And now this house. And this tall, thin, handsome man who could easily be the Count Dracula of history, written about so vividly in Bram Stoker’s famous novel, and described in the letter the Ellenton group had sent him when soliciting his services. And the locked door. Shaking with fear, he hurried to the door and tried to open it.
It would not budge.
A scratching sound at his back caused him to lurch about in panic and look at the windows. All along, he had been telling himself he did not trust this house or these people, and should not risk going to sleep here. Now he knew he should not have ignored those instincts!
Dark shapes had appeared at all three windows, blocking out the faint wash of moonlight. Were they birds or bats? Bats, of course! Huge ones with monstrous wings and ugly, mouth-agape heads. In each of the three mouths gleamed a pair of dagger-like fangs.
Simultaneously the three hurled themselves at the bubbly old window panes.
Despite his years of research, he half expected an implosion of shattered glass but there was none. The winged things passed through the panes without breaking them. The only sound accompanying their rush was the wet-towel flapping of their wings.
With an ear-splitting cry of terror Howell hurled himself at the locked door. It shuddered under the impact but would not yield. Flung back, he fell to his knees, and as he jerked about to face the intruders, a last lingering memory returned to him.
In wild desperation he clawed at his throat, where a golden cross should have been dangling from a golden chain.
The cross was not there.
But seconds later the fangs were. Three gleaming pairs of them, driving deep into his neck.
When he awoke, he was lying on the bed and the tall, handsome foreigner sat there beside him, smiling down at him. “There are some things you should know before you go on with your life here,” the fellow said calmly. “Things about life itself, if I may. Do you recall being run off the road by two young men on your way here?”
“Yes,” Howell heard himself saying.
“You were not their first victim, of course. For quite some time now they have been robbing strangers who passed through here—frequently killing them in the process, as they so nearly killed you. And we, my two aged ladies downstairs and I, have been blamed for these atrocities because the two young men make it seem that those attacked are the victims of vampires. You yourself have their false vampire mark on your neck, in case you haven’t noticed.”
He paused, shrugged, then leaned a bit closer. “Sadly, these two young criminals are not remarkable in this day and age, friend. Just listen to the news any evening on television or read it in the daily papers. A fifteen-year-old youth rapes and kills his grandmother, and who cares? A girl in Texas, only twelve years old, beats to death an infant barely able to walk. Mere children burn down a house because they decide they don’t like the man who owns it. All over this sad country, all over the world, insane violence increases while those who should be trying to stop it shrug their shoulders and look the other way.” Howell lay there staring up at him.
“So the two ladies downstairs sent for me, and I came,” continued the man with the accent. “Not to stay here long, you understand, but to help if I could. Because someone must step in to put a stop to these horrors. Don’t you agree, Mr. Howell?”
To Howell’s surprise his mind was functioning normally again, but he still needed a moment to absorb and evaluate what he had just heard. He frowned then. “But if you do to these people what you always did—what, apparently, you have just done to me—they will become one of you, won’t they? One of us? Isn’t that how it works? The victim becomes a vampire too?”
The other shook his head. “Only when such is desired. Students of the occult—like you, sir—have been making that mistake for years. We need you; therefore you are now one of us. But if we had not needed you, you and I would not now be having this conversation.”
“But what—what do you need me for?” Howell asked.
The other reached out to touch him on the shoulder and said with a smile, “You will soon see, friend. Rest, now, to prepare yourself.” And suddenly he was no longer sitting there on the bed. Howell, the new Jerome Howell, was alone.
Seven days have passed since Monk Morrisey and Dan Clay ran Jerome Howell’s Buick off the road. The two have spent the money they took from the unconscious Howell and are on the prowl again. Seriously, too, because they are out of pot, out of cocaine, out of everything. They spent their last few dollars half an hour ago on beers at a late-night bar.
Dan Clay is behind the wheel this time. Turning his head, he scowls at his companion. “Damn it, Monk, we shouldn’a done it. I shouldn’a let you talk me into it.”
“Done what? Wha’ you talkin’ ’bout?”
“We shouldn’a stopped for beers. Look.” Dan thrusts his right arm out so Monk can see the watch on his wrist—the watch they took from Jerome Howella week ago. “It’s almost midnight, for the luvva god. We ain’t gonna find nobody on the road this late.”
It is a sparkly bright New England night. No clouds. A round, near-full moon transforms the road into a shining black ribbon. On the left, just ahead, is an old wooden mailbox on a post.
Looking up from the watch in front of his face, Monk Morrisey sees something step into view from the driveway there. It is a man wearing dark trousers and a white, long-sleeved shirt. One of the white sleeves flaps up as the man steps into the road to beg a lift.
Monk’s voice gurgles with glee. “Hey, hey! Looka what we got us, Dan! A volunteer!” He makes fists of his hands and pounds his knees. “Ease up, man! Ease up!”
Dan takes his foot off the gas pedal and the clunker slows to a jerky stop. As the man at the mailbox walks toward them, Monk leans forward to peer at him through the windshield.
“Wait, Dan. Jeez. It’s the writer guy.”
