Vlad runs toward us, but with just those few steps, his son is dead. He falls to his knees beside us and sobs. Clouds blot out the moon.
Jane gets to her feet. Fresh blood drips from her gloves. She pulls a hunting knife from her waist. The elongated blade glistens in the flickering light of the fire.
“Wh—what are you going to do?”
She doesn’t reply. She simply walks out into the deep snow, following the tracks of the vampire. Within twenty feet, she’s up to her waist, but she doesn’t look back.
“Jane?”
It’s only then I realize Vlad and I are alone. The two soldiers are dead. One of them lies face down in the snow. His neck is broken, twisted unnaturally to one side. The other has been impaled on the branch of a fallen tree.
“JANE???”
“Come,” the old man says, getting to his feet. He stuffs his sleeping bag away. “We need to move out. It’s not safe.” He hoists his pack and picks up a crossbow.
“What about Jane?”
“She’ll find us.”
Smoke drifts from the dying fire. Bodies lie strewn in the snow. There’s no thought given to burying the dead. With the ground frozen, it’s an impossible task, but we could pile rocks on top of them, and yet the only good that would do is to assuage our conscience. The reality is, wolves would quickly uncover them.
Vlad turns his back on his fallen sons. His heart is as cold as the night. His head hangs low, watching the rhythm of his boots crunch through the soft snow. He trudges along the base of the cliff, making his way toward the pass.
I look for another crossbow, and consider retrieving one of the AK-47s, but I don’t want to fall behind. Against my better judgement, I leave camp empty handed but for my backpack.
We walk for hours across frozen fields, through dark forests, and over rough, rocky terrain swept clear of snow by the prevailing winds howling across the mountain. My face loses all feeling in the bitter cold. Even with thick gloves, my hands are numb. A chill seeps through my boots. Orion dips below the tree line, having drifted there over the course of several hours. Slowly, each of the stars disappear.
Vlad trudges on. For a man in his late sixties, his stamina is impressive.
“Wait,” I say, seeing a figure ahead. A dark silhouette stands on the brow of a hill, barring our way. A woman. She’s holding something by her side. It takes me a moment to realize it’s a severed head—another woman’s head, held by long hair. Blood drips from the exposed neck.
“Jane?” I ask. Although recognizing her provides no guarantee, as she could be possessed. Aren’t we supposed to have code words or poems or something?
“Hey, Joe.” Her relaxed tone is so completely out-of-context I find it disarming.
Vlad walks fearlessly up to her.
Jane steps forward into the moonlight. Her clothes are torn. She tosses the head, watching as it rolls down the hill for several yards.
“My dearest Jane,” the old man says, and she hugs him, throwing her arms around him. She still has the bloody knife locked in her clenched fist. The blade sits high on his back, leaving blood on his jacket.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
“You have done well,” he says, but his voice breaks as he struggles to hold back tears.
Jane lets him go and walks over to me, holding the knife as though she’s ready to thrust it under my ribs. She reaches out, grabbing my shoulder with one arm. “It’s good to see you made it, Joe.” I find her demeanor strange, discomfiting. Her eyes are dark. A thin trickle of blood has run from the corner of her lips, down her neck, and onto her jacket, leaving a dark stain on her pale skin. I get the impression it’s not her blood.
“Come,” she says, turning to join Vlad.
The severed head lies beside the trail. Dead eyes stare, judging me, accusing me, condemning me.
“I’ve found it,” Jane says. “You were right. There’s a cave below the watchtower.”
In the darkness, I hadn’t noticed, but a hundred yards to our left lies the ruins of a medieval castle set on a ridge line. We walk past broken walls. The castle was built with stone hewn from boulders that weigh in excess of a ton. Each one is four foot square. How this watchtower was built, let alone destroyed, is beyond me. The courtyard is small. Bats fly overhead. Dark leathery wings beat at the air, disturbed by our approach. We make our way around the outer fortifications as we follow the battlements that form the foundations, clambering over boulders, over a drainage ditch and past a collapsed well.
