The Dracula Tape

by Fred Saberhagen

  September twenty-second was in truth a day of mourning among my narrow circle of British acquaintances. On that day Lucy and her mother were both interred in a small cemetery near Hampstead Heath. And Jonathan Harker’s former employer, more recently his partner, Mr. Peter Hawkins, was also buried on that day, he having perished almost immediately — of natural causes, so far as I know — upon the Harkers’ return from abroad as man and wife.

  Mr. Hawkins’ place of burial was also near London, and it chanced that an hour or so after attending his last ceremonies Mina and Jonathan were strolling hand in hand down Piccadilly. Mina, in her account of the day’s events, wrote that she was “looking at a very beautiful girl, in a big cartwheel hat, sitting in a Victoria outside Giuliano’s, when I felt Jonathan clutch my arm so tight that he hurt me, and he said under his breath: ‘My God!’ I am always anxious about Jonathan, for I fear some nervous fit may upset him again … he was very pale, and his eyes seemed bulging out as, half in terror and half in amazement, he gazed at a tall, thin man with a beaky nose and black mustache and pointed beard” — these of course were the effects of a regular diet — ”who was also observing the pretty girl. He was looking at her so hard that he did not see either of us” — ah, dearest Mina, Wilhelmina, how could I know that you were there? — “and so I had a good view of him. His face was not a good face” — but one full of character, hey m’dear? “It was hard and cruel, and sensual, and his big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal’s.”

  The better to — but never mind. “Jonathan kept staring at him, till I was afraid he would notice. I feared he might take it ill, he looked so fierce and nasty. I asked Jonathan why he was disturbed, and he answered, evidently thinking that I knew as much about it as he did: ‘Do you see who it is?’ ”

  “ ‘No, dear, I don’t know him. Who is it?’ ”

  “ ‘It is the man himself!’ ”

  When the lady drove off Mina noted that “the dark man kept his eyes fixed on her … he followed in the same direction, and hailed a hansom. Jonathan kept looking after him, and said, as if to himself: ‘I believe it is the count, but he has grown young. My God, if this be so!’ ”

  Poor Harker teetered for an hour or so on the brink of a relapse into the brain fever that had prostrated him for weeks after leaving my domain; but he had pulled himself together by the time the couple got home by train to Exeter. There a telegram from Van Helsing awaited them, informing them for the first time of Lucy’s rapid decline and supposed death. The professor, empowered by the grieving Arthur to go through all of Lucy’s effects, had found Mina’s last unopened missives to her and had thus learned Mina’s name and address. The professor soon invited himself to come to visit the Harkers in Exeter, and talk of vampires; or talk around them, rather. It would be some time yet before he spoke the horrid word aloud.

  Track Four

  Within a day after sending them his first telegram Van Helsing had conferred with both Mina and Jonathan, and had read a typescript, prepared by Mina, of her husband’s Transylvanian journal; she herself had only been allowed to see this diary after Harker had with his own eyes beheld me walking the streets of London. Now Van Helsing not only had confirming evidence that there was at least one vampire active in the English capital, but knew my identity, and even the fact that my chief residence was likely to be at Carfax. Had our roles been reversed, that very afternoon would have seen me in the moldering chapel there, prying off the lids of boxes whilst whatever brave friends I could muster stood by me, armed with wooden stakes and spears. But as matters stood my foe, the hunter, preferred more devious tactics.

  At this time I knew of Van Helsing his name and reputation, and that he had been one of Lucy’s physicians and therefore might now pose a danger to me; but that is all I knew. I was not even aware that the Harkers were in England, much less that they had seen me in Piccadilly. I continued in the peaceful pursuit of my own affairs, until on September twenty-fifth my attention was caught by headlines in the Westminster Gazette:

  EXTRA SPECIAL

  THE HAMPSTEAD HORROR

  ANOTHER CHILD INJURED

  THE “BLOOFER LADY”

  I hastened to read the article, and discovered that the child mentioned was only the latest of a series to have complained, within the past few days, of being abducted and assaulted by a mysterious woman who roamed on Hampstead Heath at twilight. Through some equally mysterious translation of children’s jargon into that of journalists, the unknown woman had acquired the “bloofer” title. Wounds in the throat, no more than pinpricks, were observed in every victim.

