Dracul

by Dacre Stoker

  “When he hid Deaglan’s heart?”

  Bram looks at her. “Don’t you see? These crosses, they are a shield. Even if you knew his heart was hidden at this very spot, you would not be able to reach inside and take it out.”

  “Is it in there?”

  Bram’s fingers find it then, the corners of a small box, buried deep in the coffin. He reaches in with both hands and pulls it out. A box of red oak, its gold hinges now tarnished black. He carefully sets it beside the tomb and works the latch. At first, it does not budge, but after a bit of prodding it pops open. Bram lifts the lid, and the three of them stare down at the heart of Deaglan O’Cuiv. Dark and small, shriveled with age, yet still beating—only once every minute or so, yet still beating.

  “My God.”

  “But why would he lock Emily in with it, mark the grave the way he did? He led us to it,” Thornley said. “We would have never found it here.”

  “He wanted us to find it,” Bram agrees.

  A gunshot rings out. It came from the small house.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES UNTIL NIGHTFALL

  Bram is first to climb the hill and spot the men surrounding the small house, more than a dozen of them, all attired in the same strange garb as those men they had found dead around Dracul’s coach.

  “He calls them Szgany,” Ellen tells Bram under her breath.

  “Who are they?”

  “Mortal men sworn to protect and serve Dracul. They go where he cannot and keep him safe during daylight hours. As you have witnessed, they will sacrifice their lives for him. In turn, Dracul provides wealth for the families they leave behind. To die in his service means their kinfolk will never know poverty or famine. They gladly comply with whatever he commands.”

  Thornley stumbles up the hill behind them, bearing the curved dagger in his hand. Emily is nowhere to be seen.

  “You didn’t?”

  Thornley follows his gaze to the blade and quickly shakes his head. “No, no, I could never. I reached for her arm and tried to bring her with me, but she pulled away and bolted off. I lost sight of her amongst the graves.”

  “Nightfall is nearly upon us,” Ellen says. “She will gain her full strength then. You must be wary of her. If she tries to bite you again, there will be no escape. Make no mistake, she is no longer your wife now that his blood flows freely in her veins, she is a servant of the Devil.”

  Thornley lashes out. “Odd words coming from the likes of you.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the lock of Ellen’s hair and tosses it at her. “If not for you, this fate would not have befallen her. You had no business coming into our lives. You’ve brought nothing but pain.”

  Bram could see the hurt in her eyes, Ellen utters nothing in response. Her fingers coil around the lock of hair.

  A second gunshot rings out, and the three of them turn back towards the house. One of the Szgany is pointing the smoking barrel of his discharged pistol towards the sky.

  They watch as their frightened horses, unhitched from the wagon, run towards the forest and disappear in the trees. The horses at Dracul’s coach seem unfazed by the noise—they stomp their feet and harsh, white breath escapes their flaring nostrils in the growing cold as they stare to the west, watching the sun settle behind the churning storm.

  The Szgany with the gun falls back into position, and they tighten their formation around the house.

  “They will not let us pass.”

  “You can make them, Bram. You have it in you.”

  Bram turns to Ellen. “What do you mean?”

  “I have no abilities until nightfall, but you are not bound by this limitation. My blood may flow in your veins, but you are not undead, you are still human, something special. You only need to try,” Ellen tells him, then places a cold finger upon his cheek.

  It is only then that he sees, that he understands.

  Bram places the palm of his hand against the muddy earth and digs his fingers into the ground.

  MATILDA

  TEN MINUTES UNTIL NIGHTFALL

  Matilda’s eyes never leave the first man, even as it happens. Whether from fear or shock, she continues to stare at him down the barrel of the Webley.

  She watches a roach scurry from the mud and climb the man’s leg. Not until it runs across his neck to his face does he swat the bug away. This doesn’t seem to matter, though, for the moment the roach hits the ground, it is joined by a dozen more, and they all climb the man, a number of them crawling into his boots and the cuffs of his pants. At first, he remains still, as do the others, but when he realizes what is happening, when he sees these filthy creatures upon him, he begins to swat at them. But for each that falls back to the earth, fifty more mount his boots and begin to climb.