Vlad hands Jane a flashlight. He leads the way through a thin gap in the granite, carrying a kerosine lamp. I grab my flashlight.
Thin beams of light dance across the inside of the cave. Bats react, flapping their wings and threatening to take flight. On we go, descending into the bowels of the Earth. Slowly, the passage opens into a chamber. Unlike the entrance, this chamber has been hewn out of the rock. Dozens of square holes line the far wall, each one the size of a letterbox.
“What is this place?” I ask, running my flashlight over the walls. Skulls peer back at me: dark eye sockets, clean bones, bared teeth, thick jaws.
Jane says, “It’s the graveyard of the vampires.”
Chapter 3:06 — van Helsing’s Diary
Light seeps down through the rocky passageway. The sun is rising. I’m stupidly tired. Skulls be damned, I could curl up and go to sleep in here, as it’s considerably warmer than outside, but Vlad and Jane want to press on. The ground is uneven as we descend through a natural cavern, formed by water eroding the rock over the centuries. We squeeze through gaps, sinking further into the darkness. At times, the twisted cave formations require some contortion to negotiate. Mud sticks to my boots. Moisture drips from the ceiling.
Jane is just in front of me, with her light providing a glimmer of the boulders ahead. We clamber over fallen sections of the roof. Gravel slips beneath my boots. I lose sight of Vlad, catching only the flicker of his lantern somewhere ahead.
“This is crazy,” I whisper. “We should turn back.”
Jane ignores me, although I’m sure she can hear me.
“There’s nothing down here.”
Jane picks up her pace, forcing me to keep up. Stalactites reach down from the ceiling of the cave, occasionally meeting with stalagmites to form the bars of a gothic prison. They’re gnarled and twisted. In some places, they resemble the bones of an exposed ribcage. Sheets of semitransparent rock have formed and our lights give them a reddish glow. Shadows flicker. We’re descending into Hell.
“How much further?” I ask. “How deep do we have to go before you realize there’s nothing here?”
The smooth, wet rock is slippery, and my boots slide as though on ice. I fall, catching my leg in a gap. They must hear me cry out, but no one cares. They’re too focused. They continue, leaving me in the darkness. I scramble to catch up.
Finally, we stop in a vast cavern. Jane turns off her flashlight, leaving only Vlad’s kerosine lamp to illuminate the cave. The walls around us are horribly disfigured, as though they’ve been scorched and melted. Scars reach up for fifty feet, fading to black. Somewhere deep beneath us, there’s the sound of running water flowing through a subterranean river.
I follow Jane’s lead, saving my battery. The thought of groping in the darkness, searching through hundreds of side tunnels for the exit isn’t appealing.
“Thirsty?” Jane asks, handing me a bottle.
“Thanks.”
Vlad pulls some granola bars from his pack and tosses one to Jane, then to me. I’m famished. Jane’s not the only one burning through a bazillion calories.
“I don’t know what you expected to find down here,” I say.
“Answers,” Vlad replies. He pulls a few scraps of printed paper from his pack, getting them dirty as he hands them to me. “Read this—aloud.”
I recognize the handwriting. These are photocopies of the original van Helsing’s diary.
Force alone will never prevail against our foe. The v
ampire is stronger, faster, and more elusive than any beast of the field. Mankind has long vanquished those monsters that lurk in the dark—the lion, the tiger, the wolf, but the vampire is our equal and more. The Nosferatu has the sight of an eagle, the strength of the bear, the cunning of the fox, but more than that, he has our greatest asset—intelligence. Musket shot is no threat to him. Neither is the sword. He who would hide among us, moving only in the shadows, has no need of such crude weapons. Possessing the bodies of his victims, he consumes the soul, feeding on that which we fear most—death.
“I don’t get it. Why do you want me to read this?” I ask.
