Red Circus: A Dark Collection

by John L. Campbell

  Nathan’s cries rivaled it as he dropped to his knees in the wet leaves and earth, cradling his boy, sobbing his name and then screaming at the sky. His men stood around him, impotent in their unspent rage and sadness. Nathan had drawn his revolver and jammed it under his chin, clicking the hammer back, his chest heaving, his eyes squeezed tight and his teeth clenched in agony. His finger tensed. And then the sergeant major’s hand came to rest on his shoulder, the man kneeling beside him in the downpour, speaking softly, his eyes filled with tears of his own.

  “Amelia,” he had said.

  Nathan had opened his eyes, blinking at the rain for a long moment. Then he eased the hammer down and set the pistol on the leaves, holding his son close. And in that moment, Nathan Madison’s life changed again.

  He never touched another drop.

  And he swore to heaven and earth that there would only be one woman in his life, for the rest of his life.

  Over the next three years, he filled his world with Amelia, trying to become everything she could ever need or want in a father, and the largest part of a heart which had been so scarred began to soften and warm. She was his light, his faith, and on the rare occasion he dared to dream it, his hope. And the part of his heart which was not made whole again by the love of a daughter, that part turned to steel. Cold, unbreakable, unrelenting. Hunting the thing which had robbed him of his child became his purpose.

  Until today, when he thought he had put an end to the nightmare.

  And had been so very wrong.

  Nathan closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath, wishing for the sun. He opened them a moment later, feeling a chill draft, and seeing the paned, double windows standing open, soft curtains drifting in the night breeze. Not the sun but a pillar of lunar light fell across the room, and from the blackness on the other side of it she spoke, her voice soft and full of hate.

  “Oh, darling, how I have enjoyed seeing you suffer.”

  He tensed, fully alert, and glanced to his daughter, who still slept.

  “I have watched you so many nights, battling your demons, tormented in your sleep, trying so desperately to find peace.”

  She stepped into the moonlight and laughed, her voice a harsh whisper, and where the moon touched her flesh she became as marble, the rest of her in shadow. Nathan grabbed for the big revolver in his lap, raising it and standing in one movement, about to cry out, but she was no longer there. Now she stood at Amelia’s bed, having pulled the bedclothes down, exposing his daughter to the chill. One slender, pale hand rested on the girl’s chest, long nails dangerously close to her tender throat. Angeline looked at him and smiled, ignoring the barrel of the pistol pointed at her face.

  “Go ahead. Call your men…and I’ll take her life.”

  Nathan didn’t lower the revolver, but neither did he cry out.

  Angeline stroked his daughter’s hair, and the child murmured as if dreaming. She looked down at her, but there was no tenderness, no sense of compassion, only a cold examination as her fingers moved softly through the curls. When she looked up, her face wore a pout, but it was only the facade of an actress.

  “Poor, poor Nathan, so distraught, so pitiful. I watched you with delight as you wallowed in your pain. And when the moment was right,” her mask of sympathy fell away, revealing the pitiless fiend she was, “I delivered even more sorrow to your door.”

  Nathan’s hand shook, his finger only ounces of pressure away from unleashing a bullet.

  She laughed, revealing her fangs. “And you hunted him for it! That wretched creature who forbade me to touch you, who spared your life from my hand. That harmless thing who never killed more than a sheep. And how did you repay him for his misplaced mercy? You ran him to ground and destroyed him as he slept.” She laughed again, trailing her fingers over Amelia’s neck. Then her hand paused, nails resting on the girl’s pulse, and she looked at him.

  “I took Geoffrey from you, Nathan. And now I’ve come for this one.”

  The gunshot was like an artillery blast in the small room, the flash blinding, and Nathan fired twice more. In the bursts of whiteness he saw his first round take the top of her head off at the eyebrows, the second and third smashing through her chest and driving her into the wall with an enraged shriek.

