When Stakes Are High, Stay Sharp
Miss Ellen of The Portrait’s First Lesson of Dealing with Nosferatu: Run fast and keep your eyes open.
Skin hangs white and loose on her shoulders and cheeks. Her joints ache, like her bones are rusting iron. Driven purely by fear, she runs. Her sodden shift drags through the mud and catches on branches, tearing. Despite deathly fatigue, she forces her body to dart to the next tree—supernaturally fast when she moves, inhumanly still when she stops.
She’s far from the road, now, where the galloping beast’s nostrils steam. His heart races in his chest, blood roaring through his veins. She hears it, it pounds in her ears as though it were her own, for she has no pulse anymore. Ellen slinks down into a creek bed on all fours, quick and smooth like a lizard. She wades, knee-deep in the bracken-thick cascades. Stumbling over rocks, she falls, claws her way over a fallen tree trunk, then runs again, splinters under her fingernails.
The horse hooves thunder faster, nearer, along the gravel road as it loops back around near the river. She glances back, eyes wide, whites shining in the dim night. The horse smells of animal, hay and manure, a stronger scent than the forest’s rain and moss. The menace of the rider, the hunter, raises the hairs on the back of her neck. It’s the whip against her shoulders, driving her on.
Where am I going? To where do I flee?
The answer rushes upon her.
Home: to Hutter, to Grace. Their family has built their lives in a cottage in the country, where Hutter endures his drunken moods that last for days, and his screaming nightmares every night. Hutter was once Ellen’s husband, then, widowed, dug her grave alone and buried her deep in the forest. With a finger she rubs her gums, still seeping black blood, corroded by the garlic he stuffed in her mouth.
He married his new wife, Carol, and they had three children. Grace, his eldest daughter, is the only one awake in the cottage. Ellen has heard wisps of her thoughts and feelings since the first days the child garnered consciousness. Tonight, she smells her blood on the wind: the scrapes on her knees and elbows from days wrestling her brothers in the garden and clashing stakes with them in games of Bite Me if You Can, and the blood flowing between her legs with the promise of new life, as she grows into a woman.
Why am I leading this monster toward those I love? Ellen asks herself. Why, when I’m a blood-hungry beast myself?
Fear of the hunter woke her this night, and has driven her, madly. Terror drove her to claw up through the soil for the first time, the earth loosened by a week of rain, and illuminated by a beam of moonlight shining through the clouds, straight as the hand of a clock at midnight.
All these years she’s lain in a half-sleep, connected to the living through her portrait, the same portrait Hutter took over the seas, that drew Count Orlok to her, hastened his journey here. A journey which ended in their mutual destruction.
Through the portrait’s eyes she’s relished Hutter and Grace’s delights with them, and rued their tragedies… When little Phillip died in his sleep, just a babe in arms, Ellen’s somnambulant corpse, underground, cried black tears for his loss.
Tonight, anger and hate growl in her belly, even stronger than hunger, for the man who took her life and tarnished her pure heart. Her feelings are a storm of hate, desperation and love. She hates Orlok as much as Hutter’s wife hates her. The new Mrs Hutter—Carol—hides her portrait in cold, damp places. She curses: let the devil take you, Satan’s whore.
And yet, Ellen’s portrait would not burn, when Carol cast her into the fire. The flames felt real, pain scorching, as though she was burning in flesh and blood. She screamed but endured through the inferno until it dwindled, leaving only ashes and her portrait barely touched. Grace had gathered it to her bosom and said, All will be well, Miss Ellen. Do we train tonight?
She restored Ellen to her frame, unharmed but for smears of smoke aging her forehead and troubling her brow. She looked more like she felt, no longer the pure, innocent woman whose image Hutter had carried across the sea.
Yes. Always—we train, Miss Ellen had replied.
Tonight, the new Mrs Hutter might get her wish. The devil has come for Ellen, and she’s trying to outrun him. But if she continues to flee toward Hutter, Grace, Carol and their family, the devil will take them, too.
Ellen stops, eyes wide. She mustn’t take him to the family! She won’t find safety with Hutter, and Grace is not ready. Grace, her little friend, her dear little listener, wielder of stakes and Holy water, garlic and fire. She mustn’t lead this evil pursuer to her young hunter.
