Dracula Sequence - The Dracula Tape Part 4

Let us try to see this matter in historical perspective. Not until 1900, some nine years later, did Landsteiner discover the existence in man of the four basic blood groups, A, B, AB, and O, at which point in time the feasibility of transfusion without great peril for the patient may be said to have begun. Of course ever since antiquity some hardy folk have survived their enterprising physicians' attempts to transfuse blood from human to human, or even from animal to human; no doubt in many cases the survival of the patient has been due to failure of the transfusing technique to work, so that no appreciable fraction of inimical blood cells were introduced into his vascular system.

I was myself quiescent in my tomb in 1492, the year of the supposed transfusion of Pope Innocent VIII with the whole blood of three young men; therefore I cannot venture an opinion on the accuracy of that most shocking story. During a period of activity in the mid-seventeenth century I read with interest more than casual of Harvey's epochal discovery of the circulation of the blood. From time to time I continue to gather facts and learned opinions in the field. Although my own opportunities for actual research have been more circ.u.mscribed than you might think, and my natural bent is toward action rather more than intellectual affairs, still by 1891 I had acc.u.mulated some small knowledge of this subject of more than pa.s.sing consequence in my own life. Had I known what Van Helsing was doing to treat a vampire's victim-as he saw the case-I would have stopped him. You may believe that I would not have callously left Lucy to her fate. But though I perceived through the continued communion of our minds that she was now definitely unwell, and suffering, I did not guess the cause.

Whether because of a fortunate compatibility between Holmwood's blood and her own, or because of some equally lucky failure of the technique to transfuse much of any blood at all, Lucy not only survived that first operation but by next day had regained something of the appearance of heath. She had been narcotized during the operation, and on waking had no clear grasp of what had happened, although of course there was the small bandaged wound upon her arm to give her food for thought. When she questioned the men who had her in their charge they lovingly told her to lie back and rest.

On the night of September ninth she suffered a relapse; or it may have been a fresh illness, some bloodborne infection from her fiance. Van Helsing's prescribed treatment for this setback was a second transfusion, this time with Seward as the donor, as the youngest and st.u.r.diest male available at the moment. Those who wonder at the girl's surviving this second a.s.sault-and a third one, later on-at the hands of the indomitable scientist may ponder also Lower's similar operation, which was also successful or at least nonfatal, performed in London in 1667. And another in Paris in the same year, by Denis, who is doc.u.mented as transfusing the blood of a lamb into the veins of a boy left anemic by conventional medical treatment-that is, bloodletting-of the time. The nineteenth century in England saw the obstetrician Blundell, and others, attempting the transfusion of blood between humans with increasing frequency, and often claiming favorable results.

But many unpublicized attempts must have been made that concluded more unhappily. And Lucy's second transfusion, from Seward-who wrote that he was much weakened by his donation-had a bad effect upon her.

As she languished in her bed-and I of course unknowingly pursued my own affairs-on September eleventh the house at Hillingham received from Holland the first of a number of s.h.i.+pments of garlic, including both flowers and whole plants.

These of course were ordered especially by the philosopher and metaphysician, who by this time knew-though he had told no one-that a vampire was lurking about.

Now, the powerful smell of Allium sativum is at least as discouraging to a suitor of my persuasion as to one of the more common sort-nay, more so, for even bland food can be disgusting to a vampire-but it is not quite the impa.s.sable barrier Van Helsing evidently hoped for. Still, had I really been intent upon effecting the poor girl's ruin, this new tactic would at least have been better than injecting her with foreign proteins.

On the night of September twelfth Mrs. Westenra, though herself semi-invalid, roused sufficiently to throw the supposedly medicinal flowers out of her daughter's room and leave the window open. Perhaps her own life was somewhat prolonged by this removal of the irritating stench of diallyl disulfide and trisulfide and the rest, but Lucy's was thought-by the doctors, at least-to suffer. One of the most advanced scientists of his day had of course omitted to tell Lucy's mother of his theories that her daughter would be better off with windows shut and stinking blooms in place. Had he spelled out all his ideas for Lucy's mother, I suppose she might have thrown the flowers out anyway, and Van Helsing with them, and we should all have been far better off. However...

