Dracula's Child

by J. S. Barnes

  The fellow behind the wheel squinted.

  ‘Loan us your car, sir,’ Arthur implored him. ‘I give you my word that I will recompense you most generously. Or better yet. Join us. Join us in London at the White Tower and see that tyrant brought low!’

  The driver pursed his lips. He stroked the end of his nose three times in evident contemplation. ‘No,’ he said at last.

  At this, we all three gazed at him, quite dumbfounded.

  It was Jack who found his voice first, being the one amongst us who was most accustomed to conversing with lunatics. ‘Do you not understand, sir? The severity of what has been described to you? The taking of the boy? The wound at the very heart of our democracy?’

  The fellow touched the underside of his chin again. ‘I know nothing of the boy, sir,’ he said, choosing his words with a maddening deliberation. ‘I know none of the complexities of that dilemma, whatever they may be. But I do know this… I approve of the Count.’

  At this declaration, Godalming swore, cursing with a vigour and ferocity which would have shocked even the most jaded of his colleagues in the House.

  ‘Well, you may choose to adopt that tone, sir,’ the motorist went on. ‘But I dare say that I am only speaking aloud what many folk are thinking. We like what the Count has done. We approve of the course he is charting for the nation. And if the cost of our security and success is at times a little unpleasant, well, I expect that’s only natural. Indeed, we should give thanks that at long last we have at the helm a man who is capable of making the most onerous decisions.’

  There would have been more of this, of that I have no doubt, but with this latest broadside my patience had come to an end. Quickly, while the driver still pontificated, I ran to the side of the car and dragged the prating fellow from his seat. He struggled and spluttered in outrage.

  ‘How dare you, sir! How dare you manhandle me like—’

  I silenced him with an uppercut. He whimpered, sighed once and went limp.

  ‘Well done!’ cried Arthur. Seward nodded, more stoically, in recognition of the necessity of my action.

  Lord Godalming took charge. ‘Put him somewhere safe,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the wheel.’

  With impressive expertise, he leapt aboard the vehicle and began to turn the motor car around in preparation for the drive to the capital. Wordlessly, Jack and I lifted the heavy stranger to a point where he lay in the shadow of the cathedral, sheltered from the elements and under its protection.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, once we were done. ‘I am afraid that I saw no alternative.’

  On the road, Arthur sounded the horn, its high-pitched klaxon a note of wild clamour resonating in that deserted place. ‘On board!’ he shouted. ‘We have to hurry!’

  Grateful, fearful, full of foreboding, the alienist and I ran to the vehicle and climbed up. Seconds later, we were moving swiftly, heading as quickly as we could to London, a distance of more than eighty miles.

  Words must have been spoken during that hectic journey, though I can recall scarcely any of them. Arthur, grim-faced behind the wheel, scrutinised the road ahead while Jack Seward sat beside me, doing his utmost to ensure that I did not succumb absolutely to despair.

  We careered first around country lanes and then along more urban thoroughfares, the first spokes that led to the hub of our nation. We moved at speed past places which had, until then, seemed wholly innocuous and without sin: Newmarket, Duxford, Bishop’s Stortford, Harlow. All the while, the engine roared in complaint at the plentiful demands Arthur placed upon it.

  I dare say that we thought – though none of us dared to vocalise it – that there was something horribly reminiscent of that final hunt of the last century, when we had tracked the Count to his lair. Then we had been in Transylvania and the vampire was desperate and fleeing before us. Today, we were in a corrupted England in which Dracula seemed unassailable.

  We raced through the night, struggling to beat the dawn, down through Epping, Chigwell and Ilford, as the landscape waxed and changed about us – from the starkness of the country to the outposts of the city, the rural to the gloweringly industrial.

  I have never before been driven with such rapidity. As it occurred, an awful phrase returned to me, a line I had heard many times in my unhappy sojourn in Eastern Europe.

  ‘The dead travel fast.’

