Dracula's Child

by J. S. Barnes

  ‘Hello, Mr Harker.’

  I nodded warily.

  ‘So you have met them, I think,’ Joshua said. ‘And killed some of them to boot?’

  ‘The un-dead? I have, yes. More than I know.’

  ‘Then you should tell us,’ said the girl. ‘These are dangerous times for sleeping out in the open. In the hours of darkness you should not travel alone. We live not far from here, sir. Won’t you come home with us?’

  Full of foreboding, my mind still clouded from sleep, I hesitated.

  ‘Please, sir,’ said the girl. ‘It’s not safe out here. We wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves if something terrible befell one who slumbered almost upon our very doorstep.’

  She smiled with all the sweetness of untarnished youth. Her brother clapped me manfully upon my back.

  ‘Come back, Mr Harker. You must be safe. In such dark days as these we all should take particular care of one another.’

  I agreed that he was right and I allowed myself to be led away, deeper into the forest, farther from the line of the railway and into darkness.

  ‘They can be killed then, the blood-drinkers?’ asked the young woman, with an enthusiasm which I thought rather unbecoming.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They are powerful but they can be defeated. If one understands such few frailties as they possess.’

  ‘Can you show us?’ Julia said. ‘Please, Mr Harker, can you show us how to kill them?’

  As she spoke, I realised that I was already lost. I whirled around, striving to regain my bearings.

  ‘Hush, Mr Harker,’ said the girl. ‘No need to fret. We know the forest and we understand its ways. We will see you safely out of it once daylight comes.’

  As we walked on, I heard rustlings and scrapings around us, and more than once what I took to be footfalls. The trees creaked. There was in the bracken a rustling.

  ‘Are we—’ I began, but the siblings cut me short.

  ‘Only animals,’ said the brother.

  ‘Stay with us,’ said the sister, ‘and you will be quite safe.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  ‘We must hurry.’

  ‘No.’ I stopped to pick a piece of dead wood from the ground. On my knee, I broke it swiftly into two: a pair of new stakes created. I held one in each hand, knowing that, in the line of work to which I am once again committed, one can never have too many weapons.

  ‘Now,’ I said. ‘Now we may go on.’

  It was not long, and not without considerable relief, until I saw a small cottage, dirty-white, appear out of the gloom.

  ‘Home,’ said Julia as she led me to the door.

  From inside, I smelled something cooking – some lean meat. At the scent, my belly roared its approval.

  ‘Come inside,’ said Joshua, and I did as I was bidden.

  At first all was as it ought to be and everything was as appearance suggested. The house was a snug little home, warm and dry. The smell of cooking intensified within and hung most pleasantly in the air.

  ‘We still have some supper,’ Julia said sweetly. ‘If you would like to eat before you rest.’

  ‘Rabbit stew,’ Joshua said with insistent joviality. ‘Her specialism.’

  A feeling of doubt and suspicion was growing in my breast. Who would not be suspicious in such a situation? Even a child, weaned on fairy tales, would recognise the threat. Yet at those words, I felt a little reassured. Besides, I truly was exhausted.

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured. ‘I should be most grateful.’

  Within what seemed like moments, I was seated at the table and a steaming bowl of stew was being set before me.

  The scent of it was quite delicious.

  Joshua and Julia did not sit beside me but rather remained standing. Both rocked slightly upon their heels, an expression, almost identical, of happy expectation upon both of their faces.

  At the sight of this, a fright rose up in me again and I became cognisant of great and imminent danger.

  This perception I endeavoured to disguise from my hosts.

  ‘Try it,’ cooed the woman.

  ‘Might I,’ I said smilingly, ‘be permitted a knife and fork?’ Only a spoon sat before me.

  ‘For stew?’ said the man. ‘There is surely no need.’

  ‘Nonetheless. I have… a weak jaw. In case of gristle… The tenderness of my teeth… I am sure you understand.’

  Julia smiled, altogether without humour. She went to the sideboard and brought out a knife and fork, both of which looked blunt and speckled with age. ‘Here,’ she said, with no particular grace, and placed them before me. ‘Now will you try my cooking?’

