It did my heart good to see familiar sights of Wisborg again, even if they had been changed in the four years I had been away in the war. Returning to the house I had been born in, that my great grandfather Thomas Hutter had bought when he had wed his first wife, Ellen.
I turned onto the steps and before I could even think about knocking the door flew open and my father Heinrich was there.
“Come in, come in,” he beckoned me. I had no sooner cleared the threshold and the old man slammed the door behind me.
Before I could ask about his odd behaviour, he was calling to rest of the household. “It’s Kurt, he has returned from the war.”
Suddenly, the entrance hall was crammed with people as my sister Liesel, my brother Frederick and his wife Marta, carrying young Johan, all joined my father to crush in to greet me. I caught a glimpse of my mother behind them.
There was a cacophony of sound as they all spoke to me at once. Suddenly, I was back on the front line of the Somme with English and French soldiers going over the top and charging our position.
The hands of my loved ones reaching to greet me became those of a desperate English soldier reaching for my throat as the battle left us both holding empty firearms. The Tommy soldier was here in my house trying to finish the job and kill me. Now, as then, I froze in terror as I felt my life ebb away and it faded to black.
It was with a gasp that I awoke, my hands trying to tear the ghostly remnants of the Tommy’s fingers from my throat. But there was no Tommy soldier, just my dear mother sitting beside the bed. It was like I was ten again and she was ministering me through an illness.
Seeing I was awake, she left the room and in a few moments my father came in. “My son, in our joy at your return we have overwhelmed you and you fainted.” I could hear the fear and concern in his voice.
He sat on the edge of the bed and patted my hand. “Take your time, rest. Your sister is cooking dinner, come down when you feel ready.”
He rose and kissed me on the forehead. Just as he did when I was a boy. He tousled my hair and left the room.
I remained on the mattress for a few moments waiting for another ghostly apparition to try and haunt me. When none came, I rose slowly. I nearly tripped over my kitbag, which I kicked under the bed. I made my way to the window and looked at the empty street and derelict house across the road. There were stories about that house. My friend Rudy’s father would tell of the Nosferatu that lived there around the fire on camping trips. A vile vampire with the pale skin of the dead, bald head, two sharpened rat’s teeth protruding from his lips, and claws on the ends of his fingers that would tear you apart. Naturally, the Nosferatu, Count Orlok, would eat naughty boys and girls.
It was just a story to scare the children, Frederick and Marta were telling the story to my nephew before I left. No doubt I will tell it to my own children. I stared at the darkened window directly opposite mine for a few minutes as I imagined my future with Brigid, who I had been courting before the war.
I was roused from my reverie, as I caught what I thought was a pale figure moving in the derelict house. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, and I could find nothing in the Stygian darkness through the window. The scare today had made me more susceptible than usual, if I thought there was a vampire roaming around across the road.
I made my way downstairs and joined my family for dinner. The meal was more subdued than I remembered before I left. Frederick and my father would debate the latest decision of the bürgermeister or some other affair of the day. Now we all chewed our food in silence.
I assume that the rest of the family was as relieved as I was when the silence was broken by the shouting of the local constable. Together we rose, the scraping of the chairs on our wooden floor the only sound. We crowded around the window to watch as the officer made his way to us.
“The Spanish Flu has arrived!” he cried. “Stay at home except to buy food.”
The placard strapped around his neck was hard to read in the streetlights. But he stopped out the front of the house and I finally deciphered the sign: “The hospital is closed to all but emergencies!” With that he rang his bell and moved along the street.
We all stared at each other. I had heard of the Spanish Flu and from the worried looks on my family’s faces they had, too. We were stuck in the house until further notice. Everyone drifted away to their rooms.
I retreated to the library and poured myself a brandy from the bottle my father keeps, the good stuff that he doesn’t think we children know about. As I sipped it, I looked through the titles on the shelves. The Tanakh, The Jewel of the Seven Stars, Alraune, Gespensterbuch, and several adventure books by Karl May. Nothing that really caught my fancy. Then I saw it.
A tatty little volume with an odd title, Of Vampires, Terrible Ghosts, Magic and the Seven Deadly Sins. My grandfather told me that his father Thomas Hutter had brought it with him from Transylvania in 1838.
I had seen enough of the horrors that men could inflict on each other, and thought that fairy stories to scare children might be the distraction I needed.
I took the book and the brandy to the big leather reading chair. After a small sip of the alcohol, I opened the book. The first part was titled “The Book of the Vampire”.
“Out of the seed of Belial appeared the Nosferatu who lives and feeds on human Blood!” I read. “He lives in the darkest caves, tombs and coffins. These are filled with the tainted soil from the fields of the Black Death!”