  Whilst in a newspaper office, gathering what additional facts I could from a study of recent editions, I looked through columns of death notices to find where Lucy had been interred. It was too bad that since her rebirth she had taken to molesting children; perhaps, I thought, her brain as well as other organs had been damaged by the transfusions. Although essentially I considered her depredations no more my affair than those of Mary Jane Heathcote, alleged murderess of her own child, or of a thousand other madfolk scattered about the metropolis, still I was forced to be concerned by her activities all the same. Van Helsing was very likely to notice the newspaper articles and to be visiting her tomb. This in turn might present me with an opportunity to meet my antagonist, take his measure, reason with him if reasoning was possible or, if it was not, adopt such other measures as might be necessary.

  Of course I expected that any calls Van Helsing might make on Miss Westenra in her new residence would take place in daylight, when they would be safest. New-made vampires have this in common with infants newly born to breathing life: they are much more delicate than they will one day be and their powers are still largely undeveloped. I could walk through a field of garlic in full bloom and not be overcome, or even glare back briefly at the noonday sun, at least in the cool high latitudes. But Lucy in her tender, newborn state would be stunned even by garlic, and could not have long survived exposure to full daylight, even of the tempered English sort.

  On the night of September twenty-fifth I located the Westenra family mausoleum, in the little cemetery near Hampstead Heath, surrounded then by nearly open countryside. Passing like smoke through the vault’s locked doors, I stood on old stone floors strewn with dead and dying flowers from the double interment of three days before. Before me, raised on stone blocks and ornamented by iron and brass, was the coffin of Lucy’s mother, with its freight of peaceful clay. And across the narrow interior aisle from it, similar in appearance, the vessel in which Lucy had been laid. I went to it and, placing my hands upon its oaken, outer lid, could feel the emptiness within its inner, leaden shell.

  Where then was the girl whom I had once tried to help? Out prowling on the heath, most likely, if the newspaper stories gave true evidence. I had my doubts about them. But certainly the coffin was empty now.

  I waited there an hour, rehearsing in my mind what I might try to say and do to help her when she appeared. The longer I waited the less certain I felt of what help I could now offer her, and the less certain also that I had been right in not allowing her to die in the first place. Yet still it seemed to me that it had been my duty to answer her cry for help at Hillingham.

  Suddenly, with a force that keyed all my senses to full alert, the realization came to me that she might not be walking at all as I waited beside her coffin, but that her body might have been secretly removed from this place after being put to its true death by stake and blade. If Van Helsing was as dangerous an antagonist as I had heard, such might well be the case. If Lucy had been so disposed of, there was nothing I could do about it now. I waited half an hour more and then departed, yielding to my doubts, and still with no evidence of her whereabouts.

  At midmorning on September twenty-sixth, and again in the afternoon, I returned to the cemetery in man-shape. In daylight I could not change my form at will nor melt smokelike into the tomb and out again. But I was still look
ing for my adversary and still thought that daylight was the only time to find him there.

  Very few other people were about. At last, leaning against the outer wall of the Westenra tomb, I managed to pick up a faint radiance of Lucy’s encomaed mind within. She was of course not breathing, but was fully as alive as me. The mysterious and powerful Van Helsing had not, after all, been competent enough to find and kill this baby vampire yet!

  But scarcely had I allowed myself the relaxation of a smile when the thought hit home that Lucy might have been spared simply to bait a trap for me. What was Lucy to Van Helsing? By analogy, no more than a tiger cub tied mewling in the forest at night, whilst concealed men with electric lights and heavy weapons ready ring the spot about, waiting in silence for those great green glowing eyes to come, that bear a full hand’s breadth of separating night between!

