As the circus grew more and more popular, Bo Li quickly became the subject of conversation for everyone in New Orleans.
The gentlemen were unanimous in declaring that the circus performance was bound to fail, and that Bo Li would lose everything.
The first reason was that Bo Li was a woman. The gentlemen had never seen a circus led by a woman.
It was already shocking enough that women were demanding the right to vote, but now she dared to wear men’s clothing and promote her circus openly in the streets—such conduct was utterly disgraceful.
The second reason was that everyone knew the saying “women have long hair and short knowledge.” Even though Bo Li had cut her hair short, it could not change the fact of her limited knowledge.
Although a circus was a lowly performance of the marketplace, it still required the vision of men to support it.
Look at those successful troupes—all without exception had men at the helm.
Did Bo Li really understand the circus?
Did she think that by putting on men’s clothes and playing a few clever tricks, she could draw in crowds of spectators to watch her performances?
In high society, men in fact were not supposed to gossip about women.
Yet Bo Li’s behavior was so strange, and coupled with her constant appearances in men’s attire, the gentlemen felt their dignity challenged and began to criticize her every move.
The ladies, on the other hand, were divided into two factions. One believed Bo Li’s behavior was indeed scandalous, but since she was not a proper lady, they found it inconvenient to comment, merely closing their doors in silence and refusing her visits.
The other faction felt that Bo Li was beautiful, and when dressed as a man appeared both austere and graceful, and thus could be invited into their homes to be admired.
At this time, Bo Li once again declared—
Before watching the performance, everyone must sign a waiver.
For the performance was too terrifying, and not everyone was suited to watch, nor did everyone have the courage to claim that one hundred dollars.
Those with heart disease, asthma, epilepsy, and the like were strictly forbidden to enter.
If visitors insisted on entering, they had to first go with Bo Li to the police station and sign a life-and-death document—
—confirming that even if illness were triggered by fright during the performance, no responsibility would be placed on the circus.
When the sheriff heard this, he strongly objected. But Bo Li said that if the sheriff were willing to give her performance a rating—by sending in a few officers to experience it and score its level of terror—she would allow the sheriff to become a shareholder, receiving twenty percent of the monthly profits.
The sheriff, not expecting that his casual objection would earn him twenty percent of the profits, immediately shut his mouth.
The officers, however, were less than pleased—for while the sheriff would take the money, they would have to make the trip and evaluate the performance, which was nothing but thankless trouble.
“I won’t be going,” one officer curled his lip, “I’m already too busy patrolling the streets every day, where would I find the time to see a circus.”
“I won’t go either.”
“Miss Claremont, our apologies. We are all very much looking forward to your circus performance, but as you know, our duties keep us terribly occupied…”
“No matter,” Bo Li said in surprise, “I had intended to say that after the officers watched the full performance, each could also receive a reward of one hundred dollars. Since you all have no time, then so be it.”
She smiled slightly, removed her hat, and gave a bow. “Forgive me for the disturbance.”
At this, the officers suddenly found themselves with free time after all, crowding around, eager to arrange with Bo Li a time to attend the performance.
One officer, more impatient than the rest, reached out to seize Bo Li’s arm—he was the very one who had curled his lip earlier, and fearing Bo Li might ignore him, he took hold directly.
But at that very moment, the officer suddenly felt a chilling and terrifying gaze fixed upon him.
Something was watching him.
The officer’s hair stood on end, and he whipped his head around—only to see nothing.
Yet when he turned back to look at Bo Li, that sensation of being watched returned.
A chill invaded from all directions.
Though the fireplace was burning in the office, the officer broke out in a cold sweat beneath that gaze.
Bo Li did not notice this brief interlude.
She herself was somewhat uneasy—not out of fear of losing everything, but of Erik truly frightening someone to death.
Her plan was simple.
The performance took its form from the modern “haunted house,” yet aside from the deformed actors, the most crucial element was Erik himself.
The original work had written that his greatest delight was to first leave others dumbfounded, then prove that he possessed an extraordinary intelligence worthy of his name.¹
He was, quite literally, born to be a haunted house NPC.
And as chance would have it, he truly was a horror film protagonist.
The only problem was that letting him scare the visitors was like sending a flock of lambs into the mouth of a wolf.
Bo Li worried he might not restrain his murderous nature, and in the midst of frightening them, strangle the ignorant lambs outright.
