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

      Mere reproduction has not been thought a crime for human beings, at least not till very recently. Why may not I enjoy the rights of other men?

      It is the forcing of death, or of a change in life, that’s criminal, whether the force be applied by vampire fang, or wooden stake, or means more subtle used against a vulnerable mind or heart. And I say once more: my blood, and nothing else available in 1891, could save Lucy’s life for her that night. Not that the saving was of much duration.

      On September eighteenth and nineteenth Lucy languished, poisoned anew by Van Helsing’s fourth transfusion; I sensed her pain, remotely, but I held aloof, having as I thought done all I could for her. On September twentieth she died, or so thought the grieving Arthur Holmwood, and Dr. Seward, who with Van Helsing were in attendance on her at the time. Though some miles away, I could feel, through our established mental contact, the moment when her breathing stopped, that once had blown so full and sweet across my cheek …

      On that same day laborers came to Carfax, to remove some of my boxes, in accordance with my plan of gradual dispersal. The madman Renfield once more broke out through the much-battered window of his room, to maul the workmen for having, as he thought, robbed him of his “lord and master.” The lord and master, standing amid some trees behind the high wall of his estate — I was not resting in a box, for I could not be quite sure which ones the workmen might decide to take, or cast a look into — heard the row and resolved to speed up the dispersal process and to sell Carfax quickly thereafter, or simply abandon it if need be. The neighborhood seemed after all a little lively for my taste, with the irrepressible Renfield right next door, and his keeper consulting with Van Helsing, who, as I knew, had hunted vampires.

      September twenty-second was in truth a day of mourning among my narrow circle of British acquaintances. On that day Lucy and her mother were both interred in a small cemetery near Hampstead Heath. And Jonathan Harker’s former employer, more recently his partner, Mr. Peter Hawkins, was also buried on that day, he having perished almost immediately — of natural causes, so far as I know — upon the Harkers’ return from abroad as man and wife.

      Mr. Hawkins’ place of burial was also near London, and it chanced that an hour or so after attending his last ceremonies Mina and Jonathan were strolling hand in hand down Piccadilly. Mina, in her account of the day’s events, wrote that she was “looking at a very beautiful girl, in a big cartwheel hat, sitting in a Victoria outside Giuliano’s, when I felt Jonathan clutch my arm so tight that he hurt me, and he said under his breath: ‘My God!’ I am always anxious about Jonathan, for I fear some nervous fit may upset him again … he was very pale, and his eyes seemed bulging out as, half in terror and half in amazement, he gazed at a tall, thin man with a beaky nose and black mustache and pointed beard” — these of course were the effects of a regular diet — ”who was also observing the pretty girl. He was looking at her so hard that he did not see either of us” — ah, dearest Mina, Wilhelmina, how could I know that you were there? — “and so I had a good view of him. His face was not a good face” — but one full of character, hey m’dear? “It was hard and cruel, and sensual, and his big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal’s.”

      The better to — but never mind. “Jonathan kept staring at him, till I was afraid he would notice. I feared he might take it ill, he looked so fierce and nasty. I asked Jonathan why he was disturbed, and he answered, evidently thinking that I knew as much about it as he did: ‘Do you see who it is?’ ”

      “ ‘No, dear, I don’t know him. Who is it?’ ”

      “ ‘It is the man himself!’ ”

      When the lady drove off Mina noted that “the dark man kept his eyes fixed on her … he followed in the same direction, and hailed a hansom. Jonathan kept looking after him, and said, as if to himself: ‘I believe it is the count, but he has grown young. My God, if this be so!’ ”

      Poor Harker teetered for an hour or so on the brink of a relapse into the brain fever that had prostrated him for weeks after leaving my domain; but he had pulled himself together by the time the couple got home by train to Exeter. There a telegram from Van Helsing awaited them, informing them for the first time of Lucy’s rapid decline and supposed death. The professor, empowered by the grieving Arthur to go through all of Lucy’s effects, had found Mina’s last unopened missives to her and had thus learned Mina’s name and address. The professor soon invited himself to come to visit the Harkers in Exeter, and talk of vampires; or talk around them, rather. It would be some time yet before he spoke the horrid word aloud.

Track Four

      Within a day after sending them his first telegram Van Helsing had conferred with both Mina and Jonathan, and had read a typescript, prepared by Mina, of her husband’s Transylvanian journal; she herself had only been allowed to see this diary after Harker had with his own eyes beheld me walking the streets of London. Now Van Helsing not only had confirming evidence that there was at least one vampire active in the English capital, but knew my identity, and even the