The Dracula Tape

by Fred Saberhagen

  It was not rats and bugs he wanted from me; that sort of life he could get on his own or with some cooperation from his keepers. In fact it was women that he craved, whose lives and bodies alike he wanted to consume. This truth was never quite made plain in the prim journals of my enemies, but truth it was. And, since Renfield had first seen her on the day of her arrival at the asylum, it was Mina in particular he wanted. She was the boon he desired from me, the goal of all his prayers.

  These entreaties, in a low, reasonable, and terribly earnest voice, began the moment I first stood inside his room. Even in the brief space of time before I could cross his worn rug to reach the door he managed to inform me, in several disgusting variations, of his plans for that fresh young girl when she should fall into his power.

  He was a madman, certainly, and I paid these mouthings little heed just then, but gave him a smile and nod in passing. No more did I think the doctors would heed him if he spoke of my visit.

  I laid my ear to the crack of his room’s massive, locked, and bolted door, then passed on through when I was satisfied that the hallway outside was untenanted. Now I found myself in a passage that ran nearly the whole length of the house. In other rooms nearby, servants and inmates were making their several kinds of moderate noises but at the moment no one was in sight.

  Renfield was quiet behind me, whether in disappointment or satisfaction I did not care. I ghosted in mist-form to find a set of stairs, ascended them, and passed almost invisibly along another hall. Now, if my estimates were accurate regarding the configuration of the house and the distances I had traversed, I must be outside the door of the rooms occupied by the Harkers. The upper hallway was, at the moment, as deserted as the lower had been, and quieter. I resumed man-form, took off my hat, and tapped prosaically on Mina’s door.

  “Yes?” The answer in her familiar voice came through the door at once. She evidently had not been asleep.

  “Mrs. Harker?” I called softly. “I am a neighbor of Dr. Seward’s, and I bear a message concerning your husband.”

  There were quick footsteps inside the room, the shuffle of a robe being put on, and a moment later the door opened, to reveal a kind of small sitting room, comfortably furnished, with another door beyond that must lead to a bed chamber. Mina’s face, rather broad but attractive, firm and intelligent, looked out at me framed by her brown curls. “Has something happened to Jonathan?” She seemed capable of bearing bad news if it had come.

  “No, no.” I hastened to be reassuring now that my foot, so to speak, was in the door. “At least he was in good health and reasonably good spirits but a short time ago.” As I answered I marked that her concern for her husband, though genuine, did not seem at all exaggerated, or even quite as deep as might have been expected, given the circumstances. I saw also in her eyes that she recognized me, or was at least on the point of doing so. How this could be I did not know, being then ignorant of her observation of me in Piccadilly, but I saw that the situation required the finest handling.

  “You will understand,” I pressed on, in as matter-of-fact a voice as some four centuries of practice could give me, “that circumstances of some urgency compel me to perform my own introduction. I am Count Dracula.”

  She completed a movement already begun, a half step backward from the door. She had been on the point of trying to slam it in my face. But there I stood in the attitude of a distinguished male visitor in upper-class dress. Not trying to force my way in, not menacing at all but very formidable; I doubt that any Victorian girl could have mustered up the nerve to slam that door. And I was smiling, as I know how to smile at women, with four centuries of practice in that art also. My eyes were fixed on hers …

  I cast no hypnotic spell upon her then; I can never do so against the firm will of the person being hypnotized. But it seemed almost that such was her state, as she half unwillingly remained before me, one hand, still somewhat sun-browned from her summer holiday, holding the door open, the other raised to clutch her dressing gown tight at the throat. She had started to open her sweet mouth as if to scream for help, but then was still.

  She shook her head then, whilst her most beautiful eyes clung to me and drank me in, till I began to feel almost like a hypnotic subject myself.

  “May I come in, madam? There are some vitally important matters I must discuss with some representative of this household, and I suspect you are its most intelligent member. Pray let me reassure you that you have not the slightest cause for concern over your own safety.” When Mina still made no move I added — very calmly, though now I could hear a servant moving on the stairs: “My visit really does concern the future safety of your husband.”

  Being thus provided with an acceptable reason for letting me in, Mina backed away and I entered the sitting room and closed the door behind me.

  Almost as if in a daze, she gestured to a chair. “Will you sit down?” As I accepted she seated herself most decorously and then said in halting words: “Count … you … if I understood your words correctly through the door, you described yourself as a neighbor?”

  “I have that honor, madam!” I held my tall hat straight upon my knee. “My estate, Carfax, is just behind the high stone wall you may have noticed that abuts upon these premises to the east.” She was nodding, still dazedly. “Your husband, I regret to say, is over there in my house now, together with Lord Godalming, Drs. Seward and Van Helsing, and an American gentleman, if that is the proper word, who fired a shot at me last night.”

  “Quincey Morris,” Mina breathed.

  I acknowledged the information with a small seated bow. “Tonight they are trying to find me. If they should be successful they would do their best to run me through with a wooden stake and then cut off my head.” I smiled slightly, inviting her to acknowledge just how ridiculous the whole business sounded.

