by Kim Newman
‘Maybe so.’
‘One thing,’ said Dravot. ‘A piece of advice, from a spy to a soldier, as it were. Best not trouble the dear little things’ pretty heads with talk of… well, of any of this. Bats and dolls and tumblers and steel stars. You know our Gené… and the Princess. They’d only worry. Worryin’s not good for the delicate ones. We should keep this to ourselves, Worshipful Brother… An aspect of the craft, not to be discussed with the profane. Agreed?’
Kostaki thought of Geneviève a moment. And nodded.
‘On the level, Brother Taki…’
‘On the square, Brother Dravot.’
5
YOKAI TOWN, DECEMBER 9, 1899
We have been made welcome in the Temple of One Thousand Monsters. We are fed and entertained. Our hosts are quietly courteous and deferential. But we are little better off than we were aboard ship. Awake or asleep, we are baggage. Christina drags me around so she can talk with important Japanese people, but has trouble finding any. It is becoming apparent that, though many have imposing titles, the residents of Yōkai Town are as powerless as we. Yōkai think of themselves as ghosts and, without complaint, haunt homes rather than live in them. There is no one within these walls we can make demands of, offer concessions to or come to arrangements with.
The occasional glint of a polished visor is a reminder that Lieutenant Majin spies on the compound. An observation platform is built into the helmet of the warrior statue by the gate. Majin is often there, pretending to doze on a striped deckchair with his cap over his face. Since delivering us, the Lieutenant has shown no special interest. If I mention his name, locals lapse into convenient deafness.
This morning, we obtained an audience with General Nurarihyon, whom we were gently misled into taking for the military leader of Yōkai Town. Christina suggested it would be best if Kostaki came with us; she thought the General would respond to a fellow soldier. Kostaki, lately even more closer-mouthed than usual, gave her no resistance. He had quiet words with Dravot before joining our little deputation. They are hatching something – something essentially manly – between them. They have made a more thorough survey of this enclave than Kostaki and I managed on our night walk in the temple gardens.
General Nurarihyon represents what is, on the face of things, the least threatening vampire bloodline I’ve ever come across. Whereas nosferatu are feared for entering houses while owners are at home and drinking their blood, the nurarihyon are resented for entering houses while owners are away and drinking their tea. Yes – a vampire who subsists on tea! With, on occasion, a few drops of blood added to the pot. The sting is that it has to be someone else’s tea. The General’s child-brain quirk is such that he can’t just buy it. He must steal tea, or else it doesn’t quicken him.
Abura Sumashi, the potato-headed courtier, was bored enough to tag along with our deputation. He pointed out a shack close to the General’s hut. Lady Oyotsu makes sure a refreshed kettle always simmers on a stove there. In this community of oddities, Nurarihyon’s kleptomania is indulged.
The Princess and I giggled like schoolgirls at this arrangement until Abura Sumashi further explained the General’s potent power of fascination. Settled like a hermit crab in the place of an absent lord, he issued orders no one in the household had the strength to disobey. All in the pursuit of tea. That made Nurarihyon sound considerably less amusing and more unpleasant – though Christina always takes mention of others’ powers as a challenge rather than a warning.
‘Once settled in a residence,’ Abura Sumashi chortled, ‘it was not unknown for General Nurarihyon to whisper that retainers should kill themselves or each other for his amusement… or command a man’s wives, daughters and concubines to lie with him. To rebuke Magistrate Shinbei of Otama, who displeased him by levying tax on his shrine, Nurarihyon had Shinbei’s daughter Akino kneel before him – smiling and unblinking – while he slowly poured scalding tea into her eyes.’
Note that, in these stories, the antagonists are the General and the away-from-home masters. The women and the servants are property to be appropriated. Blinded Akino is less important than the bloody tea. No wonder so many Japanese kyuketsuki are angry, vengeful women. Many of them disfigured by men.
When not sneaking out to sip stolen tea, the General spends his time composing a letter to the Emperor, petitioning for full recognition of yōkai as loyal subjects and pledging service against his enemies. Abura Sumashi says that Nurarihyon, sometimes overcome by despair, is given to tantrums. Which explains the broken pots and snapped brushes strewn around his tatami mat and the dramatic ink stains splashed on his paper walls.
