The Dracula Tape

TRACK EIGHT

By about five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifteenth my enemies and Mina were ensconced at the Odessus Hotel in Varna. Had I taken the train that far with them I should then have been about five hundred kilometers, or three hundred miles, from home, as the bat flies. But I had been resting snugly in my trunk-the lock forced together firmly from inside-when it was unloaded on schedule, in broad daylight, at Bucharest. By getting off the train there I had reduced the distance to my home by about one third from the Varna figure, which enabled me to feel somewhat more secure. Besides, there would have been little for me to do in Varna, beyond dalliance. I had decided that the ship was not going there after all.

At any rate, Czarina was not even due to reach the Dardanelles till the twenty-fourth. There was plenty of time, and I decided to go home at once, there to arrange some reception for my guests.

In Bucharest I knew where I could obtain a cart and horse that I, in native clothing, could drive myself without attracting any particular attention. Dressed once more in costume of my homeland, and with the leather trunk as almost my sole luggage, I took the road back to the high Carpathians. Dozing by day at the side of some small, seldom-traveled way-already home was near enough that the common roadside earth would let me get a kind of rest-and traveling steadily by night, in three days I won my way so far up the slowly climbing roads that with the third sunset I felt sure that I would need my trunk of earth, and therefore my wagon, no longer. The horses I soothed and sent to stand in the yard of a poor farmer, who when it came time for plowing in the spring would bless the hand that had sent them to him. The cart, a poor thing, I left by the roadside, still holding the trunk, from which I had spilled and scattered the earth, lest such cargo here give rise to too much speculation. I do not often bestow largesse upon the lazy world, but considered that my homecoming deserved some unusual celebration.

Before going to the castle I stopped at a spot some miles distant, where the Szgany sometimes camped. A few were there, with their wagons and barking dogs and ragged children. The counterfeit ruddiness of my days on the train had faded; my hair when it blew before my eyes looked lank and gray, and the Szgany knew me at once. I frowned to note that the first to see me gave me hangdog, sullen almost reproachful looks. When they called Tatra out of a wagon, matters were different. His leathery face worked with joy as he beheld me, and he came forward at once to fall on his knees and kiss my hand.

"Master! Long have we waited for your safe return. My wife and seventh daughter have worked the spells three times, at dark and full of moon…"

"Yes, yes. Well, here I am. How are things at the castle?"

His face took on some of the others' sullenness. "We were not welcome there."

"Not welcome? In my home? Who has told you so?"

A hint of coming satisfaction touched his lips with a smile. "The ladies three who dwell there, master. They said they spoke with your full knowledge and authority. I doubted them… but I am only mortal man."

"You will be welcome now, my friend. But first there is another matter I must discuss with you." I informed Tatra of the approach of my enemies, and of the effort I was soon going to require of him and his men. I did not tell him that I was not going to be inside the box at the time when he received it downriver; I could not expect him or his men, if they knew that, to defend the box as wholeheartedly as might be necessary. Tatra in turn told me of certain things that he had witnessed in the castle, before being excluded therefrom, and I was frowning when I took my departure from the gypsy camp.

Anna, Wanda, and Melisse knew of course by this time that I was coming home, as they would have known across the vast miles had some sharp stake of English yew been forced into my rib cage to drive my spirit out. They were waiting on the battlements when the chief bat came down out of a rainy midnight sky. Anna, fairest and boldest of the three, actually put out her wrist for me, with a mocking smile, as if she thought I might perch there like some pet bird.

Melisse, tall and dark, and Wanda, her shorter, fuller-breasted sister, were in the background, not quite daring such impertinence but brave enough to give out nervous little laughs when Anna was not punished instantly. I wanted to see exactly how matters stood here before I acted.

In tall man-form I stood with my back to the rainswept parapet and looked down at the three white faces looking up, and soon the laughter stopped.

"I am informed," I stated then, "that you are molesting the local people here. That you have abducted young men from the villages and held them prisoner. My orders were that you take no lovers nearer than a score of leagues, and that you take none by force-"

It may be that I have an extra sense for danger. Or it may have been some combination of hearing, subtle mental alarms, and the sight of unconcealable anticipation in the women's faces that warned me to spin round on guard. A peasant youth with lank blond hair and straggly, sprouting beard was rushing at me just inside the parapet, charging with a stout wooden spear, its sharp point fire-hardened, leveled at my midsection. I pushed the thrust aside with one hand, wrenched the weapon from him, and seized him in a killing grip.

