S.C.U.D.

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 21838

The mist curled about him, carried in by the sea breeze from the harbor. Mayonnaise turned his collar up against the unseasonal chill, the unsightly mist the last thing remaining to remind that anything untoward had happened within the small town of Wisborg, that the wings of an ancient death-bird had cast their lonely shadow over the entire locale, from the empty port to the haunted manor, seat of a former lord, whose family dated back to the town’s prior Swedish rule.

A messy business, he thought unhappily, striking a match and lowering it to the dry leaves of his pipe, puffing incessantly, blue smoke curdling, losing its shape in the harbor mist.

All that was left, he was told, was a shadow, an ugly outline imprinted upon the wall. He snorted, the bristles of his moustache twitching. It was unlikely that the newly widowed man would remain in such a house, unlikely that he would remain in Wisborg even, not after the events of the past year.

It had started, so he had been told, when the former estate agent, a liberal man named Herr Knock who had later been found guilty of murder, had dispatched one of his many employees, one Thomas Hutter, at the whim of some foreign dignitary wishing to purchase a home in the town.

Such was not unusual, there was unrest in Transylvania, he had read, the towns and villages bristling with anti-Habsburg sentiment spilling over from nearby Hungary, and the rich were always looking to either flee the sad isolation of their lordly grounds, or escape into obscurity amongst those lesser in station; the love of money, after all, was the supposed root of evil, and a wedge that was oft driven between men, in Mayonnaise’s experience. Yet in the case of Thomas Hutter and his late wife, Ellen, and the mysterious count, the sadness that had befallen them had not had its root in greed, so he gathered, but rather in one of the other seven deadly sins: lust.

Behind him, he heard the heavy footfalls of another, polished shoes and an uneven gait, and he became aware that the time for reflection was now at an end. Steeling himself, he drew up to his full height, removed the pipe from between his lips, and turned to face a harried man, old and out of breath, curls of silvery grey hair, spectacles resting upon the bridge of his narrow nose.

“Professor Bulwer, I presume,” Mayonnaise said calmly, his accent clipped, betraying his upbringing along the Vaal River, south of Johannesburg.

The other nodded, breathless, trying to gather himself, to collect his wits.

“Herr Mayonnaise. Thank you,” he gasped between breaths, drawing himself up, struggling to regain his composure. “Thank you for coming, I appreciate that the summons was at very short notice.”

Mayonnaise smiled thinly.

“When our lady informs me our services are required, I do not tarry, I simply ask where it is that I am needed.”

Bulwer nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

“Quite right, quite right,” he said in a distracted manner, apparently still plagued by the ills of recent events. “I suppose you know the reasons why I put in the request with your employer?”

Mayonnaise looked at the older man, studying his stooped posture, his mothballed suit.

“The Hutter business.”

Bulwer nodded, his strength now apparently regained.

“The Hutter business, indeed.” He gestured with one arm, stepping back from the mist that gathered at the port. “Come, walk with me. I shall show you where it all happened and answer any questions you might have. After that I can see you to the nearest guesthouse and we can discuss matters further.”

There was a pause, a moment of hesitation, doubt playing across Bulwer’s lined features. Mayonnaise lowered the pipe from his mouth, hoping that the other man was not waiting for him to ask, hoping that it was not required that he coddle the old academic, that the older gentleman was man enough to say what was on his mind without needing him to participate in some display of sympathy.

Apparently understanding the younger man’s terms, Bulwer nodded, his expression still fretful.

“It is not a very pleasant sight, I am afraid.”

Mayonnaise nodded.

“So I’ve heard.”

Again, Bulwer hesitated.

“Tell me, Herr Mayonnaise, have you ever encountered a vampire before?”

The other looked at him, the mist stirring at his back, the dead ocean haunting and lonely.

“No,” he lied.

* * * *

The house had remained untouched for the better part of a month despite the haste in which Mayonnaise had been dispatched from England, travelling from Dover amidst rough waters, his credentials in the form of a number of letters from his employer, and a small bag for toiletries and a change of clothes at his side.

He need not stay long, he had been told, Mistress Lilith barely looking up from the clutter of her desk as he stood in the tiny box of her office in the old house stationed upon Grays Inn Lane. Go there, investigate the house, and return with your findings, that is all that is asked.

Standing within the empty bedroom, feeling the unnatural chill that seemed to have settled over the place, the unmade sheets of the bed those same ones from which the wife, Ellen Hutter, had risen that fateful night, Mayonnaise began to intuit the nature of the place, the building warning him away with all the fateful evil that clung to it.

He had oft heard it said that the supernatural was little more than the resonance of evil deeds clinging to the locations in which events transpired. This was the scientific origin of ghosts, he was informed, the nature of hauntings. Looking now at the blackened shadow across the far wall, it was hard to believe that was all it was. The long and disjointed shape stretched directly from the latticed window, across the unmade bed, and to the far wall, where it took on an eerie almost human shape, as if a man threw his arms up above his head to protect himself from some unseen threat.

His stomach churned.

“See,” remarked Bulwer with enthusiasm, “it is just as dreadful as I mentioned in my letter. The people of this town seek to burn the house down, they think it cursed, that its presence is an ill omen now, but I knew you people would be interested.”

