Van Helsing's Diaries: Nosferatu

by Cawdron, Peter

  You must come to me, my dear Mina, both you and Jonathan, but without word to him as of why. It is nigh on seven years since we defeated the Count, and yet I fear his dark visage still casts a shadow across our lives.

  Tell Jonathan we should meet in Transylvania to celebrate our hard-won victory, to remember both our triumph and our fallen comrades. Perhaps in the ruins of that desolate castle, we will find answers to the questions that plague our souls.

  Be safe, Mina.

  Keep your thoughts to yourself.

  And remember…

  I am forever yours,

  Abraham van Helsing.

  My hands are shaking.

  “How is this possible?” I ask, recognizing the parallels with what happened in my own life on that dark winter day little more than a week ago.

  I hand the letter to Joe. He skims through it, but from the look on his face, he catches the similarities as well. He shakes his head softly.

  Adriana says, “You are lucky to be alive.”

  “Do not be fooled,” Vladimir says, taking the letter from Joe and handing it back to Adriana with the reverence of a priest conducting Holy Communion. “The myths of your childhood have a basis in reality.”

  I look to Joe, hoping he’ll say something to dispel this nonsense, but even with his limited exposure, he’s solemn, taking this seriously.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he says, raising his hands in a gesture that conveys frustration. “I don’t want to believe this stuff. But I’ve got to say, this letter reads like it was written about you and yet it’s over a hundred years old. I mean, wolves tearing up your apartment. Jane attacking you with a cocktail of bacteria and viruses only found in bats. Back in Boise, Idaho, there’s no way I’d believe anything like this was possible. But here? It’s like the old world and the new have collided.”

  Joe looks at the floor, shaking his head in disbelief as he adds, “But this is Jane we’re talking about.”

  “Not any more,” I say.

  Vladimir says, “We live in an age where superstitions are banished, and the vampire uses that to hide. Doubts, rumors, disbelief—these are its allies.”

  “But even if Dracula is true,” I say. “He died. They killed him, right? At the end of the book. Stake through the heart, and all that stuff.”

  Adriana surprises me with her adamant reply.

  “They destroyed the body, not the soul.”

  She’s young, she’s intelligent, she’s educated, and she believes this, not that belief holds any credence on its own, but I can see that for her this is a harsh reality, a blight on her life.

  “None of us want to accept this,” she says in her soft-spoken, deep, feminine voice. “But that choice is not ours. Evil exists. It must be destroyed.”

  My head is spinning. I don’t want to accept the existence of vampires, and yet there’s no other explanation. Fight as I may, acceptance offers answers—answers I don’t like, but answers nonetheless.

  “Okay,” I say, sitting forward and resting my elbows on my knees as I glare at Vladimir, looking for any gaps in his mental armor, anything to overthrow this medieval superstition. “So how does this work? You’re describing what is essentially a shadow life-form that has gone undetected on Earth for, what? Centuries?”

  “Millennia,” he says without skipping a beat.

  Adriana says, “Not undetected. Overlooked. Misunderstood.”

  And I nod, appreciating the distinction she's making.

  “Yes.”

  “Fear has been the greatest weapon of the vampire,” Vladimir says as the door again rattles, shaking with the violence of someone pounding on the thick timber. The storm lashes the small cottage. Howls of anguish pierce the night, and I am hard pressed to attribute them to the wind.

  The two brothers sit on the table with their legs resting on chairs. They’re silent, listening to our conversation. One of them holds a rifle, the other a knife. And I struggle to dispel the notion they expect the door to come crashing in at any moment and so are ready to fight.

  “Ignorance has been our undoing,” Adriana says.

  “So what is it?” I ask, even though it feels unnatural to speak of my wife using a neutral pronoun.

  Vladimir says, “The vampire is older than civilization, having haunted us through every age.”

  “Now, I have a problem with that concept,” I say, not meaning to sound defiant, but picking up on what I think of as a flaw in the logic. “Like any epidemic, the prevalence of vampires would have to wax and wane.”

