The Darkening Dream (15 page)

He froze. Set into the cobblestones, a rusty iron grate covered the entrance to what must be a cellar. All around were muddy footprints. Alex knew he shouldn’t be doing this alone, but he was too wound up to stop now. Besides, monster hunting wasn’t so hard. What did Grandfather do but sit in his library?

With as much care as he could manage, he lifted the heavy grate to the side. His clothes were already filthy, so it didn’t bother him to lie in the mud and peer into the opening. An old coal chute, by the looks of it. A lead-coated ramp led down into darkness. He pulled his hunting knife out of his small bag and jammed the sheath through his belt. Thus prepared, he lowered himself into the underworld.

The ramp was slippery, and he almost lost his balance, but by bracing his arms against the walls he stayed upright. While he caught his breath, he heard shuffling, accompanied by off-key singing.

Alex crept forward, bit his tongue and stopped when his knees banged into something hard.

The singing paused, then resumed. Soon, he heard a soft metallic sound and saw a dim light ahead. An opening revealed a cavernous room, where the small man squatted next to a rivulet of dark water, humming a low tuneless song. Beside him were an old oil lantern and a pile of small wet forms. Rats, barely alive. The man picked up a brick and smashed a rodent’s head with a nasty wet smack.

Then the man, this real-life Caliban, stopped humming, brought the rat to his mouth and gnawed for a minute or two, then flung it away. Alex heard it splash in the distance. The man’s small mouth was smeared with dark blood. Tiny white teeth gleamed.

Alex shifted to get a better view. He felt his knife slip through his belt. It clattered on the stone floor.

The man snuffed his lamp and the basement was plunged into darkness.

Alex snatched up his blade, leapt to his feet, and bolted for the only thing he could see: the coal shaft, now lit by the first light of morning. He hit the ramp running. His momentum and a few scavenged footholds carried him up and out into the alley. He paused to kick the grate back in place, then sprinted down the alley and onto the street. He jogged toward town, slowing only as his mud-stained form joined the early morning risers along a busier road. The sun greeted him like a long lost friend.

Fifteen:

I Smell a Rat

Salem, Massachusetts, Thursday, October 30, 1913

“
I
WAS THINKING…”
S
ARAH’S
father leaned into her room as she packed for school.

“How unusual.”

“Touché.” He smiled. “That new friend of yours, the Greek boy? You mentioned that his father is also a historian, specializing in the late Byzantine.”

Just like Papa to forget personal details but remember the academic.

“His name’s Alex, and he lives with his grandfather — I think his name’s Constantine — the antiquarian.”

“I’d like to meet this young man,” Papa said. “I was going to suggest we invite the boy and his
grandfather
over for dinner. How about Friday, November seventh?”

She was dying to meet the mysterious Constantine, having tried to peer into the house several times. The most evidence she’d seen of his existence was Dmitri’s goat pen. She was
not
dying to subject Alex to her parents’ scrutiny.

“I don’t know.”

“Try to contain your enthusiasm, Sarah.”

“I’ll ask him, but Alex’s grandfather is really old, so he might not want to travel, and we can’t very well eat over there. Which is a shame, because it sounds like they collect all sorts of wonderful things.”

“It’s settled, then. I’ll tell your mother.”

This morning Sarah had awakened thinking she heard the horn again. In her half-sleeping state she’d sensed something below her in the dark, something nasty and wet, but both sound and vision had slipped away when she looked at the pale dawn glow outside the window.

“Papa,” she said. “Why do we blow the ram’s horn on New Year’s?” With the holiday only a month past, she hoped the question seemed innocuous.

Papa kissed his fingers and pressed them to the
mezuzah
on the doorframe.

“On
Rosh Hashanah
, the blowing of the
shofar
celebrates the coronation of God and the anniversary of creation.”

Her horn hadn’t seemed very celebratory. “Is that the only reason?”

“Do you have a year to add to your studies?”

“Papa!”

“Sorry. The blowing of the ram’s horn reminds us of the
Akedah
, the binding of Isaac, where Abraham demonstrated his absolute faith in agreeing to sacrifice his son. But God provided the Ram in the Thicket and spared Isaac, allowing the ram to die in his place. This exchange forged the covenant with our people.”

“The sound of the horn comes from
Hashem
?”

“Always. The
shofar
blast also recalls the trumpet blown by Moses at Mount Sinai, forged from a horn of the very ram sacrificed by Abraham. The Ram in the Thicket is eternal, one of ten special things God made on the eve of creation.”

“If Moses used one horn from the ram, what about the other?”

“And in that day, a great ram’s horn shall be sounded—”

“Isaiah 27:13,” Sarah said.

“That’s my daughter.” He looked from her to the
mezuzah
and back again. “The Archangel Gabriel will bring that Horn to Elijah, and with it, the prophet shall sound the End of Days.”

Sarah was distracted on the way to school and didn’t find her focus until Alex told them all about the incident in the alley.