Naturally Lucy's vampire visitor was blamed, by Van Helsing then, and by the whole crew later, for the continued deterioration of her condition. In fact, I was walking the streets of Whitechapel on the night the flowers were thrown out, and far into the morning; but I could have produced no witnesses. On that night I spoke with and joked with an eyewitness to one of the Ripper's shocking crimes of three years before. I believed her surprising version of that event, but I doubted that a jury would accept her word on my whereabouts or her testimony as a character witness for me.

She was welcome company, for during most of that night I walked alone and nursed a grim, post-midnight kind of thought. The first real doubts were rising in my mind as to the feasibility of my planned reunion with the mainstream of humanity.

Much as I enjoyed being in London, I was being forced to the realization that my mere presence there was not changing me as rapidly as I had hoped.

On September thirteenth, as Seward recorded in his journal-which he kept, by the way, on an early variety of phonograph, nowhere near as efficient as this admirable machine into which I speak-"again the operation; again the narcotic; again some return of color to the ashy cheeks..."

This time Van Helsing himself was donor, whilst Seward, at the master's direction, operated. With such an agglomeration of cells in her poor veins, it is only a wonder that the poor girl lived as long as she did.

I must now recount the events of September seventeenth, which was a most fateful day for all of us.

Jonathan and Mina Harker, fresh from being married in Budapest, where he had long lain in hospital, were now prosperously installed in a house in Exeter. Mina had now read her bridegroom's somewhat feverish journal of his stay at my castle, but the subject of vampirism had never been discussed between them, and no doubt at this point neither thought such horrors would touch their lives again.

Arthur Holmwood still watched at his dying father's bedside in Bing, with moral support from a young American named Quincey Morris, Arthur's frequent companion on hunting trips round the world, and the third of Lucy's breathing suitors.

At the asylum on that evening, Renfield, loose again, came after Dr. Seward with a kitchen knife. Seward, fortunately for himself, managed to stun his powerful antagonist with a single punch, and the madman was soon disarmed and returned to confinement.

Van Helsing, back in Antwerp on one of his habitual commuting journeys, but still commendably concerned about his patient Lucy, telegraphed to Seward that it was vital for Seward to stand guard at Hillingham that night-to guard against exactly what, Van Helsing had yet to specify. Seward of course would have un-questioningly complied, but that telegram for some fateful reason was missent. It was not delivered until it was twenty-two hours overdue.

And I myself, on September seventeenth, was visiting Regents Park. My doubts were with me, and I was resolved to work harder at being human. I sat on a convenient bench and read the Times of London for the day: CRYSTAL PALACE Astounding Performance TIGER DRIVING GOAT...enough of that.

Ma.s.sAGE AND ELECTRICITY.

(Weir Mitch.e.l.l system) with Swedish and German movements combined. As each LESSON of two hours' duration is given daily on a living subject, pupils can be perfected in a fortnight. No bruising; those who bruise have been improperly taught... Mary Jane Heathcote, 28, was indicted for the willful murder of Florence Heathcote... her little girl... aged five years and six months...

At Clerkenwell, Henry Bazley, 29, bookbinder, was... charged with having taken away out of the possession and control of her mother a girl named Elizabeth Morey...

aged 16 years 10 months. She was traced to Highgate, where she lodged in a room for which the prisoner was found to be paying 5 s.h.i.+llings a week, and where he visited her... Detective-sergeant Drew, who had executed the warrant for the prisoner's arrest, said that he found him at home hiding in a backyard. The prisoner was a married man with four children. When told the charge he said it was a lie. On the application of the prosecutor the prisoner was remanded...

... Do you doubt I can remember all these items as they were? Well, I found them memorable. Check your library's microfilm files of the Times if you doubt me.

(To the editor) Sir-Contrary to my inclination, it has fallen to my lot to refute the theory put forward by my friend Mr. Haliburton at the Oriental Congress that a race of dwarfs exists between the Atlas and the Sahara...

Jas. Ed. Budgett Meakin Sir-The necessity for a ready communication between the front door and the upper floor of a house in case of fire or other urgent need... is so obvious as to require no comment... I have thought of the following simple contrivance: A loud-ringing bell is hung in the upper floor; the wire of this bell terminates at its lower end on a chain and hook in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the house. At night the hook is attached to the crank of the ordinary housebell and is detached in the morning... by this means also the filthy and insanitary practice of having a manservant sleeping in the pantry, that fertile source of much immorality, both in and out of doors, may be avoided.

