Mordrake had disappeared to Paul's trailer after the demon fed of Naya's dark past, sitting before the man with pitifully small arms as he asked him to reveal to him his darkest moments.

"That's easy, isn't it? I was born, as all men must be. Only I weren't like all other men. In our street, that was a problem. Lads learned early on how to scrap. Only I couldn't get close enough to scrap back, not with these."

Paul raised his seal-like appendages and continued.

"There can be no shame with you. No shame," Mordrake responded with a nod.

"My whole life is shame. My only escape was in the dark. I could lose myself in it. There I was transported. I wanted nothing more than to come to this land of opulence and glamour, but when I arrived, it was the depression. The country's and mine." Paul sighed sadly, feeling tears form in the corners of his light, clear blue eyes. "I was tired of the streets. Tired of being laughed at, of being attacked, of being called "Seal Boy."' Paul began to cry at that moment as he continued. "The world hated me, but no more than I hated myself. They wanted a monster? I decided to give them one. I could never make the world love me. Maybe I could make it fear me. I tattooed my entire body."

"Why not the face?" Mordrake asked.

"I thought about it," Paul wept. "At the last minute, I chickened out."

"Why?" Mordrake questioned.

"Because I have a handsome face," the man with small arms sobbed, sniffling as tears fell from his eyes. "I have the face of a pretty lad. Can you imagine this mug on a normal body? I could've ruled the world."

There an indistinct whisper from the face on the back of the ghost's head—Modrake seemed to speak through it hauntingly.

"You are not the one."


Suzy was next—upon seeing the ghost of Mordrake, she waddled out of bed and fell on the floor, almost hitting her head against her dresser. Having no legs was especially hard for her to move and try to escape.

"Poor freakish thing, there is no escape," the ghost boomed. "Not until all questions have been answered. By you, and by all upon whom I would call, for I have been summoned to this place. Driven, like Percival, to find a thing most rare, though the grail I seek is one of flesh. Corrupted. Diseased. Perfect in its monstrous imperfection. Before this night is through, I will find my grail. One more pure freak to add to our unhappy number. Now tell me, dear one, how did you come to be here?"

"I committed a sin," Suzy said after a frightened gasp.

"Tell me your sin. Let the demon feed off your misery," Mordrake ordered.

"The doctors took my legs when I was two years old, owing to a spinal condition. After that, my parents lost faith. They left me in a basket on the doorstep of the children's home. I never saw them again," the legless woman explained, biting her lower lip as it became dry with nervousness.

"A sad story, but common. You don't amuse me," Mordrake answered. "Lay down your greatest sin."

"After the children's home, I ended up on the streets. There was no work for someone like me. Hell, there was no work for anyone at that time. Many of the others had legs. I happened to be near one of them. I stabbed him in the back of the thigh. It was jealousy. Even hate. He didn't deserve it. And I guess I hit an artery. I didn't think of those legs as part of him, but just the things that I would never have."

"He died?"

"Yes."

"He inspired you to perform?"

"He sure did, sir." Suzy's story was full of truth.

There was the same whispering from the face on the back of Mordrake's head.

"You are not the one, my dear lady."

He disappeared.


Ethel was in her caravan; it was dark, and she could not sleep. What the doctor had told her was grave news. She was only given six months to a year just days before after being diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. All that drinking had taken a toll on her aging body. Upon seeing Mordrake, she gasped and tried to escape to no avail; the ghost of a freak previously taken had blocked her and frightened her away from the doorway. It took some convincing to get the bearded lady to sit down and calm down, but Mordrake sat across from her on the plush lounge sofa.

"You can't take me with you. There's so much I have left to do, and my time is short as it is," she had told him.

"I cannot leave until you feed the demon your greatest pain," Mordrake said, listening attentively. "You have fallen, my good woman."

