The pressure continued to build. And now it was as if he were
caught in the middle of a great gale that howled across the world, sweeping over
ancient battle sites, barrow-tombs, hangman’s scaffolds, cemeteries and
massacred villages, saturated with doom and despair, carrying death in its
wings. The cold, dark wind whipped at his robes, tugged at his hair, even blew
through him.
Dieter was now standing, reaching out to the shadows. And it
was as if the shadows were drawn to him, channelling through him, filling his
mind with the horrific thoughts and images, borne from all the darkest places of
the world.
He was barely aware of anything else happening around him. He
heard Erich’s screams as if he was in another room. Then he was screaming too,
in physical and mental anguish. Darkness consumed him and the true horror
began.
Dieter woke with a start and a strangled cry. He sat bolt
upright, the nightmarish vision of a host of the undead—an army—dragging
their rotten bodies out of their graves and marching towards him across bleak
moorland still fresh in his mind. He was drenched in sweat and there was a foul
burning taste in his mouth, suggesting he had been sick. His head was pounding,
as if in the grip of a stinking hangover.
As he blinked the retina-seared images of the deathly faces
from his eyes, awareness of his surroundings returned and with them
bewilderment, anxiety and fear. The last thing he remembered with any clarity
was being crouched in the darkness under the house in Apothekar Allee, the
overwhelming images of death, the black sickness filling him as the pox-ridden
doktor invoked powers best left undisturbed.
What he could not remember was anything after that, other
than the horrific nightmares in which the restless dead pursued him
relentlessly. Dieter looked at the familiar surroundings of his room in the
attic of Frau Keeler’s lodging house. He could not remember returning there.
He certainly didn’t know
how
he had got back. At the
present time he did not even know what day it was, although from the bright
summer sunshine beating in through the dormer windows the time was somewhat
after nine o’ clock in the morning.
And there was so much more that he did not know. Had he and
Erich been seen by Doktor Drakus as he performed his dark ritual? Whether they
had or not, how could he be here now, with no memory of what had followed? They
must have been seen. But if they had, how had he managed to get back to his
lodgings? Had he contracted the plague from the disease-riddled man? Was the
sickness taking root within him even now, condemning him to a slow, agonising
death?
Had it all been a nightmare? It had seemed so realistic and
yet at the same time so had his waking dream about Erich after they had first
visited the house of Doktor Drakus. Had they even been to visit it a second time
or had he simply dreamed it all? Dieter’s head was in a spin. He was finding it
hard to trust his own senses now.
Another thought crossed his mind: where was Erich?
Dieter climbed out of bed. He was still dressed; only his
cloak and boots had been removed before he went to bed. He stumbled through to
the other lodger’s room. The door was closed.
Dieter knocked. There was no reply. He knocked again.
“E-Erich? Are you there?”
Nothing. Dieter tried the handle. The door was locked.
“Erich?” he called, thumping on the door with the flat of his
hand.
“Go away.”
“Erich, are you all right? W-What happened last night?”
“Go away!”
“But we need to talk about this. I need to talk about what
happened.”
“Go away!” Erich screamed. “Go away! Go away!”
Dieter slumped against the door and slid down it to the
floor. He felt sick. The pounding of his headache was now an intense needling
migraine behind his eyes that made him wince.
Cold realisation hit him. Whatever had happened beneath the
house of Doktor Drakus, it had been for real. And there was one thing he
was
certain of, without knowing how. Something had changed within him. And he very
much doubted it had changed for the better.
And it seemed that the change had not just happened inside
him. Somehow the candle-flame he lit in his room that night seemed not to hold
back the darkness so well. When he eventually ventured out into Bögenhafen
again, the streets seemed darker around him. The whole town seemed more greatly
steeped in inconstant shadows.
The world had changed irrevocably for Dieter Heydrich.
Erich did not emerge from his room for several days, not
until the ninth day of Vorgeheim. In all that time Dieter himself barely left
the lodging house, only going out to bring back food and drink; even then he
made sure he covered his face with the cowl of his cloak, despite the foetid
summer heat, in case he should be spotted by the watch and identified as a
house-breaker. And if not by the watch, by other eyes with death in their cold
gaze.
