The Vampire's Assistant and Other Tales from the Cirque Du Freak

by Darren Shan

  “Can’t I stay a little longer?” he pleaded.

  “Your mother’s probably looking for you for dinner,” Evra said.

  “I can eat with you guys,” Sam said.

  “There isn’t enough food,” I lied.

  “Well, I’m not very hungry, anyway,” Sam said. “I already ate most of my pickled onions.”

  “Maybe he could stay,” Evra said. I stared at him, surprised, but he winked to show he was only pretending.

  “Could I?” Sam asked, psyched.

  “Sure,” Evra said. “But you’ll have to help us with our jobs.”

  “I’ll do anything,” Sam said. “I don’t mind. What is it?”

  “The wolf-man needs to be fed, washed, and brushed,” Evra said.

  Sam’s smile went away.

  “The wuh-wolf-muh-man?” he asked nervously. “It’s no problem,” Evra told him. “He’s pretty quiet once he’s been fed. He hardly ever bites his helpers. If he does attack, keep your head away from his mouth and stick an arm down his throat. It’s better to lose an arm than your —”

  “You know,” Sam said quickly, “I think I do have to go home. My mother said something about friends coming over tonight.”

  “Oh. That’s a pity.” Evra grinned.

  Sam backed away, gazing in the direction of the wolf-man’s cage. He looked sad to be going, so I told him to stop.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” I asked. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Do you want to come over in the afternoon and hang out with us?”

  “Yeah!” Sam said right back, then paused. “I won’t have to help feed and clean the...?” He gulped loudly.

  “No,” Evra said, still smiling.

  “Then I’ll be here. See you tomorrow, guys.”

  “See you, Sam,” we said together.

  He waved, turned, and left.

  “Sam’s cool, isn’t he?” I said to Evra.

  “He’s a good guy,” Evra agreed. “He could lose the whole sounding smart thing, and he’s kind of a scaredycat, but otherwise he’s cool.”

  “Do you think he’d fit in if he did join the show?” I asked.

  Evra snorted sarcastically. “Like a mouse in a house full of cats!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “This life isn’t for everyone. A few weeks away from his family, having to clean toilets and cook for thirty or forty people . . . He’d be running for the hills.”

  “We do all right,” I said.

  “We’re different,” Evra said. “We’re not like other people. This is what we’re cut out for. Everybody has a place where they belong. This is ours. We’re meant to ...”

  He stopped and began to frown. He was looking over my head at something in the distance. I turned to see what was bothering him. For a few seconds I couldn’t make out anything, but then, somewhere far off, coming through the trees to the east, I saw the flickering light of a burning torch.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Evra said.

  We watched for a few minutes as the torch came closer. I saw figures moving beneath the branches of the trees. I couldn’t tell how many there were, but it had to be at least six or seven. Then, as they came out from under the trees, I saw who they were, and goose-bumps sprang to life all over my neck and arms.

  They were the small, blue-hooded people that Steve and I had seen the night of the show, the ones who helped sell sweets and toys to the crowd and assisted with the acts. I’d forgotten about those strange blue-hooded helpers. It had been a few months since that night, and I’d had so many other things on my mind.

  They came out of the woods in pairs, one set after the other. I counted twelve in all, though there was a thirteenth member, a taller person walking behind the rest. He was the one carrying the torch.

  “Where did they come from?” I asked Evra quietly.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “They left the show a few weeks ago. I have no idea where they went. They kept to themselves mostly.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “They’re —,” he began to answer, but stopped all of a sudden. His eyes widened with fear.

  It was the man bringing up the rear, the thirteenth, taller member of the group — visible now that he was closer — who scared Evra.

  The blue-hooded people passed by silently. As the mysterious thirteenth person approached, I noticed he was dressed differently from the others. He wasn’t very tall; he just looked big in comparison to the blue-hoods. He had short white hair, a thick pair of glasses, a sharp yellow suit, and long green rubber boots. He was pretty fat and walked with a weird waddle.

