Nosferatu the Vampyre

by Paul Monette

  He turned and took a burning candle from a nook in the wall, and he lit the way down the vaulted corridor. Jonathan carried his pack on his shoulder, and he felt the great doors shut behind him as he followed. For a moment Dracula held the candle close against his cloak. Jonathan could have sworn he saw the light through the other’s body, as if the Count were no more substantial than a curtain billowing at an open window. But the image fled as quickly as it came. He couldn’t keep his mind on anything long enough to work it out. There was nothing to fear in a man this sad, he told himself. The corridor stretched before them like a tunnel into another world, but now he was here at his journey’s end, so he must be safe at last. It was a relief, after so many weeks on the lonely trail, to have someone to follow.

  At length the corridor opened into an immense room lit by madly dancing candles. The high windows were covered with grates like a dungeon. The walls were swathed in tapestries. The mouth of the fireplace opened twice as tall as a man, and the timbers burned like hell itself. The massive table in front of it had chairs enough lined up on either side to seat a hundred people. But a hundred people drunk and laughing, breaking bread together, could not have dispelled the sense of chill and sickness. An ironwork chest at the hearth, where Jonathan laid down his pack, looked as if it hadn’t been opened in centuries, yet he was sure he heard the faintest scratching at the lid, as if whatever it was had never ceased pleading to be released. Though the head of the table was richly laid with food, it gave no hint of nourishment. Hunger would not be satisfied here. The thought of food made his stomach shiver. But Dracula drew out the chair, and there was nothing to do but sit down.

  “But won’t you join me?” he asked politely, noticing only one plate, one mug.

  “Ah, no,” said Dracula gently, taking the chair to Jonathan’s right. “I am a lonely man with lonely habits, Jonathan Harker. I take my food on the stroke of midnight. But you will permit me to serve you, I hope. The servants are not just now at our disposal .”

  And the clawed, attenuated fingers pulled the joint from a roasted pheasant and dropped it on the plate. Then he plucked some grapes from a bowl of fruit. Cut him a slab of goat cheese. And he poured him water in a crystal glass and filled his mug to the rim with wine, and Jonathan watched in a trance as if they were the motions of a priest. But he had to overcome a sense of nausea before he could take a bite, as if the food were rotten. As if there were something more he needed, except he couldn’t say what. He swallowed water. He ate the soft inside of the bread. And in a moment he’d come to himself again. He began to eat with greater relish. He mustn’t forget who he was, he thought.

  “You have some papers for me?” Dracula asked.

  “Why, yes,” he said, laying down his fork. “They’re in the pocket of my pack. I’ll get them for you right away.”

  “No, no. You sit and eat. I’ll find them.”

  But somehow it made Jonathan nervous to see the Count bent over his pack. He was looking for something else. The roll of documents was clearly visible, right at his hand, but he rooted through the pack with a restless desperation. He must have realized he had gone too far. He snatched the roll of Renfield’s papers and stood up, taking a deep breath to compose himself before he turned around. Jonathan stared into his plate, not knowing what to do. What of his did Dracula want?

  “Eat, eat,” urged the Count, pacing back and forth as he unfurled the plan of the ruined house in Wismar.

  Jonathan lifted a forkful of game. He chewed and chewed and got no taste. He had never had such a perplexity of appetites before. How long did he have to stay? he wondered. A yes or no from Dracula—wasn’t that all he needed? He’d be back with Lucy in three weeks’ time. Then he could savor life again like any other man. He had no wish beyond that—to be just like everyone else again. Then he would no longer have this feeling that a stranger buttered his bread and chewed his food. He couldn’t help but feel that here, high up in the mountains, Dracula was more real than he was. Wait till they both lived in Wismar, he thought. Then they would see who fit and who didn’t.

  He heard a clock begin to strike, and he turned to where it hung on the wall. Dracula was already riveted, quaking as he listened. He had his cloak clutched about him, and the documents lay on the floor. On the face of the clock, a miniature skeleton sounded the hour by beating on an anvil with a tiny hammer. At the twelfth stroke, a small door opened, and a figure in a shroud appeared with a sickle. He sliced the air once, mechanically. It was only meaningless little joke, thought Jonathan, who could no longer comprehend what had become of time. And then he heard the howling of wolves start up outside the castle, and he shrank against his chair.

