The Circus Has Landed

By Clint Lowe

Who dares enter?

 

A mysterious circus tent floats down from the clouds and lands in Potatoville's village square. Sixteen-year-old juggler, Rick, is intrigued by the tent of fantasy.

 

A shady clown beckons Rick inside.

 

Would you dare enter?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heroes Press
• Release date: Nov 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393798804

Book preview

Who Dares Enter?

THE GREAT CIRCUS FLOATED down from the heavens.

It appeared to be birthed from the bulbous patches of the burned-orange sunset clouds. The tent’s plum-purple-and-red canvas trims fluttered gently as if angelic wings. Being a showman was always my upmost desire, and that dream increased tenfold with the vision of the flying tent. The denizens of my farming town of Potatoville stared stunned with necks craned. The great tent, the magnificent tent, landed in the center square beside the water fountain, spreading a kit of cooing spotty-tailed pigeons.

A sixteen-year-old boy who had mastered the fine art of juggling is apt to be curious over a flying circus. Pops, we gotta go see it! I informed my father, squeezing his arm. Maybe afterward show ‘em my stuff.

It’s not the place to be parading your juggling, Rick, my dad said, wagging a finger at the tent. Any flying circus is shifty.

But it was exactly the place to perform. I stood peering forward with the encroaching curios multitude of Potatoville. A blank blackboard suddenly snuck out the canvas opening and stuck itself to the tent a few yards from the opening. An amazing, remarkable trick! It held my attention until a mysterious wind swept through the square, swirling past the enclosure of double-story gray-stone buildings until finally stirring the canvas’s opening.

The strip of tent flickered, as if teasing.

The crowd sucked in a collective gasp.

Red boots appeared at the edge of the tent’s opening flap, then outstepped a clown. He was no ordinary run-of-the-mill circus clown. He had the strawberry-red shoes, for sure, along with a white-painted face and blood-red hair that hung in unfastened folds beneath his plum-purple hat – a felt hat with a narrow brim and indented crown. But that’s where the similarities ended. For starters his hat was severely creased as if it had once been sat upon by a circus elephant. He wore black pants with holes worn through the knees that were patched in brown cloth but the brown cloth now had fraying thread, and his white-and-black hooped tee shirt appeared to be either stained in patches of coffee or brown sweat – Please, oh, please let it be coffee.

Outperforming his clothes was his face. It had no broad smile of a joyful clown but rather a frown of a prison warden who’d been working the same jail for thirty years