  The ground swarms with them, a rolling mass of brown and black as roaches appear from the mud and crawl over one another, climbing until they find his legs. The man before her is covered with them in seconds, thousands of these insects crawling over his every inch—she can barely see the white of his shirt, the fabric of his pants. His arms flail and he cries out something in a language she does not understand. As he does so, three of them crawl into his mouth. He spits them out and claws at his face, brushing them away, but there is no end to the bugs. His hat falls away and it is gone in an instant as the roaches climb over it in search of higher ground, these black and brown little creatures glistening with the rain. A shiver races over Matilda’s body as she watches the man fall to the ground and roll around under a blanket of bugs, his cries muffled by the lot of them.

  When Matilda is finally able to tear her eyes away from where the poor man had been moments before, she realizes the roaches have engulfed not just this one victim but the other hapless men as well—more than a dozen in number—all writhing in agony on the ground.

  Only then does she remember to breathe.

  * * *

  • • •

  “HURRY! GET INSIDE!” Vambéry cries out, holding the door open wide.

  Thornley is first into the house, followed closely on his heels by Ellen, and then Bram, who clutches a small wooden box with both of his muddy hands.

  BRAM

  FIVE MINUTES UNTIL NIGHTFALL

  The roaches parted as they ran towards the house, clearing a path in the carpet of writhing insects as men scream all around them.

  Vambéry hastily slams the door of the house once they are inside.

  “What the hell was that?” Thornley demands, retreating in the far corner of the room just inside the door, his eyes darting to Bram.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Bram stutters. He is breathing heavily, his heart pounding in his throat. He sets the small box down on the table and leans over it, steadying himself with both hands.

  Matilda is staring at him, too, unable to speak, as rain pours in through the hole in the ceiling.

  “We must hurry,” Ellen says, reaching for the box.

  Bram watches as she unhooks the tarnished latch and gently lifts the lid, revealing the heart inside.

  “You did that,” Thornley says. “You commanded those . . . those things?”

  Bram says nothing. When he catches Matilda’s eyes on him, he turns away.

  Ellen reaches inside the box and takes the heart in hand, her fingers brushing off the dust with care, even tenderness. Her thoughts become lost in the task, oblivious to the others in the room. Folding back the tarpaulin over Deaglan’s body to reveal the gaping hole in his chest, she returns the heart to its cavity.

  Bram is not sure what he expects to happen next, but nothing does.

  The body of Deaglan O’Cuiv remains inert, nothing but the pieces of the man he used to be assembled in loose order on a table.

  Thornley crosses the room to Ellen. “You said Dracul’s blood is evil. You said anything born of him is evil. What will happen if you wake this man? Should he be restrained somehow?�
�

  Vambéry is there then, his silver sword in one hand and a wooden stake in the other. “I think we have let this go on long enough.”

  Ellen hisses at him and he backs away.

  Thunder rumbles outside, followed all too quickly by Emily’s peals of laughter. Bram and Thornley go to the window. Emily is standing at the top of the hill overlooking the cemetery, her long blue gown whipping in the wind and rain. She takes a step, then another, a sort of childish skip from one end of the hill to the other. “Come out, come out, my love! Dance with me in the rain! Thooornley . . . why are you hiding from me on such a beautiful night?”

  Bram watches as she goes back and forth. There is something off about her steps, the flowing nature of them. It isn’t until she makes her second pass that he realizes what it is—she is no longer touching the ground, but floating slightly above it. The icy rain seems to miss her, the drops rolling away before they contact her. The burn marks on the backs of her arms, the cuts, are all gone now, her skin healed. She laughs again, and Bram hears it in his mind as clearly as he hears it with his ears.

  The storm breaks for a second, but it is long enough for him to realize the sun has left them, disappearing behind the horizon as night takes hold.