“So you understand,” Vlad says. “You need to know why we have come here. This is his only weakness.”
“Please,” Jane says. “Keep reading.”
To sever the head, to drive a stake through the heart—these only slow the plague. Like the Great Death, isolation can delay, but cannot stop the spread of a germ so invisible to our eye. There is no poultice, no medicine, no draft that can extract this poison from the corpse of our lives. No, to win in this battle, we must use the Nosferatu’s strength against him. We must master him. We must better him. We must gain the ascendancy. We cannot chase; we must lead. We cannot defend; we must attack. Deep in the Carpathians lies his lair. From here comes his strength, and here must lie his defeat.
I look up, not feeling comfortable reading aloud. Jane pumps the kerosine lamp, increasing its strength. Shadows flicker across the walls of the cave.
All animals fear. ’Tis common across both prey and predator. The lion hunts the gazelle, but fears her horns. The hyena seeks the new-born giraffe, and what assistance can the mother render? She has not fangs with which to tear, no claws to draw blood. Nay, even such esteemed naturalists as Alfred Russel Wallace concede that she is helpless against a pack. Her long legs afford her some security from being bitten, but not her infant—he is too small. How then does he survive? What can the mother hope for?
Vlad is mouthing the words I’m speaking. He’s read this so many times he’s committed it to memory, and is lost in thought. For me, it’s fascinating to gain insights into the mind of his great grandfather, perhaps the only mortal to have bested Dracula. It reveals surprising details about awareness of the true nature of vampires.
She finds that which her enemy fears. The lion, the hyena, the cheetah, the leopard, they fear not her, but an injury. A broken bone, torn skin, infection, sickness, disease—these are the weaknesses she seeks as she lashes out with her legs, kicking at her foe, and it works; she drives them away because they fear their own death.
In perfect sync, we both say.
The Nosferatu fear only their own demise.
Vlad is silent as I continue.
This is why they stay in the shadows. This is why they stalk at night. This is why they lie and cheat. They would rather run than fight. They would rather hide than attack. They fight only out of desperation. They seek the weakest of prey. They cower in the darkness lest they die.
I turn the last page, but it’s blank, so I hand them back to Jane, who hands the damp sheets back to Vlad. As he puts them in his pack, he says, “All we need to know is in these pages. They hide. They lie and cheat. They cower in the darkness.”
“You see, van Helsing understood how to defeat the Nosferatu,” Jane says. “For decades, he fought these inhuman monsters, but he never saw them for what they really were, not until he was on his deathbed. Perhaps it was his own mortality that allowed him to see through them.”
Vlad cracks a chemical glow stick and tosses it out into the darkness, sending it hurling over the void. We watch as the light disappears into the depths. After a hundred feet it strikes something smooth—metallic. The glow stick slides down the slick hull of a spaceship.
We get to our feet as Vlad throws three more, sending them on slightly different arcs so we can get an idea of the size and shape of the craft. The skin appears rough, as though made from brushed aluminum. Stalagmites hide the edges, dripping over the hull like wax, but the bulk of the starship is visible. There are no hatches, no windows, no markings, just a silvery sheen. The craft is set on an acute angle, as though it has plummeted through the mountain. The visible edge appears razor sharp, curving into the darkness.
“Whoa,” I whisper.
Jane wraps a climbing rope around the base of a thick stalagmite, and attaches a carabiner.
“We’re going to need to establish a fixed-line traverse across the cavern. From there, we can set up a central line to get down there.”
“Okay,” I say.
“You act as belay. Vlad and I will free climb to the other side and hook up another anchor.”
Vlad’s works his way along the far wall. He’s using a flashlight, having left the lantern with me. I let out rope as Jane follows him. Lights flicker in the distance. The damp seeps into my bones. The vast, lonely cavern is as quiet as a crypt.
After less than ten minutes, the rope goes slack, then suddenly drops, disappearing into the gaping dark hole.
