The Dracula Tape

by Fred Thomas Saberhagen.

  As for Van Helsing, he had his own goals in view and after a short rest in Galatz was ready to pursue them:

  I will take Madam Mina right into the heart of the enemy's country. Whilst the old fox is tied in his box, floating on the running stream whence he cannot escape to land… we shall go in the track where Jonathan went, from Bistrita over the Borgo, and find our way to Castle Dracula. Here, Madam Mina's hypnotic power will surely help… there is much to be done, and other places to be made sanctify, so that that nest of vipers be obliterated.

  Harker was ready to leave his wife, to go himself aboard the launch, where he assumed the chances of coming to grips with me would be the best; but he was not at once convinced that Mina should be taken toward my castle any farther. "Do you mean to say, Professor Van Helsing, that you would bring Mina, in her sad case and tainted as she is with that devil's illness, right into the jaws of his death trap? Not in the world! Not for heaven or hell!"

  But his sales resistance could not hold out against the old maestro of obfuscation:

  The professor's voice, as he spoke in clear, sweet tones, which seemed to vibrate in the air, calmed us all: "Oh, my friend, it is because I would save Madam Mina from that awful place that I would go. God forbid that I should take her into that place. There is work-wild work-to be done there, that her eyes may not see. We men here, all save Jonathan, have seen with our own eyes what is to be done before that place can be purify

  … if the count escape us this time… he may choose to sleep him for a century, and then in time our dear one "-and he took Mina by the hand-"would come to keep him company, and would be as those others that you, Jonathan, saw. You have told us of their gloating lips; you heard their ribald laugh as they clutched the moving bag that the count threw to them. You shudder; and well may it be. Forgive me that I make so much pain, but it is necessary, my friend. Is it not a dire need for the which I am giving, possibly my life? If it were that anyone went into that place to stay, it is I who have to go to keep them company."

  The vision of Van Helsing as a vampire is one before which my imagination balks; this is doubtless only a shortcoming on my part; he may have been well fitted for the role, since as we have seen he had already the power, by means of speech, to cast his victims into a stupor. At any rate, Harker in his confused anxiety was made to feel that it was he who was somehow endangering his own wife: "Do as you will," said Jonathan, with a sob that shook him all over. "We are in the hands of God!"

  Mina's own feelings were very complex at this point. But she was stirred to see how the men threw themselves and their fortunes into the preparations for their final assault on Castle Dracula and its dread lord: "Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, so true, and so brave! And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money!" That is my girl, as they say, in a nutshell.

  On October thirtieth the three-pronged drive of my enemies was launched. Van Helsing took Mina by train to Veresti, where the professor planned to buy a carriage and press on to the Borgo Pass. Jonathan and Arthur, the latter an amateur steamfitter of some standing, to judge by the skill with which he effected several repairs en route, started chugging up the Sereth. In two days they reached the Bistrita, meanwhile receiving from the river folk occasional reports of the Slovaks' boat that was carrying my box ahead of them. Quincey Morris and Seward meanwhile had rather a dull ride of it, trotting across country with no real excitement until they joined forces with the river-borne party near the end… or what they all took to be the end.

  Van Helsing's journey with Mina was somewhat more lively, though nowhere near as eventful as it would have been if I had been as intent on his destruction as he imagined. The professor recorded in his diary that their carriage "got to the Borgo Pass just after sunrise" on the morning of November third. The several closely following entries are rather muddled and probably unreliable, for he records that they did not come near the castle itself until the sun was "low down" on the afternoon of the following day. This would seem to mean that nearly two full days of driving were needed to cover a distance which I as coachman traversed in a couple of hours with Harker as my passenger, on a night when I did some deliberate doubling back and made frequent stops looking for treasure. Perhaps the professor and Mina-both of them by now, for different reasons, in peculiar psychological states-actually dozed in their seats through many of the daylight hours, whilst the horses stood idle, or sought their own path among the few available.

  This daylight-dozing theory may be strengthened by Van Helsing's statement that he was awake most of the night of November third to fourth to keep a fire going. Mina seemed to have given up eating, he wrote, "and I like it not." During the night he several times nodded into slumber, each time awakening to discover her "lying quiet, but awake, and looking at me with so bright eyes." At the same time she was in general "so bright and tender and thoughtful" that his fears were somewhat allayed.

  Still, by the night of November fourth to fifth, he again "began to fear that the fatal spell of the place was upon her, tainted as she is with vampire baptism," And now Castle Dracula was indubitably in sight, even in reasonable hiking distance, and he set up a sort of base camp.

  Mina still professed not to be hungry, and-though she really made little effort to do so-apparently could not cross a circle of crumbled host that she watched him make around her. This, he told Mina, was for her own protection. Van Helsing himself of course was armored by all his usual freight of herbs and religious paraphernalia.