  Emily dances atop the hill as the storm churns, swirling thick raindrops pounding at the newfound night. All but Ellen stand at one of the windows, watching her, watching as she finally stops and glares down at them from the hill. She raises her arm and points at the small house, at them, then turns her palm to the falling rain, somehow catching it in her hand although she remains dry. She calls out in a singsong voice, “Girls and boys, come out to play. The moon doth shine as bright as day. Leave your supper and leave your sleep, and come with your playfellows into the street!”

  “She is absolutely mad,” Vambéry says softly at Bram’s side.

  She sings this again and again. When she sings it for a fifth time, the wind and rain come to a sudden and swift stop. Emily laughs aloud and spins in a circle, the hem of her dress riding the wind.

  A thin mist comes forth from the ground at her feet and curls into the air, spinning for a brief second before growing solid and taking the form of a man, a man none of them have ever seen. He wears strange clothing from another place and time and his blond hair is ruffled, hanging down over his red eyes. He seems confused at first, unaware of where he is; then his eyes find the small house, find them standing at the window, and he smiles.

  Another mist sprouts from the ground, then another, and yet another after that.

  “Vampires, the whole lot of them,” Vambéry says. “They are rising from their graves.”

  A dozen more, both men and women, adults and children, come up the other side of the hill behind Emily, stopping when they reach her. More behind them.

  Bram watches in revulsion as these ghouls begin to arise all around. He thinks of all the defiled crucifixes tangled in the weeds, the graves throughout the village, hundreds of undead all resurrecting on this dreadful night—all those poor victims Dracul drained and enslaved when he hid the heart of Deaglan O’Cuiv in this godforsaken place, all drank of his blood. He turned every last one of them; he controls them all.

  Behind them, Maggie and Patrick O’Cuiv rise from their own graves, from the crates inside the house, their slumber over. They rise and stand beside Ellen, looking down at the body of Deaglan O’Cuiv, at the heart beating slowly within his chest.

  Outside, Emily comes down from the hill and goes to the black coach. She strokes the neck of each horse in turn as she passes, their skin flinching and quivering, endeavoring to evade her touch, but, still in their harnesses, unable to do so. The undead stand all about, parting their ranks as she approaches.

  A swirl of white mist rises out from under the coach, and, even before it assumes a solid form, Bram realizes where Dracul has been hiding all along. Had he studied the coach with a more discerning eye when they first arrived, he may have discovered it then, but he did not. Instead, he walked right past it, as they all did. Built into the underside of the coach, fashioned to blend into the woodwork unseen, was a coffin.

  * * *

  • • •

  IT TAKES SHAPE not at Emily’s side but halfway down the hill, between her and the house in which they all are gathered. The crowd of undead parts once again creating a void at their center and it is here the cloud of mist from beneath the black coach becomes a man.

  He appears no different than he had at Whitby Abbey, Bram thinks.

  Dracul stands there for a moment, regarding all around him, his long inky cape fluttering in the storm’s violent breath. His deep red eyes gaze out over the legion of undead, up at Emily next to the coach, then finally settle upon the small house.

  He smiles.

  A number of the undead hungrily spy the inert bodies of the Szgany lying around the house, now abandoned by the marauding cockroaches, and they eagerly converge. Like a pack of wild dogs, they drop to all fours and fall upon the Szgany, hunkering over them, the Szgany disappearing under a frenzied cacophony that Bram will hear echoing in his brain for the rest of his life. Emily’s laughter rings out once again, but Dracul continues to look at the house, his gaze unfaltering.

  Matilda, still leaning on the windowsill, suddenly lets out a shriek and jumps back. An old man is there, his face stenciled with the lines of age. A tangle of white hair, disheveled and dirty, limply hangs over his brow. His clothing appears to be in ruins, torn and stained. He smiles at her, his teeth yellow and gummed with grime. Two of the teeth extend down over his cracked lips, the tips sharp. He runs a pink tongue over them and smiles again, reaching for Matilda with a gnarled hand. She raises her Webley and aims it at his chest. “Back!” she commands.