Ellen stills, a statue, tall and broad-shouldered. Her eyes, shot with black veins, narrow hatefully. Her hair is stiff and wild about her head as the wind whips it around her pale, sagging face.
She tears a thick branch from a tree, with greater strength than she’s ever wielded. Teeth as sharp as razorblades, she drags her jaws along the narrow end, sharpening it to a shredded point. The hunter materialises in the distance, a blacker shadow in the darkness. His stallion’s nostrils steam as he rears.
She must fight.
Ellen relishes the horse’s fear in his sweat, ravenous for the salty scent. He’s afraid because Ellen is a monster untamed, hungry for blood of any kind, undiscerning. She would sink her fangs through his thick skin and guzzle his blood. She hasn’t yet learned to prefer the finer tincture that flows from a gentleman’s delicate throat.
The hunter’s eyes glow blue in the dark, and his skin glimmers. Ellen takes her makeshift spear in both hands, as the rain pours down around her, dripping from the cuffs and hem of her stained shift. The hunter kicks his steed and steers him towards her. Ellen raises her spear to fight but, as the stallion approaches, the lure of blood pumping through the horse’s veins is too strong, all-consuming. His blood smells rich, hot and salty, the antidote to her deprivation.
She lunges for his neck, hands stiff as claws.
Before she can sink her fangs into his flesh, the hunter casts a dark mass towards her. It swallows her head, tangles her arms. Trapped in a thick net, Ellen stumbles. The hunter launches from his horse and hits her hard, knocking her down. Their limbs clash like marble statues, but she feels no pain, only anger and desperation.
“Let me feed!” she rasps.
The hunter rises, stands over her, binds a rope around her arms.
“You will feed, but not on my horse,” he says, in a voice as deep as the thunder that shook the twilight from the world this evening past.
“What do you want of me?” she demands, as he drags her up onto his horse.
“To take you home, my abominable niece.”
Miss Ellen Of The Portrait’s Second Lesson of Dealing with Nosferatu: Keep your ideal weapons at hand.
For supper, Mama served pumpkin soup and thick toast with butter. Grace inhaled deeply the scent of nutmeg filling the warm cottage. By the crackling fire, Papa played cards with Grace and her little brother and sister who squabbled and giggled, but Grace heard something in the distance. She glanced at the dark window many times, pressed her face against it, breath fogging the glass cold on her lips. She turned to the portrait of Miss Ellen on the bookshelf.
When she played with her family, she lost her games of cards, one after the other.
“Your mind is elsewhere tonight,” Papa said, as the twins kissed him goodnight and Mama took them off to bed. Grace sat by his side to read the Holy tome by candlelight.
“Philippians 4:8,” he suggested.
Grace nodded and searched for the verse, the thin pages snapping softly as her fingers turned them. She cleared her throat and read.
Dear brothers and sisters…fix your thoughts on what is true, and honourable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise…
Grace’s eyes drift away from the Bible and up the shelves to Miss Ellen’s portrait. She bites her lip. “Miss Ellen is restless tonight.”
Papa gasps. “Grace, what could you mean?”
“She’s running. Nearer to us, for our help—”
“Grace.” His eyes are wide, disturbed and afraid. “Stop this nonsense.”
She moves close to him and clutches his forearm, her voice desperate. “Papa, I think she needs—”
“Enough!” His eyebrows draw down, warning that a dark mood approaches.
“Gracie, don’t quarrel with Papa. It’s bedtime.” Mama ushers her into the hallway. With a last glance into the darkness, Grace shivers and follows her mother away to bed. Hutter is looking at his hands, appalled, as though they drip with blood. Grace’s hands shake, and she shrinks away from the deeper shadows, as she walks down the hallway to her bed beside the twins.
“Are you ill tonight, my bravest?” Mama asks, feeling her forehead. “You know not to trouble Papa, lest you trigger an episode.”
Grace nods and climbs into bed, rolls over to face the wall.
“Goodnight, Mama.”
Beyond the wall lurks a fear that Miss Ellen flees, and Grace cannot name. It has the texture of Orlok on the night, but he is dead. Miss Ellen killed him, as he took her life.
Out in the sitting room, Grace hears the click of Papa’s shotgun as he breaks the barrel over his knee and loads two shots. Hushed voices as he and Mama exchange arguments, then footfalls lead to their bedroom. There’s a clunk, as he leans the gun barrel against the corner beside him. It’s just inches from Grace, through the wall they share, but she cannot reach through the wall to grab it.
