Red Circus: A Dark Collection

by John L. Campbell

  The rest of the animal appeared in the hole, and with the exception of the head and arms, it was human. It wore khaki pants and a plaid shirt, with a string of bones around its neck. They looked like human finger bones. Screaming filled the tiny room as it tore at the deputy, its pale green eyes rolling up at Baker, and the lawyer could see the promise those eyes held for him.

  He scrambled to his feet and shot out of the shack, an inhuman roar following him, leaping down the steps and almost landing on the back of an adult alligator poised at the bottom. The big reptile snarled and snapped its head and jaws around, missing his leg by inches. Baker ran, straining to see through the darkness, trying to avoid slamming into a tree. The wind was raging, bending the palms and long grass, trying to hold him back. He sensed movement on the ground around him, and heard more croaking. The island was covered in alligators, waddling over the soft soil, snuffling and hissing.

  From behind him at the shack came a roar that was answered by a dozen others, and he heard something crashing through the trees, its powerful snout snorting his odor on the wind. Baker ran, desperate, tugging at his restrained hands. The Seminole would catch him, and he would be devoured.

  His foot hit something soft and wet and he went down with a surprised yell, landing heavily on something that moved. He waited for the alligator to turn and start biting, but instead it lay still. Baker felt around and his hands discovered wet clothing, a torn flak jacket, a crushed head that he had kicked in himself. Gritting his teeth, he once more searched Jerry’s belt, looking back into the darkness to see where the Seminole creature was. His hands locked on the ring of keys and he tore them loose. Something big moved in the brush nearby, and Baker jumped to his feet and started running again.

  He reached the edge of the island before he expected to, and splashed into water up to his chest before he could stop. The expanse of the Everglades was more visible out in the open, and he could make out a section of shoreline stretching away from him. Not far away was the silhouette of the airboat, and with the keys gripped firmly behind his back, he waded back onto the bank and stumbled towards the craft.

  There was a splash behind him and he risked a look. The Seminole was there, standing in water up to his knees. He roared, showing off white teeth, and began a croaking rhythm, grunting with each step as he waded towards the fleeing lawyer. Baker kept going, closing the distance to the boat. Dark shapes running low to the ground burst from the trees to his left, snarling, and he leaped over the long shape of an alligator and flung himself onto the boat, cracking his elbow on the fiberglass deck, numbing his arm.

  Something heavy thumped against the hull, and an alligator nose appeared over the side. Baker kicked at it, catching it on the tip of the snout with his heel, and the animal grunted and disappeared. He looked down the shoreline, but the Seminole was nowhere in sight. Baker sat and started working the keys behind his back, the task nearly impossible with slippery fingers. More low shapes appeared from the trees, closing in.

  “C’mon, goddammit, c’mon!”

  The key fit into the lock, turned, and one of the cuffs fell loose. He shook his arm free and pulled himself up to the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition, attached to a bright green flotation fob. He twisted them and the engine caught, the fan quickly blurring to life. Baker had never driven an airboat before, but there was no better time to learn. He saw the gearshift was identical to a car, dropped into reverse and gunned the throttle. The boat pulled loose from the bank with a sucking noise. He yanked hard on the left stick and the airboat turned in a tight circle, too tight, threatening to go over. He fought for control, pulling back on the right stick, and the boat stabilized.

  Then the entire craft sagged backwards in the water, and as the nose pointed skywards there was the screech of tearing metal. The Seminole was climbing aboard from the rear, its mass pulling the craft backwards, eyes narrowed against the blast from the fan only inches away. It roared.

  Baker cried out and threw the gear into drive, slamming the control sticks forward. The fan blew air and spray and grass into the creature’s face, and its claws gouged the fiberglass as it tried to hold on. The airboat surged forward under full power, ripping itself from the creature’s grasp and then skimming out over the night water.

  Wind in his face, gasping in both terror and relief, Baker left the island behind him.

