The following week had begun the month of July, and the carnies were heading up north. Jimmy had grown worried and anxious when Naya did not show up to the camp, as promised, with her suitcase of belongings. The tents were taken down and put into trucks, and Elsa pranced around the scene with a cigarette between her lips, anxiously waiting for Naya the Living Ghost to come with them so they could venture up north.
"Jimmy," she asked, approaching him as he paced back and forth. "Where is she?"
"I don't know!" he shouted.
"Remember to whom you are speaking," Elsa sneered, blowing smoke into his face as their eyes met.
"She promised to come here!" he exclaimed. "She promised to come in the middle of the night. I'm exhausted from staying up so late just waiting for her. She still ain't here!"
"Do you think she forgot?" Paul asked, his English accent sounding inquisitive as he adjusted his signature fedora.
"No, she couldn't have," Jimmy replied, walking away from the scene and putting his motorcycle cap atop his gelled brown curls as he straddled his motorcycle and got the ignition going, his hands on the handles as Elsa approached him rapidly.
"Where are you going? We leave in another hour! Get off that bike!" she barked authoratively.
"I ain't leaving yet," Jimmy said, "I'm going to that mansion on the hill to see where Naya is."
VROOM…
And he sped off with the wind blowing his button up, dark red, short-sleeved shirt.
"If you're happy and you know it,
Clap your hands…
If you're happy and you know it,
Clap your hands…"
Jimmy was welcomed in by the maid, who told him to wait in the parlor as Dandy was busy with something. Yet upon entering the said place, he gasped to see remnants of where a generous pile of blood inlaid itself into the rug. He gasped, suddenly frightened as the image of Naya's face came to mind; the albiness' striking beauty had captivated him to the point of genuine love. Now, he felt his personal suspicions rise as he ran from room to room in search of her; he called out her name repeatedly.
"Naya?!"
No answer.
"Naya!"
Still no answer.
"NAYA?!"
Yet again, no answer. So he ran up the staircase in the atrium, his eyes too focused on the top landing to be distracted by the genuine crystal chandelier that hung ceremoniously from the ceiling. That better not have been Naya's blood, he thought, I will kill him.
Upon reaching the top landing, he heard strange noises coming from behind one of the closed white doors. He walked slowly over to it, hearing maniacal laughing and a piece of familiar classical music being played on a record player. The sound of something being knotted also caught his attention as he slowly turned the knob, taking the greatest care to not get caught in the act. As it became silently ajar, Jimmy peeked through at a heinous, diabolical sight that sent him over the edge as his blood boiled ferociously inside him.
"Now you're my puppet, Naya," Dandy said to the extremely pallid, nearly blue corpse of his wife.
Jimmy had opened the door to the dance studio Dandy had built for his wife in the place of his old playroom; the room she never got the chance to go into in its renovated form. Mirrors lined two of the walls behind ballet barres that had been placed for Naya's possible use. It all narrowed down to a small stage at the very end of the room, where the albiness' corpse was strung up like a marionette at the wrists and ankles and dressed in a white tutu-style ensemble with feather-like accents. Her lifeless feet had been placed in the satin white ballet shoes, his first gift to her, as the toes rested on the floor of the stage. Jimmy looked in horror and hatred as he noticed that Naya's throat was slashed open, remnants of blood remaining in her stark white, thin hair and on her stone-tinted skin.
"You said you wanted to dance on the great stage, so I made the great stage for you!" Dandy exclaimed—by this point, Jimmy let the door silently drift open by itself, watching as the maniacal man-boy moved the strings to make the stiff corpse move in time with the Black Swan sequence from Swan Lake.
"Spin for me! I love how you put your leg up in the air, dearest!" Dandy exclaimed excitedly, laughing insanely.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Jimmy's scream was risky, but he could not hold himself back as Dandy jumped and looked back at the open door, glaring at the man with deformed hands.
"Weren't you taught to knock?" Dandy asked demeaningly. "I'm having private time with my wi—"
PUNT!
Jimmy, without hesitation, forcefully punched the side of Dandy's head with all his might, knocking him out cold as Naya's corpse, just a morbid marionette that had fallen along with him, thudded against the floor of the stage. The young man, with tears of incredulity in his eyes, ran toward where Naya's corpse had landed and took the strings tied to her wrists and ankles off her person. He looked down, her bloodied head just brushing his lap, nearly gagging at the smell of putrefying, pallid blue flesh as he noticed her fish-like, dead eyes were slightly open.
"Naya…" He began to sob. "No…"
He took a moment of tears, sobbing his heart out as he muttered sweet nothings to his love. He then took a moment to blame himself for not doing anything—I could have saved her, he thought, why hadn't I? It's all my fault. When he finally stood up, he shook his head, sobbing still as he made his way off the stage and to Dandy's unconscious body.
Ring-ring!
Suddenly, the phone had wrung—Jimmy ran down the hall and into the closest room he could go into where there was a phone and answered it.
"Hello?" he asked.
"Jimmy?" the voice on the other end asked.
"Yes?"
"It's Maggie. Elsa told me to call you. I looked up the number after hearing where you were going," the voice explained. Jimmy rolled his eyes and sighed blankly.
"Naya is dead," he said.
"What?" Maggie asked with disbelief.
"I think he killed her," Jimmy wept quietly. "Listen, send me Eve, Dell, the twins and Desiree. The big mansion on the hill. We need to bring him back to the grounds. He needs to be taught a lesson."
"Jimmy, don't stoop to his—"
"DO IT!" Jimmy screamed, slamming the phone back on the receiver.
Bette and Dot had not come, but Eve, Dell, and Desiree managed to make it to Mott Manor with Paul along with them. They not only snuck Dandy's unconscious body into the car they came in, but Naya's corpse was put in the trunk. Jimmy had objected to his love just being stashed in the trunk, but they had no choice and the carnies did not want to smell the stench of decomposition.