In the darkness of her room, Grace waits.
Miss Ellen Of The Portrait’s Third Lesson of Dealing with Nosferatu: When stakes are high, stay sharp.
Grace waits until all the family sleeps, then dons her mother’s oiled leather coat, packs her bag with useful things, and deliberates over taking Papa’s shotgun from beside his bed. It won’t stop nosferatu. It might slow them down. But the weight of it will be too much to carry on a long walk. She’ll be better off with her short sword. And extra stakes.
Grace reaches high up the bookshelf and fetches Miss Ellen’s portrait down. Her friend remains silent and cool, absent, in her pocket. Grace sneaks out the door, setting the lock so it will secure the door when she closes it behind her.
It’s a long walk as Grace trudges east through marsh and fog. At least the drizzle has eased, as she follows the thread which joins her to Miss Ellen. The portrait—the conduit which conveys their thoughts—remains silent.
It’s more than the portrait that connects us, Miss Ellen once said. The idea of you, I implanted in your father’s mind, in our happiest days of love. You are my creation, Grace, as much as you are his and Carol’s.
The sky splits open to a dawn of orange light, revealing clouds as red and raw as wounds. She walks on through the morning glow and then the midday heat, until the smell of salt, seaweed and dune grass snaps in the air. Her family will be worried, back at home, but there’s nothing she can do to help them more than this.
She mounts a grass dune. The sea is a dull blue mass, in the distance, seagulls wheeling above it. On the dock a huge ship is moored, sails folded, with a familiar crest emblazoned on its hull. Dread freezes her a moment, then resolve sets in, and she marches towards the road. Her boots crunch along the firm gravel.
The afternoon is cooling when she reaches the dock. She takes a long drink from her waterskin, contemplating the great, ancient ship before her. It creaks as it rocks, testing the ropes mooring it to the jetty, as though forces within wish it to be gone, will conjure a storm to drive it over the sea.
The coat of arms on the hull is the one Miss Ellen burned onto her mind long ago, the one to be feared above all others. But he is dead! Miss Ellen killed him with the dawn light. Despite all this, the House of Orlok has returned to take Ellen away—for punishment, for revenge? Grace takes a deep breath, checks her weapons, reassuring herself that they are within reach and can be drawn efficiently.
Thousands of times she’s thrust them into clods of clay, picturing fanged, man-shaped monsters slain by her blades. She leaps across the water, landing lightly on the weather-worn deck of the ship.
Miss Ellen Of The Portrait’s Fourth Lesson of Dealing with Nosferatu: Strike in the day.
Across the salt-stained deck, Grace arrives at steps which lead down into the hull of the great ship. Any nosferatu on board will be asleep. Human servants might be on duty, but the only sound is creaking ropes as a light breeze tugs at the folded sails. All else is quiet, seeming deserted.
She draws her short sword from the scabbard at her back, steps down the stairs, deeper into the darkness. A scratching noise along the hall gives her pause. She squints, trying to make out what is there.
A rat squeaks as it runs close and crouches on her boot, sniffing up at her, whiskers twitching. Disgusted, she kicks it away.
She walks on. At the end of the hallway, she turns left. More steps lead deeper down. The darkness is complete, and yet her eyes adjust.
You have the eyes of a hunter.
Miss Ellen! You are here.
Her mentor does not answer, but the portrait in her pocket warms, as it does when Miss Ellen communicates with her.
More rats scurry across the hallway, and Grace turns another corner, takes the steps down deeper into the belly of the ship. Doors gape on either side. Impossible stairways spiral off, above her head, traversable only by those who crawl upside down, along ceilings.
Beneath her creeping feet, the floor begins to writhe, thick with rats squirming over each other, chittering and fighting, some of them enormous, their bodies as tall as the tops of her boots. Further on, they’re even bigger, as tall as her knees. She wades through the morass, stepping over them, treading on their tails, crushing their skulls with her boots, making them scream.
A giant rat, almost as tall as she is, sits like a drunk in front of a closed door at the end of the hall. The rat wears a crown of thorny rose vines on her head, and her belly is enormous. A tiny pink rat in a yellow sac squeezes out the hole near her tail. It squirms on the floor, helpless. Two larger rats snap at it, fighting over the newborn.