  Yes, they might be willing to let her roam at night until I came to her. They might expect me there to teach her vampire lore, receive a pledge of fealty, or demand some other service from her. They might be cold and cruel enough to risk a breathing child or two … or had any children been attacked at all? Might the whole series of newspaper stories possibly be no more than a cunning fabrication, designed to draw me into the snare?

  I looked round me swiftly. At the moment I could see no one; but inside one of those mausoleums eyes might be looking out and there might be a Kodak taking photographs, its operator protected by those walls and bars so strong that twenty men could not, bare-handed, tear them free.

  It is well for the world’s vampires that I am not the chief huntsman on their trail. Actually there was no effective plan against me at the time; in making the hasty retreat from the cemetery that I did I was an overcautious general for once. Meanwhile Van Helsing, on his part, was perhaps a little overconfident. He had been keeping a desultory eye on the cemetery, and had read the newspaper accounts of Lucy’s activities, but that evening he did not approach her tomb until after dark. He brought with him a marveling and hesitant Dr. Seward, to whom he had begun to unfold the truth about Lucy’s condition. The professor now intended to open Lucy’s coffin and demonstrate to his younger colleague the incredible truth that he was trying to get across. Of course Van Helsing came well equipped with religious paraphernalia and garlic, expecting thus to be adequately protected, against Lucy at least; he had something of the mentality of his contemporaries, the American Indian Ghost Dancers, who earnestly believed that the signs and symbols of their faith would stop the bullets of the cavalry.

  I was nowhere near Lucy’s tomb that night, but only read of their expedition in Seward’s journal later. Leading his skeptical friend along, parrying his whispered questions with mainly enigmatic and portentous words, Van Helsing entered the tomb — he had obtained the key at the funeral, under pretext of passing it on to Arthur — and opened the coffin. He cut through the sealed inner, leaden box, which was once more empty. The absence of a corpse was certainly startling to Seward, but not enough to convince him that dear Lucy prowled on Hampstead Heath with bloody fangs. Nor was he totally convinced of such an outrageous fact, even by a white figure that later in the night gave the doctors the slip amongst the trees and tombs, and from the path of which they recovered a small child, abducted but still fortunately unharmed.

  And, whilst the doctors prowled and argued, where was the evil count? On September twenty-seventh I was engaged in moving some of my furniture — by which I mean of course nine boxes, the size of large coffins, each half filled with weighty earth — from Carfax to a house I had just bought in Piccadilly. With the idea of making things more difficult for potential hunters who might attempt to trace my movements, I chose on this occasion not to deal with a regular firm of carters and instead struck out on my own to make the acquaintance of a suitable laborer.

  After several interesting experiences in the pubs of the East End I hired one Sam Bloxam, who had a cart and single horse at his disposal. With this equipage two trips were needed between Carfax and the heart of the city, and the entire day was occupied. I might have speeded up matters somewhat by loading and unloading the boxes myself, but did not want to lift them unaided in sight of Mr. Bloxam, who understood in his bones just how heavy they were. So we hoisted them on and off the wagon between us, he puffing and blowing with the forty percent or so of weight that I allowed him to feel at his end.

  At length I grew impatient, and in Piccadilly enlisted three itinerant laborers off the street to help Bloxam bring the boxes up the high steps of the house. This created a new difficulty, for when I inadvertently overpaid the men, with shillings instead of pence, they grew surly rather than grateful, and demanded even more. Perhaps some instinct informed them that the job for which they had been hired was one that their employer desired should be kept as confidential as possible. Their self-appointed leader, the largest of them, actually grew blustery with me. I took him by the shoulder and looked close into his eyes, and counseled moderation; and then I heard no more from them till they were several houses down the street, when they gave vent to oaths.

