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

room I had obtained by pressing my bat head as close as possible against the glass at one side, where a chink was open twixt blind and casement. Round Lucy’s neck, I saw, were garlic flowers garlanded, together with the long green leaves, and the whole room was fetid with the plant.

      Almost simultaneous with this shocking discovery  — which meant of course that someone was attempting antivampire measures — I heard Berserker’s first low howl below me in the shrubbery, and looked down over one batwing in absolute consternation. It might take long minutes to quiet the wolf and send it peaceably back to the cage from which it had so recently, obviously, broken free, and Lucy’s mental anguish was too urgent for me to spare the time for that. Feeling like a general beset in camp by a series of sudden surprise attacks, I crouched there on the windowsill and tried to marshal my thoughts calmly. Could there be some reason for the garlic, other than the one with which I was most familiar? There were undoubtedly some English customs of which I had not yet heard; but I had little hope that this was one of them.

      The women inside had not yet heard the wolf, or else they thought its howls were those of some dog in the neighborhood, for the noise made no impression upon them. Contorting my small, furred body, I made a greater effort to peer in beside the blind and got a better look at Lucy in her nightgown. It was something of a shock to see how ill she looked. I also saw Lucy’s mother in her robe, looking tired and drawn herself — recall that even at this time neither Lucy nor myself had yet any inkling of the very grave condition of Mrs. Westenra’s heart — just as she tottered from the room and closed the door behind her. This was my chance; I sent another mental summons and simultaneously flapped my bat wings at the panes. Lucy turned her head a little on the pillow, but no more. Her eyes were closed.

      Clinging carefully to stone in the autumnal night, I altered back to man-form right on the windowsill. I drew mass and weight unto myself  — from nothing? Say from the great reservoir in which God kept such things before deciding to enact Creation, and to which some of his creatures are allowed a limited access still. How do I do it? Let me ask how you sort out the myriad atoms in your lungs each time you draw a breath to oxygenate your blood.

      Now I tapped at the window with a long fingernail and spoke aloud. Lucy rose up in bed, with a startled look that soon changed to joy. She got up as quickly as she could, and came to the window, and was about to speak the words that would have let me pass in to her; but on the instant the door of her room opened once more and Mrs. Westenra’s figure was plain in my field of vision — and mine, alas, in hers.

      Lucy had already drawn the blind full back. When the unsuspecting old woman looked over her daughter’s shoulder into the night it was my visage that she saw peering in at both of them.

      I expected shock, but not what happened. Mrs. Westenra extended her arm for a second or two, pointing at me in silence, her face contorted with her fright; and then there came from her throat a gurgling noise and she fell as if an ax had struck her down.

      “Mother!” Lucy cried out, and hurried to try to lift her aged parent from the floor; but in Lucy’s weakened condition the shock and the exertion were too much for her, and she crumpled over also, in a faint.

      Mrs. Westenra’s heart and lungs had already ceased their labors and I was not sure that Lucy’s would not shortly do the same, so feebly and irregularly were they now working. She had called to me for help and I was anxious — nay, almost desperate — to fly to her aid, but I could not. I had not yet been bidden directly to enter the house wherein she lay. I, who might pass like smoke through barriers impossible for breathing men to penetrate, was held back by a law as inexorable to me as gravity.

      Another low wolf howl rising from the shrubbery at last jogged my slow brain back into action. I dropped lightly to the ground, which was some twelve feet below the windowsill, and called Berserker to me. For a moment I held the big gray wolf tightly, one hand gripping his muzzle, my eyes locked on his, trying to force into his willing brain knowledge of the service that I required of him. I wanted him to force his way into that room above, and lick at Lucy’s face to rouse her; failing that, to drag her by her nightdress or her hair to the window where she might come within my reach.

      Why did I not go instead, in my most suave and reassuring style to knock at the front door? All this was in the middle of the night, remember, and the house was isolated. Lucy had once mentioned to me in passing that no male servants slept in the house — the pantry at Hillingham was evidently a place of impeccable morality. Were the women within likely to open a door for me, under whatever pretext I came? I thought not. My instincts argued for direct action, and I have learned to trust my instincts in emergencies.

      It took me two, three, tosses to cast the heavy wolf up to the windowsill above. Its surface, though broad enough for a lean and rather acrobatic gentleman to sit on at his ease, offered but scanty purchase for Berserker’s paws. He whimpered at the treatment I accorded him but seemed to realize that in adopting me as master he had