Dracula's Child

by J. S. Barnes

  * In the course of my researches, I have uncovered no evidence that the Council of Athelstan ever kept records or minutes of their numerous boards and meetings. Such secrecy, of course, is entirely in keeping with their objectives and modus operandi. Who knows now what occurred in those convocations? This is the only extant documentation which I have uncovered: a rare eyewitness account of the triumph of the Count.

  MEMORANDUM FROM REVEREND T.P. OGDEN TO DR R.J. HARRIS

  4 February

  Headmaster,

  I write to you this night in a state of great concern. I have prayed at length for guidance. This memorandum would seem to me, for now, to be the best and wisest course of action.

  Headmaster, I am worried, almost beyond measure, as to the spiritual wellbeing of our boys. You will already, I fancy, have an inkling of what it is that I speak. For days now there has been amongst the pupils a growing sense of unease and disquiet. I am sure that you cannot have failed to notice this yourself, for all that you have of late been sequestered in your office upon so many occasions. Much of what has occurred I have tried to explain to myself as the understandable result of those recent events in London which have so arrested the country’s imagination. It is clear that we stand at a point (at the very brink!) of national crisis. It is natural enough that such things should affect our cohort of intelligent and perceptive young men.

  But there is something more at work here. Of this, I am quite certain. There is in our midst some alien element, some invader.

  The seeds of hysteria have taken root in our school and are already bearing dreadful fruit. Matters came to a head during our evening service in the chapel. It is generally a quiet, respectful occasion but tonight there was a febrile quality to the atmosphere even before we began. The boys seemed restless and ill at ease. There were more whispers and hushed conversations amongst them than is either customary or permitted. It seemed to me as I stood before them in the pulpit that there was to be spied a kind of collusion between them too. There were numerous looks, you see, Headmaster – knowing looks and glances.

  Even before I began to speak, I experienced something I have not known since my earliest days in the gown, the schoolmaster’s nightmare, the sense of one’s influence over the boys starting to weaken, the first notes of a total loss of control.

  The prayers, however, proceeded much as ever they do, as did our hymn and my short, pithy reading from Ephesians, in which, I am proud to report, my voice cracked only once.

  My hands were shaking as I spoke and I was forced to grip the sides of the lectern in order that my state of anxiety should not become apparent. It is my belief that several of the boys were able to detect this.

  As I spoke on, there was an increase in muffled conversation and sly glances. There came too to be apparent an unprecedented tendency towards tactile communication in the pews, a hideous, thoroughly inappropriate corporeality.

  It was not, however, until we all rose to recite together the Lord’s Prayer that the chaos began in earnest.

  Still trembling, I invited the recital to begin. From the start, the prayer was tainted. As one, the boys twisted the words, first into something which sounded like burlesque before becoming vile and ultimately blasphemous.

  ‘Our Father,’ they chanted, ‘who art now in England. Dreadful be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy dark will be done. On Earth as it is in Hell.’

  There was more, Headmaster, which I dare not set down here – more of the most frightful and abominable language, more invocation of the very darkest of forces. By the end, the boys were screaming it, screeching and whooping with a dreadful admixture of terror and delight which was altogether chilling to behold.

  At the finish of it, the chapel had become a site of wicked baboonery of the most shameful sort. I ran, Headmaster, for the door, and as I hurried along the nave a single cry went up amid the boys.

  ‘The master is coming!’

  The air was thick with hysteria and giddy panic.

  ‘The master is here!’

  A fever pitch was reached. There was weeping and fainting also. And, Headmaster, there was blood. They were causing each other harm and they were glorying in it.

  I ran to my study and I locked my door. I have prayed at great length and now I write these words to you. Oh, Headmaster, what is to become of us? What is to become of us all?

  MEMORANDUM FROM DR R.J. HARRIS TO REVEREND T.P. OGDEN

  4 February

  My dear Reverend,

  Thank you for your message, and for the memorable and vivid nature of its descriptions. I am grieved, of course, to hear of your ordeal.

  Nevertheless, I think that I shall be able to set your mind at rest. Be not afeared, Reverend. For something wonderful has come amongst us.

  Allow me to explain. I returned to my office after luncheon today intending to spend the afternoon in clearing up a number of outstanding administrative matters which have bedevilled me since the start of Michaelmas. If any time were to be left to me after the completion of this task, I meant to resume my study of the Emperor Caligula, upon whose rule of Rome I am preparing, as you may recall, a substantial monograph.

  The winter light was weak this afternoon. The shadows were long and it seemed in my study already to be growing dark. I sat behind my desk and set to my labours, yet I did so with the distinct, and initially unpleasant, sense that I was not in that room alone.

  A few minutes into my duties, I looked up from the ledger, my fountain pen in hand, to see a stranger standing at the far end of the study, indistinct and wreathed in shadows. He was a tall, moustachioed man and he was dressed from head to foot in black. At the sight of him, I began to cry out involuntarily, yet did the sound die in my throat.

  He moved forward carefully, keeping to the dark places of the room and eschewing the pale slivers of sunlight. His manner was courteous and old-fashioned. His accent was inflected by the sound of the furthermost reaches of the continent.

