Dracula's Ghost: Apocalypse - Chapter 11
Part II: And the Sea Gave Up Its Dead...
I.
Van Helsing
1893
“Do me the justice to bear in mind, later on, that I did what I could to convince you tonight.”
They remove Renfield’s corpse from his cell, his head lolling gracelessly from the broken neck, and bury him in the potter’s field behind the asylum, and though Van Helsing is careful to speak with confidence and act with resolute purpose, the following days will rank among the bleakest of his life, akin to the dark period that followed his son’s death. He has played us for fools since the beginning, Van Helsing thinks. Mina Harker had been pale and ill for several days, and only the violent death of Renfield alerted them to the truth – Dracula has been visiting her in the night, God only knows for how long, and now, a dreadful countdown is underway. It is only a matter of time before she turns against them all. That damned madman let the fiend into the house, and now Mina is lost to us. He chides himself for the lack of charity and says a brief prayer of contrition, for the same madman alerted them to the vampire’s presence, and in the end, Renfield battled the monster with a desperate frenzy, giving his own life in a vain attempt to save hers. If a madman can behave with such heroism, then he will not sully Renfield’s memory by losing hope.
The hypnotism is Mina’s idea, and as he focuses her attention, she slips into a deep trance.
“Mina. What do you see?”
“It is dark. I see nothing.”
“What do you hear?”
“The lapping of water, the creaking of a chain, the sound of men stamping overhead.”
“Then you are on a ship?” Abraham Van Helsing holds his breath, scarcely daring to hope.
“Oh, yes!”
He is planning to flee, Van Helsing thinks, and if – against all odds and good sense – they prevail, he swears to savor the irony to his last breath, for Dracula’s victim now aids his enemies.
II.
Aboard the Ceres
1989
She stirred in the final moments of darkness, just before sunrise, and blinked away the mucus that collected in the corner of her eyes. There. A vague outline watched her from the shadows, and though she wondered whether her time had come at last – perhaps Quincy Morris awaited, savoring one last sight of her sleeping form before devouring her – Katrina felt oddly calm, wrung dry of all fear.
“Hello Katrina.” Jos Van Helsing stepped from the shadows. A dark ochre pulsed from the open wound in his throat, staining the breast of his gray uniform. “I appear to have suffered an injury since our last meeting. Does that make you happy?”
“Not especially.”
“Really?” Jos smiled with bloodstained teeth. “I expected that my violent demise would provoke a feeling of joy, and yet you feel nothing. Why do you suppose that is?”
“Because you died in prison when your heart gave out,” she replied. “You’re not really here – you’re just some awful part of my own psyche that refuses to die.”
“Always the young think themselves wise.” Jos clucked his tongue in disapproval. “After all that you have seen, you disbelieve in ghosts, yet you never consider that there’s an entire world of possibility between nothing, on the one hand, and the sheet-clad apparition of old movies or penny dreadfuls. The mere fact that you summoned me into existence makes me no less real.”
“I didn’t summon you into existence – you’re nothing more than a bad dream.”
“You’re awake right now.”
“Liar.” Katrina shivered at the word, a trifle uncertain.
Jos’s face became deathly pale, and blood no longer flowed from the wounded throat – indeed, the wound itself was gone. Only the teeth retained their reddened color, and they appeared long and prominent, as if the gums had receded to expose the underlying bone. He stepped forward, nearly floating in the darkness, and Katrina found that a sudden paralysis had settled upon her own limbs. She stared into the bloodshot eyes, unable to look away.
“I think this is the final time that we will meet, unless I happen across your shade in the next life.” Dead fingers caressed the line of her jaw as Jos forced her head to one side. “But if you want to know the reality of my existence, ask me a question that only I would know. Ask me what I saw in Madrid.”
Katrina shook her head, straining against the grip that held her chin.
“Ask.”
“What… what did you see?”
“I saw your future, dear granddaughter.” His mouth opened wide, and Katrina nearly fainted from the stench of his exhalations. “I saw this.”
