Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  Remember: emotions resonate. They seethe, trapped, waiting for release, waiting to be given form.

  The deadline for my final draft of the performance text was rapidly approaching, and still I had not found an actor who I felt would adequately convey the essence of Van Helsing. It may seem a somewhat selfish point, but the other actors had so refined their vocal interpretations of my characters, had given them such life, that to bring in an actor who would less than their equal would have been an insult to them.

  Then one evening, after having ended rehearsal early, I found myself in this area of Little Russell Street, and came upon this very bookshop. As I wandered among its many volumes, the proprietor took my aside and asked, ‘Are you Mr. Bram Stoker, author of After Sunset?’ ‘I am,’ I replied, seeing with some delight that he held a well-read copy of that very short story collection in his hands. ‘I am a great admirer of your stories,’ he said, offering the book to me, ‘and I would be honored if you would inscribe my copy.’

  I took the book from him with thanks, and proceeded to uncap the pen he offered, but somehow I managed to cut the tip of my thumb in the process. I bled a little upon the first page—not enough to ruin it, but enough that it could not be easily or neatly wiped away. ‘Please do not worry yourself,’ said the proprietor to me as I signed my name to the title. ‘It can be taken care of.’

  After I returned the volume to him, he took it behind the counter and knelt down behind the shelf of books. A few moments later he merged and showed me—much to my surprise—that the blood had been successfully removed from the title paper. I noticed—but did not think much of—his licking his lips several times after emerging from behind the counter. ‘I must say, Mr. Stoker, that I am greatly anticipating the release of your new novel.’ ‘You may be one of the few persons in England who is,’ I replied, and we shared a jovial laugh at my remark.

  Something about him seemed terribly familiar to me, and as I listened to his voice with its weary, sand-like quality, I came to realize that I was looking at my Van Helsing. I proceeded to tell the proprietor of my problem, and asked him if he would be willing to read the part of Van Helsing for my presentation to Sir Henry at the end of the week. He was deeply flattered, and of course accepted my offer.

  When the time came for the rehearsal, I found him outside the theatre, nervously pacing by the performers’ entrance. ‘My dear fellow, we are all waiting,’ I said. When he said nothing in reply, I opened the door wider and said, ‘Please, come in and join us.’ He did so, and the rehearsal began.

  It was the most magnificent reading of the novel I have ever witnessed. He captured not only Van Helsing’s weariness, but his near-mad drive to destroy Dracula, as well. His performance was a prism of compassion, fury, wariness, dedication, sadness, and strength. When it came time for his ‘This so sad hour’ speech, he had all of us transfixed. He was Van Helsing.

  Then, at the conclusion of the scene, he began to laugh.

  It was the sound of an ancient crypt door being wrenched open.

  The spell was immediately broken. ‘My dear fellow,’ I said to him. ‘May I inquire what you find so humorous about this very tragic scene?’

  ‘That you see it as tragic at all is what amuses me,’ he replied, only this time his voice was not that of either Van Helsing or the sandy-voiced proprietor I had met at the bookshop the previous day: it was the voice of Count Dracula—not only as I had heard it in my imaginary conversations with him, but as the others in the cast had heard it, as well. I looked upon all their faces and knew that this was the voice of the Count as we had come to believe it would sound.

  Speak of damned places, Mr. Fort, and you speak, on some level, of belief. Emotions resonate. Electrons dance. Equations collapse and are replaced by newer, equally possible equations. Call it the collective unconscious or the hive mind of the masses, but the emotional charge had built and surged down the cumulative lines of our psyche and found not only focus but form.

  He changed before our shocked eyes; from man to bat to wolf to rodent to owl to insect, then back again, then a hybrid of all creatures plus man—a sight so unspeakable I have never been able to bring myself to put its description onto paper for fear of being labeled mad.

  Count Dracula rose up before us in all his dark, majestic, terrifying glory. ‘My thanks to all of you for our little talks at night,’ he said, smiling a lizard-grin and exposing his awful teeth. ‘I have searched for centuries for a proper form in which I could enter your world, and you have so thoughtfully provided one for me.’