  In the early hours of the morning, as we entered the outskirts of the metropolis, rain began to fall. With it we heard thunder and felt the onset of a storm.

  Jack Seward shouted above the clamour of the engine.

  ‘Surely this is the Count’s doing?’

  I could only nod. As the rain began to hurtle down, all Arthur’s concentration was needed to circumvent the challenges of the road.

  ‘The correct term,’ bellowed the alienist, ‘is a “micro-climate”. I’ve long believed that the vampire-king is capable of creating such phenomena through force of will alone.’

  As if to lend credence to his theory, a fork of lightning lit up our path ahead, like a warning. The dawn seemed close then: too close, it seemed to me.

  ‘Hurry!’ I shouted. ‘We have to hurry if we’re to save my son from damnation!’

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM

  12 February. * Later. She did not knock upon my door but simply thrust it open: Ileana, draped in some black shroud, and holding in her arms the prone and insensible body of a young man whose name I knew to be Master Quincey Harker.

  She laid him upon my floor. He seemed so very small and fragile.

  ‘There,’ said the vampiress. ‘You know what must be done. You will be preparing him now for the Rite.’

  I bowed my head, as though in acquiescence.

  ‘The Count and I have preparations of our own. I shall be returning within the hour.’

  ‘Madam,’ I said. ‘You may rely upon me.’

  The creature gave me a look of absolute contempt and made haste towards the door.

  ‘Ileana?’

  She turned her crimson eyes upon me. ‘What do you want, little Englishman?’ said she.

  ‘I wanted only to know,’ I said. ‘For certain, you understand.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘All those months ago, when you met Mr Shone and me, in that tavern at the boundaries of Brasov… did you know then what was coming? How Gabriel would be used? What part I had to play?’

  Her cruelty was effortless. ‘He knew. He has always known. For this is his revenge – not only upon the Harkers but upon the whole of your race.’

  ‘So I never really had a choice?’ I asked. ‘I was always to be a pawn.’

  She seemed to be profoundly uninterested in my questions. On the floor, the boy appeared about to wake. He groaned and stirred. Ileana looked down at him, as might a farmer at a piglet. ‘Do as he said. Prepare the boy.’

  She glided from the room and I was left alone with Quincey. He groaned once more. I sighed and, with a muttered profanity, yielded to my fate and set about doing that which had to be done.

  DR SEWARD’S DIARY

  (kept by hand)

  12 February. * Continued. As we sped out of the east, it soon became apparent that we were driving through something almost like fog. By this, I do not mean that the fog was of a literal sort (although a storm did indeed begin to brew) but rather that the night took on an oppressive, choking air. It was as if the atmosphere itself possessed a thickness, as though we were passing through some awful substance which clouded our minds and sapped our resolve.

  I believe I was a good deal more sensitive to this than were my companions. Perhaps the effects of that hideous journal upon me have yet entirely to depart. Certainly, I felt more faint and ill with every passing mile.

  The land told its own story. It seemed to me that there was an unfamiliar neatness to things, a well-ordered quality which might in itself not be thought of as sinister but which, given its context, seemed to me profoundly ominous.

  Neatness, yes, and starkness to
o. And quiet. An awful, pervasive quiet.

  We saw few other vehicles on the road, and such people as we passed darted into shadows or averted their eyes as we drove past. It was just as I had seen on the train: there was a horrible incuriosity abroad, and an unspoken fearfulness. More than once, as we progressed towards our destination – as even the engine seemed to struggle more than ought to have been the case – I found myself reminded of the panorama I had seen on only one occasion, years before, in the course of my excursion to the wilds of Transylvania. It is as though – and I tremble even to write the thought upon the page – the distant place, their conduct and customs, is becoming now our own.

  As we came upon the outskirts of London, a storm descended. Thunder first, then rain and lightning. The tempest had only begun when I called out to Jonathan that I considered the phenomenon to be the work of the Count. He seemed to agree. Arthur said nothing but bent closer to the wheel. The car was being pushed to its limits. The road was treacherous. At that moment I thought it more than likely that an accident might yet be the thing to foil our intentions.