  I reached for the knife and took it.

  ‘Please,’ said the woman again, and there was now an audible quality of brittleness to her voice for which I did not care. ‘Please, sir, do not be so discourteous as to reject our hospitality.’

  I looked at her then, and at her brother, and I saw in their eyes an awful, but not a supernatural, kind of hunger. I felt a sickening wave of fear, mingled with disgust.

  By my expression, they saw that the charade was almost over. Joshua sighed.

  ‘Could we not just kill him now, my love?’ he said. ‘I am sure that together we could overpower him. He is old, look, and weak from his walking.’

  I pushed my chair backwards and staggered to my feet. I pushed the stew to the ground. The bowl shattered and the food, which by now I was quite convinced was in some fashion drugged, poured sluggishly onto the floor.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why would want to kill me?’

  The young woman sighed, then shrugged. ‘Because we like it,’ she said. ‘Because we’ve always been curious.’

  ‘And,’ remarked the young fellow by her side, ‘because, nowadays, we can. This is his world now, Mr Harker. He permits many things. And so our time is come around.’

  They ran at me then, both together, their every motion speaking of murderous intent. Why? There was to it no rhyme or reason save for some base desire to kill.

  Both were evidently human – but they represented the very worst of our kind, twisted and thoroughly without hope. As they surged towards me I felt a rising within me of fury and outrage.

  All that we have suffered, my family and our friends. Mina gone, our son lost, our friends scattered, mad or dead. That these young panthers should dare to stand against me now! I felt a certainty then, an ardent belief in the necessity at that moment of absolute brutality.

  I thought of Mina and Quincey, and poor Sarah-Ann, and of all those who have been sacrificed, and I seized the knife and gave myself up to my rage. It was a brief but dreadful battle. I do not care to set down its every detail, even if I were able to recall them through the tidal waves of fury.

  Suffice to say that shortly afterwards, I left their house torn and bloodied, and that two cadavers lay within.

  I make no apology for this. It was done in self-defence. They were as maddened beasts and I had no choice but to destroy them. A brisk search of their dwelling-place revealed to my disgust that I would not by any means have been their first victim. How many others had they lured to the slaughter?

  And why? What darkness within urged them to commit such horrors? I have no answers, though I am sure that the revival of the Count has only emboldened them, they and others like them. I did not rest in that frightful house, nor did I dare to sample any food or drink.

  Instead, I walk on, more certain than ever of my purpose and mission. We have to stop him. We have to kill the Count. We have to set things right.

  Onwards, then. Onwards to Wildfold.

  PERSONAL MEMORANDUM BY FORMER SUB-DIVISIONAL INSPECTOR GEORGE DICKERSON

  10 February

  Continued. Back when I was a kid, my pa took me to a ghost town. It was an old mining settlement out on the fringes of the desert – a place where the ground had failed to provide much of anything, where every seam had turned out to be a false lead, where what glittered in the dust was only broken glass.
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br />   Folks had drifted. All the diggers and the prospectors were gone, along with the few shops and shacks which had sprung up to service their scanty needs. It was empty when we passed through it. Just shuttered storefronts, sand, rubble and tumbleweed. Nothing human was left, but even as a child I felt just the same that something had survived, that something was watching us with unfriendly eyes. I recall that I was most relieved when we left and moved right along. I suppose my father meant to teach me a lesson by taking me there – though quite what it might have been I cannot say.

  I thought of that abandoned place when our little group – the girl, the doctor, the Lord, his aide, his son and me – left the wind-whipped beach and walked into Wildfold. It was a small place, of fisherfolk and farmers, the kind which can be found, in different forms, on most every coast on Earth. In summer I dare say the place would look pretty enough, but at night at the end of an English winter it was only desolate.

  More than that, it had the same atmosphere as the ghost town of my younger days. It was a place where strange shadows fell. Where things slithered and shuffled just out of sight. After we walked up the beach, we came to the harbour and passed into the high street.