  Amelia screamed and sat up, and Nathan moved to her, but Angeline sprang out of the corner and onto the bed, hitting him straight-armed in the chest and sending him sprawling away to strike the far wall, the pistol knocked from his hand. The bedroom door crashed open and Stark rushed in, firing twice and closing on the creature with his tribal knife. Angeline leaped, meeting his rush and taking the blade as he thrust it into her belly, seizing his lapels and lifting the young man off his feet. Then she turned and hurled him through the windows in an explosion of glass, to land on the hard stone walkway far below.

  Nathan tried to stand, his head thundering, his vision blurred from the impact, and he saw the burly figure of the sergeant major charging into the room. The older man roared as he went at her with the battle axe, slamming it into her neck and shoulder, the force of his weight and charge hitting her, throwing her back onto the bed. Angeline hissed and clawed at his face, at his eyes, digging bloody furrows in his skin, thrashing beneath him. The sergeant major flung himself onto her, pinning her with a knee, jerking the axe free and raising it high over his head. His face was crimson with rage and he cried something in Dutch, swinging down.

  The blade never made it.

  Angeline tore out his throat with one hand, and with the other flung his body to the side.

  Nathan stumbled towards the bed, reaching for his wailing child, and saw Angeline snatch her up by an arm, holding her like a rag doll, the wounds which should have been fatal already closing. “Time for the little princess to join her family,” she hissed, and then leaped out the shattered window frame into the night, taking Amelia with her.

  Corporal Andrews met Nathan coming out of Amelia’s rooms, limping badly and clutching the sergeant major’s battle axe. His former commander’s face was set with a deadly purpose, but his eyes blazed with madness and rage. The young man had only seen that look once before, on a cratered and bloody hillside, during the final day of Tugela Heights. Wordlessly he followed him down to the great hall and out through the entry, onto the curved drive.

  Linus’s Rolls sat there, shining in the moonlight, and Nathan went to it, the garage too far away. The keys were missing, the driver nowhere in sight. Several yards behind the limousine stood the black coach belonging to Nathan’s elderly, overnight guests, an open air surrey with a canopy. Instead of being stabled, the horse still stood in its traces, nickering softly. The body of his coachman lay face-down and still on the bricks not far away, his head twisted at an unnatural angle and his surprised eyes wide and staring at nothing.

  Nathan hauled himself into the surrey, ignoring the flaring pain in his leg, as Andrews scrambled in beside him, barely reaching the seat before Nathan began snapping the reins. He immediately drove the horse into a gallop, urging the coach rapidly down the long, tree-lined drive that led to his estate, the moon lighting the way as it fell in white spears through the canopy of stately oaks. When they reached the main road, which led right towards distant Manchester or left deeper into the forested countryside, Nathan turned left without hesitation. He knew where she was going.

  Beside him, Andrews set the stock of the Rigby against the floorboards and held it between his knees, gripping the edge of the surrey’s frame. Nathan stood and jerked the driver’s whip out of its sheath, cracking it over the horse’s head and putting the beast into a full run. As they rocketed into the night, Andrews braced a boot against the frame as well.

  “Where are we going, Colonel?” he yelled over the wind.

  Nathan’s eyes were like coals. “Into battle.”

  The forest flashed by them in a shadowy blur, the horse’s hooves thundering over the hard-packed road and the surrey creaking and swaying dangerously. The whip cracked, and the h
orse strained at its traces. Clouds moved swiftly across the night sky, and the moon darted in and out amongst them, casting the countryside in intermittent spells of black and white. The road was theirs, and nothing moved in the forest, not even the small deer which often grazed on the long grasses beside the road. It was as if the land were holding its breath, waiting to see what would be.

  Nathan drove the beast faster still, the rough road threatening to throw him out of the surrey as he stood, reins in one hand and whip in the other.