  “Listen!” exclaimed the Count. “The children of the night have taken up their music!” And he let out a high laugh of triumph and threw open his arms. The cape billowed in the air like wings. He turned, and the look of inexplicable pleasure on his face was such that Jonathan clamped his hands to his mouth to keep from screaming. “Jonathan Harker, you shake with fear,” said Dracula with an angry pride. “You cannot place yourself in the soul of a hunter. You are as puny as all the mountain villagers, and fate will sweep you away!”

  Jonathan tried to act as if nothing had happened. Dracula stood in the firelight, looking as if he meant to strangle every living thing. He was just another madman, Jonathan told himself, reaching across for a piece of bread. That is why they had a madhouse, even in Wismar. Sad and lonely people ended up losing their minds. But he wouldn’t listen to raving, he thought, cutting a piece of cheese. He knew the mad were harmless, and they only hurt themselves. The silence built like a dare between them. Jonathan determined not to look at the Count till he’d finished his dinner. He put the bread and cheese together and cut it in two.

  And the knife slipped and sank into his thumb. The blood bloomed like a flower.

  “Oh, look!” Dracula moaned in a low voice. He was at Jonathan’s side in an instant, taking hold of the wrist. His jaw dropped open slackly, and he bent toward the wound. But the terror in Jonathan’s eyes, the pulling away in disgust, seemed to bring him up short. He forced himself to let go. He stepped back a pace. With a shudder of nerves, his arms crossed at his belly as if he would have a convulsion, and he began to talk brokenly.

  “The knife is very old,” he argued. “If it has a vein of rust—the blood can boil with poison, Jonathan Harker. I have seen men beg to die. If I draw it out. If I—suck the blood before it taints. It is the oldest remedy in the world, you understand.”

  “It’s nothing,” Jonathan said, binding his napkin around his thumb. “It’s a surface wound. In a moment it will close by itself.”

  But the blood came sparkling through the linen. The cut was just a little deeper than he thought. Dracula held back, and the torment that racked his face revealed a struggle as dark as warring angels. He made as if to turn away, with a terrible effort of will, but his left hand fluttered out from his body like a winged creature disembodied. He appeared to have no control of it as it gripped the other man’s wrist again. He opened his mouth as if to plead with his own satanic fingers, and yet again he lost control. The upper lip curled back against two jagged teeth. Swiftly he bent to Jonathan’s hand and tore the napkin off with his teeth. His mouth covered the wound as he fell against the table.

  For a space of seconds the two were motionless, fixed together like stars in a constellation. Then the vampire sprang away as if beaten off, appalled by his loss of control.

  “You—you do understand,” said Dracula, rubbing his hands together in a chafing way. “It’s the only way to avoid infection.”

  Jonathan staggered up from his chair, but he didn’t know where to turn. He couldn’t recall the way out. He was too weak to fight. He backed against the edge of the fireplace, the horror crawling over his skin like the beat of insects, and for a moment the despair reached such a pitch in his heart that he thought he would throw himself into the flames, because the nightmare was not going to stop now—ever.<
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  But he reeled forward and sank onto the chest, clutching his pack for dear life. He groped his way back to himself again, like climbing a cliff face hand over hand. He blanked everything else from his mind except the will to see the world as real.

  “Sir,” he said in a voice without inflection, “I believe we have business to discuss.”

  “Not now,” said Dracula, strange and distracted, as if he had too much else on his mind. “You are exhausted from your journey, Jonathan Harker. Wait till you’ve had a day or two of rest. There will be time enough for worldly matters then.”

  “I would like to conclude the arrangements,” Jonathan gasped. His guts were churning with nausea, and he couldn’t focus. “Please—if you sign the papers in the morning, I can be on my way.”

  “In the evening,” Dracula said, coming closer and peering at Jonathan, who had pillowed his head against his pack and now moaned softly, clutching his stomach. “I am away at the crack of dawn, and I don’t return till the fall of twilight. That will be soon enough, I hope.”

  “As you wish, sir,” Jonathan whispered. “I think—I must sleep now.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  There was something more that Jonathan wanted to say, something he was terribly sorry for. He felt his limbs going numb as if he’d been drugged. Only a minute ago, he thought deliriously, he had committed some kind of crime. But he couldn’t remember now. He swooned and went under, and the last sensation that gripped his heart was guilt. He was in a state of sin, and he didn’t even know what it was.

