The Dracula Tape

by Fred Thomas Saberhagen.

  The general silence of the night was helpful to my ears, this far from the bustle of the central city. Whilst my visitor was still a hundred paces off I could hear him well enough to be sure he was a man, and not a woman or a child. Motionless and noiseless as a basking lizard myself-more so, for lizards have lungs that work-I waited in the rat-trodden dust of my chapel, listening. The feet of the approaching man seemed to be bare, and he wore some kind of a loose garment that swished about him as he walked. Now he was right outside the chapel wall, and he suddenly threw himself down there and began snuffling and groveling in the most bestial style. With a feeling of sinking dismay it came to me that he might be nosferatu himself. Was England aswarm already with such as I, and had Harker through some insane delicacy omitted to let me know? Then indeed were my hopes likely to be doomed. It was with some relief I noted that this man continually breathed.

  Now the mysterious one had crept along to the iron-bound oak doors that closed the chapel, and now he strained what was evidently a powerful pair of arms to open them, so that the hinges creaked. But the doors held.

  "Master, master!" he hissed then, lips close to the door. It was a whispered entreaty that was fierce and managed to be slavish at the same time. "Master, grant me lives, many lives!"

  What Anglo-Saxon idiom of speech is this? I pondered, even as he went on: "Insects I have now, master, to devour by the scores and hundreds, and animals I may obtain… but I need the lives of people, master! Men, and children, and women, especially women. Women!" He made a sound between a gurgle and a laugh. "I must have them, master, and you must grant them to me!"

  He went on for what seemed like many minutes in the same vein, whilst I stood just inside the door, no more than an arm's length away, like a priest in some mad confessional. With hands pressed to my temples I tried to think. Of one thing only could I be sure: this man knew that I was there, knew at any rate that some being beyond the ordinary was inside the chapel, and he had come to offer me a kind of self-serving worship. My secure anonymity, upon which I had just been congratulating myself, and toward which I had spent so much coin and effort, was already nonexistent.

  Even as I stood there at a loss I heard the footsteps of others, four or five more men, climbing the wall in the area where my first visitor had climbed. In something like despair I at first visualized a whole troop of worshipers, with this their gibbering high priest who had found the shrine and was going to lead them in their litanies: "Women… master… lives… master… women…"

  But instead of the madman's acolytes it was of course his keepers who were coming after him, Seward and three or four burly attendants the doctor had wisely brought along. Only at this point did I remember Harker's casual mention of the asylum adjoining my grounds, and begin to grasp the true state of affairs.

  Outside, the newcomers rapidly came closer. They fanned out into a semicircle centered on the man who knelt at my chapel door, and continued a methodical advance.

  Meanwhile he continued to pour forth his pleas. "I am here to do your bidding, master. I am your slave, and you will reward me, for I shall be faithful. I have worshiped you long and afar off." To this day I am not certain whether this last statement was a lie meant to be ingratiating, a delusion generated in the sick man's brain, or actually the truth. Certainly Renfield-which was his name, as I later learned; a madman nearly sixty years of age, but of prodigious strength, and from a noble family-certainly, I say, Renfield was somehow aware of my presence as soon as I arrived at Carfax, and was subsequently able to detect my comings and goings there without leaving his own cell or room at the asylum.

  He went on, almost slavering, in a repulsive hissing voice: "Now that you are here, I await your commands, and you will not pass me by, will you, in your distribution of good things?"

  Behind and round him the other men were steadily closing in. Now I heard for the first time the voice of Seward, young, confident, and masterful: "Renfield, time to come back with us now, there's a good chap."

  And another, wheedling, in accents of the lower class: "Come on now, ducky. Easy does it… whup!"

  Masterful words or sweet ones would not do the trick for them that night. Though they were four or five to one, the struggle was not easy. Renfield's was no ordinary strength, as I discovered later for myself. Later also I read of how he had actually torn a window and its casing from the wall of his cell in making his escape that night. Seward and his men at length subdued him, and packed him away, bound like some wild animal to be bundled back over the wall; and stillness and the night were mine once more. But from the noise of that struggle I was well able to believe that, as Seward wrote of his patient on that very night: "He means murder in every turn and movement."

  And my dreams of a new life had received another powerful blow.

  TRACK THREE

  I would have followed the keepers and their prisoner back to the asylum at once to learn if I could from what source Renfield derived his powers, but I expected that he would detect my presence there, and no doubt make such a fuss about it that those in charge of him, who so far seemed to think there was no point to his madness, would be impelled to further investigation.

  Besides, there were my boxes, without which I would be homeless and soon doomed in this alien land. I saw now that I dared not leave them vulnerable to easy attack or even casual vandalism for so long as an hour, and I therefore spent the rest of the night making my position somewhat more secure, at least on my own grounds. It took me a few very worthwhile hours to replace the good Transylvanian earth in several of the boxes-even at this late date I am not going to tell you exactly how many-with English soil, equally good by most standards but not nearly as hospitable to me. One small portion of my homeland I transplanted into the ground within the Carfax chapel, and the contents of some other boxes I buried elsewhere on the grounds, in heavily thicketed places where no chance discovery of my digging work was likely.

