The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagen (best black authors TXT) 📗

      It was not until the night of August twenty-sixth that I next saw Lucy, and then I came to her only in response to an appeal for help. Hers was a mental outcry of such vivid anguish that to refuse it lightly would have been cruel, and I think dishonorable as well. Therefore I found myself, late at night, waiting in man-shape outside the large suburban house called Hillingham, where Lucy lived with her ailing mother and a small squad of servants. I sent a mental message of reassurance in to the sleepless girl; she arose and managed to leave the house without disturbing any of the other occupants.

      I smiled and stretched forth my hands as I saw her slight figure, in its dressing gown, coming through the garden under the trees.

      “So, then,” she murmured, coming near, eyes wide as they sought mine, “it was not dreams and nothing else.” Somewhat hesitantly she took my outstretched hands; I believe she was at that moment almost afraid of me, though we were hardly strangers. I had given her much joy, and naught, so far as I knew, of any pain.

      “My dear Lucy, lightbearer,” I said. “Is that what so distresses you? That I am not a dream? You have but to wave your little hand, dismissing me, and never will your eyes rest on me again.”

      Her eyes were puzzled and full of pain. “You know, then, that I am distressed and afraid.”

      “Child, of course I know. I would not be here if you had not called to me, though only in your mind, for help.”

      “But how can such things be?” I was about to attempt an answer to this question when she presented me with another, that she evidently thought required answering more urgently. It came in the form of a bald statement: “I am to be married, you know.”

      “I had not known, but allow me now to extend such felicitations as may be welcome from a man in my position.” I bowed.

      “I really am going to marry Arthur, you know.” Lucy blushed. “I love him — very much. And he loves me.” She began telling me of Holmwood and his mannerisms and his prospects for wealth and position, till I began to feel rather disgustingly like a grim uncle or elder brother who had to be placated, his blessing sought. Of course at that moment Lucy had no other father figure in her life — Van Helsing had not yet come on the scene  — and perhaps she did cast me most unsuitably in that role.

       “… so I do love Arthur, and am going to marry him. And you — you are still like a dream, or something out of one.” Had she hoped to provoke me to a jealous declaration? Now the anguish in her face, as she gazed on me, was obviously that of longing, and her voice broke. “I don’t even know your name!”

      I was silent, not sure that I should tell it to her. Names have power, power that can cut both ways.

      Nor was she quite sure, apparently, that she wanted to know more. “Hold me,” was all she had left to say before coming with a slight tremble into my arms. Lucy understood only that what we did gave her supreme delight and that Arthur was not the only man she loved. We had held no theoretical discussions on vampirism, and I would wager that she had never even heard the word. It may be that I drank a bit too deeply on that night, for Lucy clung to me and would not let me go …

      Her wedding was scheduled for September seventeenth, a few weeks off. Whether Lucy would have wanted to continue her affair with me beyond that date is something I cannot tell, for women are unfathomable. What do they want? I ask, with Freud, in periods of bleak masculine despair.

      Lucy pined during the next few days. Also some signs of her repeated nocturnal dissipations must have been apparent to Arthur Holmwood, who was seeing her frequently again now that she was back near London, for her fiance a few days later called in Dr. Seward, his friend as well as Lucy’s, to examine her. “She demurred at first,” as Arthur complained in a letter. Well, perhaps she would have preferred a physician who was not a rejected suitor, or even more one whose specialty was not the study of mental illness. Though she had not Mina’s capacity for sturdy independence, it is even possible that she resented not being able to decide such matters as the choice of a doctor for herself.

      Seward interrupted his contemplation of his wealthy lunatics long enough to give her a cursory looking over and concluded that the basis of her — or rather, her fiancé’s — complaint “must be something mental.” That was true, so far as it went. Ah, Lucy, Lucy which means “lightbearer” — Lucy of the delicate and trustful nature. I suppose you were not a very good girl; but like so many women of your era, you deserved much better than fate gave you.

      She tried to fob off Seward with some vague tales of sleepwalking, which of course were true enough as far as they went. But he was a pretty good doctor, for his time; at least he had an acute eye, or instinct, for the unusual. Not that he showed great judgment in knowing what to do about it. Seward’s first act after he had caught a hint of something truly remarkable in the case — my shadow or my flavor on the girl — was to send to Amsterdam for his old teacher, Abraham Van Helsing, M.D., Ph.D., D.Lit., et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

      Van Helsing...

      Do any who hear my voice still fear my name? Is it believed by even my most timid hearers that I may represent a real danger? When I have made you understand the