But before my hands put on the force that would have crushed his spine I looked into his face. No secret agent of Van Helsing, this. Only a farm lad, strong as a young horse and handsome as a god, or had been before his strength was drained away through the six small red points that now marked his throat. He had spent almost his last strength in rushing to kill me, and now his eyes gazed back at mine almost indifferently.

I let him drop to the stone walk, picked up his weapon, broke it to splinters in my hands, and threw them into the abyss. All the while I was looking at the women.

Anna sighed, then raised her chin proudly as ever, returned my gaze, and waited. Melisse suddenly brought hands up to hide her face. "Oh, Vlad," cried Wanda, "he did come from more than a score of leagues away!" Then in a breaking voice she said: "I warned them not to try to kill you."

"Your cry of warning just now to me, my dear," I answered, "was so soft that I heard it not."

Then I went on, almost as if nothing had happened: "The Szgany are returning. And there come also some English folk, whom you are not to touch. As for your punishment, for disobeying my orders and then trying to take my life, the first part of it is this-to wait." Memories of old happiness with these women came to me as I looked at them, and made me smile; and first Wanda and then Melisse began to whimper in the rain.

Hardly a word more did I hear from any of them. I carried the peasant youth below, to what had once been Harker's room, and examined him. Despite all the blood that had been taken, he was not yet nosferatu, or at least his case was still doubtful. I pondered the situation and realized, with a sigh, that it was my duty as lord of Castle Dracula to restore him as best I could to his own home. There was not another living soul at hand whom I could entrust with such a mission, and after obtaining a horse and cart from Tatra I set out to do the task myself, despite the days that it must occupy.

Meanwhile there was my daily chore of keeping track of the Czarina Catherine at sea, by means of her splinters and dust that I kept in my possession. I continued to see to it that her winds were favorable, as if I were in fact depending on her in my race for home. Since the enemy were waiting for her at Varna, I had decided not to land her there at all, and so blew a few more well-chosen winds about the ship, with fogs so that her crew would be at a loss to know which way to steer and I could drive her where I willed.

By the time the crew knew fully what was happening to them they were in the mouth of the Danube at the port of Galatz, somewhat closer to my own domain than I had been in Bucharest.

The docks at Galatz were new and efficient, having been begun only in 1887, and the place was a thriving port. The unloading of the boxful of earth was seen to by my unwitting agent, one Immanuel Hildesheim, slurred by Harker in his journal as "a Hebrew of rather the Adelphia Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep." Hildesheim, acting under written instruction from a Mr. de Ville of London-a near relative and close friend of Dr. Corday, of course-gave the box over to Petrof Skinsky, whom I mentioned earlier in connection with my departure from my homeland.

The posse, when they learned of the ship's arrival in Galatz, lost no time in entraining there from Varna, a comparatively short journey of some three hundred miles by rail. They of course brought Mina along. As the train passed through Bucharest she stared out through its windows, hoping unreasonably to catch some sight of me.

In Galatz the adventurers interviewed Czarina Catherine's captain, a superstitious but opportunistic Scot who had suspected that something more than natural good luck was behind the astounding swiftness of his voyage, yet had clubbed his restive crew into submission and enjoyed the ride as being good for business. Information gleaned from the captain led Van Helsing and his men to Hildesheim, and thence to Skinsky, whose body with its throat cut was found in a nearby churchyard just as they were asking for him. I suppose he had tried to cheat the Slovaks in some way, and was killed by them, but of course the implication in my enemies' records is that I was responsible for his death.

Exhaustion was setting in among the hunters, who for a time lay about dispiritedly in their several rooms at the Galatz hotel. Quincey nursed his scalp wound, that was somehow never mentioned in any of their journals. Mina began to fear that they might not, after all, push on to the conclusion she and I were trying so hard to arrange. She therefore decided to spur them on by drawing up a logical-though of course fallacious-chain of reasoning, showing where the box that had become their grail was now most likely to be found.

