Dracula's Ghost: Apocalypse - Chapter 6
Part I: First Voyage of the Ceres
I.
Van Helsing
1893
“I am dying, aren’t I?”
The words fall from her lips like the grim pronouncement of a prophet, and Abraham Van Helsing fusses over her pillow, delaying. A fortnight ago, she retained the pretty face and appealing figure of a nineteen-year-old girl; now her face is bloodless and thin, and the flesh of her body is wasted away. Of course not, he tells himself. You are going to live a long life, a happy life. Still, he avoids her eyes, for Lucy, thirty-six years younger than he, has mere days of life remaining. Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps he would offer bland words of comfort about taking one’s place among the angels, but he has seen the marks on her throat and discoursed with the madman in Purfleet. “Now, there are many kinds of angels Doctor; the highest ones linger outside a lady’s bedroom window at night and comfort her with kisses as she sleeps, now that’s something for a man of learning to aspire to. The lower ones, perhaps, linger around churchyards, and the least of them… why, I’d say they’re fit for very little, save perhaps for guarding the house – the divine equivalent of madmen, one might say.” Instead, he takes her hand, and though the cold flesh feels unpleasant upon his own skin, Van Helsing does not flinch from her touch.
“Do you have any children?” she asks, changing the subject.
“I had one son,” Van Helsing says. Almost immediately, he realizes his error – I had – and Miss Lucy acknowledges the slip with a somber nod.
“What happened to him?”
“There was an accident,” Van Helsing says. “He was eighteen years old.”
“It isn’t fair,” she says. The words lack conviction, as if she is commenting on bad weather or the loss of childhood innocence, but her body shivers, and Van Helsing realizes that she is crying.
No, my lady, he thinks. It is not fair at all. Lucy drifts into sleep, and Abraham Van Helsing stands at the bedroom window for a long time. Does it please you to spurn the work of your hands while you smile on the plans of the wicked? On the heels of that, another thought enters his mind. Does she know what is happening? Van Helsing shakes the thought from his mind and begins to plan. The road ahead is long and dangerous, and some of them may fall before their task is completed. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. Some of them may fall, and some of them – like Miss Lucy herself – may be turned to the service of the enemy. All the same, he is not without hope, for Van Helsing has read Lucy’s correspondence, and he hopes that Mina Harker can shed light on the girl’s illness. Above all, he swears a silent oath – to God, to Lucy, to the spirit of his dead son.
We will find the man who did this. And when we do, he will never harm another.
II.
Strait of Dover
1989
The train for London was delayed, and she spent the morning studying the map. Katrina had lived in the city for five years, living in the Imperial College Halls of Residence during the school term and boarding with friends or (after one miserable winter break, in which she had spent a month house-sitting in Brixton, with no television and strict orders to stay away from the shed) traveling during holidays. Enemy territory, her grandfather would have said, and in all honesty, she felt uneasy with each crossing of the Channel, a trespasser in forbidden lands. Still, no guard detained her, and no cries of Nazi rang out as she waited at the train station – she moved among the tourists and businessmen with perfect anonymity. The crucifix, purchased from a shop in Calais, hung uneasily from the chain about her neck.
Where to begin? Her knowledge of the city was sufficient to catalog many of the locations in Abraham Van Helsing’s diary, but one location stood out, for she had visited the area frequently during the warmer months. The passenger in the adjacent seat was a businessman in his mid-forties, and she tapped his shoulder.
“Excuse me.” Katrina smiled as he looked up from his newspaper. “Are you familiar with Hampstead Heath?”
“Of course,” he said. “A lovely place for an afternoon outing.”
“Is it safe after dark?”
“Hmmm.” The businessman wrinkled his nose. “Relatively so, I suppose. A few hooligans, perhaps, and I would avoid large groups of dodgy-looking young men.”
“I had a friend who claimed that it was haunted.”
The businessman tapped his finger thoughtfully as Katrina waited for a polite laugh at her ignorance. Serves you right, she thought – the whole thing sounded ludicrous in the morning sunlight.
“Don’t know about the Heath, but Highgate Cemetery’s nearby. There have always been stories of strange goings-on there, if you believe in that sort of thing.”
III.
Cișmigiu Gardens, Bucharest
Major Shamil Dudayev had been the military liaison in Bucharest since 1986, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and an old man of thirty-five whose philosophy and attitude, which the senior leadership considered defeatism, were best kept away from his comrades in the officer corps. Now the Soviet Union was retreating from Afghanistan, as it was retreating everywhere else, and he remained stuck in Romania – the most dismal nation in the eastern bloc. The park, at least, was pretty, and he lingered at the edge of a flowerbed as his counterpart watched their backtrail.
