Dracula's Ghost - Afterimage: Chapter 15

Part III: The Witch of Endor

I.

Budapest

1956

The violence subsided as the first troops entered the city.  Ordinary Hungarians clung to the hope that the new government would reach an accommodation with Moscow, unaware that their new freedom was already stillborn, a sickly infant that would not survive its first days of life.  From the window of his office in the Soviet Embassy, Yuri Andropov watched the crowds mill aimlessly, uncertain of the fate set before them.  For him, there were no doubts – the die had been cast and troops streamed across the Rubicon, not to carry out a rebellion, but to crush one.

A few miles away, Rupert Holmes hid in a deserted tenement, moving only at night to surveil the prison.  Friend and foe alike passed by unaware as he slipped through the darkened streets, his movements as stealthy as a shadow – or perhaps a ghost.  Rudolf Diels and Father Cristofor Albu slept, for they had spent the daylight hours watching the same prison from their vantage near the West German Embassy.  Cristofor assumed that Diels would concoct some elaborate ruse to slip through the barred doors, but Diels, who had been both jailer and inmate, was more realistic. Breaking into a prison was impossible in the best of times, and with Budapest on the knife edge of revolt, it was tantamount to suicide. Nonetheless, Diels had been strangely hopeful, for order was breaking down in the city, and the danger presented its own opportunity.  It was only at sunset, when the memories of Hof beckoned and he contemplated the prospect of a darkened bedroom, that his mood soured. 

And there was evening and morning, and another day began.  The priest and the spy awakened to begin a new vigil, and Rupert Holmes returned to his own lair. Holmes was tired and touched by disappointment, for each sunrise marked another day’s wait, and he chafed with impatience at the delay.

Where is he?

II.

The window was little more than a slit, too high to reach and too narrow to accommodate the width of a man’s body, but it allowed a little sunlight to penetrate the gloom of his cell.  Archie Spencer rose with the dawn and sat on the iron cot, his belly rumbling.  He had not eaten in over twenty-four hours, but the lack of care was offset by shoddy administration – Soviet prisons were notorious for their tight security, yet they had left him alone with his mother for an entire day. The guard had returned at sunset and listlessly shuffled him back to his own cell.

Last night, they had forgotten to lock his door.

Rupert Holmes would call that a sign, he thought, but the guards could throw open the gates, and he would not budge without his mother. Then go find her, Archie thought. A prison with open cells would surely leave at least one door unguarded. Find her and get her away from here. They were alone in a hostile city, but once they were outside of the prison gates, he could figure out their next steps.

III.

To Romania and Back Again

Plekhanov had not driven a vehicle since the war, and the truck careened across the rutted lane, its wheels dangerously close to the ditch on either side. The wool itched on his skin, and he tried not to think of what would happen if he was caught in a dead soldier’s uniform. It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing if they catch you now.  If they catch you, they’ll shoot you on the spot. He was glad for the open window, for their cargo emanated an unwholesome odor that made him slightly ill.

They had crossed the border with his would-be executioners resting in the back, a pile of severed heads neatly arranged at the corpses’ feet. The border checkpoint terrified him, but a pair of guards waved him through with barely a glance, watching with dead tranquility as the truck passed beneath the sodium lights. They passed through a small town – Chișineu-Criș, he read on the sign – and stopped at a deserted farm.  Plekhanov unloaded the bodies while Quincy Morris carried a pair of heavy-looking boxes to the truck.

“What are we taking to Budapest? Guns? Explosives?” 

“Just a few boxes of dirt.  They say that the soil in Romania, from the Carpathians to Lake Snagov, is the best in the world. Good wholesome earth.” 

The first uneasy glow of sunrise lightened in the east when he fired up the engine. Quincy insisted on riding in the back, perhaps to guard their cargo of precious earth.  How does he stand the smell?  The bed was covered in drying blood, and the odor made Plekhanov’s stomach churn. 

