The Vorrh

by Brian Catling

  By the time she arrived home, she was exhausted. She wanted to wrap herself in the darkness of the bedsheets and banish all visual memory, to remember only the luxurious depth of her stored library of touch, sound, and scent.

  —

  Mutter began to fuss around Ghertrude. It was out of character and grotesque, and she could see straight through it. He was delighted that she had come home alone and did not even want to know why.

  Her annoyance quickly turned to indifference as she felt a tickling movement in her abdomen; something tiny, not a kick—it was far too early for that—but something uncurling, becoming awake after a long period of hibernation.

  She left Mutter fluttering in the hall, like a heavy, damp moth without a flame. She went to her bedroom to rest, to hold herself tight and to pray that this was not really happening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Dr. Hoffman was walking across the city. He had been called to the house of August Daren, one of Essenwald’s richest businessmen, who had demanded his presence immediately. Daren’s wife had been attacked in the street by a mob of delinquents, who had pulled her from her carriage. He was furious, demanding the criminals be brought to a rough, instant, and painful justice. He ranted so much about the perpetrators that he forgot to mention any of his wife’s injuries, and Hoffman had no idea which instruments and medications to bring. Hurriedly, he had shoved a handful of this and a handful of that into his stoutest Gladstone bag. It would not do for him to get on the wrong side of August Daren, especially now that his life had taken such a turn towards prosperity.

  The Touch, or “Fang-dick-krank” as it had become known, was sweeping the city. It was said that it first came from the touch of miracle: the laying on of hands, the purification of the unclean and the malformed. Then it turned malevolent, eccentric, and dangerous. Qualities of kindness were exchanged for vengeance. Some who had been outcast because of their disability had turned malicious after they were healed, and their magic touch was passed on as a curse. They fingered the healthy, and the healthy became impaired; they then carried the taint, not knowing if their touch would injure or aid. It cut them off from their families and friends, making it their turn to become outcasts. A terrible fear of contact spread through the city, locking its inhabitants into themselves, hands in pockets, walking quickly away from all others.

  The Touch had become so random that it reached fanatic proportions, causing a plague of the injured and the healed to spread chaotically throughout all of Essenwald. It wreaked havoc among the promiscuous, ruined families and made treatment virtually impossible. It changed social decorum on all levels, and in a city based on commerce, where guilds and classes were firmly demarcated by etiquette and formal social meetings, things started to fray when the niceties were removed. The shaking of hands was no longer a reasonable form of greeting; more arcane forms of meeting were now fashionable: Bowing and heel clicking had returned, as had arm crossing the chest with a clenched fist, which had not been seen in civilised communities since the Roman Empire. A Teutonic rigidity had returned to this far-flung outpost of a long-dead empire, one that had until then prided itself in stepping away from stiff ancestral history and revelled in its “modern” outlook.

  The blacks and the poor were devastated by the Touch. Their ranks exchanged overnight, the sick becoming bright, the clean becoming ill. A great madness rose out of the confusion, and the growing wave of paranoiac fear was far greater than the actual number of those genuinely injured.

  Hoffman had become quite the authority on the Touch, the causes and possible treatments. He told his patients, the Timber Guild, and other municipal authorities that he had carried out extensive research in his private laboratory and was making steady progress towards a cure of the dreadful blight. In truth, he had carried out a few botched autopsies, treated some of the afflicted with prodigious doses of barbiturates, and questioned some chained prisoners that the police—whom he was now working closely with—brought to him to be examined. His major discovery was that the phenomenon was in decline. This he told nobody, but doubled his extensive efforts to find a cure. He even injected some of the “carriers” with a serum of his own design and had them released into the community to help stave off the flow of the malicious disorder. With his usual cunning, he would ride his unexpected nag home to a glorious victory of science over evil. He had always been lucky with outsiders, and this one was made of gold.

  His status in the community was growing steadily, and he no longer needed to practise the little bits of unorthodoxy that used to perk up his income. In fact, the less said about those, the better. They, and his business with Maclish, nagged at him. Such practices were yawning bear pits along his successful path of achievement, and he wished they could be spirited away or else be filled in with some amnesiac aggregate. The Tulp girl’s knowledge of the Orm had rattled him; it was a step too close to downfall. The subsequent fiasco with the wretched creature they had mistakenly dragged out of the Vorrh had made the whole situation even worse. The Lohr woman was very well connected: A word in the right place could dislodge all his achievements. He knew it was only the concealment of their one-eyed friend that kept those words from being spoken. His knowledge of the cyclops’s existence protected him.

  His association with Maclish was proving troublesome, and it worried at his confidence; the irascible Scot was far beneath him now and unpredictable in his mood swings. Moreover, the thug always blamed him when something went wrong. And wrong was an understatement: They had now used the Orm nine times, and two of those had gone seriously awry. He still believed that the savaging of the Klausen hag had been the Orm’s first outing, and it had led the police straight to his door. All these troubles gnawed at him as he strode purposefully on, towards his undiagnosed patient. His priorities needed to be refocused, and he made his mind up to rid himself of this handful of anxieties as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He was clever enough to silence the women with guile and threat, but the keeper was another matter. That cat would have to be skinned another way.

