Dracula's Ghost - Apocalypse: Chapter 7
Part I: First Voyage of the Ceres
I.
Dracula
1893
The girl from Whitby died the day before yesterday, and though he cares nothing for his own kind, she now functions as an extension of his will, and he will grow stronger as she feeds. He may need her for other purposes soon, for though he enjoys the newfound freedom of London, a worm of uncertainty burrows under his skin, and he dislikes the feeling. For several weeks, he has wondered whether someone is wise to his presence, for the garlic in her bedroom and her periodic rejuvenation (as if the blood in her veins was not wholly her own) point to something more than the ordinary ministrations of a doctor. They can’t possibly know the truth, he thinks, for the English, with their telegraphs and steamships, have forgotten the old ways… Or have they?
And something else is wrong.
Yesterday, he wandered the city at sunset, for his appetite had been whetted by the dark-haired girl. As he observed a woman shopping at a store window (this is another fact of English life that amazes him – how many goods do the commoners need?), he was struck by an odd sensation. Someone is watching me – and they know who I am. He kept his eyes upon the girl, not daring to turn, and over the cacophony of assembled shoppers, he heard – or perhaps imagined – a familiar voice. “It is the man himself…”
Impossible. He followed as the girl wandered to another window. Jonathan Harker is dead, and no one else in England knows the truth. His eyes remained upon his quarry, but his attention was focused upon that awful voice, for he was not prepared to flee an angry mob if his accuser raised an outcry. Jonathan Harker is dead, he repeated. Follow the girl and introduce yourself at an opportune time. Instead, he continued up the street for a half-block and slipped into an alleyway. There would be other girls, and other nights, but he could not risk discovery. Now, the memory of that voice brings the first stirrings of fear, an emotion that he has not felt for centuries. If Harker did survive, if he cheated the women in the castle and made his way to London, then…
Then it changes nothing. No one will believe the truth. All the same, he is glad that he accounted for every contingency, and when the sun rises, he will sleep in a different place, one that is far from Carfax Abbey.
And when the girl from Whitby is stronger, he will send her after the others.
II.
London
1975-1989
When the first spies arrived from Bucharest, the Home Office quickly detected their presence – a pair of foreign exchange students who attended no classes were immediately suspect – but no arrests were made. They broke no laws and made no attempt to approach the United Kingdom’s military installations, so it was decided to keep them under close surveillance. The pair wandered the city with no apparent purpose other than to linger at streetcorners and to walk the paths through the local cemeteries, so the authorities were surprised when both turned up dead in the winter of 1976 with broken necks and a remarkable absence of livor mortis. Others came in their aftermath, smuggled across the Channel or the Irish Sea, but most lasted no more than a few months. Acwulf Kiel found himself in a bind, for he could not use the spy’s typical fare of placing his men inside the Romanian Embassy – too many questions would be asked if Embassy staff began dying.
By pure chance, he found what he was seeking in 1978. Acwulf had long distanced himself from his surviving wartime comrades, but he kept his ear to the ground, and the story provided by Jos Van Helsing had unraveled the secret. “The press reports said that he died of cancer, but there was a big wound on the neck and not a drop of blood on the bedsheets. His head was twisted at a funny angle too, as if his spine had been snapped.” He did a quiet search of the maritime traffic and found that a British cargo ship identified as the Ceres had entered Spanish waters a few days before the death of Otto Skorzeny and departed shortly afterward. Ownership of the vessel was carefully hidden behind a number of shell companies, but Acwulf carefully unraveled each thread, ran down every false lead, until he confirmed his suspicions by finding the name that he sought. Evangeline Morris. A few bribes ensured that he was kept abreast of the ship’s comings and goings, and a larger sum ensured that he received the Passage Plan and manifest for the upcoming journey of the Ceres. Quincy Morris was going to Gdansk.
And Acwulf would be ready for him.
III.
Bucharest
1989
Lacul Morii, constructed in 1986 to mitigate the flooding of the Dâmbovița River, was located on the city’s western fringe. The official brochures, which no Romanian bothered to read, extolled the park on the southern shore as a paradise in which ordinary citizens spent a generous surplus of leisure time sailing, hiking, and enjoying nature’s bounty through the genius of Nicolae Ceausescu. Unlike most official propaganda, Suta had to admit a grain of truth to the Party line, for the park itself was quite pretty, an island of green in a drab sea of concrete. A peninsula jutted from the southern shore, and Major Shamil Dudayev stood at the water’s edge. A briefcase sat at his feet.
“Were you followed?”
“No.” Suta had made the drive in a series of wrong turns and double backs that wasted precious fuel, and the ten-minute journey had taken more than an hour. “What do you have for me?”
“Your friend Acwulf,” Dudayev said. “He’s an interesting man, for he has no official position within the Securitate, yet he managed to rise through sheer ruthlessness. A friend in the Presidential Palace says that Acwulf is one of Ceausescu’s favorites, and he can speak realities that no one else dares to say. He is… what’s the phrase in Romanian? Not an ass-kisser.”
