Roach Weidenreich, the mere name brought goose bumps to Stephen Conner's skin. And yet, here he now stood, waiting like the others in the line outside the ramshackle theatre, right under the piercing scrutiny of the man himself as he glared like a devil from the many posters fixed to the wall.

The crowd shuffled forward a step, then another; a sign that the doors had opened. Swallowing a lump in his throat, Conner moved forward, his eyes to the floor; scared to look at that face.

Now he was at the entrance. Conner revealed his ticket to the usher on duty and was directed to one of the doors through which the crowd was already filing. Now in the foyer, it seemed that everywhere he looked he saw that face, that poster:

By popular demand, thought Conner, who are they trying to fool? Of those he had overheard in the crowd outside, no one had ever been to one of Roach's performances before. Indeed, as he entered a shadowy passage leading to the theatre proper, the thought that he alone had seen one such act (and lived to remember it) filled his mind.

It was dark in the theatre. Conner finally found his place, his ears telling him that tonight's show had probably attracted a full house. He settled into his uncomfortable seat; his sight virtually useless in the shadowy gloom.

The crowd continued to shuffle as some struggled to get to their seats.

Minutes passed, the constant murmuring of those around increasing the sense of fear within Conner. He felt as though the chamber had become filled with amorphous, muttering things, each hungry for his blood.

Then, the sound started. To call it music would be like calling the screams from a burning orphanage melodious. The sound seemed to rise like something dead and wailing from the theatre basement, where all sorts of things could lurk. Like a dark, unseen tide, it quickly drowned the hum from the crowd.

Conner shifted in his seat. Then spotlights illuminated the stage. A fresh wave of fear rushed through him as he realised just how close to the front he was seated.

On to the stage there stepped a compere, his bald pate all but glowing. "Ladies and gentlemen! May I take this opportunity to welcome you all this evening, to what promises to be a night of undiluted mayhem." Many in the crowd voiced their approvals.

'Poor bastards,' thought Conner, shaking his head.

"What a show we have in store," said the compere, a mad gleam in his eye. "The first act features those manic midgets from Motherwell, those...wee men from north of the border, those dangerous dwarves..."

"C'mon, get on wi' it." A short, stocky figure, dressed in a padded leotard and carrying a couple of hatchets stomped on to the stage.

"Let's hear it for...Sammy and the Boys!" shouted the compere, gesturing to the dwarf. He then retreated off stage accompanied by a smattering of applause.

Conner watched as another four midgets, each dressed like Sammy, rushed out on to the stage. The diminutive fivesome cavorted, performing acts of none too great dexterity. With a hoot and a cry (in addition to the occasional foul-mouthed expletive) the entertainers leapt and cartwheeled. One walked on his hands, his fat backside wobbling for all to see.

"C'mon, James! Quit jeeblin' o'er yer wilkies!" shouted Sammy. "Lets gie these folk summat tae remember us be."

Another midget did a forward roll, awkwardly leaping to his feet. "Aye, fayther!"

For the next ten minutes, the dwarves entertained the crowd with their ungraceful acrobatics and juggling expertise, the gleaming axes they used spinning in the air. Every so often one of them would fall over or mistime a catch, often with a bloody result. They would get a laugh all the same.

And then, seemingly over before it had started, Sammy and his sons collected their props, linked hands and bowed in unison.

"Cheers everyb'dy!" said Sammy, preparing to leave.

"Ladies and gentlemen! Let's hear it for Sammy and the Boys! Weren't they great!" The balding compere strode from the side, clapping as he came.

"Scottish gits!" shouted a man in the second row. "Pathetic! I've never seen such rubbish in all my life!"

Conner glanced over. The heckler had stood up and was making rude gestures at the stage.

Suddenly, Sammy rushed forward, brandishing a handaxe. He looked around, his wild eyes searching the crowd. "Whit ye sayin' aboot me an' ma boys? Ye swine that ye are!"

Conner stared dumbstruck as the crazed dwarf ranted on.

"Go on, get tae buggery! Ye bastard that ye are!" Sammy rushed forward, his hurled hatchet spinning end over end towards the heckler. The man's screams echoed around the poorly-lit theatre as the whistling blade sliced his right ear off. The handaxe then thudded into an empty seat two rows behind.

Conner watched in horror.

