The Dracula Tape

by Fred Saberhagen

  and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss — and man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the Vampire fold …

  No such weakness for Van Helsing himself, of course; though he admitted that he:

  was moved to a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyze my faculties … I was lapsing into sleep, the open-eyed sleep of one who yields to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow-stilled air a long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me like the sound of a clarion. For it was the voice of my dear Madam Mina that I heard.

  This yowl seems to me more likely to have issued from the throat of one of the guardian wolves than from the lady herself; however that may be, the professor did not bother to check on Mina’s position vis-à-vis the wolves, but turned back to the “horrid task” from which he had been distracted. He soon:

  found by wrenching away tomb tops one other of the sisters, the other dark one. I dared not pause to look on her as I had on her sister, lest once more I should begin to be enthrall; but I go on searching until, presently, I find in a great high tomb as if made to one much beloved that other fair sister … she was so fair to look upon, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely

  Guess what?

  voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me … made my head whirl with new emotion.

  Of course he was not put off by human instincts. After desecrating another Host by dropping it within my own disappointingly empty sarcophagus, he nerved himself to face his “terrible task … had it been but one, it had been easy, comparative. But three! To begin twice more after I had been through a deed of horror …”

  He does not record the order in which he took his victims, but I can testify that fair Anna was the last. It bothered me that at the end she screamed my name. And when I felt something within me trying to move and melt at that mere sound, I knew I had already changed; that my sojourn to England and my love of Mina had not been without profound effect … but whether this changing, softening, in me was for good or ill I could not have said.

  So the professor thrice dutifully endured “the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam.” Then before leaving the castle he “so fixed its entrances that never more” could the rightful proprietor “enter there Un-Dead.” It is hard to imagine what means he employed toward this end. Surely particles of transsubstantiated bread would have ceased to resemble bread, and therefore ceased to be the body of God, within a few months at the most. At any rate, I noted no impediment when I went out or in.

  There remains but little to be told. Weary from daylight, from my long though indirect exposure to the sun, I descended from the castle and waited in the last light of afternoon beside a rocky outcropping, along the road by which the Szgany soon must come. From the distance my ears brought me the sounds of their flight with their wagon, and from farther still I heard the hoofbeats of the Furies who had pursued them all the daylight hours. As I waited, my wolves came now and then to give me dumb report, by howls, and head pointings, and flashing wordless thought. I saw how the chase must end, and smiled. And I knew also of Mina not far away, now with the professor back at her side, both of them watching the approaching chase.

  I called great blasts of wind and snow about me as I stepped out into the road before the gypsies’ wagon, halting their horses more with my felt presence than any sight they could have of my upraised arm.

  “Master!” cried out Tatra, joyful in the driver’s seat. “I thought —” He turned in puzzlement to look at the heavy box that rode behind him. The Szgany around him reined their plunging horses in.

  “There is no time to explain now, my loyal ones,” I said, springing up into the wagon. I set my fingers beneath the box’s lid and opened it, wrenching screws and nails free. “Drive on! And as we go, do one of you nail this down again. Above all, remember, they must not uncrate me till the sunset.”

  I flattened myself down within the box, upon the alien earth that gave no rest nor peace, and waited, calling down blessings on my loyal men. How, in cold alien England, could I ever have set such an ambush for my enemies? Willing arms beat down the lid above me whilst the wagon lurched underway again and gathered speed.

  As we sped I called more wolves together and set them running on the heels of my pursuers. There I held them, for a diversionary attack at the last moment should one be needed.

  I know when sunset’s coming, even if the day be overcast, or black as night with clouds. That day was partly cloudy, with the snow coming and going like curtains drawn across the rocky, piny landscape. Believe me well, I knew to the moment when sunset was due upon that day. After four centuries’ dependence on it there was no way that I could fail to know.

  Our horses labored. Those of the foe grew nearer and nearer still. Then all at once and nearly simultaneously two voices, Harker’s and Morris’s, cried out in English: “Halt!” Through the wooden lid above me I could hear contending voices, those of my foes and friends, and then the wagon stopped. I needed but a few moments more, a very few … I decided to risk it without calling in the wolves.

  The astronomer, the meteorologist, the artist, each have their own definitions of the precise moment of sunrise or sunset. For me, sunset occurs when the mass of intervening earth grows great enough to sharply attenuate the flow of neutrinos — or whatever the proper title of this flux should be — that, emanating from the unshielded sun, hold in partial paralysis the deep nerve centers of the vampire brain and body.

  At the moment when the first of my enemies sprang upon the wagon the mass of an intervening mountain already blocked me from the sun. Mina, then at a slightly higher elevation and looking down with Van Helsing at the scene of struggle below, noted that “the castle of Dracula now stood out against the red sky, and every stone of its broken battlements was articulated against the light of the setting sun.”

