Dracula's Ghost - Chapter 5
The Shadow of Carfax Abbey
Whitby
1893
Lucy startles awake and stares about, disoriented. Sleepwalking again. Her nightdress feels impossibly thin against the chilly air, and she shivers as a dog howls in the distance. There is a rumor that a dog jumped from the Demeter, the derelict craft that struck land two days ago, and Lucy hopes that some kindhearted soul will find the poor beast before he starves or is killed by a stray mastiff. It takes her a moment to realize that in her trance, she has made her way to the cemetery. Lucy knows that she should make her way home before Mina discovers her absence, but she is worried about the dog, and perhaps the scent of a friendly human will entice it to follow her to a warm fire and a bowl of food. Besides, the thought of walking alone makes her afraid, and a four-legged companion would brighten her journey.
Lucy starts to call out, and the sound dies in her throat. That was no dog. Lucy has seen wolves, but the howl that echoes through the tombstones is nothing like the halfhearted cries of the bored, scraggly creatures that pace their cages in the London Zoo. Perhaps the treasured companion of her imagination is waiting to devour her in the darkness. Just get home, Lucy. Start walking and get to the house before he catches you. As she rises from the seat, there is movement in the corner of her eye, and she yelps in fear.
Ten feet away, a man is watching her.
He is an older man, somewhere past middle age but well short of senescence. He seems impossibly tall in the moonlight, and his iron gray hair and white mustache contrast sharply against the black cloak. His eyes crawl frankly over her body, like a drunkard sizing up a tavern whore, and he smiles when he realizes that she has seen him. Lucy shudders a little at the sight of that leering grin.
“A beautiful evening for a walk, is it not?”
Lucy starts to explain that she was sleepwalking, that she stumbled from the house a short distance away - so short, in fact, that any screams from the cemetery will be easily heard. The predatory smile does not soften.
“I recently purchased a property near London from a man named Jonathan Harker.” Mina’s fiancé? Lucy thinks, and the stranger’s grin widens.
“Yes, Mina - you know her? Jonathan spoke highly of her - a lovely and kindhearted woman who was spending a summer in the seaside town of Whitby.”
The old man is closer now, perhaps five feet away, though she swears that he has not moved. Lucy has never met Jonathan Harker, but she knows that Mina has talked about him at some length lately. Something was bothering her, something connected to Jonathan. The eyes, strangely red-looking in the moonlight, meet her own, and the thought flies away.
“Yes, Jonathan spoke highly of her, and I am curious to find out what he might have spoken to her – about me in particular. Would you like to hear a secret?”
There is a rancid aroma in the air, and Lucy wonders whether the recent storm has washed the soil from some nearby grave. She tries to remember what was bothering Mina. Jonathan went on a trip somewhere. He hasn’t written and Mina is worried. Is he ill? He leans closer, and Lucy realizes that the rank odor is the stranger’s own breath. Every nerve of her body screams, but she finds herself unable to move as the stranger whispers into her ear.
“Jonathan Harker is sleeping with the dead, where no one will ever find him.” The hand that encircles her wrist is ice-cold. “Perhaps Mina knows nothing, but one can never be too careful. For now, let us enjoy each other’s company a while longer.”
Lucy staggers backward and sits, half-collapsing, on the concrete seat. Something tugs at her dark curls, forcing her head to one side, and she passes out from the sharp pain in her throat.
“Lucy? Lucy!”
Mina gives her a vigorous shake, and a low moan escapes her lips; the only articulation that, in her weakened state, she can give to the awful feeling of dread that lingers in the pit of her stomach. Mina wraps the shawl around her, and Lucy protests as Mina removes her own shoes, but her friend is insistent, and the walk to their rooms is nearly a mile. She will walk carefully, Lucy thinks, because the shoes were a gift from Jonathan, and Mina treasures them. Jonathan. Lucy clings to her friend, and attempts to explain, but her memories are dreamlike, her speech incoherent. Mina clucks her tongue, annoyed at her friend’s childishness, but the fear in Lucy’s eyes is real. Mina takes a deep breath and speaks softly.
“It’s all right, Lucy.” Mina strokes her dark curls. “You were sleepwalking, and you had a bad dream. That’s all.”
“No.” Lucy’s throat feels tender as she shakes her head. “Not a dream. I…”
The irritation vanishes from Mina’s face, and there is real concern in her eyes. “Was there someone here before I came?”
For an instant, Lucy’s thoughts are coherent. He is here, Mina. He killed Jonathan, and now he is looking for you. He wants to sever all ties between himself and the place from which he came. The clarity fades, and she shakes her head glumly.