Yours, & C. H.

PICCADILLY (Overlooking Green Park)-self-contained FLAT-four rooms, bath room, lift, etc., to be LET, on LEASE, and Furniture sold. Apply Housekeeper, 98, Piccadilly, W.

... That was interesting. But I would rather buy than rent, wanting nothing to do with nosy landlords.

Sir-If one of the delegates who spoke so strongly in favor of the eight-hours movement was, on his return home, seized with a sudden and dangerous illness; and if, on sending for his doctor, he got an answer to say that the latter had just finished eight hours of work, and that for the next sixteen hours he was going to rest and enjoy himself, what would he think of the new arrangement?

Yours truly, J.R.T.

And back to the front page...

MOULE'S PATENT EARTH-CLOSET COMPANY (Limited)Garrick-street Covent-garden, LONDON MOULE'S COMPANY NOW MAKES:.

CLOSETS-for the garden CLOSETS-for shooting boxes CLOSETS-for cottages CLOSETS-for anywhere CLOSETS-Complete are now made, fitted with "pull out" apparatus CLOSETS-fitted with "pull up" apparatus CLOSETS-fitted with self-acting apparatus CLOSETS-made of galvanized, corrugated iron CLOSETS-to take to pieces, for easy transport CLOSETS-can be put together in two hours.

CLOSETS-to work satisfactorily CLOSETS-only require to be supplied CLOSETS-with fine and dry mold CLOSETS-on this principle never fail CLOSETS-if supplied with dry earth...

The litany went on, and I read it, eyes almost in hypnotic bondage. But my higher attention was still back with that manservant sleeping in the pantry. Why was his condition so "filthy and insanitary"? Had he his feet resting on the bacon, or was his foul breath contaminating bags of sugar? And where exactly in the "fertile source" did the noxious weeds of "immorality" sprout? Was I to read into the letter dark implications of the deadly sin of gluttony?

The London papers, that in my own homeland had seemed to promise marvels, seemed only to grow more bewildering the longer I dwelt amid the world which they described. It would take time, I comforted myself, and threw my paper into a dustbin nearby-the park was very neat. Getting to my feet, I strolled on to the zoo. The day was overcast, and, top-hatted like a proper gentleman, I found the sun scarcely bothersome at all.

It was a relief to reach the zoo and see more animals than people round me for a while. Great throngs of humanity, though I had sought them out and still found pleasure in them, still were wearying to one who like myself had been so long removed from crowds. A stranger in a strange land was I indeed, notwithstanding a reasonable facility in the English speech and an appearance acceptable in the metropolis.

Naturally enough I gravitated toward the cage of wolves, where three gray beauties suffered with innate dignity their ignominious confinement. Although I at first made no effort to converse, one wolf of them knew me; more accurately, he knew that I was not as common men, and that I was far closer kin to him than any two-legged creature he had ever seen before. He knew that I knew what it was to run on four gray paws, and leap to the kill, and drink the raw red blood from flesh my teeth had torn.

He knew, and could not decently contain his knowledge. While the other two in the cage, who may have known something too but did not care, lay drowsing and wondering at him, he bounded like a madwolf against the bars, and let his feelings out in the only kind of voice he had.

An elderly keeper came from somewhere and regarded me with suspicion. There was no one else about at the time and I was obviously at the focal point of lupine uproar.

I was not in London to be mysterious, but to bind myself more closely to the great ma.s.s of humanity. "Keeper," I said, to have something to say, "these wolves seem upset at something."

"Maybe it's you," the man retorted, and his gloomily surly manner reminded me of a Turkish jailer I once had, and the resemblance made me smile even as it aroused my further sympathy for the confined wolf.

"Oh, no, they wouldn't like me," I answered vaguely, distracted by a communication from another source. Freedom, the wolf was saying, looking out. It was not a question but a complete declarative sentence.

I cannot give you that. I answered him. Take it for yourself and it is yours.

"Ow yes they would," the old man answered me, impertinent with the privilege of crabbed and independent age. "They always like a bone or two t' clean their teeth on about teatime, of which you 'as a bagful."

Freedom! came from the gray iron cage.

