View it yourself. It is indeed a documentary of what happened in that passenger car.
I do have to say that what it reveals is far beyond my experience as a professional soldier, and I eagerly await your instructions as to how I should proceed.
P.S. The projectionist has been rendered silent.
ATTACHMENT TO COMMUNIQUÉ
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY MAJOR W. REIKEL, INTERVIEW SPECIALIST CORPORAL SCHRECK. (Also present is your company scribe.)
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
The Subject, one Bogdan Stelymes, is a Rumanian male, fifty-three years of age, from Slobozia by way of Bucharest, employed as a locomotive engineer for the Rumanian Transportation Corporation. A background check is being pursued by the Gestapo at this moment.
Subject is in third hour of interrogation. Subject so far has withstood mild physical intimidation. A member from our medical staff revived the Subject at three different intervals during the initial interview. The fourth time, the Subject was discovered to be feigning unconsciousness and was mildly punished for the ruse. This led to another call for the medic to keep the Subject alert for the next round of questioning.
The Subject’s recalcitrance forced the initial interrogator to resort to more aggressive techniques.
The Subject was passed on to Corporal Schreck.
Corporal Schreck took the Subject to his private interview chamber. The Subject was secured to a wooden chair by leather restraints binding the Subject’s wrists, ankles, and chest to the chair. This protects the Subject from any undue injury.
The chair was built to Corporal Schreck’s specifications. The arms of the chair are made of oak or a comparable heavy wood, as are the legs and back. (There is a tendency to use pine for easier driving of the nails, but any abrupt movement by the subject may crack the boards. Oft-times the struggle is enough to render the pine chair useless.) The hardwood pieces are screwed together so that each piece can be removed and replaced when distressed because of repeated use. A one-kilogram-weight hammer is recommended, though Corporal Schreck uses a two-kilogram sledge with a shortened handle.
MAJOR R.: Again, who attacked the train?
SUBJECT: I told you. Over and over. A vampire.
MAJOR R.: A vampire?
SUBJECT: Yes, yes!
A brief cessation of the interview was given. Major Reikel gave Corporal S. the order to proceed with a more vigorous method of questioning. The hammer was procured from the Corporal’s tool chest, also a box of nails, 100 millimetres in length. (Dual-headed carpentry nails are preferred, to ease removal later.)
Corporal S. secured the Subject’s right hand with a strap placed upon the chair arm for this purpose, positioned the nail at the joining of the scaphoid and os magnum bones, and fixed the Subject’s hand to the wooden arm of the chair with one stroke of his hammer.
The Subject’s response was vocal and vigorous, but non-verbal.
MAJOR R.: Who attacked your train?
SUBJECT: I said before. I say it again. The vampire.
The Subject’s other hand was similarly attached to the other arm of the chair. Again, only one blow of the Corporal’s hammer sufficed. The Subject responded the same as previously, though with decidedly less vigor.
SUBJECT: Please, no more. Tell me what you want me to say.
MAJOR R.: Who attacked your train?
SUBJECT: Who do you want me to name? I will name them. Please . . .
MAJOR R.: Intelligence gathered this way is never reliable.
It is not known whether this statement was directed at the Subject, the Sergeant, or your humble scribe.
MAJOR R.: A couple more nails and toss him into a cell with some other prisoners, as an inducement to those about to be interviewed.
SUBJECT: Please, no.
MAJOR R.: A vampire . . . These people are tough, but creative.
At this point the Major exited the interview room and, though more hammering commenced, your humble transcriber exited with the Major. From all reports, nothing more of consequence was communicated by the Subject.
END OF TRANSCRIPTION
ATTACHED PERSONAL NOTE
W.R.
Eugene,
How is the glamorous life in glorious Berlin? Here the food is abysmal, not fit for goats. The wine tastes like the stale piss of a dead man. (Do not ask how I know this. Haha.) And the women—there is a joke: If I had a dog as ugly as a Rumanian woman I would shave its ass and teach it to walk backward.
