Dracula's Demeter: The Vampire King's Stunning Sea Voyage

by Doug Lamoreux

  He stumbled to his left, turning a circle in the swirling fog. He scanned the heavy mist, as if expecting some THING, some unnamed horror, to reach from the gloom and grab him. In this manner, spinning, darting his head, unintelligible cries escaping his trembling lips, Constantin moved toward the starboard rail.

  Nikilov stood his place at the wheel, straining to see his shipmate, his friend, completely undone. Should he seize hold of the man? Or would that harm more than help? Could he say something, anything, to sooth him and stem the madness? What would he say? How would he say it? Tired and not a little terrified, Nikilov stood mum.

  Constantin sprang up onto the rail and teetered on the bulwark. He grabbed the main mast rigging and turned to face his commander wearing the shifting fog like a shroud. A change came over the mate. The fear drained from his face like rum from a barrel (the blood from Lord Nelson). The boiling anger, so much a part of his make-up, likewise evaporated. His shoulders sank, his arms fell to his sides. He looked slowly out to the sea, though there was precious little visible through the heavy air, then turned back to the helm. He was finished; nothing left but exhaustion and despair. “You had better come too, captain,” Constantin said, in a sad but steady voice, “before it is too late.”

  “Iancu,” Nikilov said… But his first mate was beyond hearing.

  “He is there.” Constantin pointed past the deckhouse, to the innards of the ship. “He's there! I know the secret now.” Then, even through the fog, he smiled. It was a smile, not of happiness, but of relief as if he'd reached the end of a long and miserable journey.

  “Iancu.” Nikilov could think of nothing else to say.

  The mate stared into the swirling mist to their starboard with the rushing water providing background music to this his final scene. “The sea will save me from Him,” he said with certainty. “It is all that is left!”

  Without another word, Constantin jumped.

  Nikilov stared, wide-eyed and disbelieving, at the ship's empty bulwark. For a long time afterward, he could do nothing else. He merely stared.

  Slowly, with much force of will, the captain's mind wrapped itself around what had taken place. Constantin claimed he knew the secret. Now Nikilov knew as well. The mystery to the horrors that had taken place aboard his ship was solved and the truth in the open. Iancu Constantin, his mate, the man to whom he had given responsibility near-matching his own for his ship, his crew, and his cargo, the man to whom he had given his trust and his friendship, to whom he had given a loaded revolver when every other soul aboard was unarmed, was mad. He had killed everybody aboard Demeter. Now he had taken his own life. “God, help me!” The captain prayed.

  How was he to account for these horrors? For an instant he imagined himself being tried and convicted for murdering his crew. He imagined himself dragged before a crowd eagerly awaiting his execution. He saw himself swinging from the gibbet. He imagined all these things happening when he brought Demeter in to port.

  Then the ridiculousness of these thoughts sank in and Nikilov laughed, screaming to the heavens, “When I get to port!”

  * * *

  Presumably the sun rose on Wednesday, 4 August.

  Nikilov knew it was there because he was a sailor. But he could neither see it nor appreciate its arrival. He could not feel its warmth or rejoice in its purity. The sun could not pierce the veil of fog surrounding the ship all through the day. Its rays, diffused by the thick swirling mists, managed little more than to glow with a smothered daylight, a gray nimbus that vacillated wildly in brightness and was often as dark as night.

  The captain was beginning to feel his `nocturnal existence' tell on him, and scribbled as much on the note pages he carried in his pocket. The nights were destroying his nerves, he wrote. He started at his own shadow and was full of horrible imaginings. God knew there were grounds for his terrible fear. The schooner no longer felt like his ship and, more and more, he found himself thinking of Demeter as nothing more than this accursed place!

  For most of the day, Nikilov remained at the con. There was nobody left to take the wheel; he was the last man standing. And, of course, he was the ship's captain. But he made up his mind, eventually, that the only way to remain at the helm long enough to save his ship was to leave it briefly now. Things needed tending to… So he tied the wheel off.