  Next day I could rest with some confidence through the hours of light, and by the following evening I had convinced myself that the madman's incursion was not so important after all. I did not want to spend the night lurking round an asylum, anyway; I wanted to see London, and I did.

  Or I began to see her. There is of course no end to such an enterprise. Taking to my small leathery wings at dusk, I made short work of fifteen miles. Before I came within a mile of London's heart the roar of her never-quiet streets assaulted my ears and the glow of the metropolis dazzled my bat eyes. It was night, and summer, and many of the coal fires were out that on a winter's day would have quite blackened the sky about me.

  There wound the Thames, girded by great bridges and giving back a million sparkling lights. There beyond the Green Park was the palace wherein Victoria herself graced the last years of her long reign; there sounded, close below me, the deep and solemn notes of Big Ben. The larger thoroughfares were all crowded, and my eye picked out here and there the unfamiliar, unnatural steadiness of electric light. The fronts of stores and restaurants glowed along Piccadilly and in the Strand; the Abbey, towering remnant of an age long gone, looked out and pondered on a changing world. A few lights burned in Parliament, where government of a far-flung empire no doubt could not afford to wait till morning.

  Below me now St. Paul's Cathedral raised its dome; now passed the crooked streets and savage slums of Whitechapel and Bethnal Green…

  But I could talk for hours on London, and I must not. Let me now say only that night after night I came to her, and each night was more enraptured than the last.

  Meanwhile…

  I suppose it cannot be counted as remarkable coincidence that Lucy came down to London-or rather to its northern environs, where stood her family's house called Hillingham-some five days after I did. London was and is the Rome toward which all English roads must tend. It was at about this same time that she began to keep a diary, recording rather gloomy thoughts. It may be that after a few episodes of life lived keenly with her Viking she found the prospect of life
with Arthur Holmwood no longer attractive.

  Holmwood-shortly to become Lord Godalming, on the death of his father-was easily the wealthiest and most influential of Lucy's three breathing suitors, and he was the one she had accepted. I was to learn about him shortly. Dr. Seward, as I have said, was another. The third we will come to in a little while.

  Since Lucy and I had come to be of one blood I vaguely sensed her geographic closeness when I awoke on the evening of August twenty-fourth. But I only smiled fondly to myself and went out to look at London once again, to taste the psychic nectar of her crowds, to mingle with her great masses of vital humanity, to study in her houses, streets, and monuments the records of her enormous past. Each hour I spent in these activities tempted me to spend two more, and it was only with difficulty that I could force myself to allot time for necessary business: the dispersal of my nests.

  I now began to get about regularly during the daylight hours, and walked into the office of a carter's firm to arrange for the removal of some of the boxes from Carfax to secondary depots about the city. I was delighted to find that the proprietor and clerks, upright daytime citizens all of them, dealt with a vampire in a courteous and businesslike way: they observed my coin and paid little attention to my face. Meanwhile I also replaced the native earth in some more of my boxes with English soil. These refilled boxes I let sit in the Carfax chapel, whilst to hold the Transylvanian earth I employed some large boxes obtained at night, by stealth and strength, from a coffin monger's in Cheapside. I left some gold behind there, in payment more than adequate, but did not wish to attract attention by open purchase of such specialized items, when I was not an undertaker and had no stock of corpses to be exhibited on demand.

  These modern double coffins I found to make delightful domiciles; with my native soil packed into the outer box, I could rest in perfectly clean comfort within the inner, leaden shell. One such double coffin I buried in the chapel, and another in the yard of a house at Mile End that I was already negotiating to acquire. A third box I kept in reserve, in a rented shed near Charing Cross. I tell you now quite freely where they were, for they are there no longer, though two of them are still in London.

  It was not until the night of August twenty-sixth that I next saw Lucy, and then I came to her only in response to an appeal for help. Hers was a mental outcry of such vivid anguish that to refuse it lightly would have been cruel, and I think dishonorable as well. Therefore I found myself, late at night, waiting in man-shape outside the large suburban house called Hillingham, where Lucy lived with her ailing mother and a small squad of servants. I sent a mental message of reassurance in to the sleepless girl; she arose and managed to leave the house without disturbing any of the other occupants.

  I smiled and stretched forth my hands as I saw her slight figure, in its dressing gown, coming through the garden under the trees.

  "So, then," she murmured, coming near, eyes wide as they sought mine, "it was not dreams and nothing else." Somewhat hesitantly she took my outstretched hands; I believe she was at that moment almost afraid of me, though we were hardly strangers. I had given her much joy, and naught, so far as I knew, of any pain.

  "My dear Lucy, lightbearer," I said. "Is that what so distresses you? That I am not a dream? You have but to wave your little hand, dismissing me, and never will your eyes rest on me again."

  Her eyes were puzzled and full of pain. "You know, then, that I am distressed and afraid."

  "Child, of course I know. I would not be here if you had not called to me, though only in your mind, for help."