“I don’t remember, Mina. I simply don’t remember.”
I.
London
1933
The read the funeral rite from the Book of Common Prayer, and Jonathan glanced at the attendees scattered throughout the pews. Katherine Holmwood, pale and drawn, sat on the opposite end of the nave, and Jonathan acknowledged her with a polite nod. Not too high-born to be seen at Seward’s funeral, he said to himself, and the thought filled him with begrudging admiration. The others were mostly old colleagues from Seward’s asylum days, scarcely more alive than the man on the bier.
Poor Jack would have been bored by the whole thing, he thought. As the sole beneficiary of Seward’s estate, Jonathan had distributed his money among Seward’s companions and added a hefty donation of his own to Jack’s favorite pub, a dingy watering hole called The Horse and Groom. Give him a proper sendoff, and don’t try to cheat him. I will find out if you skimp on the festivities. The proprietor, a large man used to dealing with the East End’s roughest, had readily assented. Sometimes, an unsavory reputation had its advantages. The man who makes bodies disappear... Last night’s sleep had been troubled, and Jonathan began to yawn as the vicar read from the Psalter.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,”
The climb down the castle wall is his final hope. Dracula has departed, the doors are barred, and he is at the mercy of the women. The sheer wall terrifies him, but it is better to die on the rocks than to live, whole and healthy, until sunset. Jonathan edges his body out of the window and onto the outer wall of the castle. The rock bites at his fingers, and he leaves a trail of blood, a trail for the women to follow, as he descends. When he reaches the bottom, there are no more than thirty minutes of daylight left.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters.”
He stumbles down the stone steps, moving at a reckless pace as he races for the village. When he reaches the first houses, the sun has passed below the mountains, and the red glow of the sky is fading to a deep purple.
“He restoreth my soul.”
The doors of every house are shut against him. At the last house, he half-stumbles through an open doorway before a man, one of those who loaded the boxes from the castle, shoves him roughly into the street. As the door closes, a child – whether boy or girl, he cannot tell – peers out at him and grins at his plight. Overhead, the first stars appear.
“He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
Jonathan follows the river as he flees headlong into the forest. His legs burn, his breath comes in panting gasps, and he stops once to heave up the meager food from his belly. Bent double in the darkened forest, he hears the singing. The sound is so enchanting that he forgets all thoughts of flight. He waits passively until, beneath the singing, Jonathan hears another sound. The sound is so small and distant that he wonders if he has heard it at all - the sharp wail of a child, whether boy or girl, he cannot tell, cut off abruptly,
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me.”
The singing is close now. Jonathan has run farther than he would have believed possible, but the stag cannot outpace the hounds, and his own footsteps are too slow to escape the demons on his trail. Eventually, the stag grows tired, slows, and stops, unable to continue as the hounds fall upon it. The women will drain his blood, and he will haunt the old castle forever. To either side, white shapes flit ghostlike through the trees. Nearby, he hears the sound of running water.
He crests a small rise and the blonde one is mere feet in front of him. The white dress clings to her body like gossamer and accents her breasts and hips. Against that perfect skin, flawless but impossibly pale, the red eyes and lips stand out like blood on snow, and a deep longing fills Jonathan’s entire body. Just one kiss, he thinks, will take away his fear. A single kiss, and he can be with her forever, his love for Mina no more than a distant dream. He reaches for her hand, trembling.
The lips split into a bloody grin, and the singing becomes a discordant cacophony – the gibbering of a lunatic. The teeth are impossibly long and sharp, and lidless eyes stare into his own as she glides forward for a final embrace. Jonathan cries out, a shrill ululation that he does not recognize as his own voice, and stumbles down the hill. To his right, a pale arm – one of the dark-haired women – misses his sleeve by mere inches. His only weapon is the straight razor from his shaving kit, and he uses it now, taking a wild slash at the empty air as he runs. His foot splashes at the water’s edge, and fingers brush the nape of his neck. Jonathan stumbles forward, and cold water envelops him, turning his body to ice as he pushes deeper into the current.
A hundred yards from shore, he stumbles onto dry land. Jonathan is on a narrow island in the middle of the current. The women stand at the shore, champing in rage, and he realizes that they cannot enter the water. He sleeps on the island for the better part of a day and a half, his first real sleep for weeks. At dawn on the third day, he slips into the village and steals a boat. He will drift on the current for a week before he is found.
“… shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.”
Jonathan awoke with a panicked spasm and stared about the nave. He wondered whether he had screamed aloud, but the vicar droned on, and the celebrants shifted in their pews, paying him no heed.
II.
