Bloodlines: The Legendary (The Carnival)

The following is an excerpt from pages 27-29 of my work in Bloodlines: the Legendary, White Wolf Publishing, 2006.

Among carnival folk exaggeration, confabulation, and outright lying are accepted as part of any tale, for even a whispered legend among close associates is as much a part of the Show as one broadcast on-stage to a rapt audience of gullible rubes. The story of the Carnival is no exception and the Freaks would have it no other way. For them, the origin of their bloodline is just another reckoning intended to entertain first and answer questions second. Even accepting its likely inaccuracies, most agree that as told tonight, the narrative is probably not too far off the mark from the actual events that gave birth to this frightening brood.

Anulka was a Slovak girl born in 1742 with the misfortune of having her legs fused together, a condition named sirenomelia because of the victim’s resemblance to the mythical siren. Rejected by her mother at birth she was taken in by the Church, which wholly expected the infant to die within days. To both their surprise and horror, the child did not perish and though afflicted with pain and numerous attendant complications, the freak of nature survived God’s cruel joke. As she grew older she was treated with increasing harshness by her caretakers; but, afraid that the girl was a divine test, the nuns did not dare to visit harm upon her. Instead, when Anulka first experienced her menses, she was expelled from the orphanage and handed over to a local businessman in exchange for cash.

While the entrepreneur promised the sisters that the young woman would be well taken care of, he in fact had no such intention. Rather, he acted only as a middle-man for Josef Gensch, the manager of a small circus that traveled Bohemia, Austria, and Germany. Gensch knew a money-maker when he saw it and in Anulka he saw a small fortune. Once in his possession, any pretense at hospitality ceased and the deformed girl was thrust into the inhuman world of the early sideshow. Sharing a filthy, straw-strewn cage floor with an imbecilic albino, she was turned overnight into just another spectacle for the show. Towners — those locals who were lured to the circus — would come each day to gawk at the advertised Mermaid of Bohemia for a few pfennigs and would fill Anulka’s ears with words that were more injurious than her living conditions. She was spit on, insulted, threatened, and degraded each day, her only solace the quiet hours of the night when she would pray to God for salvation. To add to her agonies, Gensch grew fond of having Anulka brought to his quarters now and then to satisfy his deviant lusts. In her mind, she was being punished by the Almighty, perhaps for the sins of the mother she never knew, for her life was as bad as any Hell could conjure up in her imagination. Any hope that God might rescue her finally died in Gensch’s rank embrace. The Mermaid of Bohemia no longer prayed to Heaven, but instead begged for Death to ease her torment.

Her pleading did not go unheard, and one fateful night Death did answer her call. The circus had been in the town of Linz for only two days when Hagal, a Nosferatu neonate, paid a visit to the traveling show. Wandering among the circus-goers, his true nature masked from casual scrutiny, Hagal remained among the wagons and tents after the public had been sent home and the showmen and rousties found rest after their long day’s work. The Haunt was drawn to one wagon in particular — the Office, or the circus leader’s wagon — for from within emanated the sounds of pleasure and pain, emotions that stoked the young Kindred’s bloodlust. The wagon’s door was locked, but Hagal was too caught up in the moment to care, and tore the barrier from its hinges. Inside he found Gensch and Anulka, the former forcing his “mermaid” to provide him the basest of pleasures to her clear distaste. Unable to control his own sense of arousal, Hagal launched himself upon the stunned circus leader and satisfied every one of his own monstrous urges, relishing the heavy splash of blood that filled his rabid maw. Anulka sought only to flee as quickly as possible, but her condition made that all but impossible. Instead, she could only cower in terror from the demon before her. In those brief moments before Hagal turned on her, she came to a simple yet fortifying conclusion. God had cursed her for the sins of her parents and had abandoned her to Hell. Now, the Devil had come to ease her suffering and offer her his own brand of salvation. Her darkest prayers had been answered. With that, her fright vanished.

Sated with Gensch’s blood, Hagal eyed the deformed woman before him. As one who bore the special curse of the Nosferatu in his dead veins, Hagal understood to a certain degree the kind of person Anulka must be to survive in the face of so terrible a physical defect. He knew what it meant to be feared and hated and abused, and a glint of his lingering humanity rose to the surface. What finally decided the fate of the freak was the utter lack of fear that she now displayed to the blood-soaked vampire that surely could destroy her with nary a thought. She seemed at peace, even excited at her expected demise, a reaction that caught Hagal by surprise. Here was a creature truly fit for the mantle of the Nosferatu, a creature that was already comfortable bearing a horrible stigma without complaint. Imagine what she could be with the power of Vitae at her command. Without further hesitation, Hagal opened her neck and let the lifeblood given her by God spill out onto the already blood-stained floor. In its place, Hagal gave his childe his own accursed Vitae, bestowing upon her the full force of his clan’s legacy.

Together, Hagal and Anulka seized control of the circus, using the power of their Vitae to enslave key members of the group and put them in charge. The circus continued on its route as if nothing had happened, stopping in the usual towns and putting on the show as it always had. However, this time blood, as well as money, was collected from the locals, providing the circus’s undead masters everything they needed to survive. When the show returned to Prague, its owners — three merchants who bankrolled the enterprise and put Gensch in charge of day-to-day affairs — attempted to reassert their control by installing a new overseer and seizing their share of the profits, but the Kindred would have none of it. The pair visited each of the owners in turn, impressing upon them the need for them to immediately dissolve their relationship with the carnival, which worked precisely as desired. Now in full control of the circus, the haunting duo set out to put on a show that would exceed any other in history.

For more than three decades they did what they set out to do. The small circus gained a reputation throughout Europe as a show that was not to be missed and their regular route expanded to include larger and more distant locales. Unfortunately for its owners, the circus also gained the unwanted attention of certain influential Kindred who grew concerned about the rumors of midnight “vampire shows” that circus-goers could see with the purchase of a special, high-priced ticket. While performing on the outskirts of Strasbourg, that town’s Kindred prince received word from his own spy that the rumors were indeed true. Hagal and Anulka were putting on a special exhibition in the middle of the night for a small audience that included not only blood-drinking, but a display of their vampiric powers, a flagrant violation of the First Tradition. Enraged, the prince commanded his sheriff to drag the outlaws to his court to answer for their crimes. Along with some backup, the sheriff did manage to get his hands on Hagal, but Anulka managed to escape the notice of the posse. Hagal was summarily tried, convicted, and executed by Strasbourg’s prince; Anulka was convicted in absentia and her circus was ordered destroyed in the hope that it would flush her out of hiding. Instead, Anulka was only driven away, finding refuge with the aid of a retainer. Her sire and her circus were gone, but her will was unbroken. She retreated to her homeland and founded a new organization, something that would be less obvious and more able to move at a moment’s notice. Instead of a full circus, she operated a small traveling carnival and created her own brood of childer to assist her and enhance the outfit’s appeal. To her surprise, her progeny eventually began to change, becoming true freaks like her, each unique in his or her disfigurement. No longer merely a Nosferatu, she had become the progenitor of her own foul bloodline. She was a Freak and her family was the Carnival.