Although I had no hand in formulating Mina's report it was quite accurate about the coffin's location. Of course its usefulness to my foe rested, as she knew full well, upon two false premises: first, that I could not move, or chose not to move, toward my home by my own efforts, but preferred to be conveyed by others; and second, that I was within the box that had come by ship. When she had finished presenting her report and logical analysis to the men they were delighted by it and reinvigorated for the chase, and she promptly got out of their way again. Van Helsing himself paid her intelligence a verbal tribute which was perhaps somewhat tarnished by the words with which he closed his speech: "Now, men, to our council of war…"

Mina's conclusion was that my box was being shipped by water closer to Castle Dracula, and so Arthur and Jonathan were detailed to take up the pursuit by chartered steam launch, ascending the river Sereth toward its junction with the Bistrita, which latter stream, as Mina had noted, ran "up round the Borgo Pass. The loop it makes is manifestly as close to Dracula's castle as can be got by water." Quincey and Dr. Seward, accompanied at first by two men to look out for their spare horses, were to follow generally along the right bank of the Sereth, being ready to take action on land wherever the box carrying the vampire might be put ashore.

As for Van Helsing, he had his own goals in view and after a short rest in Galatz was ready to pursue them:

I will take Madam Mina right into the heart of the enemy's country. Whilst the old fox is tied in his box, floating on the running stream whence he cannot escape to land… we shall go in the track where Jonathan went, from Bistrita over the Borgo, and find our way to Castle Dracula. Here, Madam Mina's hypnotic power will surely help… there is much to be done, and other places to be made sanctify, so that that nest of vipers be obliterated.

Harker was ready to leave his wife, to go himself aboard the launch, where he assumed the chances of coming to grips with me would be the best; but he was not at once convinced that Mina should be taken toward my castle any farther. "Do you mean to say, Professor Van Helsing, that you would bring Mina, in her sad case and tainted as she is with that devil's illness, right into the jaws of his death trap? Not in the world! Not for heaven or hell!"

But his sales resistance could not hold out against the old maestro of obfuscation:

The professor's voice, as he spoke in clear, sweet tones, which seemed to vibrate in the air, calmed us all: "Oh, my friend, it is because I would save Madam Mina from that awful place that I would go. God forbid that I should take her into that place. There is work-wild work-to be done there, that her eyes may not see. We men here, all save Jonathan, have seen with our own eyes what is to be done before that place can be purify

… if the count escape us this time… he may choose to sleep him for a century, and then in time our dear one "-and he took Mina by the hand-"would come to keep him company, and would be as those others that you, Jonathan, saw. You have told us of their gloating lips; you heard their ribald laugh as they clutched the moving bag that the count threw to them. You shudder; and well may it be. Forgive me that I make so much pain, but it is necessary, my friend. Is it not a dire need for the which I am giving, possibly my life? If it were that anyone went into that place to stay, it is I who have to go to keep them company."

The vision of Van Helsing as a vampire is one before which my imagination balks; this is doubtless only a shortcoming on my part; he may have been well fitted for the role, since as we have seen he had already the power, by means of speech, to cast his victims into a stupor. At any rate, Harker in his confused anxiety was made to feel that it was he who was somehow endangering his own wife: "Do as you will," said Jonathan, with a sob that shook him all over. "We are in the hands of God!"

Mina's own feelings were very complex at this point. But she was stirred to see how the men threw themselves and their fortunes into the preparations for their final assault on Castle Dracula and its dread lord: "Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, so true, and so brave! And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money!" That is my girl, as they say, in a nutshell.

On October thirtieth the three-pronged drive of my enemies was launched. Van Helsing took Mina by train to Veresti, where the professor planned to buy a carriage and press on to the Borgo Pass. Jonathan and Arthur, the latter an amateur steamfitter of some standing, to judge by the skill with which he effected several repairs en route, started chugging up the Sereth. In two days they reached the Bistrita, meanwhile receiving from the river folk occasional reports of the Slovaks' boat that was carrying my box ahead of them. Quincey Morris and Seward meanwhile had rather a dull ride of it, trotting across country with no real excitement until they joined forces with the river-borne party near the end… or what they all took to be the end.

Van Helsing's journey with Mina was somewhat more lively, though nowhere near as eventful as it would have been if I had been as intent on his destruction as he imagined. The professor recorded in his diary that their carriage "got to the Borgo Pass just after sunrise" on the morning of November third. The several closely following entries are rather muddled and probably unreliable, for he records that they did not come near the castle itself until the sun was "low down" on the afternoon of the following day. This would seem to mean that nearly two full days of driving were needed to cover a distance which I as coachman traversed in a couple of hours with Harker as my passenger, on a night when I did some deliberate doubling back and made frequent stops looking for treasure. Perhaps the professor and Mina-both of them by now, for different reasons, in peculiar psychological states-actually dozed in their seats through many of the daylight hours, whilst the horses stood idle, or sought their own path among the few available.