  This warning does nothing but incite him further; he appears more amused than frightened.

  Vambéry pulls a crucifix from one of their bags and shoves it in the man’s face. He shrinks back with a hiss, spittle flying from his lips. Vambéry then hands the cross to Matilda. “Keep this displayed in the window. Do not let them get close.” He tosses another cross to Thornley. “You—watch the front.”

  Bram’s eyes are locked on Dracul; he has moved to the foot of the hill. “I don’t think they can get in, not unless invited,” he says softly.

  “I am not sure I want to test that theory,” Vambéry replies. “There must be two hundred of them out there, maybe more.”

  At Bram’s back, Ellen pushes past, and he turns around. The tarpaulin that had covered the body of Deaglan O’Cuiv has been folded down to his waist, revealing the large cavity in his chest, his severed arms and head all lying in grotesque repose around the torso on the table. Patrick and Maggie O’Cuiv stand alongside him.

  “Can you do something?” Bram asks.

  Ellen says nothing in return. Instead, her eyes lock with Patrick O’Cuiv’s. They are communicating, of this Bram is most certain, but he is not party to their thoughts.

  Patrick O’Cuiv nods, then goes to the door. He pulls it open and steps out into the masses of undead.

  “No! You mustn’t!” Vambéry shouts. He races to the door with a crucifix of his own in hand and tries to pull it shut. Maggie O’Cuiv reaches for his wrist and yanks him back, her eyes avoiding the talisman he holds.

  Bram watches Patrick O’Cuiv step out into the clearing. He approaches the remains of the Szgany, reaches down, and lifts one of the bodies by its arm, pulling it from the undead feeding upon the flesh. The body is riddled with bite marks, a gash in the neck runs with blood.

  A small child, a little girl, watches this spectacle with lustful eyes. Then she springs at him, traversing a distance of no less than ten feet, and lands upon the Szgany’s body, her lips pressing to the open neck wound. Patrick swats her away, as one would swat away a mosquito, and carries the body into the house. Maggie slams the door at his back.

  “They drained him nearly
dry,” Patrick says in his thick Irish brogue. “The others fared no better.”

  Maggie moves in a blur; one moment she is standing at the door, the next she is behind Vambéry, restraining him with his arms pinned behind his back. The crucifix he is clutching clatters to the floor. “We should use this one,” she says.

  Vambéry tries to pull free, but she is too strong.

  Bram moves towards her, drawing his bowie knife.

  Ellen frowns. “We will do no such thing; release him.”

  Maggie hesitates for a moment, then does as she is told. Vambéry snags the cross from the floor and backs into a corner, holding it up before him.

  Ellen takes the body of the Szgany from Patrick and carries it over to the table. She drapes it over Deaglan’s remains, then turns to Bram. “I need your knife.”

  Bram hesitates for a second, then hands the bowie to her.

  In a series of swift motions, she slices down the length of the Szgany’s arms, legs, and body—a number of long slashes through his clothing and flesh. The man lets out a soft whimper, and Bram is surprised to see he is still alive, although barely. His clothing is riddled with tiny red blotches where the undead had attacked him, and the edges of Ellen’s cuts quickly turn red as blood begins to run freely, dripping over the body of Deaglan O’Cuiv. Bram considers trying to stop her, to spare this man, but he knows it is no use. He won’t survive his wounds; he’d either join the undead or meet his end with great suffering. This is merciful.

  Then, above them all, soars the voice of Dracul.

  “You amuse me,” he says, “your little quest, my lovely countess, so full of purpose and defiance.”

  “I am not your countess,” Ellen says under her breath.

  “You will always be my countess.”

  Bram goes to the window and stands beside Thornley. He watches as Dracul turns to the sky, to the churning storm clouds, and with the wave of a hand brings hail to the rain, the storm growing more wicked at his touch.