  ‘You will forgive me, Herr Harris, for my interruption.’

  As he approached I found myself unable to move from my chair; I was rooted there. ‘Who you are, sir?’ I asked.

  He sat down before me, his every movement as lithe and elegant as that of any jungle cat. ‘I am a… relation,’ he said, ‘of one of the boys who is in your charge.’

  ‘Indeed?’ I asked. ‘And which of them might that be?’ I found that I was perspiring and that I felt the onset of a headache.

  The figure in the chair presented me with his piercing gaze, at which, on instinct, I looked away. ‘His name is Harker.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I know the boy in question. And you are his… uncle?’

  ‘I am a guardian of sorts. A second father.’

  My heart galloped.

  ‘Where is the boy?’ he asked.

  I breathed out with some relief. ‘Not here,’ I said. ‘Harker never returned to us after Christmas. There was, as I understand it, a series of family tragedies… A great deal of unpleasantness. No doubt his parents have made other arrangements. As is their prerogative.’

  A series of fierce emotions passed like stormy weather across the visage of my guest: fury, wonder, self-satisfaction, laughter. ‘What a sadness you describe, Herr Harris. How much the boy has suffered.’

  ‘Hardship, loss and sudden death are all a part of life,’ I said stoutly. ‘It is well that the boys learn these truths at the earliest opportunity.’

  The stranger smiled. ‘Herr Harris. I am in agreement with you.’

  ‘All the world,’ I went on, warming to my theme, ‘is made up of those who rule and those who obey. The order of things is most naturally pyramidical, with the most successful at the top of it. We encourage all our charges to climb as far and as fast as they can towards the top.’

  The visitor smiled again, more widely than before. I noticed for the first time then that there was something singular about his teeth. ‘How very right you are.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But I am
sorry that I have no better news.’

  ‘All is well,’ said the man. ‘I shall seek him out without difficulty. There is a splinter of me within him. He lacks the strength to conquer it, of that I have no doubt. And so it will draw him to me.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said, ‘but I am not certain that I understand.’

  Those white teeth flashed again. On this occasion, I thought that I saw something else also: the crimson flicker of his tongue. ‘You understand, Herr Harris, more than you think.’

  At these words, I saw something in my mind: an image, as clear as any one saw in a gallery. The Harker boy in an unspeakable ritual which meant to draw out of him that secret portion of spirit, placed in him before his birth, which will make the creature whole again. I started in horror at this waking nightmare.

  The man in black smiled, as if he knew what I had seen. ‘The Rite,’ he murmured, ‘of Strigoi.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, still half lost in the dream. ‘Now that you mention it, I do believe that I have heard that name before.’

  The creature peeled back its lips. ‘I am bored now, Herr Harris. And I hunger also. Would you be so kind as to… open a vein for me?’

  The boys spoke the truth, my friend. The master is indeed amongst us. And in his wake, I see now that the world is once more being set aright.

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM

  5 February. It would doubtless surprise almost all who have known me, yet it would seem that I have been made for the political life, and it for me. The bureaucratic exercise of power is now as natural an operation to me as once was soliloquy and the gracious receipt of applause.

  For decades I have considered myself a being of the spiritual realm, of air and not of earth. Yet now, in this unexpected and unsought encore, I find that my métier is in truth the terrestrial sphere and that I thrive in regions of the purely material. Working as a spokesman, go-between and diplomat I find that I have been uniquely prepared by my time upon the stage. As in the theatre, all in politics is showmanship, greasepaint, misdirection and flair.

  Outwardly, perhaps, in this city as in me, little enough has been altered. The people still eat and work as ever they did. They go about their business just the same. Only in the atmosphere of the metropolis is the transformation discernible – a pervasive sense not simply of fear but of some subtler shift, of a return to an older way of thinking and a simpler ordering of life.

  The state of emergency continues and so, as it must, does the rule of the Council. The Count stands at the head of it, although he speaks always through me. The mechanism of the state itself has not been changed in any way, yet control of these levers has, with cunning and determination, been delivered into the hands of him whose return I unwittingly ensured. In the days that have passed since the resurrection, however, those who believe that they were born to rule have begun to comprehend the degree to which they have been outwitted.

  This afternoon, shortly after dusk, the Prime Minister came to call upon us.

  I was waiting to greet him – a tall man with a prominent forehead as would interest any student of phrenology and a large moustache which seemed to hint of some suppressed ambition upon seafaring lines.

  ‘Prime Minister,’ I said, and bowed my head in a kind of ironic supplication. ‘You are most welcome here. The Count is sleeping now but he will be delighted to receive you at his earliest convenience.’

  The politician’s face turned a deep shade of damson. ‘Insolence,’ he said, and the word was laden with fury. ‘How does this cuckoo dare to treat me so? The Council was never established in order to advance the ambitions of some European despot.’

  I gave a casual smile such as I might provide to some notorious curmudgeon at the Garrick. ‘What a pity, Prime Minister, that you should feel as you do upon the matter. Yet I fear that the rules of succession in the Council are quite clear. The Count has come to his position by entirely fair and logical means.’

