Cirque Du Freak

THE SAGA OF DARREN SHAN

BOOK 1

I’VE ALWAYS been fascinated by spiders. I used to collect them when I was younger. I’d spend hours rooting through the dusty old shed at the bottom of our garden, hunting the cobwebs for lurking eight-legged predators. When I found one, I’d bring it in and let it loose in my bedroom.

It used to drive my mum mad!

Usually, the spider would slip away after no more than a day or two, never to be seen again, but sometimes they hung around longer. I had one who made a cobweb above my bed and stood sentry for almost a month. Going to sleep, I used to imagine the spider creeping down, crawling into my mouth, sliding down my throat and laying loads of eggs in my belly. The baby spiders would hatch after a while and eat me alive, from the inside out.

I loved being scared when I was little.

When I was nine, my mum and dad gave me a small tarantula. It wasn’t poisonous or very big, but it was the greatest gift I’d ever received. I played with that spider almost every waking hour of the day. Gave it all sorts of treats: flies and cockroaches and tiny worms. Spoilt it rotten.

Then, one day, I did something stupid. I’d been watching a cartoon in which one of the characters was sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. No harm came to him. He squeezed out of the bag, dusty and dirty and mad as hell. It was very funny.

So funny, I tried it myself. With the tarantula.

Needless to say, things didn’t happen quite like they did in the cartoon. The spider was ripped to pieces. I cried a lot, but it was too late for tears. My pet was dead, it was my fault, and there was nothing I could do about it.

My parents nearly hollered the roof down when they found out what I’d done – the tarantula had cost quite a bit of money. They said I was an irresponsible fool, and from that day on they never again let me have a pet, not even an ordinary garden spider.

I started with that tale from the past for two reasons. One will become obvious as this book unfolds. The other reason is:

This is a true story.

I don’t expect you to believe me – I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t lived it – but it is. Everything I describe in this book happened, just as I tell it.

The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books, the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn’t matter what they do, because everything comes good at the end. They’ll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up hunky-dory.

In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall out of a tree, you break some bones.

Real life’s nasty. It’s cruel. It doesn’t care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.

I just wanted to make that clear before I began.

One more thing: my name isn’t really Darren Shan. Everything’s true in this book, except for names. I’ve had to change them because… well, by the time you get to the end, you’ll understand.

I haven’t used any real names, not mine, my sister’s, my friends or teachers. Nobody’s. I’m not even going to tell you the name of my town or country. I daren’t.

Anyway, that’s enough of an introduction. If you’re ready, let’s begin. If this was a made-up story, it would begin at night, with a storm blowing and owls hooting and rattling noises under the bed. But this is a real story, so I have to begin where it really started.

It started in a toilet.

I WAS in the toilet at school, sitting down, humming a song. I had my trousers on. I’d come in near the end of English class, feeling sick. My teacher, Mr Dalton, is great about things like that. He’s smart and knows when you’re faking and when you’re being serious. He took one look at me when I raised my hand and said I was ill, then nodded his head and told me to make for the toilet.