The Dream Killer of Paris

by Fabrice Bourland

  ‘Ach, ja! Hotel Regina. Freiheit Platz.’

  And the taxi set off.

  ‘Well, sleeping is one way of putting it!’ I sighed.

  The hotel was extremely comfortable but not exactly cheap. Located close to Ringstrasse, opposite the neogothic Votivkirche, it was popular with tourists.

  It was still raining heavily in the Austrian capital. As we had no desire to wander through the city’s streets to find somewhere cheaper to stay, we went inside. The tickets for the Orient Express had not exhausted James’s reserves. We had enough to last a few days.

  The receptionist seemed suspicious of us – foreigners without luggage asking for a double room – but finally decided to give us a key.

  The room was pleasant and looked out over Votivkirche Square.

  While James freshened up in the bathroom, I stretched out and, to avoid nodding off to sleep, got Aurélia out of my bag and skimmed the first paragraph. I knew every sentence by heart: ‘Our dreams are a second life. Never have I been able to pass without a shudder through those gates of ivory or horn which divide us from the invisible world. The first moments of sleep are the image of death: a hazy torpor overcomes our thoughts, and it is impossible for us to determine the precise instant when the I, in another form, resumes the creative work of existence. Little by little an obscure underground cavern grows lighter, and the pale, solemnly immobile figures that inhabit the realm of limbo emerge from shadows and darkness. Then the picture takes shape, a new light illumines and sets in motion these odd apparitions: the world of Spirits opens before us.’

  Raising my eyes to the only window, where the Viennese night could be seen between the thick yellow curtains of the hotel room, I ran through my memories of dreams. I, too, had seen one of those pale figures appear from the other side of the gates of sleep on several occasions. Who was she? What did she want with me? What was her name?

  Nerval then began a patient description of what he called his long illness which he had spent entirely among the vagaries of the mind: ‘A lady of whom I had long been fond and whom I shall call Aurélia was lost to me,’ he wrote. ‘Condemned by the one I loved, guilty of a mistake for which I no longer hoped to be forgiven, it only remained for me to throw myself into vulgar intoxications. I affected joy and cheerfulness. I crossed the world, madly in love with variety and caprice. Above all, I loved the costumes and the strange morals of distant populations. It seemed that I could thereby shift the conditions of good and evil.’

  The writer based his work on his own experience. I had discovered from reading Aristide Marie’s biography that the Aurélia in question was really called Jenny Colon, an actress with whom Nerval had been madly in love. But in 1838 she had married someone else and Nerval had come to Vienna to lick his wounds. He had lived in the Austrian capital from 19 November 1839 until 1 March 1840, staying at the Aigle Noir inn in the suburb of Leopoldstadt.

  I looked up at the yellow curtains again and my thoughts swirled above the two spires of the Votivkirche which were suddenly illuminated.

  Without my realising it, by leaving Paris for the banks of the Danube the link with Gérard de Nerval had not been broken. On the contrary, I was still following his path. Inexorably.

  At about half past nine in the evening we came down from our room.

  In the lobby I sent a short telegram to the French Sûreté, addressed to Superintendent Edmond Fourier, to tell him the name of our hotel. I then bought a map of the city and a few French newspapers: Paris-Soir, L’Excelsior and Le Petit Parisien.

  Outside it had stopped raining but the air was much cooler than in Paris.

  We walked down Herrengasse and then wandered through the old streets of the city centre to Graben and Stephansplatz.

  The night promised to be long. The fact that we had no idea how the Austrian induced nightmares in his victims meant that we had to tread very carefully. Neither James nor I wanted to fall into the hands of Morpheus. We would have to kill time, hour after hour, until the sun came up.

  Another consequence of the situation was that communication with my stranger was suspended until further notice. It was impossible to obtain new information through her.

  Not far from the cathedral, we went into a smoky tavern on Bauernmarkt where a plump, blonde waitress wearing a strange Hungarian hat stuffed James with sausages and mutton chops while I just had a few Knödel and a meat soup.