“Was this man a vampire?” she added. “He doesn’t sound like Charles.”

Alex shook his head. “As far as I know, when vampires eat they turn… well, you saw. He didn’t do that.”

“Damn,” Sam said, “I should’ve gone to work last night. I’d rather have shared rats with that creep than eaten Aunt Edna’s chicken.”

Anne stayed silent. Sarah tried to make eye contact with her, then gave up and looked at Alex instead.

“You’re sure he isn’t undead?” Sarah asked.

She hadn’t talked to him directly in four days — since the library — but she was going to have to tell him about Papa’s invitation soon.

“He didn’t seem undead,” Alex said. “Remember, vampires actually
are
dead
—
cold and rotting corpses.”

Sarah nodded. She had immersed herself in their lore, such as she could find. It was all pretty awful, but she had to admit that witnessing centuries of history had a certain appeal, if you could ignore the death and murder factor.

“How do they become vampires?”

Alex smiled at her before answering. She felt herself flush.

“I’m not certain,” he said, “but it seems to have something to do with the blood. It’s corrupted. Who knows if it’s the person at all anymore, or if a demon moves in like a squatter in an empty house.”

Something Charles had said tickled Sarah’s brain. “Do they call it the dark gift?”

Alex shot her a look. “I’ll be sure to ask one.”

Sure, mock her God given revelation.

“Well, I think it sounds satanic,” Emily said. “Pastor Parris would say it’s a demon. He’s always warning about letting the devil get a toehold in your soul.”

“Certainly, creatures like what Charles became are evil,” Alex said, “but as to whether they are literally spawn of the devil, I don’t know. There are stories about vampires from ancient Greece, hundreds of years before Jesus. They called them
Lamia
.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” said Anne. “God has always existed. Maybe the devil has, too.”

Sarah listened to them banter. She liked hearing Alex talk, even argue. If she was being honest with herself, she’d also liked when he held her hand.

“The nature of God and the devil,” Alex said, “is unlikely to be resolved today. However, I have a theory about the rat man. Most of the time when a vampire kills a person, that’s it, they’re just dead, but since they’re incapacitated during the day, they need some mechanism for securing human help.”

“Like Renfield in
Dracula
?” Anne asked.

“You read it?” Sam said. “I thought you didn’t believe.”

“I knew when you checked it out from the library you’d never open it.”

“I would have. I just got busy.”

“I read it first—” Emily said.

Sarah cleared her throat. Maybe Anne was starting to come around.

“Anne has a point,” Alex said. “In the novel, Renfield’s a crazy man whose condition Dracula exploits. Perhaps the same is true with the rat man, or maybe a person who’s been fed on multiple times becomes something else, something halfway between human and vampire.”

“Sucking blood — animal or human — is disgusting,” Anne said. “Why am I even talking about this?”

“Because you stick with your own,” Sarah said. “For better or worse.”

Anne crossed her arms. “And I don’t even get a wedding ring out of it.”

“If — and it’s a big if,” Alex said, “this rat man is a vampire
sykophántes
, then maybe he knows his master’s location.”

“Psycho-what?” Sam asked.

“He means sycophant, a slavish person,” Sarah said. “Alex is just saying the rat man might know how to find the vampire.”

The five of them gathered in the alley as the sun began to set. A breeze off the harbor carried the chill of oncoming winter, and Sarah was happy she’d chosen a heavy wool jacket and skirts. She pulled her hat down as low as she could and tucked herself into a boarded-up doorway, hidden from the rat man’s grate.

Alex joined her, but she wished he’d chosen the other side. He opened his mouth to say something, and she put a finger to her lips, pointing at the grate. Clearly being invited to a family dinner had just egged him on.

He reached into his jacket and withdrew a four-inch wooden cross adorned with a grotesque ivory Jesus. Sarah waved it away, not even wanting to touch it with her gloves. He got the message and fished out a brown glass vial instead.

She eyed it warily.

“It won’t bite,” he whispered. “It’s just holy water.”

She sighed and took the bottle. Hopefully no one prayed to baptismal fonts.

As soon as the sunset began to fade, the grate rattled, and a small figure heaved itself onto the cobblestones. She hoped his willingness to brave the twilight was a sign he was still among the living.

Either someone made a noise or the rat man could smell them, because after a moment he crouched, sniffed the air, then bolted down the narrow alley.

Sam leapt out of his hiding place and threw himself onto the figure.

The stranger hissed and squirmed beneath his captor.

“Let me go, foul foal. Off of me you big offal. Master make mincemeat of you!” He spoke in such a bizarre blend of English and Greek that Alex was likely to be the only one to fully understand.

“What master?” demanded Alex in Greek. “
Vrykolakas
?”

“Luckless Nicolai, moorish master no want, send noxious Negros beat him big. Nicolai would serve the master for endless eternity, gallons of gold, limitless lifetime, he promised. Nicolai faithful.”