The Mammoth Book of Dracula - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Sitting among the carnage I had wrought, I gradually regained some composure. The outrage had been committed and there was nothing now I could do about it. Night was drawing on and although an hour or more to dawn, I should leave before sunrise when my powers would wane.

  I stepped forth from the ruin of that shattered sepulchre into slender veils of mist which still blanketed the place. I did not immediately metamorphose into bat or wolf but made my way instead towards the high gates of the cemetery entrance where at last I emerged into clear air. Without warning a beam of light shone suddenly into my face and eyes, momentarily dazzling me although I was able to make out a trio of shapes beyond the glare.

  For an instant I thought that I had encountered a police patrol until I heard a familiar voice, triumphant with tipsy and malicious glee.

  “Well, look what we got here boys. It’s the old feller who interfered between me and my girl. I told you I thought I’d seen him hanging around here.” My eyes had adjusted quickly and I could now see beyond the flashlight’s brightness. Haydon Lascalles had two friends with him, as big and burly as himself, and his courage was proportionately greater.

  “Now my Josephine’s gone,” he was saying. “And gone without even knowing what a good man I’d have been to her. And it’s all this bastard’s fault. Reckon he’s a damned pervert too, always hanging around cemeteries. What we gonna do about him?”

  “You sure this is him, Hay?” said one of the others. “He don’t look so old to me.”

  “It’s him right enough, Brad. Must have been using hair colouring.” Lascalles sneered at me. “You think that hair dye would get you a nice piece of young ass, Granddad?”

  I stared hard at the trio, barely controlling my ferocity. “Do not arouse me,” I hissed at them. “Walk away now and you may all live to see another sun rise.”

  My tone had an effect on the third youth, the one holding the flashlight, for he sidled a step or two back. “Let’s leave this, we can tell the cops about this guy creeping round the graveyard at nights.”

  “Hell, no!” Haydon Lascalles leaped at me, swinging a huge hunting knife he had snatched from beneath his coat. The weapon passed through me harmlessly and I gave a harsh laugh. Disarming my impassioned assailant, I retained an easy hold on him while disembowelling the one called Brad with an upward sweep of the keen-edged blade. Dashing Brad’s corpse aside, I seized the third man—who was striking at me with the flashlight—and snapped his spine. He fell to the ground, writhing and emitting pathetic mewling noises.

  The reek of fresh gore from the gutted carcass that had been companion Brad was too overpowering for me to ignore. Pulling Haydon Lascalles close, I laughed into his face before striking at his throat. He barely had time to glimpse my fully exposed fangs, barely had time enough to recognize his fate and die wailing for mercy; but time enough he had to be plunged into a mental maelstrom of Hell.

  Cowardly bully and wastrel Haydon Lascalles may have been, but his blood was thick and strong as it gushed. Young blood, invigorating blood, blood filled with vitality, blood—the well of all power. I drank until bloated, until I could feel hot streams overflowing teeth and lips to pour in rivulets down my chin. Then I twisted his gaping head from his shoulders, tossing it contemptuously to one side.

  The one with the broken back had remained conscious throughout his friend’s death and his horrified eyes, from which bitter tears streamed, bulged at me. I stirred him with my foot as I glanced at the sky. There was time a-plenty and I was strong from my repast.

  Wordlessly I began to call upon certain little friends and allies in their subterranean haunts and could hear their answering cries, as yet too highly pitched for the cur cowering before me. But soon he would hear, oh yes, soon ...

  They came pouring from the gutters and the sewers and from the very tombs themselves, pouring in their hundreds and thousands, squirming, furry little bodies jostling and struggling and fighting for position.

  And as I directed my little friends, the rats, the crippled man heard and understood and began to scream. He was still screaming when the tumbling ravenous masses swarmed over the three bodies and sharp little teeth began to rend and tear at their master’s gift, at the bountiful and unexpected feast...

  I rested for some weeks thereafter, replete and rejuvenated, but still rankling at the loss of a worthy mate. I needed to know more about how Josephine had been stolen from me and finally visited the funeral parlour from which my love had taken her final journey.

  I sought out the mortician who owned the company and interviewed him in his sumptuous office to the rear of the premises. Here, where no doubt he received all of the grieving loved ones, the air was scented as of flowers, but with my finer senses I could detect the malodorous foetor of the preparations he had used to destroy my Josephine.

  “I have come here from Europe with my family,” I told him. “And now it seems that soon my father will die. I wish to ensure the finest funeral for him and I was recommended to you by Mr George Deschamps. I have been advised that in your mighty and progressive land, it is the done thing to embalm the deceased. In the old country, you understand, we lack such sophistication.”

  “Indeed, sir,” said the mortician, an ingratiating smile upon his thin lips, thinking I suppose of the gold he could extort from me when he entombed my non-existent father. “Anybody who is anybody now insists upon embalming for their dear departed ones. It is not a cheap process but we guarantee full satisfaction. As you were recommended by Mr Deschamps you are aware of his own recent bereavement. Sir, his poor daughter was a triumph of my art. By the time that I had finished my task, she was as if she slept. I take great pride in my skills and my work, sir.”

