They didn’t thrill him anymore: the high wire acts, the trapeze artists, the lion tamer tempting death. Nothing about the circus got his juices flowing.
The man left in mid-show, walking out into the windy, autumn night.
“Where the hell are Bradbury’s October People anyhow?” the man asked out loud with a laugh.
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The sound of another voice made the man jump.
“Leaving before the show’s over?” a high-pitched accent asked against the moan of the wind.
Startled, the man looked down and found a midget gazing up at him dressed in ragged clothes.
“Beg your pardon?” the man asked.
“I asked if you’re leaving the show.”
“Matter of fact I am, if that’s any business of yours.”
The midget grinned and bowed. “My name is Renfield,” he announced. “Like the insane acolyte in Dracula.”
The man couldn’t help but laugh. “I must have missed that one. Never saw notice of an Undead performance here on the circus grounds.”
Renfield stiffened and made a motion with his hand toward the darkness beyond the big top. “If you’re brave enough, there a few side shows you might find enticing.”
“I thought they closed down the side shows during the main performance,” the man stated. “I . . . .”
Renfield had turned, walking briskly away.
The man hesitated then felt a slow rise of adrenalin from uncertainty mixed with just a touch of fear.
“Hey, wait a minute, Renfield. I’m always game for something new.”
He jogged forward, chasing the moving silhouette of the midget. As the man passed the big top, he heard muffled sounds from the crowd inside which grew dimmer the further he moved along. Eventually, he came to an area about a hundred yards away from the main tent. The man didn’t see the midget, and he stopped to catch his breath, scrutinizing the spot he had been led to.
There was a line of small, canvas tents just visible under the dim light of lanterns hanging above their entrances.
Renfield appeared from one and motioned the man forward. When the man stood in front of the tent’s opened flap, he saw a picture painted on the side. He could just make out the outline of a bat with a roulette wheel in its center. The script VAMPIRE ROULETTE arched above the wheel.
“Have any gambling money on you?” Renfield asked.
“What? Money?”
Renfield grinned sarcastically. “You strike me as one of the degenerate gambling sorts. Much like me.” The man’s face reddened at the midget’s remark. “The minimum stake is two hundred dollars,” Renfield added.
“Well, I don’t know. Just what kind of a game are we talking about?”
“There are three vampires inside,” Renfield informed. “In front of them is a modified roulette wheel made up of triangular wedges. A picture of a bat is on three of the wedges arranged in the 12, 3, and 9 hour positions of a clock. The one at the 6 o’clock position, along with those at 2 and 8, have a picture of mallets and wooden stakes on them. The rest of the corresponding hour triangles are blank.”
The man felt an involuntary chill. “Vampires?” he asked. “You expect me to believe that?”
“You either do or you don’t,” Renfield said flatly. “If you’re interested in making money, I would imagine it doesn’t matter what you believe.”
The man’s stomach tightened. “Okay,” he said dryly. “Let’s say I do have the money. What are the rules?”
“Very simple,” Renfield offered. “Land on any blank triangle and your initial bet doubles. Two hundred becomes four, four becomes eight . . . you get the picture.”
“And I can stop anytime then?” the man asked.
“No. You either keep spinning until you land on a mallet and stake space, which means you get to keep the pot, no matter how big it’s grown, and, also, stake one of the vampires, or . . .”
“What?”
“Yes. Whichever mallet and stake triangle you land on and the corresponding matching vampire, as in 2 to 3 or 8 to 9 or 6 to 12, 6 to 12 being the big one as that would double the pot beyond whatever dollar value it has already attained . . . well, you get to drive a stake through that vampire’s heart.”
The man’s own heart skipped a beat. The chance for that much money made his salivary glands hop into action.
“Of course, there’s always the chance you’ll land on one of the bat triangles,” Renfield added impishly.
“Then what?” the man inquired with more sobriety.
“Well, I imagine you can guess what happens then.”
