Dracula's Ghost - Chapter 17 (Part I)
A Ruined Tomb in a Forgotten Land
Somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains
1893
Mina finds herself unable to remain awake during the daylight, save for brief periods around noon. She eats little, for she has no appetite, and she grows restless and agitated at each sunset. Still, her mind is clear, and the dark urges at the periphery of her nightmares hold no sway over her when she is awake. Mina feels halfway dead already, but at every crossroads, she is able to guide them in the proper direction. They camp, and at sunset, Abraham Van Helsing draws a large circle about her bedding and seals the ring with a crumble of holy wafer. Mina finds that she cannot pass through the circle, a fact that both comforts and frightens her.
The horses give the first sign that something is wrong. The skin and eyes of the three women shimmer as they pass close to the fire, and when the horses are killed, Mina screams, not only from fear, but also from revulsion at her sudden urge to join their feast.
I.
Romania
1933
They arrived at Constanta at midnight and slept in the plane, dozing fitfully to the patter of a light rain. The next morning, Amy filed a flight plan for Brasov and bantered with the customs inspectors as they paused to inspect the new arrival. Jonathan remained silent, his own mood as dreary as the darkening sky, and wondered how many spies would pass word of their arrival to Berlin. By noon, the clouds parted, and a few rays of sunshine brightened the tarmac. Amy tapped him on the shoulder.
“The weather to our north is good, and we are cleared to take off.” Amy’s grim expression belied the good news.
“That’s good,” Jonathan nodded, “but what about the weather to our west?“
“A little more sporty.” Amy spoke in a low voice as she glanced toward the customs official. “Our flight plan is for Brasov, and they’ll suspect something if we don’t leave now. Make sure your door is latched before we take off.”
The plane ascended through the low clouds, and the weather began to clear as they flew northwest. The flight plan called for a northward turn at Ploesti and a short hop through a gap in the Carpathians. Perfect flying weather, if that’s where you’re going, Jonathan thought as they continued west. He stared at the foothills, partially hidden in a thick fog, as raindrops pelted the windscreen.
“John, how high are these mountains?” Amy pulled back on the stick as a crosswind buffeted the plane.
“I think the lower slopes are about three thousand feet.” Another gust rocked the plane, and he searched for a handhold to steady himself. “Why?”
“In this weather, we’ll have to fly low to find the river – around three thousand feet or so.”
“Too low to make it across the mountains.” Jonathan gritted his teeth. “If you need to turn back, then do what you think is best.”
“Strictly speaking, what is best would be a seat in the pub with hot food and good beer.” She made wide loop and nosed the plane downward, searching. “Just keep your eye out for the river, and for God’s sake, scream out if we’re about to plow into a hillside.”
She found the river on the second pass and turned north, following the muddy ribbon through a wide valley. The foothills gave way to forested mountains, the valley narrowed to a deep gorge, and the water cut through the rocks in a series of jagged slashes. In the distance, the highest peaks, treeless and snow-capped, jutted through the clouds. Somewhere ahead lay a wide stretch of still water, and Jonathan prayed that forty years of rains had not washed away the sandbar that lay in mid-channel.
“Why don’t we land there?” Amy circled the treeless plateau. From the air, the squat, rectangular structure looked so unimposing that it took him an instant to realize what he was seeing. “That big field is long enough, and it looks fairly level.”
Jonathan shook his head. “We need to stick to the plan.”
“Suit yourself.” Amy gave him a skeptical look. “I don’t know how an open field could be more dangerous than the middle of a river.”
Because when the sun sets, Jonathan thought, the middle of the river will be the only safe place within a hundred miles.
II.
Egon shook him awake as the first raindrops began to fall, and they spent the rest of morning scouring the damp forest and empty meadows. . He found the rifle in the middle of the road, Skorzeny thought. One shot fired, and an empty cartridge still in the chamber. How could we have slept through that? He rounded up the others at noon - they were on a schedule after all - and after somber meal, they descended the steep escarpment to the east. The drizzle turned to a heavy shower as they walked, and Skorzeny glanced enviously at Heydrich’s woolen coat and Tyrolean hat. His own clothes were soaked.