  He woke to the hollow sound of a gypsy fiddle, and for a moment he thought he was back in the mountains, safe in the gypsy camp. He was lying on the ancient chest, his arms folded across his chest as if someone had measured him for a coffin. He sat up and looked about, recalling where he was with a kind of dull indifference. By day, the dining hall seemed much, much smaller. Its neglected, shabby character was evident throughout. The motheaten tapestries, the cobwebs swooping at every corner, all the furniture cracked and leaning—everything gave the impression that the castle hadn’t been inhabited for decades.

  He yawned and shook off the shroud of sleep. He examined the cut on his thumb, but it seemed to be well on its way to healing. He stood up and felt a sudden throbbing at his neck. He felt the spot with his fingers. Two small welts very close together, as if two gnats had nestled down on his skin to mate. Not painful, really, but very sensitive to the touch. He looked around for a mirror, so he could study it rationally. But there was nothing bright enough in the general gloom to give him back his reflection.

  Then he noticed the table was laid afresh with food, and he forgot the irritation on his neck as he fell to eating. He couldn’t be bothered putting things on a plate. He ate with his hands, stuffing his mouth and chewing with a happy concentration. He was scooping up a pudding with his fingers when he heard the skirl of the fiddle again. The sound was coming in at the high barred window, but he couldn’t see out unless he got a ladder. He wandered away from the table, wiping his hands on his shirt. He went through a door at the end of the room, down a narrow passage like a tunnel, and came out into a circular hall where doors opened off in every direction. He walked to one at random, opened it and went in. It was a bay-windowed chamber very like another he’d known, but so long ago he couldn’t remember.

  On the bed was a pack and saddlebags, a woolen cloak and hat. He was sure they belonged to someone he used to know, but it slipped his mind just now. He crawled up onto the window seat and threw the casement open. He gasped and clung to the ledge, because the drop to the courtyard below was thirty or forty feet at least. But he leaned out into the gray and windy air. He’d caught sight of a ragged boy sitting on a moss-covered balustrade above the tortured garden, playing a lonely song on his fiddle.

  “Boy!” called Jonathan. He was so elated to see another human face. It had been so long he couldn’t say. “Tell me, please, what is this place?”

  But the boy didn’t notice, or he couldn’t hear him. Jonathan shouted and whistled. The lonely song went on. When it ended, the boy stood up and made his disconsolate way downstairs to the garden, and in a moment he went out of sight. Jonathan pleaded till he was hoarse. He felt as if he’d watched his own youth vanish. He fell back in on the window seat and put a hand to his heart, which throbbed with longing for a time that was no more. But his fingertips touched the locket pinned inside his shirt, and he drew it out as if it might contain a clue. He’d never seen it before.

  And when he clicked it open and saw her face, the wreath of flowers in her hair, the white neck like a swan, the whole of life came flooding back. Lucy! He looked up gratefully, and the tears came hot and free. He saw the gear on the bed and knew it as his own. The room he was in was the replica of the room they shared in Wismar. The color of the drapes, the china horses on the bedside table, the needlepoint cushions on the bed—all precisely the same as the details of the room above the canal! It should have made him shriek like a man falling, but Jonathan Harker smiled. How kind of the Count, he thought, to set it all up to remind him of home. The Count didn’t want him forgetting who he was at all.

  He looked at Lucy’s face till he thought he’d burst with joy. Then he pinned it in place again in his shirt and moved off dreamily out of the room. He didn’t appear to feel any fear at being in the castle. He found a passageway that circled all around it, with slit windows every fifty feet or so, to protect the place from its enemies. Every time he reached an exit, he found it locked. But instead of making him feel trapped, each successive discovery only made him feel more secure. At one point he opened an inner door and found himself in the library. Bookstacks rose to the ceiling, full of thousands of faded, dusty volumes. The silence lay so thick about that it was clear the room had not been entered in years and years. Just as well, Jonathan thought. You couldn’t believe what you read in books.