  He smiled pleasantly at us as he passed. I smiled back, but Evra looked paralyzed, unable to move the muscles in his mouth.

  The blue-hoods and the man with the torch walked farther into the campsite, all the way to the back, where they found a large clear spot. Then the blue-hoods began putting up a tent — they must have been carrying the equipment underneath their capes — while the larger man headed for Mr. Tall’s van.

  I studied Evra. He was shaking all over, and even though his face could never turn white — because of its natural color — it was paler than it had ever been before.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He shook his head silently, unable to reply. “What is it? Why are you so scared? Who was that man?”

  “He ...It...” Evra cleared his throat and took a deep breath. When he spoke, it was in a low, trembling voice, filled with sheer terror.

  “That was Mr. Tiny,” he said, and I couldn’t get any more out of him for a long time after that.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Evra’s fear went away as the evening wore on, but he was slow to return to normal and was really edgy the whole night. I had to take his knife from him and do his share when he was peeling potatoes for dinner; I was afraid he might slice one of his fingers off.

  After we’d eaten and helped clean the dishes, I asked Evra about the mysterious Mr. Tiny. We were in the tent, and Evra was playing with his snake.

  He didn’t answer immediately, and for a while I thought he wasn’t going to, but in the end he sighed and began to speak.

  “Mr. Tiny is the leader of the Little People,” he said.

  “The small guys in the blue-hooded capes?” I asked.

  “Yup. He calls them Little People. He’s their boss.

  He doesn’t come here a lot — it’s been two years since I last saw him — but he gives me the creeps when he does. He’s the spookiest man I’ve ever met.”

  “He looked all right to me,” I said.

  “That’s what I thought the first time I saw him,” Evra agreed. “But wait till you’ve spoken to him. It’s hard to explain, but every time he looks at me, I feel like he’s planning to slaughter, skin, and roast me.”

  “He eats people?” I asked, freaked out.

  “I don’t know,” Evra said. “Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. But you get the feeling he wants to eat you. And it’s not just me being stupid; I’ve talked about it with other members of the Cirque and they feel the same way. Nobody likes him. Even Mr. Tall gets fidgety when Mr. Tiny’s around.”

  “Well, the Little People must like him, don’t they?” I asked. “They follow and obey him, right?”

  “Maybe they’re scared of him,” Evra said. “Maybe he forces them to obey him. Maybe they’re his slaves.”

  “Have you ever asked them?”

  “They don’t talk,” Evra said. “I don’t know if it’s because they can’t or if they don’t want to, but nobody in the circus has ever been able to get a word out of them. They’re really helpful and they’ll do whatever you ask but they’re as silent as walking dummies.”

  “Have you ever seen their faces?” I asked.

  “Once,” Evra said. “Usually they don’t let their hoods slip, but one day I was helping a couple of them move a heavy machine. It fell on one of the Little People and crushed hi
m. He didn’t make a sound, even though he must have been in a huge amount of pain. His hood fell to the side and I caught a glimpse of his face.

  “It was disgusting,” Evra said quietly, stroking the snake. “Full of scars and stitches all crumpled together, like some giant had squeezed it with his claws. He didn’t have ears or a nose, and there was some kind of mask over his mouth. The skin was gray and dead-looking, and his eyes were like two green bowls near the top of his face. He didn’t have hair, either.”

  Evra shivered at the memory. I felt cold myself, thinking about his description.

  “What happened to him?” I asked. “Did he die?” “I don’t know,” Evra said. “A couple of his brothers — I always think of them as brothers, though they probably aren’t — came and took him away.”

  “You never saw him again?”

  “They all look the same,” Evra said. “Some are a little smaller or taller than the others, but there’s no real way of telling them apart. Believe me — I’ve tried.”

  Weirder and weirder. I was really intrigued by Mr. Tiny and his Little People. I’d always liked mysteries. Maybe I could solve this one. Maybe, with my vampire powers, I could find a way to talk to one of the hooded creatures.

  “Where do the Little People come from?” I asked. “Nobody knows,” Evra said. “There’s usually about four or six of them with the Cirque. Sometimes more turn up by themselves. Sometimes Mr. Tiny brings in new ones. It was weird that none were here when you came.”

