“Is there a problem, Danniella?”
I clench my fists harder, my nails biting deep into my palms. He leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head, typical male dominant subliminal messaging.
“No, sir. I’ll make sure I leave on time.” I rise and head for the door, eager to go home and change into something more appropriate.
“There’s something off about this circus. It’s why I’m sendingyouin.”
I freeze at the edge of the doorway, slowly turning back to him.
Does he know? No, he couldn’t.
Alan is a good reporter, or at least he was in his heyday. But there’s no way he could know that these creatures are real. I swallow hard and decide to feign ignorance.
“What do you mean,off?” I wait for Alan’s typical speech about teen drinking.
He leans back in his chair, the metal showing its age with an ominous creak as he pensively gazes out of the window.
“The big top only comes into town once in a blue moon. They chose Hillsview of all the places in the country to pop up this year. But the kicker is when people leave, they don’t rememberanything about the attractions. I want to know why they keep coming back when there’s nothing new here.”
I frown, my brain working overtime to put the pieces together. The reports I’d read didn’t have those types of details, either. It would make sense why the articles were always so vague.
Whycan’tthey remember?
“So maybe it’s from drugs?” I ask tentatively. “Isn’t a circus supposed to be a family event?”
With a large, hairy hand, Alan pinches the bridge of his nose in annoyance. I’ve apparently asked too many questions. I step further into the doorway. “Sorry, sir. I’ll be sure to avoid the food so I can gather a coherent report for you.”
His only reply is a curt nod before he glances back down at his papers and begins shuffling through them again.
All thoughts of lace and Princess Florence leave my mind as I walk from Alan’s office to the staff kitchen. After finding the coffee pot empty, I go through the motions of the prep like a zombie, my mind filing through the catalogue of reports I’ve memorized over the years.
What could cause someone to forget an entire event?
Not just one person, buthundredsof people…
A new drug perhaps? Something under-developed or brought in from another country so it hasn’t really hit the streets here yet?
Or is it something else? Magic?
I finally pour myself a cup and head back to my desk—ignoring the stares from my co-workers for me to quickly finish off the Princess piece—and start pulling up articles about this circus.
The earliest article I come across dates back to the 1920’s, but by the looks of it, they’d been to Hillsview long before that, too. I scroll through pages and pages of archives, but nothing seems suspicious. There are no corresponding reports of anyone suffering memory loss.
So how did Alan know about that fact? Is he running his own type of investigation on the circus without anyone’s knowledge? Can he be an unlikely ally in all of this?
But the weird thing is, I haven’t found a single image of the circus or the acts. There’s nothing visual included with these articles. No photographs. No drawings.
An uneasy feeling settles in the pit of my stomach. Even though I think I know what I’m walking into, a vague idea of the layout and escape routes would be helpful.
I wonder how they’ll get away with it this time, what with the boom of social media in the last few years…
I chew my bottom lip as I spin my pencil between my fingers. The answer seems obvious, but my mind can’t seem to stop dancing around the words.
There’s only one way I’m going to find out.
“You’ll need to show this ticket at the door.” Alan’s voice practically makes me leap from my chair. He plops an old-fashioned, red-and-gold striped ticket in front of me. “Do you have the piece on Florence ready yet? I need to send it to print.”
“Alan, you scared the hell out of me.” I place my hand over my thundering heart. Before it can settle, however, I realize my mistake. I’d called him by his name, something he told me in my interview to never do.