Take it. Transcend. Do you want it more than food, more than retaining your own wolf nature? Will you put by your very body and its known comforts to have this thing you say you want? Simply to be free of your cage?

And the early years of Turkish imprisonment were once more very clear to me.

Radu was then a mere child, a small child, too easily frightened to offer any sport at all to our inventive jailers. But I was fourteen years old when they began on me...

The animal's brain was churning with unworded thoughts, but for the moment it quieted and lay down. The keeper looked at it in puzzlement, looked back to me, and then walked over to the cage and reached inside to stroke the ears of the panting beast. To startle the old man I did the same, and had my reward in his expression.

"Tyke care!" he said. "Berserker here is quick!""Never mind, I'm used to them." The wolf's eyes were not on me but fixed on distance now, as he thought of running in unbarred, unbounded s.p.a.ce.

"Are you in the business yourself?" the keeper asked, his tone now friendlier. He took off his hat. Perhaps he hoped to buy another wolf or two from me.

"No, not exactly." And I tipped my own hat to him and to Berserker in farewell.

"But I have made pets of several." And with that I turned and walked away. The wolf's wordless thought-voice was falling off in my mind to mere muted distant mumbling, but the infinitely more verbal noise of Lucy's thoughts was audible again and mounting higher. I did not wish to hear either of them.

Something was seriously wrong with Lucy, I could not help but know that much, but I closed off my mind against knowing more.

There was no possible way I could have guessed that after dark Berserker would break the railings of his cage, forcing iron bars loose from their fastenings, and come racing unerringly to find me in the night-at Hillingham.

I could not know what the night before me held. But still as I walked out of the park I was perturbed in spirit.

I said before that I would later speak of fear, and now the time has come. I will not say that I have experienced infinite fear, but I have known all fear that my mind and soul could ever bear, and more. The first time that my Turkish jailors stripped me naked in my cell and carried me, paralyzed with terror and dripping with my own excrement, out to the impalement stake, I had no doubt that I was going to die upon it. Some in my situation would have fainted, others would have gone mad. What I did... well, perhaps only a caged wolf could begin to understand.

Of course I did not die. If the guards had killed me they would have had no fun for the next day. I was not even really-or I should say "not permanently"-impaled. The end of the upright stake was blunt and drew no blood immediately when it was inserted into a natural orifice of the body; and by standing on tiptoe I could keep it from entering deeply enough to do serious damage. I could not stand on tiptoe indefinitely, but when my weight began to come down the men were quick to take me off the stake. They certainly did not want me to die on it then and there. Never before had they seen anyone who retained consciousness while being so deliciously, excruciatingly, helplessly frightened.

Next day they played a new game, showing me first what they claimed was a signed order for my execution. Again I believed them, for my susceptibility to terror gave me no choice. Perhaps I am not really exaggerating when I say that on each of these days I died of fright. The new game had to do with being burned alive, and I had blisters and scorched hair before they called a halt. And on a succeeding day there was a game involving voracious rats; and again, one with a Turkish woman whose husband, she said, had been tortured to death by Walachians; and after that... but I have no wish to disgust you with all details.

It was when the cycle came round to the stake again that I realized abruptly that I had nothing left to fear, that in fact I was afraid no longer. I had used up all the fear my soul could ever generate, were I to live to be a thousand. My life's ration of anxiety, dread, timorousness, and terror, all was consumed before I had a beard to shave.

From those days to this, I have feared nothing. I am not brave and never was; that is a different matter entirely...

It seems to me the most striking proof that this estimate of my condition is correct that I simultaneously lost all desire to be revenged upon my jailors. A high official of the sultan himself, happening to pa.s.s through Egrigoz, observed with astonishment how imperturbably I bore some of the fruitless later attempts of my enemies to frighten me. They were in fact applying torture at the time, but, do you know, it is the moment-to-moment fear of pain that is the worst part of pain itself? This high official, as I say, applauded what he took to be my fort.i.tude, and took an interest in my case. In time he became my friend, to such an extent that, had I wanted revenge upon my low-ranking tormentors, I could probably have had it. And it was my refusal of revenge, not out of any heroic Christian virtue but rather because of sheer fearless indifference, that so frightened them in turn. Man fears that which he cannot understand, and I had gone far beyond the comprehension of those simple but evil men...