The river was hemmed in by mountains on either side, with sheer rock walls on the far bank and a narrow flood plain following the edge of the old road. Skorzeny viewed the terrain with an engineer’s eye and noted the high-water mark on the trees, a line of mud that reached within feet of the crumbling houses. A half-dozen dwellings were marginally habitable, but the others sat with doors hanging ajar on their frames, fallen shutters, and roofs caved in by decades of winter snow. Trees grew in open rooms and vines curled, snakelike, around the old beams as nature reclaimed her own. The precarious location suggested impermanence – a military garrison or den of thieves rather than a farming village. Skorzeny ordered a careful search of the village and wandered to the river. Halfway through his second cigarette, Hans joined him at the water’s edge.
“We found something,” Hans said.
The bushes were arranged in a rectangle perhaps thirty feet by fifteen. In springtime, the blooms would be quite pretty, but their appearance in the autumn weather was dull and listless. Skorzeny tested his thumb against a thorn.
“Common hawthorn,” Hans said. “See those fieldstones? Neatly arranged in two rows. They marked each grave and planted hawthorn over everything. Why?”
“They planted bushes over the graves - so what?” Hans gave him a steady look, dissatisfied but not quite hostile, and he changed the subject. “How are the men holding up?”
“They’re dispirited,” Hans said. “These men are not soldiers, Otto – they signed up to pass out pamphlets and do a little street fighting - not to get lost in the woods. And where is Comrade Heydrich? He wandered away an hour ago, and no one has seen him.”
Then stiffen them up, and don’t concern yourself with Heydrich’s business, Skorzeny thought. Richard had stumbled about in the dark, most likely drunk and looking for a place to piss, and had stepped over the edge of a cliff. We’ll find his corpse, he’ll have his schwengel in one hand and a flask in the other.
He heard the noise of an engine somewhere overhead, and Skorzeny cocked his head to one side. His eyes followed the trajectory of the plane as it circled and vanished behind the trees.
“What do you think it means?” Hans asked. Skorzeny tried to read the older man’s emotions, but his expression gave nothing away.
“It means that your labors have borne fruit.” He placed another cigarette between his lips. “Herr Harker has arrived from London.”
III.
Rupert Holmes wandered the cemetery for a long time. On either side of the path, tombstones protruded from the tangled vines and guarded his route like weary sentinels. It was a familiar place but different, a world out of phase with reality. Overhead the sky was gray, a drab admixture of sunlight and darkness. It began to rain, and the light mist cooled his face and hands.
His left side itched terribly.
His memory was a jumble, and Holmes tried to recall how he had ended up in the cemetery. He had been shot, and with a little luck, the Germans would take pity on him before he bled out from the wound in his leg. No - that’s not it. He had cinched that wound with his belt and had survived the war.
“You’re full of surprises, Inspector.” Rupert Holmes jumped, startled by the sound of another voice. “I have been expecting you, but I didn’t expect you here.”
The tall man stood under a dying oak, ten yards to his right. He was of indeterminate age – the lustrous hair appeared youthful, but the careworn face suggested a much older man. A dark coat hung almost to the ankles and accented the white shirt around the throat. The eyes were heavy-lidded and bloodshot, and a heavy mustache obscured the mouth. Holmes tried to place the odd accent, a bass-baritone reminiscent of mountains and ocean tides.
“Where are we?”
“This-” the stranger gestured with a grand sweep of his arm “- is a place of great significance. There are others like it – the high plains of Texas, a desert saloon in California, Patagonia – but this one is my favorite. Do you understand what happened to you?”
“I was shot.” Holmes closed his eyes and struggled to remember. “We were crossing no man’s land when a sniper got my leg. I was bleeding so badly –“
“Close, but not quite. Here –” He placed an index finger through the hole in Holmes’s jacket - “and here. An inch higher and you wouldn’t be here at all.”
Holmes touched the center of his chest and let the implication sink into his mind.