  Maclish was going to be honoured. The guild had invited him and his wife to a special dinner, to mark the company’s increase in productivity; his workforce was the greatest contributor to it, and it was cheaper to give an honour than to award a raise.

  Mrs. Maclish hadn’t been to anything quite so formal for a long time, and she was feeling apprehensive. The bulge of new life was just beginning to show, and she was mildly troubled that it made her look plump, rather than pregnant. They were dressing in the bedroom: he, fumbling and cursing with a collar stud; she, turning and glancing at herself in the full-length mirror of the wardrobe.

  “William, which do you think: the blue or the green?”

  “I only just bought ye the blue one; wear that.”

  “Yes, but which do you think is best for tonight? The green is more my colour.”

  “Then why did we buy the blue?” he said crossly, as the stud sprang from his fingers and disappeared under the bed. He cursed and crawled after it, his shiny black dress trousers ruffling up the small carpet. She ignored his response.

  “It’s a choice between them, though; I only have the two.”

  “Thank Christ for that, or we would be here all night!” he said from under the bed, his voice humming strangely in the resonance of the china chamberpot. He found the stud and crawled out to start pulling at his collar again.

  Marie Maclish was not normally a woman to engage with such coquettish uncertainty; the rest of her stern life was run on simple facts and basic commodities, but she was enjoying herself. This little charade of choice took her back to the Highlands, to her grandmother’s house and the girls’ play of dressing up in women’s lives.

  He had finished with the collar but his twisted tie looked limp and apologetic. He was admiring it, when she laughed.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “What? Oh, William, look at the state of it!”

  “The state of what?”


  She put the dresses down and went over to adjust the tie, smiling playfully. He bristled at her touch. The more she pulled, the more he stiffened. As her smile fizzled out, his warmth drained away.

  “It was perfectly fine, woman; now it’s a mess,” he said, pushing her fingers away. “We haven’t got time for this—we can’t be late.”

  She said nothing and went back to her dresses; they seemed shrunken and indifferent. He looked over his shoulder.

  “Where’s the blue?” he said, against the fret of disappointment that was filling the room. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about; it’s not you they will all be watching tonight,” he concluded, grabbing his coat and yanking the door open.

  She watched him disappear out of the room. After a few static moments, she dressed and went down to wait beside him for the arrival of the car to take them to the celebration. She looked graceful and quiet, standing in front of the house, her hair and eyes accentuated by the green of the dress, her husband too caught up and curt to notice.

  —

  The doctor waited for ten long minutes after the headlights of the car had vanished from the road. Then he made his way to the reinforced door of the slave house, letting himself in with a set of keys that nobody knew he had. He put his bag down on the central table and lifted the bundle out. He was just about to strike the gong when he heard a footfall on the metal stair. He turned to see the herald of the Limboia descending slowly, a vacant grin on his face.

  “For Orm?” said the herald in flat, dead tones.

  “Yes,” said the doctor nervously. He had never been here without Maclish, and the place and these creatures unnerved him. His skin crawled every time he came close to the herald.

  “What to do?” it asked.

  The doctor explained the specific requirements of the task and how it must be done. “You won’t need a scent or a trace this time,” he insisted, and the herald seemed to agree.

  “This time seeing one stays, stays till after.”

  The doctor thought for a moment, nodded, picked up his bag, and left. The herald tenderly picked up the bundle and held it to his chest.

  That was that. Now he would talk to the insolent Tulp girl and hush her defiance; she was in no position to argue, not in her condition. He made an appointment to call on her and was surprised at the address. He had never been to 4 Kühler Brunnen but knew of it; he had conducted business by association and at a distance with it. Why did she live there? Surely it was not a property owned by her father or some other member of her significant family?

  He had mentioned the Tulps, and indeed the Lohr family, while treating August Daren’s wife, who, it transpired, was a victim of the Touch, the right side of her body being mildly paralysed, as if by electric shock. It was then that he had the idea of treating the afflicted with generated bursts of galvanic energy. It had worked for Mesmer; why not for him? A combination of shock and barbiturates would have them flapping their pocketbooks at him like performing birds; all that wonderful equipment he would be able to buy to furnish his experiments: Van de Graaff generators; spinning wheels; sparks and the scent of ozone; copper wires, glass wires; porcelain resistors like giant shining pearls. His laboratory would look magnificent. As soon as he got these distasteful matters out of the way, he could begin.

  “The Tulps are new blood, second-generation merchants made good,” Daren had told him. “Lowlanders from Leiden, or maybe Delft originally. Good businessmen with an ambition to become burghers. Three generations away from gentry, if we let ’em. Now, the Lohrs are quite different; here before mine, they were; old wealth. Comparable to emperors, they were; unlimited funds.” Daren sat back in his chair in awe of that amount of worldly ownership, believing that the Tulps probably viewed him with a similar reverence. He roused himself at the thought of the Lohr family demise. “A bit gone to seed now, though,” he added, with the tiniest relish of spite. “Just that strange daughter to run all that wealth and influence here in the old country.”