Actually, not all is bad, but everything rankles when I know that we are on the verge of a great battle, a battle for the history books, to reclaim the land stolen from us by the Tsars. My whole life has been dedicated to the Fatherland, to be a soldier of service to our Fuhrer. I yearn for a proper battlefield, to lead men into the face of death, to prove myself to my father, to my comrades-in-arms, to my Fuhrer—not play hide-and-seek with peasants.
Fear not, I will do my duty here to the fullest extent of my abilities and complete the task laid before me, but I want to be a part of the coming fight, a war that will be written about for ages. I mean to make my own mark upon that history.
I will finish my labours here as Hercules cleaned out the stables.
Then be advised I will pressure you on every level, professional and personal, to relieve me of this dismal assignment. Be assured, I will be as relentless as I was against your sabre.
Give my regards to Lina.
Wally
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
After the rescue of her compatriots from the Nazi train, Lucille and the others returned home just in time for the vampire to avoid the sunrise. She was curious about this aspect of the vampire’s physiognomy, a lone weakness in what she assumed was unbridled power. She had so many questions, but every time she found herself in Dracula’s presence and the opportunity for inquiry arose, she balked like a horse at a fence.
Upon arrival at the house, Dracula went immediately to his curtained room. Her father looked haggard, and Lucille sent him to bed with a glass of warm milk. She feared for his health. The long days and nights, the expenditures of his energy, and the stress put upon him by his role in the Resistance leadership was just too much for a man his age.
She waited for him to drain the glass of milk. She had dosed it with a mild sedative. She was, after all, a doctor’s daughter.
“Who’s the child here?” he asked, detecting the drug’s presence and twisting his mouth in disgust.
“Neither of us,” she answered. “We just watch over each other. Like soldiers and families do.”
“Then I would be remiss if I did not warn you once more.” Van Helsing gave his daughter a tired smile. “Be careful around him.”
She did not reply. Kissing the old man’s forehead, she turned off his light and left. He was snoring before she closed the door.
Downstairs, washing the glass in the kitchen sink, she encountered the Englishman dallying for no reason at the cupboard. She was so tired of his constant pursuit of her. Why was she unable to put a damper on his misplaced ardour? She had been able to close many a door to men just like him. The type who jumped from dalliance to marriage with nothing more than a kiss, a dance, or a mere wink from across a smoky nightclub, and the next day were naming their children. And every one of these misguided men had finally listened to reason and stopped pursuing her. Well, some had left with angry, expletive-laden tirades, and some sent awful, heartbroken letters. Still, the unwanted attention ended. But this one . . .
As she washed the glass she studied Harker. The new regimental mustache did nothing to belie his youth, actually emphasised his boyish appearance. He looked like an adolescent in a school play with an eye-pencil line across his upper lip. His eyelids drooped at the outer corners, a slight epicanthic fold that gave him a melancholy aspect. The effect was not so much that he was sad but that he shared your sadness.
“That was a bit of all right,” he said, as s
he set the glass on the counter. “Tonight. The train. We make quite a team. You and I.”
“Look, Harker,” she began.
“I keep telling you, call me Jonny.”
“Jonny is what you call some urchin hawking the Times in Picadilly Square,” she said. “Now Jonathan is the name of a soldier, a spy, someone to reckon with. I shall call you Jonathan.”
She tried a smile, but he was not charmed. “Look, Jonathan,” she began again. “I know that you are perturbed that our, shall we say, moment of intimacy was never repeated.”
“Not the lack of repetition, madam,” he replied. “But, shall we say, the bloody cold shoulder afterward and acting as if it had never happened.”
“That is what I am attempting to correct. If you will let me.” He nodded and she continued. “I fell into bed with you. One time. And because it did not become a nightly affair, your pride is hurt.”
“Not my pride.”