“I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“You should be.” His host smiled with the eerie grin of a jackal. “This place is something between, neither the world as you know it nor the next one. A place where life and death are… indeterminate.”
I still don’t understand, Holmes thought. Past and present cluttered his mind, and he struggled to make sense of the recollections. Jonathan Harker sent me from London to solve an old murder, and I was hit by a sniper’s bullet. But I was a young man then, and the War has been over for fifteen years…
“Perhaps this will help.” The stranger pointed to a crumbling sepulcher, and Holmes stared at the name on the copper plate, slack-jawed.
“You don’t die easily because you were marked at a young age, and a friend of mine saw fit to bring you back from the threshold. Walk through that door, and you will return to the world as you knew it. Besides, the sun is going down, and we can’t stay here.”
The darkness enveloped him as Rupert Holmes crossed the threshold of Lucy Westenra’s mausoleum. A musty odor wafted past his nostrils, and the slow drip of water on stone rang in his ears. He reached for the walls of the tomb and found only empty space, but a vague sensation of upward movement registered as he walked.
Somewhere ahead, he heard screams. Holmes was a veteran of many anguished cries, and he felt a stab of pity at that keening wail; no expiring soldier, no grieving mother, screamed like that. The sound echoed the fear and desperation of a lost child wandering the heath at sunset, and with dawning horror, Holmes realized that he was hearing his own voice.
Pain stabbed at his eyes as he emerged into the light, and Holmes stared frantically about the room. One arm remained fastened to the bedpost and the other waved about freely, with a frayed length of rope still attached to his wrist. The woman at the foot of the bed pointed a rifle pointed at his chest.
“I’m not sure what’s happened, I – do you speak English?” Holmes was surprised by the even tone of his own voice. He made no effort to free his other arm, and the woman relaxed a little. “Can you tell me where I am?”
“You’re in my house. I found you dead - almost dead - in my hallway.” She pointed to a hole in the bloody shirt. “I was expecting Mr. Harker.”
“Jonathan is a friend of mine.” Rupert Holmes unbuttoned the shirt with his free hand, and the skin beneath was unmarked. Not a dream. “Do you have anything to drink? Water or tea?”
“I’ll make tea for both of us.” She lowered the rifle and, after a moment’s hesitation, untied the knot that bound his left hand. “My name is Gabriela.”
They sat at the window and watched the clouds pass to the south. Gabriela had taken his return from the dead in stride, but she was oddly reticent about the sequence of events between his near-death and sudden resurrection. Holmes let the matter lie and answered her questions instead. They had switched places in Paris, and he had worn Harker’s suit when he boarded the train. His subsequent memories were shrouded in fog, but Jonathan would be here - or rather, would be there - in due time, through some arrangement to which Holmes was not privy. He fidgeted with the pipe as he talked, but for the first time in years, Holmes found that he had no desire to smoke. Perhaps we should get to the point.
“How is it that I’m still alive, with a bloody shirt and no hole in my chest?”
Gabriela shrugged. “Does it really matter?”
“I think it matters a great deal,” he said. “There’s something else that I should tell you. Before I - came back - I was in a cemetery, and I met a tall man with a mustache. He told me that a friend of his had called me back. What does that mean?”
“There is a folk myth in Romania that the blood of a strigoi can heal the sick.” Gabriela avoided his eyes as she spoke. “Perhaps even revive the dead.”
“I see.” Strigoi. Holmes envisioned Lucy Westenra reaching for him in the darkness of Hampstead Heath. “The man in the cemetery is a strigoi?” She nodded.
“Dracula?”
Gabriela sipped her tea and stared out the window. What is she concealing? Holmes thought.
“If you believe Jonathan Harker,” Holmes said, “Dracula is dead, killed by his own hand forty years ago.”
She shrugged, offering no answer.
IV.
She sat up on the bed, wincing a little at the pain in her right thigh. The wash basin and shaving kit were laid out as she had found them, but Sarah could not recall how, or why, she had returned to the bedroom. A few rays of afternoon sunlight filtered through the window, but pools of shadow gathered in the courtyard below. She remembered the afternoon only dimly and the evening not at all, but last night’s dreams lingered vividly in her imagination.