  “You think it had something to do with me and Mr. Crepsley coming?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” Evra said. “It was probably just a coincidence. Or fate.” He paused. “Which is another thing: Mr. Tiny’s first name is Desmond.”

  “So?”

  “He tells people to call him Des.”

  “So?” I asked again.

  “Put it together with his last name,” Evra told me. I did. Mr. Des Tiny. Mr. Des-Tiny. Mr....

  “Mr. Destiny,” I whispered, and Evra nodded seriously.

  I was dying of curiosity and asked Evra a bunch more questions, but his answers were limited. He knew almost nothing about Mr. Tiny, and only a little more about the Little People. They ate meat. They smelled funny. They moved around slowly most of the time. They either didn’t feel pain or couldn’t show it. And they had no sense of humor.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Bradley Stretch,” Evra answered darkly. “He used to be with the show. He had rubbery bones and could make his arms and legs stretch.

  “He wasn’t very nice. He was always playing practical jokes on us, and he had a nasty way of laughing. He didn’t just make you look like an idiot: He made you feel like one too.

  “We played a show in an Arabian palace. It was a private show for a sheik. He enjoyed all the acts, but especially liked Bradley’s. The two started talking, and Bradley told the sheik he couldn’t wear jewelry, because it always slipped off or broke because of the changing shape of his body.

  “The sheik ran away and came back with a small gold bracelet. He gave it to Bradley and told him to put it on his wrist. Bradley did. Then the sheik told him to try shaking it off.

  “So Bradley made his arm small and big, short and long, but he couldn’t shake the bracelet loose. The sheik said it was magic and could only be removed if the wearer wanted to take it off. It was really valuable, priceless, but he gave it to Bradley as a gift.

  “Getting back to the Little People,” Evra said. “Bradley loved to tease them. He was always finding new ways to trick them. He made traps to hang them up in the air by their feet. He set their capes on fire. He squirted liquid laundry detergent on ropes they were using to make their hands slip, or glue to make them stick. He put thumbtacks in their food and he made their tent collapse and locked them in a van.”

  “Why was he so mean?” I asked.

  “I think because they never reacted,” Evra said. “He liked to see people get upset, but the Little People never cried or screamed or lashed out. They didn’t seem to notice his pranks. At least, everybody thought they didn’t notice. . . .”

  Evra made a funny noise that was half a laugh, half a moan.

  “One morning we woke up and Bradley had disappeared. Nowhere to be found. We searched for him, but when he didn’t turn up, we moved on. We weren’t worried; performers join and leave the Cirque pretty much as they please. It wasn’t the first time somebody had sneaked away in the middle of the night.

  “I didn’t think any more about it until a week or so later. Mr. Tiny had come to see us the day before and took all but two of the Little People with him. Mr. Tall told me I had to help the leftover pair with their duties. I cleaned up their tent and rolled up their hammocks — they all sleep in hammocks. That’s where I got mine from. Did I mention that before?” He hadn’t, but I didn’t want to sidetrack him, so I said nothing.

  “After that,” he went on, “I washed their pot. It was a big black pot, set on a fire in the middle of the tent. The place had to have been full of smoke whenever they cooked because the pot was covered in grime.

  “I took it outside and tried to scrape the grime — scraps of meat and pieces of bone — onto the grass. I scrubbed it thoroughly, then took it back inside. Next I decided to pick up the pieces of meat in the grass and throw them to the wolf-man. ‘Waste not, want not,’ like Mr. Tall always says.

  “As I was picking up the meat and bone, I saw something glistening. . . .”

  Evra turned away and rifled through a bag on the ground. When he turned back, he was holding a small gold bracelet. He let my eyes linger on it, then slipped it on over his left hand. He shook his arm as fast as he could but the bracelet never moved.

  When he stopped shaking his arm, he slid the bracelet off with the fingers of his right hand and tossed it to me. I examined it but didn’t put it on.

