The Future Is Ours

by Hoch Edward D.

  The tall man stepped forward a pace so the moonlight fell partly on his face. He smiled slightly and said, “I mean you no harm.”

  “The barracks are kept locked at night. How did you get out here? Are you on a special work detail?”

  “Yes, I am on a special detail. I am monitoring the other prisoners to be certain they do not leave their barracks.”

  It was then that Schellenberg recognized him. This man facing him, seeming in the best of health, was the same sick Gypsy he’d observed in the barracks that morning. “Vlad Tepes—that’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “I am known by that name.”

  “I’m pleased to see that you’ve recovered. I expect you to be on the morning work detail with the others.”

  “I can work only at night. The sunlight affects my skin.”

  The captain grunted. He started to turn away and then a thought struck him. “How did you know my name?”

  “I may have heard the old woman addressing you.”

  Schellenberg accepted that, though he knew it wasn’t true. He was anxious to get away from this strange prisoner. Perhaps he was remembering that Gypsies sometimes had unnatural powers.

  That night, another guard died.

  The report of this latest death was on Captain Schellenberg’s desk when he arrived at his office the following morning. There was also the report he’d requested about the earlier death. He read through both of them and was astonished to discover that each of the guards had died from loss of blood. Yet there was no evidence of bleeding and no blood had been found in the vicinity of the bodies. He took the reports with him when he went in to see Colonel Rausch later that morning.

  “Do you suspect foul play?” the colonel asked, repeating the captain’s own question of the previous day.

  “I don’t know what I suspect. I think I should speak with the doctor.”

  Rausch nodded his glistening bald head. “Do so, by all means. I will leave the matter in your hands, Captain.”

  Schellenberg sought out the doctor who had autopsied the bodies. His name was Fredericks and he held the rank of major. A short man with eyes that seemed too big for his head, he seemed to present a figure of vague menace. “Both men died the same way,” he said in answer to the captain’s questions. “Loss of blood.”

  “Was there a wound?”

  Major Fredericks shrugged. “Puncture marks on the throat, but that means nothing, unless you believe they were attacked by vampire bats.”

  “I suppose anything is possible.” He had another thought. “There’s something else I wanted to ask you, Major. Is there a type of illness that could cause someone to be especially sensitive to sunlight?”

  “You’re probably thinking of lupus erythematosus. Exposure to sunlight or X-rays can cause a patchy red skin rash to appear on the cheeks and the bridge of the nose, roughly in the shape of a butterfly.”

  “We have a Gypsy prisoner in barracks 52 who claims to have such a condition. He says he can’t work during the day.”

  “Nonsense! Simply cover his face with a cloth to keep the sun off it and he’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks for the advice, Major.”

  “Barracks 52, you say? I should have his name for my records.”

  “Vlad Tepes.”

  “Tepes? Odd sort of name. Seems vaguely familiar to me.”

  He went back to his paperwork and Captain Schellenberg started on his rounds. When he reached barracks 52 he saw the stout Gypsy woman, Olga Helsing, hovering outside. “Good morning,” he greeted her. “It is a fine summer’s day. Has your patient returned to the labor force?”

  “No, no! This sun would kill him, in his condition.”

  “I have spoken to the doctor about his so-called condition. If he covers his face with a piece of cloth, a handkerchief, he will be all right. Have him do that and report to the work detail this afternoon.”

  “How does the doctor know, without even examining him?” She spat it out in disgust, and Captain Schellenberg’s left hand came up in a reflex motion, striking her a backhanded blow across the mouth. She staggered back, more shocked than hurt.

  “Obey me, woman, or you and your patient will both be food for the worms!”

  She retreated in silence with a hand to her mouth. Schellenberg strode away, already regretting that he’d struck her. But authority had to be shown to these people. It was all they understood.

  In the afternoon he took a staff car out to the far end of the camp, where prisoners were building new barracks for future arrivals. He stood by the car for some time until he spotted a tall, slender man wearing a hat and with a handkerchief tied over his face. Satisfied, he drove back to his office.

  * * * *

  It was three days later before another guard was found dead, and Captain Schellenberg had almost put the first two incidents out of his mind. When he saw the latest report on his desk, and noted the cause of death, he hurried in to Colonel Rausch’s office. “There’s been another guard death overnight,” he announced without preamble. “Somehow they’re being killed.”

  The colonel lifted his bald head. “Loss of blood again?”

  “That’s right. We must take action.”

  “I’ll issue an order that nightly patrols must be conducted in pairs. And I’ll see that all locks are checked.”

  “It might not be a prisoner,” Schellenberg pointed out.

  “A guard wouldn’t kill other guards when killing a prisoner is so much easier.”

  The captain couldn’t argue with that logic. “I’m on my way to see Major Fredericks. If I learn anything further I’ll let you know.”

  Word of the killings had not yet spread among the prisoners, and as Schellenberg strode across the grass toward the doctor’s office all seemed calm. Lines of newly arrived prisoners were marching from the railroad siding, bound for some of the recently completed barracks. There was a shout as one man broke from the line and ran back toward the train, but he was quickly intercepted and beaten to the ground with rifle butts. He was carried off to the prison hospital while the others continued their march.