  The doctor was absorbing every word, weighing every gram of possibility.

  “Did you know she was born blind?” asked Daren.

  “I have had some knowledge of her case, but I am unable to speak of it, you understand,” lied the doctor.

  “Oh yes, of course!” said Daren, without a moment’s doubt, his finger coming to rest on his closed lips.

  Maclish had relaxed his strict social rules and accepted some wine in the name of self-congratulation. After many dry, disciplined years, he drank it in toasts to various companions, who stood and drank to him in return, with words of extreme gratitude. Nobody had ever said such things, and he had no defence. He swam in the flood stream of it, basking after the third glass and hugging his wife ferociously after the fifth; at least he thought it was his wife. By brandy, he was slipping back into his origins, where all sorts of vermin and jokers waited to greet him. Marie had been escorted to a seat four rooms away and sat in the middle of her worst nightmare, with the herd of directors’ wives. She had nothing in common with the women and nothing to say, and they all knew it. What was more, she feared William was on a steep decline, and she was not with him to steer the outcome. She hoped he might collapse, that he might pass out before his long-sleeping fangs came out. The prospect snapped her to sense and she acted without stopping to think, cleverly approaching the most senior Frauen.

  “I do apologise, but I am afraid that my husband has not taken his medicine,” she announced in such a strong, music-hall Scottish accent that it surprised even her. “Please, I must go to him.”

  Allowing a wife to intrude on the gentlemen’s part of the evening was unheard of, but it seemed a matter of severe need, so a maid was called and told to take Mrs. Maclish to the hall of the gentlemen’s room. Marie bowed, fluttering and thanking those present until she was outside the room. Then she clicked into action, running through the corridors with the astonished maid in tow. Outside the smoky door, she told the maid what to do and made herself scarce. The lowly accomplice waited for her to leave, then knocked at the heavy door. Eventually, a bleary man opened it, seeming surprised to find anybody there.

  “Please, sir!” the maid said. “Mrs. Maclish has been taken poorly; she needs to talk to her husband about her pills.”

  “Missus who?” spluttered the man.

  “Mrs. Maclish, the guest wife.”

  “Oh, oh, of course,” said the man, vanishing back into the room. After a prolonged time, during which the sound of moving furniture and broken glass fanfared his arrival, the soggy head of Maclish came around the door. There were no fangs, just a stupid grin. His concealed wife peered around the corner to make sure the coast was clear; then, at her command, they both pounced and dragged him out of the door and across the hall. Mercifully, there was no resistance, and the three of them staggered towards the entrance and the waiting automobile.

  The door to the courtyard was curiously open. With no servant to show him in, Hoffman walked himself to the front steps of the house and rang the bell. Almost instantly, Ghertrude was there, shaking his hand and inviting him to enter. The interior was blank, without sign of individual arrangement, yet the proportions were pleasant and well kept.

  “Is this your house, Mistress Tulp?” he asked.

  “No, Doctor, it belongs to a friend,” she answered, with a modest smile.

  She took him through to a reception room that smelt a little musty and unused. He stood in the centre of it, smiling uncomfortably.

  “May I offer you a sherry?” she asked.

  “That would be delightful!” he said, tucking his Gladstone behind the chair while she went to the cabinet. It was in his best interests to keep the bag and its contents out of her way.

  “Please, take a seat,” she said, returning with the brimming glasses.

  He settled himself and enthusiastically took the sherry. “I have often walked past this house and wondered who lived here,” he fished. “It must be one of the oldest houses in the city.” He sipped his she
rry and looked around admiringly.

  “Yes, it is one of the older properties,” she answered, without much interest. “The basement is even older; it still has the old well.”

  “Hence its name,” he said.

  “Yes, hence its name.”

  There was a pause of silence, while she fingered her delicate pearl necklace and he stared into his diminished glass. She poured him another and sat back.

  “What may I do for you, Dr. Hoffman?”

  Her directness pleased him: He could have this matter cleared up in time for dinner.

  “Firstly, my dear, I wanted to apologise for that distasteful business at the slave house. I am afraid my colleagues are not the brightest of men.” He paused for a moment to truly engage her eyes. “And your description of your curious friend was a little, shall we say, vague?”

  She showed no expression and sipped from her glass. He drained his in a single gulp and set it noisily on the glass top of a small side table.

  “Anyway, it’s all taken care of now, and we can begin again to look for…Ishmael, was it?”

  “Thank you, Doctor, but that’s not necessary. Mistress Lohr and I no longer wish to engage your services.”

  Hoffman bristled. How dare she speak to him like a common tradesperson? He was just about to comment when she continued.

  “We no longer feel it necessary to go searching for him; he will surely make his way out of the Vorrh in his own time.” The doctor was speechless, and she decided to use his silence to press the point. “We were curious, though, Doctor: How did you manage to get such a monster out in the first place?”