Dieter was afraid of contact with others and he certainly
dared not return to the guild, in case word had somehow got back to them of his
nefarious nighttime activities. The other students and senior members would ask
too many questions, pry too deeply. And what if Drakus had secret contacts
within the guild? And yet there still remained the doubt—the denial, perhaps—in the back of his mind that it had all been some horribly realistic dream.
But he had not been idle in those days of self-confinement.
The books he had stolen from Drakus’ library still obsessed him, even more
after what he thought he had witnessed beneath the house in Apothekar Allee.
Dieter filled his notebooks with what he learned, with what he was teaching
himself. But he had also begun to record some of the other things he believed he
had seen and beard, trying to make sense of them. He drew diagrams to represent
the curious hand gestures he had witnessed—the memory of the hand movements
was so clear to him, how could they be something he had simply dreamed—and he
tried to write down what he had heard the doktor say. He did not even know what
language Drakus had been speaking, but he persevered, writing the words
phonetically.
When Erich did emerge from his room at last, stinking and
unshaven, Dieter soon came to realise that a change had come over his roommate
too. It showed in the diamond-sharp look in his eyes and practically all he
would talk about was his new obsession with death, to the point where Dieter
preferred not to speak with him anymore.
There had been a change in the mood of the populace of
Bögenhafen too. There was talk amidst the townspeople of plague in nearby towns,
talk that Dieter heard on those few occasions when he ventured out of the garret
and the lodging house for supplies. Word was that the plague had reached as far
as Kreuzotterfeld, Stimmingen and Vagenholt. Word was that the Sigmarite
Templars of the Bögenhafen chapter house had been carrying out a pogrom in the
surrounding villages, allegedly uncovering cells of plague-worshippers. Word was
that the first cases of Sturp’s ague had been reported in Bögenhafen itself.
Dieter knew that he should have reported what he had seen—what he had thought he had seen—to the witch hunters the very next day. But it
was too late now. In fact, he should have gone to the witch hunters before,
after the discovery he had made in Drakus’ library or even before that, when he
had witnessed the body snatchers at work. It was definitely too late now; the
consequences for him were too terrible and final to contemplate. No, he would
have to watch and wait this one out alone and unaided.
On the thirteenth day of the month Leopold visited him again.
His excuse was that he had been sent by Professor Theodrus to find out what had
befallen Dieter, to find out what was going on. Leopold received short shrift,
Dieter sending him away without giving him any reason for his recent absence
from the guild.
Leopold returned again four days later, insisting he be
admitted and that the two apprentices tell him what was going on. On that
occasion a raving Erich forcefully expelled him from the lodging house. Leopold
stormed off claiming that he would be speaking to the guild and the Temple of
Sigmar about the matter.
But still Dieter was plagued by doubts of his own and Erich’s
lack of knowledge regarding what had happened on the night of the third day of
the month. Whenever he quizzed Erich about it, he either changed the subject or
claimed not to have any recollection of what had happened either. This whole
state of affairs left Dieter feeling paranoid and unsettled. He had to find out
what was going and what part Doktor Drakus had to play in it all, if for no
other reason than for his own peace of mind. But would the truth, should he
uncover it, truly bring peace of mind?
So it was that eventually, on the evening of the twenty-fifth
day of Vorgeheim, with the town sheltering through the heat of high summer,
Dieter ventured out of his garret hideaway and made his way through the town—avoiding the artisans’ quarter, the Nulner Weg and the Göttenplatz as much as
was possible—and returned to the Temple of Shallya.
This time he asked for Anselm Fleischer by name. The plain
novice priestess he spoke to knew not that the poor lunatic’s family name was
Fleischer, but certainly there was a patient going by the name Anselm in their
care. Dieter was glad it was not the stern matron Sister Marilda who met him. He
wove a story that he was a distant cousin, come all the way from Talabheim to
visit his tormented relation. He half-consciously realised that lying came more
easily to him now.