Again, he thought of Mistress Lilith at her desk, refusing to meet his gaze, telling him he would not be long.

“Have you spoken to Hutter? What does he say on the matter?”

Bulwer looked away, suddenly saddened.

“Herr Hutter is disconsolate with grief. I have asked many times what his wishes on the matter are, but he will not speak of them.”

There was a pause, a weighty silence, as if the old man was uncertain if he should continue. Eventually, however, he added, “All day, he sits in his room in the sanatorium and simply stares at the daguerreotype of his lost bride. It really is too sad.”

Mayonnaise patted his heavy bridge coat, searching once more for his matches and striking one against the warm underbelly of a book advertising some hotel in a lonely city in Eastern Europe, a faded gold address beneath the curled shape of its name—Hotel Palat—and lifted it to his pipe, igniting the curled, burnt shards of tobacco, inhaling deeply, and looking around the room.

“And you became involved in the situation at the behest of Herr Hutter?” he asked.

Bulwer looked uncomfortable.

“Yes and no,” he answered.

Slowly, Mayonnaise turned his gaze from the shadow, fixing it firmly upon the unkempt old man.

“Which is it? Yes or no?”

The old man squirmed with discomfort.

“It is true that it was Herr Hutter who came to fetch me, but it was at the behest of Frau Hutter, I am given to understanding.” Nervously, he wrung his hands together, fingers wrapped together, united but briefly, before disengaging. “I was the girl’s physician, you see. I have been since she was very young. As a matter of fact, I was there when she was born.”

“And were you not Herr Hutter’s physician also?”

“Yes,” Bulwer said, and Mayonnaise could sense that this was not the full story. “Yes, it is true, but I did not know Herr Hutter as I knew his wife, Ellen, her name was. Herr Hutter has only lived in our town for a number of years, you see, he was not born here as many of my patients were.”

“Do you know where he hails from?” Mayonnaise asked.

“From Pressburg, I believe. He mentioned it only infrequently.”

Turning, he caught a glimpse of himself beneath the layer of dust that covered the mirror on the far wall, and for just that moment, he saw himself as perhaps a stranger might, a tall man with chestnut hair, a thick moustache upon his upper lip, rings of dark shadow beneath his hazel eyes.

That was how you knew you were not a vampire, he had been told. If you can see yourself in a reflection, you’re still one of us, Mistress Lilith had remarked, turning to him when first they had met, dust and blood upon her hands.

He turned sharply away, looking again at the long shadow that was now burnt into the landscape of the room.

“How far away is the sanatorium?” he asked.

Bulwer looked somewhat taken aback.

“It is not far, on the outskirts of town, a short journey by carriage.”

Mayonnaise nodded. “I want to speak with Herr Hutter.”

Doubt flickered across the older man’s face, concern somehow lighting up his features, making him appear briefly more youthful.

“You are finished here?” he asked with surprise.

Mayonnaise nodded, removing the pipe from his mouth. “I have seen what I needed to see.”

Still, Bulwer looked at him with obvious doubt. “And you do not wish to visit the guesthouse?”

“I have few things with me. I will return here once our business with Herr Hutter is concluded.” He lifted his small case.

Surprise seemed to turn to alarm on the physician’s features.

“You will stay here?”

Again, Mayonnaise nodded.

“That is correct.”

There was a moment of silence, and then hastily Bulwer looked away.

“Forgive me, Herr Mayonnaise, I am somewhat taken aback. You will not find yourself uncomfortable in such a place?”

The shadow was eerily human, arms raised, hands lifted to hide the face. Almost a man, he thought. Almost, yet not quite.

“I have stayed in places far worse,” he answered.

He recalled the image of his family home, the body of his younger sister slumped in the wicker chair, the open wound in her neck, his mother and father slumped down at the dining table—and Mistress Lilith, dust and blood upon her hands, a wooden stake in her right hand.

“This is what you summoned me here for, is it not, Herr Professor?” he asked, allowing the agitation he felt to make itself known in his voice.

The older man’s face turned slowly red. “Well, yes, but I…” He continued to bluster, yet his protests soon trailed off giving way to a silence in which no further argument could take shape.

Mayonnaise looked at the suitcase he had left resting at the foot of the bed, and with dislike, considered how domestic the addition made the scene appear; the suitcase, the unmade bed, the light pouring in through the window. He remembered their holiday home, his sister turning to him as she danced in the waves of the ocean.

“It is decided,” he said, turning his back upon the suitcase, the bed, the scene of the crime.

* * * *

It was, as Bulwer had promised, a short journey. The establishment, Uuôdansquelle Sanatorium, a large stately building renovated some time recently, was quieter than expected. He had braced himself, somehow expecting the howls of lunatics, the halls crowded with madmen and invalids, each proclaiming their woes. Yet, for all his assumptions, the institution was surprisingly calm, an air of peacefulness surrounding it, the first suggestion of genuine springtime in the many flowered gardens that surrounded the old house.

The director was a stout man, a no-nonsense sort, the kind Mayonnaise often saw drawn to positions of authority not from a sense of altruism or compassion, but a need for validation. With Bulwer at his side, he had presented his credentials and taken no small pleasure in watching the large man’s blustering mannerisms quickly become hushed, his face paling, his voice drawing to a whisper as he had asked if the Order truly was real.