  It was Harker himself who had boarded the wagon, and at once “with a strength which seemed incredible raised the great box and flung it over the wheel to the ground.” Quincey Morris, though sustaining in the process a knife wound that was shortly to prove fatal, bulldozed his way through the Szgany and joined Harker in prying off my lid. Seward and Lord Godalming were now at hand, sitting their weary horses with leveled Winchesters, against which my knife-carrying gypsies were powerless to interfere. As the lid fell free I looked toward the western sky, from which the sun had just that moment gone, and felt my powers come. My timing had been fine; nay, I boast quite truthfully that it was perfect.

  Mina shrieked as she saw her husband’s knife cut through my throat.

  whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris’s bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and vanished from our sight.

  I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution there was in the face a look of peace such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.

  And so shall I, my dear; for that look meant that my body, lanced with metallic pain at heart and throat, found anesthesia in the balm of victory as I changed form to mist, which, flowing away unnoticed amid the flurrying snow, was soon invisible to all who might have watched it …

  * * *

  I had thought that Van Helsing or Seward or even one of the others might be bothered by the metallic means — involving no wood, nor garlic — with which I had been, to all appearances, so easily dispatched. There was also a lack of “screeching.” “plunging,” and “lips of bloody foam,” all of which phenomena had accompanied each of their previous lynchings of my race. But I need not have worried. My hunters were emotionally and physically worn out, one and all, and more than ready to find the play utterly satisfying as it stood. Even Mina’s subconscious mind had been satisfied — for, even as she screamed to see my death — not knowing at the moment whether or not it might be real — the mark of the vampire vanished from h
er forehead, never to return. She was able to run out of Van Helsing’s Holy Circle at last, to comfort Morris in his dying moments and throw her arms about her husband. The gypsies had scattered and fled, and I, in mist-form amid the blowing snow, took my own leave …

  For a few hours …

  The snow ceased shortly after sunset, and the ensuing night was bitter cold. My enemies made camp in the open — their own fears and perhaps the consciences of some of them would hardly have let them rest inside the walls of Castle Dracula that night. They built up a fire against wolves — my disturbed children were still howling in the distance — and planned to take turns standing watch. But one by one they all sank into fitful sleep around the ebbing flames, till one person only remained awake, she who had begun to learn to make the night her day.

  I deepened the slumber of the others and then I came and stood in the far firelight, where her restlessly watching eyes could not fail to see me.

  Automatically at her first sight of me her hand went up to her forehead once again, to reassure itself of unmarked smoothness there. She looked around at all the men, then got to her feet and came toward me, placing her sturdy boots carefully upon the frozen ground. I could tell even at a distance that something had changed. What, precisely, I could not say. But suddenly I was wary.

  “Vlad,” Mina said, briskly and without preamble, as she came up, “you have given me your assurance that I have nothing to fear in the way of — of permanent physical consequences, as a result of our relationship to date. Is that not so?”

  “It is.” I bowed, without taking my careful eyes from hers.

  “It is a matter of some importance that this should be so, now,” she went on, and paused to emit a faint belch. “Excuse me.”

  “You have been reluctant to eat? That should vanish soon, as your stigma has already done. I told you these manifestations in you were merely the result of Van Helsing’s hypnotic —

  “This has nothing to do with Van Helsing, or with hypnotism,” she interrupted brusquely. “The fact is that I am pregnant.”

  My mouth opened but I could find no words.

  “I am pregnant, and I intend to take no chances with the welfare of my child-to-be. I am saying goodbye to you now, Vlad. Do you understand?”

  I could but nod.

  * * *

  It was the summer of 1897, I believe, when Mina and her good Jonathan, along with Lord Godalming and Dr. Seward — who were by then encumbered with their own wives and infants — and of course with you-know-who acting as mentor and guide, journeyed once more to my fair land. I suppose that, as before, the peasants waggled fingers and blessed themselves with prayers and incantations upon learning the pilgrims’ destination as they passed; that sort of thing does not change much in six or seven years.

  Although by now, of course, Castle Dracula is almost obliterated, from truthful memories as well as from the landscape, the tourists in 1897 found it but little changed. I am sure that Mina had to put forth some effort to persuade them — to persuade her husband, at any rate — to make the journey; if I were he I would not have chosen Transylvania for my holiday.

  I knew that she was on her way, across the miles … I knew. And of course I knew it also when she walked into the ruined courtyard of the castle on a day of birdsongs and summer light and here and there a climbing flower.