“What then? I want you to know that the subsequent rejection of your affections was in no way caused by anything lacking in your performance that night.”
“Why, thank you so very bloody much. That’s jolly decent of you.”
“Don’t get huffy. The event was more than satisfactory.”
“More than satisfactory! I’ll get that embroidered on a pillow.”
“Let me explain.” Lucille knew that she was just digging herself a deeper hole with this approach. “That night was a momentary lapse on my part. I was, for the moment, requiring some physical succour. Some companionship beyond the casual embrace. And you filled that vacuum.”
“Oh, I see,” he pouted. “I fill a vacuum like some kind of mattress stuffing.”
“There’s that huffiness again. Not a very attractive trait at all, if I may say so.”
He looked abashed, and she continued, “I just want you to understand. That night was an aberration and will not happen again. What I am hoping is that this momentary lapse of mine will not stand in the way of us being able to work together and maybe even become friends.”
“We already work together,” he retorted. She could see he was in pain.
“But this cloud hangs over us and I would like it to be gone,” she said. “So, can we try this? Just wipe that night from our memories? Can we?”
“The problem,” he began, “is that, for me, the evening under discussion, your ‘lapse,’ was quite memorable. Quite.”
He looked at the floor, avoiding her eyes.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Do not be.” He raised his eyes to meet hers. “In fact, it was and is one of the most memorable nights of my life, and I suspect it will be the last thought that passes through my brain at the moment of my death.”
His face was contorted with emotion, his eyes filling with tears.
“I suppose I should be flattered,” she said softly. “Are all of you English such romantics? Don’t answer, purely rhetorical. What we need to do is get beyond this impasse and be able to work together. Is that possible in the least?”
“I suppose we must.” He tensed his mouth, raised his chin. The very illustration of the proverbial stiff upper lip.
“We must. You are a kind man, heroic, and good-looking, Jonathan. You will find the right woman. And she will be a very lucky girl.”
“The song sung to every poor fool in love with the wrong woman,” he said sadly and left the kitchen.
Lucille sighed heavily and called after him, “As you gain experience, Jonathan, you will discover the vast gulf that lies between love and infatuation.”
But he was gone and she was speaking to herself: “As I, myself, have learned so many times.”
She went to her bedroom, tried to sleep. Failing that, she attempted to read, but the usual post-mission energy was still coursing through her system. Added to that was her inability to escape the images of what she had seen through the train windows. The vampire in full siege. The power unleashed, the brute, atavistic dominion of the vampire over so many men, armed men. And then when she washed the blood off him at the river’s edge. She watched the bullet wounds heal before her eyes. Lucille had stared at the shiny new scars in wonder. This was true magic, strong magic, nothing like her crude, weak dabbling in the occult.
In the past, when she was this agitated she would find surcease in some libidinous exercise. But that was what had put her in such complicated muddles as Janos and the damned Englishman. No, no relief of that kind, thank you very much.
Lucille found herself knocking at Dracula’s door.
“Enter,” he said.
He was lying upon the red horsehair chaise, a book in his hand, the lamp next to him casting his face in a golden glow on one side, into shadow on the other. The yellow light erased some of the paleness of his countenance.
With an air of propriety, he stood when she entered.
“Miss Van Helsing.” He gave her that short bow. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“It eludes me after nights like this,” she explained and smiled at him. “But you never sleep at all? There are reports that you slept in a coffin.”
“You mentioned this before. I have at times used one for transport. Travelling in daylight can be hazardous to me, and Customs Inspectors are not surprised to find a dead man in a casket.”
“But don’t you need to remain in contact with your native soil? You put dirt in the coffin, right?”
“You think I lie in dirt? Where do such ideas originate? Your father?”
“No. As I have said, he would never speak to me about you. It comes from that book about you.”
“The vaudevillian’s account. My purported history?”