We found Nurarihyon in a placid mood, though faint and distant. Nestled amid coils of the paper, he was distracted by some point of epistolary etiquette. His swollen, hairless skull is almost transparent. I was fascinated by the pale, watery blood pulsing irregularly through his veins. At any teaching hospital, he could have earned his keep as a useful illustration in lectures on the circulatory system.
‘These are vampires from the West – from England,’ said Abura Sumashi.
We set sail from Plymouth, but are French, Italian-American and Moldavian.
‘W.G. Grace, crumpets, “London Bridge is Falling Down”,’ said the General, in a high-pitched, drawn-out titter. ‘Milk in tea,’ he added, spitting disgust.
‘Do I need to translate that?’ I asked the Princess.
Christina shook her head. Her aura sparked.
Like the General, the Princess has distracted spells – not fainting (though I believe she does that sometimes) but faint. She becomes harder to see, like a fading stain. Her substance bleeds into her light. You can make out lamps through her and, sometimes, the walls behind her – usually only for a moment. Her brows knit as if she is fighting a terrible headache and she coheres through force of will. How much effort does Christina expend on not dissipating through boredom and frustration?
It took a minute for the Princess to write off the gourd-headed General as a simpleton. His way of looking at us while pretending not to made my fangs sharpen, but he is a feeble remnant of whatever he once was.
Kostaki was imperturbable, as always. I suspect he has mastered the soldier’s trick of sleeping sat up straight with his eyes open to fool superior officers into believing they have his full attention.
The General has been working on his missive for many years. The endless scroll loops around and in and out of his dwelling. The Emperor he was addressing when he took up his first brush is long dead.
Once, Nurarihyon – tea drinker or no – could walk into a palace when the shogun was elsewhere and make himself at home, swaying the destiny of the nation. All the tea in Japan would no more slake his thirst than oceans of blood satisfied other tyrants. That he could take it was what mattered. At the zenith of his power, no one in this country could own anything – or count on anyone – unless he allowed it. Even Dracula would envy that. Now, he is reduced to writing a letter no one will read. He cannot have been easy to break.
‘Who brought General Nurarihyon to Yōkai Town?’ I asked Abura Sumashi.
The yōkai’s puffy head throbbed as he looked up for a moment at the statue by the gate. Then he straightened his hat and waddled off without answering me.
So, Majin is collector and keeper of this zoo. He has stocked the high-walled camp with yōkai. This is a cemetery for the living.
Our duties here are to lie down and rot.
6
BEFORE DRACULA (CONTINUED)
I was not the only vampire in Paris.
A nest of murgatroyds ran a macabre playhouse in the city for several seasons. They staged trivial operas – several about Lord Ruthven, who wasn’t too flattered not to ask for a cut of the box office. Act One would find excuses for players to disport in elaborate, gorgeous costume, Act Two would find excuses for the ladies (and some gentlemen) of the cast to wear as little costume as possible and Act Three, for which the stage would be covered in oilskin and patrons in the fr
ont five rows advised to wear raincoats, would feature copious, unsimulated bloodletting. The Théâtre des Vampires went out of fashion, a worse fate by their impresario’s lights than being impaled or burned at the stake. Some say Erik, the masked musician and murderer who lives under the Palais Garnier, is a vampire but he isn’t. I met him once, in the morgue. A strange duck and liable to outlive us all if he stays away from politics… but warm.
Also – and this seems astonishing now – a band of French criminals call themselves Les Vampires. They are no more undead than apache ruffians are Red Indians. Last I heard, the gang were considering a name change. The point of wearing batwing cloaks and fanged masks while housebreaking and blackmailing is to evoke dread legend – not compete with everyday monsters. If vampires are normal, what’s left to strike fear into the superstitious? Sea serpents, perhaps? Or giant armadillos?
