Darkness in the Tents

Chapter 5

Amy Klein's hand crept down the spine of the old, browned book. The gold labeling had come off from years of exposure in the small town library making it read, "T E MIL ERT N F AK SH"

instead of, "THE MILLERTOWN FREAK SHOW." She wondered if she could even call it a book, it was really just a photo album.

She knew the book probably hadn't been touched in decades with it's thick lining of dust and placement in the very back of the library on a shelf that was hard to spot even when someone knew where it was. The librarian, who'd worked there for the past forty years, didn't even know the book was in existence until she looked it up in the old filing cabinet.

Inside were decades old photos dating back to the 1920s and earlier with little snippets of the history behind each faded image. Many of them were yellowed and the faces indistinguishable, but that didn't do anything to lessen the peak of interest Amy had in the town's old legend. The freak show still came to town, only it wasn't called a "freak show" anymore and was advertised as a circus. The town's mayor had been trying to show it down for years, but they hadn't had any violations yet. Though they came close...

Amy shoved that thought to the back of her mind, not letting it fog her well-being. She was still surprised that the police couldn't find substantial evidence to bring the forsaken thing down and demolish it, but even after the death of the girl and speculation from the press, nothing was found to be against code in the ancient tents.

Again, Amy had to force herself to suppress the memories that still haunted her after all these years. It was over a decade since she acquired them anyways.

She flipped through the thick pages, eyeing each person or people featured in a photograph. There were conjoined twins with light curly hair in one picture, standing in front of the familiar striped tent. Underneath it read, "Castor and Pollux- born in Iceland in 1911 were found abandoned by ringleader, Dionysus, and brought to America in 1920. Both died in 1926 after attempted separation."

She shivered a little, her red hair crossing into her eyes. The pair stared eerily at the camera in the photo, both expressionless, both already looking like ghosts.

She continued to flip through the pages stopping only when something really stood out. She was eyeing a picture of a blonde girl contorted in a pretzel shape when she spotted a crown of dark, familiar hair from the corner of her eye. Something went off in Amy's head, like an alert signal to stop what she was doing and vacate the premise, but she went and looked at the picture anyways.

In a picture by herself was a very pale girl, with very long locks of black, wavy hair and chocolate eyes. Underneath the photo read, "Caprice Barzetti, age 14- Queen of Ghosts," but Amy knew that wasn't Caprice. The withered and skeletal girl in the photo was Bianca di Angelo, the same Bianca di Angelo she found dead on the beach back in 2002. This photo was from 1932, seventy years earlier.

Her head spun as if she had taken too many tequila shots. She felt a wave crash down on her from the heavens. Her mind brought her back to that fateful November day.

She had just been looking for loose change or fallen rings with her metal detector as she did on her days off from work and school. Amy was saving for a trip to Hawaii and so far just from her weekly outings of metal detecting had made over a thousand dollars for the vacation. She was ecstatic when the machine had begun beeping over a nice clear area of sand.

Amy had begun digging, expecting to find a lost bracelet or a few quarters. She hadn't expected to find a cold, pale hand with a crescent moon bracelet. She hadn't expected to find the dead body of a fourteen year old.

She was only twenty-two when she found the deceased Bianca di Angelo. She had called the police station and her cousin, Daniel Klein, was put on the case. She remembered throwing up on the side after the uncovering and how it had taken weeks of therapy to get over the situation.

She never visited the beach again.

Amy knew Bianca di Angelo was once a beautiful girl, it was evident in her corpse and the finding of her body nearly shut down the freak show as her body showed signs of foul play linked back to the happenings in the red and white tents. Fortunately for the show, nothing was ever found to convict them of anything, not even Bianca being an underage worker (somehow they had papers showing she was licensed to work, despite it being illegal in their state).

But that was in 2002 and now Amy Klein was thirty-six years old and in the library flipping through a photo album dating from the 1920s and 30s and even earlier than that. She couldn't understand the same Bianca di Angelo could be featured in a photo from 1932 when she died in 2002. She couldn't understand how both the picture and the corpse were identical.

Her world began to grow darker and darker...

Hey sorry for the long update! Please be patient and recognize that updates are going to be long. School is very demanding at this moment and writing isn't normally how I spend my downtime when I actually get downtime. I hope this doesn't sound wrong, but this fic is not my top priority. I have lots of homework every night and on weekends and just really hope you will respect that I will not have quick updates. That doesn't mean I don't want to write and share this with you, it just means that patience is key with reading this. Thank you!