Anno Dracula ad-1

by Kim Newman

  ‘Your stake will be sharp, Vardalek,’ he promised. ‘And your heart will be set over its point. The end will be quick.’

  ‘I thank you, Captain Kostaki.’

  ‘On a stake set low so you can look down upon him, I shall have impaled the warm worm who betrayed you.’

  ‘Masterful sir,’ Orlando screeched, mouth breaking free of the Guardsman’s hand, ‘please, I, sir, I...’

  Kostaki turned to the human and looked loathing at him. Orlando’s face was a wet twist of fear.

  ‘And the stake which spits his guts shall be blunted.’

  16

  A TURNING POINT

  Dr Seward’s Diary (kept in phonograph)

  27 SEPTEMBER

  After my Lucy, Mina. His first get disposed of, the Count turned his attention to the wife of his solicitor. I believe he fixed on Mrs Harker even as he was paying his attentions to Lucy. The two women were together in Whitby when he came ashore. He saw them as a glutton sees a pair of fat pastries. I have tried to recreate the record lost in the fire at Purfleet, now I must at last turn to the journal entry I was prevented from making. On the night of the 2nd and 3rd of October, 1885, a great stone was cast into the pond; we live now with the ripples, turned to tidal waves, of that splash.

  While Van Helsing was lecturing our little circle on the habits of the common vampire, the Count was seducing Mina Harker. As with Lucy, she was to serve a double purpose, to slake his thirst and to become his get. From the first, his mission in Britain was evangelical; he was bent upon turning as many as possible, recruiting soldiers for his army. We made the asylum our fortress, and gathered behind its thick walls and iron bars as if they could keep out the vampire. In addition to the destroyers of Lucy, we took in Mina and her husband. Van Helsing must have known the Count would pursue the woman, and dug out all the holy impedimenta that had served so little use in the earlier case.

  I was first alerted to the Count’s invasion when an attendant intruded to tell me that Renfield had met with some accident. I came to his room and found the lunatic lying on his left side in a glittering pool of blood. When I went to move him, it became at once apparent that he had suffered terrible injuries; there was none of that unity of purpose between the parts of the body which marks even lethargic sanity. Van Helsing, in dressing gown and slippers, tried to save the patient’s life, but it was hopeless. Betrayed by his master, he raved and frothed. Quincey and Art arrived to get in the way. While the Professor was readying for a trephination, I attempted to administer an injection of morphia. Renfield bit my hand, deep. Months’ practice biting off the heads of birds had given him strong jaws. If I had treated myself then, my hand mightn’t have become worse than useless. But it was a crowded night, and when the sun came up, I had fled from Purfleet, no saner I fear than the poor dead man.

  Renfield, babbling, told us of his attempt to defy his master. He had developed something of a crush on Mrs Harker, and anger at the Count’s treatment of her broke his loyalty to the vampire. There was something of jealousy in his stand, I feel, as if he envied Dracula the slow taking of Mina’s life. He alternated between maniacal rages and surprising courtesy. When I showed him to Quincey and Art, he recalled nominating Godalming’s father for the Windham and took time to lecture Quincey on the greatness of the state of Texas, but he was always dismissive of Harker, jealous of the solicitor too. Before any of us, including the presumed expert Van Helsing, Renfield diagnosed Mina’s condition. ‘She wasn’t the same,’ he said, ‘it was like tea after the teapot had been watered. I don’t care for the pale people; I like them with lots of blood in them, and hers had all seemed to have run out... He had been taking the life out of her.’

  Earlier that night, the Count had come to Renfield, apparently in a discarnate form resembling mist. The slave tried to throttle the master, only to be casually smashed against the wall. ‘We know the worst now,’ Van Helsing said. ‘He is here and we know his purpose. It may not be too late.’ With a more important life to save than Renfield’s – that opinion being reinforced by the patient himself – Van Helsing abandoned plans to operate. He had us gather up the weapons we had used against Lucy. Our group crept down the corridor towards the Harkers’ bedroom, for all the world like the partisans of an outraged husband in a French farce. ‘Alas, alas, that that dear Madam Mina should suffer,’ Van Helsing lamented, shifting his crucifix from hand to hand like a pagan fetish. He knew confronting an elder by night, when his powers were at the height, would be a very different matter from trapping a feeble-minded new-born by day.