Chandagnac, my father-in-darkness, was destroyed by the English in 1438, six years after he turned me – and, infuriatingly, before he could adequately explain why he chose to make the doctor’s daughter, of all people, his get. Melissa d’Acques, his mother-in-darkness, is a strange, elusive little creature. The few times we met, she treated me like a newfound big sister or a soon-tired-of birthday present rather than the last of her line. I have no other blood connections. Melissa, I am told, was born the way she is – so rare a thing I doubt it’s true. I have never bestowed the Dark Kiss – not even on you, dear Charles. I have no coven, colony or clan. Before the Ascendancy, I did not seek the society of my kind, for – as you once said – I really don’t have any.
The other vampires of Paris were territorial, and – like me – preferred a quiet life. Six months could pass without me running into one, which, to be frank, was a blessing. As a traveller, you know how it is. You’re in Sumatra or Tierra del Fuego and your host thinks it a kindness to introduce you to the only other Englishman in a thousand miles. He always turns out to be the most colossal bore, bounder or pill on earth. Imagine the same thing but instead of a dreary missionary with a passion for inflicting vegetarian pamphlets on the natives or a remittance man expelled from Rugby for roasting his fag, you’re stuck with a periwigged fiend knee-deep in ragamuffin blood or a murdering trollop who never shuts up about the Saturnalian orgies of the Roman Empire.
Warm people always assume vampires have a bump of sensitivity that itches when we run into each other. When there were fewer of us about and folk generally didn’t believe we existed, we’d see a pale, haunted face in a crowd and magically recognise another of our kind. As you know, that’s not the case. Remember we both took the Daughter of the Dragon for a vampire when we met her in ’88 because of her pearly teeth? Such mistakes are often fatal for either or both parties. Greetings, fellow nightwalker! Die, bloodsucking vermin! Several nosferatu nitwits have taken me for a helpless warm wench and tried to play ‘watch the watch’ with me, salivating at the prospect of my fair, pulsing throat. That was less amusing to live through than write down.
Nevertheless, sometimes we do know each other on sight. A craze sprung up for visiting the morgue to view the unidentified bodies kept on ice. The original idea was that relatives of missing persons could put names to corpses and claim them for burial. But well-off wastrels started clamouring at our doors, intent on gawping – as if the dead were statues in an exhibition. This perversity spread to the haut ton. Society matrons and distinguished seigneurs took to ogling the frost-rimed remains of drowned pregnant shopgirls and throat-cut boulevardiers. After that, respectable bourgeois queued, as eager to tut-tut the callous connoisseurs of death as to cast an eye over cadavers. Finally, the Baedeker set caught up. The morgue became one of the places a tourist in Paris absolutely must tick off in the guidebook, along with museums, galleries, churches, cafés and buildings of architectural interest.
We medical students were cynical about the viewing parties, though in no position to sneer. We’d all volunteered and had our own reasons – many dubious – for toiling among the dead. Regular visitors became well known to the ghouls: the doleful priest who insisted on performing intimate examinations of young female corpses, on the grounds that he was looking for his long-lost sister (though he ranged far and wide among dead demoiselles, oddly unsure of the colour of his relation’s hair – or even skin); the Belgian artist drawn to the dreadfully mangled or dismembered, who made exquisitely upsetting sketches of their fatal injuries and was once detained at the exit with a pair of delicate snipped-off ears pressed in his pocketbook; the retired army officer who brought his twin sons to view any bloated wretch fished out of the Seine so he could deliver illustrated lectures on the inevitable outcome of unmasculine vices.
And the tour guide.
Where there are tourists, there are inevitably professional guides. This fellow had the audacity to charge five francs a head for trips around the morgue. Holding a tiny lantern, he led groups through chilly galleries like the spieler in a waxworks – inventing fantastic stories about the unclaimed, uncared-for dead. Every one of his parties included a maiden aunt who broke out in tears at the sight of an unblemished, lifeless youth and a sticky-fingered lad who wanted to poke and prod to make sure none of the customers were being shammed. Attendants who were generally happy to oblige visitors thought the tour guide a pest. They were used to receiving ‘considerations’ from patrons. His customers felt they’d already paid for the show so didn’t cross anyone’s palms with further francs.
I was more often in the autopsy rooms than the viewing galleries, so I heard about the tour guide before I saw him. Cerral, who obviously wished he’d thought of the dodge first, told me about him.