  “As they did with Lucy,” Mina murmured softly, and in the midst of her words I could hear her fear beginning, just beginning, to rise up again.

  “A very shocking business, that, involving Miss Westenra.” I nodded, letting my own face show distress. “Dear Mrs. Harker, you see before you a man who is — most horribly misunderstood.” I let my eyes fall, as if they had suddenly gone shy, away from hers. “Let me reassure you again, if there is still any need to do so, that you yourself have not the slightest cause for concern that I will ever do aught to c-cause you harm.” Note that single deliberate stutter there. Gets ’em every time, as the Americans might say.

  “Why should I wish you harm, dear lady?” I pressed on. “It is not you who trespasses on my land, breaks into my house, destroys my property, bears lethal weapons against me through the night.” I looked up again. “Your husband, it gives me great pain to say, does all these things, persists in doing them, and because of unfortunate misunderstandings he seems likely to persevere in this mad course until he comes to grief. Yes, grief! And what am I to do? How can I possibly prevent it, without help? The men have come one and all under the influence of that fanatic Van Helsing, and their eyes and ears are closed to any entreaty of mine. It is my humble hope that with your help and guidance I may find a way to enlighten them, to turn their feet back to the paths of sanity and safety, before it is too late!”

  Mina had not yet recovered enough from my introduction to be her true, quick-witted self. “Too late for what, Count Dracula?”

  I leaned toward her and spoke slowly. “Too late for their own good, dear Mrs. Harker. I am not going to let myself be killed. What they did to Lucy they shall not do to me.”

  “I don’t understand this,” the lady murmured, and started to her feet and then sat down again, continuing to gaze at me. “I fear I do not understand this, at all. I think perhaps I’m dreaming.”

  I shook my head and remained sitting in a dignified position, top hat held resting on my knee.

  “Count — did none of the servants offer to take your hat?”

  “The servants are not aware that I am here, madam. I judged it wiser to speak to you
in secrecy.”

  “Count Dracula — for so you seem to be in truth — how can you explain the fearful things that happened to my husband whilst he was visiting your castle?”

  “Madam, I myself left the castle before he did. As to precisely how long he remained after my departure, or what may have happened to him in the interval, I cannot say, although of course some ultimate responsibility may be mine. As for what may have happened to him at Castle Dracula before I left, I am willing to offer an explanation on any point where you desire to have one.”

  “My dear Count …”

  I braced myself.

  “… who were those three women?”

  Within half an hour we were chatting more or less at our ease. Sweet Mina was perturbed at being able to offer me nothing in the way of hospitality, but I assured her that I did not eat or drink. “With one exception, of course, and even that is not really as you must suppose.”

  “No? Then you must tell me how it is.”

  I spoke to Mina on that night almost as I might have spoken to an intelligent and sympathetic breathing man, had there been any such creature in my universe. I touched only briefly upon the uncommon aspects of my life, and stressed my yearnings for a free and open life, my sore need for someone in whom I might sometimes trust and confide, and above all the absence from my existence of any gleam of true affection. Not that I rawly enumerated all these needs, but rather I gradually let their existence swim into her ken. Strange to say, or perhaps not so strange, the lady seemed to see into my heart of hearts right from the first.

  Somewhat belatedly I steered the conversation back to the problem of how we might save Jonathan and the others from the dangers of their headstrong course. But before Mina and I could reach any constructive agreement on action to be taken, my keen ears brought me the sounds of the weary hunting party’s shuffle-footed return across the grounds of the asylum.

  When I announced her husband’s imminent arrival Mina started up. “Oh! If you should be discovered here, what will happen?”

  “Good Madam Mina, they shall not discover me: that is, they shall not if you and I can quickly reach agreement that I may call on you again tomorrow night? Or whenever your husband next absents himself. We have yet to decide upon a course of action.”

  “Oh.” She listened to the opening of a door belowstairs, to the hunters coming in with earnest, tired voices that must have been almost inaudible to her. “Yes, yes, you may come. I see we must consult, for Jonathan’s own good.”

  I bowed and kissed her hand, turned to the window, and in a moment I was gone.

  Shortly her husband tiptoed into the room to find her somewhat paler than usual, and, as he thought, asleep. He sat down and wrote in his journal, mentioning among other things his concern for his wife, and a decision the men had arrived at, regarding Mina, on their inglorious way home.

  I hope that the meeting tonight has not upset her. I am truly thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of our deliberations. It is too great a strain for a woman to bear … henceforth our work is to be a sealed book to her, till at least such time as we can tell her that all is finished, and the earth free from a monster of the nether world. I daresay it will be difficult to begin to keep silence after such confidence as ours; but I must be resolute, and tomorrow I shall keep dark over tonight’s doings, and shall refuse to speak of anything that has happened. I rest on the sofa, so as not to disturb her.