  We began to run for the doors, but he became shadow and beast and speed itself: none of the cast made it any farther than the stage-left dressing room entrance before he fell upon them and opened their veins with his teeth. His strength was super-human, his speed that of the wrath of God Himself—if indeed such a Being exists at all.

  I huddled behind a stack of risers, listening to the terrified and soon-silenced screams of my cast as the Count fed on each and every one of them. After what seemed an eternity, he found my hiding place and lifted me up as easily as one would a newborn child.

  Holding me by the throat, he glared at me with his glowing red eyes and said, ‘I wish to thank you personally, Mr. Stoker, for giving me life. But you have also made it necessary for the others who populated your novel to enter this world behind me, and so I must take my leave of you for now. Since I now know the ending of your story, I feel it is my duty to change it on this side...but you needn’t worry about further revising your manuscript. I think it will be satisfactory to have the world believe that I am a fictitious creation who was summarily dispensed with at the conclusion of your little melodrama.’

  And with that, he released me, and disappeared into the night.

  Shortly thereafter, the members of my cast rose to their feet, undead all, and made their way down into the basement of the theatre and, from there, into the sewers of the city. They are still there to this day.

  And I sorrow for what I unleashed upon them and the world. Dear God, how I sorrow.

  * * *

  I sat in the darkness of the theatre in stunned silence for several minutes after Mr. Stoker finished telling his incredible tale. The man was obviously mad...but there still lingered in my mind a whispering doubt. And there was, after all, that unearthly wolf on the stage with him.

  “How can I help your unbelief?” came a voice.

  I had been staring at Mr. Stoker. His lips had not moved. I looked, then, at the wolf by his side.

  It spoke again: “Your unbelief, Mr. Fort. How can I help it?”

  The wolf moved forward, hunkered down as if to pounce, and at once became an army of rats that swarmed across the stage and into the orchestra pit and emerged in the aisle as the proprietor who had led me down here. “Does this help?” he asked of me.

  I rose to my feet and began to frantically make my way over the seats toward what I believed to be the staircase I had descended earlier. My heart was pounding against my chest with such force I feared it would smash through my ribs and tissue.

  The proprietor became several bats who quickly swooped down and around me, assaulting me with their wings. I fell to the floor and the bats collided in a flash of darkest shadow and became the proprietor again, only now he was much younger in appearance, taller, stronger.

  Eternal.

  “Look upon me and fear, Mr. Fort. For I am as real as you dread I am.”

  He reached down and grabbed onto my jacket with one hand, lifting me off the floor with unnerving ease so that my feet dangled above the aisle like some marionette left hanging on a peg.

  I could not take my eyes from his blood-red gaze.

  “My biographer, my creator, wishes for his cast to be given their proper curtain call, the one denied them so many years ago.” He slammed me down into the nearest seat and held me there with one mighty hand on my shoulder.

  “Nothing less than your most enthusiastic applause will ensure your safe exit from this place,”
snarled Count Dracula in my ear.

  An iron grate in the floor near the foot of the stage shifted with a nerve-wracking shriek and was cast aside by a hand that was more bone than flesh.

  And the parade of the dead began.

  How to describe what I saw? How to convey the pathetic, terrifying, sad, depraved sight which my eyes beheld?

  Their flesh—what remained of it—had the color and texture of spoiled meat. Worms and other such creatures of filth oozed in and out of the holes in their faces where once their eyes had resided. The stench of death was sickly-sweet in the air. Some shambled, a few crawled, and one—a woman—had to be carried by another cast member because much of her lower torso was gone, leaving only dangling, tattered loops of decayed intestine which hung beneath her like a jellyfish’s stingers.

  I wept at the sight of them, but I applauded them; oh, how I applauded!

  And I was not alone in my efforts.

