Description

PEABODY-OZYMANDIAS TRAVELING CIRCUS & ODDITY EMPORIUM

by F. Paul Wilson.

Overview: It will be a long trip, brothers and sisters, Oz said as he walked among the members of his troupe. Long in distance and in days.

And perhaps it is good that we make a full circuit of this country - better yet if we could make a circuit of the globe - for it will allow us a chance to see it and remember it as it was - if we care to.

He let his gaze range over them as he allowed the words to sink in.

All the important ones were here. The special ones, the ones like him. Three-eyed Carmella sat with melon-headed Leshane Burns, flashing sidelong glances at George Swenson who sat alone; the bovine Clementine also sat alone, but not necessarily by choice; woody-skinned Bramble sat near green-skinned Haman who appeared to be staring at the closed tent flap while the eyeless Gerald Gaines stared at nothing yet saw everything; Delta Reid coiled around her chair as Janusch waved his stalked eyes. Others sat scattered about. The troupe had no unity yet. They were not yet a team. But by the end of this tour they would be. Theyd be family.

The troupe. The freak show. People with green skin, white skin, furry skin, reptile hide, no eyes, extra eyes, no digits, extra digits, people with visions, with no vision, with one face, with two faces. A gathering to give many a towner nightmares for life. But to Oz they were beautiful. Because they were kin. Brother and sister were not forms of address he took lightly. Truly kin. For they shared a common parent, a third parent that had left an indelible imprint on their genes.

The Otherness. Each had been touched by the Otherness.

And so begins a hunt . . . for the pieces of a Device, a Contraption, a Thing-a-ma-jig. Call it what you will, it has power . . . it straddles the worlds - the one we know and another we cannot see.

What it will do when reassembled, only Oz knows. But the completed Device, activated in the right place at the proper time will change everything - make up down, and down up . . . freaks normal, and normals freaks.

Hop aboard. The Oddity Emporium leaves soon.

You want to join. You need to join.

Youd damn well better join.

• Signed by F. Paul Wilson.

  First Signed Limited Edition Hardcover. 1 of 500 copies published. Necessary Evil Press 2007. Fine/Fine.

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