“Catacombs, or cellars, or possibly something else entirely,” replied Van Helsing, peering at the stone walls, and the valet felt a shiver dance up his spine. He had never heard his master sound uncertain, not at any point in the two years he had served him.
The old professor approached the arch of the one passable corridor and looked down at the footprints in the dust.
“This way,” he said, as he stepped into the passage.
The space between the stone walls only allowed for single file, so Stoker followed Van Helsing, and the valet followed them both, his hand buried in his jacket pocket, gripping something tightly.
Van Helsing led them through the stone corridors, pausing at junctions and tipping small pools of flaming oil on to the dusty floor, markers that would hopefully lead them back to the ladder.
The passages were pitch-black, lit only by the flickering orange of the lamps. At the edges of the light, rats scurried into cracks in the ancient stone, their pink tails leaving thin lines in the thick dust. Heavy, intricate webs hung between the walls, ropy strands of silk that caught in the men’s hair and brushed their faces. The dark brown spiders that had woven them squatted in the highest spirals, thick-bodied creatures that Van Helsing didn’t recognize, although he kept this information to himself. The stone floor was uneven, cracked and subsiding, and the going was slow. Twice the valet had to reach out and grab Stoker’s shoulder when a slab moved under his feet, preventing the night manager from turning an ankle, or worse.
This was no place to be carrying an injured man.
It was difficult to gauge the passage of time in the darkness, but after a period that could have been as much as an hour or as little as ten minutes, the glow of light became visible in the distance, beyond the arc of their lamps. The three men headed toward it.
The light grew brighter and brighter, illuminating more details on the stone walls as they approached. At head height, carved into the wide slabs of the narrow passages, were the grotesque faces of gargoyles, their mouths open wide, forked tongues protruding between triangular teeth, their eyes staring out from wrinkled, finely worked skin. Stoker muttered to himself as they passed them, his hip flask now almost permanently attached to his lips. The valet watched with mixed emotions. He did not want to have to rely on a drunken man if, as seemed increasingly likely, they found trouble at the end of this labyrinth. But nor did he have any desire to answer the night manager’s questions, or placate his fears. If the brandy was keeping him quiet and putting one foot in front of the other, the valet supposed that was sufficient.
As they neared the source of the light, it became clear that it was shining through an ornate arch, much larger than the passage they were traveling along. Indeed, as he looked, the valet could see that the walls and ceiling were now tapering gently outward, widening the corridor in a way that was extremely disorientating. Stoker stumbled, yet again, and the valet gripped the man’s shoulder and righted him. The night manager murmured thanks, and they pressed on, until they walked under the towering arch and entered hell.
The arch opened into a square cavern, lit on each side by a pair of flaming torches. The lower walls were covered in carvings: gargoyle faces, humanoid figures, and long rows of text, chipped out of the stone in a language the valet had never seen before. On a stone slab in the middle, her arms and legs bound with rope, her skin so pale it was almost translucent, was a girl.
“That’s her,” whispered Stoker. “Jenny Pembry.”
Van Helsing quickly crossed the room and began examining the girl, while Stoker and the valet stood frozen under the arch, taking in the horror that surrounded them.
In the four corners of the room were the missing employees of the Lyceum Theatre.
To their left was the trumpet player, the fraying remains of his dinner suit hanging from his decaying corpse, which had been propped against the stone corner. His legs and arms were missing, and the skin that remained on his face was a green so dark, it was closer to black. Stoker turned back into the passage and retched, his hands on his knees, while the valet approached the body. As he neared it, he saw pages of sheet music had been crammed into the dead man’s mouth.
In the next corner was the understudy, clad in what remained of her Queen Titania costume. Her tiara, rough metal painted gold, shone horribly above the decomposing flesh of her face. Her legs had also been removed, and her ballet shoes placed on the floor before the ragged stumps, a practical joke of vicious cruelty. Her eyes were gone, although the valet could not tell whether this had been deliberate or the inevitable consequence of her final resting place.
In the final two corners were the missing chorus girls, arranged so they faced each other. They were less decayed than the others, and their death agonies were still visible on their faces, their teeth bared, their eyes wide. Both girls were naked, their torsos grotesque patchworks of cuts and stitches, done with what the valet realized to his horror were lengths of horse hair from a pair of violin bows that lay between them. They were horribly, unnaturally pale, their veins invisible.
All four of the bodies, the valet realized, had a pair of ragged puncture wounds on their necks.
“She’s still alive,” said Van Helsing.
At his master’s voice the valet turned away from the horrible fates that had befallen the chorus girls and approached the altar. Stoker followed, unsteady on his feet.
On the slab, Jenny Pembry was barely conscious, moaning and turning gently against the ropes that held her fast. The valet pulled his knife from his belt and sliced through the ropes. Van Helsing gently lifted the girl down and passed her to Stoker, who held her at arm’s length, his face blank with terror.
“Hold her, damn you!” barked Van Helsing. Stoker flinched and drew the chorus girl tight against him.
“She’s been bled almost dry,” Van Helsing told the valet. “Recently, too. The jugular blood is still warm.”
“Where’s the conductor?” asked the valet, his voice low.
“I don’t know,” replied Van Helsing. “If he’s in one of other tunnels, we will need more light, and many more men. If he’s-”
A drop of blood landed on the valet’s shoulder.
The valet examined the dark material of his jacket, then slowly both men looked up into the roof of the cavern.
Harold Norris hung upside down from the stone roof of the chamber, twenty feet or more above them, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes closed, like a grotesquely swollen bat. His mouth and chin were dark with Jenny Pembry’s blood, and as the three men stared upward, drops of crimson fell softly onto the dusty floor between them.
“Be absolutely quiet,” whispered Van Helsing. “We must not wake him.”
“What… what has happened to him?” asked Stoker, his whisper slurred by alcohol.
“There is not sufficient time to explain it to you now. We must leave here at once and return better prepared. We are no match for him if he wakes.”
The valet was still looking up at the conductor. The face that hung above him was gentle, kind even, lined with wrinkles and topped with a mane of gray hair. Norris was wearing his evening suit, the jacket spreading out around him like wings, the white collars of his shirt stained brown with blood.
“ Boy!” hissed Van Helsing.
The valet looked around, shaken from his thoughts. His master and the night manager were standing under the great arch that led into the chamber, waiting for him. He crossed the cavern slowly, anxious not to make any sound that might awake the sleeping monster swaying gently above his head. He had almost reached his companions when Stoker, his eyes wide with fear and incomprehension, turned and ran down the passage.
He made it only two steps before a stone slab shifted beneath him, and he pitched sideways. Van Helsing made a futile grab for his jacket but gripped only air. The night manager thumped into the wall of the corridor, which collapsed around him in a shower of rubble and a great cloud of choking dust. And in the roof of the cavern, Harold Norris opened his crimson eyes and let out a deep, animal growl.
The conductor was upon them before any of the men had chance to react. He fell like a dead weight into the middle of the cavern, pivoting impossibly barely inches from the ground to land in a deep crouch. He burst forward from this position with dizzying speed, crossing the distance to the arch in the blink of an eye, barreling into them like a snarling hurricane. He gripped Van Helsing around the throat and threw the old man into the middle of the chamber. Van Helsing crashed to the floor, skidded into the side of the altar, and lay still. The valet made to pull his hand from his pocket, but was much, much too slow. The conductor descended on him, a dark thing from hell,