I had heard of Belial, he was mentioned in the Tanakh—many would call him the Devil. It made sense that an evil creature like the Nosferatu would be a creature of the Devil, shunning the light. I read on about how he haunts the dreams of his victims, draining their blood. I knew how he spread disease and pestilence last time he was in Wisborg from the scary tales around the campfire and the family legend of my great-grandmother Ellen, sacrificing herself to destroy the monster, allowing him to drink her blood until the sun rose, disintegrating the creature and stopping the plague.
I flicked ahead to the next section, “The Book of Ghosts”. Before the war, I may have laughed at the idea of spectres but now I’m haunted by the men I killed. They appear in my sleep and sometimes they appear when I am awake. Shellshock, the army doctor called it, after I woke the barracks screaming that a French soldier was trying to bayonet me.
I remembered killing the man. The call had come at dawn that the French were going over the top and the generals in charge decided that we would do the same. I climbed out the trench and ran forward. The Frenchman, barely a man, charged straight at me. I stopped and took aim, the luger bullet flew true and straight through his left eye and exploded out the back of his head. His dying synapses kept the body upright, heading for me. His rifle bayonet drove into my left thigh as he collapsed on me. His ruined face headbutted me as I heard his final breath leave his mouth.
I lost track of time pinned under his dead body, until one of my retreating countrymen found me. I next saw the French soldier staring at me with his one good eye as I lay in the hospital delirious with fever. He appeared again as I walked out of the hospital. He’d disturbed my dreams ever since.
I took a healthy sip of the brandy and continued reading.
“From deeds incomplete rise the revenants. Unable to pierce the veil to the next realm, these spirits haunt the living.
“Some spirits do not realise that they are dead and may continue as if they were still alive.”
I drained the glass and refilled it before I continued.
“Many spectres are harmless and if aided in the resolution of their life’s quest will pass into the next realm and haunt you no longer.
“But one must watch for the Terrible Ghosts! These are vengeful spirits who seek to do ill to the living. They may be kept at bay with a ring of salt. Or dispersed by striking them with iron.”
A chill ran up my spine. I stood up and stoked the fire with the iron poker. With the flames dancing and the room beginning to heat up, I returned to the book.
“But these will only provide a temporary respite from the torments of the terrible ghosts. To stop the hauntings, one must find the Earthly remains of the person and burn them.
“Where this is not possible, one pure of heart may perform the exorcism ritual.”
I was about to turn the page when I heard a noise. A scurrying and scratching in the walls. Rats or other vermin, no doubt. I was about to investigate as my mother appeared.
She would chase me off to bed as I sat up reading late at night. I went to kiss her good night as I always did, when I realised that she was not at dinner earlier, nor had she said a word when I saw her. I looked harder, there was a faint white aura surrounding her. It was then that I remembered the final letter I received from Father in the same dispatch that brought news of the Armistice. With the end of the war, I never opened the letter thinking I would see them all soon enough.
I ran to my room and pulled out the kitbag. The letter was sitting in the outside pocket. My hands trembling, I opened the envelope and confirmed what I suspected. My mother had died a month ago.
My mother was a ghost, looking over her family in death as she had in life.
Eventually, I drifted off to sleep and for the first time in a long time I slept soundly, dreaming only of a picnic with my mother.
I rose feeling refreshed and was surprised to find that it was nearly 2pm. It was a pleasant surprise as I had not slept a solid night for several months, let alone slept through the morning.
I made my way to the kitchen to find Marta just returned from the markets.
She stifled a cough as I walked in. She looked around, embarrassed, and took a sip of water.
I wished her a good day and pretended I had not noticed the cough. I made my way to my nephew, Johan, who was sitting in the corner chewing on a bread crust. He had been born just before I left for the war and the letters that found me gave glimpses of the child growing up. And now I could meet him for the first time. He let loose a whooping cough as I sat beside him.
Marta raced over and picked him up. Patting him on the back, she explained he had a touch of croup. With that she gave him a small spoonful of brandy.
“Poor little man,” I said as I ruffled his hair. I could feel the heat radiating from his scalp.
The boy smiled at me before shyly burying his head in his mother’s shoulder. He didn’t know me, his uncle. Also, he was sick, and I remember that I only wanted my mother when I was unwell.
Just then my father came down the stairs sounding like he was going to cough up his left lung. That was three members of the household coughing. Could they be infected with the Spanish Flu?
Count Orlok’s first appearance brought the plague in 1838, and I saw him again at the same time as I heard the news of the Spanish Flu arriving in Wisborg. It was clear that Count Orlok had risen from the grave on the wings of this new pestilence to threaten my family again. The rats in the walls were proof of that. I had lost so much time with my family, and was struck by the irony of surviving several battles in the war only to come home to lose my family members to the deadly plague spreading around the world.
