam said.
I shrugged. "I guess I could get used to it."
We were in a good mood and talked about NOP and R.V. the whole way back to camp. None of us had any idea of the trouble the nice ecowarrior would soon create … or the tragedy he would unintentionally cause.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next few days went by lazily. Evra and me were kept busy with our chores and with feeding the Little People. I'd tried talking to a couple of the silent blue-hooded creatures, but none of them looked at me when I spoke.
It was impossible to tell them apart. One stood out because he — or she (or it) — was taller than the others, and one was shorter, and another limped on his left leg. But the rest looked exactly alike.
Sam was helping out more and more around the camp. We didn't take him with us when we went hunting, but we let him pitch in with most of our other jobs. He was a hard worker, determined to impress us and earn himself a full-time position with the Cirque.
I didn't see much of Mr. Crepsley. He knew I had to be up early to hunt for the Little People's food, so he left me alone most of the time. I was happy that way; I didn't want him bugging me about drinking human blood.
Then Cormac Limbs arrived early one morning, which caused great excitement.
"You've got to see this guy," Evra said, dragging me behind him. "He's the most amazing performer who ever lived."
There was already a large crowd around Cormac when we arrived at Mr. Tall's van (where he reported in to). People were slapping him on the back and asking what he'd been up to and where he'd been. He smiled at everybody, shook hands, and answered questions. He might have been a star, but he wasn't big-headed.
"Evra Von!" he shouted when he saw the snake-boy. He reached over and gave Evra a hug. "How's my favorite two-legged reptile?"
"Fine," Evra said.
"Have you shed your skin lately?" Cormac asked.
"Not recently," Evra said.
"Remember," Cormac said, "I want it when you do. It's valuable. Human snakeskin is worth more than gold in some countries."
"You can have as much of it as you like," Evra assured him. Then he pushed me forward. "Cormac, this is Darren Shan, a friend of mine. He's new at the Cirque and hasn't seen you before."
"Never seen Cormac Limbs?!" Cormac shouted, pretending to be upset. "How can this be? I thought everybody in the world had seen the magnificent Cormac Limbs in action."
"I've never even heard of you," I told him.
He clutched his chest as though suffering a heart attack.
"What do you do?" I asked.
Cormac looked around at the crowd. "Should I give a demonstration?"
"Yeah!" they shouted eagerly.
Cormac looked at Mr. Tall, standing at the back of the crowd. Mr. Tall sighed and nodded. "You may as well," he said. "They won't leave you alone until you do."
"All right then," Cormac said. "Stand back and give me room."
The crowd moved back immediately. I started to move with them, but Cormac laid a hand on my shoulder and told me to stay.
"Now," he said to the crowd, "I've been traveling for a long time and I'm too tired to go through my entire routine, so we'll keep this short and sweet."
He made his right hand into a fist, then stuck out his index finger. "Darren, will you put this finger in your mouth?" he asked.
I glanced at Evra, who signaled for me to do what Cormac asked.
"Now," Cormac said, "bite down on it, please."
I bit softly.
"Harder," Cormac said.
I bit slightly harder.
"Come on, boy," Cormac shouted. "Put some backbone into it. Work those jaws. Are you a shark or a mouse?"
Okay. He wanted me to bite hard? Then I would.
I opened my mouth and bit down quickly, meaning to give him a shock. Instead, I was the one who was shocked, because I bit clean through the finger and snapped it right off!
I fell back in terror and spat the dead finger from my mouth. My eyes shot up at Cormac Limbs. I expected him to scream, but he only laughed and held up his hand.
There was no blood where I'd bitten the finger off, only a white, jagged stump. As I watched, the most amazing thing happened: The finger began to grow back!
I thought I had to be imagining it, but as the seconds passed it kept growing, and pretty soon it was full-length again. Cormac held it rigidly in place a few seconds longer, then flexed it in and out to show it was as good as new.
The crowd cheered, and I felt my heart slow back down to normal.
I looked down at the ground, where I'd spat out the finger, and saw it beginning to rot. Within a minute it was nothing more than a grayish mound of mold.
"Sorry if I frightened you," Cormac said, giving my head a pat.
"That's okay," I told him. "I should have learned by now to expect the unexpected around here. Can I feel the new finger?" He nodded. It didn't feel different from any of the others. "How do you do it?" I asked, amazed. "It is an il
lusion?"
"No illusion," he said. "It's why they call me Cormac Limbs. I've been able to grow new limbs — fingers, toes, arms, legs — ever since I was a toddler. My parents discovered my talent when I had an accident with a kitchen knife and cut off part of my nose. I can grow back virtually any part of my body. Except my head. I haven't tried cutting that off. I guess it's best not to tempt fate."
"Doesn't it hurt?" I asked.
"A little," he said, "but not much. When one of my limbs gets cut off, a new one starts to grow almost immediately, so there's only a second or two of pain. It's a little like —"
"Come, come!" Mr. Tall bellowed, cutting him short. "We don't have time for detailed description. This show has been idle far too long. It's time we entertained the public again, before they forget about us or think we've retired.
"People," he shouted to the crowd, and clapped his hands together. "Spread the word. The lull is over. The show goes on tonight!"
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The camp was buzzing with activity all afternoon. People were running around like crazy. A bunch of them were working on putting together the circus tent. I hadn't seen it before. It was an impressive sight when it was done, tall and round and red, decorated with pictures of the performers.
Evra and me were kept busy, hammering pegs into the ground to hold the tent in place, arranging seats inside, setting up the stage for the show, preparing props for the performers (we had to find tin cans and nuts and bolts for Rhamus Twobellies to eat, and help move the wolf-man's cage inside the tent, and so on).
It was a huge operation, but it moved with incredible speed. Everyone in the camp knew their place and what was expected of them, and there was never any real panic over the course of the day. Everybody worked as part of a team and things came together smoothly.
Sam showed up early in the afternoon. I would have kept him around to help with the work, but Evra said he'd be in the way, so we told him he had to take off. He was upset and slouched off, kicking an empty soda can along in front of him. I felt sorry for him, then realized how I could cheer him up.
"Sam! Wait a minute!" I shouted. "I'll be back in a second," I told Evra, then rushed off to Mr. Tall's van.
I knocked once on the door and it opened instantly. Mr. Tall was standing inside, and before I could say a word, he held out two tickets for entry to the Cirque Du Freak.