  I was about to speculate aloud as to the parameters of the abilities of the Count – and wonder if they had grown since our last encounter – when something unforeseen occurred.

  We were upon some grim road, surrounded on either side by patches of bleak and sleeping grasslands, when all at once a shape blundered into the road before us: a bulky shadow in the gloom.

  ‘Watch out!’ I cried, but it was too late in such conditions even for a driver as experienced as Arthur to swerve in time, and so our car was struck. The sound was not a pleasant one: a deep, dull and somehow fleshy thump.

  Lord Godalming swore briskly and fluently. He applied the brakes. We skidded to a halt. The tyres squealed their complaint against the rain-slicked surface and for a moment I wondered if the vehicle itself might not be about to be upended. Once the car stopped, I leapt out.

  ‘What was it?’ Arthur called. ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘An animal?’ Jonathan replied, raising his soft voice to be heard above the storm. ‘A deer?’

  ‘No,’ I said, speaking with grim certainty. For I had seen precisely what it was that had struck us. ‘No, it was a man!’

  ‘I never meant to hit him,’ said the aristocrat. ‘You chaps saw that, didn’t you? How he all but hurled himself in front of us. There was no alternative. No time for me to change course.’

  Jonathan shivered in his seat. ‘It was a tragedy, Arthur. We both saw it. But we cannot afford to tarry now. We have to leave this and go on. To the White Tower.’

  Arthur was appalled. ‘No, we cannot. We must not. If we abandon our principles now – if we abandon our decency…’

  ‘But my son. Lord Arthur, the fate of my son’s soul hangs in the balance!’

  I stepped adroitly from the car. ‘Wait here!’ I cried. ‘Just for a short while. Let me see if this unfortunate fellow still lives.’

  ‘He can’t be.’ This was Jonathan Harker. ‘We all heard the sound of it. The poor devil’s body will already be cooling in the rain.’

  ‘But Arthur’s right!’ I said. ‘We need to see for sure.’

  I hurried back to the place where the person had been struck. Still he lay upon the earth where he had fallen. I drew near and crouched down beside him. Swiftly, I reached out to take his pulse. The skin of his neck was clammy and cold. No blood stirred in those veins.

  ‘I am terribly sorry,’ I murmured. ‘I am really very sorry.’

  He was a stranger. That much was clear. He was a large man with a sizeable belly. I should say a septuagenarian. He was untidy and ill-dressed. There was dirt and mud caked upon him. A few days’ growth of beard sprouted in unbecoming patches. I thought him most likely a vagrant or a wanderer.

  I spoke again, pitching myself against the tempest. ‘If we had more time we’d give you a proper Christian burial. But I’m afraid that, for now, this must suffice.’

  I lifted him up by his shoulders and dragged him as swiftly as I could to the side of the road. It was horrid work, and far less than any man deserved, yet I could see no alternative. Poor Quincey needed us.

  The body of the stranger was light. Suspiciously light. That alone should have made me realise.

  My grisly task accomplished, I turned around and waved to Jonathan and Arthur. ‘It’s done! We must hurry on.’

  Yet I was barely able to speak the last word of my sentence before I was knocked flat to the ground. Something was upon my back, pinioning me. I knew what it had to be and I appreciated the dire nature of the peril in which I now found myself. There were fingers tight at my throat and a hissing in my ears.

  I kicked furiously back and, for a second, succeeded in flinging my assailant away from me. I stumbled upright and, through the merciless rain and against the distant bellow of thunder, saw the true nature of my opponent: the man from the roadside revealed as un-dead, his lips peeled back to reveal grotesque fangs, delirious hunger in his eyes.

  I shouted desperately over my shoulder in the direction of my fellows. ‘Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!’

  I cursed myself for a fool for not having brought from the car any of our store of weapons.