  When Geoffrey had been taken, the first thought was that his murderer had been a madman, and Nathan had employed the local constabulary to commence a search of the county. No such person had been found. As months passed, reports of slain and blooded livestock circulated, initially attributed to wild dogs or perhaps one of the few remaining wolves in England, but the theory had proven groundless. Not until residents of rural villages began reporting encounters with a shadowy figure, perhaps a man, seen lurking on rooftops or in barns, sometimes peering in nighttime windows, did an impossible picture begin to form. The sightings were accompanied by livestock slayings, and only at night. Although pursued on occasion, the figure had never been apprehended or clearly seen.

  It was the sergeant major who first uttered the word vampire to Nathan one night at the fireside, telling him stories of his childhood in South Africa. He claimed both the Boer and the native Swazi held closely to their legends, and insisted that the tales were true. Nathan’s respect for Voorhees prevented him from dismissing his friend outright, and he soon found himself pouring through books in the manor’s library, learning about a legend which seemed to remain frighteningly similar throughout the world, regardless of nationality. It began to fit.

  And so he began a hunt which would range across rural England, scouring the places such a creature would use as lairs, following sightings and wild tales, even catching sight of the fiend several times. It remained elusive. Until he and the sergeant major finally tracked it to that mausoleum, to that particular cemetery.

  A destination Nathan knew far too well.

  He slowed the horse, its chest and flanks lathered in foam, and turned the surrey off the road and through a pair of granite pillars marking the entrance to the place. In the night, among the hills and flats of sprawling trees and narrow paths, black shapes sprouted from the ground, some simple stones, some gothic structures complete with gargoyles. He guided the small carriage into the quiet cemetery, no longer needing the whip, and brought the horse to a halt at the foot of a gently sloping and manicured hill. Atop it, standing in silhouette against the night sky, was the grandest mausoleum of all, a great granite shape with broad stairs and a pillared face, where silent angels brooded at the corners and peak of the roof.

  The Madison family crypt.

  Even in the half light, Nathan could see one of the tall, bronze double doors standing open, a deeper blackness beyond. A soft night wind rustled through the ancient trees flanking the place, and dead leaves tumbled across the marble path which led to it.

  Andrews rose and prepared to swing to the ground, but Nathan held him back with a hand.

  “Not this time, my friend.”

  Andrews looked confused. “But, Colonel…”

  Nathan shook his head. “You’ve stood with me so many times, and never a question asked. But your place is here. Mind the horse, and watch the front so I’m not flanked. This is my affair.”

  Andrews looked ready to argue, but could tell by his commander’s face it would be useless. “Do be careful, Colonel. And Godspeed.”

  Nathan swung down, wincing when his bad leg hit the ground, gripping the sergeant major’s battleaxe, then walked stiffly up the path towards the crypt. His shoes scuffed at the granite as he climbed to the covered entry, the wind whispering around the eaves of the mausoleum as he entered without pause. The cemetery had been quiet, but he hadn’t known silence until he stepped inside.

  The main chamber was large, with a high vaulted ceiling and a white marble floor shot with veins of gray. Nathan’s footsteps were hollow and echoed through the open space, and the only light was that of the moon streaming in through a large, arched window high on the far wall, the glass set in elaborate twists of wrought iron. Deep shadows lived in the corners and high against the ceiling. To the right and left, squares of marble set in the walls marked individual crypts, each mounted with a small brass plate to identify its occupant. A pair of archways led to smaller chambers in each direction, these rooms also housing Madisons of years gone by. The center of the chamber featured four white marble benches arranged in a square, framing a large circular hole, where spiral granite stairs descended to an inky darkness. The room smelled of lavender, for he had long ago directed that fresh-cut blooms from Elaine’s beloved garden be placed here weekly.

  Nathan moved to an altar-like slab beneath the window and withdrew a wooden match from a pocket of his tuxedo vest, striking it against the stone. The scratch was deafening in the silence, and the sulfur flare hurt his eyes for an instant before a flame took hold. He lit a trio of candles set in a silver candelabrum, throwing a circle of yellow light around him and chasing the shadows deeper into hiding. Then he raised it and turned towards the room.

