Dracula's Ghost - Afterimage: Chapter 7

Part II - The Thieves

Part II

The Thieves

I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager said afterwards that Mr. Kurtz’s methods had ruined the district. I have no opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand that there was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him—some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can’t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last—only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core....

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many.

Ecclesiastes 11:8

I.

Perhaps the world is larger than our senses can perceive, and if so, it remains separated from the humdrum reality of daily existence. This deeper reality, if it exists at all, can be glimpsed only in snatches – a widow may catch the image of her dead husband in the corner of her eye, or a man may perceive some flash of hope or a portent of doom in the terra incognita of the future. Some, through no fault of their own, crossed an invisible threshold and never returned, and thus, the murder of Lucy Westenra remained unsolved. Similarly, the authorities in London knew that Katherine Holmwood died violently, but their best suspect was merely a name in a long list of missing persons, and the motive for his act remained a mystery.

Archie Spencer slept fitfully, his dreams haunted by German pickets and empty buildings. At one point, he stood at a locked door, a twelve-year old boy eavesdropping on his father. I think Sarah is having an affair. The dream faded as he fell into a deeper sleep, and as the night wore on, he found himself in Highgate cemetery. The geography was all wrong – fields where there should be trees and hills where there should be flatlands – but the feeling of place, of the old graves in the forest, was instantly recognizable. Shapes, vaguely humanoid, passed by in the darkness, and Archie caught a glimpse of Jonathan Harker, walking arm-in-arm with his grandmother. A dark-haired woman emerged through the trees, and Archie gaped at her slender form, taking in the beauty of her face and the fair skin of her arms and neck. He longed to embrace her but shied away, suddenly fearful, when her eyes met his own. “They can’t see you,” a voice behind him whispered, and he awakened as the first rays of dawn appeared in his window.

Father Cristofor Albu rose early and completed his devotions as workmen streamed into the church for their morning shift. Cologne had been a city of the dead when he arrived in 1945, but he had to give credit where due – the Germans had slowly brought life back to the city, and the repairs to the cathedral would be complete by year’s end. If a woman’s face, similar to the phantom of Archie Spencer’s dreams, intruded upon his thoughts, he pushed her gently away, for he had work to do. In a different part of the city, Rudolf Diels slept on, his own senses dulled by alcohol. He knew that he had been drinking too much of late – I need to slow down if I want to see sixty – but the case of Sarah Spencer had awakened wartime ghosts, phantoms that Diels thought long-banished.

Sarah herself lay huddled with Alexandr Plekhanov at the edge of a fallow field, for the morning sun was already shining, and they were exhausted after walking all night. Her dreams were drab and only half-remembered – her mother’s voice, her son’s face, and an old memory of the German Jew who had saved her life. Plekhanov himself remained awake, for he would keep watch until the sun was directly overhead.

Only Evangeline Morris, far from home and newly wealthy, slept untroubled. She had enough bad memories for a lifetime, but for the first time since 1953, she had a feeling that things would, perhaps, work out in the end. Only a tinge of odor, perhaps the smell from a car in New Orleans or an empty castle in Romania, lingered at the fringes of her consciousness.

II.

London

August 1944

Katherine Holmwood thrashed in his arms, but she was too frail, and perhaps too frightened, to resist. Blood streamed from the wound in her throat as Horace shoved her over the open container, anxious that no blood spatter the cellar floor.  She cried out the name of  a long-dead friend, Lucy, Lucy, as Horace pushed the knife deeper into her neck. Finally, the knife severed the carotid artery, and blood poured into the box in a fountain. Katherine Holmwood struggled for an instant longer before all movement finally ceased.

Dear God, I’ve killed her. Horace stumbled away from the box, like a man waking from a nightmare. He never intended murder, and even the knife that he brought had been solely intended for… For what? He could not remember. They would hang him now, and his final hours would end in shame and humiliation. I never intended harm, he thought wildly. I simply went mad for a moment – surely they will believe that. Perhaps he could tell the police that a German spy broke into the house, that there was a struggle – that would explain his fingerprints on the knife. What if I bury her in the garden? She’ll be missed eventually, but I can tell everyone that she went into the city and never returned. No, I can’t wait for her to be noticed – it will be more plausible if I report her myself. Perhaps in two days, if that isn’t too long to wait…

Something in the box was moving.

