Nosferatu the Vampyre (11 page)

They faced each other across the room. He stood up and held the bedpost and looked at her accusingly. She wrung her hands. She had lived here fifty years, had heard every superstition in the neighborhood, but still, after all this time, could hardly put the matter into words.

“We pray against the darkness, Mr. Harker. The darkness is all about us, of course, but we try not to inquire too deeply into it. We find that we do more good when we turn our faces to the light. No doubt it is most old-fashioned of us, but that is how it has been handed down for us to do.”

But he hardly listened. He cupped his hands and stared into them—searching, searching—as if he meant to read his fortune off his palm. It was the way he held the pendant when he gazed on Lucy’s portrait. He remembered none of that, of course, but he felt an echo of something, even so. As if there were someone still in Wismar who knew who Jonathan Harker was. And he was willing to bet on that small hope, because he couldn’t endure the sense of doom and the feeling that he was only letting it happen if he stayed here.

“I have no money,” he said, pulling on first one boot, then the other. “I will make it up to you one day, I promise.”

“I cannot convince you to stay just a few more days? Till you’ve grown a little stronger?”

“No,” he replied quite firmly, but he came across the room and took her hands. “May I ask you to pray for me?”

“You do not have to ask,” the old woman said, taking his arm so they walked together along the loggia and onto the porch. “And I will tell you a curious thing. Whatever evil was there in the castle has gone. I know it when I pray. There has always been a kind of fury in the air.” And she swept her free hand vaguely around her head. “No more. And though it ought to make me weep for joy, I find I am growing terrified.”

“What is it?” he pleaded.

“I wish I knew. But as long as I cannot convince you to stay and rest, then let me urge you to hurry home. I fear there is not much time. As you are skeptical of prayer, please take this gift from us to speed you on your way.”

And he followed her pointing finger down the tree-lined courtyard, to where a russet horse, saddled and ready to ride, was tied to a hitching post. She’d been hoping he’d go along, he realized. He bowed low and walked away at a brisk pace. Though he winced at the pain in his shoulder, he had a momentary sense that all would be well. The world was a reasonable place, and a man who determined to find out who he was was bound to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. He mounted like a general, turned to wave, and trotted out the gate with a gathering sense of mission. The Mother Superior sketched a blessing in the air. She stood on the nunnery porch and watched him go down the mountain path, staring into the distance long after he was out of sight.

C H A P T E R
F i v e

T
HE sea was still gray and violent, but the storm had withdrawn enough for the
Demeter
to set sail. On the icy deck, under a pewter sky, the captain and his mate lashed a plain wooden cross to a shrouded corpse. They stood at the rail, sleepless and numb, and tried to pray for the soul of their brother seaman. But they had already buried twenty men at sea in five days’ time, and the words they used to call on God began to seem like a mockery. “Mercy on his soul,” the captain mumbled, and they picked up the corpse and heaved it overboard. Dully, they watched it hit the water, float for a moment in their wake, and sink.

“How many are we now?” the captain asked.

“Six,” the other replied. But they both knew the four sailors still alive were already sick with the fever. They lay in their hammocks in the stinking space belowdecks, where the air had turned rotten like a charnel house. “I implore you, Captain,” he said, his voice near breaking, “we must turn back. Or at least seek shelter in the nearest port.”

“Out of the question,” replied the captain fervently. “I will carry my principles with me to the bottom, if I have to, but I will not abandon the voyage. We go on for the sake of those poor men who have aleady died. Man prevails. There is no other law.”

And so saying, he staggered to his cabin while the mate went up to the bridge to take the wheel. Krull could hear the moaning of the fevered sailors down below as he sat at his desk and turned the page of the
Demeter’s
log. He entered the name of the man just buried as if he were keeping the book of the dead, preparing for a judgment day that was drawing ever nearer.

“We are true to our course,” he wrote in a trembling hand. “Northwest at thirty degrees. Wind is steady. Twelve knots.”