At the graveside, he noticed her for the first time. She gave him a quick smile, and both returned their attention to the service. When it was over, she hung back a little as Jonathan spoke with the vicar. Finally, they were alone, and Jonathan extended a hand as she stepped forward.
“Hello Amy.”
“Ten years working for you, and all I get is a handshake?” Amy Johnson threw her arms tightly about his waist, and Jonathan buried his face in the red curls.
“As I recall,” he said, “you only worked for me for a year. Got some wild notion about flying airplanes.”
Her eyes twinkled as she pushed him away. “As I recall, I did ten years of work in those twelve months. Come on. Let’s take a walk.”
Amy had worked for him in Mina’s last year, before flying became her profession. In 1930, she had made headlines as the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia, and that exploit was followed by others – London to Moscow, Moscow to Tokyo, and a new speed record to Cape Town. Duly impressed, Jonathan had invested in her business. They strolled among the tombstones, chatting idly.
“Next flight?”
“London to Brooklyn. My first trip to America, and – what? You have that look on your face.”
“It’s nothing.” Jonathan took a deep breath. “Funerals dampen my enthusiasm for transatlantic flight.”
She feigned hurt. “You don’t trust me?”
“I’d fly with you any time – you know that.”
“Good. After all, you’re talking to the best pilot in England.” Amy winked as she kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”
He watched her walk down the path, feeling slightly wistful. Mina’s death and Sarah’s marriage had left a void in his life, and Amy had filled a small part of that space. In his darkest days, Amy’s reliance on him for a paycheck had been the only thing that kept him going.
“Excuse me? You dropped something, sir.”
Jonathan was taken aback by the unfamiliar voice. The woman was young and smartly dressed, with dark hair cut in a shingle bob. One of Seward’s companions? She spoke accented English as she pressed a folded paper into his hands.
“I don’t believe that I did.”
“I saw it fall from your pocket – I’m sure that it is yours.” Jonathan stared at her, dumbfounded, as she folded his fingers around the paper and fled into the maze of tombstones.
The paper was heavy, fine stationary well-suited for the correspondence of the German Embassy in London. Jonathan stared at the black eagle at the top of the page and ran his fingers over the embossed seal of the Reich. Below the eagle, a single sentence was written neatly in block letters:
I know who killed your friend.
III.
National Socialist German Workers Party Headquarters – “The Brown House”
Munich, Germany
He sat at his desk as the visitor, newly arrived on the overnight train from Vienna, stood at attention before him. The new arrival was tall, with dark wavy hair swept over the forehead, and a small scar ran downward from the lip to the jawbone. Its companion, a much longer scar, crossed the left cheek from the corner of the mouth to the ear. The man behind the desk had fenced in his younger days and was impressed by the hit – the stroke must have peeled off half the face. The visitor’s drab green eyes matched the color of his uniform. All right, Otto. Tell me what happened.
“There were two targets in London. Hans and Richard searched the first…”
“And?” He knew the answer already, but honesty was a good sign of loyalty.
“They killed an armed homeowner during the break-in and were forced to flee.”
“Indeed.” The man behind the desk made a brief entry in his notebook. “I heard the fire was visible for miles.”
A trace of agitation showed on the scarred face. “Hans says that the house wasn’t wired for electricity, and someone knocked over an oil lamp. You can’t blame him for that.”
“Perhaps not, but the other target – the primary target, mind you – was not exploited.”
“They had a choice of houses, and they assumed that they could exploit the primary target the following night. I think it was a reasonable decision.” The visitor’s fingers drummed restlessly against his thigh. “Besides, Hans came up with an alternate plan.”
The thin man skimmed the report again. Personally, he believed that Hans had made a serious error in judgment, but he was impressed by the audacity of his proposal - exerting pressure on a person was a hundred times more effective than burglary. They went over the requirements again, and when his visitor had finished, he sat with the perfect stillness of meditation, thinking.
“Are you using the same men?”
The visitor clucked his tongue in exasperation. “They are the best that we have. If you want better ones, call Diels and hire a couple of professionals. Besides, Hans speaks fluent English.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. He would bring in better men when he had Diels’s job. “What about the boy?”
“They take him if possible. Stick the boy’s head in the water, and she won’t give them any trouble. You squeamish about hurting a child?”
The thin man considered this. His own son will still an infant, and to the surprise of many in his inner circle, he was a devoted father. Still, the answer was easy.
“The woman is our priority. They can throw the boy overboard, for all I care.”
Fifteen minutes later, Otto Skorzeny left the Brown House and turned toward the Königsplatz. Sigmund looked up from his papers but did not follow. An hour later, the coded telegram arrived at the desk of Rudolf Diels.