“Who?”
“The guy with the book. The Buick we ran off the road the last time we were out. Don’t you remember?”
Dan Clay remembers. The book about vampires. They had thrown it away. And just tonight, when out of money, they had swapped the man’s gold cross for their last two beers in that late-night bar.
“We won’t get nothin’ outa him,” Monk says with a groan.
“We already cleaned him.”
The beers have made Dan argumentative. “Who says we won’t? He could’ve got paid by now for comin’ here, couldn’ he? He’s been here a week.”
“But he just walked outa the old Hode place, dummy. Nobody in his right mind would be stayin’ in a creepy abandoned house if he had money for a motel room.”
“It’s a roof, ain’t it? And if he believes in vampires, he coulda shacked up there ’cause he likes old houses. He just needs a ride to town ’cause we wrecked his wheels, that’s all.”
“Well, all right,” Monk grudgingly concedes. “If you say so.”
They wait then in silence while the author of How to Protect Yourself Against Vampires continues his approach. By the time the man leans against the door on Monk’s side, the two in the clunker have even begun to grin a little. But their grins freeze into grotesque expressions of terror when the door is violently jerked open and they see Jerome Howell’s face up close . . .
. . . and are trapped in their seats by the hypnotic stare of his sunken, glowing eyes . . .
. . . and see the long, gleaming fangs at the sides of his opening mouth.
BRIAN MOONEY has been contributing short stories to magazines and anthologies for more than forty-five years, although he has never been prolific. His first short story, “The Arabian Bottle,” appeared in the London Mystery Selection in 1971.
Since then his fiction has appeared in anthologies such as The 21st Pan Book of Horror Stories, Space 3: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories, Final Shadows, Dark Voices 5, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, In the Shadow of Frankenstein, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, Shadows Over Innsmouth, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horro
r Eighth Annual Collection, and the magazines Fantasy Tales, Kadath, Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, and Dark Horizons.
Endangered Species
Brian Mooney
Still searching for companionship, Dracula turns to the personal ads . . .
Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!
That is correct, I am your “mysterious” host. And you are Miss Roisin Kennedy. Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring. But come, for you have had a long journey. The night is chill and you must be in need of food and rest.
Please walk this way. We will go into my library, which is comfortable and where there is warmth and refreshment. This great house is old and much of the rest of it is sadly dilapidated. I was told that it was built by one who made his fortune in the 1849 gold rush and who lived out his whole life here as a stingy hermit, neither improving nor renovating. But it is in keeping with my tastes, for I love houses which are old, which proclaim to you of their history.
See, is that not better? A blazing log fire has so much more to offer than other forms of warmth. Its appearance alone can comfort and cheer the weary traveler. I abhor this modern central heating—it is so clinical, do you not think? In the old country the forests were ancient and thick and provided light and fuel for boyar and peasant alike. I hear that under Ceausescu my land is polluted by the effluvia of industry and coal-fired power stations. Such an abomination!
I digress. Accept the apologies of a garrulous old man who sees so little charming and intelligent company. Be seated, here in this wing chair by the fire where it is most comfortable. In a few moments I will join you and we can converse. But first, allow me to serve you. A little cold chicken and salad? Some wine perhaps?
I am rambling away and forget my manners. You, I know, are Miss Roisin Kennedy of Boston, Massachusetts. I have lived in Boston, a charming city. How wild and remote these forests and hills of Oregon State must seem to you, although they comfort me greatly for they are so reminiscent of my beloved Carpathians. Ah, there I go again . . . In my clumsy way, my dear, I am trying to express regrets for not yet having properly introduced myself to you.
My given name is Vlad. I have been known by other names. Once I was called Tepesch but I may be more familiar to you as Dracula. No, I beg you, do not look so alarmed. You are not in the presence of a madman. You are in none of the danger so common in the movie entertainments of such as Mr. Hitchcock. I am speaking nothing but the simple truth. I am indeed the Voivode Vlad Dracula, late of Transylvania, late of London, late of . . . so many places.
I am Dracula the terrible, Dracula the arch-fiend, Dracula “the fearsome lover who died yet lived” as one old movie poster described me, Dracula the . . . much-maligned.
You still seem to be a little agitated, which I can understand. Yet you must have courage for having undertaken your long journey into the unknown. A glass of wine, that will soothe you. Here is some good Tokay, one of the finest years. Is that not excellent? And see, I drink with you.
You laugh. That is good. And I know why you laugh. It is from sheer relief. You think that as I am drinking wine with you I cannot possibly be who I say I am. And yet am I not a nobleman of a lineage centuries-old and proud before Columbus set out on his voyages of discovery? Is not wine a natural drink to one such as I? To tell the truth, I can stomach only a little but if I sip slowly all is well.
There, a little more in your glass. And a toast—to our friendship! You must not believe all that you see and read, particularly if it emanates from such a place as Hollywood. I blame a certain clumsy playwright and that terrible old Mittel-European actor with his oh-so-studied poses. “I do not trink . . . vine . . .” Hah! A nonsense! As far as I recall, not even Stoker used that. He simply had me say that I had dined and that I did not sup, which was literally true.