  Much later in the morning, when the sun was high and all the rest of the household up and about, Jonathan “had to call two or three times before Mina awoke.” She did not even seem to recognize her husband immediately, but looked at him at first “with a sort of blank terror.” Her life had been changed during the night, and for the moment neither she nor her husband had any inkling of how great a change had been wrought. Nor, in fact, had I any real idea of how my own life would be transformed from that point on.

  Mina as usual wrote in her journal on this day, the first of October. But this time she wrote not of what had really happened on the night before. Rather it was an oblique and coded kind of entry, relating an experience of a dream, or dreamlike state, in which she had beheld mist creeping across the lawn and pouring in ’round her bedroom door, and a vague vision of red eyes. Rather diffidently she showed it to me, as a sort of maiden literary effort, when I came back the next evening.

  My enemies were busy that October first, trying to trace the dispersal of my boxes from Carfax. Engaged in this task, Jonathan was out again, this time in Walworth, toward the south of London, when I arrived.

  On this visit I found an attendant posted, evidently as a guard or lookout, in the corridor outside Renfield’s room. The madman had suddenly become so cheerful, “singing gaily” and snapping up houseflies as of old, that Seward was made suspicious. It was Renfield himself, with many winks and grimaces and pointings of his thumb, who notified me of the presence of this lookout as soon as I came in through his window. Of course I was not required to pass through Renfield’s room at all after once gaining admission to the house, but I had already begun to feel somewhat uneasy about Mina, lodged as she was in rooms directly above that of this inhumanly powerful man who yearned to rape and torture her. I thought I would try to soothe the lunatic with a few soft, calming words, as from his lord and master.

  But first of all there was the attendant in the hallway to be dealt with. It was no great trick to send this sentry, who already nodded on its brink, toppling safely into the abyss of sleep. I did it by creating a certain electrical resonance between my brain and that of the subject, a means that your science is now beginning to discover.

  Then I put my hands on Renfield’s shoulders and gave him a few soft words. He took them rather sulkily, I thought. It was not peace and calm he wanted. But I tried …

  I left him quiet, if not pacified. Then, wraith-like, I went out of his room and past the guard who nodded in his chair, and up the stairs again. Listening outside the door of the Harkers’ apartment, I could hear only one set of lungs at work within — Mina’s, that I had already come to be able to recognize. And there came also to my sensitive ears the soft, thick murmur of her heart, so tender a pump that pushed such pure elixir through her veins. The fang roots in my upper jaw were aching as I tapped lightly at her door. And at my tapping her breath inside, that had already been quick with anticipation, quickened more …

  If chastity can be defined as that which is protected by a chastity belt, then Mina, like Lucy before her, was always chaste with me. But as I am concerned to speak the truth I must relate that Mina gave herself to me as fully as she could, as early as that night, our second meeting. Very little in the way of making plans did we accomplish then, for ourselves even, let alone for her husband’s future welfare … ah, Mina! My true, enduring love! Dear one, heart of my heart …

  Harker on his tardy return home — to the asylum, that is — on that night of first October found Mina fast asleep, and thought her

  a little too pale; her eyes look as though she has been crying. Poor dear, I’ve no doubt it frets her to be kept in the dark, and it may make her doubly anxious about me and the others. But … it is better to be disappointed and worried in such a way now than to have her nerve broken. The doctors were quite right to insist on her being kept out of this dreadful business … indeed, it may not be a hard task after all, for she herself has become reticent on the subject, and has not spoken of the count and his doings ever since we told her of our decision.

  The next day, October second, I rested, glassy-eyed, in trance. That day saw Arthur and Quincey out looking at horses, with a view to purchasing some in case any sort of cavalry action should be required; they were basically men of action, chafed by Van Helsing’s deviousness and delays. Harker continued his interviews with teamsters, by which he was methodically tracking down my boxes — though of course he had not discovered that several of them no longer contained their original soil. Seward had enough work of his own about the a
sylum to keep him out of mischief; and one of the most advanced scientists of his day was reportedly at the British Museum’s reading room, “searching for witch and demon cures” that he had told Seward “might be useful later.” Mina got some rest during the day, but the mental strain of her ambiguous new position was affecting her, and Harker on rejoining her in the afternoon thought she still looked wan.

  She made a gallant effort to be bright and cheerful … it took all my courage to hold to the wise resolution of keeping her out of our grim task. She seemed somehow more reconciled; or else the very subject seems to have become repugnant to her, for when any accidental allusion is made she actually shudders …

  He had just found my house in Piccadilly, ripe for plundering; but had to record regretfully that he could not tell the other men of the day’s great discovery whilst his wife was hanging about.

  So after dinner — followed by a little music to save appearances even amongst ourselves — I took Mina to her room and left her to go to bed. The dear girl was more affectionate with me than ever, and clung to me as though she would detain me; but there was much to be talked of and I came away. Thank God, the ceasing of telling things has made no difference between us.

  So many a cuckolded husband has comforted himself, I should imagine, as his last chance to retain first place in his girl’s heart slips through his hands, unnoticed by himself.