There was no key in the ignition.
What now?
He was finding it hard to think straight, even to think at all. When he struggled to concentrate, the throbbing in his forehead became all but unendurable. But the struggle finally paid off. Go back to opening the door, his mind instructed. You can pull yourself up to it.
Squirming out from under the wheel, he reached up for the door and found he could not work the release. There was a weakness in his fingers. But with beads of moisture forming on his face and salting his lips, he persisted. The door finally opened an inch.
Now he had to boost or pull himself higher to push it farther open, which meant forcing it up. This took time and increased the pounding in his head, causing him to fight for breath. Then a tree beside the car, apparently the one the machine had sideswiped, was so close that the door would open only partway. He had to stretch his aching body to the limit and crawl out like a damaged caterpillar.
At last, though, he stood outside the machine on ground covered with pine needles and was able to explore his body with his hands.
There seemed to be no major injuries except the lump on his forehead. None that caused any sharp pain when touched, at any rate. Nor could he discover any rips in his clothing. But again, why was he here in this strange place? Whose car was this? Most important, who was he?
He was wearing a tan jacket and had a feeling there should be a billfold in its inside pocket. But the pocket was empty, as were all others in both the jacket and his slacks. Perhaps the plates on the car would tell him something.
He went to look, but learned nothing except that the car was from Massachusetts. Was he in Massachusetts now? Did he live near here, close enough to walk home if he could remember where home was?
The trunk lid was open—perhaps had sprung open when the car hit the tree—but the trunk itself was empty except for a jack and spare tire. Well, maybe something in the glove compartment would help him. Climbing back up on the car with the greatest of care, he leaned in through the partly open door and reached down to the dash.
But, like the trunk, the glove compartment yielded nothing.
Who was he? Where was he? How long would the pounding in his head, apparently caused by the egg-sized bruise on his forehead, keep him from remembering?
Whatever the answers, he had to walk out of here. There was no way he could use the car. So where was the road?
The car ought to tell him that, at least. It must have run off a road into this grove of trees. Assuming it had done so in a reasonably straight line, the road should be over there behind the red glow of its taillights. Not too far away, either. With so many trees around, a machine out of control could not have travelled any great distance.
Had he simply blacked out while driving? Or had some other car forced him off the road and gone on without stopping? And what time was it? He had a feeling there ought to be a watch on his left wrist, but there wasn’t. Had he been robbed?
Start walking, he told himself. Just hope to God there’s a house not too far away where you can phone for a doctor and a wrecker.
With both arms outthrust like the antennae of a night-prowling insect, he struggled on through the dark and came to a two-lane blacktop road. A pale moon feebly shone through cloud-gaps above it, providing light enough for him to see by. After flipping a mental coin to reach a decision, he turned blindly to his right. Behind him the lights of the car were still visible among the trees.
He must have walked a long two miles before seeing lamplit windows in a house on his left. No car had passed him in either direction. Wherever this road was, it appeared to be little used.
The windows were three in number and well back from the blacktop. One hundred fifty feet, at least. There was an old wooden mailbox on a post at the end of an unpaved drive. He had to lean close to make out the weathered black letters on it.
CARLETON HODE.
He stood there for a moment gratefully resting, because he had not stopped walking since leaving the car. Had he heard the name Carleton Hode before? He didn’t think so. But then, he didn’t know his own name, did he? Or where he was from. Or whose car he had been driving. He might even be Carleton Hode. Or a neighbour. Perhaps on coming face to face with the people who lived here, he would remember.
Straightening from his slouch against the mailbox, he went plodding down the driveway to the house.
One of its lamplit windows looked out on a long veranda, and the pale shaft of yellow light from it showed him the steps. He climbed them. Approaching the door, he wondered whether he should be honest about not knowing who he was. What would his reaction be if some hurt stranger appeared out of the dark and said, “Please help me, I’ve been in an accident, I don’t know who I am or where I’m from or where I was going when it happened”? Would he let such a person in or slam and lock the door and phone the police?
I could give myself a name, he thought, but shrugged the thought aside and looked for a bell button. Failing to find one, he knocked. Knocked again. Presently he heard slow footsteps approaching over a bare wooden floor.
How should he respond if the person coming to the door asked, “What do you want?”
The door opened with a slight jerk and he found himself face to face with a small, grey-haired woman in a black dress. She stood there peering up at him, waiting for him to speak. “Good evening,” he said. Recalling the name on the mailbox, he added, “Mrs Hode?”
Her expression became a frown. “Who are you?”
Better be honest, he thought. “To be truthful, I don’t know who I am at the moment.” Feeling weak again, as he had at the mailbox, he put a hand against the doorframe to steady himself. “I’ve had an accident with my car. Please—may I use your telephone to call for help?”
She leaned forward to peer at him more closely, and he half remembered something. Had he picked up a hitchhiker sometime before his accident? An old, grey-haired woman in a black dress? This very woman, perhaps?
No, no. If anything like that had happened, the person he picked up would never have walked away and left him unconscious, perhaps dying, in a wrecked car. His mind was playing tricks on him.
“Accident?” the woman echoed. “You’ve had an accident?”
“About two miles down the road. I don’t know what happened. When I came to, the car was on its side in a grove of trees and I had this lump on my head.”
He pointed to the bruise and she leaned closer to examine it. “M’m. It does look nasty,” she said in a thin voice. “Come with me, please.”
