by Kim Newman
‘Yes, dear,’ said Christina.
Lieutenant Katō walked ahead of the little procession of carts, like the man with a red flag preceding an automobile. Higurashi had said accommodations would be found for the party in Yokai Town. Geneviève trusted he didn’t mean a cemetery.
Kostaki had sent scouts – Mr Yee, as foreign here as he was in London, and Verlaine, an angry redheaded woman – out into the fog, with orders to report back if it looked like Katō was leading them into an ambush. Kostaki still thought like a soldier, which she supposed was just as well. He was a good judge of vampires. Yee, an assassin, and Verlaine, a mercenary, were about the only ones of the party – including herself, and most definitely including Christina – Geneviève would trust not to abandon the mission and hare off in search of fresh warm blood. Red thirst makes vampires selfish, small-minded – and easy to gull, catch and kill. It’s why, before Dracula, they never really accomplished anything as a species. Too intent on their next feeding to find common cause, they didn’t much care for each other’s company. Wolves were pack animals. Vampires were not.
Yee and Verlaine were as ravenous as the rest of them, but professionals took necessary pride in their work. No one wants to employ an unreliable mercenary. Like Geneviève, they earned their living, but by inflicting the sort of harm which meant she’d never be short of work, though she suspected folks Yee and Verlaine got the better of were more likely to need burying than doctoring.
How many silvered swords were there in Tokyo? How many cases of silver bullets?
Katō led them along a broad thoroughfare – wide enough so the fog made buildings on both sides indistinct. They were spied on, every step of the way. Shapes and eyes behind screens and in shadows. Aside from the tengu, who had a pressing reason for showing himself, they’d seen no one on the streets. The inhabitants of Yokai Town kept out of Katō’s way.
Eventually, they arrived at a large, tiered building. Red wood, with flaking white and gold trim. A stack of projecting roofs like large, square hats. Set in its own ill-kept grounds, with a shallow pool in a front courtyard. Katō signalled a halt in front of a torii gate – two orange-painted pillars with crossbars and a slate roof. A curtain of cobweb hung across the gate. The Lieutenant had Kannuki – whose long face looked like pulled dough, with raisin eyes – tear down the thick webs with a docker’s hook, scattering fist-sized fat spiders which he took a mean, childish joy in trampling with spade-blade clogs. The spiders squealed as they popped. The markings on their hairy backs resembled sketches of distressed human faces.
A banner bore red characters. Sen Kwai Ji.
‘What does that say?’ asked Christina. ‘“No Hawkers or Circulars”?’
‘Or “Beware of the Dog”?’ suggested Whelpdale.
Considering the specialised diet of dogs in this place, that wasn’t a poor guess.
‘So far as I can make out,’ Geneviève said, ‘“Temple of One Thousand Monsters”.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ said Christina.
‘Poetic licence, ducks,’ said Drusila. ‘There are only six hundred and ninety-eight monsters. Eight hundred and fifteen, if you include us. Eight hundred and sixteen, if you include the Demon Man With White Hands.’
‘Don’t pay her attention,’ said Christina, airily. ‘She makes up the numbers to sound impressive. When she says there are seven thousand, six hundred and twelve sunflower seeds on the floor, no one ever counts them and contradicts her.’
‘Seventy-six hours, fourteen minutes and three seconds,’ said Drusila. ‘That’s how long eternal life lasted for Prince Casamassima. His old black blood turned to charcoal and clogged his heart. Which went sploosh.’
Christina was cross with Drusila for bringing this up. She shimmered.
But they had other concerns at present.
Geneviève sidestepped to avoid a scuttling spider – even though she had good leather boots on, she didn’t want the thing running over her toes.
A deputation of three awaited in the temple courtyard. On a raised stone platform by the pool.
A squat, child-sized person sat on his haunches, stunted body barely supporting a swollen head which looked like a rotten green potato with a wide face on it and curly fangs stuck out of a slit-mouth. He wore a coat of woven rushes and a circular straw hat a yard across.
A white-faced, beautiful woman posed on a mat, playing a samisen – a long-necked musical instrument. Her kimono was decorated with a surging wave motif. She nodded with each plucked note.
A singular little fellow seemed to be a living folded umbrella. He had one bare muscular hairy human leg, a corrugated flesh cone body sporting a single large eye and a smiling set of fleshy lips, and a topknot with a bow in it.
Whelpdale swore in astonishment.
‘These are yokai,’ Geneviève said. She’d known what to expect and was still rattled.
In woodcuts, these creatures looked absurd and almost endearing. In the flesh, they exuded wrongness. In the West, vampire shapeshifters were swimmers who stuck close to the shore. They relied on the familiar forms of bats and wolves – or, in rarer cases, insects and reptiles – but always retained a human template, reluctant to leave behind what they were before turning. At most, they had permanently sharper teeth. In the East, traditions were different – and other shapes, other practices, emerged.
Even if he crushed his bones to paste, she doubted Whelpdale could turn himself inside-out like an umbrella… and couldn’t conceive of circumstances whereby the new-born would want to.