This daylight-dozing theory may be strengthened by Van Helsing's statement that he was awake most of the night of November third to fourth to keep a fire going. Mina seemed to have given up eating, he wrote, "and I like it not." During the night he several times nodded into slumber, each time awakening to discover her "lying quiet, but awake, and looking at me with so bright eyes." At the same time she was in general "so bright and tender and thoughtful" that his fears were somewhat allayed.

Still, by the night of November fourth to fifth, he again "began to fear that the fatal spell of the place was upon her, tainted as she is with vampire baptism," And now Castle Dracula was indubitably in sight, even in reasonable hiking distance, and he set up a sort of base camp.

Mina still professed not to be hungry, and-though she really made little effort to do so-apparently could not cross a circle of crumbled host that she watched him make around her. This, he told Mina, was for her own protection. Van Helsing himself of course was armored by all his usual freight of herbs and religious paraphernalia.

After dark the horses screamed, and amid snow flurries the three women of the castle appeared, taking form slowly in the outer reaches of the firelight. From Harker's descriptions Van Helsing "knew the swaying round forms, the bright hard eyes, the white teeth, the ruddy color, the voluptuous lips…" For some reason voluptuous was a favorite word of the professor.

Alas for Anna, Wanda, and Melisse. I had warned them against touching any of the expected "English," and now, too late, they were being obedient to the letter of my orders. But still of course they must go out and gibber at Van Helsing in the night, and drink his horses' blood, and call to Mina to come and join them as a sister. Perhaps they thought to send Van Helsing screaming in panic and fleeing like a peasant down the mountainside, rushing over a precipice in blind terror. They did not know his name, of course. I had not told them that…

They were disobedient subjects, not once but again and again. In the old days such behavior would quite likely have brought them to the wooden stake whilst they still breathed… has it occurred to you that impalement is the one punishment equally enforceable upon a vampire and a breathing man or woman? Some say now that I was known as Vlad the Impaler whilst I still breathed. Bah, to be remembered for mere gory butchery, no matter how just or necessary, and to have all guiding purpose and ideals forgotten…

Never mind. I had tolerated far too long the three women's disobedience, which had then culminated in treachery to me and assaults upon the innocent. Certainly if things were to fall out so that Mina had to join me at the castle at once, I did not want those three around to spit with jealousy and bother her.

Seward at dawn on November fifth "saw the body of Szgany… dashing away from the river with their leiter wagon. They surrounded it in a cluster, and hurried along as though beset." This was indeed Tatra and some of his most faithful men, who, according to my orders, had taken the box unopened from the boat and were rushing it toward the castle. By this time Jonathan and Arthur had seen their vessel suffer its final breakdown, had somehow commandeered horses, and were riding in pursuit as well.

Meanwhile I had returned to Castle Dracula from my errand of duty with the unfortunate peasant, arriving just before dawn; and now, congealed in man-shape by the morning light, I squinted against the sun's rays to make out a human figure that was climbing alone toward my forbidding walls. When I recognized Van Helsing my grip tightened on the edges of the embrasure through which I watched until the old stones gave up flakes into my hands. But I meant to let him have his way, convince himself that he had sterilized my house. Mina was far more important to me than any thing or person he might destroy within that gloomy pile.

I remained in my high, comparatively sunny observation post, where I thought he was not very likely to come looking for me. Soon after he reached my front door far below a hollow booming began to reverberate up through the courts and rooms between. Later I discovered that the professor had been prudently knocking loose the hinges of those great entrance doors, not wishing to be trapped inside by any misfortune, or vampirish plan. He used a handy hammer that he had lugged up in his bag, and for which he meant to find other employment as well.

As he wrote later, he was working on the doors when he thought he heard "afar off the howl of wolves. Then I bethought me of my dear Madam Mina…" He had left her sleeping alone in the snow, wrapped in rugs for warmth but protected by nothing else more substantial than his ring of crumbled Host. If she had never drunk from my veins she very likely would have perished from exposure. And had those wolves been looking for their breakfast… but as matters stood they were sent by me to find her and stand guard.

