by Paul Monette
The customs inspector was already dressing down a group of frightened dock laborers, demanding to know the meaning of it. He got no satisfaction. The harbormaster called him, and the two men walked importantly down the pier, fat and righteous and thrilled to have a crisis brewing. A group of curious children had already gathered next to the ship. Two dogs barked without ceasing at the empty deck.
“Put a plank across,” the harbormaster ordered the laborers padding along in their train, and the inspector took up the imperious tone. “The ship must be examined thoroughly,” he said, “and I will do the job myself.”
A plank was brought, and they slung it between the pier and the side of the ship. The inspector and the harbormaster bowed each other across with enormous deference. The decks were silent. They mounted to the bridge and fell against each other squeamishly when they saw Krull’s body hanging in the harness, slumped at the wheel. But they steeled themselves and went up close. The harbormaster gripped the body by the hair and turned up the face. The eyes were so wide with horror that they seemed to have sprung the sockets.
“Look!” cried the inspector, pointing a shaking finger at the pulp of puncture wounds on the neck. He staggered away to make his tour of the ship, and the harbormaster, struck with a dread he could not name, stared out across the ship to the unsuspecting town nestled beside the canals. The children called up questions, demanding to know what he’d found. The two dogs on the pier were fighting, tearing at one another’s flesh with a strange abandon. The harbormaster waited silently, wishing it all away, till he heard the inspector returning. He knew the news was bad when he saw his ashen face.
“There’s not a soul on board,” the inspector said. “I found the captain’s log, but the last pages make no sense. The writing changes into symbols I can’t read.” He held up the heavy volume, as if to plead for confirmation, but the harbormaster waited, knowing the worst was still to come. “And the hold,” the inspector went on. “I couldn’t go down. It is all infested with rats. So many—you can’t imagine. I had to shut the door.”
“Come,” said the harbormaster, leading his comrade away. “We will post quarantine till we have studied the matter further. I think we’d better call the council.”
They didn’t want anyone panicking, so they made the rounds themselves. The council members agreed to a meeting at noon, in the town hall, and they came through the town at the appointed hour, each from his separate residence, wearing the crimson robes of office. The people in the streets, busy at their labors, looked up in some surprise, since they knew the council didn’t meet till the autumn was well advanced. But they shrugged their shoulders and turned again to their work, secure in the knowledge that the course of law was being carried on. A few new laws would only make Wismar a better place to live.
The councillors swept up the stairs to the town hall. They convened in a domed room that looked out on the bustle and cheer of the market square. All about them were models of sailing ships, bearing witness to Wismar's bond with the sea. In the center of the room, lying in state, was the dead captain, whose body had been brought in a covered cart from the pier, down alleys and back streets, so as not to draw attention. Krull was laid out with all the pomp accorded to those whom the sea took victim—dressed in a velvet gown with a silver cross placed in his folded hands. Doctor van Helsing was bent over the corpse, examining the wound, as the councillors took their high-backed chairs on the dais.
“It baffles me, gentlemen,” he testified, when the bailiff gave him the nod. “He has been ravaged repeatedly. I don’t understand why he couldn’t protect himself. And whatever the beast that bit him, I don’t see why it didn’t bite him in several places. Why just the neck? I suggest we listen to his last notations in the log.”
The harbormaster came forward and laid the heavy book on the lecturn. He opened it like a book of hours, as if he meant to read a sermon or a Psalm. He scanned the page till he found the entry that began the voyage. “Varna, twenty-sixth July,” he read with great solemnity. “Course south. Then west to the Dardanelles. The major cargo for the voyage out is a shipment of garden soil for the botanical laboratories in Wismar.”
“What botanical laboratories?” queried the doctor, but no one spoke in answer. The harbormaster skipped ahead another page and began to read in snatches.
“This morning the fourth man died of fever. Buried at sea. Fourth August—the mate who had the watch last night disappeared without a trace. Fear grows daily among the men, but they will not mutiny. They trust me. Eighth August: seas high. Making fourteen knots toward Biscaya. The first mate throws more bodies over every day. The rats are everywhere.”