  The Seminole stood in the rippling water, and a small alligator swam to him through fuel-coated waves. He stroked its head with a claw, and it swam away. Then the wind brought a distant sound, an engine choking and sputtering, a fan winding down as the small remaining amount of gas in the craft’s ruptured tanks was expended.

  A wail of human despair came through the dark swamp, and the Seminole grinned as much as his snout would allow. A single tear rolled down from a big green eye as he sank into the water and drifted lazily towards dinner.

  UNBEARABLE

  Wanda Pearson was angry again, and she intended to let someone know about it. As her metallic green Prius motored through the parking lot of her apartment building, she saw the white Jeep ahead in one of the spaces on the right, parked slightly crooked as usual. She stopped behind it and snatched up the spiral note pad on the passenger seat, grabbing a pen from the cup holder and scribbling furiously.

  Your car alarm goes off ALL the time! Especially

  at night! Two nights ago the police came!

  You need to fix your alarm! The noise is

  UNBEARABLE!!!

  Wanda tore off the page and climbed out of the Prius, taking a long look around to make sure no one was watching. It was the middle of a work day and the lot was almost empty. She had called in sick to play hooky, and wasn’t she entitled to? All the other teachers at Jacob Childs Middle School did it as often as they could get away with it. Why should she always be the one working hard while others goofed off?

  Satisfied there would be no witnesses, she scuttled her squat, wide body quickly over to the Jeep and tucked the note under a wiper blade. Moments later she was pulling into the underground garage beneath her building, for which she paid an extra, outrageous amount each month. The garage was a large, well-ventilated space, but as she got out of her car she could smell cigarette smoke, despite the No Smoking signs posted on the walls and noted in every lease. She bared her teeth. She detested smokers and wished they would all die horrid, protracted deaths full of pain, with plenty of time to regret how they had forced the stench of their foul addiction on innocent people. She jotted another note on her pad, and pinned it to the community bulletin board beside the elevator.

  There is NO SMOKING in the garage!

  Read your lease!!!!

  Wanda stepped off the elevator at her floor and wrinkled her nose. The hallway smelled of curry and what she considered to be unwashed feet. Another Pakistani (or were they Indian?) family had moved onto her floor. The smell was unbearable.

  Mr. Pacino was there to greet her as she keyed her way into her apartment, giving her a soft welcome meow and rubbing a figure eight against her legs. She scratched behind his ear and he wandered off for one of his famous four hour naps by the radiator. Wanda set her purse on the hallway table and hung her jacket in a front hall closet which was organized with meticulous precision. Then she started a kettle for tea in an equally meticulous kitchen.

  Footsteps thudded across the floor above, and she bared her teeth again. As usual the people upstairs were wearing their shoes. She took the broom from the pantry and slammed the handle into the ceiling with five sharp raps. The footsteps stopped. The ceiling in every room of Wanda’s apartment was a pattern of polka dot scuffmarks, each the size of her broom handle. She didn’t notice.

  Once her tea was ready, Wanda settled herself into a comfortable armchair by the living room windows, her favorite place to read. She picked up a manila folder from the coffee table, a red pen clipped to it, and began reading papers, pen in hand. She might be playing hooky, but she still had to keep up with her grading. Besid
es, if she finished early, it meant more time for herself.

  At fifty-six, Wanda had tenure, making her nearly untouchable, and she ran Jacob Childs’ English department – as well as the school newspaper – with Stalinesque fervor. Never married, she was a committed Democrat, worried about global warming and polar bears, thought Barack Obama was the closest thing to Jesus Christ (not that she believed in Jesus Christ) and that George Bush and all those who supported his criminal wars should die of bone cancer. She also believed that most people’s problems stemmed in one way or another from being inconsiderate, and got what was coming to them. Wanda knew it was her job to let them know that.