  We were heading (mostly, I guess, on instinct) for a little flint church at the heart of the town. Many doors were closed and many windows were boarded up, as though the inhabitants had left of their own free will. Other, gaping entrances and shattered panes told a different story. For a long time there was only the sounds of the sea and of boots on stone.

  Mr Strickland and me were at the back of the party. Strickland was a small, thin young guy, loyal and hardworking. I liked the man. I wish he had not died so hard.

  ‘Inspector?’ he said.

  ‘Not any more. Just plain George now.’

  ‘Of course. Forgive me.’

  I shrugged. ‘Ain’t nothing to forgive.’

  ‘I have two questions for you, George.’

  ‘Just two?’

  ‘Well, many more than that, of course. This whole business – this entire, wretched affair – raises so many questions for us all. But as to you, here tonight, I have but two enquiries.’

  ‘Then shoot.’

  ‘First, what led you to Wildfold?’

  ‘I was invited here.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘By an old friend – in a dream. And as to who sent that dream… who the hell knows?’

  He seemed not in the least bit surprised by my admission but just nodded. ‘Yes. We were brought here the same way. Lord Godalming – he was shown things in dreams. Told to trust the boy and to return to England. He’d meant to leave, you see, to depart the country altogether and go wandering abroad, for as long as the mood took him. But then… the storm… the ship… Crossing became impossible.’

  I think I only grunted at this. ‘What was your second question?’

  He looked away. ‘I… wouldn’t want to sound foolish. In such days as these one’s imagination has become distinctly skittish.’

  ‘Strickland, please. Ask me whatever you damn well please.’

  ‘Do you think, since the beach, that someone’s been following us?’

  I stopped. I held up my hand.

  Ahead of us, the others walked on, almost at the church. I looked into the darkness. Nothing. Only the hiss of the sea.

  But there seemed to me to be something all the same – something wrong, something which the quick eyes of Mr Strickland had seen and recognised.

  ‘Do you feel it too?’ he asked. ‘That sensation of being stalked?’

  I didn’t reply but just peered into the gloom. For a long moment there was nothing at all. And then…

  He must have been so hungry. That is what I have come to believe.

  Attracted by the sounds of our voices, he must have crept out of whatever shallow pit he’d been hiding in, and tracked our progress till his compulsions overwhelmed him.

  The vampire roared out of the darkness, moving far faster than should have been possible. Hands stretched out like talons, lips peeled back to show fangs like razors, and gleaming eyes which spoke of appetite. In a flash of horror I saw who it was: my old friend, Martin Parlow – hollowed out and made into a monster.

  Strickland was closest, so the creature took him first. With a wretched hissing sound it threw itself upon the Englishman and sank its teeth into the exposed part of his neck. Strickland cried out.

  I whaled on the creature. I pulled at his fat form, releasing Strickland. He fell at once upon the ground, crimson pumping from his neck.

  I had my old mentor held tight. Parlow thrashed and groaned in frustrated fury. I forced him around – gripped him by his lapels. He grinned madly up at me. His lips were flecked with foam and blood. He laughed, moist and gurgling.

  ‘In my eyes, Dickerson,’ he said, ‘you see the future.’

  I made my right hand into a fist and I smashed it hard into his plump face.

  He only laughed again.

  ‘Oh, but it’s a wonderful thing,’ he said. ‘Being like this. All them years of abiding by the law. Trying to keep order. When all the time I could have been this way. It’s glorious. You should try it, Georgie boy. Let yourself be transformed.’

  I held that filthy creature tight in my hands. ‘How…?’ I said. ‘How could you have allowed this to be done to you?’

  ‘No choice,’ the vampire spat. ‘No choice is given. But when she stopped me on the lonely road – the dark woman, the beauty who sent me here – I found soon that I wanted her to change me. In the end, we all want it.’

  His words – his filthy lying words – stopped. He writhed and hissed in my hands.

  ‘Stand back.’

  These words were spoken by Dr Seward, who appeared from behind me. Outstretched before him, he held a silver crucifix. The Parlow-thing wailed.

