Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482)

by Vollmann, William T.

  And though it was sore grief to us to hear such things of you, inspector, declaimed an old ghoul, yet justice compels us to investigate the matter, to examine the witnesses and to summon and question you on oath, proceeding in each and every way as we are bidden by our satanic institutions. First, to the complainant. Now, troll, what’s your name?

  They call me Snow White, said the ugly fellow, and the assembly screeched with laughter; the inspector had to admit that they were all very jolly.

  Sir, may I put a question? he said. As a new fellow here, I can’t help but wonder if you’re related to Hans Trollhand, who’s burned so many of us.

  The troll, of course, flew into a rage at that insinuation, and came rushing at him with his claws out, but the old ghoul tapped on the lectern with a coffin-nail, and the assembly returned to order. Meanwhile the inspector had scored a point, for several witches who had been smiling fondly at the troll before now overwatched him with tight grimaces of suspicion, as so many of their neighbors had been lately destroyed, thanks to the inspector’s efforts, that nobody underground felt safe.

  Snow White, tell the court what you know.

  All I can say is that when the priest did for poor Gulper, who was my second cousin, I was hiding behind a tombstone, as Kobold will bear out, and I saw the priest and that inspector exchange a look.

  Is that so, Kobold?

  That’s right, and who else do we have to suspect but this fellow who was on the right side until he insinuated himself down here?

  Search him, trolls.

  In a twinkling, the poor inspector was stripped. But he had wisely left his two charms behind, so nothing could be said against him.

  Accused, what do you have to say?

  Well, said the inspector, already getting delighted with himself, let me just say that if I only had hold of Saint Mary by her pretty paps . . .

  At this, they all positively screeched with glee, so that the vault rocked and the citizens of H——, shaken out of sleep, crossed themselves and prayed not to be devoured by earthquakes.

  Thus, for the moment at least, he was acquitted by acclamation, which he considered his greatest triumph, for nothing had ever struck him as more difficult than that night in the vault full of ghouls and vampire judges. But when he departed the court, explaining that he had some mischief to attend to, he could not but remark the silence with which the others regarded him, as if he smelled alive or worse.

  4

  In time he made up with them, and they loved him when he persuaded Father Hauser to lend him his cassock, which he pretended he had stolen; and the witches all took turns trying it on while they had sexual congress with broomsticks. It was a merry night, to be sure; by then they were all twenty glasses of blood the better. After that, the inspector could not help but laugh when the vampires voted to dig up the dry old grave of a Christian and play dice with the vertebrae. Back when he was a soldier in the war, the boys in his regiment used to play similar pranks.

  In each of them he descried the will to bury his own shame and foulness, hate and greed, not to mention death itself; so that’s good, this vampiric tendency, he said to himself; for such things truly ought to be kept out of sight!

  Because they knew so much about the depths of the earth, they were well acquainted with gems and hoards of gold. So, because they were fond of him, they soon taught him where the richest lodes were, and he felt even more important. But how could he forget what it means to be alone?

  Just like children gathering fallen pears and nuts, they ranged about, murdering whomever they could. To them, living human flesh was nearly as delicious as a Sunday roast of castrated goat.

  The next night they frightened their arch-enemy Hans Trollhand, popping up outside his window, dressed in their shrouds as when they attended the Hangman’s Meal. The inspector declined to attend, not wishing to observe his friend’s discomfiture. This stirred the mercurial vampires against him. All the same, he bravely set forth to ensnare more of the undead.

  Now he fell in with a less jolly crew. The dead vagrant branded on his forehead with the Lord’s Mark, the prostitute whose right ear had been sliced off after the second time she was caught in the act, the embezzler whose wicked fingers got nicely hacked off before he was decapitated, these were all ordinary criminals, justly convicted by their own confessions and executed in accordance with the law, so I fail to see what they had to complain about. And yet, strange to say, they all acted quite bitter. Bertha the murderess, whose breasts had been nipped off with red-hot tongs, was especially foul in her expressions of fury, even though she had repented in tears (a pretense, no doubt) just before they broke her on the wheel. Here’s a good one to keep away from, thought the inspector. He did not really need to deceive them, although sometimes, like Richter von Lochner himself (who was famous for his tricky promises to the accused), he did so for his own pleasure. His duty was but to recognize them and withdraw before they thought to suspect him. Since Father Hauser had so fine a great memory for names and crimes, all the inspector had to do next was unearth his golden pentacle, pull on his mendicant’s cloak and creep over to the church in the daytime, while his comrades slept, and then describe them to the priest, who would take notes, only occasionally asking a clarificatory question or consulting the graveyard register. That very afternoon, the sexton would come with Hans Trollhand, to dig up and dispose of them while they were helpless.