  The students in her eighth-grade, second period class had been instructed to pick an environmental problem, then describe in no less than two pages what could be done to fix it. She had already read through half the papers, and as usual they were garbage. Her notes across the top of each in red pen, as well as their grades (nothing above a ‘C’, more than a few ‘D’s and two ‘F’s) expressed her feelings.

  You put NO thought into this!

  I expected you to take this assignment seriously!

  Your solution is childish!

  To one paper she had stapled a sealed envelope, the exterior of which read, “Deliver to your parents.” Inside was a one page note stating that, clearly, Scott was being influenced by a destructive personality (Wanda felt his work had a decidedly aggressive, right-wing feel to it). Furthermore, his performance in class led her to believe there might be a drug issue, and she was concerned. This last part wasn’t true, of course, but it was a nice way to twist the tails of his obviously Republican, war-mongering parents. And the school board could never hold her accountable for expressing her opinion about drug activity, not these days, and not according to the union.

  Two hours later, her grading finished, Wanda was in the building’s laundry room, and she was angry again. Someone had left a load of wet clothes unattended in one of the four washing machines, and hadn’t come back to deal with it. The other three washers were available, and in fact she put her own clothes in one of these, but that wasn’t the point. She pulled the wet clothes out and dropped them on the floor in a pile in a dusty corner of the room. She jotted a note on her steno pad – she always had one with her – and just before leaving plastered it against the wet pile.

  Unattended laundry will be REMOVED! Check

  your lease! Your inconsideration is UNBEARABLE!!!

  Then she quickly headed for the elevators before someone could come in. She didn’t like confrontations. Notes were better.

  Wanda stopped in the lobby to collect her mail, and saw Mr. Stubbins closing his own box. He was the one person in the building she could tolerate, always quiet and considerate, with a nice smile. About her age, as usual he was dressed in jeans, loafers and a pressed button up shirt. He was always around on work days, and she thought he ran his own small computer business from home.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Pearson.”

  “And to you, Mr. Stubbins.” He was kind enough to hold the elevator while she opened her mailbox, collected her bills, magazines and junk mail, and took a moment to slip an envelope into the management box. Inside was a note which complained about the late night treadmill use by her downstairs neighbor. It had lots of words in caps and plenty of exclamation points.

  They rode up to the fourth floor in comfortable silence. Mr. Stubbins wasn’t much of a talker, and though she longed to commiserate with him about the burdens of living in this building, he seemed too amiable to share her views. She imagined him saying something like, “Well, there’s some things you just learn to put up with when you live in apartments.” She glanced at him and curled her lip just the slightest bit. Maybe she didn’t care for Mr. Stubbins that much after all.

  He gave her a pleasant smile as they got out, heading in the opposite direction. Wanda only nodded, glad that he lived at the other end of the hall. She was sure his personal habits were just as noisy and intolerable as everyone else in this building. And she was increasingly convinced that people who worked from home were simply too lazy to get a real job. At least he was polite.

  Back in her apartment, Wanda heard another racket from the floor above, something being dragged across the hardwood floor, and a child laughing. She banged the ceiling with her broom again and the racket stopped. A moment later she was scribbling on her steno pad.

  The noise from your apartment is UNBEARABLE!

  You need to get area rugs as your lease requires!!!

  She ducked out to the hallway and climbed the fire stairs up one floor, checking the fifth floor hall to be certain it was empty. Then she taped her note to the door of the apartment directly above hers, and hurried back downstairs.

  An hour later her doorbell rang, and she crept on sock feet to the door, pressing an eye to the peephole. Standing there was a heavyset man in a Jets jersey, his face red and angry. Her upstairs neighbor, another bum who couldn’t work a real job with regular hours. In one hand he held her note. She didn’t open the door, and when he pounded a fist on it she checked to make sure the deadbolt was engaged, then eased back down the hallway, smiling. She had no intention of talking to him, the note was clear enough, and he’d obviously gotten the message. Before long he went away.