  I could not hate this man, for he was nothing other than a hired lackey. I did kill him, of course, but quickly and mercifully.

  ~ * ~

  I moved away from New Orleans after that. I moved a great deal, in fact, never staying for more than three or four years in one place. I fasted a great deal, only feeding when absolutely necessary. I preyed upon animals or society’s outcasts, always destroying the latter when they were no longer of use to me. I stayed away from small towns where people tended to know each other well. Large cities or remote wild places, where both predator and prey could remain well hidden, were the most suitable places for me.

  I continued to take a great interest in world events and politics and kept up my correspondence with Richelieu and the others. We discussed the likelihood of war breaking out afresh in Europe, agreeing that the rise of National Socialism made this inevitable. Throughout the thirties they made certain arrangements and by the time that Hitler invaded Poland all were safely hidden in those lands most likely to remain neutral. Like myself they continued to live with discretion.

  The Nazi hordes swept across Europe, wreaking death and destruction on a scale unthinkable to those of us who were ancient warriors. At my most tyrannical, I could not have matched them.

  Jonathan and Mina Harker both died in their seventies, not of natural causes but in a bombing raid on the City of Plymouth. Their son Quincy was apparently most valorous at the Normandy landings and was awarded the Victoria Cross, posthumously. I salute his memory.

  I found my next Josephine—or, I should say, Josephines, for they were twins, brother and sister—in the early nineteen-fifties in Madison, Wisconsin. Both unmarried, both Doctors of Philosophy at the University, they were scions of an old and wealthy family. This time it was not a matter of the Thunderbolt but a cold recognition that these two, with proper control and guidance, had the potential to become great Nosferatu. They cared for little save their work and each other and treated all about them with a cold aristocratic hauteur which amused me greatly.

  I took my time with these two. Many months passed before they died and by the time they did so, both their physician and their family’s mortician were fully under my control. The physician stipulated that an autopsy was unnecessary, he having been treating both for pernicious le
ukaemia. The mortician was fully persuaded that he had completed embalming the two, whereas he had done no more than apply paint and powder to the bodies. They were mine!

  Their funeral took place upon a bright spring day, and that evening I went to the church where the service had taken place. I began to search the adjoining cemetery for the freshly dug graves and while I was doing so a custodian approached and asked if he could help me.

  “There was a brother and sister buried here today,” I said. “From the University. I wish to pay my respects at their gravesides.”

  “Their graves, sir?” The custodian looked puzzled. “Didn’t you know that they were cremated? So many families prefer that now...”

  It may have been an expression of incandescent rage upon my face or it may have been the hideous grinding of my teeth which frightened the man, for he scuttled away from me, glancing back once in terror.

  Once more my schemes were frustrated! What was it about these humans? So pitifully weak compared with such as I and yet somehow they consistently managed to impede my way. Embalming and now cremation. Such irony.

  Had Richelieu been correct all those years ago? Were we Nosferatu doomed to extinction, were we to become an endangered species partly because of our insistence on quality for our offspring, partly because of the changing ways in which humans disposed of their dead? Our very nature demanded that we should be a dominant species and yet here we found ourselves in a parlous position akin to the tiger and the whale.

  I moved from place to place in America, engaging upon a great study of their funeral rites. I frequented morticians’ premises and mortuaries and graveyards. I attended the funerals of acquaintances and strangers and visited morticians’ colleges listening to lectures and observing training. I immersed myself in the human rites of death.

  And everywhere it was the same. Those worthy of becoming Nosferatu were invariably embalmed or cremated, or even both. Only the poorer people, those unworthy of my attention other than as cattle, continued to be buried in a natural state.

  You may wonder why I did not simply use such creatures and then move on, leaving them to their own devices. I have mentioned that a young Nosferatu is driven by insatiable appetite. Consider the old conundrum of shoeing a horse: it needs four shoes, each with eight nails and you charge a penny for the first nail, two pennies for the second, four pennies for the third and so on. Calculate and you quickly realize that the cost is prohibitive. And so it would be with new and uncontrolled Nosferatu. Soon there would be a world empty of all but Nosferatu, which is unthinkable.

  In Europe, even, according to my allies, embalming and cremation have become the accepted way, and they too have undergone the loss of potentially excellent consorts.

  Another irony is that the human race—those, that is, who believe in or believed in us—hold us to be monsters. And yet, Roisin Kennedy, consider the twentieth century and then ask yourself just how monstrous we really are. Look upon what the century has given you: Hitler, Stalin, Mao-Tse Tung, major monsters all, wreaking so much more havoc than would any intelligent Nosferatu.