‘He’s the most extraordinary specimen, Gené. Wears this stiff, tall horsehair wig. Looks like a startled prude in a comic engraving. His boots have six-inch wooden soles. Without the clogs and head-brush, he’s a shrimp, not much taller than Toulouse-Lautrec. He’s sick with something. His eyes bulge like someone has thumbs pressed into the back of his head. The classic symptom of Graves’ disease, as I’m sure you’ll recall from Charcot’s lecture last year. Shouldn’t be surprised if he comes to the morgue as a permanent resident. The oddest thing, though, is that in the icehouse his breath doesn’t frost. Must have Eskimo blood.’
When I saw the tour guide, I knew him at once – and smelled the blood on him.
Worse, he saw straight off that he was like me. A vampire.
I was ‘lunching’ in a grassy court in front of the main building. The little park was ghoul territory, though I took the trouble to be between shifts when my fellows were less likely to be taking meal or cigarette breaks. The day was gloomy, but as usual I kept to the shade. I pretended to eat a slab of bread and cheese I was crumbling into tiny particles and feeding to pigeons.
Another practice I don’t miss is feigning interest in food. All those chickens dissected and spread around on the plate while twittering about not having an appetite. All that wine tipped into flowerpots while burping extravagantly and humming tipsily. I am sure I overplayed it dreadfully. We all did. The vogue for the Théâtre des Vampires was brief because vampires are, on the whole, terrible actors. It’s a wonder we weren’t as often persecuted by critics as witchfinders. Remember Dracula promenading up and down Piccadilly in a straw boater and Jonathan Harker’s tweeds, thinking himself perfectly disguised as an Englishman?
The tour guide and his latest party trooped out of the morgue. Beside the wig and elevator shoes, he wore a violently checked jacket and matching plus fours. The sensitive matron mused that life was fleeting and swooned, prompting a companion to produce smelling salts from her reticule. The sticky-fingered lad stamped and yelled, startling the pigeons. They rose in an angry flutter, leaving me with half a sandwich. I might have snarled at the boy, showing a glisten of fang.
That brought me unwanted attention.
The tour guide suddenly became brusque. With their money in his purse and the tour of the House of the Dead over, he was done with this party. They hastened off to Notre Dame
, which loomed over every building on the island. Many tourists followed the chill thrills of the morgue with the spiritual uplift of the cathedral.
When they were gone, the guide approached me. His head oscillated. He wanted to look at me from several sides before coming to a decision. He circled as if I were a shtetl and he a detachment of Cossacks, eager to loot but expecting a trap.
‘Can it be?’ he exclaimed, standing in front of me. ‘Surely not… no, I do not believe it. Yet, it is so. A pretty thing… exquisite, oh la! But definitely cold. A sister of the night.’
‘I’m not a nun,’ I said. ‘Or nurse.’
He tittered and showed ratty brown front teeth.
‘You mock me,’ he said. ‘Such a tease! I know what you are.’
Veins throbbed in his swelling forehead and around his prominent eyes. I saw why Cerral diagnosed Graves’.
He sat beside me on a stone bench not suitable for two people who hadn’t been properly introduced. He was as cold as the customers I had been serving all day and, under the scent he drenched his clothes in, gave off the same whiff of decay.
He pinched my arm. He had rat nails too.
He touched his forefinger nail to a long tongue, tasting me.
‘I fear I do not know your line but you are old, lady elder. Older by far than I, a mere stripling on our path through the dark.’
There was no point in me denying it.
There was no point in me giving anything away, either.
‘I am Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome, Marquis de Coulteray,’ he said.
I counted to five in my head, hoping he’d take me for an animated waxwork and go away… which, of course, didn’t happen.
‘Geneviève Dieudonné,’ I admitted.
‘Never heard of you,’ he blurted out.
‘I can’t say the same of you,’ I said.
He puffed up like a cockerel. I didn’t elaborate.
What I had heard of de Coulteray was that he was a rare European of the pishacha bloodline, a strain usually native to India. He was the get of a dancer-priestess who had passed through France before the Revolution. She turned him in the hope he’d build her a temple but he didn’t. He was one of those snobs who change their names every thirty years or so but insist on keeping the title, claiming to have inherited it from a previous identity.