Horace stared, transfixed, as a hand emerged from the soil and It unfolded from the narrow confines of the box like the sprouting of a malign flower. It was hairless, save for a few limp strands that adorned the skull, and the skin, white and leprous, was barely sufficient to cover the bones. Beneath that covering, the limbs themselves were devoid of flesh – the arms and legs of a scarecrow. Only the red eyes, and the teeth, showed any sign of vitality. Those eyes wandered about the room, disoriented, before fixing upon him.

“Where is Jonathan Harker?”

“He is dead.”  Horace’s voice nearly fails him. “Dead for years now.” 

“And his wife? His family?”

“All dead. Only his daughter remains.”

“Good. Come here.”

Horace stepped forward unwillingly, like a fish drawn at the end of a line. It would have been better to hang, he thought. Still, his fear eased as the eyes fixed upon him, for the police would never catch him now.

The last thing that he remembered was the sight of sharp teeth as the mouth opened to receive him.

III.

London

1956

“You’re sure you’re not angry?”

They sat in the corner of the pub, and Evangeline Morris ordered whisky. Her dress was the same deep blue of her hat, recently bought and cut to knee length. She had good calves, and when she caught him looking, the hint of a smile touched her face. Archie found that he liked her, this strange woman with brown eyes and rough manners .

“Not at all,” he said. “I just can’t figure out what my mother was thinking.” 

They had spent the morning with her solicitor, and he had confirmed the woman’s story. Sarah Spencer had purchased the property from the estate of Katherine Holmwood and transferred the deed into a trust for the living descendants of Quincy Morris. His mother had paid substantially more than the property was worth, but the money was not an issue. Something else nagged at him, which he was not ready to share with his new friend.

“My great uncle disappeared without a trace – did you know that?”  Evangeline Morris sipped her drink, lost in thought. “I half-wondered if I’d find him alive and well, the patriarch of a brood of second cousins who sipped tea and prattled on about the queen.” 

“You must be disappointed.” 

“Not really – he’d be in his nineties by now.”

“Forgive me for saying, but you’re a terrible liar.” 

“Careful there, Archibald. I’ve been a grifter since we were both in diapers.” 

“Perhaps,” he said as the liquor loosened his tongue, “but I lied my way across occupied Europe for the better part of six years, and I learned at the feet of a master. You, my dear, are trading mostly on good looks and charm.” 

“That’s because I deal mostly with men. You all go weak in the knees when a woman smiles at you.” 

“Fair enough.”  He ordered another drink. “Can you tell me again how you found out about the money?” 

“If you’re checking my backstory, I think you’ll find that I was quite careful when I put everything together, right down to the lost puppy.”  She batted her eyes at him. “If you want, I can add a whiff of wrongdoing – hiding my inheritance from the U. S. Treasury and my unloved relatives – if that will convince you.” 

“Let’s have another drink instead. If you’d be willing to come by my townhouse next week, I have something that might explain.” 

They spent the rest of the luncheon in pleasant conversation as the pieces turned over in his mind, like tumbrels clicking in a lock.

The war has started, but like a ship in the eye of a storm, they wait in the lull between Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the blitzkrieg of the following year, when Adolf Hitler will drive Britain’s armies to the brink of destruction. Archie Spencer, sixteen years old, lies awake in the darkness as he envisions the coming battles, and the possibility of his own death, with a curious mixture of mortal dread and heady excitement. His father has already returned to the Royal Navy, to the ship that will become his grave, and they are alone in the house.

Archie hears a moan in the darkness and crosses the hall to his mother’s bedroom. Sarah cries aloud when he touches her arm, then fades again into sleep as he holds her hand. In the darkness, she mumbles a name. Clarence? Clancy? Two days later, he mentions the name to Rupert Holmes, and the old man dismisses his question a trifle too quickly. Sometimes, even the master of lies fails at his craft.

IV.