Katrina Van Helsing came awake with a gasping intake of breath, the struggle of a drowning swimmer breaking the surface. The cold had seeped through the metal skin of the Ceres, and she lay shivering in the darkness, the impulsive twitch of her muscles a counterpoint to the desperate weeping that emanated from her lips. After several minutes, her groans were cut short, and a wave of bile rose in her throat as she became aware of another noise from somewhere above – the banging of metal on metal.
They’re trying to force the door to the hold. Katrina performed a quick search of her neck, arms, and legs and found that for now, she remained alive and unmarked. For now, the malign spirit of her grandfather replied, and she crossed her arms protectively over her breasts. Something else was wrong, and it took her several minutes to realize that the droning of the engines, her constant companion for the last thirty hours, had ceased entirely.
They were dead in the water.
III.
Gdansk
His mouth was set in a thin downward slash as Rupert Holmes returned to the shipyard, for he had gone over every possibility and could not explain the unexpected quiescence of the Ceres. We had contingencies in place for every problem from bad weather to naval interdiction, he thought dismally. Perhaps Quincy Morris had lost control of his appetite and murdered the crew, and in a few weeks or a few months, the ship would wash ashore on some desolate stretch of coastline, or a passing vessel would happen upon her empty shell, her cargo rotting in the hold, and a single wooden crate resting in the darkness. They’ll haul it to the deck and open it under the full light of the sun, and that will be the end of him, he thought. Or perhaps not. The dead man was possessed of an uncanny cunning, and if the Ceres was found, Quincy Morris would not reveal his presence until it was too late for any poor soul that happened upon his tomb… For God’s sake, let it go. Quincy was dangerous, but he was capable of great self-control – and he understood what was at stake.
“Slow down, Holmes.” Jimmy met him at the door. “At your age, you’re going to break a hip if you run like that.”
“And what age is that?” Holmes read the stylized logo on Jimmy’s shirt, Iron Maiden, and the grinning monster that held a devilish marionette by a series of long strings. A second phrase hung suspended in the air below the monster’s fingers – The Number of the Beast.
“You’ve got to be at least…” Jimmy squinted. “Sixty? Too old to be sprinting.”
About forty years off, Holmes thought. “What’s happening?”
“Early this morning, someone triggered the EPIRB.”
Holmes gave him a quizzical look. “What’s that?”
“Emergency position indicating radio beacon,” Jimmy said. “Every ship carries one, and if you get in trouble, the beacon triggers a distress call. If a ship sinks, the EPIRB can also be triggered by contact with seawater. On the ship that we’re seeking, however, it has a slightly different function.”
“Don’t be giving away trade secrets.” Holmes feigned a sour face. “Are you sure you trust me?”
“I’d say you’re a ruffian and a dangerous criminal,” Jimmy said. On the television, a news program alternated between shots of the Kremlin’s onion domes and a crowd of protestors. “The EPIRB normally alerts the authorities, usually the navy or coastal defense, but the beacon on board the Ceres transmits to only two places – an office in London, and here.”
“Where are they now?”
“Still in the Baltic.” Jimmy switched off the television. “About 20 miles east of Bornholm Island.”
Holmes did a quick calculation in his head. About 320 nautical miles lay between Copenhagen and Gdansk, and at an average speed of ten knots, the Ceres should have arrived in port no later than yesterday evening.
“A little overdue, aren’t they?” Holmes spoke with a note of concern, but Jimmy appeared indifferent.
“They’re certainly taking their time,” Jimmy said. “EPIRB shows no change in position for the last four hours. You know the rules, Mr. Holmes – we have strict orders to maintain radio silence, and if the ship sinks, we don’t go looking for her.”
“Of course I know the bloody rules,” Holmes snapped. “I wrote them. Give them another day, and hail them on the open channel if there’s no movement.”
IV.
