Volk

by David Nickle

  “No,” said Andrew, “just pain.”

  “Deutsch sprechen!” shouted Orlok.

  “Es ist nur Schmerz,” repeated Andrew.

  “Ah. That is brave. But stupid. Why do you hurt yourself?”

  “I do not wish to fall under a spell,” said Andrew. “None of us do.”

  Orlok raised his brow. “Why not?”

  “We do not wish to lose ourselves.” Andrew gestured around him. “We want to see what is here. Not some fantasy.”

  “And how can you be sure that you lose yourself? Could you not be finding your better self instead?”

  “No. We have seen this before. It does not lead to our better selves.”

  “You have not seen this before,” said Orlok, gesturing to indicate the room, the shifting crowd of people. “But you have seen a thing that I have seen too. We have both fought it. So I understand your fear.”

  At this, Lewis interjected. “You fought the Juke?”

  Orlok grinned and nodded. “I devoured it,” he said, and then he laughed. “How did you kill yours, Doctor Waggoner?”

  “Everybody died. And it starved,” said Andrew, and Orlok laughed.

  “That is a good story,” he said. “Fast. To the point.”

  “How did you devour a Juke?” asked Kurtzweiller.

  Orlok turned to Kurtzweiller. “My brother Jason tells me you like to hear stories. That is how you understand your world. You tell a story to others, with their wits about them, and ask them to see if it is strong. And so you can say what is true and what is . . . fantasy.”

  “The Decameron System,” said Jason and, in spite of himself, Andrew smiled.

  “Doctor Bergstrom relies on something similar. He calls it psychoanalysis,” said Orlok. He reached over and put a hand on Bergstrom’s shoulder, and when he tried to flinch away, gripped hard enough to make him cry out.

  “Decameron System. Psychoanalysis. Telling a good story. To find the truth of it. Maybe I will tell you one now. About fighting the Juke, yes?”

  Orlok stood, so that he loomed high over the table. Bergstrom, to one side of him, visibly shrank away, and even Jason slid down the bench.

  “Here we go,” he said under his breath, in English—this time, without drawing rebuke.

  “My struggle,” said Orlok, and he grinned wide—as though he had made an exceedingly clever joke that none understood but him.

  “It begins—”

  Two

  “—before I can remember in words.

  “I have memories, but they are of the senses not of the words—and why should they be? I was in the womb, suckling through the nabelschnur . . . sated and growing. I remember that. I also remember, just before that, terrible pain. And yes, struggle. My earliest memory is of struggle . . . of an understanding that I might indeed die before even being born . . . the idea burst upon me like a great flash of light. I do not think I had such ideas before, and I did not again for long after.

  “This idea of my death was bright. It did not frighten me. How could it? I had no other ideas before this one. It was neither good nor bad—but everything. I simply knew that I might die, and also that I might not. I knew that I came very near to it. I knew that an enemy was near. And that one of us might die. And I did not die. Instead, I became sated.

  “Look at you, Doctor Kurtzweiller. You already think this is a bad story. You know something about the foetus, and the womb, and you know that a foetus is liable to remember nothing of that time. Doctor Bergstrom might disagree with you. He might say that we are all formed by our time in our mothers’ wombs, and memories from there have even greater power over us than the memories we make in the cradle. This is what I remember. Maybe I dreamed it all, yes?

  “But the story is not only me and my memories. It is also those of my mother, whose name was Maja. I do not know what town she was from originally. She was with a circus you see. My mother was very strong. Big. Like me. She performed feats of strength with the circus, and travelled with it everywhere it went. She gave birth to me near Vienna. I was conceived in Bulgaria she told me. My father was probably still there. But she was not sure. She did not recall even his name. He was a tradesman, from Pleven. Not very handsome, she said . . . it was from him that I inherited this single eyebrow . . . and not willing to take on a wife from the circus. Maja took many lovers in those days prior, but my father was the last. . . .

  “The second-to-last.

  “There was another, although she would not call him a lover. This one came upon Maja in Bulgaria too . . . two months later, in another town . . . Vratsa . . . near mountains, much like this Wallgau.