  We paused outside the Harkers’ door. Quincey said ‘should we disturb her?’ The Quincey Morris I remember from our Korea expedition would have shown no qualm about bursting at dead of night into a young lady’s room, although he might have given pause if, as now, he knew the lady’s husband were with her. The door was properly locked but we all put our shoulders to it. With a crash it burst open, and we almost fell headlong into the room. The Professor did actually fall, and I saw across him as he gathered himself up from hands and knees. What I saw appalled me. I felt my hair rise like bristles on the back of my neck.

  The moonlight was so bright that through the thick yellow blind the room was light enough to see. On the bed beside the window lay Jonathan Harker, his face flushed and his breath coming heavily. Kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outwards was his wife. By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black. His face was turned from us, but the instant we saw, we all recognised the Count. With his left hand he held both Mrs Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white night-dress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn-open shirt. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.

  As we burst into the room, the Count turned his face and a hellish look seemed to leap into it. With a wrench which threw his victim back upon the bed as though hurled from a height, he turned and sprang at us. By this time the Professor had gained his feet and was fumbling with one of his wafers. The Count suddenly stopped, just as Lucy had done outside the tomb. Further and further back he cowered, as we, lifting our crosses, advanced. A righteous Christian army, we would have done John Jago proud. We had the vampire in a corner and might have finished him or put him to flight but for a failure on our collective part. Before me was evidence that Dracula shared Van Helsing’s belief in the power of sacred symbols to harm him, but my own faith faltered. I would rather have had a pistol in my hand, or Quincey’s bowie knife, or one of my now-silvered scalpels. To face the Count with a penny ornament and a broken biscuit struck me then, and strikes me now, as sheer folly. As my doubt flared, I dropped my cross. And as a great black cloud passed over the moon, I heard terrible laughter in the dark. Quincey put a match to the gas and the light sprang up. All shadows banished, the Count stood before us, blood dribbling from the shallow cut in his chest. I had expected to find Dracula drinking the blood of Mrs Harker, not vice versa.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ the Count said, casually buttoning his shirt, and arranging his cravat. ‘Dr Seward, I believe. And Lord Godalming. Mr Morris of Texas. And Van Helsing. Of course, Van Helsing. Professor is it, or Doctor? No one seems quite sure.’

  I was surprised that he knew us, but, of course, he had information from many: Harker, Renfield, Lucy, Mina. I had expected his voice to be the thick-accented croak of an Attila unschooled in English. But he spoke in a cultivated, almost proper manner. Indeed, his command of our language was certainly far in excess of that of Abraham Van Helsing or Quincey P. Morris, to name but two.

  ‘You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher’s. You shall be sorry, each one of you. Your girls that you love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine. My creatures, to do my bidding and to
be my jackals when I want to feed.’

  Van Helsing, with a roar of rage, shoved his wafer at the Count, but Dracula moved with incredible speed, stepping aside to let the Professor fall again. He laughed again, a cruel chuckle from the throat. I stood paralysed, my hand throbbing as if covered with scorpions. Art, too, made no move. That shared lack of action accounts, for our both being, in a manner of speaking, alive three years later.

  Quincey, ever putting deed before thought, rushed at Dracula, and stuck him through the heart. I heard the bowie sink in as if penetrating cork. As the Count staggered back against the wall, Quincey yee-hahed a victory yell. But the blade was plain steel, not the wood that would have transfixed his heart nor the silver that would have poisoned him. The vampire took the knife out of his breast as if drawing it from a scabbard. The gash remained in his shirt, but closed in his flesh. Quincey said, ‘Well, kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass,’ as Dracula closed on him. The Count gave Quincey back his knife, plunging it into the hollow of his throat, sucking briefly at the wound that erupted.

  Our gallant friend was dead.

  Next the Count picked up the unconscious Harker as easily as he would a baby. Mina was by his side, eyes glazed as if drugged, blood on her chin and bosom. Dracula kissed the solicitor’s forehead, leaving a bloody mark.