  Around four o’clock Wanda fixed a light, early dinner and planted herself on the couch to watch Biography. It was about Clint Eastwood’s life and climb to fame. Mr. Pacino curled up beside her and went to sleep.

  During a commercial, there was a knock at her door, not angry pounding, just a simple rapping. Wanda sighed. The man upstairs had been quiet, but he was probably back, feeling like a reasonable discussion, hoping to catch her at home. She considered ignoring it, but it was a commercial, so she hoisted herself off the couch, careful not to disturb Mr. Pacino, and padded back down the hallway. It would be fun to see her chubby neighbor standing there frustrated as she ignored him.

  When she looked through the peephole she instead saw Mr. Stubbins holding a scrapbook or a photo album. She unlocked the door and opened it a bit. “Mr. Stubbins, it’s a bit late and…” With the door open she could now see the object held low in Mr. Stubbins’s other hand. A yellow Husqvarna chainsaw.

  “What…?

  Mr. Stubbins pushed the door open and, smiling, head-butted her with a loud crack. There was a blast of white pain as she staggered backwards into the hall closet door. Mr. Stubbins stepped in and closed the door behind him, snapping the deadbolt. Wanda’s head was spinning, and blood from her forehead was running into her eyes. She saw that Mr. Stubbins’ nice button up shirt was spattered with red.

  She opened her mouth to scream, and he struck her across the face with the spine of the scrapbook. Her lips split, and one tooth rattled across the floor.

  “My Jeep,” he said. “My laundry.”

  She was still trying to stay on her feet, but Mr. Stubbins hit her in the stomach with the butt of the chainsaw, knocking the wind out of her. She collapsed in a wheezing heap, starting to crawl down the hall towards the living room. Mr. Stubbins walked slowly, deliberately behind her, prodding her ample bottom with the tip of one loafer.

  “I like to have a smoke in the garage once in a while, too.”

  Wanda gasped and crawled.

  “My broken floor lamp left outside the dumpster last Spring.” A prod. “My Christmas tree needles in the elevator in January.” He prodded harder. “My unclaimed FedEx box in the lobby that ended up in the trash.” He kicked her hard as she reached the living room, and she sprawled in front of the TV. Biography was detailing Clint’s spaghetti western days, and Mr. Pacino had long since fled to safety in the bedroom. Wanda couldn’t catch her breath.

  Mr. Stubbins tossed the scrapbook onto the floor in front of her, and it popped open. Each page had been carefully fitted with handwritten notes, on a variety of steno paper, stationary and legal pad pages. Her notes. Her angry notes. She looked over her shoulder, trying to speak, eyes wide, and saw that Mr.
Stubbins’ forehead had split open too, a rivulet of red running down alongside his nose, dripping across his smiling lips. He straddled her and jerked the cord of the chainsaw, bringing it to raucous life.

  “There’s some things you have to put up with in apartment living!” he yelled over the clatter of the whirring blade. “And some things you don’t!”

  Then he went to work on Wanda.

  Despite a frantic 911 call from the upstairs neighbor in the Jets Jersey, it took the police almost ten minutes to arrive and make Mr. Stubbins stop. Later, in his statement to police, Wanda’s neighbor would describe her screaming as “unbearable.”

  A PICTURE FROM HARRIETT

  The Terrell County Sheriff’s cruiser slowed as the road flare and the deputy standing on the blacktop came into view. Beyond, a collection of patrol cars, fire trucks and one of the county ambulances were pulled to both sides of the two lane road where it rounded a gentle curve through the forest. Red and blue emergency lights flashed against the twilight.

  A murdered child in the Mississippi woods. It was going to be a long night.

  Sheriff Cecil Hamilton eased his cruiser up to the deputy in the road, the flashers of his own roof rack reflecting off the man’s yellow safety vest, and lowered his window, letting the air conditioning escape into the humid evening. At even a few yards, a ghostly steam could be seen clinging to the asphalt.