Marta placed a plate of food before me. I formulated a plan as to how I might tackle this vampire. The idea of returning to combat twisted and turned my stomach and I could barely force down the food, but I was the logical choice. I had no wife or child like my brother, nor was I old and infirm like my father. I could not allow my angel of a mother or Marta to sacrifice themselves to this beast. I had the combat experience to tackle and destroy this monster and the plague he’d brought with him. This was my family legacy; like my great-grandmother Ellen, I must make the sacrifice to save the family.
I barely registered the talk around the table as I excused myself and returned to my room.
I knelt beside my bed and offered a prayer before pulling out the kitbag I had kicked under there the night before. I reached in and pulled out the Nahkampfmesser, my trusty trench knife. The blade had saved my life more than once and I was calling on it now to save my family.
The sheath clipped onto my belt, and I hid it under my jacket. There was no need to worry the family by openly carrying a weapon. I hesitated for a second and returned to the kitbag and pulled another weapon, a French nail. I’d found this in no man’s land, an improvised knife made from the iron stakes that held up the barbwire. It never hurt to have a spare weapon on hand.
There was no need to search for the monster. I had seen him in his old haunt, the abandoned and derelict house directly across the road from my family home. In the last 80- odd years, the house had been bought several times, but no owner stayed long. I remembered Herr Schuler, he came from Berlin and declared that he would renovate the house. It was less than a week later that he fled the house naked. He was nearly unrecognisable as his jet-black hair had turned white overnight and his skin was covered in rat bites and scratches. The poor man had been committed to the local asylum, raving about plague rats and their master.
The town council had debated knocking the building down but the wheels of bureaucracy, that normally spun slow, had seized and frozen, leaving the derelict building to rot.
With weapons secreted on me, I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen pantry where I grabbed a lantern and a packet of matches. When I was 12 or so, I had snuck across the road on a dare and found that the outside light refused to enter its interior. I had no sooner taken three steps and I found myself in deep, inky darkness. I heard a scratching, and something brushed against my legs. I am not ashamed to say that I had turned tail and run out of the house in sheer terror. That was not going to happen again.
The town hall clock struck 3.30pm as I crossed the road. With the Spanish Flu in town nobody was on the street, and I made my way to the building unseen. The front door hung off its hinges and scraped on the floor as I pushed it open enough to admit me. Again, I made it only three steps and the light refused to follow as the darkness enveloped me. I lit the lamp expecting it to illuminate most of the room, but the light struggled to shine more than a foot in front of me.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the French nail. With the lamp held at arm’s length, I penetrated the black velvet darkness. The sounds of scratching and scraping surrounded me. I made another few steps and I felt a presence behind me. I spun, thrusting my weapon as if it might cut through the gloom. I saw a familiar pale, white face. Instead of the expected bloodless, rat-like visage of The Nosferatu, it was instead the ruined face of my French soldier, his one good eye reflecting the light of my lamp and the other oozing blood and brain matter. I slashed out instinctively with my blade and slashed across where his belly should be. The ghost screamed as the iron gutted him.
I saw another figure on my right. It was a Tommy soldier. His cold, ghostly hands grabbed my lamp hand. I felt a chill spread along my arm and the lamp slipped from my nerveless fingers. With the other hand, I began to madly slash at the darkness. I heard rather than saw the Tommy dissolve at the touch of my weapon. The darkness was punctuated with other cries and curses.
The lamp broke as it hit the ground, the spilled kerosene soaking into the wooden floor and igniting. The circle of light and flames spread, illuminating more and more of the room as the rotted timbers caught fire. Glancing around, I saw several more spectres and ghouls surrounding me; these were the ghosts of war, the terrible and vengeful ghosts that had been haunting me.
I saw a pile of wooden crates burst into flame on the other side of the room. A plague of rats ran screaming past me as a tall, pale figure rose out of an open crate. The pallid skin, the two sharpened teeth and glowing red eyes. Nosferatu!
I turned and fled.
I carved a path through the press of ghosts bearing down on me with the rapidly spreading wildfire behind me. I felt the flames licking at my heels. A spectral slouch-hatted digger was blocking the door. I drove the blade into his throat and he faded into oblivion as I leapt through the flaming entryway.
I rolled onto the cobblestone street trying to extinguish the flames. I quickly regained my feet and pulled off my jacket. I saw another terrible ghost of a turbaned man, one of the first I had killed in battle. I punched him in his rotting face and his exposed skull made a mocking and silent laugh. I ran to the kitchen door of my house and near knocked it from its hinges as I charged through to the pantry. I grabbed the salt canister and pulled a handful of the crystals. I threw them at the turbaned figure, and he vanished.
