Bram Stoker's Dracula

by Fred Saberhagen

  Leaning toward Renfield, Seward spoke with calculation. "Wouldn't you rather have a cat?"

  Ecstasy! "Yes, yes, a cat!" Screaming! "A big cat. My salvation depends upon it!"

  "Your salvation?"

  Renfield's expression, his whole manner, altered. Something like calm returned.

  Regaining his feet, the patient looked Seward straight in the eye. "Lives," he said simply. "It all comes down to that. I need lives for the Master."

  The doctor blinked. This was new. "What 'master'? Do you mean Professor Van Helsing?"

  The lunatic's scorn and contempt were enormous. "No! The Master! He will come."

  "Here? To the asylum?"

  "Yes!"

  "Here to your cell?"

  "Yes!"

  "Why?"

  "He has promised to make me immortal!"

  "How?"

  Somehow this simple question was the one that probed too close to the nerve. With a strangled cry Renfield lurched forward, his powerful hands groping for a grip. The pair of attendants in the corridor had not relaxed their vigilance, and they rushed in at once to interfere; still they were a shade too late, and both of the madman's fists were clamped on Seward's collar. Renfield's jaws that had chewed files and spiders were now ravening for a bite at Seward's throat.

  Gasps and curses. Three men against one, in a swaying struggle. Other patients in other cells, aware of violence in progress, set up an eerie clamoring.

  Seward, far from a weakling himself, was gripping Renfield's wrists with all his strength, trying to tear the choking hands away—but to no avail. The madman's arms seemed carved from stone. Seward's lungs were bursting, and the world was turning red and gray before the doctor's eyes.

  Renfield was screaming maniacally now: "The blood is the life. The blood is the life!"

  One of the keepers had the patient around the neck from behind, keeping him from biting; the other had him by a shoulder and an arm. But even with odds of three to one, mere wrestling was not going to save Dr. Seward from being throttled. Now clubs rose and fell. But still, one keeper had a broken arm before the lunatic was finally subdued.

  7

  It was morning again in the Carpathians, gray early daylight on a day of spring rain that came spattering and lashing intermittently at the high windows of the apartment which had become Harker's refuge, overlooking the still-deserted courtyard of Dracula's castle.

  Harker had awakened in his usual room within the castle, in his usual bed, and for one blessed moment before his eyelids opened he had been able to persuade himself that his experience with the three women had been only a dream.

  For one moment only—then, despite all the improbability and nightmarish horror of what had happened, he was soon utterly convinced that their embraces had been as real as any other experience he had ever had.

  His shredded clothing testified to the reality of that particular nightmare, as did certain painless, seemingly harmless, but terrifying marks—suggesting the action of fine, sharp teeth—in at least three places on his body. His private parts, his very manhood, had not been spared.

  To have yielded to temptation with a woman, or women, in the normal way would have been bad enough for an engaged man. Especially, as it seemed to Harker, for any man whom Mina loved. But this…!

  Overcome by shame, by the helpless certainty of unnatural guilt, Harker sat for some time on the edge of his bed, face buried in his hands. He was struggling not only with his guilt, but against the memory of great delight.

  At length, pulling himself together, he made a new resolve to face his difficulties, however great they might be, and overcome them. From now on he must, he would, maintain his self-respect, live in a manner worthy of the great love that Mina bore him in her innocence.

  It must have been the count himself, he decided at length, who had carried him back to bed in this room and undressed him. A number of small details, even apart from the torn clothing and the wounds, testified that Harker's nightly routine had not gone as usual; his pocket watch, for one thing, was unwound, and he was rigorously accustomed to wind it before retiring. But the contents of his pockets, in particular his journal, seemed undisturbed—for which he breathed a small prayer of thankfulness. He felt sure that if Dracula had noticed the small book, he would have stolen or destroyed it. Perhaps the count for some reason had been hurried in his task.

  Slowly Harker bathed—once deprived of his mirror, he had abandoned all attempts to shave—and dressed himself in untorn garments from his trunk. He was perfectly certain, long before he looked, that this morning as usual there would be a breakfast laid out for him in the next room, decent food on golden plates or perhaps on silver, even coffee warming on the hearth. Evidently his usefulness, as language teacher and adviser on the ways of England, was not yet over.

  But today he was not hungry.

  For some time after getting dressed, he occupied the chair at the writing desk in his sitting room, making an entry in his journal. Harker considered this record a necessary part of his determined effort to keep a grip upon his sanity. He even noted down, as clearly and objectively as possible, despite the chance that Mina might someday read his words, what he remembered of his experience with the three women.

  Then, startled by hearing unaccustomed noises outside in the courtyard—raucous human shouts and the rumble of wagons—he hastily replaced the small volume in an inner pocket of his coat and went to the window to look out.

  To his amazement Harker saw that the place was deserted no longer. As he watched he observed that a sizable work party composed of Gypsies, the Szgany as Harker had learned they were called in this country, were undertaking a considerable task, that of loading great coffin-sized boxes, obviously heavy, aboard several sturdy leiter wagons, the wagons hitched to teams of four to six horses each. There were three boxes, four—another and another. Soon Harker realized, from the number of wagons, that there might be dozens of these containers, all the same size and shape, each emblazoned with Dracula's coat of arms. They were being carried out, one by one, into the open courtyard from somewhere inside the castle. The location of Harker's window kept him from seeing exactly where the source might be.