“I have to pass through that door,” Grace says.
“She is not the one you knew.” The rat queen’s voice is squeaky and tortured. “She’s your enemy now. Flee while you still can. While they sleep.”
“I’m going through that door,” Grace says, pointing her sword at the queen’s eye. “Get out of my way or I will slay you and your children.”
The rat queen laughs, a bloodcurdling chitter, her children joining in with noxious giggles, surging closer, protectively, to their mother.
“Out of my way,” Grace warns, slashing her sword through the pile, kicking rats out of her way, striking for the rat queen’s head. Her majesty and all her subjects reveal sharp teeth and fangs. They gnash at Grace, who grabs the queen’s tail and tugs her backwards. Smaller rats climb Grace’s legs and bite at the flesh above her boots. She clenches her teeth against the pain and drags the rat queen down the hall. She holds the tip of her sword to her neck.
“Kill me,” the rat queen warns, “and chaos descends. My plague will run wild and clash, devouring you in the madness, until a new rat queen ascends. If you spare me, you spare yourself.”
What the rat queen said made sense.
“Keep out of my way,” Grace says.
The rat queen waves her tiny front legs back and forth, like a conductor, directing the tide of rats, who scurry behind her.
As Grace reaches for the doorhandle to the room, her white sleeve loose around her wrist, she notes the bolt on the door. If she goes in, she might not come out alive. She closes her eyes, trying to conquer the fear burning in her veins, racing through her heart, certain that her panic would delight Nosferatu.
In her pocket, the portrait of Miss Ellen glows so hot it burns.
Do not enter this room!
“Who else will save you?”
The doorhandle is cold on her sweating palm. It creaks as it turns. She opens the door to a room where the darkness is even thicker yet, somehow, her eyes adjust. There’s a coffin and a large barrel set sideways in two braces.
Does Miss Ellen lie in the coffin? Whispering words entangle in the air, words overlapping and confused as time trips backwards. Echoed conversations play again.
Let me go! Stay away! Miss Ellen cries.
Wisps of action materialise in the air. A struggle.
If I’d known you’d be so easy to catch I’d have told the servants to set sail today. But I’ve given them the day. On the evening wind—tonight—we set sail.
Finally, Grace understands. The younger Count Orlok is Ellen’s abductor.
Let me out! Miss Ellen cried, as he shovelled dirt over her bound hands. She fought against her prison as he nailed the lid closed. With her last strains of effort, she gnawed through the ropes binding her hands. The malaise of the death-sleep rolled over her mind and body, and sucked her under.
Grace takes a tentative step closer.
You don’t have to do this, she says to herself. You could turn around, and run. The sun will set soon. You could find safety in the church, before it does.
But she cannot. Miss Ellen never abandoned her. She taught her everything she knew about Nosferatu, in case something like him came again. She taught her that it was not enough to sacrifice herself for love. That truly winning meant escaping not only with the lives of those dear to you, but with your own life, too.
She reaches a trembling hand towards the coffin, steeling herself, seeking the strongest mettle of resolve within her, firing up her physical strength, preparing to fight.
No! whispers the portrait in her pocket, but too late, for she’s touched the coffin.
Nosferatu snaps half-awake. His power’s like a blast, knocking Grace backwards as the lid of his coffin slams open. The sun has not yet set, so he cannot rise, but he shivers and jerks. He will wake soon.
Good Lord, what have I done?
Grace dives for the barrel, and lays her hands on the wood. Miss Ellen is in here. This is what Orlok nailed shut.
You can’t trust me, Grace! Ellen cries. Don’t let me out. Run!
Grace glances towards the door behind her, in time to see the rat queen slamming it closed, as a tsunami of rats rolls forward to pile up behind it. The external bolt slides in, as Grace thumps against the door with her shoulder. She’ll never get out that way, and there are no other doors, nor windows.
I’m no longer me, Miss Ellen warns. He gave me his blood, soaked the soil in it, in this barrel in which I am buried, to ferment, to become a creature controlled by him alone.
“But you remember me,” Grace whispers, scrummaging in the corners for something to use to hack into the barrel. I need your help. I’m not strong enough alone.
Her fingers close around a sledgehammer and then a crowbar. These will do. She raises the hammer over her shoulders and smashes it down against the barrel. With each strike of the hammer, Orlok convulses nearer to waking.