IV.
London
Katherine Holmwood, Lady Godalming, sat in a chair that, Holmes was certain, cost more than his annual salary. An offensive odor wafted through the hallway, a striking incongruence with the opulence of the manor.
“Please excuse the mess, inspector. We’re fertilizing the gardens, and most of the servants were given the day off.”
“I’m sure they appreciate the kindness.” He put on a happy face. “What are you using?”
“Blood and bone meal from a nearby slaughterhouse. Best thing one can do for the soil.” Lady Godalming’s smile was quite charming. “Are you a gardener?”
“I grow a few rosebushes, my Lady. The grounds of your estate are well beyond my skills.” He paused, frowning. “I need to ask you about Lucy Westenra.”
“Arthur’s dead fiancé.” A small cloud darkened Katherine Holmwood’s brow. “His true love, some would say.”
“My apologies, my lady, but it is serious business. You knew her?”
“I did,” she said. “Pardon my flash of jealousy – Lucy was a sweet girl and a dear friend. She was engaged to Arthur, but she sickened and died before they could be married. Why do you ask?”
“I am following up on the investigation of 1908.”
“Inspector, if there was foul play involved in Lucy’s death, they would have found it. Scotland Yard put the hot irons to all of us.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “I heard the accused never talked.”
To his surprise, Lady Godalming laughed. “Mina played them for fools. That inspector - Watson? No, Wilson, that was it - imagined he could break her easily. A woman’s constitution is weak, and if you threaten her with a harsh word, she’ll give up her husband to save herself.”
“She sounds like a remarkable woman,” Holmes said. “One thing continues to bother me. No one knows the location of Miss Westenra’s tomb. By the time anyone thought to ask, the Harkers and Doctor Seward were not speaking to the police.”
“That’s odd. I don’t know if I could find the grave, but the cemetery –” Katherine Holmwood’s brow furrowed, and her voice trailed off, like one entranced.
“My lady, are you all right?” Holmes touched her arm, and her eyes snapped to his own, like one waking from a dream.
“Yes, of course. I was just remembering. Lucy is buried in the west cemetery at Highgate, near Hampstead Heath.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Positive,” she nodded. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to my blood meal.”
Katherine Holmwood brushed a wrinkle from his coat as she led him to the door, and the touch lingered pleasantly between his shoulder blades. Hampstead Heath. He had lived nearby as a child, and the older children had taunted him with stories of ghosts that haunted the fields and monsters that hid beneath the surface of still ponds. A spooky place after dark. A slight chill ran through him, despite the warmth of the afternoon sunshine.
V.
Romania
He stood on the wall and watched the last rays of light fade in the west. This was his favorite season; the longer days allowed him to catch the last roseate glow on the horizon. Mornings were altogether different, since the beauty of dawn was tinged with anxiety, and he rarely watched the eastern sky. Sunset, at least in the summer months, aroused a deep feeling of happiness amidst the horror of his existence. He waited another five minutes, then went inside to retrieve the radio.
He lingered at the mirror, as did every evening. They say the reflection of the dead cannot be seen – not exactly true. The mind simply could not accept what the eye revealed, and a normal person, a living person, would see only the empty room. The thing in the mirror leered at him, and he returned the stare, gazing calmly into the eyes of the monstrosity with a carefully practiced stillness. Finally, he tired of the game and carried the radio outside.
Atop the wall, he positioned the antenna for optimum reception and waited. The odd box made him smile, because he had been certain that it would never work, and it pleased him to be proven wrong – his own voice traveled through the ether like any other. The woman had been a child in 1916, when he had saved her life in a rare act of benevolence, and her father had served him until his death in 1929. She had proven her father’s equal, tending to his needs and investing his stores of treasure (less than one might suppose, for Jonathan Harker exaggerated the opulence of the place) in enterprises of varying legality. His own needs were minimal, but money could buy information, and she served as his intermediary with the man in London. Besides, I enjoy her company, he thought. She wore a crucifix in his presence and kept a packet of sacramental wafer beneath her pillow when she slept, but none of these things offended him. He could not fully master his appetites, and she was wise to be vigilant.
She should have called by now, he thought. On occasion, a call would be missed due to weather or inopportune circumstances, and he would be restless and agitated for the entire night. He was a student of things in the sky and beneath the earth, and the air had not crackled with such portent since 1929, the year of Alexandru’s murder and the bloodletting that followed. Something was afoot, and he was hungry for news from London.
A moment later, the radio crackled to life. Grasping the receiver with a pale hand, he answered.