And now they all waited for him to speak the word. The councillors leaned forward to the edges of their chairs. Once the word was uttered, they knew their power was ended. Pandemonium would be all the rule in Wismar. For this one last moment, each man prayed, against all the mounting evidence, that the sentence wouldn’t fall. Outside the windows, in the market square, a hush had swept the crowd, as if everyone felt the first drop of a sudden storm.
“Wednesday, thirteenth August,” the harbormaster read. “The fever has come upon me. I have betrayed the trust of my dearest men. Only the first mate still stands with me. The rats have multiplied again and again. There can be no doubt anymore. It is the plague.”
And though they knew it was coming, they all fell back amazed. The councillors tore off their crimson robes and leapt from the dais, shoving their way to the exit. Doctor van Helsing tried to speak, but the harbormaster slapped his face and knocked him down. When the first man burst from the room and reached the town hall stairs, he cried across the market square:
“The plague is upon us! Every man for himself!”
Where were the thousand laws of Wismar now? By the time the doctor struggled out of the domed chamber and down the steps, the crowd was frantic, running away and screaming. The market stalls were tipped, and all the fruit and fish and fresh milk spilled on the cobblestones. The doctor held up his hand to address them. He wanted to announce the rules for the quarantine. He wanted to tell them not to give up hope. But he couldn’t be heard above the noise of the crowd, and he stood there all alone.
Around noon, the rats began to creep across the plank. At first, only a few ventured as far as the pier, sniffing and delicate on their feet. Then those few seemed to send back a silent command to the others, urging them to come ahead. The coast was clear. And they came in waves, spilling out of the ship so forcefully that dozens fell from the plank and into the water, squealing and drowning. The numbers were so great, it didn’t matter if some died. And the army marching up the plank and across the harbor square didn’t register the loss. Food was all they wanted. They’d already smelled the trampled goods a half mile off in the market square.
The proprietor of the harbor café was still shuttering his windows when the first pack came. He ran inside, but they were already at his heels, so he couldn’t close the door. He had just time to duck into the storeroom closet in his kitchen. Then he listened while they tore at the food on the table. A pot of stew was bubbling on the fire, and the rats jumped up and fell on the coals. They kept on coming and dying, till they piled up body on body, and the next wave was able to reach the iron rim and scoop up the scalding food. The proprietor was nearly out of his mind with the gnashing of their teeth and the smell of burning flesh. But at least he was out of danger, he thought, till he fell against a sack of grain.
All around him were baskets of apples and potatoes. A bin of flour. A side of bacon. The sound had stopped outside in the kitchen, as if the rats had swarmed away and on to the next shop down the street. But he knew they had only finished eating what was out there. And he knew they were waiting, rank on rank, beyond the storeroom door.
No one was in the streets. All the doors were closed. Beside the still canal, the chestnut trees were going yellow, and the nuts grew heavy in the branches. The silence, here in the heat of the midafternoon, was ripe with
the promise of harvest in the plains beyond the town. Everything was still in place in certain quarters.
And the bellman came over the bridge, beating his drum with a wooden mallet, the sound as dull as a toothache. He held a document on a scroll, sealed in wax with the mayor’s seal. He read it out like the last testament of a doomed race.
“The mayor and councillors of the lawful town of Wismar proclaim the following edict to all good citizens. The plague is landed. It is strictly forbidden, upon pain of imprisonment, to deliver contaminated patients to the hospitals. The dead should be laid down on the banks of the canals. A boat will make hourly rounds to pick them up. The banks are shut till further notice. Each man will have to survive on the stores he has saved up. No provision of any sort will be made by the town of Wismar. This is the last pronouncement till the plague is ended. May God have mercy on you all.”