Make no mistake: the yokai of Japan were vampires, if distant cousins only to the nosferatu of Europe. The same went for the aswang of the Philippines, the penanggalan of Malaya and the pontianak of Java. They just weren’t the sort of vampires Lord Ruthven would invite to Downing Street for whist and a nibble on the maid… or Prince Dracula would baptise with foeman’s blood during a Carpathian Guard initiation. Some Far Eastern vampires had extra lamprey mouths on the backs of their heads or necks, hidden by long hair, used only for feeding. Others wore their lungs and entrails on the outsides of their bodies, and decorated their exposed innards with ribbons and bows. Many indulged in practices which would disgust Graf Orlok, reputedly the most repulsive vampire in Europe. The frog-faced dwarves of the Japanese kappa bloodline lived in ponds, crawling out of the water to eat farmers’ livers and rape their wives. They took blood only from horses and cows, fixing mouths over the animals’ anuses while sticking tongue-tentacles into their bowels. The pale, self-dramatising, perfume-and-powder murgatroyd dandies who paraded nightly in Piccadilly would not go in for that. Their frilly shirts and velvet britches would get filthy.
‘At least the popsy with the sideways guitar looks halfway normal,’ said Whelpdale. ‘Though it sounds like she forgot to kill the cat before stringing its guts on that there plink-a-plonk affair. Is she one of them geisha girlies?’
The woman played and sang. Japanese music used to seem harsh and discordant to Western ears, but the Mikado craze had given London aesthetes a taste for it, along with fans and lanterns. As the tune played out, the musician’s neck elongated by six or eight feet… as if it were string and her head a balloon. Christina was revolted and pained. Drusila smiled, enraptured by the trick – and flapped the heels of her hands together in applause. Whelpdale whistled, out of tune.
Katō walked up to the trio. The umbrella yokai hopped behind the long-necked woman, and the green-faced goblin rolled into a ball. The woman’s neck undulated like a serpent. She was her own snake-charmer, head swaying to the music of her hands. She smiled down on Katō, showing pearly cobra fangs.
Another specimen of the vampires not found in Japan.
Katō raised his hand and his glove seemed to throb with light.
It was a signal they come forward – or at least the most important of them, Kostaki and Christina. And Geneviève, if only to translate.
Katō stood back.
‘I am Lady Oyotsu,’ said the woman, voice ululating from di
stended vocal cords. ‘Abbess of the temple. These are my attendants, Abura Sumashi and Kasabake.’
Abura Sumashi, the potato-head, rolled around so his grinning face was uppermost. His tongue poked out and she decided she wouldn’t trust him near the back end of her livestock, if she had any. Kasabake, the umbrella demon, opened and closed. His struts were bony ribs, attached to a column that was once a human spine. His long-lashed eye winked. She thought him smitten with Christina’s Paris parasol.
‘My lady abbess, I am Geneviève Dieudonné, a physician,’ she said, in Japanese. ‘This is Captain Kostaki, late of the Carpathian Guard, and the Princess Casamassima, who you will find an enormous pain in the neck. We are yokai from Europe. Kyuketsuki. In our language, vampires.’
Lady Oyotsu looked at each of them in turn, paying particular attention to Christina. Her head bobbed, and Geneviève saw how muscular and supple her long neck was. At full extent, she was less like a giraffe than one of the prehistoric monster statues in Crystal Palace Park. Her pallor was painted, as were the ash-smudge eyebrows in the middle of her forehead and the cherry-red bow of her lips.
‘Vampires, you are welcome guests,’ she said.
Katō made a signal, and the carts were unloaded. Kannuki and the workmen set the boxes down outside the gate, taking care not to step onto temple grounds. At a nod from Lady Oyotsu, several ogre-like yokai – as big as Kannuki, with demon masks and scraps of armour – shambled from the shadows to take over, hauling coffins into the courtyard.
‘Eight hundred and fifteen again,’ said Drusila. ‘One of us just died.’
TO BE CONTINUED IN
ANNO DRACULA 1999: DAIKAIJU
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THANKS TO KEALAN Patrick Burke, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Carroll, Jack Dann, Ellen Datlow, Dennis Etchison, Larry Fessenden, Neil Gardner, David Garnett, Scott Harrison, Sean Hogan, Maxim Jakubowski, Stephen Jones, Marvin Kaye, Katz Makihara, Maura McHugh, Glenn McQuaid, David Pringle, Nicholas Royle, Al Sarrantonio, David Sutton, Cath Trechman, Cat Camacho.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KIM NEWMAN IS a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His fiction includes The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, the Anno Dracula novels and stories, The Quorum and Life’s Lottery, all currently being reissued by Titan Books, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles published by Titan Books and The Vampire Genevieve and Orgy of the Blood Parasites as Jack Yeovil. The critically acclaimed An English Ghost Story, which was nominated for the inaugural James Herbert Award, and most recently, Angels of Music. His non-fiction books include the influential Nightmare Movies (recently reissued by Bloomsbury in an updated edition), Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Neil Gaiman), Horror: 100 Best Books (with Stephen Jones), Wild West Movies, The BFI Companion to Horror, Millennium Movies, BFI Classics studies of Cat People and Doctor Who, and the forthcoming Video Dungeon, a collection of his popular Empire magazine columns of the same name.