“Interesting.” They were on dangerous ground, for the Major’s words were a tacit admission that the Russians had a spy inside the Presidential Palace, and the knowledge made his skin crawl. They’ll hang you if they find out that you knew. “I suppose every leader needs some grounding in reality if he wants to survive.”
“Tell that to Comrade Stalin,” Dudayev said. “At any rate, our friend Acwulf now finds himself in some trouble – I doubt your president loses much sleep over the state of Romania’s orphanages, but if the missing children become known to the public, he’d be facing quite a scandal. Another thing that Ceausescu doesn’t know is that the German is be running a number of off-the-books operations in Warsaw, Copenhagen, London, and God only knows where else.”
“What about the American?” Suta asked.
“The American lives in Târgoviște, and he’s one of Acwulf’s paid stooges. Don’t look so surprised,” Dudayev said, reading his expression. “I also have friends among the local police.”
“Abuses of official power by the Securitate are hardly news.” Mihai Suta scraped at the dirt with his shoe. “Do you think he’s taking the children out of the country?”
“No idea,” he said. Dudayev stared at the far shore, carefully weighing his words. “There is one more thing.”
“Go on.”
“You said there’s no record of a man named Acwulf Kiel in Romania, but there is a record in Moscow.” Major Shamil Dudayev removed a set of yellowed files from his briefcase and handed one to Suta.
“I’ll admit it’s an uncanny resemblance,” he said as he examined the paper, “but Acwulf can’t be older than fifty. Maybe a relative?”
“It’s the same man,” Dudayev handed him another file. “Acwulf Kiel, born 1907 in Königsberg, Doctorate in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry from Leipzig, Nazi Party member since 1933, member of the SS since 1936. He spent a decade working for the KGB in East Germany and Hungary before dropping out of sight at the end of 1956. He must have angered someone in Moscow, because when Yuri Andropov became KGB chairman, they spent five years searching for him – Andropov ordered him shot on sight if located.”
“It can’t be.” Suta crumpled the paper in his hand. “Acwulf would be a doddering old man by now!”
“When I was a child,” Shamil said, “They taught me the story from the Quran, how Iblis had refused God’s command to kneel before Adam.”
Suta shook his head. “You think Acwulf is the devil?”
“You have a man who never ages and a lot of missing children.” The major returned the files to his briefcase. “At this point, I could believe anything.”
IV.
London
The phone rang, and after a moment of indecision, she picked up the receiver. It was Archie, and for the first time in weeks, Evangeline felt able to talk. Three days ago, the Ceres had sailed up the Thames, and by tomorrow morning, she would be stopping in Copenhagen to refuel for the final leg of her journey. Had she, Archie asked, encountered the Van Helsing girl? She had not, and though she remained coy about the extent of her knowledge (“Van Helsing? I think I heard the name from your mother once”) Evangeline quietly fumed at the unexpected complication. She had been noncommittal regarding the girl but had quietly resolved to keep her as far from Quincy Morris as possible. In spite of it all, she blunders right into the dragon’s maw. She was certain that it was his doing somehow. Frustrated, she changed the subject – how was Archie’s mother?
“The doctors have no idea what’s wrong with her. No signs of heart attack or stroke, no abnormal lesions in the brain – she’s dying, and no one can explain why.”
Of course she is, Evangeline thought, and a knot twisted in her stomach. Quincy Morris was on the move, and by sheer coincidence, his plans coincided with the arrival of Katrina Van Helsing and the collapse of Sarah Spencer. Sarah is ill because of what he did to her, Evangeline thought.
No, another part of her mind answered. She is alive because of him. If Quincy Morris hadn’t given his life in Romania, Mina Harker would have died before Sarah was ever born.
“I’m coming back to London soon. Can I see you?”
“We’ll see. Call me when you get here.”
She hung up the phone and went to the cellar where the box, a rectangular cuboid some two feet high, rested in one corner. Evangeline carefully inspected the cover and airholes, screened with black silk to keep out the light, as she rehearsed her story again. “She’s a Eurasian pygmy owl. You don’t typically find them in London, and this one must have been blown here by a storm. I’m taking her to an aviary outside of Uppsala.” There was such an aviary, for she had been careful to check the details beforehand. An earthy, slightly musty smell emanated from the box.
Evangeline closed her eyes and thought of Sarah again. “The doctors have no idea what’s wrong with her. She’s dying, and no one can explain why.” In her mind’s eye, Sarah’s breathing grew labored as her body entered its terminal state, and the sine waves of the EKG became erratic as her heart struggled to maintain its normal rhythm. Eventually, her body would be overwhelmed by age and illness, and it would fail entirely. And then what? Would her eyes open, glimmering redly in the twilight glow of sunset? Would she smile with sharp teeth at the newfound vitality of her limbs? Could Archie take it upon himself to prevent that from happening? For that matter, could I? She wished that Archie was here now. They could go out to dinner, and that would give her an excuse to be away from the house at sunset, because if anything went wrong…
Nothing will go wrong. Every threshold and windowsill was carefully sealed with garlic. Just get where you’re going in one piece, and everything will be fine.
V.