  “The bracelet the sheik gave to Bradley Stretch?” I guessed.

  “The same,” Evra said.

  I handed it back.

  “I don’t know whether it was because of something really bad he did,” Evra said, fingering the bracelet, “or if they were just tired of the nonstop teasing. What I do know is, ever since, I’ve gone out of my way to be polite to the small, silent people in the dark blue capes.”

  “What did you do with the remains of ...I mean, with the scraps of meat?” I asked. “Did you bury them?”

  “Heck, no,” Evra said. “I fed them to the wolf-man, like I meant to.” Then, in response to my horrified look, he said, “Waste not, want not, remember?”

  I stared at him for a second, then began to laugh. Evra laughed, too. In a minute we were both rolling around on the floor in hysterics.

  “We shouldn’t laugh.” I caught my breath. “Poor Bradley Stretch. We should be crying.”

  “I’m laughing too hard to cry,” Evra gasped.

  “I wonder what he tasted like?”

  “I don’t know,” Evra said. “But I bet he was rubbery.”

  That made us laugh even more. Tears rolled from our eyes and trickled down our cheeks. It was a terrible thing to laugh at, but we couldn’t help it.

  In the middle of our fit of hysteria, the flap to the door of our tent was pulled aside by an inquisitive head, and Hans Hands entered. “What’s the joke?” he asked, but we couldn’t tell him. I tried, but every time I started, I began to laugh again.

  He shook his head and rolled his eyes. Then, when we finally quieted down, he told us why he was there.

  “I have a message for you two,” he said. “Mr. Tall wants you to report to his van as soon as possible.”

  “What’s up, Hans?” Evra asked. He was still laughing. “Why does he want us?”

  “He doesn’t,” Hans said. “Mr. Tiny is with him. He’s the one who wants you.”

  Our laughter stopped instantly. Hans let himself out without any further words.

  “Mr. Tuh-tuh-tuh-Tiny wants us,” Evra gasped.

  “I heard,” I said. “What d
o you think he wants?” “I don’t kn-kn-kn-know,” Evra stuttered, though I could tell what was going through his mind. It was the same thing that was rushing through mine. We were thinking of the Little People, Bradley Stretch, and the big black pot full of scraps of human meat and bone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mr. tall, mr. crepsley, and Mr. Tiny were in the van when we entered. Evra was shaking like a leaf, but I wasn’t really nervous. But when I saw the worried looks on Mr. Tall’s and Mr. Crepsley’s faces and realized how uneasy they were, it put me on edge a little.

  “Come in, boys,” Mr. Tiny welcomed us, as though it was his van and not Mr. Tall’s. “Sit down, make yourselves at home.”

  “I’ll stand if that’s okay,” Evra said, trying not to let us hear the chatter of his teeth.

  “I’ll stand, too,” I said, following Evra’s lead.

  “As you wish,” Mr. Tiny said. He was the only one sitting.

  “I’ve been hearing a lot about you, young Darren Shan,” Mr. Tiny said. He was rolling something between his hands: a heart-shaped watch. I could hear it ticking whenever there was a pause in his speech.

  “You’re quite the boy, by all accounts,” Mr. Tiny went on. “A most remarkable young man. Sacrificed everything to save a friend. There aren’t many who would do as much. People are so self-centered these days. It’s good to see the world can still produce heroes.”

  “I’m no hero,” I said, blushing at the compliment. “Of course you are,” he insisted. “What is a hero but a person who lays everything on the line for the good of somebody else?”

  I smiled proudly. I couldn’t understand why Evra was so afraid of this nice, strange man. There was nothing terrible about Mr. Tiny. I kind of liked him.

  “Larten tells me you’re reluctant to drink human blood,” Mr. Tiny continued. “I don’t blame you. Nasty, repulsive stuff. Can’t stand it. Apart from young children, of course. Their blood is scrump-dillyicious.”

  I frowned. “You can’t drink blood from them,” I said. “They’re too small. If you took blood from a young child, you’d kill it.”

  His eyes widened and so did his smile. “So?” he asked softly.