What is that you say? I am “putting you on”? Ah, I understand: you believe that I am jesting with you. Dracula was a fictional character, you are sure, based loosely on a real-life 15th-century tyrant who died in the year 1476 and who anyway is always destroyed in the book and all the plays and movies. If you bear with me, I will explain all that in due course.
First, I must thank you for answering my advertisement and for having the courage to attend this meeting. So few persons, men or women, would have agreed to an assignation with an unknown person in a place so distant and remote.
So, you were intrigued by my wording. That was my intention. “Reclusive European nobleman, living far from civilization, promises an inquiring soul unique experience, interesting narrative and rich reward. Intelligent young persons only, of sturdy good health, apply to Box Number V1214.”
The truth is, my dear, that even one such as I can be lonely and at times must have an outlet for a very human vanity. I purposely placed this advertisement in a great variety of newspapers and journals, rightly guessing that many of the responses would be unworthy of my consideration. As it is, I received few replies and was immediately able to dismiss most of them.
Several were obviously from persons who were little more than panders and I admit to an outdated moral outrage toward such creatures, so much so that I was tempted to meet with and destroy them. This was just a foolish whim which would have achieved nothing and I dismissed it.
Others were from persons who seemed to lack the intelligence that I sought or whose cupidity shone through their every word. There were those urbanites whose idea of “living far from civilization” is that they need travel no greater distance than the edge of the city.
Your letter, though, was interesting. I have it here. I was impressed at the outset by the fact that you took the trouble to write by hand, and legibly at that. In this age of typewriters and other mechanical devices, you demonstrated a rare—an almost obsolete—courtesy. Then your style of writing, your use of language and choice of words, indicated that you are well educated and intelligent, that you are worthy of my cultivation.
What follows is what decided me. “I want no rich reward,” you wrote, “I was born to wealth and privilege and the consequential first-class education and all my life I have wanted for nothing. Yet I remain dissatisfied for I have never had to struggle to attain anything. Everything in life has been handed to me and I am bored.
“If you can indeed offer me a unique experience, ‘reclusive European nobleman,’ then I wish to meet with you.”
You say that you want no rich reward, and yet your time must be recompensed. As promised when I first wrote to you, I have paid your travelling expenses. Your background is wealthy, you say, but it is my experience that even the wealthy can always use a little more wealth. This leather pouch contains a considerable sum in antique gold coins, crowns, thalers, double-eagles and the like, for which I can provide authentic provenance. Distribute them slowly and carefully among a variety of dealers and you will receive good prices without arousing suspicion.
Now, to convince you that I am who I say I am. The human race, whether or not they believe in such as I, call us Vampire, Nosferatu—Un-dead—Monster. I eschew such pejoratives. Were I to choose a description it would be along the lines of “Homo superior.” There, I did tell you that I have a very human vanity. However, the accepted human terms are convenient ones and so I will use them.
I will offer strands of evidence which I hope will weave themselves into proof. The light in here is low but I am sure that you can note the pallor of my skin. And no, I am not a recently released felon as I believe you may be thinking. Prison pallor is quite different. Here is my hand, take it in your own. Ah, you are startled. Is not my flesh abnormally cold? Unlike your own fingers which are silken soft and warm with the vibrancy of the living blood flowing in your veins. And witness the palms of my hands, the coarse hairs which grow upon them. No human, however hirsute, would have hair growing there. Unnecessary to say that I do not keep mirrors about me but I believe that my hair and mustache must at the moment be gray, perhaps even white. You nod. A
sign of aging? Or is it, as in my own circumstances, a sign of long abstemiousness? No, I do not offer the lack of color in my hair as proof but simply point out that it shields more evidence. See, I move the locks aside and reveal how pointed my ears are.
And if I draw back my lips. Observe my canine teeth which are longer and sharper than those of any normal man. Yes, you are right. They could be false, or I could have had special dental work performed to fuel my fantasy. But it is not so. Here, feel the weight of this huge fire iron. How many men do you know who could bend it in two with such ease—thus? Now I will offer you two final pieces of evidence which should fully satisfy you that there is no trickery in what I tell you. Come, stand next to me here at the fireside.
See how your own shadow stretches away toward those shadows beyond the pool of light cast by the flames. Where then is my shadow? So, I have your interest. Now, I doubt not that in your handbag—forgive me, your purse—you carry with you a small mirror as do all women. Hold it before me. Where then is my reflection?
At last you are convinced as to what I am if not who I am, I can see it in your eyes, I can feel it in your aura. There is realization and there is belief and there is fear. Yet underlying the fear I sense a steely determination to see this adventure through and I salute you for it. I chose wisely.
Resume your seat, Miss Kennedy. I may call you Roisin? Then please, take your seat my dear Roisin. In a short space of time you have had so many surprises. At first you probably thought you were travelling to meet an eccentric dilettante, then you had the brief worry that you were trapped with a maniac, and now you realize that you are the guest of an infamous . . . vampire.
In the Footsteps of Dracula Page 22