  * * *

  Nikilov entered his cabin with thoughts of returning to the helm with his pockets swollen with booty from below; a bible, the Russian colors, a coil of stout rope, food and drink, his log book, perhaps even a pound of Swales' tobacco and a bottle, if the old boy had one hidden. (He never knew a cook who didn't.) His great plans changed when he reached his berth. The bible and colors seemed superfluous. They were ever his strength and courage but, as he always carried both in his heart and head, what sense did it make to overload his hands? Food and drink, though he could not explain the feeling, seemed out of place and somehow wrong. The rope seemed foolish as there was rope a-plenty on the deckhouse wall. More ridiculous yet was the idea of tobacco and a mug. He did not smoke and, as he was the only one here to be responsible for the ship, would not drink.

  In the end he settled for his spyglass and his sextant. They'd been taken below, along with the ship's hour-glass, when the seas got up rough. He left the time piece. (What difference could the time make now?) He took the glass and measuring device under his arm and started back.

  He paused in the mess and, searching Swales' galley, located and confiscated a tin of oil. The deck lamps had been neglected (with no deck boy to refill them) and were all but dry. He'd a notion to grab some biscuits, cheese or a handful of raisins. But Swales had been so fastidious in cleaning up there was nothing edible in sight. With the ship sailing blindly, unguided, through the fog, Nikilov would not take the time to look. He returned to the deck with the items he had.

  Several times more during the day Nikilov lashed the wheel and left the helm to stand at the port bulwark and search for land or ship, equally impossible. Following each sortie, he returned to take the wheel again into his hands and regain some sense of control.

  But the fog had left him blind. What, dear God, kind of fog was it? It seemed the whole western North Sea (for didn't he have to be in the west of the North Sea?) was covered in this swirling blanket. Or was it his own private fog moving with the ship?

  Nikilov left the wheel one other time that bleak and foggy Wednesday. He secured the ship, on a course he'd only guessed at and went to the head. He could have accomplished the same over the near pin-rail but, though everything else was gone, he still had his dignity.

  Going to and coming from the bow, Nikilov walked past the rosary that dropped on the deck from the tear in Harrington's waistcoat pocket, without taking notice. He returned to the stern ignorant of its presence.

  On his return, he diverted to the deckhouse rain barrels, washing his hands and face in one and stealing a cool drink from the other. He'd eaten nothing since the afternoon of the previous day. A momentary twinge of annoyance passed through his frame for the memory of his late cook. The man had been tidy to the point of starving him to death. Of course it was nonsense and Nikilov knew it. Cleanliness had always been, by his own pronouncement, next to godliness. He had no one to blame for his rumbling innards. (How would the loud Scot have put it? He “lacked belly-timber”.) He accepted the rumble and ignored it. Nikilov found himself refreshed by the water and chose to be content with that. He resumed the wheel with a lighter heart, determined to push away the spiritual darkness.

  Morning became afternoon became evening. Throughout, Nikilov's mind ventured over many topics, envisioned many faces, debated furiously with itself, and worked to still itself against the effects of many fears. To say these thoughts all passed in silence would be to mislead. For the old seaman, to his own embarrassment, caught himself more than once laughing, singing, even arguing to the air. All the while, the wind blew (without clearing the fog!), the sails billowed, waves buffeted the ship, and the deck creaked
endlessly as it pitched and rolled beneath his feet, his desperately aching feet.

  * * *

  Outside of Nikilov's activities, the day came and went below deck as well. The gray glow left the fog with the setting of the sun. With no one below to light the lamps, darkness overtook the bunk rooms, the mess and galley, and the cellars of Demeter.

  In the pitch black of the forward hold, Dracula emerged from his box. Following the bloodbath of the previous night, his vitality had returned and his youth was again in full vigor. He stepped to the coffin he'd created for Ekaterina the night before and, even in the blackness, had to quickly avert his eyes. He hissed in annoyance. The ship's tools, left atop her box by that miserable sailor, were still there, over-laying each other in the shape of a cross. He reached blindly down and flipped the lid open, sending the offensive cross (inoffensive tools again) flying across the hold and out of his way.

