Serials


THE VAMPIRE CLOWNS OF OLD POLAND by ICAM

PART 3 - PAYMENT

I sleep above the animals.

In these hard times people don't have to be thieves to steal. The animals are all I have. I have so many, but fewer than I would like. I need them all, to feed my family. Fifteen; my wife and fourteen daughters. Plus me makes 16.

Many mouths.

So I guard my flock closely. Four sows and a boar. A goat for milk and fifteen chickens that sleep up here with me. Once there were cows but then, Once I was young.

I am still the richest man I know. I sleep light and easy. I will never get all of my daughters married, so my family will never disappear. I will be never alone.

Times are hard but that will not always be. Soon there will be grandchildren I have two expected. They may not grow big but they will always appreciate a good meal, and that is a great gift in life.

There is a noise in the night but it is far away.

I hear the noise again, like a cricket testing the limits of a jar.

The animals are oblivious, there can be nothing wrong.

I have been sleeping and now I am awake. I am too heavy to move. I can hear something that I know well. But the animals are quiet. It cannot be important.

My new babies are crying but I am sleeping.

I am awake and there is a noise in the night.

I have a billhook that would frighten a Turk in case someone's hunger has overpowered their brain. It is in my hand as I trot down the big steps of the ladder.

I push open the door of my barn and let in the starlight. The night is quiet but there are noises from my house. I lock the door to keep the animals safe.

The air is very warm and there is a general melt. Down in the town below is a great fire, so large that I can smell the pine logs and the cooked meat.

Perhaps my girls have seen the fire; perhaps there is good news.

I lean my long hook by the front door and step into my house. The kitchen is warm; someone was in here until a few minutes ago. There are noises from above. My family can make a lot of noise over a simple thing.

Only one person can use our little wooden stairs at a time. When I built them I did not imagine so many children. I meet nobody on the way down as I go up.

At the little door at the top I give my knock and open the door.

I can see nothing.

The wind is terrible in here. The air is full of whirling shapes that must be clothes blown on the gale.

My girls are somewhere in here because I can hear their noise. Each one's voice is well known to me and I can tell from the full chorus if one is missing.

I can see a candle ahead, dancing in the wind.

I can see faces in the light and I hear the sound of locusts.

I fight through the wind and fall to my knees in the light.

A man sits cradling the flame in his hand: he and his accomplices form a break in the endless wind. Inside the ring of watching men it is snowing. Snowing fine threads that lie on the arms and heads and backs of the men. The threads fall on me and sometimes a stray thread falls into the tiny flame and burns with a pop and a sizzle.

The men are watching another man dance with a partner. He dances without heed to the trailing snow and the buffeting air. He dances sadly, slowly. He spins his partner with grace and care, their faces hidden by his big winter hat. He is keeping time aloud; his dancing is precise and military, however sad.

Another man drinks from a sloshing bottle. I see how red he is under his white makeup. The candlelight shows what it wants to when it wants to.

The dance stops and the dancer lowers his partner to the floor. When he sits down, his partner stays, lying on the floor. I look over at her. Her neck is cut. She is dead and empty. I do not recognise my wife with my eyes.

I stand up, grabbing the bottle from the drunken man. I drink to taste and I spit out the blood without swallowing. I step forward through the group of sitting men and haul the dancer to his feet.

The wind stops.

The silence makes me look around.

There is a candle at the foot of every bed.

There is another at the head. Thirty two candles.

The room is well lit. I can see clear, the length of my house. Strangers fill every gap between the beds. Strangers in rich coats, with painted faces. On every bed lies one of my offspring. My daughters and their forcibly birthed children. From the oldest to the newest they are screaming.

A hand falls on my shoulder. It is the military dancer, he smiles. He flicks his overcoat towards my eyes and as I blink he changes. His winter rags are now fur and wings. The flying rags and the wind are back. Tearing and batting at my face.

Through the clouds of devils I can see my family. All are having the hair yanked from their heads. There used to be two blondes, two redheads, two brunettes, two with black hair and two with orange, two with hair that was grey like a mouse and two like me with every colour in every hair.

My wife's hair was once black; now it is white, wherever it is.

The flying bats tear chunks from their heads and drop them. The pounding winds catch the threads and spill them over everything. Two demons in the shape of men use rakes to clear the threads from the floor into sacks.

Around my stricken girls the strangers cavort and leer. They switch from man to bat and back again. Cheeping with joy.

They show me my first grandchildren, freed from their mothers like fish freed from the sea.

They speak to me but their Polish is different from mine.

They slap me and make me drink.

They rape my daughters, dead and alive alike.

They sweat, and drops of paint fall from their faces onto the bodies of my children.

Red and White.

Blood and Paint.

They tease my family and each other: they trip up legs and send the victims crashing into pools of spilt blood and wine.

They set fire to each other's clothes and fur.

They fly round and round, screeching their idiot screeches.

Finally they throw me out of my own bedroom and down the little stairs that I built before I had any children.

I get up and go outside. The night is shamefully warm. My animals have been stolen but I don't care because I have no family anymore.

I find some snow and bathe my eyes. I grip the long handle of the billhook.

I go back inside.

I go upstairs.

Only my family remains. The strangers have gone. There is still work for the hook, giving mercy to the last, strongest of my children.

I kindle a fire in the thatch, I shall not come back here.

Outside again I see the strangers flying back to their fire in the town.

I walk down the hill after them slipping in the mud and the slush.

The town is dead.

The fire is dying.

The strangers are going home to their carriages to roost.

They are full and happy and blind.

They are drunk.

They divide up their sacks of loot and fly within.

My hook bites the wood of a big black caravan. I cut the lock from the door. I pull the barrier away.

Inside it is black.

Curly black and springy.

I push my arm into the blackness and pull out some to look at. A handful of hair, the mixed output of many heads.

I dig like a dog and uncover one of the painted strangers.

Sleeping, tangled in the hair.

It is a female, her infant clutched to her breast.

I cut off their heads with my hook.

Another door, this time blonde hair. Shining in the light of the sickle moon.

Another carriage holds red hair.

Inside the strangers are wrapped up safe as winter apples. Each carriage has a different crest. Each caravan an ancient family.

I rouse the fire and catch it on a branch end.

The packed hair is hard to light but once it has started it goes with a roar. I watch it until dawn, bearing the stink until the light.

With the help of the sun I can make sure.

By ICAM, copyright 2008. All rights reserved.





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