The vision is alluring, even if her mind comprehends that the hotel in Vienna is merely a vestige of her memory. Sigmund is just beyond the threshold of her doorway, as she remembers him on the last night of his life. He had been a handsome, if somewhat ordinary, man whose most attractive qualities had been his intelligence and courage, and death has not marred his countenance; indeed, Sarah finds him so beautiful that she cannot look away. A pang of loss washes over her as she recalls his death at the bridge. Sigmund’s eyes shine in the moonlight, and his voice has a sweet, musical quality as he speaks.
“Let me in, Sarah. We can be together again and leave the old life behind.”
“I can’t Sigmund. I have to go home to my husband and son.”
The reflection of his eyes is mesmerizing, and Sarah feels herself reaching out to him as her resistance weakens. Then a shadow passes between them, not unlike a bat fluttering in the darkness, and the spell is broken. Sarah turns away, heartbroken, but in the periphery of her vision, she glimpses a different face, glaring at her with an expression contorted by anger.
Sarah rubbed her eyes and tried to make sense of the day’s events. Yesterday’s events, she reminded herself. She remembered scrambling over the rocks outside and finding her way into the locked room, where she had met her host. Quincy Morris. That odd accent had tickled her memory, but she had recognized the truth only with hindsight. It had taken the dead man’s own words - Art, Van Helsing, Mina, and Lucy - only John is left. And if the barbaric accent and roll call of the dead were insufficient, there was the dream.
The sky over the plateau is a cloudless blue, and the biting air reminds her that winter will arrive soon. The service, tears mingled with joyful remembrances, is over, and John, Mina, Art, and Abraham have departed. The bowie knife is placed into the grave, along with two cigars and a flask of whiskey, and Van Helsing consecrates the earth with a piece of the Host. Sarah remembers everything in detail, though she sleeps through the entire service.
The sun passes below the horizon, and her hands reach upward through the earth. The first thing she notices is the intense hunger, a hot coal burning in the center of her mind. The surviving vagabonds have fled to the river, and she catches their scent as she sniffs, doglike, at the air. She turns, but a malevolent presence stops her in her tracks. The voice urges her westward, toward the path of Jonathan Harker and the others.
“They left you to die here, Mr. Morris. Follow them and have your revenge.”
Sarah hears the harsh metallic whisper, and memories roll over her like floodwaters. She remembers the wound in her belly, the foul thing in the coffin, the taste of blood in her mouth, and – the last thing she sees before dying – the dissolution of Dracula’s corpse as the severed head falls away. The voice urges her westward again, but she has the hunger to satisfy, and Sarah walks toward the river in the body of Quincy Morris, moving with the glee of the hunter.
Somewhere below, in a hidden corner of the castle, he was sleeping now, waiting for the sun to set. She understood the dream well enough - Dracula, the specter that haunted her family for forty years, had died here, just as John Quincy had told her. Papa and Quincy killed him. Quincy Morris, like Dracula himself, somehow survived his own death.
He survived and has taken Dracula’s place, Sarah thought. She touched her throat, grateful for the crucifix that Gabriela had placed around her neck. The thought of the dead man frightened her, but she placed the emotion firmly into the context of her ongoing ordeal. Just as Papa had survived this place, she had endured through kidnapping, imprisonment, and attempted murder. And I’ve made it through one night already, none the worse for wear. She swung her feet over the edge of the mattress. When I go downstairs, I’ll just -
Sarah’s knees buckled as her feet touched the stone floor, and she panted through the waves of nausea that roiled her belly. The pain in her thigh returned, and sweat beaded her forehead as she pushed herself upright. Quincy has taken Dracula’s place. Sarah lifted her skirt, closing her eyes tightly as she tried desperately to summon her mother’s presence. A pair of bright red puncture marks, the flesh around the edges an unhealthy white, marked the inside of her thigh.