“How long did you serve in Afghanistan?”
“Four years, from 1982 to 1986. Did you bring me out here to tell old war stories?”
“No.” Mihai Suta turned, and they began walking. “But if the Securitate catches us, I can tell them we were discussing issues of military readiness. Gleaning a few tidbits of real information shores up our cover story.”
“All right.” Dudayev shook his head in disbelief – if Soviet government had been cruel and repressive, the Romanians were downright crazy, an echo of the worst days of Joseph Stalin. “I was a team leader and staff officer for a Spetsnaz group. One of the few things in the Soviet Union that actually works. How many children are we talking about?”
“Officially, only one – a bureaucrat’s daughter who disappeared from Brasov. The director of that facility told me that there are others, and my subordinate has found at least twenty more.”
“Good work and bad politics.” The Russian nudged his arm and grinned, revealing a mouthful of steel fillings. “Give too much credit to your subordinate, and you’ll find yourself working for him one day.”
“More likely, we’ll find ourselves shot,” Suta replied. “Our suspects are an unidentified American and a Securitate officer of German descent. Both files are oddly sparse, and I thought they might be familiar to Moscow.”
“You thought we were spying on you,” Dudayev snorted in amusement. “As if we would trust a German with our secrets.”
“You might, if he were sufficiently ruthless.” They crossed a pedestrian bridge, and Dudayev waited as the Colonel surveyed the path ahead. “We both know that relations between Bucharest and Moscow have soured over the last twenty years. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the KGB sent a double agent, and our President was pleased with his ability to root out dissenters. Our mole – your mole – could work his way up the ranks while sending reports back to the Soviet Union.”
“While making children disappear on his days off?” Dudayev shook his head. “The KGB are not known for good morals, but a man who kidnaps – and presumably murders – children is a security risk, and one that they would weed out. And relations are poor because your President is a loon.”
“I wouldn’t be asking if I had other options.” Suta looked him in the eye. “Acwulf Kiel isn’t a fucking ghost, and he has to have a paper trail somewhere. I don’t know where else to turn.”
“I’ll do some digging on the German and see what turns up,” Dudayev said. “In the meantime, I would return to your man in Brasov to ask about the American.”
“You don’t think he’s one of yours?”
“An American spy in Romania would stick out like a sore thumb,” he replied. “No, I think your German is protecting him, perhaps using him as a disposable asset.”
They departed by separate routes, and Dudayev lingered a while longer to admire the flowers. The Romanian would have done well in Spetsnaz, for the unit had been one of the few places in which competence was valued over conformity. Every nation needs those who see clearly, he thought. Given a chance, men like him could make this country into something halfway decent.
If they don’t kill him first.
IV.
Amsterdam
The answering machine picked up, and the voice of Evangeline Morris, filtered through a network of telephone wires and the static hiss of a cassette tape, filled the receiver. “Hello, no one is available to take your call. Please leave a message, and I will return your call as soon as possible.”
“Em, it’s Archie – pick up the bloody phone.” He left his mother’s number in Amsterdam and placed the receiver back in its cradle.
He had wrangled Eric Van Helsing’s address from Plekhanov and had gone there yesterday afternoon, hoping for another chat with the girl. Archie had knocked on the door until an old woman had answered from the adjacent house. “The Van Helsing girl? I saw her this morning, and she said she was returning to London for a few days. After what her grandfather did, she can stay there for all I care.”
Gone to London, he thought dismally. He did not believe in ghosts or vampires or curses that had affected three generations of the Harker family. Utter bollocks. Yet something had happened to his grandparents, and Archie remembered Jonathan Harker as a giant among men. A somber, serious fellow, not given to flights of fancy. He picked up the phone again and dialed the number in London.
“Em, listen to me. Mum is in the hospital, and there’s a girl coming from Amsterdam…” The answering machine cut off in mid-sentence, and Archie gritted his teeth in frustration. Why doesn’t she pick up?
Because you cut ties with her in 1975, he told himself. They had remained cordial afterward, but distant, and he cursed himself for failing to stop by periodically or check on her well-being. And now that you need her, you can’t simply expect her to pick up the phone. He dialed a final time.
“Em, please call – it’s important.”
The answering machine cut off again, and he was alone. It’s probably nothing, he thought. The Van Helsing girl had gone in search of dragons, but she would find nothing in London but old bones. He did not believe, and the undead, the resurrected Quincy Morris, Dracula – these things were nothing more than stories to frighten children.