Closing the door behind him, he trailed her down a lamplit hall to an archway on the right, and through that into a lamplit living room. Or perhaps, in this part of New England in a house as old as this, it was referred to as a parlour. To his surprise, two of its three ancient, overstuffed chairs were occupied by a man and a woman. The man, wearing a dark suit complete with jacket, was tall, swarthy, even handsome in a foreign sort of way. The woman, definitely of old New England stock, was at least as old as his guide and as old-fashioned in her dress. The only other pieces of furniture in the room were two small tables on which stood kerosene lamps with ornate, cut-glass bases and tall glass chimneys.
Mrs Hode—if his guide was Mrs Hode—said to the other two, “This man has been hurt in a car accident and doesn’t know who he is.”
The pair gazed at him with such intensity that Howell was tempted to turn and run.
“Haven’t you a driver’s licence?” asked the man, speaking with an accent.
“No, I don’t. Or anything else with a name on it. Someone must have emptied my pockets while I was unconscious.”
“It would seem you have a problem, then.”
“If I might use your phone-—”
“To call whom?”
“Nine-one-one, I suppose.”
“There is no Nine-one-one here.”
“A doctor, then? One who lives within reach?”
“None would be willing to come here at this hou
r.” The swarthy man extended a long, bony finger to point at a brass clock on the wall. “It is past midnight.”
Howell was startled. Past midnight? How long had he been unconscious there in the car?
“You had better forget about a doctor tonight.” The man’s gaze flicked darkly to the woman who had opened the door, then to the other one. “Ladies, I believe what this man needs most is a good night’s rest. Don’t you agree? I don’t know why we can’t let him have the spare room for tonight. Then if he is no better in the morning we can call Doctor—ah—Jones.” He waited while the two women exchanged questioning looks, then added impatiently, “Well?”
“All right,” said the one who had opened the door.
“Yes, I think so,” the other echoed.
With bits and pieces of memory struggling to sort themselves out in his mind, Jerome Howell sat silently staring. The two women were sisters, he decided. The man could be the husband of one of them, or just someone living here. Was this the entire household? And were they the Hodes whose name was on the mailbox?
Why did he have such a strong feeling that the Hodes had died long ago, the house had long since been abandoned as old and worthless, and these three had simply moved in recently and taken it over?
The man with the foreign accent was gazing at him. “Well, sir? Do you agree that what you most need is a good night’s sleep?”
“With all due respect, sir, I’d prefer to see a doctor,” Howell said experimentally. “Is there a cab I could call to take me to one?”
“There are no taxicabs in this small town.”
“What town is this?”
“Ellenton.”
Another jog to his memory. He knew the name Ellenton. But Ellenton what? New Hampshire? He thought so but was afraid to ask. Whoever they were, these people must already suspect him of being unstable. “Well ... if I can’t get to a doctor, perhaps you’re right in saying a night’s sleep ...”
“Good.” The swarthy man pushed himself out of his chair and took up one of the lamps. He was even taller than he had appeared to be when seated, Howell noted. Even more handsome. Were his clothes a bit newer, less seedy, he might well have attracted attention even in a place like New York City.
“Come with me, please.”
Jerome Howell trailed his host up a wide flight of uncarpeted stairs and along a bare upper hall to the rear of the ancient house, where the fellow stopped before the last of several doors and produced a ring of keys. He inserted one into an old-fashioned lock. Strange, Howell thought with a touch of apprehension. How many people kept bedroom doors locked?
Entering the room, the fellow placed the lamp on a bedside table, and by its light Howell saw that the room was a large one. It had four windows. The bed was a massive old four-poster of pine. Completing the furnishings were two ancient chests-of-drawers and a bedroom chair with faded rosebuds on its skirt of chintz.
“The bed is ready,” the tall man said in his mellow voice, with just a trace of a smile. “Perhaps you should retire at once, no? You appear to be very tired, sir.”
“Are you sure this won’t inconvenience you, Mr Hode?”
“I assure you, it is no trouble. Let me get you something to sleep in.” Striding to a chest, the man dropped on one knee to open its bottom drawer. “Here now. These will fit you, I believe.” He placed a pair of grey flannel pyjamas on the bed and turned to lift a long-fingered hand in farewell. “Goodnight, sir. Rest well.”
He went out. Howell heard the key turn in the lock and realized he was a prisoner. A prisoner in a town called Ellenton, in the state of New Hampshire. And suddenly, with the shock of that frightening realization, all the rest of it flooded back into his memory.
He knew his name. He knew he was a vacationing professor of philosophy whose hobby was the investigation of psychic phenomena. He knew he had received a letter from the town of Ellenton, signed by twenty-two of its citizens, imploring him to come to their town and investigate reports of vampirism—especially the rumour that the most renowned vampire of them all, Count Dracula, had chosen to pay the town of Ellenton a visit and was now in residence here.
More and more came back. He remembered he had planned to arrive in Ellenton about three in the afternoon but had been delayed in Portsmouth by car trouble. He recalled that hours later, when it was dark, he had picked up an old woman—one of the two old women now in the almost bare parlour downstairs. Then an old clunker of a car had run him off the road—perhaps deliberately—and when he regained consciousness in his wrecked car, his passenger was no longer there. She could hardly have escaped injury, but still she had vanished.
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.
The Mammoth Book of Dracula - [Anthology] Page 23
