Philip Nutman - Cities of Night

How, exactly, Arabella, the daughter of an Essex magistrate, had met the late Baron, Van Helsing did not know. Nor did he care, as such social matters were of no importance to him. What mattered was that he considered the Baroness to be a fine, upstanding woman — a little headstrong perhaps, and not without her eccentricities — but a selfless soul who devoted much of her fortune and time to those less privileged. Yet now he wondered if he knew her at all.

As he sipped his wine, the thoughts which vexed Van Helsing began to fade, for he was suddenly overcome by a terrible tiredness, both physical and mental, which fragmented his silent questions, shattering them like the glass which slipped from his fingers to break on the Pump Room floor.

Van Helsing dreamed.

The nightmares that had pursued him through his troubled sleep of the past week had left him shaken to the core on awakening; this dream, this lurid vision which now enveloped him, both disgusted and aroused him to an unprecedented level.

He found himself guided into a sumptuously furnished room filled with plush red velvet cushions piled upon ornate rugs from Morocco and the Orient, but the décor’s accent was predominantly Greco-Roman. And like ancient Rome during the reign of the Emperor Caligula, a sea of writhing flesh undulated before him, grasping hands lapping at his feet — his bare feet, the Professor now realized, as he appeared to be dressed in some kind of toga, his flesh naked and vulnerable beneath a thin layer of sensuous silk. He sought to avert his eyes, but everywhere he tried to turn his heavy head his vision was assailed by this cornucopia of copulation as old, bloated, gout-ridden flesh pushed itself against young, smooth, alabaster skin. Somewhere in the midst of this river of wanton behaviour, this bacchanalia of breasts, buttocks, and genitalia, he thought he spied the Baroness’s red hair, a wig floating on waves of flesh. Van Helsing felt sick to his soul. Yet worse was to come.

His eyesight dimmed, and as one sense retreated, his other senses became more acute. Smell, touch, taste, hearing — all four faculties were suddenly so sharp the sensations danced on the threshold of pain. The rich, heavy aromas of incense and myrrh assailed his nose, inducing a feeling of suffocation; hands, many hands — tiny hands — caressed his skin, causing his blood to race and rise. His lips were parted, his mouth opened, and a heavy, sweet wine flowed down his throat like nectar, the taste so seductive to the tongue he drank deep, deep draughts of Bacchus’s bounty. His ears ached to the infernal, overwhelming sounds of voices reduced to grunts and sighs, moans and groans, cries and whispers, as if he were surrounded by Dante’s damned, writhing in one of Hell’s nine circles. His senses overwhelmed, the rhyme of his reason reduced to hedonistic doggerel, and Van Helsing, too, cried out like a lost soul as his body betrayed him once more…

Slowly, like a tentative winter sunrise that struggles to push back the chill of a frozen night, Van Helsing escaped from the clutches of the phantoms that cursed him. But when he awoke, what he saw nearly drove him mad.

He stood in a large, sepulchral underground chamber decorated with the remains of ancient, worn Roman statuary. Broken columns adorned a number of jet black doorways which appeared to lead away from the chamber in a measured geometric formation, but the columns, too, were mere ornamentation, as Van Helsing could tell the chamber was a natural geophysical formation adapted by and not made by men’s hands. The air was fetid, humid, cloying with the heat that rose from the deep, dark green pool situated in the center of the chamber. The water swirled and bubbled, and Van Helsing fleetingly realized he was somewhere underneath Bath, that the pool before him was fed by the natural spring which wormed its way upwards from deep within the heated rock miles beneath his bare feet. Six bloodstained slabs radiated out from around the pool, each one angled so the end nearest the water was lower than the farthest tip of stone. On each altar, for he immediately realized that was what they were, lay the body of a child no older than nine or ten — boy, girl, three of each, all deathly pale, unconscious, unmoving, as blood trickled from cuts in their hands and feet to dribble into the pool. The professor’s stomach churned with anger and his digestive system tried to expel the noxious pollutant of drugged wine which held his body in its sluggish state.

“Two thousand years this temple has remained hidden from the eyes of the unworthy,” a voice said from behind him. “But for two thousand years there have been those who have been blessed to know its secrets.”

Dressed in a ruby red toga, Lord Manfred appeared beside the Professor on his left side.

“Why?” Van Helsing managed to speak despite a numbness in his tongue.

“Why are we doing this? Or why are you here?”

“Because She Who Lives Beneath The Waters needs sustenance if She is to grant us her boon,” said a female voice to the Professor’s right.

Van Helsing turned his head as far as his drugged muscles would allow. Baroness Lewis smiled lasciviously as he laid eyes upon her.

From the periphery of his vision, Van Helsing saw another four toga-clad figures enter the chamber led by Monsieur Boullan. Each took up a position behind an altar.

“You are here, Professor, to bear witness,” Lord Manfred said. “And because I take great delight in bringing torment to others. You are a man of God — the Christian God, the false God — yet now you will have the honour of gazing upon the face of a true Goddess.”

Van Helsing stared helplessly at the dying children, their life’s blood flowing into and staining the water.

“You are evil,” he managed to say, despite his inability to fully move his lips.

“There is no Good, no Evil; just the natural order of things: those who serve, and those they serve; those who feed to survive and their prey. Those who serve will be blessed. Now, watch!”

The pool’s previously placid surface began to roil, a churning turbulence like a bubbling pot of murky green stew. Something stirred beneath the surface, a dark, reptilian shadow. Then, slowly, regally, a head emerged from the water. The head of a beautiful woman with golden eyes and olive skin framed by a slick of jet-black hair.

“Behold the Lamia, wife of Poseidon, granter of eternal life!” Lord Manfred whispered forcefully into the professor’s ear.

Van Helsing stood like the temple statuary — broken, immobile, frozen by the abominable sight.

The Lamia placed two webbed hands on the lip of the pool and raised herself up from her watery womb. The creature’s breasts were perfectly shaped like those of the Venus de Milo, but there her resemblance to womankind ended. As she reached out a hand towards the nearest child, Van Helsing saw in abject horror that from the waist down the creature was pure serpent.

“Watch! Watch!” Lord Manfred urged.

If Van Helsing believed he had seen evil in the world, nothing he had witnessed before this day could prepare him for the sight of the Lamia as it began to feed.

News Item from The Pall Mall Gazette , September 20th, 1861

Professor Abraham Van Helsing, the noted Dutch Lawyer and esteemed Physician who has been Guest Lecturer in Residence at the Royal College of Medicine for the past year, has been diagnosed as fully recovered following a most unfortunate incident which occurred while he was visiting the City of Bath last week.

The Professor suffered a serious blow to the head when attacked by ruffians while taking a late night stroll through Bath’s much acclaimed Royal Victoria Park, and has been confined to bed since returning to London on Thursday.