  After dark the horses screamed, and amid snow flurries the three women of the castle appeared, taking form slowly in the outer reaches of the firelight. From Harker's descriptions Van Helsing "knew the swaying round forms, the bright hard eyes, the white teeth, the ruddy color, the voluptuous lips…" For some reason voluptuous was a favorite word of the professor.

  Alas for Anna, Wanda, and Melisse. I had warned them against touching any of the expected "English," and now, too late, they were being obedient to the letter of my orders. But still of course they must go out and gibber at Van Helsing in the night, and drink his horses' blood, and call to Mina to come and join them as a sister. Perhaps they thought to send Van Helsing screaming in panic and fleeing like a peasant down the mountainside, rushing over a precipice in blind terror. They did not know his name, of course. I had not told them that…

  They were disobedient subjects, not once but again and again. In the old days such behavior would quite likely have brought them to the wooden stake whilst they still breathed… has it occurred to you that impalement is the one punishment equally enforceable upon a vampire and a breathing man or woman? Some say now that I was known as Vlad the Impaler whilst I still breathed. Bah, to be remembered for mere gory butchery, no matter how just or necessary, and to have all guiding purpose and ideals forgotten…

  Never mind. I had tolerated far too long the three women's disobedience, which had then culminated in treachery to me and assaults upon the innocent. Certainly if things were to fall out so that Mina had to join me at the castle at once, I did not want those three around to spit with jealousy and bother her.

  Seward at dawn on November fifth "saw the body of Szgany… dashing away from the river with their leiter wagon. They surrounded it in a cluster, and hurried along as though beset." This was indeed Tatra and some of his most faithful men, who, according to my orders, had taken the box unopened from the boat and were rushing it toward the castle. By this time Jonathan and Arthur had seen their vessel suffer its final breakdown, had somehow commandeered horses, and were riding in pursuit as well.

  Meanwhile I had returned to Castle Dracula from my errand of duty with the unfortunate peasant, arriving just before dawn; and now, congealed in man-shape by the morning light, I squinted against the sun's rays to make out a human figure that was climbing alone toward my forbidding walls. When I recognized Van Helsing my grip tightened on the edges of the embrasure through which I watc
hed until the old stones gave up flakes into my hands. But I meant to let him have his way, convince himself that he had sterilized my house. Mina was far more important to me than any thing or person he might destroy within that gloomy pile.

  I remained in my high, comparatively sunny observation post, where I thought he was not very likely to come looking for me. Soon after he reached my front door far below a hollow booming began to reverberate up through the courts and rooms between. Later I discovered that the professor had been prudently knocking loose the hinges of those great entrance doors, not wishing to be trapped inside by any misfortune, or vampirish plan. He used a handy hammer that he had lugged up in his bag, and for which he meant to find other employment as well.

  As he wrote later, he was working on the doors when he thought he heard "afar off the howl of wolves. Then I bethought me of my dear Madam Mina…" He had left her sleeping alone in the snow, wrapped in rugs for warmth but protected by nothing else more substantial than his ring of crumbled Host. If she had never drunk from my veins she very likely would have perished from exposure. And had those wolves been looking for their breakfast… but as matters stood they were sent by me to find her and stand guard.

  Van Helsing of course did not know this. The dangers Mina might be facing put him, as he wrote, "in terrible plight. The dilemma had me between his horns." Though he expected that his Holy Circle would guard her from vampires by day or night, "yet even there would be the wolf."

  But he was not the man to let the wolf's real fangs on Madam Mina's skin, or the dilemma's figurative horns upon his own, turn him aside from his objective now so near at hand within the castle.

  I resolve me that my work lay here, and that as to wolves we must submit, if it were God's will. At any rate it was only death and freedom beyond. So did I choose for her.

  As for himself:

  I knew that there were at least three graves to find-graves that are inhabit; so I search, and search, and I find one of them. She lay in her vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do murder.

  Now, Professor, why on earth should you have felt that way, do you suppose?

  Ah, I doubt not that in old time, when such things were, many a man who set forth to do such a task as mine found at the last that his heart fail him and then his nerve. So he delay, and delay, and delay, until the mere beauty and the fascination of the wanton Un-Dead have hypnotize him; and he remain on and on, till sunset come, and the vampire sleep be over. Then the beautiful eyes of the woman open

  In my time I have known an ugly vampire wench or two; theirs is a sad lot.

  and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss-and man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the Vampire fold…

  No such weakness for Van Helsing himself, of course; though he admitted that he: was moved to a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyze my faculties… I was lapsing into sleep, the open-eyed sleep of one who yields to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow-stilled air a long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me like the sound of a clarion. For it was the voice of my dear Madam Mina that I heard.

  This yowl seems to me more likely to have issued from the throat of one of the guardian wolves than from the lady herself; however that may be, the professor did not bother to check on Mina's position vis-a-vis the wolves, but turned back to the "horrid task" from which he had been distracted. He soon: found by wrenching away tomb tops one other of the sisters, the other dark one. I dared not pause to look on her as I had on her sister, lest once more I should begin to be enthrall; but I go on searching until, presently, I find in a great high tomb as if made to one much beloved that other fair sister… she was so fair to look upon, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely

  Guess what?

  voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me… made my head whirl with new emotion.