  “It is in Vratsa, Maja told me, that she met the dhampir.

  “What is a dhampir? Not a vampire . . . not a Nosferatu. But near to it . . . a creature said to haunt the darker corners of Bulgaria, the Balkans. It is a soft thing, perhaps the child of a vampire and a human . . . and it comes to women, often virginal women, to deflower them.

  “My mother was not that . . . she was with child, with me, and far enough along that she would soon not be able to perform her feats of strength. The dhampir appeared to her as she readied for bed after the second night at Vratsa. It may have been in the audience—she said she thought she remembered it, a pale creature with a face like a full moon, eyes black as the night . . . dressed in dark rags. . . .

  “And it was the same, in her wagon, where it slithered under the cover and into her bed. She remembered how weak it was—she easily could have overpowered the thing, for it seemed to have no bones, nothing like muscle . . . it was all flesh, she said. Flesh, nearly liquid.

  “This was the opposite of me. I was born with great strength, unusual strength, and it showed even before my first year. The circus owners were so impressed with me that they tried to make me a part of the show—have me lift up chairs and small tables, snap tree branches before I was even two years of age. I did not do that for very long. For I was a disobedient child and prone to tantrums and, in the ring, I could not easily be controlled. The only thing for me would have been the sideshow, in a metal cage, where strangers could watch my display of mighty anger safe on the other side of thick iron bars. Maja would not allow that. For even though it might have been a help—after my birth, she found herself going to fat, and not so strong as she once was—Maja loved me. And I loved her.

  “We worried about each other too. I worried for her. Maja was getting fatter and weaker . . . maybe keeping up with my ferocious appetite, she overate? Got lazy like a mother can? It was not just that. It was said that my birth took away her strength and put it in me. Her strength and her beautiful fury. All in me.

  “She worried about me because of those things. I was a beast of a child. Too strong. Too angry. I could not play with other children, because I might harm them. Or worse—I might persuade them to do harm. I did not take instruction, but others did follow mine. Children, and men, and women too. None said no to me.

  “This talent of mine did help us. Maja grew fatter, and then she grew thinner, and weaker. The Italian who owned our troupe might have tossed her out . . . the circus is no place for the infirm. But I would not allow it, and so he would not consider it. And we travelled with the rest, often doing nothing to earn our keep.

  “Maja was not as grateful as you might expect. She worried about me, but she also worried about what it was I had become. She loved me and also feared me. She told me again and again, the story of the dhampir, and the night it had taken her—and, she feared, taken me too.

  “‘Ah, mein Kind,’ she would say, ‘you have been poisoned by the dhampir!’ And I would say back: ‘Ah, meine Mutter, I have eaten it up!’ This would make her laugh, but as she wasted, I came to understand it as a truth. When she died . . . I was not more than ten years old then . . . it was a certainty.

  “I had fought a dhampir once. And I would do so again.

  “I fled the circus. I climbed on board a freight train. And then another. And another after that, and finally a truck.
And in that way, I made my way to Bulgaria. To Vratsa.

  “A dangerous journey for a child? Perhaps. But not for me. There was always food and shelter when I needed it. No one moved to harm me when I took either. As for rapists and pederasts? I was very strong and fast. I had nothing to fear.

  “I arrived in winter. It had snowed the day before and the roads were thick with drifts of it. I remember that . . . trudging through the clogged streets . . . stopping at a tavern, and taking food from the plates of diners there . . . I slept in a church pew for a time, and remember a priest.

  “But that earliest memory—that of the senses, not of word—grew to my present experience. And that is what I recall the most about Vratsa: the cold, the satiety . . . and the call.

  “When dawn broke, I left the town and climbed into the hills and up the slope of a mountain. And there, I found the opening of a cave. I had not received direction, or even a hint. . . . No one in Vratsa had told me about the dhampir that preyed upon them. I did not know the way to the cave. But I arrived. And although it was dark, I clambered within. Blind.

  “But not blind at all. I felt that I knew where I was going . . . I felt I was going . . . to a kind of home. It was . . . like faith.