  So I was still going peaceably about my own affairs, not seeking conflict with those who were determined to be my enemies. I felt very domestic in my Piccadilly house and considered rigging up a night-bell, or a day-bell rather, with a wire, and rejoiced that there were no manservants in my pantry to give concern for immorality. On that same day, unknown to me of course, Van Helsing and Seward were back in the boneyard, where the professor intended to make another demonstration for his doubtful student. They mingled with the mourners at some stranger’s funeral, then slipped away to an unpeopled corner of the cemetery where they laid low until the sexton had closed the gates. Then, using their key to enter the Westenra tomb for a second time, they naturally found Miss Westenra at home, though perhaps not in shape for receiving callers properly.

  On this occasion Van Helsing had along his little black bag, with its cargo of hammer and stake and beheading knives, and he might have performed final surgery right then and there and discharged his patient. But once the doctors were in the tomb, and had opened the coffin to find the still-beautiful girl stretched out helpless and unconscious before them, it occurred to the professor, as he said to Seward: “How can I expect Arthur to believe? He doubted me when I took from him her kiss when she was dying … he may think that in some mistaken idea this woman was buried alive … that we, mistaken ones, have killed her by our ideas and so he will be much unhappy always. Yet he never can be sure, and that is the worst of all … again, he will think that we may be right, and that his so-beloved was, after all, an Un-Dead …”

  Van Helsing, of course had a prescription to save Arthur from this dilemma. “He must pass through the bitter waters to reach the sweet. He, poor fellow, must have one hour that will make the very face of heaven grow black to him …”

  In short, the old sadist wanted to get Arthur himself to do the killing, or be a witness at the very least.

  After sending Seward home to his madhouse, and dining alone in Piccadilly — perhaps not far from where I was at my domestic tasks —

  Van Helsing returned to the Berkeley Hotel, where he was staying. He girded himself for a night-long vigil, and wrote out an impressive farewell note to Dr. John Seward, just in case. He left it in his portmanteau, and it was never delivered.

  *

  27 September

  Friend John —

  I write this in case anything should happen. I go alone to watch in that churchyard. It pleases me that the Un-Dead, Miss Lucy, shall not leave tonight, so that on the morrow night she may be more eager. Therefore I shall fix up some things she likes not — garlic and a crucifix — and so seal up the door of the tomb. She is young as Un-Dead, and will heed. Moreover, these are only to prevent her coming out; they may not prevail on her wanting to get in; for then the Un-Dead is desperate, and must find the line of least resistance, whatsoever it may be. I shall be at hand all the night from sunset till after the sunrise, and if there is aught that may be l
earned I shall learn it. For Miss Lucy or from her, I have no fear; but that other to whom is there that she is Un-Dead, he now have the power to seek her tomb and find shelter. He is cunning, as I know from Mr. Jonathan and from the way that all along he have fooled us when he played with us for Miss Lucy’s life, and we lost; and in many ways the Un-Dead are strong. He have always the strength in his hand of twenty men; even we four who gave our strength to Miss Lucy it is all to him. Besides, he can summon his wolf and I know not what. So if it be that he come hither on this night he shall find me; but none other shall — until it be too late. But it may be that he will not attempt the place. There is no reason why he should; his hunting ground is more full of game than the churchyard where the Un-Dead woman sleep and the one old man watch.

  Therefore I write this in case … Take the papers that are with this, the diaries of Harker and the rest, and read them, and then find this great Un-Dead, and cut off his head and burn his heart or drive a stake through it, so that the world may rest from him.

  If it be so, farewell.

  Van Helsing

  *

  And neither, perhaps, will I be greatly saddened when the time comes that I rest from the world, forever. But Count Dracula is not yet ready to be killed, nor was I then.

  Though I wished nothing more than to be let alone, yet I could not forget that Van Helsing must know of me and that he was a killer. I avoided Carfax during the day, and at night, like my enemy, I took my way once more to the cemetery, to find out what I could.