  After the meal I took a look at the newspapers I had bought at the hotel. They were from the day before and the news was not very up to date. Paris-Soir (whose report was not the work of a certain J.L.; Lacroix had apparently kept his promise to be discreet) and Le Petit Parisien discussed the affaire of Deadly Sleep in depth. The news of a second investigation into the death of Ducros had just been made public and journalists were focusing on the political repercussions of events. As Fourier had predicted, the attack on the leader of the Surrealists was mentioned, as were our own names.

  At half past midnight we left the tavern and wandered through the city in a north-easterly direction. We crossed the Donaukanal, strolled around the Praterstern monument and the Augarten park area and then returned to the city centre via the long Taborstrasse (the street where Nerval had lived nearly a century earlier).

  In the end, we began to feel terribly tired. Oh sleep! Sleep! It seemed a long time since I had had the luxury of an entire night’s rest (not since leaving London actually). At that moment, how I would have liked to fall into a deep sleep!

  A crazy idea which would considerably improve our situation came to me when we were on Schwedenbrücke after crossing the Donaukanal again.

  I remembered the words of Monsieur de Vallemont, the vice-chairman of the Institut Métapsychique, about one of the Marquis de Brindillac’s discoveries: ‘Dreams occupy a small part of the time devoted to sleep; they only appear about an hour and a half after we fall asleep and then return regularly in brief sequences.’

  If the good Marquis was to be believed, the gates of sleep would only open intermittently and, moreover, regularly and predictably. When they were closed dreams could not develop. Nothing therefore prevented James and me from getting some rest as long as we took turns and, above all, shook the sleeper awake before he started dreaming.

  Nonetheless, should Auguste de Brindillac’s theories be accepted without question? What had he based his ideas on?

  From the jumble of memories from my reading, a passage from De natura rerum came to me in which Lucretius confirmed that while they slept domestic dogs and goats always gave little uncontrolled jolts, an unmistable sign of dream activity.

  If the Latin philosopher had been right (and if the idea could be applied to humans) dreaming produced physical effects on people. Maybe the Marquis de Brindillac had developed his audacious principle by observing these physical effects. To be certain, it should be enough to imitate the scientist and observe a sleeping person; if he demonstrated rapid and unconscious movements at one time or another, it must mean that he was actively dreaming.

  I put my idea to James. He seemed very sceptical but, in the absence of anything else and wanting to have a rest as much as I did, he agreed to try the experiment.

  At about half past one in the morning we returned to our room.

  James lay down on his bed, fully dressed, and without further ado he fell asleep.

  Sitting in an armchair next to him, I smoked cigarette after cigarette in an attempt to fight off drowsiness.

  At three o’clock, an hour and a half after he had fallen asleep, his body was still just as serene. Apart from two or three changes in position and sustained snoring, there was nothing of note.

  Clearly, the experiment was not conclusive. It would have been reckless to take it any further.

  I was therefore preparing to wake him when his breathing suddenly accelerated, his fingers moved on the sheet as if he was playing the piano and his eyes, until then tightly shut, opened almost entirely and I noticed that they were rolling wildly. The effect was striking
16. I immediately shook James roughly by the shoulder. He stared at me for a few seconds, stunned, and then, pulling himself together, confessed that he had just started having a dream which promised to be very amusing.

  I was delighted. Not only did dreaming have an effect on the body of the sleeper but it was perfectly visible. We could recover from our exhaustion without any risk.

  That night we swapped places on the bed several times for periods of ninety minutes each.

  Just before the Votivkirche bell tolled seven times the following morning I shook my friend excitedly.

  ‘James! James! Wake up! I think I’ve discovered how Kessling kills his victims!’

  ‘Really?’ he groaned, his eyes half closed with sleep. ‘Would it be by tormenting people like you do?’

  He sat on the edge of the bed and looked towards the window.

  ‘The sun isn’t even up yet! Couldn’t you have let me sleep a bit longer?’