She stared at those wounds for a long time, and at last Sarah began to cry, great sobs of despair and loneliness that convulsed her entire body. Outside, the sun continued its westward journey, and the shadows deepened over the forest below.
V.
The island was a strip of sandy earth, perhaps a half-mile long, and exactly where Jonathan had predicted. Amy circled once, searching for rocks or downed trees, and found nothing. By God, you’re right, John. It’s a perfect little runway, perfectly hidden. She nosed the plane down, and the wheels touched solid ground. Jonathan cried out as the plane rocketed upward for a half second before settling firmly onto the sand. A little rough, but I’ve had worse, she thought. No transatlantic crossing mind you, but a good bit of aviation, all the same.
Then why the long face?
She killed the engine and closed her eyes. In a lifetime of flying, Amy had lost count of the number of friends killed by mistakes or equipment malfunctions - engines failed, wings sheared away from the fuselage, and pilots, not knowing their limits, flew into foul weather. Some of them did everything right and died regardless, because at ten thousand feet, it was the nature of things to fall apart. And knowing the risks, they still climbed into that cockpit, just as I would have done. Still, she owed him the truth.
“John?”
“What’s on your mind, Amy?”
“You’re an old man, you’ve barely eaten or slept, and the water in that river is freezing. Even if you make it across without drowning, how far do you have to go? Five miles? Ten? How many hills do you have to climb to reach that pile of stones on the mountain?” She took his hand in her own. “You’ll never make it back in three days – you won’t even make it there in three days! Call it off, John – you don’t deserve to end up dead in the forest.”
“I can’t call it off,” he said. “Sarah is in that old castle.”
“Then why not land in the bloody field?”
“I suppose I should tell you the truth.” Jonathan smiled, but she detected an undertone of bitterness in his voice. “In 1893, I was a solicitor’s clerk in Exeter, and I arranged the sale of a property in London to an old nobleman...”
He finished an hour later, and Amy stared at him in amazement. She knew that a whiff of scandal clung to Jonathan Harker, but the darkest rumors did no justice to his tale.
“It’s quite a story,” she said.
“I would imagine so.” Jonathan grinned at her. “That place nearly killed me once, and now it has my daughter. Ready to fly me back to London for committal?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” She smiled at him without humor. “There’s all sorts of strange things in the world. You remember that solo flight I did from Cape Town to Brisbane? Thirty hours with no sleep, no co-pilot, and the emptiest ocean in the world. Not another human being for a thousand miles. After a while, you look down at that ocean, and you start wondering what it would feel like to just nose the plane straight down into the water. You’re not angry or sad, your mind just asks the question… tempts you. Know why I didn’t do it?”
“No, Amy.”
“I looked at the co-pilot’s seat and saw my own mum, dead for ten years, staring back at me. Never said a word, just watched me with those soft eyes of hers.” Amy wiped her lips with the back of one hand. “I reached out and she wasn’t there, but I felt a little better. After that, whenever I got too sleepy or my mind started wandering where it shouldn’t, I’d look over, and she’d be right there with me.”
“And you never told anyone,” Jonathan said.
She shook her head. “I always figured everyone would think I was barmy. Just like a woman to crack under pressure - that sort of thing.”
“But you don’t think so. You think she was really there.”
“My poor brain was tied in knots, and maybe I was seeing things.” Amy chewed her bottom lip. “But at the end of the day, I can’t help but believe it was her. Perhaps I should haul you to the loony bin, but I guess I’ll take you at your word.”
She reached past him to open the door. I should have fixed the damned thing before I left England. The door wouldn’t latch properly unless you closed it from the outside - one wrong turn at ten thousand feet, and your passenger would find himself sitting in empty air. And when it catches, it takes an act of Parliament to get it open again.
Jonathan stepped from the plane, and a change came over him as his feet touched the water’s edge. He stood rooted in place, ghastly pale, his shoulders slumped and his arms crossed protectively over his chest, and for a moment, Amy feared that he was having a heart attack. His head darted to either side as he mumbled a few words, his voice barely audible above the hum of the current.