  “And soon enough, the faith was rewarded. There was light—a firelight—that I only came upon after creeping through the darkest of caverns. I did smell smoke, but only as I was nearly upon it . . . a well-stoked firepit, in the middle of a high chamber with an icy pond in its middle. Stacked around the fire were carcasses, of goat and fowl . . . and also baskets of vegetables. Stoking it, and tending to this winter store, were three girls.

  “Not girls really. Women. Strong. Maybe sisters? They had the same blonde hair. Muscular. One of them was pregnant. And that one . . . she commanded the others.

  “I tried to speak to them but it was no good. I could only say one or two words in Bulgarian that I had learned on the way and I did not even know what they meant. I tried to get close and that was worse. They threw stones at me and shouted at me to go. One of them picked up an axe, and waved it at me.

  “I became very angry at that. And I picked up rocks and threw them back. I was better aim, and hit them in the faces and arms and bellies . . . and this drove them away from the fire and into the dark of the caverns.

  “I did not give chase. I did not care about these girls, and I could tell in my heart, that I was already upon the creature I sought—the dhampir. It lurked nearby. It would soon reveal itself, I was certain. So I sat down to warm myself by the fire, and eat some of the food that was there. That is one sensation that I recall in the hours before we confronted one another: the ferocious hunger. It was a depraved hunger, a lust for the foodstuff, to not only consume it but possess it.

  “I saw the dhampir, when I came to the edge of the pond of water, to drink and clear my throat. There was a splash, and a rippling, and it—or a piece of it—emerged. It was nothing as Maja had described to me: no moon-faced man with black eyes. It was rather a great serpent, or first a great serpentine thing, that slid from the water, with a terrible wide mouth. I remember that mouth moved close to me, and breathed air that was sweeter than anything I had smelled, even as it widened and I could see the rows of teeth.

  “I snatched it, with both arms around its neck—thinking that I could pull it out of the water, or at least squeeze its throat and kill it. The throat collapsed easily in my grip, and the mouth opened wider so that it had nearly turned inside out. And I did pull it from the water. But of course it was not a neck . . . it was only one of many mouths, and it did not come from the depths of the pond . . . it had been drifting there, dangling on a long throat, from high among the stalactites.

  “How did I kill such a thing? Again, I remember sense, not words. I know that I was lifted from the ground. I know at a point I was submerged in icy water. I know that I bit and tasted flesh. At a point, hot smoke filled my lungs. And I felt a powerful erection . . . and a sexual release, not my very first . . . but the first I recall with any fondness. Doctor Bergstrom has theories about that.

  “I tore the dhampir down from the cave. I tore it to shreds. I killed it and it was not as hard as that. These creatures . . . they are weak of the flesh and the bone, as compared to we men. They can do nothing for themselves but persuade us. And I would not be persuaded.

  “The girls—the women—did return, with men from the church. They were weak too . . . not of flesh and bone, not like the dhampir—the Juke—but of spirit. They carried torches and axes and swords. They were prepared to stop this demon that had violated the sanctuary of the caverns. Of their God. But when they faced him . . . when they faced me . . .

  “All they could do was bow down, before their new God.

  “I stayed in Vratsa for the remainder of the winter. I was well looked after and might have stayed longer. But I had no wish to be looked after. And the remains of the Juke—which they hung at the mouth of the cave, like the severed head of an enemy . . . I could not abide the smell. I had done what I had come to do. So when the trees began to bud, I left Vratsa. And also, the second Juke that I had killed. Better they be on their own.”

  Orlok pushed his stool back and sat down on it, and looked around the room, meeting each of their eyes in turn.

  “Now, Doctors . . . do you have any questions about my terrible story? My brother Jason tells me that this is how you determine the truth of things.”

  The gentlemen of the Société were finally led to the top floor of the farmhouse—a wide hallway from which branched small bedrooms with barely room to stand, thanks to the slope of the roof. At one end, set against a pair of tall windows, were some chairs and a table. They shared this floor with Johannes Bergstrom, whom Orlok commanded to show them to their own rooms.