At last the sun went down, but it seemed to grip the horizon at the end, as if to throw a moment more of light. Wismar was deserted. For the moment, the rats were quiet. They had swept the market square and all the gardens and storage bins, but now they burrowed in for the long siege. They crept beneath the bridges and into the stables. They nestled in among the shrubbery. As the sky turned rose and lavender at the fall of dusk, the town lay serene as a still life, full of an early autumn poignancy. It seemed, just now, the perfect place to live. And in every nook and overhang, the rats bunched together in restless sleep, like maggots at a wound.
At the end of a broad and tree-lined avenue, Dracula loomed in the shadows, bent double with the coffin he carried on his back like a curse. He went from house to house, peering at the orderly porches and starched white curtains drawn at the windows. At last he came to an overgrown garden plot surrounding a dark and dilapidated mansion. The doors and windows were boarded shut. It was Red Oaks, and only the darkness stirred inside. No one could remember who’d last lived there, or what the exact history of vioIence was that attached to its luckless state. But the burghers of Wismar, their dressed-up wives and mannered children, didn’t even notice anymore. They walked right by as if they didn’t see it.
The vampire walked up the sagging steps, and the boards fell from the door at his approach. The gaslights glowed again in the paneled halls as he made his way to the parlor and eased his burden onto the floor. He scarcely paused to look around him. He had lived in a castle for half a millenium, and he no longer cared for the trappings of property. Or perhaps he knew that the ownership of every house on earth had begun to pass to him, and he didn’t need any one place to prove his power. He hastened out of the house again, back to the harbor and the ship. He had a full night’s work ahead of him, but as he went through the quiet streets, he couldn’t help but thrill with anticipation at the lovely town he’d fallen heir to. He glided along, over the picturesque bridges and by the flowering parks, casting an approving eye. As if he were nothing more than a civic official or a prosperous merchant. As if he planned to live out his life in peace, like any other citizen.
He stood in the harbor square, under the dead of the moon, and sent up a silent hymn of praise to the lordly darkness of the night. At just that moment, a cat came out of the shadows, strutting in his direction. The cat hadn’t succumbed to fear when the rats poured in. He had bided his time and pounced when he found a rat that had strayed from the pack. He had had his dinner six times over, and he walked the night with a lilt of pride. But when he saw the vampire, his hair went up on end. He started to back away, hissing with terror.
Dracula reached out and grabbed the cat up in one hand. He held him close against his cloak as he continued across the square, unaware of the scratching and the needlelike teeth of the desperate animal. He came in under the shadow of the hospital, searching along its windows. At last he found the alleyway where the asylum windows faced. Through the bars of one, he could hear the prayer of his visionary priest.
“Oh, Master, make me worthy,” Renfield pleaded. “Let me do your work.”
And like a father tossing a toy to a fretting child, Dracula reached up and pushed the snarling cat between the bars. He listened to Renfield’s moan of pleasure, to the coaxing words he spoke to the terrified cat who huddled in the corner. Then the blow, as Renfield kicked the cat dead against the wall. And the vampire went away feeling proud and just as a doctor, because he kept his people strong.
It was lonely work on the pier, unloading the coffins one by one from the Demeter’s hold, bearing them away on his back to his several hiding places. Though he could have walked through the asylum like a healer of souls, releasing all the mad to be his soldiers, he had to do this part himself. The polluted earth in his coffins was the holy ground of his dearest sanctuary. He knew his enemy very well. The light of day was the only shadow across his dream, and his only line of defense was narrow as a grave. He was too shrewd to lose the victory that fluttered in his grasp like a tropical bird. He put down this ring of safety, so he would have a place nearby to run to, wherever the end of the night might find him.
He put a coffin under the drawbridge, deep in the bushes. He put a coffin in the cellar of the windmill. Then one in the town hall dome, at the back of the gallery. One in the bishop’s carriage house. He went to the cemetery far at the end of town, where he stowed one in the gardener’s shed, and he stood there a moment, ringed with death on every side like a monk in a chapel. And he looked up into the night again, to whisper a lover’s promise to it, and saw the black was shot with gray.