Budapest

The Magyars had been allies of the Third Reich, but Yuri Andropov was not bound by the past, and as ambassador, he had worked with the Hungarian government (the rightful government, he thought, restored by the guiding hand of Comrade Stalin) to work for a brighter future. And the dullards in the street hate me for it. The Soviet Union promised peace, bread, and land, and the Hungarians could hardly fault him if spies and saboteurs wrecked their prosperity, or if fascist influences undermined Party discipline. Instead, provocateurs stirred up the peasants with promises to reform the secret police and guarantee the liberties of Hungary’s citizens. Andropov wanted to scream in their faces that the iron rule of the Party was not simple viciousness or caprice – that violence was necessary to build a better future. Do they really believe that we want blood for the sake of blood? That we are nothing more than common murderers? Apparently, they believed exactly that, for another diplomat was roughed up yesterday by the mob.

He lit a cigarette from the box on the table. Reporting to Moscow was stressful under the best circumstances, but the unrest left his own nerves frayed. And the illnesses. Outbreaks of disease were to be expected as peasants migrated into the city, and he had instructed the staff about proper hygiene and the avoidance of infected persons. Korzh had been sick and deluded, and one miserable corpse was not worth so much trouble, but what a strange disease it was. Korzh left work in the evening, perfectly healthy, and by the next morning had been listless and weak. The cycle repeated itself for a week, slow recovery followed by sudden relapse, until he had been found dead in the park. Yuri Andropov set to work, carefully wording his description of recent events. He thought it best to omit the long missive found in the dead man’s apartment, for there was no reason for the Politburo to parse the ravings of the deceased – Korzh’s death was of sufficient propaganda value that his body would have been returned to Moscow. Would have been… The illness had unhinged his mind, and the scribbles in his apartment included a disjointed ramble of whispered voices and strange visions, and an unhealthy obsession with holy relics. Had he lived, his ravings would have rendered him unsuitable for future work.

We should have rotated him back to Moscow to get him away from the bad air, Andropov thought. The Politburo suspected that Korzh had been poisoned by western agents and demanded that the perpetrators be identified and punished. They had a man in custody, and an autopsy might have confirmed their suspicions, but that avenue was closed to him now. Yuri Andropov gritted his teeth in frustration.

Three days ago, the corpse of Vladimir Korzh disappeared into thin air.

V.

Yaroslavl

A platoon of Interior Ministry troops guarded the site as a team of officers inspected the train for evidence. The man in the suit did not join them, for the murder of the guards was not his concern. The train carried only two prisoners, and the man was of secondary importance, a nameless zek under transport to Moscow for release and exile.  The woman was a foreigner, and her file did not specify her crime or sentence, only a numeric code that the man knew by heart.

There were three bodies in the crew car and another two in the engine, and he struggled to comprehend how a pair of unarmed prisoners could have produced so much carnage. One prisoner, the man reminded himself, thinking of the code in the woman’s file. Perhaps they would find her companion’s body dumped on the forest or floating in the river, his neck snapped like the others, but the man in the suit found this doubtful. The woman had been fond of her companion, and the male prisoner’s inclusion had been intended to ensure her quiescence.

The troops began to move as an officer barked orders, and he signaled to his driver. The standard protocol for an escape was to cordon off a ten-kilometer radius and saturate the area with troops and search dogs, for escaped prisoners did not travel great distances – they sought food and shelter near collective farms or in empty trapper’s cabins. The woman, he suspected, would not be so easy to catch. Good. The Interior Ministry would shoot her on sight, and the German, to whom he answered, wanted her alive.

“Take me to the city,” he told the driver as the truck roared to life. He would send a secure cable to Moscow and catch some sleep if possible – the man in the suit doubted that he would be sleeping much in the coming weeks. The truck bounced over the rutted path, and he closed his eyes, never quite managing to sleep.

VI.

Hof, Bavaria

Federal Republic of Germany

His destination was nowhere in particular, merely an old hut near the border fence, but he stopped first at the church. After all, Acwulf thought, he had traveled far since 1945, and it seemed only fitting to pay his respects. The prybar was in the valise with his other materials, but he guessed that he would make no use of the tool for several days.  The other materials, he would need today. And the knife, he thought. The blade was tucked into his belt, and he had thoroughly cleaned the blade before honing its edge to razor sharpness. Let no one be found among you who consults the dead, he thought, smiling. The dead had much to say for those who would listen, but such divination required only the basest knowledge, and today, he had something else in mind.