So as I walked the London streets it was not with fear or hatred but in gloomy meditation that I thought back upon the Turks. Was I so sure that I wanted to rejoin the ranks of the mainstream of mankind? To shorten my life, possibly, in doing so?

Not that I feared a shortened life, or aught else in the world or out of it.

Not even G.o.d, my friends, although I know him better than you do...

An hour or so before the wolf escaped at midnight I had been standing in a Soho tavern, acutely conscious of the fact that there was no image of myself in the cracked and cloudy mirror behind the bar and that the fleshly girl clinging to my arm would be indeed surprised were she ever to note that fact. I was acutely conscious also of the warm fluid pulsing so rapidly within her Vena jugularis, and of the impossible odors of alcoholically fermented grain rising from the gla.s.s that waited untasted before me on the arm-smoothed wood. Conscious with all my soul of the gulf between me and those round me, all of them unarguably human, misshapen in mind and body and spirit though they were.

It was in this state that I felt Lucy call to me with a new urgency, cry with a terrible fervor across the four or five miles of the city that separated us. In her fear and sickness she was appealing for my help, calling on me as her protector and her lord, and so it was I answered her. From the shadows of a Soho alley I took flight, and came down to rest on earth again in the dark, timbered lawn of Hillingham.

From there I sent my wordless summons, as before. This time, however, I soon learned that she could not or would not try to come out. Nor could I simply enter the house upon my own initiative. Whether the reason is to be found in physics or in psychology I am not sure, but the fact is that I may enter no dwelling place of breathing folk unless I have been at least once invited to do so by one who dwells within.

I knew by this time which window of the upper floor was that of Lucy's room, and I quickly took wing again and perched outside it, on the ledge. The blind was drawn and at first I could not see into the room, but Lucy's voice was plain. She was engaged in a shrill argument with another, older woman who could only be her mother. The argument ended abruptly when Lucy fell back exhausted upon her bed, thus coming partially into the narrow range of vision into the room I had obtained by pressing my bat head as close as possible against the gla.s.s at one side, where a c.h.i.n.k was open twixt blind and cas.e.m.e.nt. Round Lucy's neck, I saw, were garlic flowers garlanded, together with the long green leaves, and the whole room was fetid with the plant.

Almost simultaneous with this shocking discovery-which meant of course that someone was attempting antivampire measures-I heard Berserker's first low howl below me in the shrubbery, and looked down over one batwing in absolute consternation. It might take long minutes to quiet the wolf and send it peaceably back to the cage from which it had so recently, obviously, broken free, and Lucy's mental anguish was too urgent for me to spare the time for that. Feeling like a general beset in camp by a series of sudden surprise attacks, I crouched there on the windowsill and tried to marshal my thoughts calmly. Could there be some reason for the garlic, other than the one with which I was most familiar? There were undoubtedly some English customs of which I had not yet heard; but I had little hope that this was one of them.

The women inside had not yet heard the wolf, or else they thought its howls were those of some dog in the neighborhood, for the noise made no impression upon them.

Contorting my small, furred body, I made a greater effort to peer in beside the blind and got a better look at Lucy in her nightgown. It was something of a shock to see how ill she looked. I also saw Lucy's mother in her robe, looking tired and drawn herself- recall that even at this time neither Lucy nor myself had yet any inkling of the very grave condition of Mrs. Westenra's heart-just as she tottered from the room and closed the door behind her. This was my chance; I sent another mental summons and simultaneously flapped my bat wings at the panes. Lucy turned her head a little on the pillow, but no more. Her eyes were closed.

Clinging carefully to stone in the autumnal night, I altered back to man-form right on the windowsill. I drew ma.s.s and weight unto myself-from nothing? Say from the great reservoir in which G.o.d kept such things before deciding to enact Creation, and to which some of his creatures are allowed a limited access still. How do I do it? Let me ask how you sort out the myriad atoms in your lungs each time you draw a breath to oxygenate your blood.

Now I tapped at the window with a long fingernail and spoke aloud. Lucy rose up in bed, with a startled look that soon changed to joy. She got up as quickly as she could, and came to the window, and was about to speak the words that would have let me pa.s.s in to her; but on the instant the door of her room opened once more and Mrs.

Westenra's figure was plain in my field of vision-and mine, alas, in hers.