  Turning to Joe, I say, “Think about polio or smallpox prior to vaccination, and how these diseases moved through population centers, culling the herd.”

  “Exponential growth,” Joe says, picking up on my thinking. “Yes, he’s right. If there are vampires, they should go through cycles of boom and bust, just like any other disease. They couldn’t help but become exposed as they spread through a population. And once they exhaust local resources, they’ll slump, just like viral outbreaks.”

  Vladimir smiles.

  Being a doctor, Adriana understands what we’re describing. Using terminology and concepts we're familiar with, she says, “But this is not a disease that spreads unchecked like a virus. It’s an intelligence. The vampire is not a contagion, passing from one person to the next and multiplying as it spreads, it’s a predator, a creature of unspeakable terror.”

  Footsteps pound on the roof, distracting me for a moment, and I glance up at the rafters, but these are not the steps of a human, there’s a pattern to them, a surge of motion characteristic of quadrupeds. Wolves.

  “Go on,” Joe says, gesturing for Adriana to continue.

  “A creature?” I ask, not meaning to interrupt, but wanting clarification. “Creature singular? So there’s just one of these things?”

  Vladimir says, “Legend speaks of many. They are led by Nosferatu, lord of the vampires.”

  “And Jane is now one of them? One of these vampires?” Joe asks, clarifying what I know is true but dare not confess myself.

  “Yes,” Vladimir replies.

  “How?” I ask. “Was she bitten?”

  “All that is required is touch,” Vladimir says. “The vampire may bite, but it is not necessary. Any physical contact allows energy to flow.”

  “Vampires are intelligent,” Adriana says. “They are not driven to multiply, but to survive, and so this creature in the ruins, she hides.”

  “Hides?” I say, looking at Joe. “Why?”

  Adriana shakes her head softly. Vladimir is quiet.

  Joe asks a good question, “Maybe it's waiting for something?”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  Vladimir says, “We know so little, and our ignorance only increases its strength. My forefathers have fought these monsters since the thirteen hundreds, passing on what they have learned from father to son.”

  I rub the grit forming in the corners of my eyes, desperately wanting to develop a coherent understanding of what we’re dealing with.

  “And it can switch bodies?” I ask, still using the word “it” as a description of the vampire instead of “she,” or “he.”

  That this unholy creature can switch so easily between identities is unnerving. At any given time, it is impossible to tell where the vampire is beyond following a trail of dead bodies.

  “What?” Joe asks, surprised by the notion. “So vampires can swap bodies?”

  “Yes. They steal bodies from both the living and the dead,” Adriana says.

  I get up and grab my bag, pulling the ragged copy of Dracula from the side pouch along with the notes I made while listening to the recording Jane made when she confronted Jasmine Halter.

  “So all this,” I say, holding up the novel.

  Adriana completes my sentence, saying, “It is an attempt to expose the monster.”

  Sitting down again, I unfold my notes, scanning them briefly.

  “Jane spoke to it,” I say, feeling a knot form in my throat. �
�She recorded her conversation. This was before—must have been before she… she died.”

  Those words.

  Grief wells up in my heart, threatening to overwhelm me, but I push on. I have to. For Jane.

  Reading her last words aloud, I get a glimpse into the courage Jane had in facing such evil alone. She must have felt she had no other option. Who would believe her? I am ashamed to think I would have tried to talk her out of such nonsense. And yet now I’m proud of how brave she was. She refused to back down in the face of terror.

  Taking a deep breath, I say, “The vampire spoke of itself in the plural. Jane… my Jane asked a housewife, a normal goddamn housewife, Who are you?”

  In that moment, the storm eases and a calm descends on the cottage. The rain still falls, but the fury of the storm abates. It is as though the creature is listening, waiting for the reply, and I cannot help but feel we are being watched.

  Tears fall from my eyes as I continue, quoting from the recording. “Who am I? My name is legion, for we are many.”

  “Many?” Joe says as thunder breaks overhead, shaking the cottage.