Van Helsing of course did not know this. The dangers Mina might be facing put him, as he wrote, "in terrible plight. The dilemma had me between his horns." Though he expected that his Holy Circle would guard her from vampires by day or night, "yet even there would be the wolf."

But he was not the man to let the wolf's real fangs on Madam Mina's skin, or the dilemma's figurative horns upon his own, turn him aside from his objective now so near at hand within the castle.

I resolve me that my work lay here, and that as to wolves we must submit, if it were God's will. At any rate it was only death and freedom beyond. So did I choose for her.

As for himself:

I knew that there were at least three graves to find-graves that are inhabit; so I search, and search, and I find one of them. She lay in her vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do murder.

Now, Professor, why on earth should you have felt that way, do you suppose?

Ah, I doubt not that in old time, when such things were, many a man who set forth to do such a task as mine found at the last that his heart fail him and then his nerve. So he delay, and delay, and delay, until the mere beauty and the fascination of the wanton Un-Dead have hypnotize him; and he remain on and on, till sunset come, and the vampire sleep be over. Then the beautiful eyes of the woman open

In my time I have known an ugly vampire wench or two; theirs is a sad lot.

and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss-and man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the Vampire fold…

No such weakness for Van Helsing himself, of course; though he admitted that he: was moved to a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyze my faculties… I was lapsing into sleep, the open-eyed sleep of one who yields to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow-stilled air a long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me like the sound of a clarion. For it was the voice of my dear Madam Mina that I heard.

This yowl seems to me more likely to have issued from the throat of one of the guardian wolves than from the lady herself; however that may be, the professor did not bother to check on Mina's position vis-a-vis the wolves, but turned back to the "horrid task" from which he had been distracted. He soon: found by wrenching away tomb tops one other of the sisters, the other dark one. I dared not pause to look on her as I had on her sister, lest once more I should begin to be enthrall; but I go on searching until, presently, I find in a great high tomb as if made to one much beloved that other fair sister… she was so fair to look upon, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely

Guess what?

voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me… made my head whirl with new emotion.

Of course he was not put off by human instincts. After desecrating another Host by dropping it within my own disappointingly empty sarcophagus, he nerved himself to face his "terrible task… had it been but one, it had been easy, comparative. But three! To begin twice more after I had been through a deed of horror…"

He does not record the order in which he took his victims, but I can testify that fair Anna was the last. It bothered me that at the end she screamed my name. And when I felt something within me trying to move and melt at that mere sound, I knew I had already changed; that my sojourn to England and my love of Mina had not been without profound effect… but whether this changing, softening, in me was for good or ill I could not have said.

So the professor thrice dutifully endured "the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam." Then before leaving the castle he "so fixed its entrances that never more" could the rightful proprietor "enter there Un-Dead." It is hard to imagine what means he employed toward this end. Surely particles of transsubstantiated bread would have ceased to resemble bread, and therefore ceased to be the body of God, within a few months at the most. At any rate, I noted no impediment when I went out or in.

There remains but little to be told. Weary from daylight, from my long though indirect exposure to the sun, I descended from the castle and waited in the last light of afternoon beside a rocky outcropping, along the road by which the Szgany soon must come. From the distance my ears brought me the sounds of their flight with their wagon, and from farther still I heard the hoofbeats of the Furies who had pursued them all the daylight hours. As I waited, my wolves came now and then to give me dumb report, by howls, and head pointings, and flashing wordless thought. I saw how the chase must end, and smiled. And I knew also of Mina not far away, now with the professor back at her side, both of them watching the approaching chase.

I called great blasts of wind and snow about me as I stepped out into the road before the gypsies' wagon, halting their horses more with my felt presence than any sight they could have of my upraised arm.

"Master!" cried out Tatra, joyful in the driver's seat. "I thought-" He turned in puzzlement to look at the heavy box that rode behind him. The Szgany around him reined their plunging horses in.

"There is no time to explain now, my loyal ones," I said, springing up into the wagon. I set my fingers beneath the box's lid and opened it, wrenching screws and nails free. "Drive on! And as we go, do one of you nail this down again. Above all, remember, they must not uncrate me till the sunset."

I flattened myself down within the box, upon the alien earth that gave no rest nor peace, and waited, calling down blessings on my loyal men. How, in cold alien England, could I ever have set such an ambush for my enemies? Willing arms beat down the lid above me whilst the wagon lurched underway again and gathered speed.