Lucy had already drawn the blind full back. When the unsuspecting old woman looked over her daughter's shoulder into the night it was my visage that she saw peering in at both of them.

I expected shock, but not what happened. Mrs. Westenra extended her arm for a second or two, pointing at me in silence, her face contorted with her fright; and then there came from her throat a gurgling noise and she fell as if an ax had struck her down."Mother!" Lucy cried out, and hurried to try to lift her aged parent from the floor; but in Lucy's weakened condition the shock and the exertion were too much for her, and she crumpled over also, in a faint.

Mrs. Westenra's heart and lungs had already ceased their labors and I was not sure that Lucy's would not shortly do the same, so feebly and irregularly were they now working. She had called to me for help and I was anxious-nay, almost desperate-to fly to her aid, but I could not. I had not yet been bidden directly to enter the house wherein she lay. I, who might pa.s.s like smoke through barriers impossible for breathing men to penetrate, was held back by a law as inexorable to me as gravity.

Another low wolf howl rising from the shrubbery at last jogged my slow brain back into action. I dropped lightly to the ground, which was some twelve feet below the windowsill, and called Berserker to me. For a moment I held the big gray wolf tightly, one hand gripping his muzzle, my eyes locked on his, trying to force into his willing brain knowledge of the service that I required of him. I wanted him to force his way into that room above, and lick at Lucy's face to rouse her; failing that, to drag her by her nightdress or her hair to the window where she might come within my reach.

Why did I not go instead, in my most suave and rea.s.suring style to knock at the front door? All this was in the middle of the night, remember, and the house was isolated. Lucy had once mentioned to me in pa.s.sing that no male servants slept in the house-the pantry at Hillingham was evidently a place of impeccable morality. Were the women within likely to open a door for me, under whatever pretext I came? I thought not. My instincts argued for direct action, and I have learned to trust my instincts in emergencies.

It took me two, three, tosses to cast the heavy wolf up to the windowsill above. Its surface, though broad enough for a lean and rather acrobatic gentleman to sit on at his ease, offered but scanty purchase for Berserker's paws. He whimpered at the treatment I accorded him but seemed to realize that in adopting me as master he had acquired an obligation to carry out my orders. In a moment he had swung his heavy forequarters round and smashed the gla.s.s panes of the window in.

I was leaping up to catch the windowsill with both my hands just as the wolf fell back. As we pa.s.sed I saw the red cuts on his muzzle and the small gleam from a bit of broken gla.s.s that had stuck in his fur. I meant to tend his wounds, who had served me faithfully, but I would see to Lucy first. I will be human, I will be, I kept repeating to myself.

I crouched on the sill again, my face framed in the broken-edged aperture of gla.s.s.

"Lucy!" I called in, quietly but fiercely, using mind as well as voice.

On a carpet littered with broken gla.s.s and garlic flowers Lucy stirred and sat up slowly, not seeming to realize that she was half entangled with her mother's corpse.

"What... who... ?"

"Lucy, your Viking is here to aid you. Call me to come in. Call me to come to you."

Her eyes lifted slowly, puzzledly, to behold my face. Now belowstairs I could hear some of the housemaids stirring; no doubt they had been awakened by the crash of gla.s.s. Outside, the wolf howled once again, this time in pain. Lucy raised a hand to try to put back the blond hair from her face, but she was too weak and the gesture failed halfway through.

"Lucy, my name is Vlad. Bid me to come in, quick."

"Oh. Come, then, Vlad. I feel so sick, I am afraid that I am going to die." Then, when I had lifted her in my arms, she made a gesture toward the still form remaining on the floor. "Mother?"

"Your mother is not suffering," I said, and put down Lucy on the bed. Then, before I could do or say anything more, a mult.i.tudinous shuffle of feet in the carpeted hall outside the bedroom door announced the arrival of the housemaids in a frightened group.

"Miss Lucy? Are you all right?"

"Answer carefully!" I whispered, gripping Lucy's arms. My eyes burned into hers, my voice commanded, and she seemed to regain a little of her strength.

"I am all right," she called out weakly, "for the moment."

"Is your mother in there, Miss Lucy? May we come in?"

I nodded.

"Come!" she called out, and the handle of the door began to turn; before it had completed its motion I was under Lucy's bed, stretched out at full length and ready to melt to mist or shrink to bat-form in an instant.