Taking advantage of the respite, I ran to the library, grabbed the book and the iron fire poker. Then I made a protective circle of salt around my chair. I recalled what the Book of Ghosts had said but it was of little help. The ghosts haunting me had their corporeal bodies spread across the battlefields of Europe and there was no way to burn their bodies as recommended by the book. Even if I knew the exact location of the bodies, getting there would be difficult as the terrible ghosts were haunting me here and now. The book had mentioned an exorcism ritual.
I frantically flipped to the page; this ritual was my only hope. From the corner of my eye, I saw another apparition appear, I felt the hatred emanating from him like heat. When I looked, I couldn’t tell what nationality this one was. He rushed me and as I raised the poker to strike him down, he stopped dead in his tracks at the line of salt. Knowing I was protected, I began to calm my breath and opened the book.
The Exorcism Ritual, it read:
“By the light of white candles six, in a protective circle of salt,
Wearing a chaplet made from white roses. Let one of pure of heart say the following:
“From the demon of darkness I believe you
Terrible ghosts shall trouble me no more
The darkness of the night is no longer home
The song that I sing sends you to the light
Please don’t be angry, in the world to come
After He takes us away.”
This was something, but I was missing several ingredients: candles, white roses, and one pure of heart. Mrs Murchison next door grew roses and candles were easy to get. One pure of heart, that was a little harder. After what I had done in the war, I certainly did not fall into that category. These ghosts were certainly proof of that.
The ghosts seemed to have retreated for the moment. I brandished the iron poker as I stepped out of the circle. No ghosts appeared.
I now had a mission. I retreated downstairs and jumped the fence into Mrs Murchison’s yard. She had kept the rose garden for over 50 years. There were numerous bushes with every colour one could imagine. Several bushes had white flowers and I quickly snapped off two dozen roses. Stealing like this did nothing towards making me pure of heart.
At that point, another ghost appeared. I hurled the poker like a javelin and it disintegrated the spectre before imbedding itself into the Murchison’s cellar door.
Again, I jumped the fence and returned home. My mother always kept a supply of candles in the dining room sideboard. She never trusted the new-fangled gaslights Father had installed about ten years ago. I was relieved to find they had not been moved in my absence.
I returned to the library and the circle of salt. I sat and wove the flowers into a circle to wear as a chaplet. Just as I finished, my mother appeared. She was the best person I knew and if anyone was pure of heart, it was her.
“Mama, I need your help,” I said to her, with tears flowing down my cheeks.
She smiled that sweet smile she always did. I explained that I was being haunted and that I needed her to help remove the ghosts. I felt the temperature drop.
As she came, I noticed that I must have accidentally disturbed the salt and broken the circle. With my mother inside, I fixed the circle and lit the candles. She took the chaplet and put it on her head.
Several ghosts seeped into the room. The one-eyed Frenchman glared at me. I pulled out my French nail, but they all stayed outside of the circle. My mother cleared her throat and began to read the incantation.
A vortex appeared near the fireplace and the ghosts began to flicker and fade into a mist. I could feel the pull of the vortex as the ghosts began to disappear into it. It was almost like a weight had lifted from me as the last ghost vanished.
It was then that I realized the sun had almost set. I glanced out the window and smoke from the burning house began to waft across the road. It reminded me of something I had heard as a young child, that vampires could turn into mist or smoke.
I ran down the stairs as the smoke began to come under the door. It seeped through and began to rise and form a cloud.
The cloud solidified and began to take a very familiar shape. The red eyes glowered at me as Orlok’s maw formed, with a snarl displaying his two rat fangs. He hissed at me as I leapt across the room.
I took comfort from the feel of the cold iron of the French nail in my hand. The honed point penetrated the creature’s chest where the cold, dead lump of flesh it called a heart was located. The resistance was so minimal, I was unsure whether I was stabbing flesh or mist.
All uncertainty disappeared as I felt my hand press against the cold, damp black coat he wore and drive the body back. The creature screamed in agony as I pinned it to our oak door. Its face writhed and contorted into inhuman shapes as it began to disintegrate into flakes of dust and grime.
Once again Orlok had come to Wisborg, a harbinger of plague and disease to find that Ellen Hutter and her bloodline were too strong for him, ready to fight against the evil of the supernatural, ready to pay the ultimate price. I dropped to my knees, a feeling of peace coming over me, the point of the French nail buried in the door.
At that moment, the Great Death came to an end and I could feel the curse lift from the family like a carrion bird flying off to search for easier prey, vanishing in the darkness.