Strangely, Dandy's personal maid had not even noticed his disappearance—she had been in the garden watering the tulips over the grave of Dora, the maid before her whom Dandy had killed in the same manner as Naya but under different pretenses.
Back at the camp, the last tent, overlooked by the movers, was still up—inside, Dandy was placed in dead center surrounded by the freaks. Everyone was armed with some kind of sharp weapon or blunt instrument; Jimmy had a hatchet he had found outside, Eve had a meat cleaver, Paul had a pronged hammer, Elsa had one of her throwing knives, Desiree and Dell each had steak knives—the only one not participating in the vengeful act was Maggie, who sat in a corner and watched. Bette and Dot, however, were holding the gun given to them by Jimmy, as he had stolen it before leaving the manor.
Everyone was furious over Naya's heinous murder at the hands of her spoiled man-boy of a husband, but the one with the most anger boiling in him was Jimmy—she did not deserve to die, he thought, he is going to pay for what happened to her.
He had woken up just a half hour after he was put in the tent, feeling a sharp pain shoot through his head like a speeding bullet. Dandy rubbed his temple and looked around to see the freaks horded around him, waiting for him to regain consciousness.
"What the…" For once, Dandy felt fear overcome him. "What is going on?! Where am I?"
"You wanted to be a part of the show?" Jimmy asked cruelly. "You're getting what you asked for, big shot!"
They drew closer to him, surrounding him at all angles. He tried to reach into his pockets to find his gun to try defending himself, but he looked right up and saw that Bette, the left side of the conjoined body she shared with Dot, was holding it and pointing it right at him.
"That's mine!" he shouted.
"Not anymore," she said.
"What you did to Naya was unforgivable!" Dot hissed.
"And now you gonna pay!" Desiree added as they each slowly drew nearer to him. "You may look like a motion picture dreamboat, but you are the biggest freak of them all!"
They drew closer to him, and Bette shot him in the shoulder.
"AH!" he screamed, reaching to where he was shot and feeling blood pour out of him. "N-Naya was a spy! She was sent here from Russia! I found a diary! All in Russian! She was a communist spy! A Soviet pig! A—"
"YOU DUMB PIECE OF SHIT!" Jimmy shouted. "Naya came here for a better life! They weren't just going to give her a good one! She was dirt poor, dammit!"
Elsa tossed one of her throwing knives at his leg, hitting him in the upper thigh as blood poured out of him generously.
"AHH!" Dandy screamed.
"Naya married you…you took her in…gave her whatever she desired…" Elsa hissed in a violent-sounding whisper. "You killed her…you brought death to us…for that, you must pay!" Her eyes seethed through him like a raging, roaring fire as she tossed the next one into his other thigh—now he was beginning to feel faint, and that is when the final breath was spoken by the freaks.
"You killed the woman I love! You ruined my life…and for that, we will ruin yours!" Jimmy screamed.
"You can't kill me!" Dandy shouted. "I'm immortal!"
"YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!" Jimmy barked, sounding like a mad dog at the end of his leash. "ATTACK!"
The bloodshed began—the freaks hacked him, stabbed him, mutilated him, struck him, slogged him; all in an intense ambush that left a huge bloody mess and Dandy screaming for mercy along with cries of hate. Jimmy, though he was busy hacking his limbs to immobility with the hatchet, struck him in the chest to deal the final blows that would kill him. By the time they backed away, they saw that Dandy was dead, nothing but a mass of chopped-up, incised flesh with brain matter pouring out one end of his body. Even his left arm had fallen off from Jimmy's excessive, fury-driven blows with the hatchet.
Maggie had tears in her eyes, traumatized from the sight she had just bore witness to. Elsa looked back at her, glaring intensely as her dress was covered in blood—everyone needed a change of clothes at that point.
"What's the matter, leibchen?" the German asked. "You act like you've never seen a dead body before."
Maggie remained quiet and tight-lipped, still with disbelief at the gruesome scene.
Naya's body was buried that night—the movers had started going up north to Michigan, where they would spend the summer entertaining those interested in seeing human oddities. They had no time for a coffin, but Maggie and the twins had gathered flowers to bury with the deceased albiness—chrysanthemums. Jimmy was in tears even as he dug the grave, only four feet under; Dell, Paul, and Toulouse had helped him dig before setting the body neatly in its new home. Jimmy's eulogy had been heartfelt and entirely improvised, working his way through the tears and remembering her for who she was.
"Naya was…very strong…" he began. "She…she knew all the steps to Tchaikovsky's ballets and danced perfectly. She was…flawless…and captivating. To me, she was not just a…living ghost or…an albino woman…or another beautiful girl to look at..." He smiled sadly, sniffled. "She was a person. She had courage." He sobbed his next sentence, crying his heart out. "She wanted a better life for herself…a s-second chance…I…I can only imagine what her life was like back in her country…and…w-when…she was a prisoner….being kept and c-cruelly treated for who she was…and what she was…but it…" He sniffled, tears flowing down his face in unison with the others; Pepper wailed uncontrollably to empathize with her fellow carnie, "was…only…natural for her to leave there and come here, you know?"
He paused, tossing a white rose into the four foot deep grave with her pallid, livid corpse resting in it. It was the last glimpse of the pitch black digits tattooed into her forearm—AU-9741; about as horrifying as how she looked nestled in her final resting place. Elsa then took the ballet shoes she had worn in life and placed them at her feet in the open grave.
"So you can dance in heaven, leibchen," she sobbed.
Jimmy looked down, tears running down from his eyes.
"You had courage, doll," he muttered. "You had courage."