Yet something had happened to his mother in 1933, and she had never been the same afterward.
And three people vanished from Carfax Abbey in 1975. The police had entered every room of the old manor, dragged the pond, and searched the overgrown property for signs of covert burial, but they found nothing more than an old crate, its iron bands pried open, its contents spirited away. Archie had been forthright with the police and had even admitted, with some embarrassment, that Carfax Abbey had the reputation of a haunted house. He doubted (mostly doubted, he corrected himself) that Evangeline was directly responsible, but in that case, who – or what – had carried them off?
And now, a young woman’s life is at stake. Archie Spencer poured himself another drink and sat by the phone, praying that Katrina Van Helsing’s journey to England would be a waste of time.
V.
Râmnicu Vâlcea, Romania
He slept in a rat-infested apartment on the outskirts of town, and though Acwulf had assured him that he would be safe, the nightmares of the past week had been awful, and his waking hours were filled with foreboding. Today, he was on the road, and the American was grateful for the opportunity to escape the city.
In the foothills north of the city lay an abandoned work camp that had been used in the 1950s to house the overflow of convicts from Pitești Prison. The fences and outbuildings had been reclaimed by the forest, but a series of bunkers were built into the hillside, half-concealed reminders of an evil memory. The American stepped inside, and the interior was dark and cool. A place with a whiff of murder about it, he thought, noting the pockmark of bullet holes in the wall.
“The first thing is to find the location, because I don’t want to be wandering all over the mountains once we’re ready to move.” Acwulf’s instructions had been insufferably pedantic. “Second – and it is vital that you understand this – the site must be sufficiently isolated that no one will find us.”
When he returned to the city, Acwulf was waiting for him. The German leaned against the cab of a truck, a covered flatbed so old that it appeared of wartime vintage.
“You’re two hours late.” The gray eyes regarded him without emotion. “You’ll have to hurry to get to the old house before sunset.”
“You never said anything about –”
“No, I didn’t.” The German threw him an old key. “The local police were asking about you this afternoon. Perhaps you’d rather talk to them instead?”
The American gripped the key tightly in one hand. He’ll have me arrested when this is finished. He had done Acwulf’s bidding, and there was nothing, not a single thread of evidence, that would tie the German back to his crimes.
“How do I get back?”
“You walk.” Acwulf smiled thinly. “Unless you prefer to spend the night up there. Best to get moving now.”
He drove west, then north, following the river’s path into the foothills. As he ascended the winding road, the truck’s suspension groaned with each pothole, and the steering wheel resisted his efforts with every curve. It occurred to him that the old flatbed could betray him at any time, spilling him over the precipice into the forest below, where he would lie undetected for days. The American thought of dying, of croaking out his final moments among a tangle of evergreens or impaled upon a splintered branch. Not a good death, but better than the alternatives – it was rumored that the Securitate murdered dissidents by drowning them in their own shit.
He crested the last rise, and there it was, its roof shot through with holes and one wing partially collapsed. The American gave a quick westward glance, where the sun hung low in the sky, as he killed the engine. Always arrive at least one hour before sunset. He let himself down from the cab and peered beneath the canvas, where a stack of large crates were secured to the bed with military webbing. Curious, the American hoisted himself into the bed and shoved at one. What does Acwulf want with a bunch of empty crates?
Maybe we’re moving the bodies.
The front door of the house was secured with an old padlock, and if he were making a delivery, he would use the key in his pocket and make his way across the rotten planks before stopping at the cellar stairs. The cellar made an L-turn at the foot of those stairs, and he had never explored the recesses of that dark space – the gruesome nature of his task compelled him to leave quickly. I never hurt anyone, he thought, I just left them at the foot of the stairs as Acwulf instructed. Twenty children had been left in the old cellar, but there were families in Europe and America, who adopted children illicitly – Acwulf would have taken his cut of any payments, and they could have been shipped off to new lives in Brussels or London or New York.
Then why don’t you see for yourself? The locked door and shattered windows were strangely enticing in the fading light, and he needed only to wait until sunset and walk down those stairs, and he would see that there were no dead children, no graves dug into the cellar floor. The feeling was so strong that he took a step forward, his hand reaching into his pocket for the key ring, before stopping abruptly – there was nothing at the foot of those stairs worth seeing.