Aboard the Ceres
The engine sputtered and died shortly after midnight, and they found the sledgehammer at dawn, leaning against the warped hatch that led to the hold. A working ship always carried tools – bolt cutters, an axe, something – but they had searched the wheelhouse and emptied the gang box on deck and found nothing larger than a pair of pliers. Yet at sunrise, the sledgehammer was simply there, propped casually against the door for them to find. And it’s a good thing that we did, Penkovsky thought as Iosif pounded at the damaged metal. Four men had gone missing in the last two nights, and if they didn’t find their tormentor in the hold, there was a good chance that none of them would be alive by tomorrow morning. The engine compartment was only accessible through the hold, and if they could not get through the hatch, they would never get the boat running again –
Iosif let out a shout of triumph as the door came free.
They stood at the threshold of the open portal, and Sergei handed him a rifle. Penkovsky had carried the same rifle in Afghanistan, and the heft of the weapon brought back a flood of memories as he went over the specifications in his mind. 5.45 x 39 mm cartridge, adopted by the Red Army in 1974 to allow each soldier to carry more ammunition per unit of weight. Full metal jacketed bullet with an unhardened steel rod penetrator core and a lead inlay that does not fill the entire tip. This last fact was crucial, for it shifted the bullet’s center of gravity toward the rear and allowed the nose to deform upon impact. The deformation would induce yawing when the bullet struck its target, and the tumbling motion would do greater damage to bone, muscle and organs. But what will it do against a ghost? His rational mind dismissed the notion, yet something had passed through the ship like smoke, making off with the crew and leaving only the dead in its wake.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s see what’s at the bottom of these stairs.”
V.
The pounding stopped, and there was dead silence as Katrina sat in the dim light of the hold, knees drawn to her chest. Have they given up? Her breath came in shallow gasps as she began to count, a pyramid of numbers that ascended to one hundred, then reversed to her starting point. One, two, three, I can’t stay down here forever, but what happens when they break through the door? The ship rocked gently in the waves, and in the semidark of the hold, the steady drip of water upon metal matched her count with the precision of a metronome. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, they killed the crew, for God’s sake! The box lay in its corner, and Katrina wished desperately that sunset would arrive to dull her limbs and mind, anything to relieve the dread that held her like a vise. Ninety-nine, one hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight – but what if Jos was right all along? The dripping water ceased, and there was an instant of awful silence before other sounds filled the void – the metallic scream of the opening door, men’s voices, footsteps descending into the hold.
Three, two, one.
I’m about to die now.
VI.
Amsterdam
She awakened long enough for a little soup and another failed attempt by the nurses to lift her from the bed – her legs had no strength at all, and Sarah fainted as they hoisted her into a sitting position. When the nurses gave up, she lay in bed with the stillness of death until sleep overtook her, and she began to dream. The ship ran without lights as she made her way across the deck, and her path was lit by nothing more than the glitter of the few stars that shone through the clouds. Sarah disliked the sea; save for a few reluctant crossings of the Channel, she had not boarded a ship since… Since 1933, she thought. The year that everything went wrong. She glimpsed a familiar shape that loitered by the rail, but Jonathan Harker vanished like smoke as she rushed forward.
From somewhere below, she heard an old man’s voice. “Tell me Mina – what do you see? What do you hear?”
“I can see nothing for all is dark.” Mina’s voice had a faraway quality, and Sarah wondered if her mother, like herself, was dreaming. “I hear the rushing of water and the lapping of waves against the ship’s hull. Canvas and cordage strain and masts and yards creak. The wind is high – I can hear it in the shrouds, and the bow throws back the foam.” Sarah paused at the open hatchway and listened, and though the ship was no sailing vessel – the tinge of diesel exhaust lingered in her nostrils – she could hear it as well.
She descended the metal stairway, and time seemed to fold upon itself as she straddled the world of memory and the recollections of the dead. He is fleeing London, Sarah thought, and the words made sense though they were not her own. He is going home. As she passed through another hatch, she found herself in the depths of a cargo hold. The enclosed space was filled with large bales of cloth, and the air was stale, a sour odor mingled with a tinge of rot. The space within the bowels of the ship was old, as old as time itself, and Sarah wondered if the captain fretted over the water that intruded between the oaken planks, for if he did not heave down soon to clean the hull and repair the caulking, a rotten board could give way and send them all to the bottom…
At the far end of the hold, they were waiting for her.