  The other undead could not understand where their associates kept disappearing to. They had not been in such peril since the Prince Elector of Bohemia sat beside the Count Palatine. Some were in constant excitement, running from one grave to another without being able to eat any corpse. Finally they decided to appeal below for help.

  5

  The Vampire-Colonel’s expression somehow reminded the inspector of the way his father used to smoke his long pipe. It was a long way down if one wished to see this worthy, but when he overheard some of his depraved and disgusting friends agreeing that it was high time to make that pilgrimage, the inspector volunteered his company, at which they wrinkled their bloody lips at him, half prepared to reaffirm his treachery, but after whispering together they agreed that he could come. What did they admire in him? Richter von Lochner, I regret to say, had never considered him save in the light of a tool; Father Hauser kept him at an ever greater distance, due to the offensive stigmata of decay which he now presented; as for the undead, it is all too plausible that even they saw him as no more than a convenient companion for their debauches; and presently even the inspector himself began to wonder who he was. Down a greasy tunnel they sped, until it had gotten substantially warmer, and even brighter with a blue light to which the inspector supposed he could get contentedly accustomed, if he ended up having to spend eternity down here.

  His friends urged him forward. They asserted the necessity for a second interrogation of this peculiar individual, for they could find no one else among them to blame; he himself continually reinfected them with the cunning fallacy that Trollhand and Father Hauser were managing these persecutions entirely on their own.

  Why did you come to us? demanded the Vampire-Colonel. From this first question he could see that this too was to be a pro forma questioning; at which, as so often before, it struck him that people became stupider after death.

  I died, he answered.

  Prove it.

  Here’s my death-wound.

  I’ll give you another, just to be sure—and, blowing a skullheaded whistle, the Vampire-Colonel summoned two rats who gnawed away. It didn’t hurt at all. After that, the company courteously assisted him in refastening his head on. I am told that they keep very good mastics in those subterranean realms. After all, many glues and gums can be made from dead things.

  Well, said the Vampire-Colonel, it appears that you truly are dead. And a good business, too.

  Again the inspector began almost to pity his adversaries in their
ignorant weakness.

  Now, what are you all doing here? their host demanded.

  Taking the errand upon himself, the inspector explained: Half the population of our graveyard has been rubbed out in the past year. It’s that damned priest and Hans Trollhand.

  All right, said the Vampire-Colonel. I know them. I’ll get my legions together before the moon wanes. On the first completely dark night, we’ll go out through the crypt and tear those two apart. Now inform me about the church? Does it serve any purpose?

  Sentimental attachment, said a troll.

  That’s all? No store of items to pollute and deconsecrate?

  We’re afraid to go there, said the inspector.

  We’ll smash that place.

  The next day, the inspector sneaked over to the church. Father Hauser informed Judge von Lochner, who sent to Prague, and come the dark of the moon a squad of Holy Bohemian Dragoons stood ready with garlic-shooters, buckets of holy water and arquebuses loaded with silver bullets every third one of which had been blessed by the Pope. When Hans Trollhand lifted up his fungoid ear from the floor and raised his forefinger, they all knew that the evil souls were marching in cunning, silence and speed.

  The flagstones trembled. Two engraved marble memory-stones began to swing aside, and there were black shapes like reflected tree-limbs trembling in dark green water. From underground came deep voices singing the following:

  Up, up, you doughty ghouls, to aid the groaning dead

  And tear apart the pious ones who boiled us in lead!