Acwulf prided himself for his clarity of vision. Take the Third Reich, for example – with hindsight, Germany’s failure was inevitable, for in their failure to learn from the past, they had simply repeated the mistakes of 1914, and now the Volk subsisted upon crumbs thrown by their American and Russian masters. And what is true for nations is true for individuals, he thought. Reinhard Heydrich had been thwarted at every turn in 1933, for he failed to consider the treachery within his own ranks. It pained him to admit the truth, for Acwulf had worshipped the great man, but Heydrich’s power had bred complacency, and Rudolf Diels had taken advantage of that weakness.

And once again, Herr Diels pokes his nose where it does not belong. Acwulf checked his knife and the totems in his bag. The inhabitant of the old hut was perfect, for none visited his home, and the dwelling lay suitably close to the old church. The dead spoke to those who would listen, but the true adept could change the future, nudging events to the left or right as it suited him. It suited Acwulf that Rudolf Diels should not only appear – Otto Skorzeny would take care of that – but that he should appear at a certain time in place.

When everything was ready, he moved forward at a lope, one hand on the hilt of his weapon.

VII.

Cologne

Diels arrived late, delayed by the damnable French customs officials. Had they known the truth, he thought sourly, they would have been happy to detain me. Plenty of former Nazis sought refuge in Franco’s Spain, and Diels had been consorting with a known fugitive. He purchased a fresh pack of cigarettes from the vending machine, hailed a cab, and after a moment’s indecision, directed the driver to his office. In the darkness outside his window, boats moved up the Rhine, their passage marked by the glow of navigation lights. You should send a note to Archie, he thought, but Diels was in no mood to work through that damnable code. The visit with Otto Skorzeny left him troubled, and Diels poured a drink to soothe his frayed nerves. He unlocked the filing cabinet as Skorzeny’s words rang in his ears.

“In twelve years as a Party member, I never killed a single Jew – can you believe that? Never herded an old man onto a boxcar to Treblinka, never pulled the trigger on a young mother clutching her child. My hands are clean.”

Diels had received the photograph in 1947 or 1948, and he assumed that his notoriety during the Nuremberg Trials had attracted the attention of his correspondent. He pulled the picture from its place in his cabinet and stared at the image. The woman was reasonably attractive, a full-figured lady of perhaps forty, and Diels ascertained from the quality of her undergarments that she had been well-off. The photographer had captured her in mid-scream as she ran through the rubble of destroyed buildings, blood pouring from her nose and mouth. The mob that pursued her was visible in the background, though their faces were blurry.

“I never killed a single Jew.”  Otto Skorzeny had been surprisingly incurious about Diels’s search for Sarah Spencer.   Diels re-read the caption at the bottom of the picture. Lwów, July 1941. That scene had been repeated countless times in Munich, Kiev, Riga, and God only knew how many other places. Diels often tried to convince himself that she had escaped – there were enough twists and turns in bombed city to lose one’s pursuers, if one were fast and lucky – but he knew the truth of her likely fate. Stripped and beaten, she would never have outdistanced the wolves at her heels. The boy at her heels might have been older than he appeared, but the camera’s perspective made him small, little more than an adolescent. He wore knee-length shorts and a soft cap that gave him an odd air of authority, like a pint-sized policeman, and carried a club in his right hand. Diels stared at the image, appalled and spellbound by turns.

“Never herded an old man onto a boxcar to Treblinka, never pulled the trigger on a young mother clutching her child.”  In the awful instant captured by the photographer, the boy outpaced the others, youth and size lending vigor to his legs as he raced forward to cut off his prey. The head was swiveled to one side, eyes focused on the beaten woman as he sprinted past. Diels frequently saw the boy in nightmares, his face contorted in an apelike grin, and he studied the image carefully. The face was that of an ordinary youth participating in his first murder.

“My hands are clean.”   Diels’s hands trembled as he lit another cigarette. Goethe, he remembered, hoped that the Germans would become great, the ennoblers of a higher civilization. He turned over the photograph and read the inscription from his anonymous correspondent. “Are you proud of what you did?”  He poured another drink, and as the sky began to lighten in the east, Rudolf Diels fell asleep at his desk. Perhaps he dreamed of a fleeing woman and a boy with a club, but whether he was the woman or the boy, not even he knew for certain.

