by John Burke
“Ludwig.” Brother Mark sounded surprised. “What are you doing out of your room?”
“My room is being used for highly important matters.” The man called Ludwig looked round the door at Diana with an odd mixture of deference and slyness. “Father Shandor sends his compliments, madam. Would you do him the honor of joining him in his study?”
Brother Mark began to protest. “But I have instructions . . .”
Ludwig raised a lordly hand. Diana knew nothing of his position in the monastery, but she could see that his manner baffled Brother Mark. There was no denying the authority in it, however. She reached instinctively for a robe from behind the door and drew it over her shoulders.
“Everything is under complete control, Brother,” Ludwig said loftily to Mark. “There is no cause for concern.”
Before there could be any further argument, he was ushering Diana out into the chilly corridor. He walked quickly as though eager that they should both keep an urgent appointment. She wondered what new developments there had been, and what Shandor and her husband had discovered.
Ludwig darted ahead of her to open a door. He tapped sharply on it and opened it without waiting for a reply. Then he stood aside and waved Diana in.
She advanced into a room which must undoubtedly be Father Shandor’s study. The bookshelves mellowed the harshness of the floor and walls, and the finely polished old desk was, in these surroundings, a luxury in itself.
But there was no sign of Father Shandor.
Behind her she heard the faint click of the lock. She swung round.
Ludwig had gone. He had not followed her into the room. But standing with his back to the door, staring at her with leisurely appreciation, was Count Dracula.
Terror bubbled up in her throat. Before she could unleash it in a cry for help, Dracula raised his right arm and pointed one savage claw at her. His eyes blazed as though the fires of hell had been rekindled behind them.
Diana could make no sound. She stared into those demoniacal eyes and felt that she would soon fall down, down into those pits of flame. His hypnotic gaze drew her on. Without moving an inch she was somehow being wrapped in his embrace. They stood apart yet she was getting closer and closer to him.
Dracula took a step forward. She sweated with fear yet yearned for him.
His hand gestured at her throat.
Half seeing the movement of command, she was still a captive of his eyes. Again he had to wave his hand before her eyes; and then she understood. Her hand went of its own accord to the crucifix at her throat, and slowly she undid the clasp at the back of her neck and threw it aside.
Dracula smiled. Without releasing Diana from the spell of his gaze, he tore open the front of his white shirt, with its fastidiously bunched lace at the throat. The sharply pointed nail of his little finger sketched a line down his bare chest; then it drove in, pressed home . . . and there was a puncture from which the blood began to flow.
With his free hand he reached out for Diana. She did not resist. He caught her arm and drew her close, guiding her head towards the slow, steady flow of blood.
She saw the darkness of it against his chest, and felt an anguished greed for the taste of it. But now the spell had been broken. His eyes no longer dominated hers. Freed from that burning trance, she struggled against the remorseless clutch of his hand. Dracula growled like a beast which would not give up its prey. He let go of her arm quickly and seized her by the hair, pressing her head against his chest.
Diana struck out again and again. She was able to draw her head back long enough to scream. At last it came—a reverberating scream that was answered by another snarl from Dracula.
“Diana . . . !”
It was Charles. But far away down a corridor: too far away.
Diana fought to free herself. If she could only run to the door . . . if she could hold him off for only a few seconds . . .
There was a sudden crash of glass. Dracula did not slacken his grip, but twisted Diana and himself round to face the window.
The face of Ludwig grimaced at them. He beckoned, and then jabbed forward again with his elbow to send more glass showering to the floor.
Dracula’s fist came round brutally against Diana’s head. She reeled, and felt him gathering her up in his arms. The room spun past them, Dracula leapt at the window, and the remains of the glass splintered and sprayed around them.
The nightmare had claimed her again. Charles had left her, gone away from her, and now he would never find her. Charles . . . never again.
They were racing into the night, into the waiting hell of the undead.
9
Father Shandor had taken Charles with him from Diana’s room straight to the main gate. He had seemed to guess exactly what he was going to find. After a cautious study of the wagon under the trees, to make sure that there was nobody lurking in its shadow, he went to it and clambered up, dragging Charles bodily up after him with one heave of his muscular arm.
There were two long boxes on the wagon. Boxes . . . or coffins. Shandor raised the lid of one, and in the faint glow of light from the monastery windows Charles saw a thin layer of earth at the bottom of the coffin.
“Yes,” said Shandor bitterly. “Unpardonable of me not to have anticipated such a move.”
From beneath his robe he drew two crucifixes. One he placed in the centre of the earth in the coffin. He nodded to Charles, indicating that he should lift the lid of the other box, and then laid the second crucifix in the faint dusting which lay there also.
“The wagoner,” he said, “was probably the faithful Klove. Faithful . . . if one may dignify his slavish subservience to his evil master with such a word. He brought the creatures of darkness here in daylight while they were still asleep—ready to awaken when night fell upon the land. But now”—he nodded at the coffins—“that will prevent them from returning to their resting-place at daylight. If we haven’t caught them by that time, they will be exposed to the sun and will be destroyed.”
“So we have no time to waste,” said Charles.