  "But how can such things be?" I was about to attempt an answer to this question when she presented me with another, that she evidently thought required answering more urgently. It came in the form of a bald statement: "I am to be married, you know."

  "I had not known, but allow me now to extend such felicitations as may be welcome from a man in my position." I bowed.

  "I really am going to marry Arthur, you know." Lucy blushed. "I love him-very much. And he loves me." She began telling me of Holmwood and his mannerisms and his prospects for wealth and position, till I began to feel rather disgustingly like a grim uncle or elder brother who had to be placated, his blessing sought. Of course at that moment Lucy had no other father figure in her life-Van Helsing had not yet come on the scene-and perhaps she did cast me most unsuitably in that role.

  "… so I do love Arthur, and am going to marry him. And you-you are still like a dream, or something out of one." Had she hoped to provoke me to a jealous declaration? Now the anguish in her face, as she gazed on me, was obviously that of longing, and her voice broke. "I don't even know your name!"

  I was silent, not sure that I should tell it to her. Names have power, power that can cut both ways.

  Nor was she quite sure, apparently, that she wanted to know more. "Hold me," was all she had left to say before coming with a slight tremble into my arms. Lucy understood only that what we did gave her supreme delight and that Arthur was not the only man she loved. We had held no theoretical discussions on vampirism, and I would wager that she had never even heard the word. It may be that I drank a bit too deeply on that night, for Lucy clung to me and would not let me go…

  Her wedding was scheduled for September seventeenth, a few weeks off. Whether Lucy would have wanted to continue her affair with me beyond that date is something I cannot tell, for women are unfathomable. What do they want? I ask, with Freud, in periods of bleak masculine despair.

  Lucy pined during the next few days. Also some signs of her repeated nocturnal dissipations must have been apparent to Arthur Holmwood, who was seeing her frequently again now that she was back near London, for her fiance a few days later called in Dr. Seward, his friend as well as Lucy's, to examine her. "She demurred at first," as Arthur complained in a letter. Well, perhaps she would have preferred a physician who was not a rejected suitor, or even more one whose specialty was not the study of mental illness. Though she had not Mina's capacity for sturdy independence, it is even possible that she resented not being able to decide such matters as the choice of a doctor for herself.

  Seward interrupted his contemplation of his wealthy lunatics long enough to give her a cursory looking over and concluded that the basis of her-or rather, her fiance's-complaint "must be something mental." That was true, so far as it went. Ah, Lucy, Lucy which means "lightbearer"-Lucy of the delicate and trustful nature. I suppose you were not a very good girl; but like so many women of your era, you deserved much better than fate gave you.

  She tried to fob off Seward with some vague tales of sleepwalking, which of course were true enough as far as they went. But he was a pretty good doctor, for his time; at least he had an acute eye, or instinct, for the unusual. Not that he showed great judgment in knowing what to do about it. Seward's first act after he had caught a hint of something truly remarkable in the case-my shadow or my flavor on the girl-was to send to Amsterdam for his old teacher, Abraham Van Helsing, M.D., Ph.D., D.Lit., et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

  Van Helsing…

  Do any who hear my voice still fear my name? Is it believed by even my most timid hearers that I may represent a real danger? When I have made you understand the depths of the idiocy of that man, Van Helsing, and confess at the same time that he managed to hound me nearly to my death, you will be forced to agree that among all famous perils to the world I must be ranked as one of the least consequential.

  Van Helsing tended to make a good impression, though, especially at first and with the young and inexperienced. Seward held, and stubbornly maintained, a very favorable opinion of this man, who he thought knew "as much about obscure diseases as anyone in the world." Well, perhaps. Medicine in the 1890s was in a miserable state. "He is a seemingly arbitrary man, but this is because he knows what he is talking about better than anyone else. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician"-right there, Arthur Holmwood, for whom this sales pitch was written, should have been warned-"and one of the most advanced scientists of his da
y; and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind. This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice brook, an indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration"-the latter not for vampires, of course-"exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats…"

  And Mina, when she met him later, saw and described "a man of medium weight, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The poise of the head strikes one at once as indicative of thought and power; the head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large, resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight… The forehead is broad and fine… such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man's moods."

  Now let us see just what this paragon accomplished for us all. By the time he first examined Lucy, on September second, if I am not mistaken, she had recouped from our perhaps too-enthusiastic embraces of a few nights earlier, and was of course looking better. Van Helsing decided that "there has been much blood lost… but the conditions of her are in no way anemic." We must make allowance for the fact that English was not the professor's mother tongue. But neither was his knowledge of the blood and its disorders adequate, a circumstance we all had much cause to regret. After shaking his head over Lucy's case, but saying little, he went back to Amsterdam to think.

  For several days I had remained away from Lucy to allow her blood time to restore itself, and also to give serious consideration to the idea of breaking off with her permanently and at once. This I decided to do, and when I went back at night to Hillingham it was with the resolution that the time had come to say our last farewell. This decision was for her welfare as well as my own.