  Captain Schellenberg had to wait about five minutes before Major Fredericks returned to his office. “Well, Captain, what can I do for you today?”

  “I’m looking into the death of those guards. I don’t want to take your time, though, if you have a patient. I saw them carry that prisoner in here.”

  Fredericks barely blinked. “The man is dead. They waste my time with dead men.”

  Schellenberg nodded, as if agreeing. “What has been killing these guards, Major? Is it some sort of natural virus, or an animal—”

  “No animal could suck out that much blood.”

  “Then what—?”

  “You mentioned the name Vlad Tepes the other day. I knew it sounded familiar.” He walked to the bookshelf behind his desk and took down a textbook on Eastern European history. “Here—Vlad Tepes was the ruler of Wallachia during the 15th century, when he is said to have tortured and murdered more than thirty thousand people. He was the basis for the character of Dracula in the novel by that Irish writer, Bram Stoker.”

  “Vlad was a vampire?”

  “No—only in Stoker’s imagination. But it is interesting that someone should take the name of such a fiend. Have you seen this prisoner lately?”

  “Not in some days,” Captain Schellenberg admitted. “I should check up on him.”

  The major’s face remained impassive. “Be careful,” he advised. “If you suspect him of these crimes it would be easier to place him on the next train to Auschwitz.”

  Schellenberg took the staff car and drove out to the area of new barracks where the Gypsy prisoners were working. He sought out the tall man with the handkerchief over his face, and found him pushing a barrow full of
bricks. “Vlad!” he called out, but the man did not turn.

  Schellenberg walked up to him and snatched the handkerchief from his face. It was not Vlad Tepes. It was a young Gypsy he had never seen before.

  It took him less than a half-hour to establish that Vlad was not among the members of the work crew. Nor was he back in the bunk at barracks 52. That afternoon he had the woman, Olga Helsing, brought to his office. “Where is Vlad Tepes?” he asked her, leaning forward across his desk.

  “I do not know, sir,” she answered, touching her lips with one hand as if remembering his blow.

  “How long has he been gone?”

  “Many nights.”

  “And the young Gypsy who works in his place?”

  “He was incorrectly reported to have died in barracks 44. We moved him to our barracks and he took the place of Vlad Tepes.”

  “Has the man escaped?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Perhaps a night in the dungeon will refresh your memory. Life is very cheap here. Your body would make fine food for the pigs.”

  “I am an old woman. I do not frighten easily.”

  He nodded sadly. “Return to your barracks. I will tend to you later.”

  After she’d been taken away he sat for a long time staring at the opposite wall of his office. He heard another train arriving on the siding below, but did not bother to look. They were coming in twice a day now. The pace was beginning to pick up. Soon there would have to be another shipment to the extermination camps. Bergen-Belsen was treating them too well. Too many were adjusting to the routine, even on starvation rations. Adjusting and surviving.

  He left his office and went to the officers’ club at the far end of the camp. There was a small library off the dining room, with a good collection of German and English fiction. He remembered having seen a copy of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula there. That was what he needed.

  Schellenberg spent the rest of the afternoon pondering over the volume, frequently consulting an almanac on one of the other shelves. The ending of the book interested him the most—the part where Jonathan Harker and the others pursue the Gypsy wagon bearing the box of dirt containing Dracula, and slay him just at sunset. Using the dates given in the text, together with the phases of the moon as reported in the almanac, he could come to only one conclusion. The death of Dracula had taken place on November 8th, 1887.

  It was the very date that Vlad Tepes had claimed for his birth.

  The captain dined at the officers’ mess that evening, and it was growing dark by the time he left the building and headed back to his quarters. He had never studied abnormal psychology, but the idea that one of the Gypsy prisoners could imagine himself to be the character from a novel was difficult for him to comprehend. Would this man Vlad have followed Stoker’s novel to the point where he was attacking guards after sundown and sucking the blood from their necks?

  He’d spent time in the small library seeking other explanations, even reading an article on vampire bats. But the small creatures were native to the tropic zones of the western hemisphere, and if they attacked humans at all they were most likely to choose a sleeping victim and suck blood from a big toe.

  He thought about it as he walked along the fence that separated the prisoners’ compound from the guards’ and officers’ quarters. Certainly he would have to report the escape of Vlad Tepes, if indeed the man had escaped. Or he would have to report him as the prime suspect in the death of those three guards. Still puzzling over it, he happened to glance up at his office window as he passed the administration building near the railroad siding.

  He’d forgotten to close his window when he left, not realizing that he’d be gone for the entire afternoon. It was only open a few inches at the bottom, but looking up at it now he saw a movement, a small dark shape on the sill of the window. It might have been a bird, except they weren’t usually out after dark. Then, as he watched, the thing seemed to disappear. He had the awful feeling that it had entered his office.

  The captain hurried up the steps to the front door, surprising the night guard who was on duty. “Any trouble, sir?” he asked, snapping off a salute.