  After chatting with the others of her party for a while over this and that item of the architecture she descended alone toward what I might call my public tomb — which is the one Van Helsing had already found. There was and is another, much more private, and not far away.

  With all the sunlight up above, even the dim underground chamber was almost bright as day. Before the impressive monument that bears my name, Mina stood for a long moment with her head bowed. Then turned — and I was waiting for her, sitting casually upon a lesser slab nearby.

  “You startled me,” she said, raising one hand toward her breast in a Victorian maiden’s gesture that she gave up on halfway through, beneath my gaze. Then she asked: “How is it with you, Vlad?”

  “Well enough. I continue to — pursue my destiny.” I made a vague gesture, not knowing, myself, quite what I meant. “And you?”

  The voices of the rest of her party were audible somewhere above, a childish treble among them. A slight shadow crossed Mina’s face and I divined its meaning, and went on: “The child is innocent of me and mine. The bloodstreams do not mingle in the womb.” So I thought then; latterly, men of science are no longer quite so sure.

  “Two children, Vlad. I have borne twins.”

  “Then both are innocent. But what if they were not? There are worse fates in this world than to be a vampire.” On Lucy, Mina’s daughter, I will have no comment now, for she was still alive the last I heard. But certainly Quincey, her son, kept to breathing all his short life; he needed bayonets and hand grenades to drain the blood of others, and it was German iron that drank his, in 1916 at the Somme.

  Mina’s face cleared and we stood looking at each other, and she seemed to be wondering what to say next. But gradually she began to smile and shook her head at me. “Vlad, Vlad. There have been times in England, in the bright sunshine, when — forgive me, but when I have doubted your very existence.”

  “Oh? But that is all right. Every year there are fewer and fewer people who believe in me. But if they all forget me I will be here anyway, like an artifact of some lost civilization.”

  “Oh, Vlad! Your life is such a lonely one. And for six years you have been here waiting.” I had not been waiting entirely unaccompanied, but saw no reason to correct her estimate.

  Above, sharp careless footsteps of a small throng resounded on stone vaulting, drawing closer now, and a high voice was raised: “Mummy! Mummy, are you down there?”

  I reached Mina in one silent bound, planted a kiss upon her lips, and pressed something into her hand. I was held in man-shape by the daylight, but still those were my grounds and I knew them well. By the time two children came racing into the vault I was out of sight, but watching.

  “Mummy, mummy, there you are. Ohh, what’s this? Tombstones!”

  Then Harker himself, gray and solid and growing a little portly, strolled in and came to a sudden stop as he realized what chamber he had entered. “Lord,” he murmured, “I never thought to see the day when we could stand here in calm safety.”

  “I came to offer up a prayer, Jonathan,” his wife said. “For him.” Her husband was not looking at her, and her eyes flicked in the direction where I had disappeared. “That we may meet someday in — in a happier place than this.”

  “How lovely of you, my sweet, to pray for him,” Harker murmured, and gave her hair a little proprietary touch, which must have disarranged it, for a small restorative fingering by her own hand followed in a moment. “What have you there in your hand, Mina?”

  “Why, it’s a gold ring. It was here in a crevice between the paving stones, and I picked it up. Do you think I might be allowed to keep it?”

  “I don’t see why not, my dear. I believe the proper owner is not likely to come looking for it now. Ha, hum. Quincey, Lucy, show some respect, do not sit on the tombstones, please.”

  * * *

  Have I seen Mina since? Why yes, I must admit, a time or two.

  Jonathan died of apoplexy, raging at Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Mina lived to be ninety-five, and breathed her last in an Exeter nursing home in 1967, and was interred in her family’s plot nearby. In St. Peter’s Cemetery, as a matter of fact, not far from this very snowdrift where we sit …

  Van Helsing, God rest his own perturbed soul, was right about one thing at least …

  When I have mixed my blood with theirs, often enough, they all must walk after they appear to die. Exceptions are extremely rare. Some, like Lucy Westenra, bestir themselves in a mere three days or less. With some it takes three years or more. Modern embalming methods are to be considered, for if the vampire heart is nearly destroyed it needs a long time to regrow. But
it will do so, if destruction is not utterly complete. But after that regrowth, more healing time will pass, time in which the buried body, still quiescent, restores itself inexorably to youth. And after that …

  The bond has stretched twixt Mina and myself, but never broken. And I have come here tonight to welcome her into a new life. A life in which I trust she will find, despite its continuation of earthly sorrows, some great joys too, unknown to those who merely breathe … Mina!

  The tape ends shortly, the only sounds on its remaining length being the hissing of snow and wind around the windows of the car, and what some listeners describe as faint and distant peals of laughter, one feminine and gay, one masculine and deep.