He snatched the note from Gravois’s hand. It disappeared into some secret pocket in his filthy attire. His comrades melted back into the shadows, leaving the four of us stranded on that little island of bald earth, ringed on all sides by the crumbling edifices of the rear-houses.
Our newfound guide navigated the serpentine course through the bewildering snarl of clotheslines and fences with unerring step. This was his universe, and no doubt, if every particle of light had been sucked from our atmosphere, he could have found his way through the utter blackness left behind.
He stopped at the rear of a building indistinguishable from the rest—the same sagging stairs masquerading as a fire escape, zigzagging four stories up to the roof; the same warped platforms that passed for balconies, framed in by broken rails.
“Nováková,” the boy whispered, pointing at the tenement.
“Which floor?” Dobrogeanu asked. “Jaký patro? What flat? Který byt?”
The urchin’s reply was silent. He merely presented his palm. Gravois sighed heavily and gave him another five-dollar note.
“Ve čtvrtém patře. Poslední dveře vlevo.” His expression became very serious. “Nikdo tam není.”
Dobrogeanu frowned. “Nikdo tam není? What do you mean?”
“What does he mean?” echoed Gravois.
The boy jabbed his finger at the brooding tenement. “Upír.” He clawed the air and bared his teeth. “To mu ted’ patří.”
“He says it belongs to the upír now.”
The urchin nodded vigorously. “Upír! Upír!”
“‘Upír’?” asked Gravois. “What is this upír he’s talking about?”
“Vampire,” answered Dobrogeanu.
“Ah! Well, now we are getting somewhere!”
“The building is empty,” the other monstrumologist said. “He says it belongs to upír now.”
“Does he? Then, we are wasting our time. I suggest we return to von Helrung and make a full report—tout de suite, before night falls.”
Dobrogeanu turned to ask the boy another question and was astonished to find him gone. He had disappeared into the icy mist as abruptly as he had appeared. For a moment no one spoke. Gravois’s mind was already made up, but the elderly monstrumologist teetered between charging forward and sounding the retreat. It was a tantalizing lead—an abandoned building that now belonged to the upír, the closest the lexicon could come to Lepto lurconis. Yet he suspected our guide may have been merely giving us our money’s worth. For five dollars more he might have gladly informed us that in the basement we might find a stairway to hell.
“He could be lying,” he mused. “It may not be abandoned at all.”
“Do you see any lights inside?” asked Gravois. “I do not see any. Monsieur Henry, your eyes are young. Do you see lights?”
I did not. Only dark panes dimly reflecting the glow from the ash barrels in the courtyard.
“And we have none,” pointed out Gravois. “What good will it do, stumbling about in the dark?”
“It isn’t dark yet,” countered Dobrogeanu. “We have a few hours still.”
“Perhaps our definitions of ‘dark’ differ. I say we let Monsieur Henry break the tie. What is your opinion, Will?”
So rarely was I asked for one, I did not realize I even had an opinion until it came out of my mouth. “We should go in. We have to know.”
Up the rickety back stairs we climbed, Dobrogeanu leading the way, one hand hidden in his cloak, no doubt gripping his revolver. I followed next, fingering the hilt of the knife to steady my nerves. Gravois brought up the rear, muttering in French what sounded like curses. Once or twice I caught the word ‘Pellinore.’
The stairs were alarmingly insubstantial, swaying with each step of our slow ascent, the old boards crying tremulant squeaks and protesting groans. We reached the fourth-story landing, whereupon our leader pulled the revolver from his pocket and pushed open the door, and we followed him.
A narrow, poorly lit hallway ran the length of the building, its walls coated with decades of accumulated grime, the floor speckled with water stains and darker blemishes of unknown origin, perhaps urine or excrement, for the passage reeked of both—and of boiled cabbage, tobacco, wood smoke, and that peculiar funk of human desperation.
It was very cold and deathly quiet. We stood for a moment without moving, hardly breathing, straining our ears for any sound that might give proof of life. There was nothing. Dobrogeanu whispered, “End of the hall, last door on the left.”
“Will Henry should investigate,” urged Gravois. “He is the smallest and the lightest of tread. We’ll stay here and cover his advance.”
Dobrogeanu stared at him from beneath his thick gray eyebrows.
“How did you ever become a monstrumologist, Gravois?”
“A combination of familial pressure and social retardation.”
Dobrogeanu grunted softly. “Come along, Will; Gravois, stay here if you like, but watch those stairs!”
We proceeded carefully down the hall, passing midway down a central staircase on the right. The sole source of light came from the fire escape door, and that light faded as we went.
Dobrogeanu stepped over a bundle of rags, pointing it out lest I trip over it in the gloom. To my surprise I saw the bundle was moving—and then I realized the rags were wrapped around an infant, no more than a few months old, its toothless mouth stretched wide in a pitifully silent cry. Its dark eyes moved restlessly in their sockets; its stick-thin arms flailed the air.
I tugged at the old man’s sleeve and pointed at the child. His eyebrows rose in astonishment.
“Is it alive?” he whispered.
I squatted beside the abandoned child. Its little hand caught my finger and held it tight. The eyes, which appeared very large in the emaciated face, had fixed upon me. It considered me with frank curiosity, squeezing my finger.
“Its parents must be somewhere,” Dobrogeanu surmised. “Come, Will.”
He urged me to my feet. The baby did not cry when I withdrew my finger. Perhaps it was too weak or too sick to cry.
Dobrogeanu started down the hall, but I did not move. I looked down at the baby by my feet. It was too much for me. How many times had I bemoaned my fate, the gross injustice of my parents’ deaths, or my service to an eccentric genius whose dark pursuits demanded that I endure the most alarming of scenarios, unto the risk of my very life? Yet what was my experience compared to that hungry child’s, forlorn in a filthy hall reeking of piss and cabbages? What did I understand of suffering?