The Midnight Circus

by Jane Yolen

  “I ordered camp to be made a little way off while the tent was dug out. I was the first to enter. Of the five members of the Polar expedition only three had even made it this far. Two of them were fully wrapped in their sleeping bags, so that it was necessary to unfasten the bags to identify them. I could scarcely bear to look upon their frozen faces.” His good eye closed again but this time the dead one kept staring up, as if gazing on the cold, wasted past.

  “Do you wish to rest a moment?” I asked, worried that he had tired himself to no good end. But he once again waved an impatient hand.

  “Let me finish,” he said. “Let it all be finished.” And then, as if my very interruption lent him strength, he returned to his tale.

  “Dr. Wilson—whose artistic skills have left such striking images of the polar landscape—lay with his hands across his chest. He looked as though he had merely fallen asleep. Stocky little Bowers, his feet pointed to the door, also appeared to have passed away without pain. I checked them carefully, leaving Scott ’til the very last. But in truth I was months too late to offer them succor. This was a tomb, and we were the grave robbers. I was careful not to disturb the dead more than I had to, simply ascertaining the manner of their deaths.

  “Between them lay our brave commander. He had thrown back the flaps of his sleeping bag and opened his coat, as if inviting the hostile elements to take him. His left hand was touching Wilson’s arm, his right was across his own chest. Beneath the fingers of that hand, I saw an envelope. It was kept separate from the other letters that were laid out on a ground sheet nearby. The name inscribed on the envelope was my own.”

  “Ah,” I said and, all unthinking, took a sip of the brandy. But my exhalation did nothing to stop the flow of Atkinson’s story. He went on.

  “Gently I pulled the envelope loose of the frozen body. Some indefinable instinct prompted me to conceal it in my pocket before I invited the others to enter—one by one—and bear witness to that tragic scene. We had been comrades to these dear, dead men. It was mere chance that they—and not we—had met eternity in this cold place. I left the others to their own thoughts, and retired to a spot well away from that awful tent, where I might open the envelope Scott had left for me and read the many pages he had written at the end without the others seeing me weep.”

  At this point Atkinson ceased his narrative and moved his hand stiffly to reach under the pillow behind him. He pulled out a fat envelope but had not the strength left to pass the thing on to me. I understood his intention and picked it up from the quilt where it had dropped from his enfeebled fingers. The envelope had yellowed, but the name Edward Atkinson could still be clearly discerned. The flap was open, but for some reason I hesitated to remove the contents.

  “You must read it,” Atkinson croaked, “otherwise you will have wasted your time—and mine also, which is considerably more precious, there being so much less of it.” In spite of his bristling tone, he had clearly exhausted himself by relating his lengthy tale.

  I pulled out Scott’s letter and began to read it aloud, so Atkinson would know I was bowing to his will. Hearing my voice speaking what were obviously familiar words, he closed his eyes, but I do not think he slept.

  My dear Atkinson, (the letter said)

  Words cannot express my heaviness of heart over subjecting you to this extra burden when you have just found us in this sad condition. But I have no choice in the matter. Indeed the choice was made for me in London five years ago.

  As the wind howls outside the tent, and the men lie dead by my side, I know the time has come for me to tell you all. I have long wrestled with this decision, wondering how great a disservice I do you. I even wondered for a while whether I was making my decision with a clear mind. The bleak desolation of Antarctica induces a singular state of consciousness quite different from that of ordinary life. One’s priorities are shifted, attitudes are altered in a way that is imperceptible even to oneself, until one returns at last to the comforts and demands of civilization. I know this well, having lived through such shifts before. But you are a man of science. With your instruments you have laid open every secret cavity of the human corpus. If this is a disease—as I believe it to be—of the body and not the mind, who better to understand it than you?

  Do I sound the mad man? Do not judge me yet, Atky. Read on, read on.

  First I must tell you that while you may rightly grieve for the others, do not do so for me. Of them all, only I have attained the one goal that I truly sought: peace and a final freedom from the curse that has afflicted me for some five years now.

  Yes—a curse. A disease and a curse. You must understand that or all is lost. If you have ever judged my behavior in this last expedition to have been difficult, even to the point of irrationality, I hope that these revelations will at least shed some light on my state of mind.

  It was never my ambition to be an explorer, let alone one who charted the new lands of Antarctica. I was but a simple seaman. However, when Sir Clements Markham singled me out for that first expedition, I saw an opportunity to rise above the humble circumstances of an undistinguished naval career. The benefits proved even greater than I had anticipated. The burdens, greater still.

  Returning to London after three years in Antarctica, I found myself to be a much sought-after celebrity. I now moved in an exotic milieu of writers, actors, and artists, not just hardened seamen. It quite turned my head, as much as a girl at her first ball. Indeed it was through my celebrity that I met my beautiful Kathleen. It is the one truly good thing I have done in this life. But do not, I pray you, burden Kathleen with what I am about to impart. Let her think me dead a hero. Only you will know otherwise. And—in this wild waste where I stay—I will know it as well.