  “It’s a quote,” I say, refusing to be intimidated by the storm. “From the Bible. From the New Testament. Christ confronts a man among the tombs. He’s possessed. And the demon says, My name is legion, for we are many.”

  In a soft voice, Vladimir says, “Interesting,” and I can see he’s holding himself back from saying anything else, not wanting to cut me off.

  “Ah,” I say, pausing for a second as I gather my thoughts. “According to the scripture, the demon possessed two thousand pigs and drove them into a river or a lake or something, drowning them.”

  “Two thousand?” Adriana asks, as surprised by the number as I was when I first read that section in the Gospel of Mark.

  “Do you think this is significant?” I ask of Vladimir.

  Vladimir doesn’t rush to answer. He’s thinking, weighing all he knows against what I’ve just said.

  “We have seen the creature spread,” he finally says. “But never on that scale. Never more than four or five at a time. The masters keep them close.”

  “Bodyguards,” Joe says.

  “The sisters,” I say, pointing at my tattered copy of Dracula. “And Lucy.”

  “Yes,” Vladimir replies, with that one lone word capturing generations of learning slowly accumulating within his family.

  Adriana says, “Vampires need a host. They can revive the dead to gain an empty shell, but only within three days. A living host must be displaced.”

  “Swapped,” I say, remembering Jane's cryptic notes about the chain of transmission she followed to Jasmine Halter.

  “Yes,” Adriana replies.

  “You said it hides,” Joe says, reviving an earlier point as he addresses Adriana.

  “Yes.”

  “Risk mitigation,” I say, understanding what Joe is getting at. “If there are thousands of them, they could spread to thousands of people.”

  “That would avoid the limitations of a single presence,” Joe says.

  “But increases the risk of detection,” I say, completing his thought. “As that’s the sort of thing epidemiologists would pick up on in a heartbeat.”

  “So the creature is balancing risk,” Joe replies. “Avoiding attention. Spreading only so long as it can remain hidden.”

  “Yes,” Vladimir replies.

  Thunder breaks overhead yet again, shaking not only the building but my bones. I cannot help but think the vampire is listening, raging against us, incensed by our reasoning. Rain pounds the roof, coming down in waves, surging as the storm rolls through the tiny village.

  Joe doesn’t seem bothered by the weather. He says, “Living for thousands of years, such a creature would have plenty of opportunity to adapt its strategy to suit the times, fluctuating depending on cultural awareness.”

  “Yes,” I say. “If there’s lots of fear and ignorance.”

  “Spread wide,” Joe says, completing the thought.

  “Rational thought,” I say.

  “Consolidate,” he replies. Joe shakes his head, saying, “Damn. We’re fighting what amounts to an intelligent virus, one that can spread with ease but seeks to evade detection.”

  Adriana says, “The creature comes out fighting only when cornered.”

  “But why this strategy?” I ask, hoping this is the question on everyone’s mind.

  “Maybe it’s a parasite?” Joe replies. “Maybe it’s unable to exist outside of a host and so is threatened by us, knowing we would eradicate it.”

  Adriana says, “Vampires know no pity.”

  “We are vermin to them,” Vladimir says. “Nothing but rats. In their eyes, we are a plague on this world.”

  “To them,” I say, agreeing with the old man. “We’re pests.”

  Adriana puts it more bluntly.

  “We’re food.”

  “So how do we kill it?” Joe asks. “I mean, should we be grabbing garlic and a crucifix?”

  “Garlic, yes,” Adriana says. “It overwhelms the vampire’s acute sense of smell. But a crucifix? No. That is part of the myth.”

  Joe asks, “So they suffer from some kind of anaphylactic shock?”

  “Garlic is nauseating to them, interrupting their senses, which means they can’t track you.”

  “How is that possible?” Joe asks. “How can the vampire heighten the senses of its host?”

  “We know not,” Vladimir replies, “but we have observed that it does.”

  “What about daylight?” I ask.