Several in the crowd screamed as the one-eared man desperately scrambled over the seats behind. With blood oozing from the side of his head, he stumbled over and then made a break for it, awkwardly shoving his way along. He got near the end of the row, when another handaxe thudded with deadly accuracy into the side of his head. The force of the blow catapulted him over and into the next row where he fell, upended.

Conner watched in stunned silence as the unfortunate's legs twitched. The body then slumped down into the space between the seats.

There followed an unsettling silence, a silence which was soon interrupted by the sound of the angry midget cursing to himself as he stomped off stage.

Conner sat, like the majority off the audience, stunned and horrified at what had just happened. My God! he thought, what kind of barbarism was this? Or could it be part of the act...no more than a well managed illusion? His thoughts seemed to be echoed by some in the audience as a ripple of uneasy laughter spread across the room. He watched as others left their seats, moving to the side aisles, fearful that the vicious dwarf would return or disgusted by this gross performance. They kept well clear of the body.

The compere returned, patting the sweat from his face with a handkerchief.

"Well...that was something else, I'm sure you'd all agree." He took a mint from a pocket, flicked it into the air and caught it in his mouth. "As for tonight's second act...may I present, all the way from the 'Grand Guignol' theatre in Paris, the one, the only...Monsieur...Claude Giraudin!"

The lights dimmed. The curtains rose, albeit clumsily. The haunting organ groaning of Bach's Toccata and Fugue started up as clouds of dry ice billowed on to the stage. As the fog cleared, the music continued. When the piece had finished, Conner could discern a caped organist, his back to the audience.

The caped figure, resplendent in a top hat, walked through the knee high fog. Behind him could be seen some hastily erected stage props; a rather crude attempt to transform the stage into the likeness of a cemetery.

Removing his top hat with the flair of a true showman, Monsieur Giraudin, his face painted like an actor from an old silent movie, walked over to one of the headstone props. He sat down and stared unblinkingly at the crowd.

Conner shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The evening was proving to be even worse than he had anticipated. Although he had seen Weidenreich before, the man had been supported by different acts last time or had he? His memory of that last time was somehow scrambled and elusive. The general theme of violence and terror was, however, horribly familiar.

On stage, Giraudin rose to his feet and passed his hand over the hat with a flourish, then with a wiggle of his arm, he reached in and pulled out a severed head. It was that of the youngest midget.

A cry went through the auditorium.

Giraudin grinned, his face like a skull. He looked at the head and then threw it into the crowd. It vanished in mid flight in a blue flash, drawing another cry from the audience.

Conner had to admit he was impressed (horrified, but impressed).

A second midget's head, a third and a fourth were also removed from the hat. Giraudin studied each, at one point lovingly caressing one's cheek, before throwing them to the audience. They all vanished as had the first. He turned and walked to the other end of the stage. With hat held in one hand he rose his other arm high before plunging it inside.

This time Giraudin screamed as though he'd been gelded; his face a portrait in pain. He pulled his arm free. Clamped on to the arm, its teeth around the wrist, was Sammy's head!

As one, the crowd visibly winced. Some screamed. Others, deciding they had seen enough made for the doors.

The Parisian conjurer screamed, trying to shake the midget's head free. The head fell back into the hat (which now lay on the stage floor), dragging Monsieur Giraudin with it.

Captivated by the scene before him, Conner watched as the hat slowly began to swallow the Frenchman.

Giraudin's limbs danced in spasmodic judders as, like a constrictor snake with its prey, the hat began to expand as it drew him in. Blood poured over the brim. Then with a slurping noise, he was engulfed from head to waist. Somehow, he staggered to his feet, blood covering what was visible of him. Then he crashed against one of the plastic grave markers and fell to the ground.

Surprised that the man could still be alive (assuming that this was for real and not another trick) Conner watched as the organist's legs kicked as though he was trying to right himself once more.

Then, with a final slurp, the hat devoured everything bar one foot. A trouser leg and well polished shoe protruded at an odd-angle.

The bloodstained hat sat alone on the stage, steaming and burping like some gorged fat toad.

A disturbing minute elapsed. Conner stared, confused, bemused and utterly disgusted.

Then it happened. Like a geyser, a torrent of blood and guts fountained out of the hat. The crowd screamed as one. Still the red spray came, covering the stage in its gory soup. Had anyone been left in the front row they would have been drenched.

Still the hat sat there, Giraudin's unmoving foot defying Conner's sense of reality. He had hoped it would move, disappear, do something, anything but lie there. If it had gone, he could have rationalised that there had been some kind of trapdoor or something. Some escape hatch into which the entertainer had gone.