  Ekaterina lay within, wide awake, in agony.

  She was ghastly pail and fighting for breath. Her eyes, like Dracula's, had the reddish reflection of some wild animal but, unlike his, were lusterless and lacked the startling brilliance that made the Count's so frightening. She was starved for blood, her body wracked and emaciated, a viscous mixture of blood and clear fluid seeped from the wounds in her stomach. He lifted her, upsetting the casket and disgorging moldy dirt about the deck at his feet.

  * * *

  The captain heard something below. He feared his ears must be playing tricks. He was the only person alive on the ship! The crew was dead or gone, and days had passed since he'd seen either of his passengers. Yet, to his growing alarm, he heard someone; something.

  What had Constantin said just before he jumped to his death? “He is there!” They were the ravings of a madman, surely. They couldn't have meant anything. Who was left?

  “Who,” he whispered aloud. “Who is there?”

  As if he'd spoken a cue, the door to the midship deckhouse burst open. Nikilov gasped.

  There, in the dimness of the lamplight, stood the fiend, tall, thin and draped in black as his terrified crew had described him all along. A young man. The ship's phantom with, and there Nikilov gasped again, the Romanian girl in his arms. All indications of her former incognito, the deck boy, were gone. She was clothed in a white dress, the origin of which the captain couldn't begin to guess. Otherwise, her appearance did not match her elegant attire. She was conscious, but only just, and lay wounded and splattered in blood, supine as he cradled her, and at his mercy.

  “Who are you?”

  The dark creature, the shadow man, ignored the question and stepped out. Behind him, the deckhouse door slammed closed with the roll of the ship.

  Nikilov stared on, unable to hide his awe. “What have you done to the girl?”

  The monster that haunted his ship paused and glared at Nikilov. Then, dear God, he smiled, showing frighteningly sharp teeth below his mustache. With no more answer, still cradling the girl, he rounded the starboard corner of the deckhouse and vanished into the fog headed forward.

  “What are you doing with her?” Nikilov cried in impotent fury. “In the name of God, what are you doing with her?”

  * * *

  Dracula strode into the bow with Ekaterina gasping in his arms.

  There had been much for him to consider the preceding day as he lay in his box. He thought of his brides, rising from the vaults, floating through the halls of his castle in Transylvania. He thought of Lucy, the dark-haired beauty whose mind he'd touched ahead of them in Whitby, wandering the night, aching for his arrival. He thought of the maniacal servant in Purfleet, addicted now to blood, waiting impatiently to serve him. And he considered this young thing in his arms.

  “Stop there!”

  His thoughts interrupted, Dracula turned to see the ship's captain emerge from the fog.

  His blue eyes pierced the veil of gray to stare at Dracula with all of his pent-up anger. He could not merely stand by at his wheel while this demon had his way with the child. To that end, he'd drawn his gun and come forward brandishing the revolver. “Give the girl to me.”

  The vampire would have laughed had not the rest of the crew been so obstructive, so tiring. He'd had enough. He eased the girl to the deck and turned on Nikilov.

  The terrified captain did not wait to see what the monster next intended. He raised the gun and pulled the trigger repeatedly; seven explosions in rapid succession. His shaking hand sent the first shot wide, through a spritsail, but the remaining six struck their target solidly in the chest and stomach. The phantom bucked slightly as each shot tore through him and a dark nimbus of watery blood appeared and grew around each puncture in his black clothing. Beyond that, the assault produced no discernable effect. The tall man merely glared at Nikilov, his eyes glinting through the fog and black smoke.

  Dracula swatted the gun from the old man's hand sending it flying over the rail. He tore the captain's shirt clutching at him then threw Nikilov somersaulting away. Dracula moved in again, eager to send the old sea dog to whatever afterlife awaited him.

  Nikilov was helpless. Face down on the deck, hungry, exhausted, disheartened beyond the breaking point, he'd been in no condition for a fight from the start. He recovered his senses only to realize he was about to meet his doom.