“Not really. It was sold as a fiction, but it is, more or less, about you and my father in England. Mina. Lucy Westerna. Harker’s grandfather’s adventures here in Transylvania.”
“Mina and Lucy . . .” Dracula gazed into the shadows. “As I said, I was a different man then. After you live too long you become . . . bored. Supremely bored, and the next stage is what some philosophers deem an existential nihilism. It was such a state that ultimately led to my depredations in England.”
“And at what stage are you now?” she asked.
“We shall see,” he replied. “The search for a reason to live is a difficult quest, and there are myriad paths on which one can become lost.”
“I, too, am on this same pilgrimage.”
They were silent for a moment.
“I understand,” Lucille said. “Really I do. I had my days of unbridled adventures. As soon as I was of age I fled this house. Call it adolescent rebellion; two people too close for too long. But Brasov seemed too small for what I wanted, so plebeian. Rumania itself was too paltry a playground.”
“Now you risk your life for it.”
“Irony gets you every time, don’t it?”
“Where did you go?”
“All the hot spots: Paris, Berlin, London, New York City, California, Hong Kong, India . . . It was a time of . . . Before the war it was a time of experimentation. Not just me. It was the twenties . . . The youth of the world went on a bacchanal. I went a little wild myself. There was . . . excess. I finally came home to put myself back together and to warn my father that the Nazis were kicking up their jackboots. I was hoping he would decide to move to Australia. But then the Japanese are building a fire in that part of the world, are they not? There seems to be no safe harbour from this war.”
She shrugged, leaned forward. His eyes examined her face, her eyes, the auburn tresses like a painter’s sable brush.
“The point in all this is, I do understand your attempt to control yourself,” she told him in a whisper. “I understand lust.”
She moved closer, sat upon the chaise. Their faces were inches apart. She lowered her lips toward his. Dracula abruptly pulled away.
“Thank you for your understanding,” he said rather formally. “So, this bit of fiction—I would be interested in reading this tome.”
“There’s a mov
ie, too,” she said, putting some distance between them, a bit embarrassed, but covering.
“A movie? Ah, yes, the moving pictures you spoke about. This cinema.”
“We should go!” She jumped up with sudden enthusiasm. “Oh, there’s a good one playing now in Brasov!”
Dracula was struck by her childlike joy. All presumptions of sophistication, any worldly airs, disappeared, and before him he saw a little girl excited about sharing an enthusiasm. And for that same moment he forgot his own dire history and had a vision of his little brother’s delight at finding a newt in the garden.
“We have to go!” she exclaimed. “We must go!”
“Now?”
“Tonight,” she declared with a dip of her chin. “It’s a date. Oh! And I’ll get you the book.”
And she dashed away to the library. There she found a volume, the spine announcing the title in gilt letters: Blood Diseases of the Oceanic Tribes. It was a mask, being only the dust jacket of that volume wrapped around a copy of The Book.
She rushed back up the stairs to Dracula’s room. He was patiently standing where she had left him.
“My father had many a copy sent to him.” She handed the book to him. “Once the author presented it to him at a conference in Malta. I don’t think Father ever read it. I do know he burned it in the fireplace. A most extreme act for a man who worships literature in any form. Too painful perhaps.”
“Painful for everyone involved,” Dracula answered.
“I found this when I was nine. Stole it.”
He hefted the volume in his hand, examined the cover. It was a simple declaration, the title at the top—Dracula—and below it, the author’s name. He thumbed through the pages, not looking at her.
“So. Tonight.” She backed to the door. “A date!”
And she was gone. Dracula listened as her footsteps receded, still bemused at her many forms: terrorist leader, vagabond, nurse, bibliophile, and now excitable maiden.
Back in her room, Lucille lay in bed staring at the ceiling, amazed at the boldness of her overture toward the vampire, embarrassed by his rejection. It was these thoughts, plus the anticipation of the promised engagement later, that threw her mind into a vortex that finally sucked her down into a delirious sleep.
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