Grace levers the crowbar to prise open the smashed wood. Soil falls out, and Miss Ellen’s hand jerks around, grabs her wrist. She slithers out of the tiny hole—it should be impossible, but she’s no longer human and her bones dislocate, break and reform.
Grace crashes through an abyss of fear as the hideous creature holds her like a vice, skin hanging from its bones. It is naked, sagging, covered in slimy dirt and blood, far from how she imagined Miss Ellen.
“I warned you,” Miss Ellen growls. “Yet you reached into my grave. You woke me before the sun has sunk and for that I will—”
Grace smashes her forehead with the crowbar, making a deep gash halfway through her skull. Miss Ellen judders and jerks, loosening her grip on Grace’s arm. Free, Grace snatches the portrait from her pocket. It’s glows golden, as bright as the sun.
“This will remind you who you are.”
Grace slams the portrait into the slit she’s made in Miss Ellen’s brain, unsure of what will happen next, sensing this is her only hope.
As you have influenced me, I have influenced you, and it’s all recorded here, in the conduit of our exchange.
Veins and neurons worm around the portrait snug in her brain. Ellen shudders and writhes. Flesh grows over the gash in her skull, remoulding like dough, as crosshairs of bone reknit. Hair sprouts from the newly formed scar as she falls to the floor, still.
Grace catches movement in the corner of her eye and turns to find Orlok looming over her, less than an arm’s length away.
“Mine,” he says, reaching for her, but Grace swings the crowbar towards his chest. He’s too fast and snatches it out of her hand. She draws her sword, but he laughs.
“You think you’ll hurt me with your little toys?”
“How about with this?” Grace grabs for her bag of minced garlic and holy water.
Before she can touch it, he’s pinned her to the corner, a wrist against either wall.
“Potions and trinkets won’t help you, fool,” he roars, baring his fangs, leaning in, preparing to feed. Instead of the bite she expects, he tumbles away from her, folding at the waist, hauled backwards by a force too fast for her to see. His hands, still clamped around her wrists, drag her forward too. She runs, keeping her feet, breaking free of his hold.
Miss Ellen pounces away, bounds off the walls and the roof, then crouches like a monster on the floor. She dives upon him again, tackling him, tumbling with him. Grace draws a sharp stake from her leather bag, and with her sword in her other hand, races towards them as they roll. Miss Ellen crawls up his chest, wraps her arms and legs around his head, and sinks her fangs into the back of his neck. He cannot see, grabbing and punching at Miss Ellen.
Grace plunges her stake into his heart.
She draws away and watches, fascinated, as Orlok writhes and spasms. He falls still and shrinks, losing all solid form beneath his skin, which slackens and wrinkles, until his tegument dwindles and desiccates to dust. Miss Ellen’s skin firms as she feeds. She grows stronger, younger, firmer. The dirt and blood fall away from her body. When he is dust, she sits back and wipes her mouth. But for the black blood dribbling down her chin, she is clean and fresh, brown-eyed with black ringlets, just like the young Miss Ellen of the portrait. The dark veins in her eyes and around her forehead are gone.
As Miss Ellen turns her gaze to her, Grace’s grip tightens on her sword, with a fresh stake ready in her other hand.
“The ship’s already launched,” Miss Ellen says, looking upwards. Grace notices the boat shifting under her feet, rolling on the waves.
“Will you join me hunting monsters?” Miss Ellen asks, shaking out Orlok’s robe. “This will have to do, for now,” she says.
Outside the door, the rat queen removes the bolt, and stands back, eyeing her new master, peering inside at the remnants of Count Orlok. Her smaller children rush in and crunch the dust of her old master’s bones between their jaws.
The larger rats stand either side of the hall, in a guard of honour, as Grace follows Miss Ellen through the hallway and up the steps. The crew draw back when they see the women.
“What is this?” the captain cries.
“Orlok is dead,” Ellen says. “You will obey me, now, or pay the price.”
She turns to Grace. “Where do we sail to first?”
Wind blowing her hair back from her face, Grace returns her sword to its sheath and looks out over the bow.
“I’ve always wanted to see Paris,” she says.
Miss Ellen Of The Portrait’s Final Lesson of Dealing with Nosferatu: There are many monsters in the world. We hunt until they, or we, are eliminated.