  The dragoons took aim. Trollhand lowered his pike. A knight’s marble tomb-effigy, cracked across his grin, so that his head was nearly bifurcated, began to tremble even as he lay rigid, with his delicate marble hands crossed upon his sword, and then he swung sideways. First out came the Vampire-Colonel, as one might have expected. They riddled him with consecrated silver, and he exploded. From the other two tunnels spidery things convulsed in hatred. Launching garlic and holy water down into hell, Christ’s army brought forth many a screech and a wail. At dawn they descended with candles to clean it out as far as they dared, finding nothing but a few troll-scales, clots of greenish blood and promiscuous scatterings of human bones.

  Throughout this operation the inspector kept wisely aloof.

  6

  So the undead had to go deeper, right down to the King Vrykolakas. The inspector kept them company again, of course; for I promise he will be loyal to everyone throughout this hateful story. After the oozy earth-guts there was a lovely winding stair, all stone, with shells of unknown mollusks laid out as if by design, and a soft glow of yellow-green light from the landing below, or perhaps from the landing below that, which might have been hell. They reached a crouching corpse, now fallen forward in its decay. When they got down twice as far as where the Vampire-Colonel used to dwell, they began to hear a sound of chuckling which was actually roaring, coming up through the ground

  The King Vrykolakas lay faceup in a wine-cask full of blood, snoring, gurgling, drinking and vomiting all at once. He was as fat and brown as a roasted pig; he was as absurdly large as a mountain of hay which must be carried by two oxen. He had fangs halfway down to his knees, fingernails like sickles and toenails like a vulture’s claws. When he opened his eyes, the inspector saw that the whites were yellow, the irises were red and the pupils were blackish-green like frogskin.

  You see, said the vrykolakas. I know what you’re up to, inspector. All the rest of you, leave us alone, please. I’ll send a rat to get you when you’re done. Now, tell me which is worse, inspector—to find malignant beings such as we are, or to find nobody in here? Wouldn’t it get lonely in here if it were just you and a few skeletons that couldn’t even chatter their teeth hello?

  When you put it like that, said the inspector, I see that there’s a third possibility. Why not wish for a cemetery full of angels?

  Oh, so that’s what you want. One of those is just down the road, in Neinstade. For your reward, after you finish destroying us, why not get Father Hauser to rebury you there? There’s a cute little winged Cecelia with a marble-white bottom; I used to let her suck my fangs. But I don’t know how much joy you’ll get from people like her. They’re not as open-minded as we. All cobwebbed up with hymns, you know. Unless you’re one of them, they won’t even smile at you. But go and see for yourself.

  The inspector kept quiet.

  The great vrykolakas sucked in his cheeks and scratched bloodclots off his chin-bristles. He said: Now see here. Do you suppose we’ll be better off when Trollhand drives a stake through our hearts?

  That’s not for me to say, replied the inspector. My task is to apprehend evildoers and turn them over to the authorities.

  Well, we’re definitely evil. And does our punishment fit the crime?

  It’s not punishment, actually. You’re scarcely conscious when the stake goes in.

  As he said this, he confessed to himself that it must be worse for them than that. Even Father Hauser sometimes grew unnerved at the way that a vampire appeared to smile slightly when in daylight the lid of its coffin was struck off by the ecclesiastical authorities; in simple fact, the creature sensed that it had been disturbed, and struggled in its sleep to avoid the hateful stimulus of holiness, grimacing, as if it practically expected the stake.

  But the vrykolakas pretended to agree, burping and saying: That’s right. So it hardly matters to me what you do. Undeath is nearly as monotonous as life. What happens next I don’t know. So I won’t betray you to your friends. In the meantime I’ve got appointments down in hell. Will you take my place?

  After your accusations?

  I have known far too many who have crept into the deepest positions, solely due to their proficiency in biting. Inspector, do you promise to accept personal responsibility?

