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

      Mina had not yet recovered enough from my introduction to be her true, quick-witted self. “Too late for what, Count Dracula?”

      I leaned toward her and spoke slowly. “Too late for their own good, dear Mrs. Harker. I am not going to let myself be killed. What they did to Lucy they shall not do to me.”

      “I don’t understand this,” the lady murmured, and started to her feet and then sat down again, continuing to gaze at me. “I fear I do not understand this, at all. I think perhaps I’m dreaming.”

      I shook my head and remained sitting in a dignified position, top hat held resting on my knee.

      “Count — did none of the servants offer to take your hat?”

      “The servants are not aware that I am here, madam. I judged it wiser to speak to you in secrecy.”

      “Count Dracula — for so you seem to be in truth — how can you explain the fearful things that happened to my husband whilst he was visiting your castle?”

      “Madam, I myself left the castle before he did. As to precisely how long he remained after my departure, or what may have happened to him in the interval, I cannot say, although of course some ultimate responsibility may be mine. As for what may have happened to him at Castle Dracula before I left, I am willing to offer an explanation on any point where you desire to have one.”

      “My dear Count …”

      I braced myself.

      “… who were those three women?”

      Within half an hour we were chatting more or less at our ease. Sweet Mina was perturbed at being able to offer me nothing in the way of hospitality, but I assured her that I did not eat or drink. “With one exception, of course, and even that is not really as you must suppose.”

      “No? Then you must tell me how it is.”

      I spoke to Mina on that night almost as I might have spoken to an intelligent and sympathetic breathing man, had there been any such creature in my universe. I touched only briefly upon the uncommon aspects of my life, and stressed my yearnings for a free and open life, my sore need for someone in whom I might sometimes trust and confide, and above all the absence from my existence of any gleam of true affection. Not that I rawly enumerated all these needs, but rather I gradually let their existence swim into her ken. Strange to say, or perhaps not so strange, the lady seemed to see into my heart of hearts right from the first.

      Somewhat belatedly I steered the conversation back to the problem of how we might save Jonathan and the others from the dangers of their headstrong course. But before Mina and I could reach any constructive agreement on action to be taken, my keen ears brought me the sounds of the weary hunting party’s shuffle-footed return across the grounds of the asylum.

      When I announced her husband’s imminent arrival Mina started up. “Oh! If you should be discovered here, what will happen?”

      “Good Madam Mina, they shall not discover me: that is, they shall not if you and I can quickly reach agreement that I may call on you again tomorrow night? Or whenever your husband next absents himself. We have yet to decide upon a course of action.”

      “Oh.” She listened to the opening of a door belowstairs, to the hunters coming in with earnest, tired voices that must have been almost inaudible to her. “Yes, yes, you may come. I see we must consult, for Jonathan’s own good.”

      I bowed and kissed her hand, turned to the window, and in a moment I was gone.

      Shortly her husband tiptoed into the room to find her somewhat paler than usual, and, as he thought, asleep. He sat down and wrote in his journal, mentioning among other things his concern for his wife, and a decision the men had arrived at, regarding Mina, on their inglorious way home.

      I hope that the meeting tonight has not upset her. I am truly thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of our deliberations. It is too great a strain for a woman to bear … henceforth our work is to be a sealed book to her, till at least such time as we can tell her that all is finished, and the earth free from a monster of the nether world. I daresay it will be difficult to begin to keep silence after such confidence as ours; but I must be resolute, and tomorrow I shall keep dark over tonight’s doings, and shall refuse to speak of anything that has happened. I rest on the sofa, so as not to disturb her.

      Much later in the morning, when the sun was high and all the rest of the household up and about, Jonathan “had to call two or three times before Mina awoke.” She did not even seem to recognize her husband immediately, but looked at him at first “with a sort of blank terror.” Her life had been changed during the night, and for the moment neither she nor her husband had any inkling of how great a change had been wrought. Nor, in fact, had I any real idea of how my own life would be transformed from that point on.

      Mina as usual wrote in her journal on this day, the first of October. But this time she wrote not of what had really happened on the night before. Rather it was an oblique and coded kind of entry, relating an experience of a dream, or dreamlike state, in which she had beheld mist creeping across the lawn and pouring in ’round her bedroom door, and a vague vision of red eyes. Rather diffidently she showed it to me, as a sort of maiden literary effort, when I came back the next evening.

      My enemies were busy that October first, trying to trace the dispersal of