He had run this ship for eighteen years. He had traveled overland to the North Sea shipyard where she was built, to watch her fitted. There were three or four men, the first mate included, who’d been with him since the day the
Demeter
left port on its first coastal run. He was a man who understood the gamble he made with fate every time he put to sea. But though he could accept storms and shoals, running aground and whirlpool as part of the lot of a captain’s life, he couldn’t face the thought that his ship was being broken up from within. He had to force himself to record the ominous details.

“We are burdened with a curse, it seems. Twenty men lost to fever, and four vanished without a trace. The rumor circulates among the men—it comes on them when the fever reaches its crisis—that there is some stranger aboard. We search from stem to stern, but there is nothing there. Nothing but rats. The
Demeter
has never been so overrun.”

He put aside his quill and held his head in his hands. He knew what the cruelest twist of fate would be. He was going to be the last survivor. Racked with guilt and shame, he dashed across his cabin to the ship’s safe. He twirled the dial through the set of the combination. He creaked the door open, thrust his hand inside and came out with the roll of bills the oarsmen had paid him. Groaning with sorrow, he tore at it till it shredded. He staggered to the porthole above his desk and threw the money out onto the waves.

The sea was not interested in being paid. No amount of money was enough. But he turned from the gesture with a renewed sense of command, and he walked across to the door, ready to take the wheel of his beloved ship. He had to hold on to the wall at every second step, but he made his slow way up the deck. He didn’t even seem to realize that the fever had come upon him.

Lucy was subdued when the nurse ushered her into the doctor’s office. Van Hesling stood up eagerly at his desk and came around to embrace her, but the somber mood stayed his hands at the last moment. He waited for her to speak first. She put down her stack of books on the edge of the desk, looked blankly at the fetal pig in the jar, and slowly took off her gloves. She was wearing a dress that was gray and very severe, and her wide-brimmed hat was plain as a Quaker’s. She was no less beautiful than before—more, perhaps, with the procelain glow that had come to her white, white skin—but still it was a shock to see her so. In the past she had always favored colors bright as a garden.

“I have come to ask a favor,” she said.

“Of course, dear Lucy,” the old man said, bringing up a chair for her. “You mentioned you had some things you wanted to discuss. Something’s come up in your reading, perhaps.” He tapped the topmost book as he sat at the desk.

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head and looking away. “Not yet. You wouldn’t believe me.” She stated it as a matter of fact, without any rancor or accusation. “What I need to do—I have to talk to Renfield.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed the doctor, leaning forward. “He wouldn’t even know you, Lucy. You can do nothing to help him, good as you are. I must insist that you turn your mind to more cheerful matters. Wismar sorely misses your gaiety, you know.”

“I think he will talk to me,” she insisted. “I know he cares for me greatly, and besides, we share a common . . . vision, if you will. He is the only one who can ease my mind about Jonathan. Will you have me go mad myself with worry?”

He couldn’t say no to Lucy. He looked at her longingly for a moment, as if he could bring them both back to the simpler time when she was a child who ran to him laughing, whenever he came to call. It touched him that Lucy was not afraid of the mad like the others. Renfield had so far ceased to be violent that they had taken him out of the strait-jacket. Van Helsing believed that a generous soul like Lucy could have the most salubrious effect. He had only said the contrary in order to protect her. But he saw again how strong she was, and he felt new hope himself as he beckoned her to follow.

“There is the most extraordinary swing in his behavior,” he explained as they walked downstairs and past the guards. “At times he is so lucid I feel like bringing him up to my office to talk. For the rest, he is in a kind of trance. But what is most curious, he never seems to experience melancholy or anguish. Not since the first day. He seems to be in such a state of peace.”

A guard unbarred the door, and they entered the cell. Renfield sat cross-legged on the wooden bed, his head turned dreamily up toward the high barred window. He couldn’t climb up to see out of it, but the patch of sky he saw from where he sat seemed quite sufficient. He was stark naked. One hand played with his genitals. Van Helsing was so captivated by the madman’s mood that he neglected to apologize for any offense the lady might have taken. But the lady hardly noticed.

“Mr. Renfield,” she sad, “I don’t know what I shall do. I haven’t had word from Jonathan in weeks. If only I knew the name of the place where you sent him . . .”