He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines, has written and broadcast widely on a range of topics, and scripted radio and television documentaries. His stories ‘Week Woman’ and ‘Übermensch’ have been adapted into an episode of the TV series The Hunger and an Australian short film; he has directed and written a tiny film, Missing Girl. Following his Radio 4 play ‘Cry Babies’, he wrote an episode (‘Phish Phood’) for Radio 7’s series The Man in Black.
Follow him on Twitter @annodracula. His official website can be found at www.johnnyalucard.com
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
ANNO DRACULA
It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. His polluted bloodline spreads through London as its citizens increasingly choose to become vampires.
ANNO DRACULA: THE BLOODY RED BARON
It is 1918 and Dracula is commander-in-chief of the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The war of the great powers in Europe is also a war between the living and the dead. As ever the Diogenes Club is at the heart of British Intelligence and Charles Beauregard and his protégé Edwin Winthrop go head-to-head with the lethal vampire flying machine that is the Bloody Red Baron…
ANNO DRACULA: DRACULA CHA CHA CHA
Rome 1959 and Count Dracula is about to marry the Moldavian Princess Asa Vajda. Journalist Kate Reed flies into the city to visit the ailing Charles Beauregard and his vampire companion Geneviève. She finds herself caught up in the mystery of the Crimson Executioner who is bloodily dispatching vampire elders in the city. She is on his trail, as is the un-dead British secret agent Bond.
TITANBOOKS.COM
ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD
It is 1976 and Kate Reed is on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Dracula. She helps a young vampire boy, Ion Popescu, who leaves Transylvania for America. In the States, Popescu becomes Johnny Pop and attaches himself to Andy Warhol, inventing a new drug which confers vampire powers on its users…
‘Compulsory reading… glorious’ Neil Gaiman
‘A tour de force which succeeds brilliantly’ The Times
‘Anno Dracula is the definitive account of that post-modern species, the self-obsessed undead’ New York Times
‘Politics, horror and romance are woven together in this brilliantly imagined and realised novel’ Time Out
TITANBOOKS.COM
THE SECRETS OF DREARCLIFF GRANGE SCHOOL
BY KIM NEWMAN
A week after her mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school, Drearcliff Grange in Somerset.
Although it looks like a regular boarding school, Amy learns that Drearcliff girls are special, the daughters of criminal masterminds, outlaw scientists and master magicians. Several of the pupils also have special gifts like Amy’s, and when one of the girls in her dormitory is abducted by a mysterious group in black hoods, Amy forms a secret, superpowered society called the Moth Club to rescue their friend. They soon discover that the Hooded Conspiracy runs through the school, and it’s up to the Moth Club to get to the heart of it.
‘Kim Newman stands among speculative fiction’s finest, and his new book is no less impressive than the best of the rest of his writing… I had a hunch it would be wonderful and it was’ Tor.com
‘I can see myself re-reading this book time and again’
Fantasy Book Review
TITANBOOKS.COM
AN ENGLISH GHOST STORY
BY KIM NEWMAN
The Naremores, a dysfunctional British nuclear family, seek a new life away from the big city in the sleepy Somerset countryside. At first their new home, The Hollow, seems to embrace them, creating a rare peace and harmony within the family. But when the house turns on them, it seems to know just how to hurt them the most – threatening to destroy them from the inside out.
‘Immersive, claustrophobic and utterly wonderful’ M.R. Carey, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl With All the Gifts
‘Thoroughly enjoyable, master storytelling’ Lauren Beukes, bestselling author of Broken Monsters
‘Deserves to stand beside the great novels of the ghostly’ Ramsey Campbell
‘An intoxicating read’ Paul Cornell, bestselling author of London Falling
TITANBOOKS.COM
COMING IN 2017 FROM TITAN BOOKS
VIDEO DUNGEON
BY KIM NEWMAN
Ripped from the pages of Empire magazine, the first collection of film critic, film historian and novelist Kim Newman’s reviews of the best and worst B-movies. Some of the cheapest, trashiest, goriest and, occasionally, unexpectedly good films from the past twenty-five years are here, torn apart and stitched back together again in Newman’s unique style.
Everything you want to know about DTV hell is here.
Enter if you dare.
TITANBOOKS.COM
COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS
ANNO DRACULA
The award-winning horror series creeps into comics from Titan in 2017, written by creat
or Kim Newman with art by Paul McCaffrey (The Third Doctor).
Anno Dracula has garnered high praise since its initial release, including from literary superstar Neil Gaiman, who helped to develop the series and called Anno Dracula “compulsory reading”.
Titan Comics’ Anno Dracula hits stores in March 2017, and is available to pre-order from January’s Diamond PREVIEWS catalogue.
AVAILABLE MARCH 2017
TITANBOOKS.COM
For more fantastic fiction, author events, exclusive excerpts, competitions, limited editions and more
VISIT OUR WEBSITE
titanbooks.com
LIKE US ON FACEBOOK
facebook.com/titanbooks
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
@TitanBooks
EMAIL US
[email protected]