  Surrounding me, each of them as decayed and pathetic as the sad creatures who were assembling on the stage before us, were all the characters from Stoker’s novel, all of them flesh and blood, all of them—thanks to the Count’s actions—now equally un-dead: here was Mina Murray and Jonathan Harker; there was Dr. Seward and Lucy, Lord Godalming and Quincey and every last character from the novel who had participated in Dracula’s destruction, only now they were the destroyed ones...even the great Abraham Van Helsing. All un-dead and applauding those whose portrayals and belief had brought them into this world and given them life—albeit briefly.

  I became aware of several women clothed in white encircling me as I continued to applaud and the cast to take their individual bows.

  The brides of Dracula surrounded me, caressed me, touched me with their lips and hands. My temperature rose in depraved want for them, and I applauded all the harder for it.

  “My cast,” intoned Stoker from the stage, gesturing to each member of his troupe. “My fine cast, my dear friends.”

  Dracula smiled and wiped something from one of his eyes. Looking at me, he smiled his awful, bloody grin and said, “I am moved, are you not the same?”

  “I am,” I said, quite dizzy.

  The applause from the audience grew deafening. Dracula parted his arms and became a giant man-bat thing with slick flesh. He flew above stage and proceeded to land gracefully in the center of the players.

  “Let my brides pleasure you, Mr. Fort,” he bellowed above the noise in a voice part human and part beast, “and worry not, for they will not feed on you. You are our messenger now. Leave here, and tell the world, if you have the courage, that I am real, and that as long as men read my story, I shall never die. With the coming years and centuries, my story will be read by thousands, millions more, and each time the book is opened, each time a page is turned, I grow stronger and more eternal! Tell this to the world, sir, if you dare! For in the centuries to come my followers will grow, they will read of me, go forth, and multiply, and there will come a night when the entire earth will awaken and pull in the sweet damned breath of the un-dead, and then I will be as I should have been from the very beginning: The true Prince of Night, the king of my kind! Go, then, and tell them, if you dare.”

  One of his brides fell on her knees before me whilst another began to tear at my shirt.

  The applause swelled as Dracula himself took a bow, and then I fell down into a dizzying pit of desire and darkness.

  * * *

  When I regained consciousness, I found myself outside the Lyceum Theatre, some good distance from where I was staying.

  I cannot say for certain how I came to arrive safely back at my rooms at Bedford Place, only that I did find my way back there and was at once taken by the arm and led to an office where I was given a stiff drink of whiskey while a constable was called to take my statement.

  “Robbery and Assault” was the official explanation for my condition. I saw no reason to argue their conclusion.

  The next day, no fewer than three bodies were discovered around London, the blood drained from their veins.

  The next day, I discovered reports of several other deaths in Canada, The United States, and Germany.

  I returned home soon after, and for the rest of my life continued to gather such stories of bloodless bodies.

  I am now an old man and my time is short. It has taken me a lifetime to muster the courage to set this tale to paper. Whether or not you choose to believe this is a matter between you and your conscience. I can no longer say I neither believe nor disbelieve nothing. Belief or unbelief, the dark forces of the Universe will have their way, regardless.

  At my window last night I beheld the countenance of Mr. Bram Stoker, himself among the un-dead now; beside him was his creation, the Count, and in his eyes was a promise: Soon.

  I fear I may not be alive come morning.

  Not that I would have had lived that much longer, anyway.

  So I take my leave of you. Do with this recounting what you will. The night is nearly upon us.

  An article in yesterday’s New Yorker listed Dracula as one of the best-selling books of all time. To this date, it is estimated that somewhere around five million copies in twenty different languages have been sold.

  So many readers. So many pages turned.

  And he grows stronger with each word read.

  There will come a night, he said.

  I fear it may be sooner than we think.

  I shall lay down my head for the last time now.

  God go with you in all the damned places that you walk.

  Soon, such places shall be all there are.

  —Charles Fort, the Bronx, May 3, 1942.

  Ungrateful Places

  Introduction by Linda Robertson

  I have known Gary Braunbeck for several years. Both of us being native Ohioans and writers, of course we have attended many of the same writing conventions, participated in multi-author book signings around the state, and even been to a few of the same BBQs. Always, he has been pleasant, professional, well-spoken and several other flattering and boring adjectives I could use here. But Gary is far from boring. Though his vast writing credits and many noteworthy awards showcase his penchant for horror, I assure you he can also tell personal and self-effacing tales that evoke much laughter.