“Jonathan Harker of Wismar. Is that the man you speak of?” the madman asked. His voice was very tender—sleepy, almost, except his eyes were round and wide. He stared at her just off center. He seemed to revere the name, as if his house agent had gone away to war and acquitted himself like a hero.

“You’ve had word of him?” Lucy demanded, coming close and sitting by him. Not afraid or horrified. She realized now how much time she had lost by running from him eating his butterfly.

“He is a man of noble birth, I believe,” said Renfield.

“Not Jonathan,” she replied. “You must be thinking of the nobleman he visited. What was
his
name?” She took up his free hand in both of hers, trying to catch his gaze and make him concentrate. “Try to remember, Mr. Renfield. I must get word to my husband.”

“He is nothing but a name,” the madman said. “He rides like a gypsy, rootless and alone.”

“Who? Who do you mean?”

“Half of the man is blood, and half is now a darker thing.” Renfield spoke in a singsong, his meaning wrapped in riddles. “Which way will he go? Well, that depends. Fate is not required to flip the coin till later.”

“It delights you to tease me, doesn’t it?” She rose and walked to the corner, under the window; It was simply amazing, van Helsing thought. She chatted with him as if he were quite as normal as anyone else. Why did everyone always raise their voices and talk to the mad in toneless phrases? She was better at it than he was. “I’m so worried, you know,” she went on, “I’ve half decided to saddle a horse and go myself. I would not cease asking questions till I reached the Carpathian Mountains.”

“No, no,” cried Renfield, coming up to his knees and putting his hands out pleadingly. “You mustn’t do that. He is almost here.”

“Do you mean Jonathan Harker?” the doctor demanded.

“The Master,” Renfield gasped, as if beatified by the knowledge. “The Master comes at the head of his army. Thirsty, thirsty. Four hundred thousand strong.” The last came out in a kind of babble, and the madman lost control. He fell back in a fit, and his mouth foamed over. The bug eyes rolled back into his head, till all they saw was white and blank as grapes.

Doctor van Helsing went over and held Renfield’s head, a hand around his jaw so he wouldn’t choke on his tongue. Then the doctor looked over to Lucy, thinking to apologize for the madman’s losing his grip at the crucial moment. She stood there, cool and impassive, and waited for the fit to subside. Van Helsing realized two things at once. First, she had come to a point where nothing could make her squeamish. She’d assimilated all that was grotesque or festered or coming to pieces. Second, she appeared to know what Renfield was about. The halluncinations were no less real to her than the ordinary chatter.

Renfield quieted down and presently came back to them. The doctor almost forbade her to question further, but he sensed they were on the verge of a breakthrough. It was worth the risk to Renfield’s nerves to push him just a little more. And it struck van Helsing again as he gave her the nod to continue—the sense of Lucy’s towering purpose, larger than the stifling cell they sat in now, larger than all of Wismar.

“Army?” she queried, coming close. “Army of what?”

He focused on her slowly as he crouched in the doctor’s lap. He grinned in a way that seemed both loving and curiously pure.
“You
know,” he said coquettishly. “They fill up your dreams the way they fill up mine. Shall we tell the doctor?”

“Oh please,” she said, nodding excitedly.

“It’s rats,” he announced. “They are white as lambs, and their eyes are full of light. They sweep across the earth like a blanket.”

Van Helsing looked from one to the other, and the gravity in their eyes as they locked each other with a stare was so enormous that he shook with terror. He began to think
he
was the one going mad. He pushed Renfield aside and stood up from the bed. Lucy was wide-eyed, but her body seemed limp and impassive as he took her arm and steered her out of the cell She looked over her shoulder helplessly, holding the eye-to-eye with Renfield, even as she let the doctor take her away. The doctor shut the door. The guard bolted and barred it. Lucy began to weep quietly as they made their way upstairs.

And Renfield sat back in his corner, cross-legged and alone. He looked up again at the square of sky and began to recite. He spoke with a strange officiousness, as if he were a town councillor reading a proclamation in the market square. He had not seen a newspaper since they locked him up. He had spoken with no one from the world at large. He had heard no rumors. Yet his voice was full of the certainty of fact.