After much consideration, she decided that for every performance, she herself would follow the visitors inside, so as to prevent the haunted house from becoming a river of blood.
Day by day passed, and two weeks later, Bo Li received a letter from Erik—she could not understand why he had to write when he might just as well have spoken.
On the stationery there was only one short line, the handwriting sharp and cold as the edge of a blade:
“Everything is ready.”
Signed, E.
The speed was astonishing.
In just half a month, he had transformed a tavern into the haunted house she had envisioned?
But then, that tavern had been built at the start of the century, and had gone through the Civil War, with plenty of trapdoors and hidden passages for refuge.
Moreover, Bo Li had not been idle either; she had hired a number of seamstresses to sew props for the haunted house. That the progress was quick was natural—though she had not expected it would take only half a month.
Still, recalling how he conjured up piles of clothes and shoes from who knew where each day, Bo Li was reassured.
If there truly existed supernatural power in this world, it must lie within him.
Bo Li first wrote a letter to the officers, inviting them to attend the performance that evening. She then wrote another to the gentlemen who had been the loudest voices in opposition, inviting them to “test their courage.”
Bo Li admitted this second letter carried a trace of personal spite.
After all, had they not once said with every breath, “women have long hair and short knowledge”?
Once both letters were finished, Bo Li did not rest, but wrote yet another article, intending to have the newspaper manager print it on the front page.
The title was even more mischievous:
“‘Miss Claremont’s Circus’ performance is about to begin. Invitations have already been extended to Mr. A, Mr. B, and Mr. C—one wonders whether they dare to come and test their courage?”
Although no names were mentioned, New Orleans was only so large, and high society an even smaller circle.
Few gentlemen ever spoke of women, so once the article was published, nearly all the citizens knew who Mr. A, Mr. B, and Mr. C referred to.
At that moment, something even more bizarre occurred.
One officer actually made a public statement: “The performance effects of ‘Miss Claremont’s Circus’ are astonishing, but those of weak psychological endurance had best not attend, lest they bear the consequences themselves.”
It was like a stone dropped into water, stirring up a thousand ripples.
On the streets, men, women, children, and idle ruffians alike were all discussing the performance about to begin; in smoking rooms, gentlemen whispered about the circus’s so-called test of courage.
At parties and balls, ladies also speculated curiously on whether those three gentlemen could pass the test.
What gnawed at people most of all was: what in the world had happened, that an officer would say such a thing?
That evening, three officers signed the waiver, exchanged glances, and with hands in their pockets, talking and laughing, went inside.
Bo Li draped a black cloak over her shoulders and followed after them.
They cast critical eyes over the furnishings, making harsh remarks:
“Miss Claremont, I think this arrangement could be made a little more frightening—what do you think?”
“I’ve seen quite a few freak shows. Others’ setups are far scarier than this. Your performance style may be novel, but after a while it still grows tiresome.”
“Please don’t take offense at our bluntness,” one officer said. “We only speak so because we hope for your performance to succeed. If we did not wish for your success, we could just take the hundred dollars and leave.”
Bo Li smiled gently. “I do not mind.”
When they reached the second floor, one officer began to feel bored. “Where are the actors? We’re not just going to keep walking forward like this, are we?”
In truth, only two minutes had passed.
Bo Li remembered him—he was the officer who had curled his lip, named Henry, coarse by nature, combative like a rooster.
“Forget it,” Henry said. “For the sake of the money, if a reporter asks, I’ll still pretend to have been frightened.”
Bo Li said nothing.
Following Erik’s instructions, she slipped into the darkness.
Not receiving a reply, Henry glanced back, but saw no sign of Bo Li. Shrugging, he went on.
Before the performance began, Bo Li had given him a card—his role to play.
Henry had taken one glance and tossed it aside—he was supposed to play a deformed woman.
The very thought repulsed him.
Like other men, Henry scorned women. Upon hearing that a woman meant to run a circus, his first reaction had been derision.
If not for that hundred dollars, who would come to see this show?
Beyond the identity cards, every place they passed had detailed story guidance.
Henry ignored it all, as if reading the text would diminish his masculinity.
The other two officers, however, read with care, even discussing in hushed voices. Henry could not help a sneer.
Ten minutes later, the other two officers wished to follow the story guidance, to see Marbelle’s past.
Henry found an excuse to separate from the others—he could not understand what there was to see, only a waste of time. Better to keep moving forward, get out quickly, and claim that hundred dollars.