  So he ran everything like a dream. He arrested the ghouls who stole mammocks from each other’s tombs, and punished those who expressed seditious sentiments about the Devil. (This made him realize that some undead were less fundamentally guilty than others.) He oversaw the decorations on All Hallows’ Eve. He even drilled squadrons of undead soldiers, showing the keenest sensitivity to the prestige of the Mushroom Crown. And all the time he silently identified everyone who was active underground: the son whose parents had neglected to punish him for sluggishness, the prostitute Veronika, the nameless brother and sister burned alive for incest and so many others whose peccadilloes had ripened into sins. Many of them dwelled so far below the surface that it would be necessary to pitch holy water down into their tunnels. He began to map the warrens down there between headstone and hell.

  But there were certain passageways which, finding them strangely beautiful, he decided not to betray to Father Hauser. He was willing to reveal most of what he saw, but when he entered the high-vaulted side-cellars where undead children played harmlessly with knucklebones, and sometimes tried to grow phosphorescent mushrooms, he left those off his maps.

  7

  When the King Vrykolakas came back, as a reward, or more likely an enticement, he introduced the inspector to the demon Brulefer, who causes a man to be found luscious by women; Surgat, around whom no lock can remain shut; Humots, who fetches any book one wishes for; Hael, who gives us command over any and all languages, but is ruled by Nebirots, whom it is best to conjure first; Trimsael, who teaches chemistry and legerdemain, and can accordingly impart the obscure process of manufacturing the Powder of Projection, which will alter base metals into gold and silver; Bucon, who causes antipathy between men and women; Sidragosam, who forces the girl of one’s choice to dance in the nude.

  It was all profitable to the inspector, who had never been well educated. He learned the identities of the Whispering Knights, and which demon is most delighted by ritual cremation. He still believed that everything about being dead was the same for him. But what had really happened was that, as people generally will, he grew accust
omed to his new state of being. This is not to say that he made plans of any sort, much less altered the previous ones. To tell the truth, he disdained the riotous ghouls and vampires upstairs as much as ever. The snoring solitude of the King Vrykolakas was more appropriate to his nature. The inspector was well aware that this monster was one of the most dangerous of all. Trollhand ought to destroy him immediately. Well, the inspector would take care of that in time. That old ghoul in the mold-green robe who had judged him last winter had already been dealt with, and a good thing, too. But when would the inspector receive his reward?

  He had never been suggestible, but now it would have been easy to convince himself that in spite of the medallion of Saint Polona and even the golden pentacle, he was developing an allergy to light. Not wishing to give in to such satanic deceptions—for after all he had already rejected a number of notions in order to get where he was—he continued his investigations, under the guise of being a subaltern to the King Vrykolakas, who loved to look him up and down, snorting and snoring with laughter until blood-clots wormed out of his hairy nostrils. The golden pentacle would have been his mainstay in this time of hesitation, were it not for the fact that he dared not risk carrying it on his person, so that it mostly slept in the dark dirt high over his head.

  Of course while he was down here exposing the Devil’s work, the King Vrykolakas was employing minions to counter-investigate him. First they found the medallion to Saint Polona in his coffin, together with old Jette’s skeleton-hand. These did not really signify, since any number of people in H—— were buried with such trash, which availed nothing against a vampire bite. So they kept on looking, while the inspector, having received approving consent from the King Vrykolakas to conduct a census of the undead, should there ever come a need to mobilize all the undead against an invasion of Holy Knights or worse, burrowed deeper and deeper, openly mapping almost everything he saw, with a secret excitement as he imagined presenting this document to Father Hauser, and clinking glasses with Hans Trollhand—nobody had thought to offer him a drink since he died! Perhaps even Richter von Lochner would come. Turning a corner, he entered a golden-black ooze-world of jawless skulls basking like crocodiles, half overgrown with vagina-flowers. More than anything the place resembled, at least to me, one of the night-garden paintings of Leonor Fini, but since she lived after the inspector’s time I cannot imagine that he drew the same comparison. But here, in a grove of nude trees whose branches terminated in smooth blue hands, he met undead women, scintillatingly nude, whom he actually supposed he could love.— Dear boy, that’s a truly romantic place, the King Vrykolakas remarked, gnawing on a dead frog, just to bring on an appetite for dinner.— You see, Baal constructed it for his harem, although they’ve since dug down to blacker paradises. It was unoccupied for more than ten thousand years, and then some of your kind moved in.