He looked up and realized with some alarm that much of the light had bled away from the sky. If he stayed for much longer, it would be dark. Never – under any circumstances – linger after the sun sets. The American began to walk down the rutted road, sweating a little with the exertion, and as the first stars appeared overhead, he began to move faster, only dimly aware that he was running.
It was nearly midnight before he made it home.
I am the only one who knows, he thought, and Acwulf will kill me when I am no longer useful. The safehouse was little more than a hovel, but it was equipped with a telephone, a device installed at Acwulf’s insistence. If he alerted the Securitate to Acwulf’s crimes, surely he would get off with a lighter sentence – and Acwulf was not his only contact among the security services in Romania. He hesitated for another moment, then dialed a number in Bucharest.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
VI.
London
The Greater London Cargo and Shipping Company had maintained an office in Gdansk since 1971, for the Communist authorities permitted the inflow of a few consumer goods to keep the workers content. They were expelled briefly in 1978 and for a longer period in 1981, when several members of Solidarity were arrested at the company’s warehouse. Evangeline Morris had taken the news in stride, and by 1987, the edifice of Communism teetered atop its crumbling foundation, and a few party members saw the writing on the wall – the company’s trading privileges were quietly restored in exchange for a few well-placed bribes.
As she had done in 1975, she selected the crew with care, for they would be used for exactly one voyage, dismissed with a generous severance, and expected to keep quiet about what they had seen and done. Evangeline selected an Irish captain who had done a lucrative side business running guns for the IRA, a pair of marijuana smugglers from Florida to serve as mates, and two Polish deckhands who had served prison time for various offenses against the state. They repaired and painted the ship, filled the hold with bales of denim, and spent their idle time in a local pub as Evangeline ordered cartons of Marlboro cigarettes and bottles of Johnnie Walker as gifts for the customs officials. The final piece of cargo rested in the cellar of her own house. Delivery of that item was the true purpose of the voyage, and the crate would be loaded under cover of darkness before their departure.
She remained unaware that a different set of eyes watched the ship, or that the recent flurry of activity on the Ceres was carefully documented and reported to Bucharest.
VII.
London
The dog wandered from North End Road to Hampstead Heath, following a meandering westward path as he took in the scents blown on the breeze. He was distracted once when a rabbit bolted from cover, and the dog spent the next half-hour snuffling through the tall grass until the trail dead ended. The dog circled twice, frustrated at his prey’s disappearance, until the whorls and eddies of the ambient air returned him to his original purpose. He trotted across the heath as the rabbit, who had doubled back on its own trail, watched from a patch of weeds.
Notions of owner or master were foreign to the dog, and it was odd that this scent would draw his attention at all, for many people visited Hampstead Heath each day, and there was nothing of particular importance about the woman. She was a newcomer to his territory, and perhaps her scent stirred a forgotten instinct suppressed by the dog’s feral existence, or perhaps he was simply attracted by the smell of food (the woman had stopped at a chip shop for lunch, and the dog loved fish). He snuffled along behind her, moving with purpose as the afternoon faded, until he reached the bathing pond – and stopped dead in his tracks. The snake had been here, and perhaps it was watching him now, lurking in the treeline or beneath the still water.
The woman saw him and extended a hand, but the snake-smell permeated the area, and the dog let out a series of sharp barks, an instinctual warning of approaching danger, before fleeing across the heath.
VIII.
She strolled across Hampstead Heath as the sun began to fade, and in her late-afternoon reverie, Katrina half-imagined the park as Abraham Van Helsing might have seen it, a mix of Victorian ladies and gentlemen soaking up the sunlight, then departing as the afternoon wore on to leave only the children, underfed waifs in threadbare coats and worn trousers, playing as the sun set and the woman, newly interred in the nearby cemetery, rose from her tomb and set off in search of prey. As the light faded, Katrina found herself at the open doorway of belief but hesitated, reluctant to step across the threshold.
She jumped as she caught a movement from the corner of one eye. The dog stood perhaps fifty feet away, and when it realized that she was watching, it dipped its head in a submissive, slightly fearful gesture. It circled, head bobbing and tail firmly between its legs, and she held out one hand, and when it fled into the twilight, she let out a sigh of disappointment. We could have been friends.
“The strays that wander the park don’t tame easily,” a voice said.
Her right hand went to the chain about her neck as Katrina whirled in sudden alarm. The man at the edge of the pond was dressed in a black overcoat and a broad-brimmed hat that partially obscured the face. She guessed his age at around thirty-five years, but the face appeared gaunt and wasted, the face of a convalescent. He turned, and Katrina caught a brief glimpse of one eye, which reflected dully in the twilight.