"It's true. I have fallen. More than once," she told the ghost. "This backwater ain't the worst of it. I had an act once. Slick as anything in vaudeville. I'd surround myself with the prettiest girls I could find, and then I'd dare the audience to look at anything but me. They loved me for it. I was the biggest thing to come out of Baltimore since Wallis Simpson." She took a moment and remembered, smiling nostalgically. "Now, she landed herself a monarch. I ended up with something else—Dell. I think maybe he really…he really did love me at first. I know I was crazy about him. He became my manager, put all kinds of ideas in my head, told me I shouldn't be doing popular tunes and playing for laughs. He said rich folks don't pay for low comedy. They want culture and art. He convinced me to leave the three-ring when the show went to Paris. He'd manage me exclusive and we'd make a million. Me as the bearded Bernhardt. I was pitiful when reciting the classics. It was a failure. Nobody wanted to see some hairy broad reciting the classics. They laughed all right. This time I wasn't in on the joke. I was the joke."

"How dreadful for you," Mordrake sympathized. He turned his head slightly and there was a indistinguishable whisper that even Ethel could hear—she grew nervous.

"What's it saying?" she asked.

"It says you hide a deeper pain," Mordrake stated. "When you returned to the States, what happened?" Ethel sighed sadly, reluctant to answer the ghost—yet she had to, which she knew very well.

"We were penniless. I was carryin' Dell's child. We couldn't find carnie work, and I couldn't do my act. Not in that condition. So, Dell arranged a different kind of command performance…" Ethel wept softly, tears coming from her blue eyes as her lips pursed into a tight frown. "Dell suggested I make a spectacle…w-when I gave birth to my boy. I was humiliated. Paid admission to see…" She sobbed. "…a freak baby, he called it. Peanuts were bein' sold. Even two bit to hold my baby." She lookef up at the ceiling of her caravan and took a moment of tears to console herself. "How could I have done that to him? He's never known anythin' but exploitation right from the start. I cursed my own child."

Mordrake reached in his coat pocket for a clean, white handkerchief and he held it out to wipe the tears of the bearded lady. She took a breath and looked up at him.

"Thank you for your pains, my dear woman," he said. "I apologize that you had to relive any of this."

"I relive it everyday," Ethel replied with a tearful nod. "I'm ready. Take me to hell with you. I deserve it."

"No, my dear woman," he replied politely. "You are not the one."


Elsa came next—Mordrake had to tear down her sun-sized ego by telling her of her "delusional ignorance" before his spectral companions held her to her large bed and tore off her prosthetic legs. The German was humiliated, finally feeling vulnerable for the first time in years. Mordrake had cupped her aged face in his hand, looking down into her hazel eyes.

"There is nothing more craven than a freak like yourself. Someone who would pretend to be the benevolent zookeeper, but she is nothing but a pernicious, diseased animal herself. Now tell me all about your darkest hour."

It is then that Elsa opened up about her life in Germany; every disturbing, juicy detail.

"Berlin, 1932," she began. "It was during the Weimar Republic. It was said you could get the blow job of your life for an American nickel. It was sexual chaos. All of the pain and humiliation of Germany's surrender, the anger…" Elsa took a breath, taking a cigarette from the elaborate pewter holder and lighting it, taking a drag. "Before there was Hitler to channel it into another war, the citizens of Germany expressed their misery with their cocks. Any deviance you could imagine, you could have. Animals, scat, amputees, hunchbacks…in the darkest corner of it all, I found myself."

Mordrake listened, disturbed by the description of Elsa's past in the brothel.

"I was unable to find work on the stage, starving. Even inthat world, I was a star. I was a minette, a French cat. I worked only at the top hotels, but I wasn't like the rest of those whores. I never let my clients touch me, let alone put their filth inside of me. I gained a reputation for being the one you went to when you were looking for something creative. No one puts on a show better than I do. I once made a client sit on a toilet seat with nails. He loved every minute of the pain." Elsa took a long drag from her cigarette. "And in time, I began to attract more clients and an audience. I called them the Watchers. I never knew their names, but they paid well, and never in marks. You trade away your humanity trick by trick. In the end, I wasn't Elsa. I was nothing. A ghost, like you."

Mordrake seemed puzzled—"there is something she is not telling you", the demon whispered in his ear.

"I came all this way to hear your story," he said.

"I just told you," Elsa retorted.

"No…I do not mean that," Mordrake sighed. "Tell me about your legs."

Elsa sighed, shaking her head.