Matters were made worse when a stage hand came on, lifted the hat (foot and all) off the floor and disappeared behind the descending curtain.

The lights dimmed.

A spotlight fell on the stage, following the movements of the compere as he strode out from the side. "Ladies and gentlemen! Our next act this evening needs no introduction and so, without further ado, may I present that master of the macabre...Roach Weidenreich!"

Conner covered his eyes, peering from a slit between his fingers as the curtain rose.

A smartly dressed man of indeterminable age stood on the stage next to a high chair. Cradled in his right arm was something from a child's nightmare. The thing was lumpy and potato-shaped, what face it had resembled a cross between a battered child and a drooling bulldog. It was dressed in an old-fashioned suit complete with tie, hat and baggy jacket. Whereas most of the body had been fashioned (God preserve us if that thing was real, thought Conner) to look stunted and deformed, its arms looked like human arms and moved accordingly.

"Good evening," Roach said, his voice eloquent, yet thickly accented. "I am Roach Weidenreich."

"An' I'm Uncle Tarby," growled the dummy, its eyes seemingly seeking out Conner's.

"Tonight, what a show we have in store," Roach said, sequins on his dark suit glinting.

"Have we?" the dummy responded, turning its gaze on its controller.

"Have we what?" Roach said, a look of fake confusion on his face.

"A show?"

"But of course, Tarby. For tonight it is our...."

"What's happened 'ere? There's bleedin' innards an' all sorts lying about," said Uncle Tarby, noting the visceral spillage left over from the last act. "Has my mate Jack been about?"

"It is quite a mess," replied Roach, looking down. "I would have thought they..."

"'Ere missus," Tarby interrupted, its eyes drawn to a horrified woman stood in one of the aisles."How's about me and you go backstage fer a ...?"

"Tarby! Decorum, please."

"Shut up you old tit," the dummy croaked. "Do ye think I've got nuthen better to do than sit 'ere with yer hand up my arse all eve? Besides, there are some nice bits o' skirt in tonight." Leering, the dummy stared into the audience.

"Now, I've warned you before, whilst on stage you are on your best behaviour," Roach admonished, his free hand wagging near the diminutive thing's head.

"Oh, piss off you annoying tit," Tarby croaked, turning to the audience with a mischievous grin.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Please forgive my associate, but you must understand, that for someone who spends most of his life in a box..."

"I'll put you in a bleedin' box, you old bastard," the obscene puppet-thing rasped.

"As I was saying," Roach continued. "Please forgive my associate..."

"Yeh, its not his fault he's a tit."

"You sir have gone too far."

"You sir have gone too far," the dummy repeated in a childish, mocking voice.

"I'll put you back in your box," the ventriloquist said, pacing to one end of the stage, Tarby's legs dangling above the floor.

"No, anythin' but the box. I promise to be good," Tarby replied, grinning repulsively to the crowd.

"Promise?"

The dummy bowed its head. A trail of what looked like saliva drooled from it gaping mouth and pooled on the wooden stage.

"Promise?" Roach repeated.

"Go on then," the dummy said, nodding.

The bulk of the act was carried off in the same vein. The dummy would insult the audience or its controller, whilst Roach kept up the facade of being the ultimate gentleman. Amidst the horrific comedy, the ventriloquist would sometimes participate in a little one-handed prestidigitation, often with hysterical outcomes.

As the act was coming to a close, Roach started back to the high chair in the middle of the stage when suddenly the dummy turned on him. With its human-like arms it reached out and grasped its controller around the throat.

Roach's eyes bulged like a toad's as Tarby's vice-like hold clamped around his neck. Feebly, he pummelled his ghastly assailant as the two staggered across the stage. Horror-tainted laughter sounded from the audience as Roach and Tarby stumbled against the high chair before clattering to the floor. In the brawl Tarby's hat was sent flying, revealing the dummy's short greasy hair.

Conner peeked at the sick slapstick from behind his fingers.

With his legs kicking and the dummy now astride his chest, Roach pulled out a dagger with his free hand. Twice he stabbed the berserk puppet, red blood splattering with each hit. On his third attempt, Tarby released its strangle hold and instead grabbed its controller's wrist. Screaming and writhing, the ventriloquist could do little but watch in horror as the dummy shook the bloodied dagger from his hand.

Conner sat up, his eyes fixed on the anarchic puppetry. He then watched as with murderous intent, Tarby retrieved the dagger.