  I say that to say this: Gary is not merely an author. He is a storyteller. The difference? A storyteller crafts more than words on a page, he hones performance into every syllable—and Gary is unparalleled in dramatic readings. If ever you are presented with the opportunity to hear him, it is my earnest recommendation that you do not miss it.

  As for Ungrateful Places…

  We’re told that what’s on the inside matters most about people, yet that maternal, reassuring whisper seems like a lie as the vain parade of endless selfies scroll by on social media. We know personality isn’t bound in the superficial slopes and planes of a face, yet we make myriad assumptions every day based on others’ expressions. We convey our emotions through the subtle extension or contraction of our facial muscles. We distinguish whom we know by who we recognize. We even mark achievements with photos—of our faces. The importance of our personal identity is nowhere more evident than in phrases like losing face and saving face.

  Losing face means ‘to suffer the loss of respect, to be humiliated.’ It implies guilt and failure.

  We all want to be admired, valued and appreciated for whom we are by our family, friends, peers and neighbors. There is value and a sense of worthiness in the respect of others. It is the reward for hard work and maintaining good character. Which is why saving face, meaning ‘to preserve one’s reputation,’ is essential when transgressions have occurred. The implication here is in spite of guilt or failure. The threat of shame and disgrace is a tactic used to make people behave; the threat of exposure of shame and disgrace is enough to cause some to lie, fight, and kill.

  With that being said, is there a great cause for which you would be willing to lose face?

  Taking a bold stan
ce for something you believe in is unarguably honorable, but in these modern times proclaiming your beliefs to the world is as simple as typing it and hitting “ENTER.” Opinions are everywhere while actions grow uncommon. Sacrifice—the willful destruction or surrender of something precious—is rare.

  Ponder my question again: is there any one thing for which you would cooperatively accept personal indignity? Perhaps you would shoulder such a burden for your children, or spouse, or family, but on what terms would you consent to rigorous personal shame for strangers?

  Take it one step further…is there any purpose for which you would, literally, sacrifice your face?

  That chill you just felt in the pit of your stomach confirms the horror of this concept.

  Before you read Ungrateful Places, ask yourself: Who would I be without my face?

  Ungrateful Places

  “Once a fool was soundly thrashed during the night and the next day everyone made fun of him. ‘You should thank God,’ he said, ‘that the night was clear; otherwise I would have played such a trick on you!’ ‘What trick? Tell us!’ ‘I would have hidden myself.’”

  —17th Century Russian Fable

  His name was Edward Something-or-Other and though everyone in the village recognized him on sight no one really knew much about him, except that he was a large and strong young man who was always willing to do odd jobs for reasonable pay, that he never spoke an ill word against anyone, and that he went off to war one cold and foggy September morning where he eventually saved many of his fellow soldiers from certain death, was given many medals, hailed a hero and great warrior, and came home with no face. But by then he had been gone for so long that no one in the village could remember what he’d looked like before war had broken out.

  To say he had no face is a bit of an exaggeration; he had eyes for he could see, and he had eardrums because he could hear but no ears to speak of, just bits of dangling, discolored flesh on the sides of his head. The skin which formed his cheeks had been grafted on from flesh the doctors removed from his thighs, and though he was told that everything would heal over and appear normal Some Day Soon, it still hurt him to walk or smile; walking was something he could not avoid, but not so smiling. His nose was gone, as well; his nostrils were two small skeletal caves that were often blocked and forced him to breathe through his mouth, which in turn dried up his throat and made it difficult—sometimes even impossible—for him to swallow; as a result, he was often hoarse and coughed frequently. Gone also were his teeth but his jaw remained intact and his gums were firm, making it possible for him to wear dentures. Sometimes, though, when he talked—which he rarely did, due to his hoarseness, and also because his difficulty in swallowing caused him to drool—the dentures would slip a little and click and whomever he was talking with would make sorry work of hiding their amusement.