The novice led Dieter back through the infirmary hall and
admitted him to a different room to the one in which the poor wretch had been
incarcerated before. Even after all that he had seen, the sight of the
hollow-eyed, emaciated, prematurely white-haired man still came as a shock to
Dieter.
Anselm was sitting on a pallet bed, clad in only a stained
linen nightshirt. Dieter was somewhat surprised to see that the madman was no
longer restrained by the harness jacket he had seen him wearing the first time
they had met. It had been three months since, and the self-inflicted wounds on
his legs had healed, after a fashion. He obviously wasn’t considered a danger to
himself or others anymore.
The novice left them together, reassuring Dieter that she
would not be far away if he needed her. Dieter closed the door as she left.
“Good day to you, sir,” Anselm said, fixing his visitor with
a quizzical look. “Pardon me for asking, but do I know you?”
“Yes, Anselm, you do.”
He seemed quite lucid. Dieter was encouraged. Perhaps he
would be more successful in this venture than he had at first hoped. Perhaps
Anselm would be more receptive to his questions than he had been the last time.
“Well it is very nice to see you again, very pleasant
indeed,” the lunatic beamed. “I do not receive many visitors.”
“And it is a pleasure to see you too,” Dieter said with
forced joviality. He edged forwards and sat down on the end of Anselm’s bed.
“Last time we spoke, you talked of your apprenticeship.”
“Did I?”
“Yes,” Dieter swallowed, his mouth suddenly thick with
saliva. “At the physicians’ guild.”
“I was an apprentice there once.” Anselm smiled disarmingly,
with all the innocence of a child, and all the lack of guile too.
“Yes, I know. You were under a doktor…”—he almost dared
not say it—“Drakus there.”
The smile froze on Anselm’s lips. Then his face fell. “No,
not him. Not him.”
“What’s the matter?” Dieter asked, as though making light of
the matter.
“D-Doktor D-Dr—”
“Drakus,” Dieter finished for him.
“No!” Anselm snapped, his cry full of anguish. “Not him. Do
not mention his name. He’ll find you!” Dieter sensed that the crazed creature
was talking to himself again. He started to rock backwards and forwards on the
bed. “He’ll come for you. He has your soul already. He’ll come for your mortal
flesh as well and carve himself a new body! Physician, heal thyself!”
Dieter knew he had to act quickly before the madman’s cries
alerted the priestesses to what he had done.
“What did Drakus do to you, Anselm?”
The wretch locked eyes with Dieter and stopped rocking. “He
took my soul.”
“Why? How did he steal your soul?”
“He wanted my body. But all he got was my soul.” Anselm
started rocking again. “I’m all right as long as I don’t die. But then I can
never die. Not now. Not really. He won’t let me. And if I did, he’d only bring
me back again. No, there’s no peace for you. Not now, not ever. You can’t let
him find you. You can never let him find you. He has your soul. Your soul!”
His last confession became a scream. Dieter hurriedly got up
from the bed in the face of the howling madman. And then Anselm was up,
springing off the bed. He yanked the door open and was through it in a flash.
Reacting on instinct alone, Dieter followed in the very next moment.
Ahead of him the startled cries, the screams and the howls of
the madman himself, told him the whereabouts of the white-haired lunatic. He was
fleeing through the infirmary, leaping over beds and barging people out of the
way as he made his bid for freedom. A pair of elderly Shallyans tried to halt
his flight. Anselm lashed out viciously with fists and feet. Both women were
knocked flying. With a crash, a table bearing an earthenware jug and bowl was
overturned. The crockery smashed on the flags.
Dieter ran after the wretch. He did not see the water that
the jug and bowl had held, and which was now spilt over the infirmary floor,
until his feet were slipping out from under him in the spreading puddle. He
landed hard on his backside.
By the time he had managed to get back to his feet, Anselm
was past all resistance and the last Dieter saw of him was his mane of white
hair streaming out behind him, giving him the appearance of some exorcised
apparition fleeing into the warm embrace of the night.