  ‘He was my guest,’ he explained, ‘but he abused hospitality.’

  He looked at Mina, as if communicating with her mind. She hissed at him, startlingly like the new-born Lucy, setting her unholy blessing upon his intent. She was turning fast. With a quick snap, he broke Harker’s neck in his great hands. He jabbed his thumb-nail into the pulsing vein of Harker’s neck, and offered him to his wife. Mina, her hair swept aside with both hands, leaned over, and began to lap up the blood.

  I helped the Professor to his feet. He shook with rage, his face purple with blood, foam about his mouth. He looked like one of the madmen in the other wing of the house.

  ‘Now,’ the Count said, ‘leave me and mine be.’

  Art had already backed out of the door. I followed, hauling Van Helsing with me. He was grumbling under his breath. Mrs Harker dropped her husband’s lifeless body on the carpet and he rolled against the bed, open eyes staring. From the corridor, we saw Dracula pull Mina to him and press his face to her throat, his thick-nailed hands tearing at her chemise and the long tangle of her hair.

  ‘No,’ said Van Helsing, ‘no.’

  It took all my strength, and Art’s too, to hold the savant back. We looked away from Dracula’s feeding, but Van Helsing was transfixed. What he saw in the Harkers’ bedroom was a personal affront.

  A man in muddy striped pyjamas burst into the corridor from a stairwell, dragging a thin woman by her hair, waving an open razor. It was Louis Bauer, the Pimlico Square Strangler. A crowd of others, shambling in the darkness, followed. Someone sang a hymn with a ragged but pure voice, joined by animal-like whining. A hunched figure pushed to the front of the crowd. It was Renfield, twisted over where he was broken, his face and front a mess of blood.

  ‘Master,’ he shrieked, ‘I atone...’

  The swell of bodies pushed him forward. He should have been dead, but insanity can keep people with the most terrible injuries on their feet, if only for the length of a fit. He had let out the inmates. Renfield fell to his knees and was trampled under by his mad fellows. Bauer kicked his already snapped spine, finishing him at last. There was a fire in the building somewhere. And dreadful screams, either from rampaging paients or the staff who bore the brunt of their fury.

  I turned to look for Art but he was gone. I’ve not seen him since. With my good arm around Van Helsing, I backed away from the mob. The Count, his business with Mina finished, emerged from the Harkers’ room, and quieted the inmates with a glance, just as he was supposed to be able to quell wolves and other wild things.

  I tugged on Van Helsing, leading him towards the back staircase Art must have taken. He resisted, still mumbling of holy hosts and un-dead leeches. Another man might have left him, but I was driven by a strength come too late. Because of me, Lucy was twice destroyed, Quincey and Harker were dead, Mina was the Count’s slave. Even Renfield was on my conscience: he had been entrusted to my care, and I had used him for an experiment as he had used his spiders and bugs. I fixed upon Van Helsing as if he could be my salvation, as if rescuing him would make amends for the others.

  Mina was by the Count now, already in the full throes of her turning. The process, I understand, is variable in its length of incubation. With Mrs Harker, it was rapid. It was hard to recognise in this newborn wanton, her night-clothes shredded away from the voluptuous white of her body, the prim and practical school-mistress of the lower middle classes whom I had met only a day or so before.

  With a sudden shock of strength, I subdued the Professor. He went slack and I got him on to the stairs. I hurried as if we were pursued but no one followed us. Art must have taken one of the horses from the stable and proverbially failed to bolt the door after him, for there were several animals wandering loose on the lawns. Fire already burst from the lower windows of Purfleet Asylum. I could taste the smoke in the air. Like escaping madmen, we ran for the woods, avoiding the battered black bulk of Carfax Abbey. We were defeated utterly. The whole country lay before Count Dracula, ripe for the bleeding.

  We stayed in the woods for days and nights. Van Helsing’s mind and heart were gone, and my hand was a swollen mace of pain. We found a hollow protected somewhat from the elements and stayed there, starting at every sound. Even by day, we were too afraid to stir. Hunger became a problem. At one point, Van Helsing tried to eat earth. If I slept, I was persecuted by dreams of Lucy.