  “The guest quarters,” said Bergstrom as he showed Andrew his room. “Three floors above the front door. Difficult to leave undetected, which I think is the point, after the escape. Secure. Not uncomfortable though.” He smiled weakly at Andrew. “Unlike this moment, Doctor Waggoner. You must despise me. Bunking us together is another of Orlok’s rather poor jokes.”

  “I’ve never met you until today,” said Andrew.

  “And yet you suffered terribly at the hands of my brother.”

  “He suffered at his own hand. More, I think, than I did.” Andrew looked at Bergstrom. “Maybe you too.”

  Bergstrom shrugged and turned to go. Andrew grabbed him by his arm. Bergstrom turned and fixed Andrew with an affronted stare.

  “You’ve seen one,” said Andrew, and Bergstrom nodded.

  “Ja.”

  “It’s still here?”

  “Es ist tot.”

  “Dead. Orlok killed it?”

  “So Orlok says. So Jason Thistledown confirms.”

  “Have you seen it dead?” asked Lewis.

  Bergstrom looked around. The men of the Société had gathered behind him at the door to Andrew’s room. Andrew pointed over their shoulders to the little sitting area by the window.

  “Why don’t we all go sit,” he said, “and talk awhile before we go to bed. That suit, Doctor?”

  “I did see the Juke,” said Bergstrom, sitting in a hard chair in front of the rain-streaked windows. “Not, I believe, in the form that it finally took when Orlok killed it. That was by all reports much larger. But when it arrived . . . I did help supervise the enclosure.”

  “How large was it?” asked Lewis. “The Juke. Not the enclosure.”

  “No bigger than a child,” said Bergstrom, and levelled his hand over the floor.

  “How did you contain it?”

  “It arrived in a glass-walled cage, fed air through a hose from a tank. The cage would not contain it for long but the intention was not to contain for long. We established a compound, in the valley . . . quite elaborate, with infirmaries and laboratories, and including larger cages . . . electricity, from petrol-fuelled generators. All held within concentric rings of fencing on the banks of the stream.”

 
; Kurtzweiller leaned forward. “Have you photographs?”

  “There are photographs,” said Bergstrom. “Of course. But matters are far beyond the Juke. It is dead, and now we are contending with something new.”

  “Yes,” said Lewis. “Orlok. What is he?”

  Bergstrom shrugged. “He is a man. And as he told you—he believes that he is a part Juke himself. He may well be. Although his story of his childhood . . . it is fanciful. His great strength and speed . . . it is like a hero from stories.”

  Lewis shook his head. “Perhaps not. In my field, I have encountered people like this Orlok. They are the product of a mutation, such as a Siamese twin, or a birth defect of the brain . . . but in this case, largely beneficial. Children born with unusual musculature. What baby fat they have, they lose within weeks. They are quick, and very strong from an early age.”

  “Oh yes,” said Bergstrom. “We know of these mutations as well. We had, working here, known about this fellow long before we even knew of, let alone considered, using a Juke. Stories about Orlok—not necessarily by name—had been circulating through Germany since the War. Since before. We had a great interest in locating him. For the same reason we gather the strong and beautiful among our youth here.”

  “Übermensch,” said Kurtzweiller, and Bergstrom nodded, and smiled wryly.

  “Or Nosferatu. But the Übermensch. That is the dream,” he said. “Of our partners in this, particularly.”

  “A superman, somehow strong enough to devour a juvenile Juke . . . in the uterus,” said Andrew.

  “It is usually the other way around,” said Dominic. “The Juke devours the foetus, and latches on to the umbilical itself.”

  “Or devours a body,” said Andrew. “I can see why he calls himself Orlok.”

  He looked at Bergstrom—and looked away, as he recalled Nils Bergstrom, Johannes’s brother, with Jukes writhing under his skin, sucking away his life like . . . well, like vampires. It was a frequent nightmare, that sight.

  “He also,” said Bergstrom, “grew up believing his mother was raped by a Nosferatu.”