As we sped I called more wolves together and set them running on the heels of my pursuers. There I held them, for a diversionary attack at the last moment should one be needed.

I know when sunset's coming, even if the day be overcast, or black as night with clouds. That day was partly cloudy, with the snow coming and going like curtains drawn across the rocky, piny landscape. Believe me well, I knew to the moment when sunset was due upon that day. After four centuries' dependence on it there was no way that I could fail to know.

Our horses labored. Those of the foe grew nearer and nearer still. Then all at once and nearly simultaneously two voices, Harker's and Morris's, cried out in English: "Halt!" Through the wooden lid above me I could hear contending voices, those of my foes and friends, and then the wagon stopped. I needed but a few moments more, a very few… I decided to risk it without calling in the wolves.

The astronomer, the meteorologist, the artist, each have their own definitions of the precise moment of sunrise or sunset. For me, sunset occurs when the mass of intervening earth grows great enough to sharply attenuate the flow of neutrinos-or whatever the proper title of this flux should be-that, emanating from the unshielded sun, hold in partial paralysis the deep nerve centers of the vampire brain and body.

At the moment when the first of my enemies sprang upon the wagon the mass of an intervening mountain already blocked me from the sun. Mina, then at a slightly higher elevation and looking down with Van Helsing at the scene of struggle below, noted that "the castle of Dracula now stood out against the red sky, and every stone of its broken battlements was articulated against the light of the setting sun."

It was Harker himself who had boarded the wagon, and at once "with a strength which seemed incredible raised the great box and flung it over the wheel to the ground." Quincey Morris, though sustaining in the process a knife wound that was shortly to prove fatal, bulldozed his way through the Szgany and joined Harker in prying off my lid. Seward and Lord Godalming were now at hand, sitting their weary horses with leveled Winchesters, against which my knife-carrying gypsies were powerless to interfere. As the lid fell free I looked toward the western sky, from which the sun had just that moment gone, and felt my powers come. My timing had been fine; nay, I boast quite truthfully that it was perfect.

Mina shrieked as she saw her husband's knife cut through my throat.

… whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and vanished from our sight.

I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution there was in the face a look of peace such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.

And so shall I, my dear; for that look meant that my body, lanced with metallic pain at heart and throat, found anesthesia in the balm of victory as I changed form to mist, which, flowing away unnoticed amid the flurrying snow, was soon invisible to all who might have watched it…

I had thought that Van Helsing or Seward or even one of the others might be bothered by the metallic means-involving no wood, nor garlic-with which I had been, to all appearances, so easily dispatched. There was also a lack of "screeching," "plunging," and "lips of bloody foam," all of which phenomena had accompanied each of their previous lynchings of my race. But I need not have worried. My hunters were emotionally and physically worn out, one and all, and more than ready to find the play utterly satisfying as it stood. Even Mina's subconscious mind had been satisfied-for, even as she screamed to see my death-not knowing at the moment whether or not it might be real-the mark of the vampire vanished from her forehead, never to return. She was able to run out of Van Helsing's Holy Circle at last, to comfort Morris in his dying moments and throw her arms about her husband. The gypsies had scattered and fled, and I, in mist-form amid the blowing snow, took my own leave…

For a few hours…

The snow ceased shortly after sunset, and the ensuing night was bitter cold. My enemies made camp in the open-their own fears and perhaps the consciences of some of them would hardly have let them rest inside the walls of Castle Dracula that night. They built up a fire against wolves-my disturbed children were still howling in the distance-and planned to take turns standing watch. But one by one they all sank into fitful sleep around the ebbing flames, till one person only remained awake, she who had begun to learn to make the night her day.

I deepened the slumber of the others and then I came and stood in the far firelight, where her restlessly watching eyes could not fail to see me.

Automatically at her first sight of me her hand went up to her forehead once again, to reassure itself of unmarked smoothness there. She looked around at all the men, then got to her feet and came toward me, placing her sturdy boots carefully upon the frozen ground. I could tell even at a distance that something had changed. What, precisely, I could not say. But suddenly I was wary.

"Vlad," Mina said, briskly and without preamble, as she came up, "you have given me your assurance that I have nothing to fear in the way of-of permanent physical consequences, as a result of our relationship to date. Is that not so?"