“Hello,” she stammered.
“Pardon me for startling you, but I was wandering the park, and when I saw you, I was surprised to find that I recognized your face – you’re Eric Van Helsing’s daughter, aren’t you?”
Katrina let out a nervous laugh as her mind calculated possible routes of escape. I came to the park looking for monsters and found a creep instead. A hot flush crept up her cheeks, but she forced her breathing under control and ignored the panic that burned in her throat, because if the panic took over, she would run, and flight would trigger the predator’s instinct. Perhaps, she thought with sudden regret, that was why the dog had run away. He’s seen one too many bodies dumped into the pond…
“Well?” The stranger did not leer or approach, but the fright that held her did not abate. She took a deep breath.
“Yes, I am. How do you know my father?”
“A fair question. I am one of the trustees of the Arthur Holmwood Memorial Foundation, and I wrote to your father several times over the years. It seems that your family was unfairly tarnished by your grandfather’s deeds, and naturally, he was quite skeptical that a small foundation such as our own would take an interest in you. A wise man to be distrustful of strangers, although our intentions in your case were perfectly honorable.”
“I see.” She relaxed for an instant, then tensed again. “And you just happened to be walking on the heath when you stumbled into me?”
A whistling trill rang out, and Katrina saw an owl observing them from a nearby branch. One predator watching another, she thought. To her surprise, the owl glided from the tree and landed on the dark-coated shoulder.
“Is that your pet?”
“Hardly.” The owl chirped in agitation, and he stroked its feathers. “She is my friend – perhaps the only true friend that I have. Your father had a journal, didn’t he? A document passed down from his great uncle?”
“How did you know –”
“Because Abraham Van Helsing died with no living descendants, and his papers were taken to London before his death by a woman named Mina Harker. Abraham had a nephew – your great-grandfather – who stood to inherit everything, and he was determined that his most important work not fall into the nephew’s hands. Thus, the work of Abraham Van Helsing was quietly preserved until it found its way to me, and in due time, I returned the journal to your father. That is why we are here together – because you came looking for me.”
Katrina Van Helsing tried to speak, but a series of voices whispered in her ear as the red-tinged eye fixed upon her face. My family was in the resistance, and we killed every collaborator that we found. We won a great victory in 1893 and survived a bloody skirmish in 1956. Your Opa once told me that his father killed one of his own cousins. For the love of God, Otto, what did you see in those final moments? She shook her head to clear the cobwebs.
“I have the answers to your questions, but the journey will be long and dangerous.” Katrina stared in amazement at the scrap of paper in her hand as she realized that she had been wrong – the stranger was much older than she had first assumed. “Meet me at that address in one week’s time.”
“What happens if I refuse?”
“You won’t,” the stranger replied. “There’s too much of Abraham Van Helsing in you.”
IX.
Cardiff to London
1975
The ship sailed from Valencia to Tiger Bay, and its sole passenger disembarked with the ebb tide. He weighed the option of tossing the crew overboard to reduce the chance of discovery, but murder carried risks of its own, and they had followed his instructions to the letter: ask no questions and stay out of the hold. He left the city at sunrise and traveled to London by rail, his sleeping berth an empty freight car that he had reserved (and carefully locked from the inside) for a generous sum.
In the early hours of the following morning, he reentered the cemetery.
Blood and vengeance, he thought. And love – especially love. A girl walked the overgrown path, perhaps twenty yards ahead of him. She moved like a ghost, and if he wished, he could sense her desires, offering comfort to the lonely or strength to the fearful. Just one kiss. She would be ill for a few days, but she was young and strong, and her health – he was reasonably certain – would recover in due time. Quincy Morris slipped closer, and the vision dissipated like morning dew as he reached with a dead finger to touch her neck. I loved her, he thought, as a wave of remembered emotion surged in his breast. Lucy should have married that fall, produced a brood of children with Arthur Holmwood, and lived a long happy life. Instead, we came one afternoon in late September and drove a wooden stake through her body.
Vines grew around the walls of the tomb, and he hesitated, staring upward at the cherub that guarded the entrance. Of all the things that he had done, perhaps this was the worst. And what would you have me do, he asked silently to the vanished ghost. Even now, a murderer roams free, his crimes unpunished. To falter now was to negate the sole purpose of his continued existence, but he contemplated the next step with dread.
Beyond the crumbling fence, he heard the bark of a stray dog at the far end of Hampstead Heath. He had no key, but the rusty lock of the mausoleum turned of its own accord, and the gate swung open to him.