  And your minor monsters. Amin in Africa, Pol Pot in Asia, even in my own land the dreadful Nicolai Ceausescu. And the almost invisible monsters: the scientists who develop more and more terrible weapons, the men who sell such weapons, the so-called “good” politicians who are prepared to advocate the use of such weapons. Tell me, how is it that such men can be considered more human than one such as I? How?

  I wandered from place to place, here and there renting tumbledown properties unwanted by others, often spending long periods in a state not unlike hibernation, emerging to find myself ever more disgusted with humanity and what they were becoming.

  At last I discovered this State of Oregon, and this house which called to me; it is one of those rare dwelling places which seems to be a part of the land on which it stands, seems to spring from the soil. So it was with my fortress in Transylvania which felt as if it grew from the very rock upon which it stood. And so it is with this house; although not old in the sense of which I am old, it is old within this land of America and it grows from the fertile ground like the forest around it.

  For many years now, we superior Nosferatu have remained inactive. We have observed the world and what is happening to it and we can no longer condone it. We have debated carefully among ourselves and we have reached an important conclusion. There has been too much of the human monster.

  The time has come for us to re-establish our rightful place. It will not happen immediately, for we move with stealth. However, we have set in hand a series of stratagems whereby we Nosferatu will move surely and inexorably, taking ourselves away from the path of the endangered species to the high road of a dominant one.

  When our current plans reach fruition, perhaps by the end of this century, almost certainly no later than the second decade of the next, the world will be a place of enduring peace, controlled by Nosferatu. The human race will remain unaware of us, yet they will be our slaves and our livestock. Homo superior is about to come into his own: requiescat in pace, Homo sapiens!

  ~ * ~

  And that, dearest Roisin Kennedy, is my narrative. As yet you can have little inkling of how good it has been for me to talk with you. Human or Nosferatu, the need to share one’s dreams and ambitions with another becomes sometimes pressing. You wonder about the unique experience I promised you. As for that, you have already experienced it. But have patience and I will explain in a moment.

  Do you not notice something different about me? Ah, exactly. I look much younger, I am less thin and my hair and whiskers are darker.

  When describing to you my Nosferatu powers, I mentioned my regret that I am unable to halt time in its relentless progress. I do have the ability, though, to give the illusion that I have stopped time. Tell me, Roisin Kennedy, how long have you been here? I see, one night.

  Will it astonish you, lovely Roisin, when I tell you that you have been here for considerably more than a week? It is with the power of the will, the strength of the mind, that I create my illusions, that I make you believe little more than a few hours have passed. As for your unique experience—why, you yourself are now Nosferatu.

  You have awakened from death to a superior state of life. Soon you will thirst and I will control the appeasement of that thirst. Carefully at the outset, until like a new child you come to learn and practise self-control.

  Understandably you are unsure whether or not to believe me. Why not take that delicate little mirror from your purse once more and confront your image. There—see! Why, you have shattered it into pieces with the force of your throw. Faugh! do not concern yourself with that. It was but a human bauble for which you no longer have any use.

  I gave my word of honour that I intended you no harm? Well, I do not consider that I have done you harm. I have released you to a higher plane of life, and what is the harm in that? Seduction is preferable to force as you will discover.

  Now listen closely to me. The dawn of a new world order approaches and you can be—are intended to be—a part of it. Among others around the world, you were chosen.

  Do you recall how it was that you first saw my newspaper advertisement? Precisely, it was shown to you by a friend who knew how your vitality was ground down by ennui. In effect, an agent of mine prepared to sell her friend for ... well, shall we say thirty pieces of silver?

  There are others. Throughout this immense land of yours, others -more than at first I allowed you to believe—have answered my call and are awaiting the invitation to visit with me. All of you were selected with care, in the way that a breeder would select the finest stock: for intelligence, for positions in life, for family power and for influence.

  Your own family, Roisin, has wealth and power and influence in abundance. In the past, some have aspired to the most exalted positions of status in the land, some have achieved them. They can continue to do so. Those who have no direct power are frequently power brokers. With you as my consort I can infil
trate that family and use them, just as together we will infiltrate and use the families of the others who will come at my summons. With you as helpmeet, those who wait so eagerly to meet their “reclusive European nobleman” can be altered so much more quickly. Our offspring, Roisin, will be awesome, mighty. Soon we will have puppets in the most influential positions in government and finance and society. And through them we will rule.

  The web of the Nosferatu is spreading, its strands adhering and corrupting wheresoever we require them to. Throughout Europe Richelieu, the Borgias, the others, have all ensnared new subjects from the highest echelons. There may be in existence other worthy Nosferatu, perhaps to the east, and we seek to ferret them out and bring them into our alliance. We cannot be stopped, we will not be stopped. And none will be aware of this silent acquisition. Who was it who said that Satan’s greatest trick was to make mankind not believe in him?

  You appear to be horrified. So are we all when first we awaken to this enhanced existence. But then comes the hunger and the awareness, and the horror soon passes. Your initial reluctance is understandable, though, and I will not compel you into my Empire. I will be American, democratic; I will offer you free choice.