  For a few moments, the monster and I circled one another. The creature gave a harsh and bitter laugh and, at the awful sound of it, I understood that whatever experiences had brought him to this place had not merely vampirised him but driven him irreparably insane.

  ‘I know you,’ said the creature. ‘Seward. The perverted alienist.’

  ‘Then you have the advantage, sir!’ I cried.

  The fiend laughed again. ‘You know my name.’

  ‘I assure you I do not.’

  It hissed. ‘Salter. I was once named Salter. I was celebrated and beloved. I was the tribune of the people.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I really don’t think I’ve ever heard of you.’

  This seemed sufficient to enrage the creature. It ran at me, full tilt. I stepped aside, only for the vampire, with unholy dexterity, to hurl itself sideways against me and pinion me once again to the ground. I felt its foul and rotting breath against my face.

  ‘Liar. Damned liar. You will never reach London! I will not permit it! I will do my duty and see that you never see my master again.’

  I struggled, but his strength was inhuman. I screamed, more in fury than in fear, at the thought that my journey might end here. The blood-drinker lifted high his head, his fangs bared, and brought his mouth down hard upon my neck.

  I screamed as his teeth punctured my skin. I screamed still louder when the monster was pulled from me by force. The hands of Jonathan and Arthur were upon him and they dragged him from me.

  As they did so, his teeth were still in me. He bit down as they dragged him away. Much skin and flesh was torn away from me. Blood pumped faster than before, spurting obscenely into the air.

  I struggled upright, clamping my right hand to the left of my neck. My fingers at once grew slick with crimson. My vision swam. I saw just enough to glimpse Arthur hold down my attacker and, through the driving rain, Jonathan raise a stake above Salter and drive it down into his heart. I heard that wretched creature shriek in desperation.

  ‘My master! My master!’

  Then all unnatural breath left his body and he sank, shrivelled and reduced, back upon the ground.

  I slumped down too. The blood seemed unstoppable. Darkness swam towards me. I saw my friends run in horror towards me. I heard their words of passionate concern.

  ‘Go on!’ I called out to them. ‘In God’s name, go on. You must save your son.’

  I do not know for certain whether they even heard me.

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM

  12 February. * Later. The boy groaned on the floor before me. His eyes flickered open. I stood before him and gazed down. How innocent he still looked. How tender!

  ‘I am so very sorry,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ the boy murmured. There was blood on
his face, I saw now, and I thought that several of his teeth had been broken. ‘You have done nothing beyond what has been written for you. The Count is so very strong.’

  ‘Quincey,’ I said. ‘The Count is indomitable.’

  He spoke to me then with a weird, beguiling knowledge. He knows of the workings of this place – the prisoners, the larder, the dark woman from the forest. And he made to me certain unexpected suggestions and recommendations of the most curious kind. He urged me to make a decision of my own, and as he talked he seemed to see into my very soul. I felt a little as might a Pharisee when the child in the temple spoke, far beyond his years, of ancient secrets and of the hidden truth of the universe.

  Once he was finished, I breathed in deeply. I was shaking profoundly, as if palsied, all over my body.

  ‘You’re sure?’ I said. ‘You’re absolutely certain?’

  He gave a terrible smile. His eyes flickered briefly crimson. ‘I am.’

  I could stand no more. I ran from the chamber, out into the tower beyond, and set about doing that which the boy had asked of me.

  JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

  12 February. * Continued. We did what had to be done. We did our duty and did not flinch from it.

  Poor Seward was already unconscious. Arthur ripped off his jacket and tore up its sleeves, cursing all the while the excellence of his tailoring. These strips he applied to the doctor’s wound, pushing it hard against the skin in an attempt to stop the bleeding. The fabric was soon soaked with blood. I had no notion as to whether there was any chance that he could last the night. The only fellow amongst us with medical training lay before us, bleeding and faint.

  Together, we helped the injured man back towards the car and lifted him carefully within.