  Now to get to the meat of the matter. My cursed disease. It began in London, of that I am sure. Having led a conventional, perhaps even dull, life before—even as a seaman I’d not resorted to low pubs and lower women—I found it difficult to resist the allures of a more Bohemian existence, especially with my dear wife newly pregnant and unable to go out with me even to the more staid parties. Time after time, after she had retired early to bed, I would frequent areas of London I might once have shunned for fear of embarrassment or scandal.

  What precisely occurred on the night that altered my fate so completely I have never been able to recall. Was it an infection I contracted from some whore? A mania passed on by tainted meat? Was I bitten by a mad dog? Raked by a rusty blade? Poisoned by some foreign tincture? Your surgeon’s knife might have uncovered the seat of the infection. But five years on, discovering it would be like arguing First Causes with a Jesuit—fascinating but beside the point. Whatever it was that set me on this dark path is all lost in the miasma of those London rookeries. And confused by the great quantity of rum I had drunk with my low friends.

  All I do know is that I found myself staggering down a deserted, muck-covered street in the early hours of the morning, my head pounding and my eyes curiously unfocused. I was also plagued by a peculiar thirst so intense that my throat was actually aching with it.

  It was here that I was approached by a drunken vagrant begging for money. I tried to push my way past him, for he was a noxious, smelly brute, but he persisted in blocking my path.

  “Guv’nor?” he said, his hand in my face.

  It enraged me. Enraged me.

  I do not speak here, Atkinson, of anger, or even a momentary spasm of annoyance, but of a pure, unreasoning rage.

  Now as a very young man I had been known for my quick temper, but in later years I had mastered such outbursts. Now, however, I was possessed by a rage such as I had never before experienced. I trembled with it, like a tree in a fierce storm. Seizing hold of the raggedy man by the front of his filthy shirt I hauled him down onto the pavement with a speed and savagery he was powerless to resist. Before I could understand what was happening, I found myself with my teeth at his throat, sucking away his life’s blood.

  My horrible thirst quenched by this g
hastly infusion, my head was finally cleared sufficiently for me to recoil in horror. The man lay under me, the side of his throat torn as if a wild beast had ravened there. Instinctively I wiped a hand across my mouth in an effort to erase the taste. My childhood squeamishness at the sight of blood briefly reasserted itself and, for a moment, I thought I was going to vomit right then and there.

  I was sure I had killed the man and wondered what I was to do with the corpse. I knew no one would miss him. He was but a piece of filth. And there was no one else on the street to decry my deed. But to take him in my arms, to drag him to some smaller back alley—I did not know if I had the strength for it.

  While I was thinking what to do, the man moaned piteously and I reeled back, more shocked than before. His eyelids began to flutter, like a girl at her first assignation. It appeared that he had merely swooned and was even now beginning to recover. I turned and ran from the scene as fast as my legs would carry me.

  Upon my return home I cleaned myself up and made weak excuses for my evening’s absence to dear, trusting Kathleen. It took all the composure I could muster to make it through that day, but by the end of it I was prepared to believe that what had occurred—however shocking—had been an isolated incident brought on by too much rum and base companionship, and that it would never repeat itself.

  My shallow optimism was soon cruelly dashed. Within a day I felt once again the stirrings of that unnatural appetite and nothing I could do could stop me from feeding again.

  Had I been a religious man I might have prayed for the curse to be lifted. I might have sheltered in a church and begged forgiveness from a priest. As it was, I had nothing but my own will with which to resist the dreadful craving. I put great store by my own powers. I should not have been so self-satisfied.

  I succeeded for five days in resisting the thirst, much of those days spent in a state of isolation. I explained that I had a fever I did not wish to pass on to the other members of my household, especially to Kathleen in her delicate condition. Kathleen wanted to call a doctor, but I persuaded her that none was required.

  I wrestled with my affliction, feeling it burn in my veins like hot mercury. My throat was parched beyond endurance and no amount of water or other liquid seemed to bring any relief. Brandy, port, tea, even sweet possets that cook sent up to me only made the thirst greater. I suffered alone, constantly pacing my room, and wearing out a pair of bedroom slippers in the five days of my torment.

  I now believe that I might have cured myself had I been committed then to a cell. If I had allowed myself to be locked away before I took a second draught of that unnatural drink, the thirst—like a fever—might have burned itself out. But it was not to be. I relied on my will—and my will failed me.

  When on the fifth evening I found myself standing over my dear Kathleen as she slept in her own room, my gaze lingering upon the vein that pulsed in her neck, my will at last broke. I rushed into the street, still in my dressing gown and second-best pair of slippers, and ran off into the night. I sought out once again those disreputable quarters of the city where I might pass unnoticed at that benighted hour, even dressed as I was.

  I came upon a stray dog sniffing in the gutter and, in a vain hope, I grabbed hold of it and sank my teeth into its scrawny neck. With a choke of horror and distaste I flung the animal aside. Its blood was like bile, burning and bitter, but more bitter still was the revelation that only another human being could provide me with the sustenance I craved.

  I staggered into a darkened alleyway, pale and trembling as the thirst racked my body. The sound of footsteps made me suddenly alert and—more like a wild animal than a man—I concealed myself in the shadows.