Yet as he walked, a chill suddenly crawled up his back—that sensation of being watched returned once more.
Someone was following him.
Henry stopped and turned around.
Nothing.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Henry said evenly. “You want to frighten me into quitting halfway, into giving up that hundred dollars, don’t you? I suppose that’s what your lady manager told you—if you can scare off the strong policeman, then that hundred dollars is yours, right?”
No reply.
But the feeling of being watched would not disperse.
Forcing down his unease, Henry continued forward.
The next moment, the lock of a door along the tavern’s corridor gave a faint rustle—like fingernails scratching against it, creak… creak… as though something inside wished to come out.
Henry frowned, seized the doorknob, and flung it open.
Yet the room was empty, utterly bare.
Henry knew well this was a cheap street trick, not worth a place on stage, but still his heart pounded wildly, and sweat dampened his back.
At the same time, that feeling of being watched descended once more.
Someone was standing behind him!
Henry whirled around.
This time, it was no longer nothing. What he saw now exceeded his expectations of terror.
A woman was crawling toward him, dragging four deformed, grotesque legs. Her hair was disheveled, her face contorted, and her nails scraped agonizing marks into the floorboards.
Behind her loomed a giant with a carpenter’s saw in his hand.
The giant must have been two and a half meters tall. He seized the woman’s hair in one hand, and with the other pressed the carpenter’s saw downward, sawing into her legs.
The sound of the saw grinding through flesh and bone filled the air.
Blood and torn flesh spattered about.
The woman let out a shrill, heart-rending scream, clawing at her own scalp and pulling free clumps of bloody hair.
Cold seeped through Henry’s entire body; his stomach knotted with nausea.
As time passed, the sound of the saw grew grotesque, turning into something between a meat grinder and a juicer, chilling him to the marrow.
At last Henry understood what the woman was shrieking.
“Save me… he’s going to saw off my feet for specimens!” she wailed, gasping for breath. “He’s going to saw off my feet for specimens—save me!”
At the same time, the giant lifted his head and looked at Henry.
“You want to save her?” He rose to his feet, pulling the saw free from the woman’s leg. “Very well. Then let me saw off your leg instead.”
This is fake.
Henry told himself so.
Yet the blood on the floor was so real—warm, viscous, and reeking of iron—that it spread to his feet, soaking the soles of his shoes.
The chunks of flesh tangled in the woman’s hair were just as horribly real.
The instant Henry saw them clearly, his stomach contracted violently; he nearly gagged aloud.
“You can’t scare me,” Henry forced down the urge to vomit, feigning calm. “That hundred dollars is mine. No matter how you act it out, I won’t quit halfway.”
But the giant, as though deaf, showed no expression. Dragging the blood-soaked carpenter’s saw, he advanced toward Henry step by step.
In that split second, countless thoughts flashed through Henry’s mind.
Perhaps this was not a performance at all. Perhaps Bo Li was not a circus manager, but a cruel serial killer.
Such cases were hardly rare: serial killers setting traps, luring the unsuspecting into their lair, then slaughtering them for sport.
Otherwise, how could the blood and flesh be so real?
And why did the woman’s expression look so filled with agony?
It was as though she had truly experienced such torment.
And that strange sensation of being watched… Surely this group had long since intended to kill him.
Henry tried not to show his growing panic.
He reached for his holster, meaning to draw his gun and warn the giant to stop—but his gun had already been removed before entering the tavern!
At the time, he had been told no weapons were allowed, and he had not thought much of it. Casually, he had unbuckled his gun and left it with one of Bo Li’s attendants for safekeeping.
Now that he thought of it—if this was not premeditated, then what was?
The giant’s massive figure loomed ever closer, and Henry could no longer maintain his composure. He turned and bolted.
But the tavern was small, the corridor narrow and short. In mere moments, he had run himself into a dead end.
The giant was terrifyingly tall. In order to move down the corridor, he had to hunch his body.
Worst of all, that strange sensation of being watched returned once more.
Henry’s heart trembled with suspicion.
He was already at the corridor’s end, his back pressed against the tavern wall—how could there still be someone watching him?
Unless—
The watcher was inside the wall.
At that very moment, it seemed as though a pair of powerful hands reached out from within the wall, seizing Henry’s ribs in an unyielding grip.
Henry felt his blood turn to ice, his breath all but stop, as though he had stepped into nothingness and plummeted into a freezing abyss.