  Of course he was not put off by human instincts. After desecrating another Host by dropping it within my own disappointingly empty sarcophagus, he nerved himself to face his "terrible task… had it been but one, it had been easy, comparative. But three! To begin twice more after I had been through a deed of horror…"

  He does not record the order in which he took his victims, but I can testify that fair Anna was the last. It bothered me that at the end she screamed my name. And when I felt something within me trying to move and melt at that mere sound, I knew I had already changed; that my sojourn to England and my love of Mina had not been without profound effect… but whether this changing, softening, in me was for good or ill I could not have said.

  So the professor thrice dutifully endured "the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam." Then before leaving the castle he "so fixed its entrances that never more" could the rightful proprietor "enter there Un-Dead." It is hard to imagine what means he employed toward this end. Surely particles of transsubstantiated bread would have ceased to resemble bread, and therefore ceased to be the body of God, within a few months at the most. At any rate, I noted no impediment when I went out or in.

  There remains but little to be told. Weary from daylight, from my long though indirect exposure to the sun, I descended from the castle and waited in the last light of afternoon beside a rocky outcropping, along the road by which the Szgany soon must come. From the distance my ears brought me the sounds of their flight with their wagon, and from farther still I heard the hoofbeats of the Furies who had pursued them all the daylight hours. As I waited, my wolves came now and then to give me dumb report, by howls, and head pointings, and flashing wordless thought. I saw how the chase must end, and smiled. And I knew also of Mina not far away, now with the professor back at her side, both of them watching the approaching chase.

  I called great blasts of wind and snow about me as I stepped out into the road before the gypsies' wagon, halting their horses more with my felt presence than any sight they could have of my upraised arm.

  "Master!" cried out Tatra, joyful in the driver's seat. "I thought-" He turned in puzzlement to look at the heavy box that rode behind him. The Szgany around him reined their plunging horses in.

  "There is no time to explain now, my loyal ones," I said, springing up into the wagon. I set my fingers beneath the box's lid and opened it, wrenching screws and nails free. "Drive on! And as we go, do one of you nail this down again. Above all, remember, they must not uncrate me till the sunset."

  I flattened myself down within the box, upon the alien earth that gave no rest nor peace, and waited, calling down blessings on my loyal men. How, in cold alien England, could I ever have set such an ambush for my enemies? Willing arms beat down the lid above me whilst the wagon lurched underway again and gathered speed.

  As we sped I called more wolves together and set them running on the heels of my pursuers. There I held them, for a diversionary attack at the last moment should one be needed.

  I know when sunset's coming, even if the day be overcast, or black as night with clouds. That day was partly cloudy, with the snow coming and going like curtains drawn across the rocky, piny landscape. Believe me well, I knew to the moment when sunset was due upon that day. After four centuries' dependence on it there was no way that I could fail to know.

  Our horses labored. Those of the foe grew nearer and nearer still. Then all at once and nearly simultaneously two voices, Harker's and Morris's, cried out in English: "Halt!" Through the wooden lid above me I could hear contending voices, those of my foes and friends, and then the wagon stopped. I needed but a few moments more, a very few… I decided to risk it without calling in the wolves.

  The astronomer, the meteorologist, the artist, each have their own definitions of the precise moment of sunrise or sunset. For me, sunset occurs when the mass of intervening earth grows great enough to sharply attenuate the flow of neutrinos-or whatever the proper title of this flux should be-that, emanating from the unshielded sun, hold in partial paralysis the de
ep nerve centers of the vampire brain and body.

  At the moment when the first of my enemies sprang upon the wagon the mass of an intervening mountain already blocked me from the sun. Mina, then at a slightly higher elevation and looking down with Van Helsing at the scene of struggle below, noted that "the castle of Dracula now stood out against the red sky, and every stone of its broken battlements was articulated against the light of the setting sun."

  It was Harker himself who had boarded the wagon, and at once "with a strength which seemed incredible raised the great box and flung it over the wheel to the ground." Quincey Morris, though sustaining in the process a knife wound that was shortly to prove fatal, bulldozed his way through the Szgany and joined Harker in prying off my lid. Seward and Lord Godalming were now at hand, sitting their weary horses with leveled Winchesters, against which my knife-carrying gypsies were powerless to interfere. As the lid fell free I looked toward the western sky, from which the sun had just that moment gone, and felt my powers come. My timing had been fine; nay, I boast quite truthfully that it was perfect.

  Mina shrieked as she saw her husband's knife cut through my throat.

  … whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and vanished from our sight.

  I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution there was in the face a look of peace such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.

  And so shall I, my dear; for that look meant that my body, lanced with metallic pain at heart and throat, found anesthesia in the balm of victory as I changed form to mist, which, flowing away unnoticed amid the flurrying snow, was soon invisible to all who might have watched it…