  ‘It was my turn anyway. But listen to this!’

  The books I had bought two days ago on Boulevard Saint-Michel were open on my lap and I had circled certain passages in pencil.

  ‘In here,’ I said, pointing to Jules Delassus’s essay, ‘it says that observers can interfere with the psyche of a sleeping subject from a distance. To do so, they fall asleep voluntarily and then leave their own bodies, creating a kind of ghost which can take any shape and any possible or imaginable face.’

  ‘Aha! A hallucination then.’

  ‘If you like, but not a hallucination as understood today, James. The nightmare which took hold of me in our compartment on the Orient Express was not just a dream. The horrible creature which tried to kill me had a tangible existence on another plane of reality, the one which provides access to the gates of sleep several times during the night. It was created in the mind of Herr Kessling.’

  ‘Very well, but how does he cause death? In principle, unless your heart is very weak, you do not die of fear.’

  ‘A sleeping person is naturally in a vulnerable mental state. All Kessling, or rather the creature created by him, has to do is break the thin invisible thread which connects the various planes of the personality in order to kill the sleeper in a few seconds. The look of terror which all the victims displayed can be explained like this: a psychic entity had become master of their consciousness and all they could do was witness their own death with fear. As effective as a bullet straight through the heart.’

  ‘And it leaves no trace.’

  ‘Indeed. In so doing, Kessling has almost managed to perfect a new kind of crime in a locked room. When it has been established that all the exits from the scene of the tragedy are hermetically sealed, no police officer will think of the door to dreams.’

  ‘So he went after all those specialist dream researchers to prevent them discovering the secret?’

  ‘Probably. As long as it remained confined to obscure essays on the occult, to which no one serious has paid any attention in our time, there was no risk. On the other hand, if a famous scientist discovered the existence of the gates of sleep and decided to talk about it with anyone ready to listen it would become dangerous. I strongly suspect that, within the context of his work on lucid dreams, the Marquis de Brindillac was very close to solving the mystery. That is probably what he was preparing to reveal in his lecture.’

  ‘And your little Tinker Bell, what has she to do with all this?’ asked James, rubbing his face to wake himself up.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t really know. These books say that elemental spirits rarely intervene in human affairs. That is why their existence inspires such caution. There must be a compelling reason for her to do so.’

  ‘It could be the death of the poor Marquis.’

  ‘Possibly. But it would seem that an even more terrible secret is hidden behind all these deaths.’

  ‘More terrible than the possibility of being bumped off by an invisible power while you sleep? I really don’t see what!’

  James stood up and went to the bathroom. For a few minutes I heard the gush of water from the tap. When he reappeared with a towel over his shoulder and his face and shirt collar wet, he no longer looked befuddled and was smiling broadly. The strength of character and cheerful temperament of my friend, who was always ready to see the lighter side of things, were a constant source admiration to me.

  ‘My word! I have known more peaceful dreams!’

  Sitting down on the bed again, he looked at me mockingly.

  ‘Tell me one thing, dear friend. If your stranger from the steamer really is one of those alluring spirits who haunt the hidden corners of nature, why has she chosen you to deliver her messages? If she was looking for a good-looking young detective, able to save the world from evil powers who want to destroy it, why not choose me?’

  ‘Oh! I don’t doubt for an instant that you were her first choice!’ I exclaimed, laughing. ‘But I think that one crucial thing influenced her decision.’

  ‘Oh yes? What might that be?’

  ‘Nerval.’

  ‘Nerval?’

  ‘Yes. I am convinced that my desire to solve the mystery of his death created a sympathetic link with the occult.’

  ‘Are you saying that this beauty knew your poet?’

  ‘Gérard’s spirit would often wander through the invisible world, putting his mental state at risk. No doubt he formed a number of relationships and was liked and appreciated by ethereal people.’

  ‘Hmm, I see! Nerval’s friends are their friends. So, don’t forget to remind them that I am your friend, Andrew! If I’m lucky, a succubus with a fantastic body will visit me too!’