  They found us before the week was out. Mina Harker led them, wearing trousers and an old tweed jacket of mine, hair done up under a cap. The small band of new-borns were turned patients and one orderly. They had organised into a search party, discharging the Count’s orders while he was removing his headquarters from Purfleet to Piccadilly. They seized upon Van Helsing and trussed him, slinging him over a horse’s back for transport back to the Abbey. What became of him is too well known to recount, and too painful to think of.

  I was left with Mina. The turn had affected her differently from her friend. While Lucy had become more sensual, more wilful, Mina was more severe, more purposeful. She accepted her place as one of Dracula’s cast-offs and found her new state a liberation. In life, she had been stronger than her husband, stronger than most men. As an un-dead, she was stronger still.

  ‘Lord Godalming is with us,’ she told me.

  I thought she intended to kill me on the spot, as she had done her foolish husband. Or else make me as she was. I stood up, my swollen and dirty hand in my pocket, hoping to meet whatever came with dignity. I cast about my mind for some suitable last words. She came close to me, a smile cutting into her cheeks, sharp teeth white and hard in the moonlight. Almost lulled, I tugged at my collar, letting the night air against my throat.

  ‘No, doctor,’ she said, and walked away into the dark, leaving me alone in the woods. I tore at my clothes and wept.

  17

  SILVER

  Outside a public house on the corner of Wardour Street, two new-born street flowers discreetly offered themselves. Beauregard recognised their silent protector as the dacoit from Limehouse, tattoos covered by a long velvet coat. Wherever he went in the city, in the world, he could never escape the webs of the shadow people. The dacoit gave no sign of noticing him as he passed, but somehow the girls knew not to bother him.

  The address was in D’Arblay Street, an unobtrusive shop-front between a cabinet-maker’s and a jeweller’s. The cabinet-maker’s had a selection of caskets, from plain plank boxes to gorgeously-finished items suitable for a Pharaoh’s sarcophagus. A new-born couple cooed over an especially fine coffin, large enough for a family and ostentatious enough to cow a provincial alderman’s wife into a fit of silent envy. The other premises displayed an array of jewel clusters and rings in the
shapes or insignia of bats, skulls, eyes, scarabs, daggers, wolfsheads, or spiders; trinkets favoured by that type of new-born who styled themselves Gothick. Others called them murgatroyds, after the family in Ruddigore, the Savoy Opera of last year that so successfully lampooned the breed.

  The denizens of Soho were more eccentric than their desperate cousins in Whitechapel. Murgatroyds concerned themselves mainly with ornament. Many of the women emerging as the sun set were foreign; French or Spanish, even Chinese. They favoured shroud-like dresses, thick cobweb veils, scarlet lips and nails, waist-length coils of glossy black hair. Their beaux followed the fashions set by Lord Ruthven; high-waisted, immodestly tight trews; floppy Georgian cuffs; ruffle-fronted shirts in scarlet or black; ribboned pompadours with artificial white lightning-streaks. Quite a few vampires, especially the elders, regarded those who creep through graveyard shadows in batwing capes and fingerless black gloves as an Edinburgh gentleman might look upon a Yankee with a single Scots grandparent who swathes himself in kilts and tartan sashes, prefaces every remark with quotes from Burns or Scott and affects a fondness for bagpipes and haggis. ‘Basingstoke,’ muttered Beauregard, invoking the Gilbertian magic word supposed to render the most gloom-besotted murgatroyd a meek suburban mediocrity.

  He walked to Fox Malleson’s establishment and entered. The shop was empty, all the counters and shelves taken down. The window was painted over green. A vampire tough sat, eternally vigilant, by the door leading to the works. Beauregard presented the new-born with his card. The vampire stood, considered for a moment, and pushed open the door, nodding for him to enter. The room beyond was full of opened tea-chests, in which were packed, amid quantities of straw, an assortment of silverware: tea and coffee pots, dinner services, cricket cups, cream jugs. Heaped on trays were the remains of rings and necklaces, gems prised out and gone. A heavy ring-base caught his attention, the gouged-out hollow at its centre like an empty eye-socket. He wondered if Fox Malleson were in partnership with the jeweller next door.