“I should have listened to you earlier. When evil is abroad, one must never delay, never rest.”
There was a babble of voices from the courtyard within the monastery. Shandor swung round, appalled. The uproar sounded quite out of keeping with the holy traditions of the place.
They both jumped from the wagon and hurried back through the gates. A monk let out a gasp of relief and moved towards Shandor.
“Brother Peter, this commotion—”
“We have caught the woman, Father. She was hiding in the stables.”
“Ah. And Dracula?”
Brother Peter shook his head.
Shandor thought for a moment, then said: “Take her to . . . to Ludwig’s cell.”
Brother Peter ran off. Shandor took Charles’s arm and led him back into the monastery.
“If you wish to see the destruction of the horror spawned by Count Dracula, come with me. But I warn you it is not a sight for the squeamish.”
Charles said nothing but continued to walk beside Shandor. The two men made their way to the cell in which Ludwig worked. He was there, but not the Ludwig who had been so proud of his handiwork. Now he cowered in a corner as though sensing that something terrible was about to happen. Cowering . . . and yet, thought Charles uneasily, somehow sure of himself. He could not define the change in Ludwig, but felt that he was in possession of his faculties again: he was frightened yet covertly gleeful.
He turned to whisper something to Shandor, to draw attention to this almost imperceptible difference; but Shandor was already issuing orders.
“Brother Peter, take Ludwig out.” He raised his voice. “Let the woman be brought in.”
Ludwig scuttled towards the door—and again Charles was disturbed by something sly and exultant in the last glance he cast back into the cell.
When he had gone, two brawny monks came in, with Helen struggling wildly between them.
Charles forgot Ludwig. He
forgot everything. He saw and heard only Helen. The room was filled with the evil of her. Beneath the mask of hatred he tried to recognize the lineaments of the dry but well-meaning woman who had been his sister-in-law; but there was nothing left of her. Her teeth gleamed, her mouth slavered. When Shandor took a step towards her she fought like a demon to be free and hurl herself at him. When Charles came to stand beside Shandor, to give help when that help was needed, she screamed with awful laughter. If she could bite either of them, they would be hers . . . or Dracula’s. Charles tried not to look at those vicious, venomous teeth.
Shandor said, without turning his head: “Bear in mind, Mr. Kent, that this is not the woman you knew. This is not your brother’s wife. She is dead. What remains—what you see before you—is a shell . . . and what it contains is unadulterated evil. When we destroy it, we destroy only the evil.”
The monks began to drag Helen towards the table on which Ludwig had so recently worked so assiduously at the creation of beauty. Shandor swept up a few brushes and fragments of paper which still lay there.
Helen struggled and howled. Her body was taut and limp by turns, thrashing and turning and contorting with inhuman energy. But the monks held firm.
As they threw Helen by main force on to the table, another monk came in with a sharpened wooden stake about a foot long. The wood gleamed in the light, and there was a faint piny smell about it: it had been newly shaven and sharpened within the last few minutes. The newcomer handed it to Shandor, and then produced a heavy club mallet.
Shandor turned towards the table.
Helen was spreadeagled so that only her head could move. It twisted incessantly from side to side, and she spat and cursed until the room seethed with her fury.
Shandor raised his eyes, remote from her for a moment. He prayed silently.
Then he placed the sharpened stake over Helen’s left breast, and raised the hammer.
Charles felt his stomach contract. He wanted to bend double, to hug his pain and sickness. He ought not to have come, ought never to have seen this. No man ought ever to look on this.
But he could not take his eyes away.
Shandor’s arm swung down.
The scream that rang through the room was nothing human. It was the last terrible howl of a soul in torment. The stake thrummed for a second like a taut wire and then was still.
Charles looked away.
“Mr. Kent,” said Shandor gently, “it’s over now.”
He took Charles by the arm and led him to the table. Reluctantly Charles looked down.
The face of the old Helen had been restored. It was as prim as ever, but more peaceful than he had ever seen it; a thousand times more peaceful than that of the hideous creature who had been here only a few minutes ago.
The monks began to intone a prayer. Shandor and Charles stood with bowed heads. Then Shandor said:
“Come . . . you need a drink.”
As they went to the door, Shandor’s foot jarred against something metallic. It clanked a few inches along the floor.
Shandor stooped and picked up a metal bar. Charles did not understand why he should have gone so rigid. He swung round towards the window. It was open a few inches. There had been four bars on the inside. Now, Charles saw, there were only two. The fragment which Shandor held in his hand had been carefully sawed off.
“Ludwig!” murmured Shandor. “Was he trying to get away from us, after all this . . . ?” He stared at the window as though to pierce the secrets of the night. “Could it be . . . his old master calling him . . . Ludwig striving to reach him?” He sprang into life and whirled back towards the door. “We can’t let him roam about loose if there is any such yearning in his mind.”
Charles had to hurry to keep up with Shandor, whose long legs strode resolutely down the corridor. At the corner, in shadow, the two of them almost stumbled over the huddled form of Brother Peter. He moaned as Father Shandor touched him, and brought his hands up to explore the back of his head tenderly.