  He threw his towel into the middle of the room with a chuckle.

  ‘Well? What are we doing today?’ he asked when he had stopped laughing.

  ‘Let’s concentrate on the information provided by my stranger. In particular, I am convinced that the castle with the pointed roof, which appeared in my vision on the Canterbury, is an essential clue. That is where we should go.’

  ‘A castle with a pointed roof? It’s not much of a clue.’

  ‘Except that it was only one element of a larger picture, a magnificent steep valley cut by a river with blue water, probably the Danube.’

  I put the two books on the occult on the bed and went over to the large cupboard which took up half the wall. I opened the drawers and pulled out a tourist leaflet which I held out to my friend, open at the relevant page.

  ‘I found this brochure when I was looking for something to write on last night. A guest must have left it behind, unless the hotel management puts a copy in every room.’

  ‘The Wachau valley! That is what your vision was? Are you sure?’

  ‘There’s no doubt about it. The Wachau starts in Melk and ends in Krems, east of Vienna. It is a very well-known local attraction. I’ve looked carefully at the photograph. It’s the same landscape of vines, conifers and oak trees that I saw in the vision. Its eighteen miles contain a considerable number of ruined monasteries, fortresses and eyries perched on the rocks. We just have to find the one we’re looking for.’

  ‘And how do we get to this haven of splendour?’

  ‘Look at the brochure. All the information we need is there, even the timetable. There’s a ferry service every day between Vienna and Passau on the German border. It stops at Dürnstein and Linz.’

  James looked at his watch.

  ‘I say!’ he cried. ‘Couldn’t you have said so earlier? It leaves at eight o’clock! We’ll barely make it!’

  ‘Don’t panic. I called reception to order a taxi. It will be downstairs in a minute and will take us to the Reichsbrücke boarding point. We’ll be there in plenty of time.’

  XVII

  AT W— CASTLE

  The Habsburg was one of those elegant paddle steamers which crisscross the Danube and delight the tourists, and indeed the Viennese as well.

  The ferry was not very busy on a Monday morning and it was a pleasure to enjoy the view from its deserted
decks. Unlike the day before, it was dry and the sun regularly broke through the low clouds.

  We positioned ourselves on deckchairs at the front of the boat for observation purposes. The tall chimney exhaled a delicate wisp of black vapour. After we had left behind the village of Grinzing and Mount Leopoldsberg with its famous belvedere marking the northernmost point of Vienna, for several hours we saw only flat, sandy banks.

  Shortly after eleven o’clock, the Danube, whilst still impressive, narrowed noticeably and the banks suddenly steepened to create a landscape of unparalleled magnificence, a succession of small valleys covered with orchards and forests reputed to be full of game. A member of the crew confirmed that we had just entered the Wachau valley and were, at that very moment, passing the ancient city of Krems, the first stage of our journey.

  Now we had to pay attention and carefully examine each twist of the landscape.

  I had taken the precaution of sketching a picture of the castle I had glimpsed in my vision on to a piece of paper for James. I had portrayed it perched on its rocky summit with the tower with the pointed roof in the foreground and, behind, a second, taller tower without a roof and connected to the first one by a wing of the building. In front of the rock, I had remembered to include the shady islet.

  The advertising brochure had not exaggerated There were a plethora of ancient ruins on either side of the gorge. Over the centuries the area’s tortuous geography had inspired the toughest builders. Emperors, kings, princes, tyrants and wealthy bandits had vied with one another in their audacity to build impregnable fortresses. For hours we sailed past military and religious architectural treasures: Göttweig, Stein, Dürnstein (where we docked for half an hour), Spitz and Aggstein. All of them, were surrounded by woods and vines and had their fair share of romantic castles, nearly ruined eyries, churches and monasteries.

  But of my castle there was no trace! When our steamer reached the grandiose Melk Abbey in the middle of the afternoon, and a gently undulating wide plain replaced the uneven terrain of Wachau, I could not hide my disappointment.