VIII.

London

1937

She bought a home in the countryside, a small cottage situated on a modest parcel of land, and retreated there every few weeks.  “It will give us a chance to get out of the city,” she had explained to her husband, though she found it unlikely that Arch Spencer would ever cross the threshold – the distance between them had grown irrevocably wide. It mattered little, for Sarah had chosen the property for the stream that ran through the center, and she immersed herself in the running water to ease her mind and wash away the urges that wracked her body. Life began to seem normal again, and though she doubted that her marriage would recover, she grew closer to her son as the wounds healed. The knock at the door came as they were packing for a weekend excursion.     

“Mrs. Spencer?”  The man appeared to be around fifty years old, but his face defied age; he could easily be a decade older or younger. “I was a friend of your father’s, and I need to talk with you about an old estate.”

“That’s odd,” she said. “I knew most of my father’s friends, but I don’t remember you.” 

“I would imagine not. I met him near the end of his life, while you were still in India.” 

“Of course.”  A feeling of unease tingled in her spine, for there was something off-putting in the stranger’s demeanor. “And we didn’t meet at his funeral?” 

“We did not. I was traveling abroad at the time of his death, but I was terribly sorry to hear of his passing. Now, the property at issue was an old manor named Carfax Abbey. I believe your father was involved in the sale –”

Sarah cut off his final words by slamming the door in the stranger’s face, and she retreated into the foyer. Her breath came in short, hitching gasps as she fought the dread that seized her chest.  

“Sarah.”  The voice on the other side of the door remained calm, but there was a new undertone of urgency as he spoke. “My name is Rupert Holmes. I know about Quincy Morris, I know what happened to you in Romania, and it is vital that I speak to you about Carfax Abbey.” 

For the love of God, no. Sarah’s hand grasped the doorknob, and after a moment’s consideration, the door swung open. The inside of her right thigh began to throb with a pain that she had not felt in months.

“All right. What do you want?”

IX.

Romania

1956

They bypassed the larger island to the south, and the boat slipped through the water as the brothers pulled at the oars. Behind them, the setting sun hung low above the trees. It was bad luck, if one believed the old tales, to work under cover of darkness, but the peasant did not fear the ghosts. The Securitate, on the other hand, were everywhere, and the consequences would be dire if they were caught outside of their village and could not account for their business on the lake. We can always turn back, the peasant thought, but the money (not too much, for large sums were too difficult to hide from the authorities) would purchase a month of bread on the black market or pay a smuggler to ferry his family across the Black Sea. Besides, there was something frightful about the man from the forest. “Have you heard the old folk tale? A man met the devil at a crossroads…”  He knew the story well enough – the frightened man had readily agreed, but when morning came, he broke up the devil’s coffin with an axe and scattered its contents to the four winds. The consequences had been frightful, and his grandmother used the story as a warning against broken promises.

Their destination was little more than bare rock, an isolated point of land in the middle of the lake, and the brothers shivered as they pulled the boat ashore. His younger brother, less sanguine than he, had been troubled by the capriciousness of the request. “We are risking a long stretch in prison, and for what? Pry up the stones in the floor, take this with you, leave that behind. He’s with the Securitate, and he is setting us up for arrest.”  There were risks, of course, but the peasant was confident that his benefactor was not a member of the Securitate. Then what is he? He supposed that God might punish him for offering his services to a (Devil? Witch?) or for robbing the grave of an old voivode, but God was not feeding his family or sending medicine to his daughter. As for the old voivode himself, they would be safe enough in the boat, for the dead could not cross running water.

The walls and roof of the monastery were had long ago succumbed to the elements, but the crypts remained, cut into the rock of the island itself and accessible through a small tunnel. The air was oppressive as they worked the prybar into the stone floor, and an odd smell emanated from the earth, as if the old grave still carried a whiff of corruption. They dumped the bags onto the floor and worked a shovel into the earth. At least we get to keep these when we’re finished. Simple things like tools and burlap were difficult to obtain these days.  

They emptied the bags and filled the wooden box, and when their work was complete, the brothers carried the bags to the boat. They pushed off into the water, and if the voivode’s ghost objected to the plundering of his tomb, he raised no voice in protest as they headed for the shore.