  Nothing moved, and there was no sound other than the flutter of the flames and his own breathing. He considered examining the rooms beyond the archways, but dismissed the thought. He knew where they would be, and started towards the stairs. As if to confirm it, a sound floated up from the darkness.

  “Daddy…”

  Amelia’s voice, small and distant. His heart quickened as he tightened his grip on the axe and started down the stairs. The spread of his light was constricted in the tight turn of the stairs as he descended, and death could well be lurking only feet away in the darkness, waiting for him, yet he did not hesitate.

  “Daddy,” called the voice again, and he struggled against the urge to charge down to his daughter. He had learned hard lessons about ambushes, and the fact that she was still alive signaled she was being used as bait. He would do her no good racing to his own death, although he had already accepted that his end was already a forgone conclusion.

  A moment later the stairs emptied into another room, this one with a lower ceiling, but still grand and also floored in marble. More plates lined the walls, and another four archways led to long passages of older, smaller crypts. Over two centuries of Madisons rested here, above and below. This chamber, once a common room for reflection, had been transformed into a place of reverence. The benches had been removed and replaced with a pair of large stone sarcophagi, each a granite box with a lid carved in loving detail. Touched by the candlelight, the one on the left depicted a beautiful woman sleeping with a bouquet of flowers, and on the right, a sleeping boy holding a book.

  He had been here countless times. His heart still broke when he saw them.

  Amelia was huddled in a far corner beyond them, shivering and clutching her knees.

  “Daddy?” she whispered, her eyes frightened.

  Nathan took a long stride forward and then stopped himself, realizing that to go to her would put the dark archways to his unprotected sides and back.

  “Still the soldier,” Angeline said, sliding out of the archway on the right, the one closest to his daughter. The light from the candles did nothing to warm her porcelain features, and Nathan could see that she had completely healed, including the top of her head, which the bullet had removed. A dancer and an actress, she had always been smooth and graceful, but her new existence gave her a predatory litheness as she glided to put herself between Nathan and Amelia, resting a hand lightly on Geoffrey’s tomb. Her eyes radiated in the flickering light.

  Nathan eased left, putting the two sarcophagi between them, and set the candelabra on Elaine’s tomb, taking a two-handed grip of the battleaxe’s three foot oak shaft. His sight never left her, though he had learned from his reading not to look her directly in the eyes. Amelia whimpered softly in the shadows.

&nb
sp; “Daddy’s here, love,” he called to her. “Stay where you are.”

  Angeline cocked her head. “Yes, Daddy’s here. Such a good daddy, so loving, so thoughtful. Here to rescue his little princess.” She smiled, her fangs touching her red, bottom lip.

  “Why?” asked Nathan.

  Angeline’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Why? Have you forgotten us? Have you forgotten that night?”

  He said nothing.

  “Well,” said the vampire, “you had been drinking. Perhaps it’s a bit hazy, but I’m quite certain you remember what I said to you.”

  “I went to tell you we were finished, and you…”

  She nodded. “And I told you about the baby. And you laughed and said it probably wasn’t yours.”

  Nathan took a sharp breath.

  “You laughed!” she screamed. “Of course it was yours!” Angeline leaped atop Geoffrey’s tomb and crouched, hands flat against his image, and she shrieked, “I LOVED YOU!”

  Nathan raised the axe and stepped left again, circling towards his daughter, keeping the two tombs as a barrier. Then Angeline stepped lightly off Geoffrey and was standing between the resting places, only one tomb between them now.

  “I wasn’t myself,” he said, sickened by his own, weak words. “You needn’t have killed yourself.”

  Angeline blinked, then laughed, her harsh voice echoing through the crypt. “I didn’t kill myself, darling. I tried to get rid of the baby. I wanted you so badly, and thought if it was gone, we could still be together. I was a foolish girl, and as it turned out, unskilled. I did something wrong, and began bleeding terribly.”

  She moved right, in the direction Nathan had been heading, putting herself once more between father and daughter. Nathan was forced to retreat back behind Elaine.