Nosferatu the Vampyre (12 page)

“Plague is declared in several places,” he intoned. “In Transylvania and the Black Seaport of Varna, an irreversible fever has appeared. Most of those stricken have been young women. All victims have died with puncture wounds at the neck, the origin of which is still unexplained. Whole stretches of land along the coast have withered into dust. The animals throw fits and twitch in the streets. Silence grows and grows.”

And in the silence that followed his speech, from out in the hallway there came a muffled cry. The guard had drawn his sword and thrown himself upon it. Blood seeped out and covered the floor like a blanket. As the silence grew, Renfield came off the bed and crawled—soundlessly, soundlessly—to the door. He crouched to the crack of light at the doorsill, put out his tongue in the dust, and waited for the stream to reach him. The room was full of glory.

The horse did all the work. As they came down into a wild and stormy region, Jonathan nodded in the saddle. He held the reins so loosely that he couldn’t give directions. For hours at a stretch he slumped forward onto the horse’s neck. But the beast seemed to have the will to go on, even when Jonathan didn’t, and so they made their way. When the lightning dazzled the air and struck trees down like match-sticks, they sought the shadow of an overhanging rock and waited for the rage to pass. When they came to a stream that tore through the landscape in a torrent, the horse went along it till he found a natural bridge to cross.

Jonathan was too feverish and weak to say how long they’d traveled. They’d left the steepest crags behind long since, and in the meadows on either side of the muddy road began to appear the trees and grasses of the foothills. But it was not till he came through a narrow pass in the gathering dark and decided to stop for the night that he found himself remembering. He came to the middle of the level space, sheltered at last from the driving winds, and saw the remains of a bonfire, many weeks old.
I’ve been here
, he thought as he dismounted.

He sat by the bed of ashes, arms around his knees, while the horse trailed off to crop the meager grass that grew up among the stones. He remembered a group of people dancing. He looked about him on the empty ground and saw in his mind the gypsy treasure. He could almost hear them whispering behind him, and he strained his ears to recover the words they spoke so long ago. The sound took shape in his head like a shadow on the night:
Nosferatu, Nosferatu
.

His eyes widened in horror. He looked down at the scar on his thumb. He brought his hand up to his neck, where he felt two tiny scabs. He saw the vampire start forward toward him, the night he had slumped against the table, powerless to move. He screamed now as he couldn’t then, and the mountains rang around him with the echo. He shuddered at the touch of undead flesh, the heat of the monster’s breath against his neck. The whole of the time he was trapped in the castle came back in a flash. The scream went on and on, till he thought the breath would go out of him for good. But at last it was done, and he lay panting in the dirt, his cheek in the muddy ashes. His heart was still again. Then, like a stroke of lightning blazing through his being, he saw to the end of the nightmare. He saw Lucy.

“Lucy,” he whispered, as if he’d solved the riddle at last. The face was blazoned on his heart like the portrait on the pendant. The world came back into balance again. For every force of evil, a fire of goodness stood and fought. He knew he would not forget again the anchor of his life. “I am Jonathan Harker of Wismar,” he thought to himself with a wild thrill of pride. The terror of the vampire shriveled and died on the spot, like dust among the ashes. He and Lucy together would make the night retreat. He knew he had come to himself again for good.

It was dusk on the open sea. The decks of the
Demeter
were empty of men. The captain stood at the helm, groggy and alone, and every few minutes he seemed to double up with pain. The rats crept over his feet in a trance. They didn’t bite, didn’t scurry, and didn’t search for food. They only waited to reach dry land. The captain hardly noticed them anymore, even when he was lucid. They were as much a part of the journey now as the heavy gray waves of the brooding.

But the first mate was still sane enough to feel the horror all about him. He had buried the rest of the men today, heaving them over the side, too tired to sew a shroud around them. He never stopped his search of the ship, but he never knew what he was looking for. Now he stood at the stairway down to the hold, an axe in his hand, and determined to hack his way through all the coffins till he tracked it down. He would sift that black polluted soil between his fingers and hold the secret in his grasp.