“Ludwig,” he mumbled. “Where . . . ?”
There was a scream. Charles recognized Diana’s voice at once. He shouted, and ran madly towards her door. Shandor came after him.
Together they charged into the door and blundered across the threshold—in time to see Dracula gather up Diana in his arms and take a great leap that carried him through the splintering glass of the window.
“The wagon!” snapped Shandor.
They raced to the main door and out into the darkness. As they reached the gates they saw that the wagon was still there, but two horses were in the shafts and a dark figure was waiting on the driver’s seat. Dracula hurled himself at the wagon and threw Diana up between the coffins. Then he sprang to the seat beside the driver, and the horses jolted forward under the flick of the whip. The driver leaned forward, and as his hood fell back from his face it was clear that he was Klove.
A dark figure scuttled across the path of the horses.
“Take me with you, master. Take me with you . . .”
Shandor had the gates open and ran forward as the horses slowed, with Charles at his heels. Dracula saw them coming and let out a feral howl. Ludwig was swept mercilessly aside and hurled to the ground. The horses tugged forward again and went at a fiendish pace down the bumpy track towards the road.
“Horses!” cried Charles. “Horses—quickly!”
“We will go after them,” said Shandor, “but not in panic.”
He turned back towards the monastery. Ludwig was grovelling on the earth. Shandor stared down at him in a dark anger which turned slowly to compassion. As they reached the main door, where Brother Mark was waiting with three or four of the brothers, Shandor said:
“Take Ludwig back to his cell. Be gentle with him—but be very careful of him.”
Charles was impatient to be out of the building. To be on horseback in pursuit of Dracula was all that counted. Every second lost was a second nearer to the pit for Diana.
But Shandor insisted on their going to his study. There he produced a rifle from behind one of the bookshelves. It was a surprising thing to find in this setting.
“They will head for the castle,” he said, as though this were some leisurely academic discussion. “Once there he will be safe—and your wife will be lost forever. We must stop him before he gets there.”
“Then let’s start now,” Charles implored. “In an hour or so—”
“An hour or so?” Shandor shook his head. “You were in no state to judge time or distance when we brought you here. The castle is a full day’s ride from the monastery.”
“But that makes it worse.”
“It is to our advantage. It will soon be light, and already he will he thinking of returning to his coffin. Klove will have to make it ready for him—and will have to guard your wife during the hours of daylight. She will be safe until sunset. Here . . .”
He loaded the rifle and handed it to Charles, then began to search through the drawers of his desk.
“It would be better if you kept it,” said Charles. “It’s your rifle. You’re used to it . . .”
“For hunting game. I am not used to shooting human beings. Klove is a human being and you may need to use it against him. I may bend the laws of my office at times, but there is a limit to what I can do.” Shandor tugged at his lower lip. “We shall need some newly sharpened stakes. Come . . . you and Brother Mark can saddle the horses while I make my preparations.”
They rode through the last hour of darkness and into the flush of dawn. As it grew lighter they could see the tracks of wheels in the dusty road ahead of them. The skid marks and swirls of dust at corners showed what a rate Klove must be maintaining. Dracula would be asleep in his coffin now, but his loyal servant would not slacken the pace. And Diana . . . ? Charles urged his horse on. Bound or unconscious, stunned or awake and alive to terror, his wife was in the power of the vampire. When sunset came she could be eternally in his power.
The day drew on. Shandor insisted that th
ey stopped for a while to rest the lathered horses, though Charles was in a mood to flog them till they dropped. Afternoon settled on the mountain peaks, and gradually the light began to wane once more.
“We’ll never make it,” sobbed Charles.
Soon they would be at the crossroads and still the wagon was ahead of them. It was incredible that Klove should have kept up such a speed, yet no more incredible than the other devil-inspired things which had already happened.
Shandor reined in his horse. He stared up at the slopes of the jagged, interlocked hills.
“We must cut across country. It’s rough going, but we may just have a chance of intercepting them below the castle.”
They turned their horses towards the wild slopes. It was a grim scramble up through scrubland, skirting the outcrop of dark forest and then picking a stumbling way over a wilderness of small stones.
Darkness raced them, flowing greedily down the slopes like a tide rippling in to cut them off.
When Charles had given up hope and was urging his mount on simply because it was as meaningless to stop as to go on, the castle rose suddenly above them, to their left. Immediately ahead was the road. And there were no recent tracks in the dust: the wagon had not yet passed this way.
Shandor slid from his horse and tethered it to a tree. Charles followed suit. They were getting their breath back when they heard the unmistakable rumble of wheels. Cautiously they picked their way through a clump of trees to a bend in the road.
The wagon was moving slowly now. The horses strained up the slope. Klove was alone on the seat. Behind him the coffins bumped and jarred as one wheel went into a rut.
Shandor glanced at Charles and raised an eyebrow. The two of them stepped out into the road. Charles raised the rifle and drew a bead on Klove.
Klove stared straight at them for a moment without taking in what their presence meant. Then, his mouth dropping slackly open, he pulled in the horses. The rifle was aimed unwaveringly at him.
Shandor said: This is far enough. Get down from there.”