—Why would there be hands reaching out from inside the wall?
By then, the giant had reached him, raising the carpenter’s saw slowly before his eyes.
Warm liquid dripped onto Henry’s face.
The woman’s blood.
It was not fake.
On the saw’s blade there were even fragments of bone, mottled red and white—
So real, how could it possibly be false?
Terror engulfed Henry entirely. His eyes bulged wide, his chest convulsed rapidly, his breathing sharp and ragged. His body went slack, and he fainted outright.
When Bo Li saw Henry on the verge of collapse, she pulled the other two officers over, letting them witness the entire process from the perspective of bystanders.
From another angle, the scene seemed somewhat “false.”
The giant’s expression was a little stiff, and Emily’s acting slightly exaggerated, but Henry appeared as though under some kind of psychological suggestion, panicked and retreating step by step, until he was frightened into unconsciousness.
The two officers looked at one another in astonishment, never having expected the usually overbearing, hyper-masculine Henry to be so easily frightened.
Bo Li whispered, “This has nothing to do with us, right? You both saw it—our actors never even touched him.”
“Indeed,” one officer said. “Henry fainted on his own, simply because his courage was too small.”
“Still,” the other officer said, “your performance does carry a certain risk. We’ll have to warn the public in the papers, advise that those of weak nerves not attend, lest they bear the consequences themselves… Will you accept that?”
Upon hearing this, Bo Li nearly bloomed with delight, and could scarcely resist giving the officer an enthusiastic embrace.
Clearly, he had no idea what reverse psychology was, nor did he understand the sort of slogans that existed—“Not for the faint of heart,” “Contains terrifying scenes, do not click,” “If you cannot endure horror, close this video immediately,” and the like.
Bo Li could already predict the uproar that would follow once the officer made this statement public.
Yet all she could do was feign regret, saying, “…I understand your concerns, and it can only be this way. I truly apologize—I never imagined matters would come to this.”
The two officers offered her a few words of comfort, then carried the unconscious Henry away.
Inside the tavern, the light returned once more.
Bo Li praised each actor, and especially Emily—lauding her skill, her power of expression, saying she was a born performer.
Emily, who had been steeped in sorrow and unable to free herself, now found that playing the haunted house role—reenacting her own near past and terrifying a “normal” before her eyes—had lightened her whole being, as if a heavy burden had been cast off.
She had not forgotten—it was Bo Li who had given all this to her.
Though Emily was not skilled with words, she was no ingrate. She hugged Bo Li tightly and whispered, “Thank you.”
Theodore also inclined his head to Bo Li. “Thank you.”
Bo Li had never let down her guard around him, and had placed little hope in his performance. She had not expected his effect to be so astonishing—that he could so thoroughly frighten an officer into fainting. She did not stint in her praise of him either.
Once the actors had departed, Madam Freeman came up with a bucket to clean the “bloodstains” on the floor.
Bo Li chatted idly with her for a while, exchanged goodnights, and made her way toward the tavern door.
But halfway there—
A gloved hand suddenly shot out, seized her wrist, and pulled her into a hidden trapdoor.
—Erik.
This was their first close contact in some time.
Compared with the beginning, the air about him had changed greatly.
No longer was it always the stench of sweat and blood, nor the monotonous scent of soap; from his collar there drifted even the faintest trace of perfume.
Bo Li froze for a moment, then rose on tiptoe, leaning in to catch the scent.
It truly was perfume.
Whether due to his own bearing or not, the fragrance seemed dry as cypress, sharp as a blade, burning with a bitter, piercing note.
The next instant, he seized her chin forcefully, turning her face aside. As though restraining some emotion, his breath grew rapid and uneven.
Bo Li could not fathom what he was thinking.
He had dragged her inside, only to forbid her to approach.
He had spilled perfume upon himself, only to forbid her from smelling it.
She thought for a moment, then suddenly had a flash of insight.
…Could it be that he, too, wanted her praise?
Bo Li tried tentatively: “…I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you—you were especially incredible today. Without you, our performance would never have succeeded so well.”
As soon as her words fell, his gloved hand came down to cover her eyes.
The last thing she saw was the austere line of his jaw beneath the white mask, and the flush spread across his neck and ears, red as though a rash had broken out.
In that instant, Bo Li was left with only one thought—
So last time, it had not been an allergy. It was embarrassment.