He descended into the belly of the ship. He went up fearlessly to the pyramid of coffins. As he heaved the axe and struck at the lid of the nearest one, splintering the wood and letting out a hideous stench on the air, he neglected to notice the shadows building behind the pile. He worked away, and at last he broke open one whole side. He knelt to the hole and pawed at the earth with his hands. He did not know that the sun had set. He was head and shoulders through the hole and into the coffin, digging around in the dirt, when he felt something tugging at the tail of his shirt. He thought it must be the captain, and he pulled out into the gloomy light to say he wouldn’t stop till he came to the end of the pile.

He opened his mouth to scream, but the vampire’s teeth gripped onto his throat with such a lightning speed that he never made a sound. He was paralyzed in every limb as the vampire shook him by the neck, drinking him in in great gulps. He usually made his incision so precisely, drank the blood at such a heartbeat’s rhythm, that his victims died in a kind of swoon. But the vampire raged at the desecration of his temple. He wanted pain. And the mate went out in such an agony that his heart burst in his chest. He was pinned and tortured till he lost his mind, all in the moment that he died.

When every drop was drained, the vampire raced about the room in a sort of drunken madness. He always forgot the awful beauty of violence. The triumph broke in him anew each time. He was swept by a fit of soundless laughter, and he let the blood dry on his fangs, his mouth like an open wound. He pointed a nerveless finger at the corpse, and a wave of rats erupted from the violated coffin, swarmed all over the still-warm flesh, and mangled it with their teeth. Dracula quivered with pleasure as he watched. The drunken delirium passed, and he drew his cape about him and went forward. As he climbed the steps to the main deck, it was clear in his proud demeanor who was in command here.

He went up to the bridge, where the captain fought to stay at the wheel. He came up close and put a hand on Krull’s shoulder. The captain didn’t flinch—he hardly seemed to notice. They watched the lilt of the evening waves together. They had no one around them anymore to worry about. They kept the ship between them like a secret.

“I thought,” said Dracula, “the time had come for us to meet. The cargo you carry belongs to me.”

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me,” the captain replied. The devil had come to court him. He forced the fever out of his head and turned to the God he had left behind in the harbor town where he was born.

“Nothing is required,” said Dracula, “but the courage to be alone. I will need a thousand lieutenants before the month is out. A thousand thousand by the start of winter.”

“Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”

“When it is all over,” said Dracula, “I will banish the light of day entirely. We will build beneath the ground tremendous cities. When all the blood is drunk up, there will be no hunger among us.”

“I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” the captain replied, but the words had turned to ashes in his mouth. They didn’t make any sense. He was so weak and weary that he fell against the stranger’s icy shoulder. The vampire held him up and put out a free hand to the wheel. When the captain felt the stronger force take over, he turned and buried his face against the stranger’s neck. He wept for his loss of strength, for the lies he was taught at the altar rail, for the men he had failed. There was no comfort anywhere but here.

Doctor van Helsing couldn’t let the matter go. He had sent Lucy home the moment they came upstairs from Renfield’s cell, but the feeling plagued him that the two shared an intuition he had missed. He didn’t like to admit it, but it came as a blow to his pride to think that someone other than himself could communicate with a hopeless case. But he genuinely wanted Lucy’s thoughts when he rang the bell beneath the chestnut tree that evening.

“Oh,” she said when she opened the door. “You’re very kind to look in on me, but I’m feeling quite myself again.”

They went into the parlor and sat by the fire. The solid oak tables and horsehair sofa, the gaslight glowing from the walls in frosted tulip globes, the mantel clock and the steel engravings—everything in the room anchored them here in the sturdy world of Wismar.

“I was interested in your method with Renfield,” he observed. “I wonder if you would consider coming to work with me.”

“How many beds have you in the hospital?” she asked abruptly. He sensed that she had not even heard
his
question.

“Sixty.”

“Oh, that’s not enough. We’ll need hundreds. I was wondering if we couldn’t set up the school as a sick ward. Or the town hall.”

“Lucy, you aren’t making sense,” he said a trifle harshly. He heaped another spoon of sugar in his coffee.