  He thrashed against me. I held him firm. Then Seward was by him, pressing the cross to his right cheek. There was a smell like burning meat.

  ‘Hold him down,’ Seward snapped and, with pleasure, I thrust the vile creature to the ground. It roared and protested. Too late.

  From somewhere, Seward had a stake and hammer and in an instant the thing was pushed into Parlow’s chest.

  The vampire screamed, a keening, unearthly sound. On my right, the aristocrat, Arthur, appeared. He had a knife and in six strong motions he succeeded in severing head from body. It was hard work. His face shone with sweat.

  Once it was over, he looked across at Seward. ‘Like old times, Doctor.’

  Nearby, poor Strickland lay in a spreading pool of blood. The girl was by his side, her face grave and full of sorrow. As she rose to her feet, I noticed that she could not bring herself to look upon what remained of her father.

  ‘Dead,’ she said simply. ‘With Mother now.’ Her courage impressed me.

  Lord Arthur surveyed the scene. ‘We cannot tolerate this,’ he said. ‘We simply cannot allow it. I ought never to have left this country. I should never have abandoned her. I should have stayed and I should have fought.’

  I spoke up. ‘There’s still time enough for that, sir. There’s still time to fight.’

  ‘Then I shall go to London,’ said the Englishman. ‘I shall destroy the vampire-king or I shall perish in the attempt. Who’s with me? Eh? In Strickland’s name and in Caroline’s and in the name of all those who have been destroyed by the monster, who is with me?’

  ‘Me,’ I said. ‘I am.’

  Seward: ‘Me too.’

  Ruby: ‘Of course.’

  We turned towards the kid. Young Quincey.

  It was a queer sight, for he did not seem to be paying us the slightest heed. Instead, he stood with arm outstretched, pointing towards that little flint church.

  ‘There comes another,’ he said. ‘The crew of light is not yet complete.’

  None of us replied. Without asking why, we found ourselves doing just what the kid wanted, staring at that damn kirk.

  As we watched, the door was thrown open. I
sprang forward, ready for action, expecting another blood-sucker.

  ‘Wait,’ said Lord Arthur. ‘Hold fast, Mr Dickerson.’

  Out of the door stumbled a man in his middle years, brown-haired and pale. He looked fretful and tired – the kind of fellow who lives on his nerves. At the sight of all of us, however, and of the kid in particular, his face creased into a broad smile.

  ‘Jonathan?’ called out the nobleman and the doctor almost as one.

  ‘Father!’ shouted the boy.

  They ran then, father and son, practically into each other’s arms.

  And for a brief, sweet moment, there even seemed to me to be a scrap of hope still left in this world.

  FROM THE DIARY OF ARNOLD SALTER

  11 February. I used to believe that this country had been infected by a poisonous, fast-spreading disease, and that the name of that infection was the twentieth century. In order to fight it, I looked for a cure. But, given the events of recent days, I wonder if the remedy might not be very much more contagious than the original malaise.

  Oh, I went to the Tower to ask my questions, of course – just as the Gazette had promised its readers, and just as I had promised Tanglemere that I would. I walked into the White Tower all puffed up, all dressed in my finery and with a kiss from Mrs Everson still glowing on my cheek.

  It was Mr Hallam who met me – a fat, florid, self-important man and a clear lover of perverted telegraph boys if ever I saw one. He is not as the Count is, or as the rest of them. He, amongst us all, is still human.

  I remember the fireside stories and the folklore. Is there not often one who is unchanged and is kept mortal in order to help them? Isn’t that right?

  In any case, I shook the man’s hand and followed him inside. He led me down – too far! – down into the depths of this place. He led me into a room of shadows and told me to wait. I was about to round on the man and d—n him for his impudence. When I turned, I saw that Mr Maurice Hallam was already gone.

  Then the voice stole out of the darkness, deep and rich and ancient.

  ‘Mr Salter?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am here to interview the Count.’ I was trying to sound tough but I sounded only young, like a mere stripling. Next to him, I suppose that is exactly what I am. Which of us is not?