Some two dozen stunned spectators then witnessed the brutal stabbing of Roach at the hands of his dummy. Screams resounded around the decaying building as the thing known as Uncle Tarby maliciously butchered its controller. Again and again the dagger descended, blood spurting with each stab.

More screams accompanied the frantic departure of half the remaining audience.

Astride Roach's body, the blood-spattered dummy turned to stare at those still seated, a maniacal glint in its eyes. In its hand it still held the crimson-bladed weapon."Who's next? Who's next?"

"Lower the curtain! Lower the curtain!" the compere yelled, his anxious face peering from one side.

"I'll get you too, you bald bastard!" Tarby growled.

The curtain fell.

Conner, his heart thumping like a jackhammer, took a deep breath and rose from his chair. Looking over his shoulder, he saw ten or so strong-stomached individuals left in the audience. Obeying a pull that he was powerless to resist, he made his way down the row and clambered on to the stage. "Excuse me, can I have a moment of your time?"

The remaining men watched in surprise, believing that the show was over.

"Well, I'm sure you've all enjoyed tonight's cabaret, if you hadn't you wouldn't still be sitting here." Conner gave a nod to the compere who waited in the wings.

Two of the remaining audience put on their raincoats and prepared to leave.

"I'm afraid you'll find the doors are locked. There'll be no escape," Conner said, apologetically.

The compere walked on stage. "He's right you know, gents."

"What's this all about?" shouted a thick-set man, pulling on his coat.

The compere nonchalantly strode to the edge of the stage. "Hell and Damnation, my friend. Hell and Damnation." His smile changed into a feral grin.

"I'm leaving, this has turned stupid," the man said, walking to the doors.

"Your time for leaving has passed," said the compere. "Turn round!"

The man's head revolved, wrenched a hundred and eighty degrees. The other men cried in horror.

Conner watched from the stage, powerless to help.

The compere suddenly clapped his hands and the screams broke off. The men all stood to attention, their muscles no longer under their control. With vacant eyes they turned to face the stage."That's better, even I get tired of the sweet sound of distress," the compere said. "I run the best, most extreme show in the world my friends. In any world, in fact, isn't that right Conner?"

Conner nodded, miserably.

"Would you like to explain, Conner?" invited the compere.

"He's the Devil, we are the damned, you'll all die horribly," Conner said, curtly.

"Come now, you can do better than that," the compere chided him. "Never mind, I'll tell you myself. Sammy and the Boys, their unfortunate critic, Monsieur Giraudin and Roach Weidenreich were all that remained of the last shows' audience, those who stayed to the very end, drinking in the violence and blood. Just like them, you are now going to be the entertainment next time I put on a show...and, just like them you are going to die."

On stage, Conner cast a nauseated look at the remnants of tonight's performance. He stood almost ankle-deep in splattered human remains.

"Now then, what shall we have? Well we've already got our amazing back-to-front-man...ah yes, I think we'll also have some black and white minstrels." The compere pointed at a group of men who, released from immobility fell to the floor, writhing in pain as their faces blackened. "What else? Ah yes...you can be a sword swallower, no prizes for guessing how you're going to die." The compere turned his attention to the last remaining man. "You sir, will have the starring role, you will be Roach Weidenreich!"

As the man's features began to contort into the face on the poster, he managed to croak a question. "What...about Tarby?"

"Tarby? Why he is my associate, the only one who survives the show, except for young Conner of course." The compere grabbed Conner around the shoulders in a parody of affection. "I found a while ago that I love having him in the audience, in agonies of disgust and horror. So I partially wipe his memory before each show so that he can experience it all anew before he remembers right at the end that he is stuck here too."

Conner nodded, his now perfect memory torturing him. He had sat through countless shows after that first, fateful one where his curiosity had got the better of his good taste. He wished that he too could die but that did not seem to be an option any more. He was doomed to attend and participate in this horror show for all eternity.

"Come with me my new friends, we must prepare you for the next show." The compere herded Conner and the other men to the back of the theatre, his leering demonic face a horror to behold. "You're going to enjoy the rehearsals and I'm sure you'll go down a treat. Cheer up, it's not such a bad way to go. Entertaining the adoring fans will be your final act."

The sorry crew of lost souls, once more under the Devil's complete control, danced out of the theatre to his favourite song.

"Give 'em the old razzle dazzle. Razzle, dazzle 'em. Give 'em a show with lots of flesh in it...."