Copenhagen, Denmark
The plane landed just before nine, and Katrina directed the cab driver to an address at Refshaleøen. The port was little more than a row of storage buildings, and the ship, a vessel so dingy that it barely appeared seaworthy, lay anchored at the end of a long row of piers. Katrina looked over one shoulder, and when no one hindered her movements, stepped across the gangplank to the deck.
The first thing that she noticed was the blood.
Each body in the wheelhouse had a neat hole in its forehead, and she nearly fled at that instant. Instead, she took a deep breath and went deeper into the ship, where she found three more corpses in their bunks. Get away from here before you get yourself killed. It was a perfectly reasonable thought; indeed, Katrina was certain that anything less than immediate flight bordered on lunacy, yet her feet carried her forward over the objections of her rational mind. “I have the answers to your questions, but the journey will be long and dangerous.” God only knew what answer was worth her life, but she was determined to uncover the truth. Just a few more steps, she told herself. Have a look belowdecks, and you can get back to shore and call the police.
The hold was dimly lit by a few flickering bulbs, and bales of cloth were stacked in neat rows on either side of the walkway. At the far end of the hold lay a rectangular shipping crate, carefully placed upon a pair of wooden pallets. Katrina fingered the chain about her neck. “I have the answers to your questions.” What would she find if she opened the lid?
There was a loud banging overhead, and the boat began to rock as its engine roared to life. There was a sensation of movement, and a low moan emanated from her throat as the ship’s propeller began to turn. The smell of blood was cloying in the enclosed space, and Katrina’s stomach did a slow belly roll as she felt movement beneath her feet. I’m trapped on board with whoever killed the crew, she thought, and if they found her, they would have no compunction about throwing her overboard. Katrina Van Helsing cowered in the darkness as the ship moved into the wider channel of the Øresund and headed for the Baltic.
They were underway.
VI.
Râmnicu Vâlcea
Last night’s sleep had been filled with nightmares of missing children and policemen and the dank cells of Romanian prisons, and by morning, his pulse raced, and his brain was half-addled by fear. Acwulf claimed to be a friend of the President himself, but powerful men made enemies, and the number in Bucharest had been his insurance policy. The American had given a brief overview of the disappearances (with his own role carefully minimized), and the voice on the other end of the line had instructed him to stay put and that someone would come and take him away for debriefing. He waited all day, but there was no knock at his door, and when Acwulf returned that afternoon, the American was certain that it was a bad sign.
“I need the truck.” Acwulf was perfectly at ease, and his tone evinced no suspicion of betrayal. “We’ll pick it up and bring it back here tonight.”
They drove south in a Mercedes of early-1970s vintage, and the American marveled at Acwulf’s rare display of largesse – it was an old car by western standards, but one that few Romanians could afford. The route took them in a wide loop around Târgoviște, and the American breathed a sigh of relief, for he had no desire to return to the city. On the other hand… He stared through the windshield as the headlights illuminated the winding road. Never linger at the old house after the sun sets. The road continued to ascend, and dark forest passed on either side until finally, they emerged from the trees and parked on the overgrown lawn. The big truck remained where he had left it, but the American was surprised, for it sat low on its springs, its flatbed laden by an unknown hand.
“Let’s go inside.” Acwulf jangled a set of keys. “I need to be sure that we left no trace of our activities.”
“But you said –”
“It’s perfectly safe. Come on.”
The house was dark and gloomy, and the American wished for a light as the rotted floor sagged beneath his weight. Stars were visible through the broken windowpane, and the odor of the house, which he had always disliked, was stronger now, more offensive. He paused to listen. There must be rats. Something skittered beneath the floors, inside the walls. Acwulf seized his upper arm, and the grip was surprisingly strong.
“That number in Bucharest,” he whispered. “The man on the other end of the line reports directly to me.”
The American opened his mouth to explain – it isn’t what you think – and the words died in his throat. A boy was staring at him through the broken window. From the orphanage in Ploesti, or was it the one in Brasov? He had been pallid and sickly when he was brought here, now the skin was so bloodless that his pallor was tinged with a hint of blue. Another child, a girl from Bucharest, joined the boy at the window as footsteps rustled in the empty hallway. A third child approached, one that he remembered well, for she had been dressed more neatly than the others. Her school uniform had been clean when he took her from the orphanage; now, it was ragged and filthy. They had not shaved her head, as they sometimes did, and the dark hair accentuated the deathly pallor of her face. The bureaucrat’s daughter, he thought wildly, the one whose father was jailed. She smiled at him with a predator’s grin as others glided into view.
The house was full of dead children.
A shadow emerged from the cellar as the children cut off his retreat. Tall and thin, its outline vaguely resembled a man, but something about its appearance was wrong, for it appeared to warp the feeble starlight that glimmered in the window away from itself, so that its aura was somehow darker than the surrounding space. It was a nullity, something less than emptiness, and the American realized with horror that it had grown strong through his own care and feeding. The children paid no attention to the shadow – they stared at him with hungry eyes.
“I am grateful, and He is grateful, for all that you have done.” Acwulf smiled benevolently at the surrounding horde. “However, it seems that your services are no longer required.”
The American stood rooted to the spot, unable to move, as the children swept over him like birds of prey.