“JANE?” I call out, stiffening in anticipation of the inevitable jolt that will come as the rope goes taut under her weight. I’m expecting to hear yelling, screaming, but there’s nothing beyond the whip of the rope rushing through the still air. The tension I feel is nothing more than the weight of the rope dangling below me. It whips back and forth like a pendulum, crashing into the rock face as it slowly loses momentum.
“Jane???” I peer over the edge. The rope disappears beside the faint outline of the spacecraft. The glow lights flicker, slowly dying, returning the alien vessel to its ghostly grave.
There’s no light beyond my lantern. A bitter wind descends through the cavern, chilling my face.
“Vlad?”
No response. I hear singing. At first, it’s faint, echoing off the walls, making it impossible to pinpoint any sense of direction. All I hear is the tune, as the words are indistinct. The voice is haunting—that of a young girl. She sings, working through a familiar melody with measured deliberation, articulating her words carefully as she repeats herself, slowly growing louder. A chill runs through my bones.
Ring a ring a rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town
Ring for little Josie.
“Josie?” I don’t understand the reference. “Jane? Is that you?”
It’s Jane’s voice, I’m sure of it.
Water drips from the ceiling. The gas lamp flickers, losing its pressure. Jane left her backpack leaning against the rock beside me. The pouch is open. There’s a newspaper rolled up in the pocket. I didn’t notice it before, yet it seems she meant for me to find it.
The nursery rhyme repeats, teasing me.
“What’s going on, Jane?”
The only response is my own voice echoing through the chamber.
The page is a news clipping from several months ago.
Boise, Idaho—Longtime advocate for paraplegics and local charity fundraiser Suzanne Chambers was found dead in her home this morning. The nurse of fifteen years was strangled in her bed. Forensic reports indicate there was no sign of sexual assault. Friends and colleagues at St. Mark’s Hospital, where Chambers worked as a triage nurse, expressed shock at the murder, saying Chambers was well known for her kindness and generosity. A memorial will be held for Suzanne Chambers at John the Baptist Church, downtown, this Saturday at 10 a.m.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask the darkness. “I know it’s you.”
The disembodied voice torments me. The words change, but only slightly.
Ring around the rosie,
A pocket full of posies.
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down!
I mumble to myself, “We all fall down.” It’s the first thing Jane said to me in the alleyway outside the opera house, and it’s then I realize—they know.
Ring a ring a rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town
/>
Ring for little Josie.
They’ve always known.
Josie—‘A ring for little Josie’ was the correct response. In the past, it’s been the next line of the poem, but there was no next line—they changed their strategy to memorizing different versions of various nursery rhymes, alternating between them.
Vlad speaks from somewhere on the far side of the chamber. “It was you, wasn’t it? You killed Suzanne Chambers. You used her to get close to Joe, to observe him at work, and then you made the switch—killing him by killing her.”
“How long?” Jane calls out, although it sounds as though she’s fighting back tears. “How long did you watch him? How long did you study him before you made your move?”
I’m silent.
“More than once, you had us fooled,” the old man says. “Even Jane doubted, but the Nosferatu never came for you, did they? Back there by the cliff face, the vampires ignored you.”
“You’re very good,” Jane says. “The facade. I dare say, you’ve talked yourself into the role, absorbing not only his habits, but his mannerisms and attitudes.
“Does it hurt? To betray a host? Do you feel any remorse? Or are you so busy consuming every aspect of his life that you barely think about it any more?”
Shadows move around me. Vampires step forward, flanking me. Torn clothing, washed-out skin, dark eyes, long straggly hair, sharp fingernails—these are the wild ones, those that remain in the wilderness to guard our home.
“There are factions, aren’t there?” Vlad asks, his voice echoing around me. “Different parties, following different directives. You don’t always agree, do you?”
Van Helsing's Diaries (Books 1-3): Nosferatu Page 20