Jonathan and Mina Harker stood at the head of the box, heads bowed as if in silent prayer, while Jack Seward and Arthur Holmwood waited at the foot of the bier. Like mourners at a funeral, she thought. The last man, older than the others, was unknown to her, but his resemblance to the girl from Amsterdam was unmistakable. They’re all dead, Sarah thought, as they watched her with empty eyes. They failed in their quest and were murdered in London or bled dry in the winter snows of the Carpathians. Only one of their number was not present: Lucy Westenra lay in a distant grave, resting quietly as she waited for the sunset.
The lid of the box slowly opened, and against her will, Sarah moved past the dead faces and stared into the coffin. She cried out with an inconsolable wail, but it was neither the cold hand that grasped her wrist nor the blood-red lips that whispered her name which filled her with terror, but a bitter realization of the truth. The monster drew her into its embrace, and Sarah had time for one final, despairing thought.
Dear God, Quincy – what have you done?
VII.
Romania
Things could be worse. The playwright lay on his bunk – flat on his back, hands outside the blanket as required by the guards – and stared up at the darkened ceiling. One of his uncles had died in prison, and if he worked twelve-hour days in the logging camp with only thin gruel to sustain him, if the guards were petty and occasionally cruel, the playwright was reasonably certain that he would escape with his life. Just five years of hard labor, or ten, or twenty, and they’ll let you out. You’ll never find respectable work again, and the Securitate will keep an eye on you for the rest of your life, but they probably won’t kill you. Nine months ago, he had been arrested after an incautious remark to a friend, and the state saw no reason for him to remain idle between periods of interrogation. The work was backbreaking, but it was better than the punishment cells, the bright lights, the shouted questions. He told himself these things as the night wore on, as the guard’s footsteps echoed in the hallway outside his cell, as the weight of his predicament settled upon him like a heavy stone. Things could be worse, but they were bad enough already, and the playwright wondered how he would survive the next month, the next year, the next decade –
He jerked upright in sudden shock. Something was scratching at the window.
“Who’s there?” he whispered. The playwright listened for the heavy tread of the guard, but the hallway was oddly silent.
“Can you let me in?” The voice was high and thin, a child’s voice, and it rang with an otherworldly quality that made him shiver. “They took my mama away, and I don’t know where to find her.”
He pressed his face against the window, reinforced glass covered by wire mesh. The girl’s face was slightly distorted by a layer of fog, and the playwright, who followed no god and feared no devil, wondered whether he had met a ghost. If they arrested her parents, she wouldn’t be wandering in the forest, and there’s no way that she would know to come here. Still, he was moved, for there was real pain in the distorted image beyond the glass.
“This is a logging camp, and there are no women here,” he whispered. “You should go back before the guards catch you –”
“No!” she hissed, a real flash of anger in the girl’s voice. “He sent me here, and he knows that I’m looking for my mama. Let me in so that I can find her – please.”
“She’s not here,” he answered. “Whoever sent you here, perhaps he lied.”
“He never lies,” the voice answered, but the playwright detected an instant’s hesitation in her response, the brief recognition of an unacknowledged truth. “Besides, I’m cold and lonely… and hungry. They took away my mama, and then they took me away from my friends. All of my friends are dead now.”
The playwright’s response took him by surprise, for the words that escaped his throat revealed the truth. He knew – had known since the first scratching at the window – and worst of all, he believed her. The beckoning girl was not merely play-acting, and her pain and fear and loneliness, like his own, weighed upon him. He had only one question.
“Will it hurt?”
“Yes.” Lucyna Wilk pressed her face against the window. “More than you can possibly know. But you’ll be free of this place.”
“All right then – come in.”
In the week that followed, half of the prisoners sickened and died, and when the guards began to fall ill, the commissar in charge of the camp fled to Bucharest. He was arrested for dereliction of his duty, but the commissar counted himself lucky, for the cell in which he found himself was small and enclosed, with no windows that looked upon the outside world.