  A London bobby passed by on his nocturnal beat. It was a mark of my desperate state of mind that the presence of the law did not frighten me in the least. I rushed upon him from behind and struck him down with one frenzied blow. He did not rise again.

  Such was the extremity of my thirst by this time that it was all I could do to restrain myself from draining him utterly. I left him unconscious but alive and skulked off into the darkness, shamed by the bestial satisfaction I felt.

  Although I had heard of men behaving as I did, it had only been in those horrific myths and legends and novels by hack writers who pandered to the basest tastes. And those stories were all vastly inconsistent with my own circumstances. I suffered no discomfort in the full light of day nor did I experience any of the other symptoms the popular imagination attributes to such a condition. My incisors did not grow long and pointed. My appetite for garlic was undiminished. I needed no home soil for comfort. There was only this awful, damnable thirst that only one horrid wine slaked.

  Please understand, Atkinson, that I was entirely possessed by this cursed disease. Only when the thirst was satisfied, could I then act like any other man—eating and drinking and, to my shame, making love with the passion of a boy. But the thirst grew, and I had to satisfy it more often. Still, I took great care only to prey in the dark alleys and rookeries of London, where the unwashed and unwanted lived. I did not ever again drink from those folk whose lives were productive and regular. In this way, for a while, I excused myself as some sort of Grim Reaper, inflicting fear and pain only on those who deserved it. But in my saner moments I knew this to be untrue.

  At last I understood that there was but a single course of action open to me if I was to preserve the honor of my family. So I filled a bathtub with hot water, and still in my dressing gown, climbed in. With two quick strokes of my shaving razor, I sliced open my veins at the wrists. The pain was but a moment, and then I slipped down under the water, the front of my gown rising and opening like the petals of a dark flower in the spreading red rain.

  “Come death,” I thought, and for the first time in months was at peace.

  Nothing you have ever experienced can give you any inkling of the terror that possessed me when I awoke some time later, awash with my own blood, to find that I yet lived. I glanced down at my wrists, and saw that the wounds had healed themselves to such an extent that there was not even a visible scar.

  I gripped the sides of the bath and clenched my teeth tight against the scream of anguish that tried to rip itself from my throat. But no sooner had my initial shock subsided than I became aware that the dread thirst was flaring up in me worse than I had ever felt it before, due—I had to believe—to the massive exsanguinations I had forced upon myself.

  I hauled myself out of the bath, left the ruined gown on the floor, and hurriedly washed off all traces of the crimson which stained my body. Dressing with haste, I ran from the house leaving all goodness, morality, and will behind.

  The rest of that night remains a blank to me, a merciful veil having been drawn across my memory by the bestial craving that had me in its grip. All I know is that by morning my thirst had been assuaged. I came home unseen, cleaned up the bathroom, and washed my own dressing gown. But for the curse itself there appeared no possibility of a cure. Even death—it seemed—would not have me.

  What fate could I possibly subject myself to? It had to be something so destructive as to render reanimation impossible. But there was nothing my disordered mind could think of. The prospect of recovering consciousness in some hideously dismembered state was even more terrifying and repugnant than the thought of continued life under the shadow of this affliction.

  It was clear to me that until I could find a solution, I needed to devise some means whereby I could carry on my life without posing a threat to those whose good will meant so much to me. In a city such as London, there are women who will perform almost any service if adequately recompensed, and I had little trouble finding one suitable to my purpose. I shall call her Marie. Her real name does not matter in the slightest, and she was well paid for what I had her do. Better, in fact, than had I used her in the usual fashion.

  Marie gave me the impression that—bizarre as my needs were—this was not the most repellent behavior she had been party to. Feeding sparingly, I learne
d that two or three visits with her per week were sufficient to prevent any uncontrollable outbursts of savagery on my part, at least in the beginning. Marie suffered no harm as a result of my . . . desires. And—to my even greater relief—she showed no sign of becoming contaminated with this dreadful infection herself. However, the shame of it all, the constant need for secrecy, and the knowledge of the irreparable harm it would do my family if the truth were ever exposed, all preyed horribly on my mind.

  Consequently a brooding self-abhorrence came to dominate my waking hours. I found that I could no longer abide the sight of my own reflection in a mirror. Images of death struck me with a painful force that compelled me to avert my gaze from gazettes and books. Paintings in the museums—where Kathleen loved to walk with me—became abhorrent if they were about war or martyrdoms. And crowds—crowds were intolerable, for it was as though I could hear the very blood coursing richly through the veins as people pressed about me, upsetting the stability I strove so hard to achieve with my visits to Marie.

  With each passing day it became more and more difficult to maintain a semblance of normal behavior. The birth of my son only exacerbated my gloom. His innocence threw into grotesque relief my own ever-present guilt.

  I began to see that the only faint glimmer of hope I had was in mounting a second Antarctic Expedition. The aim of this journey was not merely to map and study, but to attain the greatest goal of all exploration—the South Pole itself. Perhaps there, amid the most intense cold to be found anywhere on earth, the heat of my unnatural thirst might be cooled.