“Drive until midday, then pull off the road and wait for sunset.”

“What if someone finds us?” Plekhanov had asked.

“Look official.”

As the morning sun climbed higher, Plekhanov found that he could maneuver the truck reasonably well, and he pressed the accelerator, scattering each passing oxcart or pedestrian with the horn. Halfway to Budapest, he turned onto a rutted trail that marked the border of a fallow field.  A few kilometers from the main road, he killed the motor. 

It’s so quiet, he thought.  In the gulag, a few old Ukrainians whispered of the famine of 1932, where the very fact of survival marked the enemies of Soviet power.  It was a crime to hoard grain, he remembered, and we turned fertile fields into wastelands, with only ghosts to till the soil.  When the famine went on long enough, anyone who had not starved was presumed to be hoarding grain – a criminal.  Plekhanov had been eight, a Moscow schoolboy who ate his fill of bread and studied the wisdom of Comrade Stalin in his classes.  He stared across the empty field. It’s a good place to wait if we don’t want to be found. Let’s see what our passenger thinks. He walked to the back of the truck and peered beneath the canopy.

The truck was empty save for the two boxes. Plekhanov ran a hand across the wooden surface and found the lid fixed in place with a series of nails. The air beneath the canopy was stale, still tinged with the rancid odor of dried blood, and a thought tickled the back of his mind. There was a tire tool in the truck, and Plekhanov considered prying open the lid, just to be certain, before some instinct for self-preservation stopped him. After all, he was a Zek, and a good rule for every convict was to know as little as possible.

What if he’s inside?

And why can’t I remember what happened last night?

Alexandr Plekhanov crawled into the cab and stretched his body across the seat. He drifted into an uneasy sleep and dreamed of an empty plain, where shadows flitted past as he wandered the barren dreamscape.  They smelled of drying blood and whispered with Sarah’s voice, but Plekhanov stared resolutely toward the horizon as he walked, fearing what might reveal itself in the darkness.   

IV.

Purfleet

Evangeline Morris awakened to the smell of dust and old bones, and her head ached at the base of her skull. Dustin hit me over the head, she thought. But Dustin has been dead for three years. The mad German had cut him into a dozen pieces before showing up in her bedroom. Oh my God…  She sat upright and stared at her surroundings. Acwulf sat across the room, watching her, a bowl of red liquid at his feet. It was dark inside the chapel, and the light that penetrated the high windows was weak, the last gasps of a dying sun.

woman in an empty cellar

“Blood magic,” he said, gesturing toward the bowl. The eyes stared at her without blinking. “Not as powerful as necromancy, but it shows past and future in little glimpses. Have you figured out why I am here?” 

“The money,” she said. The blood loss made her shiver, and Evangeline wondered whether Acwulf’s ritual was an elaborate ruse or a sign of insanity. “My husband stole money from the Outfit, and we went on the run.” 

“Your foolishness is almost charming,” he said. “Do you know about the SS, the most elite men of Hitler’s Germany? We spent the last years of peace delving into the occult – spiritualism, ancient runes, astral bodies – and most of it was a waste of time.  However, there was one man, a great leader of our movement, who stumbled across something authentic. Real magic. By the time anyone realized what he found, he was already dead, killed by his own discovery.”

“I didn’t ask the time – don’t tell me how to build a watch.” 

“I always liked the American sense of humor.”  Acwulf’s face was a blank mask, revealing nothing.  If the German was a grifter, she thought, he was an exceptionally good one. “When the SS wanted to review the… unusual circumstances surrounding his death, a single man was entrusted with the task, a man who had proven himself trustworthy with the bloodiest aspects of the war in Russia. It took three years, but I found the truth of what, or rather who, murdered Reinhard Heydrich. His name was Quincy Morris. Have you heard of him?”

“No,” she lied. Quincy Morris disappeared before I was born.