“It is only a matter of days,” she said without any passion. “The plague is coming.”

“Don’t even
say
it,” he gasped, standing up and looking about for his hat. He had heard the rumors of fever at Varna, of course. He wasn’t a superstitious man, but he acted as if Lucy had jinxed the town by speaking the word. He seemed very old as he hobbled to the hatrack in the hall.

“It does not matter anymore if you believe me,” she said with an odd compassion. “But we might save a good many if we were prepared. We ought to convene the town council. Draw up emergency plans.”

“There are no rats in Wismar,” the doctor said loudly. “Our streets are clean.” And he put on his hat quite crookedly and mumbled his good night. He swung the door wide and padded off into the summer night.

“Please,” she called after him, “tell me the moment you know the truth. We mustn’t lose hope.”

But he had his hands held against his ears, and in another moment he’d crossed the canal and gone out of sight.

Mina opened the cupboard in her kitchen and saw a rat perched on the crust of her pie. She shut the door hard and bustled across the room to pour Schrader’s tea. He was sitting at the center table absorbed in his evening paper. He’d already eaten enough dinner for three men, she thought. He didn’t need dessert tonight. She put an extra spoonful of honey in his sassafras tea before she set it down in front of him. Then she sat at the table opposite him and folded her hands and tried to stay calm. Behind her husband’s head, she could see a rat on the windowsill outside, scratching to come in.

She knew it wasn’t really there. They came at her frequently now a couple of dozen a day popping up all over the place, but she knew they were really in her head. And she also understood they were manifestations of sin. Though she went to church and did everything right, she was somehow being punished. She accepted the sentence calmly and struggled to abase herself before the mystery. Whenever Schrader was out of the house, she fell to her knees and prayed. She wore a rough shirt that burned her skin when she moved. When Schrader went to bed, she sat up in the parlor and lit a dozen candles. She read the Bible half the night.

But she didn’t dare tell another living soul. Her shame was too great. She knew that the stories of Lucy’s perverse behavior had spread to every quarter of the town, and she took a certain pride in keeping her own dark visions to herself. She was sure it was the dividing line between the blessed and the damned. She planned to grope her way to the fount of forgiveness and stand up clean and whole. And she would peer out at Lucy from the gate of heaven and smile in her most beatific way. It was a race for divine election, sinner against sinner, and Mina Schrader willed herself to win.

She spoke the name of God in a fevered prayer, calling Him to witness her act of worship.
God, God, God
, she thought, chanting in celebration of her victory over sin. She did not know that the word she spoke was not the word she thought. Her voice rang dully in the tidy room, saying it over and over:
Nosferatu, Nosferatu.

Though the sky was still amass with clouds, a streak of liver-colored light appeared in the eastern sky. The vampire stood at the wheel and cradled the captain like a brother. It was time to turn over the watch, to wake poor Krull from his feverish sleep. The vampire propped him up at the wheel and stooped for a length of rope that was coiled at his feet. Wrapping it round Krull’s body, he tied him in a harness so he wouldn’t slump over.

“I turn over the daylight command to you,” said Dracula, casting his empty eyes on the swooning man. He shook Krull’s shoulder vigorously, to wake him, and the captain groaned. His head lolled baring his neck to the vampire’s gaze. It was irresistible, of course. Dracula suddenly needed the strength, just to make his way downstairs again, to sink down into his coffin. He bent forward with a predator’s instinct and bit down into the vein. He sucked up just enough to fill his mouth. When he withdrew and stood up tall again, a trickle of blood ran down at the corners of his mouth.

Then he seized the captain’s shoulders in both his hands. He reeled with intoxication as he shook the man quite violently. Krull woke from a dream of a sunny island harbor where all his noble seamen still survived. Woke to the agony of the claws tearing through his shoulders, the seeping wound in his neck, but when he turned around to cry for mercy, there was no one there. The pressure had lifted on the instant. He looked out sadly on the rising sun, and his nightmare course came back to him. He steered his death ship forward. He had no other choice.