  “Again,” Adriana replies. “Effective as a distraction due to the creature's hypersensitivity, but not fatal.”

  “So no crumbling to dust in the sunlight, or anything like that?” I ask.

  “No. They simply put on sunglasses,” she says with a smile. “Nasty sunburn, yes. But no burning to ashes.”

  “Why come back here?” I ask. “I mean, Jane encountered this creature in America. Why has it returned to Europe?”

  “Swapping many bodies weakens the vampire,” Vladimir says. “There is something in the soil, something about Transylvania, something not found anywhere else on Earth, and so it returns. Sometimes only once in a generation, but evil always comes home. Once it has gained its strength, it will seek to flee. As we know its current form, it will abandon the body of your wife and seek another identity. And then it will set both time and space between us, fleeing to the far corners of Earth and waiting decades before arising. And yet it cannot resist the blood lust. It will kill again and again, but it will hide its tracks, avoiding detection.”

  “So we kill it by driving a stake through its heart?” Joe asks.

  “Yes, but the body must be burned. You cannot risk touching the vampire. Even after death, the creature is dangerous. Whereas we die within a few minutes of being starved of oxygen, the vampire can lie dormant for days before death ensues.”

  As much as it pains me to admit it, I say, “So tomorrow, we kill my wife?”

  “Yes,” Vladimir says. Adriana can’t maintain eye contact. She looks away. She must see the failing glimmer in my eyes, the realization that my wife is gone. My heart breaks, but I know what must be done.

  Vladimir rises from his seat, saying, “Sleep. We rise early to continue the hunt.”

  I nod, exhausted after a long, torturous day, wondering what madness tomorrow holds.

  Chapter 2:06 — Alan

  I’m not sure what time I wake, but it's dark. The house is deathly still. The storm has passed. Starlight creeps through cracks in the boarded up windows, catching specks of dust drifting in the air.

  Quietly, I step over Joe lying on the floor beside the fireplace. My bladder is bursting. There’s no running water and the outhouse is off-limits during the hours of darkness, but Vladimir left us a night bucket in the washroom. Feeling my way with my hands, I pass the couch, and then the kitchen table, and make my way to the washroom beside the main door.

  With no light, I d
are not stand for fear of missing, and so I crouch with my hands perched on the sides of the plastic bucket, trying to avoid resting all my weight on the sides in case it collapses. After relieving myself, I rinse my hands in the pool of water resting in the sink, trying not to think about sanitary issues and the ease of bacteria spreading. We have bigger problems than hygiene.

  The cottage is quiet. Too quiet.

  The doors to the bedrooms are open, something that culturally would never happen in North America, but I guess that’s normal for this part of Europe. I expect to hear snoring or the rustle of someone turning over in the night, but there’s nothing, not even the faint sound of breathing. It’s as though I’m in a crypt rather than a home.

  I peer in one of the bedrooms, wanting to dispel the irrational fear welling up within, simply to assure myself there is life in this house, and not death. In the grainy half-light, I see someone curled up on a mattress on the floor. The mattress has been pushed up against the far wall to make space in the tiny room. I want to wake them, if only to convince myself I’m not alone. An unnatural sleep has fallen upon the house, and I feel the hair raising on the back of my neck in the eerie silence.

  In the quiet, I can hear scratching like that of a raccoon or an opossum. Curious, I step slowly around the table, taking pains not to bump any of the chairs in the darkness. Floorboards creak as I tiptoe across the room.

  The small window beside the main door is the only window not sealed by shutters. A long, thin sheet of glass is set into an aging wooden frame. Barely half a foot wide, the glass runs from waist height to the ceiling, affording a glimpse outside.

  The glass pane is old, distorting the view slightly and revealing the imperfections from when it was formed easily a hundred years ago. The scratching sound is the lever moving with the wind outside. Somehow, the window has become unhitched, and the lever is free to slide against the wooden sill as the wind shifts.

  A perfectly logical explanation is precisely what I need to set my mind at ease, and I slip the catch on the window, pinning the frame in place.