  The Szgany were going cheerfully and noisily about their task of loading the strange cargo. Shortly after discovering their presence, Harker took a position in full view in his window, quietly trying to signal to some of the men below. His hope was to get one of them to post a truthful letter to England, a message that would alert his employer to the fact that he was being held here as a prisoner. But only a few workers took any notice of the man in the window, and these only jeered at him, even ignoring the coins he held up in an effort to arouse their interest.

  After that, trembling with fear and anger, he lurked near the window, continuing to observe the unaccustomed activity in the courtyard, as much as possible without being observed himself.

  The visible boxes multiplied; as soon as a wagon was fully loaded, it was driven away and out, and an empty vehicle pulled up to take its place. When one of the large boxes slipped just as it was being hoisted aboard a wagon and broke open with the force of its impact on the stone paving, Harker saw moldy, greenish, foul-looking earth spill out, ugly stuff that at once began to turn to mud in the persistent drizzle.

  The accident had a sobering effect upon the laborers. Their merry songs and laughter ceased abruptly, and they cast frequent glances over their shoulders, and up at the high windows of the castle. Clearly they dreaded their employer's wrath. Not only the Szgany but even the horses, as it seemed to Harker, were frightened at the spillage. The men made haste to repair the damage, finding somewhere fresh boards with which to rebuild the box, replaced the contents as thoroughly as they could, and got on with their work.

  Shortly after that Harker drew back from the window. That a shipment of moldy earth was being made from Castle Dracula was puzzling, but there were more urgent problems to be faced.

  Obviously he dared hope for no help from
the Gypsies, who were laboring faithfully on their mysterious task for the castle's master. Therefore, as it seemed to him, he had two choices. First, he could wait in his rooms, or visit the library again, or employ himself in other useless ways, until cloudy daylight should give way to night.

  Then, when night had fallen, the three women—Harker was as sure of it as if they had promised him in so many words—would come to his door. Now that they had established a relationship with him, they would inevitably come, to laugh and whisper just outside, promising renewed delight, tempting him unbearably, until he should yield and come out to them… and he knew that he would yield.

  But his blood chilled at the thought that perhaps the women had indeed given him just such a promise, or such a warning, last night while he lay in that helpless trance.

  Harker shuddered violently at the compound memory of horror and pain and pleasure. But no, they were not women—Mina was a woman. Those three were devils of the pit!

  Whenever he closed his eyes, he could see again the movement of that bag the count had thrown before them, and could hear again the half-stifled human cry that came from it. Whether in true memory, or only in imagination, he could see the naked babe drawn forth from it by the white, long-nailed hand…

  But now, in daylight, he, the prisoner, still had time to make one other choice. He could summon up the courage of his growing despair and attempt an escape, by taking the only open path, the one he had once seen used by Dracula himself.

  Harker could attempt to get away by climbing down the castle wall.

  Thinking coldly and clearly now, the young man could accept that choice, though it was hideously dangerous, in fact almost suicidal. He preferred death at the bottom of the cliffs to whatever fate the count and the three horrible, fascinating women might have in store for him.

  If he was ever going to attempt the castle wall, obviously the effort must be made by day. And evidently it would be hopeless to try to escape on the side of the castle where Dracula's loyal servants the Gypsies could observe him.

  Therefore he must go on the other side, the side above the dreadful cliff. And he must leave his rooms to do it now—now, at once—before fear—and the terrible attraction of what awaited him tonight—could combine to undo his resolve.

  Plainly he would be able to carry with him nothing but what might fit in his pockets—his journal, some money, and very little else.

  Leaving his rooms on impulse, not allowing himself a chance to hesitate, Harker once more mounted the high stair that led to the south side of the castle, to the windows that overlooked the steepest precipice, and the twisting, leaping river that foamed below, too far below for him to hear the water's roar.

  Misty rain blew in his face. He was standing at the same window where he had hidden and watched with horror as the count himself climbed down the wall.

  Now Harker, gripping the wet stone of the sill so that the muscles trembled in his arms, allowed himself to look down, all the way down, once.

  The terror of the sight was not as great as he had feared.

  In fact the outer surface of the castle wall beneath him now was very nearly sheer, but not so absolutely featureless as to make his attempt completely suicidal. A very slight general inward slope from bottom to top, combined with the roughness of the stones, and the many seams and broken, crumbling edges, offered at least faint hope that the fingers and toes of an ordinary human might be able to find enough purchase for the climb. The first forty or fifty feet, he thought, would be the worst—below that the irregularities grew greater, and there would be real hope.

  Gritting his teeth, the young man whispered: "If I should find him on my way, I must kill him. Good-bye, Mina, if I fail. Good-bye, all!"

  Muttering a prayer, still not allowing himself time to hesitate, Harker went over the rain-wet sill and out, lowering himself on nerve and will and fingertips.

  But these, his only real assets, quickly proved inadequate. Harker had descended only a few feet along his dreadful path before the grip of his fingers upon the ancient stonework abruptly failed.