“Of course not,” he said. “There were other names – Harker, Holmwood, Spencer, Westenra – but we will deal with them in time. You cannot know how pleased He was to learn that a descendant of Quincy Morris was alive and well.” 

“What are you talking about?” Her unease began to grow into a sick fear. “Who was pleased?”

“The dead talk, Fraulein Morris, to those who know the proper questions, and that is how I found you. You have proven surprisingly resourceful, but He has not forgotten the injuries that he suffered, and he is eager to settle accounts with those who wronged him. You will meet him soon – tonight, or perhaps tomorrow.  Then he will reclaim what is rightly his.”

It is imperative that as the living descendant of Quincy Morris, you retain possession of Carfax Abbey.  Was that her answer, the reason that she had survived New Orleans, only to die in London by the same madman’s hand? Life comes at you fast. One question remained, and though it no longer mattered, she needed to speak the truth.

“You’re the one who murdered Dustin. You forced him to tell you where I was, then killed him before you came for me.”

“You have the order backward.”  Acwulf’s eyes shone with the dying sunlight. “I killed your husband, then I made him talk.”

V.

Budapest

Archie had been certain that the guards would raise an alarm when his absence was discovered. No one came, and as morning wore on into midday, he grew agitated and restless. Sarah lay sleeping on the metal cot, and when his efforts to rouse her yielded little more than a bleary state of semiconsciousness, he gave up and left to explore the lower floors. Perhaps there’s an unguarded exit nearby. The air was pleasantly cool, though the dampness lent an unwholesome tinge to the atmosphere. Archie ran his fingers across the brick, and traces of mildew clung to his skin. Like a catacomb, he thought. He found reams of old files in one empty cell, and another contained only a desk and a heavy iron ring set into the concrete wall.  Archie inspected the pockmarks left by the bullets and the drain in the floor. A hose bib was fixed to the opposite wall, and he slaked his thirst from the tepid water.  But no other prisoners, he thought. Save for his own footfalls on the concrete, the basement was deathly silent. And no exit. The only egress was the metal stairway to the upper floors.

His belly rumbled, and Archie scrounged through the abandoned guard’s station, searching for the abandoned remnant of a week-old meal, before returning to his mother’s cell. If no one came by sunset, he would try again to rouse her, and they would chance a return to the upper floors. No guards, doors left unlocked – there has to be a way out of this bloody place. Sarah’s eyes followed him as he passed through the doorway. 

“Mum?  There’s no exit on this level.  I was thinking we should make her way upstairs.” 

“Not now.”  She shook her head.  “It’s too close to sunset.” 

Archie opened his mouth to protest, but something – the look in her eye, or the dead certainty with which she spoke – stopped him.  He sat on the edge of the cot, then allowed his body to relax onto the thin pallet.  For the first time in several hours, he realized that he was exhausted. 

“We’ll try in the morning.” She sat beside him, and callused fingers ran through his hair.  “It will be safer then.”

VI.

Hungarian People’s Republic

Sun yielded to shadow, and Plekhanov wandered through a remarkable dream. The wooded paths and elaborate statues reminded him of Novodevichy Cemetery, but the graves were marked with Roman rather than Cyrillic letters. Tendrils of old vines wound their way about the tombstones, and a thick canopy of forest filtered the sunlight to a sickly yellow. It was a paradox, both peaceful and dreary, and Plekhanov supposed that the contrast was what made the place amenable to ghosts. They flitted at the edge of his visual range, flashes of white in the corner of one eye or oddly formed shadows that appeared briefly among patches of sunlight. Their speech was barely discernable from the wind that whistled through the broken monuments, whispered voices uttering strange tongues. Once, he caught a glimpse of Quincy Morris.

The sunset kissed the grasslands beyond the stone fence with a pleasant band of yellow and glimmered blood red on the stone angel, and the wind stirred the leaves at his feet. Plekhanov stared at the trees as the branches began to move, a rhythmic oscillation that matched the beating of his own heart. The voices of the ghosts were a whispered cacophony, their speech unintelligible but their message perfectly clear. Save yourself.