The man unconsciously reached up and pulled his shirt collar higher on his neck. “That’s if I actually believed in such things,” he said. The man hesitated a moment, glancing around to make sure there were no lurking cohorts of Renfield’s hiding about before he removed his wallet and counted out two hundred dollars in twenties. “I’ll take a chance,” the man said as he handed the money to Renfield. The man grinned and added, “From one degenerate gambler to another then.”
Before he took the money, the midget Renfield said, “Very well, but there is something I need you to wear.”
“Wear?” the man asked as Renfield went inside the tent, returning shortly with a large necklace made of what the man guessed was some plant pods. “What in the Hell is that?” the man asked.
Renfield motioned for the man to bend down. He hung the heavy necklace around the man’s neck.
“Garlic cloves,” Renfield advised. “You’ll get use to the smell in no time.”
“Really now. This seems a bit much.” The man frowned at the pungent odor.
“Also,” Renfield added. “Inside the tent you’ll find a chair across from a square table. The roulette wheel is in the table’s center. The three vampires are on the opposite side. There is a circle dug around the chair. That circle is filled with Holy Water.” Renfield smiled. “You will be sitting in that moated chair.”
The man shrugged and sniggered, “All right. If theatrics are called for, I’ll go along with the act.”
Renfield held back the entry flap. “Please step inside,” he invited, taking the money from the man’s hand as he did.
The man chuckled as he entered the tent. It was not much brighter inside. Three lamps hung from the tent ceiling poles, illuminating the table with a shadowy gloom.
In that gloom, the man saw the roulette wheel in the center of the table. The wheel differed from the standard, Monte Carlo version in that it was designed as the face of a clock with the symbols inside the triangles just as the midget Renfield had described.
The chair Renfield had mentioned was also in place. The man could just make out the hint of rippling reflections from the circle of Holy Water surrounding its base.
It was when the man stared across the table at the three huddled figures that his chuckles vanished.
The three vampires sat opposite the chair the man would be sitting in. At first glance, the man took them to resemble huddled and roosting black birds.
The figure in the center of the three was the largest. The man speculated that if that one was to unfurl itself and stand, its head would come close to the tent’s apex.
The man swallowed painfully as a long, pale hand emerged from that vampire’s sleeve, its ragged nails pointing to the empty chair across the table.
“Sit and spin the wheel,” a voice commanded with the texture of rustling leaves.
“Sit and roll the ball,” the other two clustered forms echoed.
The man slid cautiously into the chair. He strained to get a look at the faces across from him, but the three were concealed by dark, hooded robes.
The man nervously glanced behind, finding Renfield’s grinning face just above his shoulder.
“What do I do now?” the man asked in a choked whisper.
Renfield’s hand slithered around the arm of the chair. The man glanced at it and discovered a small, silver ball clenched in the midget’s stubby fingers.
“Open your hand,” Renfield ordered.
The man did so and the midget dropped the ball in the man’s palm.
“Now spin the wheel and roll the ball,” Renfield said, resting his large head on the man’s shoulder. The man visibly shuddered at the weight of the midget’s head.
The man spun the wheel, and then rolled the ball around its rim.
“Round and round it goes,” Renfield whispered in the man’s ear. “And where it stops . . .”
The cloying reek of the garlic began to make the man nauseous, and when another odor, the stench of old and decomposed blood, superseded that of the plants’, the man actually gagged. The wheel stopped and the ball fell with a metallic clink just as he was about to vomit.
“Ahhh,” Renfield sighed.
The man glanced down at the ball sitting in a blank triangle corresponding to that of the number 7 on the clock’s face. He sighed with relief.
A low growl came from across the table. The vampire seated to the right of the center, larger one placed a layer of bills on the table. Renfield snatched them up. “Another two hundred,” he said as he thumbed through the old, brown crusted bills. “Antiquated,” Renfield added. “But still tender currency.”
Renfield folded the money and slipped inside his pocket. “The pot now stands at four hundred dollars,” Renfield announced. “Please spin and roll again,” he instructed the man.
And the man did and there was another blank followed by still another blank.