  A hoarse cry of despair burst from his throat.

  Slipping and sliding down an almost vertical incline, bloodying his hands in a desperate effort to stop his fall, Harker came to an abrupt and unexpected halt, crashing into the muck and water that filled most of a stone basin or huge gargoylish cup built out from the castle's Hank.

  Spitting and choking on foul water, he brought his face above the surface. Dimly he realized that this tub-sized receptacle might once have been part of a system of cisterns for gathering rainwater.

  Shuddering now with the realization of how close he had come to sudden death, Harker looked about him from this precarious place of momentary safety. To right and left there was no chance, only blank vertical stone for many yards. Below, the hopeless wall fell straight away to nothing more secure than a dizzying plunge of equally hopeless rock, ending only in the river at its unreal distance.

  But now a faint new possibility had presented itself. From the stone basin in which Harker crouched, a low, dark tunnel of a drain, barely wide enough to accommodate a man's body, led back—somewhere—into the castle wall. The drain was mostly clogged, with broken stones and mud, but he could dig the obstacles away. As he did so, the water that had saved his life went gurgling off.

  There was no real alternative. Breathing another prayer, the young man crawled headfirst into the tunnel.

  Through many tight spots and sharp turns this passage led him along a wearying, seemingly endless descent. Through gaps in crumbling, broken masonry, through darkness and foul smells, by means of many, many reversals and windings, he went down. Spider-webs brushed at his face. Rats and other things went scurrying away from him; the hardness and roughness of stone wore at his knees and elbows, through the wet fabric of coat and trousers.

  Down, always down.

  A time came when Harker felt he had descended for such a distance that he must now be at least close to the level of the courtyard. He thought that it might well be fatal to emerge among the jeering Szgany, who had given every evidence of being the faithful servants of his mortal enemy.

  Go slowly now! Be quiet!

  Very cautiously, now making a conscious effort to cause as little noise as possible, he crawled on.

  At last providence, or fortune, or some benign power, seemed to smile on him. Harker managed to avoid encountering the Gypsies when he at last crawled out of the castle's wall through a great fracture in its thickness. Instead of being in the familiar courtyard, he found himself in an extensive chamber, whose darkness was so much modified by indirect sunlight that the heart of the fugitive rose in hope, thinking that the blessed outdoors and the possibility of freedom must be very near.

  Careful, though' Standing erect again, nursing his bloodied knees and elbows, he could clearly hear the Szgany singing their work songs. But their voices sounded from sufficiently far away to present, as he thought, no immediate danger.

  Stretching limbs cramped by the long, tortuous, crawling descent, peering cautiously about him, Harker soon understood that this dim chamber to which chance had brought him must be—rather, must once have been—a chapel. He thought the place looked very old, from the fifteenth century or even earlier.

  Large sections of the walls were honeycombed with I what Harker quickly realized must be burial vaults, aboveground sepulchers; and in front of a tall window whose antique glass was still intact, a simple altar (he could read the word DRACULEA carved across the front) supported a great wooden cross.

  The carven front of this tall symbol was all stained as by dried blood. For some reason, as Harker gazed at this forsaken cross, his eyes began to fill with tears, and he felt at his throat for the small silver crucifix that was no longer there.

  Parts of the floor of this dim, cavernous room had long ago been broken up, so that the dark and almost lifeless earth beneath bulged through. Someone had recently been digging in this exposed earth—there were m
odern shovels, and a spade.

  And all across this broken floor, arranged in rows, were more of the strange, coffinlike wooden boxes, evidently waiting to be loaded on the wagons. One box, with its lid in place like the others, but not yet nailed down as the others seemed to be, rested by itself at a little distance from them.

  Now somewhere near at hand, no more than a few yards away, Harker could hear the Gypsies once more shouting to each other as they nailed and lifted and loaded. He heard the clatter of wagon wheels on cobblestones, the snap of whips.

  As the fugitive looked about him, seeking the best chance of completing his escape, his eye was caught by a faint, strange gleam in the indirect daylight. Something yellow, just there where soil showed through the broken pavement. Moving in cautious silence to the spot, Harker bent to pick up first one gold coin of old and unfamiliar mintage, then another. Quickly, with the idea that it might be of use to him in his escape, he was able to gather a small handful of treasure that had been lying here mixed into the ground.

  Almost too late he became aware that the voices of the Szgany had suddenly grown louder. Hastily the intruder sprang up and pressed himself back into a recess of the wall. A moment later several Gypsies came in through the main entrance of the chapel, to lift and bear out with them, grunting, one more of the coffins.

  As soon as they were gone again Harker emerged from hiding. For the moment the need for knowledge was even stronger than the urge to escape.

  Approaching the coffin that stood a little apart from the others, Harker seized and wrenched off the lid, which was still unfastened. Gazing at the revealed contents, he froze in fright and horror.

  Dracula, garbed in an ornate robe of golden and bejeweled fabric, was looking back at him.

  It took Harker a long, nightmarish moment to realize that the eyes of the man in the box, though they were turned in his direction, did not see him, or at any rate were not really focused upon him.