"Fine," she began. "My ambition was my downfall. The Watchers made blue movies, and I was their top seller. They said I made men ejaculate gold, but this one was different. There was no costar. Usually there was a boy or girl, a streetwalker or runaway. But there was just me, and I'd been drugged. Enough to be powerless but not enough to forget. Not enough to not understand. Not enough to dull the pain…" She took a long, miserable drag from her cigarette. "They sawed off my legs. Strapped me to a bed. Snuff films, they call them. They told me I was one of the lucky ones. They just left me there to die."

"Who saved you?" the ghost asked as Elsa took a shuddering breath, a tear in her eyes.

"The soldier boy," she answered sadly. "He fell in love with his whore. He followed me everywhere…" She sniffled, wiping her heavily made-up eye… "He rushed in the minute they left. I will never forgive him for it. They passed the film around Berlin, Munich. I hear a copy even made it to Vienna. I was a star, but my career was over. It was all over for me." Elsa began to sob, feeling her heartbreak at the images she was reliving in her mind. "I had the most beautiful legs!"

The face of the demon haunting the back of Mordrake's head began to speak; it sounded satanic, unearthily evil—"she is the one!" Elsa heard him and fell to her knees, where her prosthetics attached.

"Yes. I am the one! Take me, please! I know now. I can't deny it. Please!" the German woman begged frantically, clasping her hands in front of her before grabbing the cold black cape-like coat of Mordrake. "There is nothing left for me! It's all over!"

"Are you certain you are ready?" he asked, drawing a clean, fightening silver dagger from his person. Elsa nodded rapidly, crying fearfully.

"I am ready! Yes! Please! Take me! TAKE ME!" She had begun to scream. "What are you waiting for?! I am the one!" She calmed down for a moment, gathering her thoughts. "Take me."

The faint sound of a xylophone began to play in the distance—Mordrake put his dagger back into its sheath and stared off into space.

"I hear music," he said.

He disappeared, much to Elsa's shock.


The following morning, fear had swept across the grounds of the freak show. The freaks were out, having breakfast, listening to the news on the radio, or playing card games, and all the while, Naya had woken up from a deep, peaceful sleep. Her platinum-colored eyelashes seemed to be stuck together from the tears she had cried the night before. She looked at the gathering ceiling of her tent and sighed before freshening up and getting dressed in fresh, black clothing. She walked out of the tent, having purposely forgotten her wide-brimmed hat, and she walked out into the faint morning sunlight. It was not enough to give her a headache or make her feel uncomfortable, though. She squinted slightly, seeing a motorcycle with two familiar figures riding on it with her good eye.

"Curfew's lifted!" Naya immediately recognized it as Jimmy's voice. Elsa approached them sternly, aggravated with their absence.

"Where the hell have you two been?!" she shouted.

"They caught the killer," Jimmy explained. "Curfew was lifted."

"You mean you caught the killer," Maggie, who was riding on the back of the motorcycle, said to Jimmy. She turned her gaze to Elsa. "He caught the killer. He saved the kids. He saved everybody!"

Suddenly, Maggie got off the motorcycle and stood next to Jimmy, whose hands were still on the handles. Everyone, especially Elsa, witnessed her leaned down slowly and plant a kiss on his cheek. Jimmy blushed slightly, sighing as the charming woman walked off—the German woman crossed her arms over her chest and smiled.

"She has cast her spell," she grinned. "She's not the only one. The camp had a visitor last night." Jimmy unmounted his motorcycle and put the kickstand down to keep it in place.

"Edward Mordrake," he said, his deep voice sounding like a groan.

"H-He came to you, too?" Paul asked, lightly flapping his short arms in front of him.

"Not to me," the handsome man with deformed hands replied. "He claimed his freak, though."

Elsa gasped with intense worry as she saw a massive group of people approaching the grounds—women and men, children and teens, rich and poor, old and young, black and white—they all seemed to come to the grounds on foot. Some even held things in their hands, but the carnies could not distinguish what they were. When they finally came, they didn't look very menacing, but Elsa was still cautious. They've finally come to run us out, she thought as an older gentleman, backed by his young daughter and wife, approached the carnies.

"You Jimmy?" he asked, looking at the charming man with excessively-gelled hair.

"What do you and the rest of this mob want?" Jimmy asked anxiously.

"We wanted to thank you," the older gentleman smiled. "You saved our son. You saved our town. I want to shake your hand."