  It was then he saw the miracle.

  Surely it was; a rosary miraculously glinting in the soft glow of the deck light. He had no way of knowing that it wasn't a miracle at all, that the icon had fallen from the pocket of the murdered Harrington, that it had lain there all day. He had himself stepped past it several times. But he saw it now and, like the miracle he presumed it to be, Nikilov clutched the rosary in his fist and drew it close.

  Dracula reached for him. Nikilov rolled to avoid the clutching hand. He stared up in blind horror at the white face, the sharp teeth. Emboldened by fear, Nikilov lifted the rosary as if it were a shield. The silver crucifix, the depending beads, shone in a brilliant flash of reflected light. Dracula shouted in pain and backed away.

  Nikilov did not know why he'd been spared, nor did he care. The monster had released him! Instinct told him to flee, yet, he could not without the girl. With the tall man turned away, he looked to her wondering how he could save her. But she was staring back at him with something akin to animal hunger in her eyes. She appeared badly wounded and wobbly on her feet but had a set of fangs every bit as frightening as those of the phantom. Only the crucifix, Nikilov was certain, kept her from him. Dracula joined her, baring his teeth. The pair hissed and Nikilov backed away in terror. Like everything else about this voyage, he was too late to do anything at all. He turned and ran.

  Dracula pictured the captain, shaking like a wind-blown leaf, hiding somewhere in the fog. He would deal with him later. With Nikilov and his detestable Christian symbol gone, Dracula lifted Ekaterina back into his arms.

  “Am I dying?” she asked, struggling for breath.

  Dracula smiled in spite of himself. “You are already dead. You are beyond death.”

  “But I feel like I'm dying.”

  “The cross,” he said, “left atop your box all day, prevented your wounds healing.”

  “Will I heal now?”

  “In time. Were I to allow it.”

  She gasped against the pain, holding him tightly. “I do not understand.”

  “You are a delectable little toy.” The vampire smiled cruelly. “But I have many plans for when this ship reaches England. None of which include you.”

  “I love you. I am yours.”

  Dracula chuckled, then roared with laughter. He set her bare feet upon the deck and, supporting her weight, stood her against the pinrail. “Companionship… a pleasure, but always a fleeting one.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes driving the pain, temporarily, from them. She grabbed the rail to brace herself. “You don't want me?”

  “I cannot use you. Still, to show you that I too can love, I offer you something I have never offered another in all these many centuries…�
�

  Breathless anticipation took over, the wounded vampiress was wide-eyed. “You offer?”

  “My pity.” He stroked her hair, watching the anger flash in her eyes, and allowed his hand to trail to the nape of her neck. “And a second, even more rare gift… my mercy.” He snatched her throat with lightning speed. (So quickly she hadn't even time to gasp). “I shall not miss you,” Dracula told her. “But I will most certainly remember you.” Showing neither hesitation nor emotion, he lifted her off the deck and snapped her neck. Her lithe body went limp as a rag doll. Her face was still alive, her eyes blinking, her protruding tongue lolling to one side, a stuttering gasp escaping her lips in an unsuccessful attempt to talk – or perhaps to scream.

  He grabbed a handful of her flowing dress with his free hand, bunched it at her knees and lifted her over the gunwale. Then he dangled her above the churning North Sea like a goose in a shop window. “We are undead,” he told her. “We cannot die. But we can be destroyed. This is the gift I now give you.”

  He dropped her with a splash. The living water of the cold North Sea churned around her as if she'd been dumped into a vat of acid. Without muscle control, she could not work her lungs, could not scream (though her mind was shrieking), could not struggle. All Ekaterina could do was vanish beneath the foam-topped waves.

  * * *

  With nowhere else to run, Nikilov was back at the ship's wheel trying to maintain his sanity. He was shaken to his core and shaking. Terrified, trembling, he gripped the crucifix and cried in shame at having done so little to help the girl. He was still crying when the tall man appeared from the fog again on the port side of the deckhouse. He was alone. His arms were empty.