  “No. I simply forgot something in my office.”

  He unsnapped the flap on his holster and removed the Luger before he inserted the key in his lock. Then he pushed the door open slowly, holding the weapon ready. There was no sound from the office. He could see that the window was still open a few inches. He stepped inside and snapped on the overhead light.

  “Good evening, Captain Schellenberg.”

  He whirled around, facing the voice that came from just behind the open door. It was Vlad Tepes, but he was no longer wearing prison garb. Instead he was clothed in a dark suit covered with a black opera cape. The captain pointed his Luger at the Gypsy’s stomach. “Where did you get those clothes?”

  “From the quarters of Colonel Rausch. I noticed we were about the same size.”

  “I could shoot you dead on the spot, right here.”

  Vlad Tepes smiled. “Do you really think your bullets would have any effect on me?”

  Schellenberg’s finger tightened on the trigger, then hesitated. The man was bluffing, of course, but if the bullet didn’t harm him—

  “Who are you?” he asked, allowing his trigger finger to relax a bit. “You’re no Gypsy.”

  “They have been very good to me. I have lived and traveled with them for more than fifty years. I am Count Dracula.”

  “You are a delusion, a madman who believes himself to be a fictional character!”

  “Put down your weapon, Captain. If I am a delusion, how did I gain access to this office?”

  He remembered the thing he’d seen on the window sill. A small bird—or perhaps a bat. “What do you want here?” Schellenberg asked by way of a response.

  “I desire to leave this camp.”

  “Leave it! Fly over the fences as you flew into this room!”

  “It is not so easy as that. I must have a place to sleep.”

  “A coffin?”

  “A box, with dirt.”

  Schellenberg ignored the request. “You have been killing our guards. Three of them. Why guards? Why not prisoners?”

  “You starve them and you overwork them. Their blood is thin.”

  “How can you be a character from a novel?” he asked.

  “You have it backwards, Captain. The character in the novel is me. It is all true—almost every word of it—except for the ending. As you can see, I did not die with an American bowie knife through my heart.”

  “You told this story to the author, Bram Stoker?”

  “No, I told it to—But perhaps I should start at the beginning. As you may remember from the book, I journeyed to England in August of 1887. I had been in London only a few days, moving among the theatre people who frequented the city’s West End, when my gaze fell upon the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, certainly the most beautiful woman in London at that time. She had pale blue eyes and a long, lovely neck. Her skin was perfection.”

  Captain Schellenberg could not believe he was having this conversation with a man who was obviously mad. “What did you do?” he asked.

  “I became acquainted with her, of course. I am not a young man, but I am not without attractions.”

  “You killed her, like the guards?”

  “Perhaps that was my original purpose. I will not deceive you, Captain—of course it was! I wanted to feel her flesh and taste her blood. Instead, I ended up telling her my story, the story of Dracula.”

  “Who was this remarkable woman?”

  “Her name was Florence Balcombe. Florence Balcombe Stoker. She was the wife of Bram Stoker.”

  Captain Schellenberg could not believe his ears. It was all like a wild, half-remembered dream, and yet it
was happening. He was standing in his office holding a Luger pistol on a madman who claimed to be Dracula. He moistened his lips and said, “She told the story to her husband and he wrote his book.”

  “That is correct. I never regretted telling her. I hoped to return to England someday, but that never proved possible during her lifetime. Harker and the others did pursue me, as in the book, but they never found the Gypsy wagon in which I traveled. It was impossible, however, for me to continue living in Castle Dracula. I was forced to make my home among the friendly Gypsies, who gave me a place to sleep by day. I adopted the name of Vlad Tepes, the 15th-century ruler who was a distant ancestor of mine. For his birthdate I chose the day of Dracula’s death in the Stoker novel. That seemed fitting. I was still with the Gypsies a few weeks ago when we were seized one night by a German patrol. Since then my life has been as you know it. The old woman, Olga, has tended to my body by day using every trick she knows to keep the sunlight from me.”

  “Where do you hide now, since you are gone from the barracks?”

  “You need not know that, Captain. I only ask a favor, before more die here.”

  “You are a madman!” Schellenberg growled. “Be gone from here!”

  Count Dracula merely smiled. “Look at me and see yourself, Captain. My deeds are no worse than yours.”

  In that instant Schellenberg almost believed the man, believed that he really was who he claimed. He raised the Luger and squeezed the trigger. For a split second a veil seemed to cloud his vision, and then Count Dracula was gone. He was nowhere. The captain whirled around, toward the window, just in time to see a bat take off from the outer sill, spreading its wings as it flew into the night.

  There was to be no sleep for Captain Schellenberg after that. The downstairs guard came to investigate the shot he’d heard, and the captain said he’d fired out the window at an escaping prisoner. He contacted the guard towers personally and ordered an alert for a possible escapee wearing a long black cloak. If Dracula thought he would supply a coffin outside the walls, the man was sadly mistaken. Schellenberg hurried to the armory and removed a sharpened bayonet from one of the guards’ rifles. This was what Dracula would find if they met again.