Wow, he thought as he saw him extending his hand to him for a kind, friendly gesture. Jimmy looked down—no one had ever been this nice to him before. His hands were his most distinguishing feature even though he could pass as normal. He nodded and shook the man's hand. Not a wince, not a cower, not a complaint about his fused fingers—it were as though Jimmy were perfectly normal. Suddenly, the man's daughter, blonde and blue-eyed, brought what looked like a plate covered in tin foil and presented it to him.

"Homemade brownies," the girl cooed. "I only had one. I saved the rest for you."

"Uh…" Jimmy was overwhelmed with joy but didn't know how to express it. "Thank you." He took the plate, and the girl's blue eyes looked over at Desiree and her three-breasted cleavage with fascination.

"Are you a real lady?" she asked.

"Jessie! Manners!" her mother scolded.

"Oh, that's ok, darlin'," Desiree smiled cheerfully. "I am a lady…and then some!"

The merging of the normal and the different occurred at that moment—the townsfolk socialized with those they had ostracized, and it seemed all was well. Jimmy had shaken the hands of several gentlemen, and Pepper accepted the plate of brownies from the little girl so he could do so. Suddenly, Elsa had an idea—all these people are here, she thought with a grin as she made her way up to the ticket podium, why not sell them a show?

"Ladies and gentlemen! One and all," Elsa called out graciously. "We would like to invite you to our grand command performance tonight. Here in our big top. Tickets are available over there at the box office."

She gave a ceremonious bow, and everyone clapped as though she had just given a performance herself. Even Jimmy had clapped before looking in the distance—first, he saw Bette, her tilted head on she and Dot's conjoined body. Then he saw Maggie walk out in to his view, and he got distracted and he gave her a slight smirk. It wasn't until he saw the ghostly, unnatural pallor of Naya as she made her way toward the crowd to socialize—he saw her stop for a moment, and he felt his heart race beyond his imagination.

He didn't seem afraid of her, so to speak, but he was admiring her. Naya was indeed beautiful even if she was freakish for being an albino. Unveiled and uncovered by her wide-brimmed hat, he admired her astonishing white features—her swan-white hair; her colorless complexion; her toneless, nearly absent thin eyebrows; her eyes, usually an intense purple, glowed a light shade of lilac purple in the sun as her stark white eyelashes framed them. Jimmy smiled grandly, and she seemed to see him—she nodded her head forward politely, but her face was unsmiling.


Early that afternoon, the carnies were helping set up for the show Elsa had promised the townspeople outside the great tent. Bette and Dot, the conjoined twins, were summoned by the woman, and Bette politely smiled as she watched the woman direct Pepper and Toulouse to move around audience chairs.

"Space them closer together," she commanded.

"You wanted to see us, Elsa?" Bette asked sweetly.

"Ja," she said with a smile. "We have a sold-out show tonight, and I've made some changes to the set list."

"I get it," Dot sneered impatiently. "You're makin' us warm up for you." Elsa cackled, shaking her head.

"Nein, don't be ridiculous!" she joked. "You and the Pinheads are warming up for Naya the Living Ghost."

"You can't be serious!" Dot chided. She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"It's our faces on the banner," Bette said, keeping calm. "Naya has only been up for less than a week."

"You were there last week, leibchen," Elsa smiled. "We took that banner down."

"Uh, knock-knock?"

It was the voice of a man; a middle-aged man with greased dark hair hiding beneath a brown fedora that matched his brown tweed suit. He had cool blue eyes, slight sun-spotting and wrinkles that properly showed his age and how he had progressed through the years. Elsa looked at him—his real name was Stanley, and he had been the one to take Maggie there for a job. Elsa had not been the one to see him before, and as the twins walked off, the German smiled at him graciously as he introduced himself.

"Uh, sorry to bother you folks," the man said as he approached her. "I, uh…I was hoping to buy a ticket to the show, but it seems to be sold out. I'm here from, uh, out of town. Yeah, Hollywood, California, is where I call home." Elsa gasped excitedly and her hazel eyes widened.

"Hollywood?" she asked.

"Name's Richard Spencer. Talent scout," he said. Elsa smiled, nodding at the man. This may be my chance, she thought to herself.

"We can find you a seat, sir," she nodded.