  And when at last he came again to the dining room, he climbed up onto the table and sat cross-legged. He ate and ate, till he fell over laughing to think a man could eat so much. His belly ached, and he fell asleep in the midst of his meal. He could hear the gypsy boy’s song, fiddling in at the window, and it seemed to him, as he drowsed on the table, that the Count had ordered a song to make him think of home.

  Mina came by at one o’clock, as usual, to set out something for Lucy’s lunch. If she didn’t, the poor girl went all day without a bite. She called a greeting, and Lucy only murmured in reply. Mina knew she was sitting in the bay, surrounded by all the books she’d borrowed from Doctor van Helsing. Morbid books about insomnia and madness, apparitions and the evil eye. She had drawn her beautiful hair up into a bun, and she wore a gray dress and jacket as drab as a schoolgirl’s. She was pleasant to everyone who called on her, but regretted every invitation. It was spoiled and shameful behavior, Mina thought, and reflected poorly on a town where a woman’s duty began with looking pretty. If she didn’t watch out, her husband would decline to take her back when he came home. Mina almost wished it would be so, as an object lesson to everyone.

  “Lucy,” she called, “I’ve put out a lovely potato soup, with a pat of butter in it. Come and eat it while it’s hot.”

  Lucy drifted into the dining room, a close-printed book held up to her eyes. She propped it up on a candlestick and sat at her plate. Mina saw that she didn’t bother with her napkin. And she didn’t notice that Mina had chosen the Celadon soup-plate, to go with the vase of dogwood brought from Mina’s garden. She didn’t notice the dogwood, either.

  “It says here, Mina, that in the Middle Ages, if a man had a vision involving a bat, he was put to death, and his body was buried far out at sea. Now why was that? Why didn’t they try to find out what it was really a vision of?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Mina primly. “People having visions don’t belong in nice society. Eat your soup.”

  Lucy lifted the spoon to her mouth and swallowed. Immediately, she was struck with a terrible sense of pressure
in her stomach, as if she’d gorged herself. She clenched her teeth and dipped the spoon in the soup again. If she ate another bite, she was sure she would explode. Food was a kind of torture. But she swallowed again and kept on eating. And though her eyes had hardened, and the cords in her neck were taut with pain, Mina didn’t see what she was going through at all. That was the test of Lucy’s strength.

  She’d been attacked for the last two days by a series of disorders, every time she ate—nausea, satiety, thirst so bad her lips had cracked, one thing after another. But she knew it was only the beginning. She had to use these minor agonies now to toughen herself for the horrors ahead. She hadn’t seen a vision in a week that took the shape of a rat, as if the power that taunted her out of the darkness knew it didn’t strike terror in her anymore. So it twisted a knife in her stomach instead, stabbed and stabbed till she thought she would start to pray to die, but she told herself: Take one more bite. And so she inched her way through hell.

  “Oh Mina,” she said, “you spoil me. I’ll have another bowl.” In her secret heart, she dared to taunt the darkness back. The fire shook her belly like a prisoner in a dungeon. “This time, Mina, with a double pat of butter.”

  Jonathan sat at the window in his bedroom, staring out on the falling dusk. He had one hand clasped around the pendant pinned to his shirt, and the other held a stub of pencil at an open diary on his knee. He wore a calm smile and a distant look, as he had all afternoon.

  “Lucy, my love,” he had written, “it is as if you were with me now. I cannot tell you how, but I am sitting here in our room, and I feel you are going to walk through the door at any moment. I can’t imagine what life will be like when I return. You are the only thing that I can imagine. Tonight I finish negotiations with the Count, and tomorrow I start the journey back, to fly to your side. If you only knew how much you are in this room . . .”

  The last light went in the woods around the castle, and Jonathan shook himself from his reverie and prepared to go into the main salon for dinner. He tucked the diary again into his saddlebags. He pulled out the sheaf of documents from Renfield and Company. He burrowed deep inside the pack for a clean handkerchief, having promised himself to eat his dinner like a gentleman, no matter how fierce his hunger was. He pulled the folded cambric out, and a gleam of something caught his eye. Did he still have a bit of gypsy silver? He burrowed deeper and brought up the rosary hung with the little cross. Now who had given him that? And what did it mean? It was as if he had no associations at all with crosses. But he pinned it around his neck because he thought it made him look prosperous, and he felt the cool of the cross against his heart as he swaggered through the hall and tunnel to join his host.