  The man bristled. ‘Those means may very well appear to be so. But you and I both know that there has been chicanery and devilry at work. I have tried to see the King upon multiple occasions. My way has been barred. I have my suspicions, sir, as to the truth of all this! Aye, sir, I do!’

  I gave merely a faint smile at this tirade, as if mildly embarrassed. From somewhere below us, from one of the deeper levels of the White Tower, there then came the incongruous cry of a wolf.

  The statesman seemed appalled.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So the Count has awoken. He will see you now.’

  The politician only gazed at me.

  ‘This way, sir,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  ‘But… that was a wolf, was it not?’

  ‘Escaped from London Zoo. After which he hastened, with all the speed of Mercury, to the Tower. You need not fret, Prime Minister. You’re quite safe. The beast is tame. At least when the Master walks abroad.’

  There is something rather dreadful in seeing a man who was born to the easy, gilded life of influence made to tremble with such ease by one for whom the getting of power was an altogether more strenuous affair, whose spirit has been forged by centuries of struggle. At that moment, the wolf howled once more, as though to issue summons, and at the sound of it I watched any willingness to fight drain from the face of our Premier.

  ‘Come along now, Prime Minister,’ I said, my manner that of an indulgent nanny to a hesitant charge, to which the old statesman murmured his assent and capitulation.

  I turned, he followed, and together we walked down dank stone steps to the lowest level of the White Tower. Once we had descended, we waited before the great door which seals that subterranean room which I have come to think of as the crypt.

  I knocked. No answer was to be heard, yet a second later the door creaked open. It did not surprise me in the least to note that it seemed to achieve this feat of its own volition.

  Darkness waited upon the other side. I looked to the man beside me and saw that his face was white and perspiring.

  ‘Stand firm, Prime Minister,’ I said. ‘I recommend that you do as I did and simply accept the inevitability of change.’

  A voice came from the darkness, deep and ancient. ‘Prime Minister. Enter freely and of your own will.’

  The politician looked at me rather plaintively.

  ‘Go,’ I said, not unkindly. ‘For the Count is amongst us now. An ant may as well try to resist the turning of the wheel.’

  He did not reply, save with a stoical nod. A moment after he had crossed the threshold, the door swung shut behind him. I waited outside for only a little while.

  Once the screaming started, however, I found that I could bear only a moment of it and hurried away. Alongside those cries, I heard also, and somehow still more unpleasantly, the sound of high female laughter.

  * * *

  Later. Of course, the Count would never be so reckless or so hungry as to cause even the smallest permanent damage to that august official. He may have toyed with the Prime Minister for a while. He may have filled him with terrified awe. Yet he would never have gone so far as to drink from his veins, nor so much as pierce his papery aristocrat’s skin.

  The Count’s survival, for so many centuries, has been founded, I believe, upon knowing when stealth might best be employed. Still, the Prime Minister is now the Count’s creature, as surely as am I and as was poor Gabriel.

  I saw our Premier pass from the outer walls of the Tower some hours ago. His movements were a little more stilted than before, his eyes a little more fixed and staring, but there were no further indications that he – like all of us – has been placed in thrall.

  FROM THE WESTMINSTER PRISM

  6 February

  PRIME MINISTER OFFERS FULL SUPPORT TO THE COUNCIL AND THE COUNT

  The Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Earl of Balfour, today declared his full support for the continuance of the present state of emergency in London and for the retention of control over the metropolis by the Council of Athelstan. Furthermo
re, although he did not name the present leader of that Council, he affirmed his trust and loyalty in the figure who stands at the head of it.

  Speaking in Chequers to a small, select band of journalists (including your reporter), the Prime Minister spoke upon a variety of topics, including the recent devastation caused to the Houses of Parliament, which has, he says, rendered the buildings out of reach for the present time. He touched also upon those numerous souls who are still missing in the wake of the tremor which shook the city five days ago. Responding to several questions upon these matters of significance, he declared himself delighted to support entirely the temporary and interim control over the city of the Council and its leader.

  ‘I have met he who commands the Council,’ our Prime Minister said, ‘and I have the greatest confidence in him to steer us through this crisis. According to the ancient laws of our people, I cede all power over London to his Council until this catastrophe is eased. Once normality has been restored, so shall the usual order of things resume.’

  The Premier seemed in himself to be a little tired and drawn, although there was no mistaking the strength of that faith which he holds in the Count. He would answer no further questions and retired early to bed. It is said that he will remain in his country residence until the worst is over. If many of us who were present felt rather as though we had seen some shift of significance in the ordering of our national life, there was none of us discourteous enough – or, perhaps, sufficiently courageous – to speak such a thought aloud.

  FROM THE DIARY OF ARNOLD SALTER

  7 February. ‘You must be most encouraged,’ said Lord Tanglemere, ‘at the progress of events.’

  ‘I suppose that I am, my lord,’ I said. There must have been a note of uncertainty in my reply for, once I had spoken, the nobleman grimaced. He gulped.