The iron door of the tomb was standing open.

Plekhanov stared with bulging eyes as the darkness gathered beyond the threshold, a shadow within shadow like the event horizon of a dying star. It radiated pure malevolence at him, envious of his corporeal existence. When the sun sets, the angels flee this place. The crypt loomed before him, impossibly large, and Plekhanov realized with horror that he was being drawn toward that open maw. He flailed his arms, desperate for a handhold –

“Wake up, Alexandr.”  A clammy finger touched his face, and Plekhanov screamed aloud. Quincy Morris sat in the passenger seat beside him.

“I was dreaming,” Plekhanov said. A sudden fear seized him, as if he had called for his mother in the night, only to find that a fiend had answered in her place.   

Quincy nodded. “You caught a glimpse of the world beneath the world. What did you see there?” 

A dead man in the forest, Plekhanov thought. An entire village of Jews wiped out by the Germans. Myself, killing an old man who fed those same Germans. You, tearing the throats of my executioners and gorging on their blood. Pain and fear and heartbreak stored away in a single tomb, waiting for someone to open the door. His breath came out in a long exhale.

“I don’t know what I saw.” 

“No, I would imagine not.”  The bloodshot eyes carefully studied his face. “The thing that you saw, what you can’t put into words, is what’s waiting for us in Budapest. Start the truck, and let’s get moving.” 

VII.

Purfleet

Somewhere on the far side of the Channel, the sun set, and Evangeline Morris waited in the semidark of the old chapel. Acwulf busied himself with the lighting of candles and with scrawling runes upon the stone floor. Every half-hour or so, he passed through the doorway and vanished, returning after each absence with an expression of growing impatience. On his last return, Evangeline noted the leaf clinging to his trousers and water dripping from his shoes. Why is he going to the pond? He sat on the stones in front of her, crestfallen.

“Not tonight,” he said. “Perhaps tomorrow.” 

VIII.

Budapest

Captain Sokolov lay on the bunk of an empty cell, and though the walls were thick, he could hear everything. The prison was down to a skeleton crew, and the few remaining guards were frightened, for another man had vanished last night. Those that remained stayed near the front gate, too fearful to keep an eye on their charges.

Outside, he heard a wolf’s howl, and Sokolov moved quietly to avoid the others as he made his way to the roof. It could be finished tonight, for the mother and son were hiding together in the basement, but there were others to be dealt with, and He wished to settle all quarrels with a single stroke. The door was locked, and he had left his key ring on the lower floors, but he had no need for keys. Sokolov waited until he heard the words, a whispered question from the other side of the steel, before responding.

“Yes. Come in.”

IX.

The lights in their cell flickered and died, and Archie jerked awake as his mother cried out in the darkness. He placed one arm round her shoulder, an odd inversion of parent and child, and shivered at the sudden chill. It’s just a bad dream, mum, nothing more. At the far end of the hall, a door opened with the stealthy creak of metal on metal.

Sarah’s breathing quickened, the shallow gasps of budding panic, and his own heart began to pound as Archie waited for the sound of footsteps or the angry shouting of guards. Instead the hallway remained quiet, and Archie found the silence unnerving. Come outside, it whispered. Your mind is playing tricks, and there’s nothing to see. Perhaps, he thought, a guard had slipped into the basement to drink from a bottle of smuggled vodka. Or perhaps the thing that took your mother has returned for both of you. No way of knowing unless you come outside… His own fear spurred his body to action, and he half-rose before Sarah’s hand tightened about his wrist, and they sat on the edge of the bed until the bulb overhead flickered back to life.   

“Archie?”  Sarah’s voice was a low whisper. “Promise me one thing.” 

“Promise you what?”  There was no reply for several minutes, and Archie wondered whether she had fallen asleep.

“Don’t leave me alive to fall into his hands.”