And by the time the house pot had risen to three thousand two hundred dollars, the man’s confidence had increased dramatically. He found himself leering at the three, robed figures across from him as he announced, “Sure you boys don’t want to give up?” At this point, the man was convinced the three were certainly not supernatural creatures. They would have dispatched him by now, garlic necklace, Holy Water moat or not. “I got a strong feeling a mallet and stake space is about to come my way.” The man turned and winked at Renfield whose face had suddenly gone pasty.
“You shouldn’t tease them,” Renfield said breathlessly.
“Oh, come on,” the man laughed as he sent the ball spinning around the wheel’s rim. “There’s no such thing as vam . . .”
The ball landed briefly in the number 6 spot before it unexpectedly arced across the center of the wheel, coming to a halt in the number 12 triangle.
“Hey, wait just a minute!” the man exclaimed. “That ball fell here,” he insisted, pointing to the mallet and stake icon drawn on the number 6. “What kind of a rigged game is this anyway? Besides owing me sixty four hundred dollars, I should get to stake the big fellow over there by number twelve, right?!”
The man turned and found Renfield had backed away to the tent’s front flap. The midget shrugged his shoulders at the man’s staring eyes.
The man turned back around as the sound of something rustling filled the tent. The three figures had removed the hoods from their heads. The man gasped at the bald skulls, the pointed ears, and the emaciated faces with hollow, glowing eyes.
The two on each side of the middle figure had short, pointed fangs drooping over their lower lips. The large vampire seated in the middle possessed long canines, jagged and yellow from eons of use. His fangs extended almost to the end of his elongated chin. When this one stood, his head did indeed almost graze the top of the tent as the man had earlier speculated.
A brisk wind entered the tent. The lanterns swayed, producing an eerie play of shadows along the canvas sides.
“Either give Renfield sixty four hundred . . . Beg your pardon, sixty two hundred dollars plus your initial bet of the minimum two hundred,” the large vampire stated in a raspy tone, “or surrender your blood and service.”
“Service?” the man asked through a quivering smile. “You’re kidding, right? Ha, ha, you guys. You can take off the makeup now.”
The man actually shrieked when he felt the garlic necklace pulled off his neck. He turned and found Renfield holding the cloves. The midget grinned and pulled a bag from his pocket. “Sorry,” Renfield said with a chuckle as he opened the bag, spreading sawdust from it into the moat of Holy Water. As the liquid was quickly absorbed, Renfield added, “It’s my only way out of their debt.”
“What?” the man asked.
The man watched as Renfield handed the money to the tall vampire.
“I knew you’d win it back,” Renfield said with a nod. He cautiously backed up to the tent’s entrance, avoiding the man’s shaking, grasping hands as he did. “Been a pleasure serving you all these years,” Renfield expressed to the vampires. “And good luck to you,” he addressed the man before sliding out of the tent and into the night.
“Hey, wait!” the man yelled. “Hey . . .”
Behind him, the man heard the swishing of feet across the dirt floor of the tent. He turned just in time to see the raised arms, the wide mouths and glaring eyes, not to mention hearing the horrid resonance of moans from years of parched hunger.
* * * *
The man left the tent well after mid-evening. He did not care that his clothes were worn and tattered, or that his feet moved sluggishly toward the main circus tent a hundred yards away.
The man unconsciously scratched the scarred, infected bite marks on his neck as he plodded across the open ground.
He stopped abruptly when he saw a figure exit the circus tent. The figure’s face lit up briefly as a match was ignited to light a cigarette dangling from its lips.
The man hurried to intercept the patron who had left the big top performance before it was finished.
“Hello,” the man hailed.
The exiting figure stopped and turned toward the sound. The man walked briskly toward the disgruntled patron.
“See you’re leaving the show early,” the man stated, a smile creasing his face.
“So?” the figure asked, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke into the summer night. “What business is it of yours?”
The man felt like this was the one, the fellow degenerate gambler he’d been waiting for, searching for. The man extended his hand, “My name’s Renfield, like the insane acolyte in Dracula.”
The discontented circus patron gave the man a questioning stare.
“You look like you might enjoy a game of chance,” the man now known as Renfield said, then added with a grin, “and it will only cost you two hundred dollars to play.”
© Copyright 2012 Timothy C. Hobbs
2484 words
