by Paul Monette
He lay in a heap on the floor, released from his ancient prison. Lucy looked into the sun. The sky outside her window was bright with the constant image of the man she loved. She had kept it like a faith. She moved her lips to speak his name. I love you always, she whispered, a smile of perfect mildness breaking on her face. And the light went out.
All over Wismar, the people woke in the bloom of health. Scores had died in the night, but the fever vanished at the stroke of dawn. Everyone’s temperature dropped to normal. The pink came back to their cheeks. The world, or what was left of it, was saved. They sent up what prayers they could still remember to the wide and cloudless heavens, and then they went to work to bury the dead and clear the streets. The rats had disappeared from all the crevices and alleyways. Like brave survivors everywhere, the citizens of Wismar emerged from their houses into the sun and put the horrors of the past behind them. When they saw the littered thoroughfares and plundered shops, they felt no shame because shame would not help them. They cleaned things as best they could and faced the future boldly.
Jonathan didn’t at first know where he was. He opened his mouth to call for the Mother Superior, eager to get on his horse and go, but then he realized that part was already finished. He felt a curious sense of anticlimax, seeing he was home. He stood up from the horsehair sofa and tried to step into the room, yet he could not move forward. An invisible wall seemed to cage him in. He sat down again, bewildered, and tried to think what to do.
The front door opened. Jonathan’s heart leapt up, to think someone had come to release him. But Doctor van Helsing did not even acknowledge his presence. He made straight for the stairs, glassy-eyed and bent with grief, and in one hand he carried a hammer, in the other a wooden stake. As he mounted up to the bedroom, Jonathan was filled with panic. He stood again and began to scream.
“Help!” he cried, as if a monster had broken in. “Stop him! Somebody stop him!”
And out in the street, the neighbors turned from their cleanup work and started forward to the Harker’s house. In truth, they were all irritated to hear the shouting. They felt they ought to maintain a dignified quiet as they brought things back to normal, yet they knew they could not ignore the cry of a man in trouble. They clustered about the doorway, twenty in all perhaps, and a few men ventured in to see what they could do.
“Upstairs!” shrieked Jonathan, standing helplessly in the parlor. He clutched his chest and felt each blow of the hammer as if he were being stabbed himself. “Van Helsing has murdered my wife!”
The men drew back in horror, wishing with all their might that they could call him mad and go back to their work. But they could not turn from the sight that met their eyes. The doctor appeared at the head of the stairs, a bloody hammer in his hand. Jonathan shrieked revenge, and two men hurried up and collared him. A third ran into Lucy’s room, came staggering out, and confirmed with a heavy nod that it was so.
“But wait,” the doctor pleaded, raising his voice to be heard above Jonathan’s threats and accusations. “I have acted to save her soul. She has risked damnation for the rest of us, and death is all she asked for in return. You must let me explain.”
But he was just another raving madman, and they sent him sprawling and dragged him from the house. They would lock him up in his own asylum. The neighbors poured in. To give the others an excuse, a couple went over to comfort the grieving husband while a dozen rushed up to see the madman’s work. They grouped around the bed and gasped to see her naked, with the stake deep in her heart. And they hurried away to spread the news in the town.
But how could they neglect to see the vampire too, heaped in the corner and dead as a post? Had he vanished the instant he died, shriveled to nothing like ice in the sun?
The neighbor women begged poor Mr. Harker to tell them what they could do. Hadn’t they always known that Lucy would turn out bad? They were terribly understanding. When he sent one off to fetch a broom, she went without hesitation. He was all upset about the dust in the parlor, and they knew it was the wage of grief, to attend to minor matters. They bustled about the room, neatening all the disarray, and when the broom was brought, they swept the crumbs from around his bed. He bounded out into the room.
“My horse!” he cried. “I must be off!”
They looked at one another then. They knew the Harkers kept no horse. What was he doing, leaving at a time like this? But he wouldn’t stay to give an answer. He ran to the door, looked back strangely up the stairs, but would not go and see. He fled from the house, and the neighbor women shook their heads. They saw he could not bear the shame.
He ran through the streets. The coroner still went from house to house, chalking doors where no one came to answer. The death-boats made their final rounds along the still canals, taking on the victims of the night. But nobody seemed to notice all of that. Wherever Jonathan passed, the people of Wismar called and waved as they cleaned the town and made it the way it used to be.
At the far end of the last bridge, a riderless horse was waiting, stamping his foot and snorting, wild to be on his way. Jonathan crossed the last canal and leapt up into the saddle. They galloped away without a backward look. Bound across the blighted plains. Bound for the steepest mountains. There was something there that he’d only caught the glimmer of. He could not recall a single thing about it, but he knew now, down to the last shred of his being, that it had to be a better world than this. His cloak flew up behind him, whipping in the wind like a pair of wings. Though he had all the time in the world, he hurtled along at a crazy speed. There was so much work yet to be done.
Table of Contents
NOSFERATU
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