“John?” she called out. “John, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” His spine stiffened and he forced a smile. “Three days, Amy – not a day more. Understand?”
Amy nodded. “Three days.”
He passed safely through the current and paused at the water’s edge before disappearing into the trees. At least he won’t drown, and perhaps he won’t freeze, she thought. Still, she was worried. Jonathan changed as he entered the water, as if he had undergone some dark baptism that revealed a great and terrible truth. His final words, spoken so softly that she barely heard them, haunted her.
“Dear God, I should never have come back.”
VI.
He walked for two hours, scrambling over slick rocks and panting with the exertion of each new hill. Jonathan moved quickly, sweating profusely in the cool air as he pushed his aging body with the desperation of the damned. This place has a malevolent power all its own - Arthur, in his madness, had seen that well enough. If Sarah had made it this far, she was most likely dead, and he found himself wishing that he had stayed in England, had died a natural death where he could rest with Mina. Now, at least, Jonathan understood that awful dream of the veldt.
He had fled the castle at sunset, climbing down the wall and fleeing toward the river to escape those awful women. Jonathan thought back to his fugue state Seward’s funeral, the dream of his flight and escape - the blonde sister with the bloody grin, the first splashing steps into the water, the hand that brushed the nape of his neck as he stumbled into the safety of the rushing current. Only that’s not what happened, is it? His first steps into the rushing water, brought back the memory, and the truth, of his flight from the castle.
He crests a small rise and the blonde one is there, mere feet in front of him. Jonathan’s dream matches the reality of his memory - the white dress, the red eyes and lips, his own longing turned to horror as she reveals her true nature. Jonathan sprints for the river, and he almost makes it to the water’s edge. A pale arm – one of the dark-haired women – seizes his bicep, and he slashes with the razor, a blow that meets only empty air as it passes through her body. His head is drawn back to expose the throat, and Jonathan cries out, a shrill ululation that he does not recognize as his own voice, as the women batten upon him.
He awakens the next morning, drained nearly to the point of death. The women will return when the sun sets, but Jonathan’s limbs are strong enough to stumble into the river and choose the manner of his passing. Cold water envelops and numbs him, but he pushes deeper into the current as he wills his own death. To his surprise, the water revives him a little, and a hundred yards from shore, he stumbles onto dry land. Jonathan finds himself on a narrow island in mid-current, and when the sun sets, he cowers on the sandbar as the women call from the water’s edge. The musical voices turn to angry howls, but they come no closer, and he realizes that they cannot enter the water.
Days or weeks later - for by then, Jonathan had no sense of the passage of time - he awakened in the hospital in Budapest, and his rotted brain spared him the worst memories. Four months later, Abraham Van Helsing would kill the women in their sleep, and with their bodies destroyed, any living souls on whom they fed would be set free - or so he believed at the time. In the shadow of the castle, Jonathan knew better. This place has a malevolent power all its own.
Enough to give life to a dead curse?
The last rays of sunlight were fading when he reached the empty village. Cobwebs assailed him as Jonathan crossed the threshold of the hut, but the door and shuttered window appeared sturdy enough. He removed dry clothes, tinned beef, and a canteen from his pack, and when his hunger was satisfied, he laid out the revolver, kukri, and crucifix next to his pallet. He was asleep before the sun passed below the horizon.
That awful dream is more vivid than he has ever known. One by one, the others die, wounded by an invisible enemy that leaves the soldiers pale and bloodless. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him,” Jonathan whispers as Arthur is cut down. He faces them alone, an advancing horde of faces from his past: the women from the castle, the crew of the Demeter, and Jack Seward, his body scorched by the fire that consumed him. Arthur rises to join Lucy Westenra, reunited with his fiancé at last.
Finally, with the honor of place given to one much beloved, the funeral wagon appears with Mina Harker at the reins. Mina’s red eyes reflect the dying light as the coffin opens, and the ghoul rises. A pallid face grins at him as the last rays of light vanish, and at last, Jonathan Harker understands the truth.
It is his own face.
Part II of Chapter 17 will be published tomorrow.