The rat’s eyes filmed with a thing like tears. He fled out of the graveyard and down the avenue. Though the putting down of his no-man’s-land had taken him the whole night, he couldn’t go back to the tomb again without a glimpse of Lucy. The light in the sky was mackerel by the time he reached the house beneath the chestnut trees. He crept to the back, where it faced the canal, and climbed the trellis to her bedroom window. The roses died and fell from the vine as his cape drew by them. He pulled himself up to the sill. He saw her.
And though the night fought a losing battle to hold the dawn, though a minute or two would bring a ray of the sun that would seize his skin like a firestorm, he stood there frozen on the topmost rung. He might have been standing there forever and have forever left to go, but he knew no time would ever be enough. Her sleep was dearer to him now than the deepest death. The portrait in the pendant, till now the greatest treasure he’d ever known, was a counterfeit coin compared to this. I will never let this beauty die, he thought as he haunted her face with his ruinous gaze. She will lie with me, he thought, and flee this mortal prison.
It was only the gravity of his oath that could bring him to himself again in time. The light in the sky was gray like a dove when he realized where he was. Crying out in panic, he bounded down from the trellis. He ran along the yard at the edge of the canal, his arms swirling around his head as if to hide in the folds of his cloak. The gray of the sky had shaded into blue, and the horizon in the east was boiling red. He reached the picturesque summer house at the end of Lucy’s garden, clawing at his throat and heaving with every breath. He held on to the whitewashed picket fence that ran around it, pulling himself along as if on a crutch. At the back, where the lilac bushes were heavy with shade, he’d broken a hole through to the crawl space underneath, and he dropped to his hands and knees, and crept inside. He did not know how he had the strength to lift the lid of the coffin and climb inside, except he had to for the sake of his beloved. He blacked out almost instantly.
Lucy stared out at the canal. She’d prepared herself for everything, she thought, but it was the silence that unnerved her most. The rats were here, and the infection was blowing about in the air, but it would be another day or so before the people started to drop from it. In the meantime, piercing silence. And now that the sun had dawned on the second day of plague she was confused about her role in the oncoming battle. Whatever it was she was supposed to do, it wasn’t to do with the rats. She’d seen herself somehow acting like a nurse, going from house to house with dis
infectants and sleeping powders, facing the horror with the dead and dying. Now she wasn’t sure. It seemed to her that she was meant to stay right here and fight it out in her own house.
And she felt somehow, for the first time in several weeks, that she wasn’t quite alone. When the cat made an innocent noise, playing with a ball of twine across the room, she whirled around as if a sword had been drawn. She kept going to the door and throwing it wide, as if she heard a crowd in the street outside, or a messenger calling her name. But every time she looked, there was nothing there. Just the chestnut trees in a row, yellow and brown and ready to shed at the first gust of wind. And now she stood in the morning room, a shawl about her shoulders. She couldn’t get warm, and she couldn’t get out of her mind the cry that had awakened her at dawn. Like the howl of a wolf. Or no: like the howl of a man attacked by wolves.
When she heard the noise of the coach approaching she stood her ground. It was all in her mind, she thought. She was all alone, no matter how much she felt a presence hovering near. When it stopped in front of the house, she turned and stared at the front door as it daring the phantoms to knock. There was a rap of knuckles against the oak. She clenched her fists and started forward. This was the moment, then. She glanced in the mirror above the horsehair sofa as she went across the parlor to open up. She seemed to want a final glimpse of who she was before the dark encounter caught her up. She had the feeling she’d never look in a mirror again, or never in quite the same way.
The coachman on her doorstep shook with fever, and she thought at first he must want help. She flinched a bit at the heavy breathing that came through the rattle of his throat and filled the entry with contaminated air, but she leaned forward all the same to take his arm. And he shrank from her, shaking his head, and gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. Getting out of the coach was an even sicker man—terribly thin and pasty-faced, and tottering on his legs.