"It is." I bowed, without taking my careful eyes from hers.

"It is a matter of some importance that this should be so, now," she went on, and paused to emit a faint belch. "Excuse me."

"You have been reluctant to eat? That should vanish soon, as your stigma has already done. I told you these manifestations in you were merely the result of Van Helsing's hypnotic-"

"This has nothing to do with Van Helsing, or with hypnotism," she interrupted brusquely. "The fact is that I am pregnant."

My mouth opened but I could find no words.

"I am pregnant, and I intend to take no chances with the welfare of my child-to-be. I am saying goodbye to you now, Vlad. Do you understand?"

I could but nod.

It was the summer of 1897, I believe, when Mina and her good Jonathan, along with Lord Godalming and Dr. Seward-who were by then encumbered with their own wives and infants-and of course with you-know-who acting as mentor and guide, journeyed once more to my fair land. I suppose that, as before, the peasants waggled fingers and blessed themselves with prayers and incantations upon learning the pilgrims' destination as they passed; that sort of thing does not change much in six or seven years.

Although by now, of course, Castle Dracula is almost obliterated, from truthful memories as well as from the landscape, the tourists in 1897 found it but little changed. I am sure that Mina had to put forth some effort to persuade them-to persuade her husband, at any rate-to make the journey; if I were he I would not have chosen Transylvania for my holiday.

I knew that she was on her way, across the miles… I knew. And of course I knew it also when she walked into the ruined courtyard of the castle on a day of birdsongs and summer light and here and there a climbing flower.

After chatting with the others of her party for a while over this and that item of the architecture she descended alone toward what I might call my public tomb-which is the one Van Helsing had already found. There was and is another, much more private, and not far away.

With all the sunlight up above, even the dim underground chamber was almost bright as day. Before the impressive monument that bears my name, Mina stood for a long moment with her head bowed. Then turned-and I was waiting for her, sitting casually upon a lesser slab nearby.

"You startled me," she said, raising one hand toward her breast in a Victorian maiden's gesture that she gave up on halfway through, beneath my gaze. Then she asked: "How is it with you, Vlad?"

"Well enough. I continue to-pursue my destiny." I made a vague gesture, not knowing, myself, quite what I meant. "And you?"

The voices of the rest of her party were audible somewhere above, a childish treble among them. A slight shadow crossed Mina's face and I divined its meaning, and went on: "The child is innocent of me and mine. The bloodstreams do not mingle in the womb." So I thought then; latterly, men of science are no longer quite so sure.

"Two children, Vlad. I have borne twins."

"Then both are innocent. But what if they were not? There are worse fates in this world than to be a vampire." On Lucy, Mina's daughter, I will have no comment now, for she was still alive the last I heard. But certainly Quincey, her son, kept to breathing all his short life; he needed bayonets and hand grenades to drain the blood of others, and it was German iron that drank his, in 1916 at the Somme.

Mina's face cleared and we stood looking at each other, and she seemed to be wondering what to say next. But gradually she began to smile and shook her head at me. "Vlad, Vlad. There have been times in England, in the bright sunshine, when-forgive me, but when I have doubted your very existence."

"Oh? But that is all right. Every year there are fewer and fewer people who believe in me. But if they all forget me I will be here anyway, like an artifact of some lost civilization."

"Oh, Vlad! Your life is such a lonely one. And for six years you have been here waiting." I had not been waiting entirely unaccompanied, but saw no reason to correct her estimate.

Above, sharp careless footsteps of a small throng resounded on stone vaulting, drawing closer now, and a high voice was raised: "Mummy! Mummy, are you down there?"

I reached Mina in one silent bound, planted a kiss upon her lips, and pressed something into her hand. I was held in man-shape by the daylight, but still those were my grounds and I knew them well. By the time two children came racing into the vault I was out of sight, but watching.

"Mummy, mummy, there you are. Ohh, what's this? Tombstones!"

Then Harker himself, gray and solid and growing a little portly, strolled in and came to a sudden stop as he realized what chamber he had entered. "Lord," he murmured, "I never thought to see the day when we could stand here in calm safety."

"I came to offer up a prayer, Jonathan," his wife said. "For him." Her husband was not looking at her, and her eyes flicked in the direction where I had disappeared. "That we may meet someday in-in a happier place than this."

"How lovely of you, my sweet, to pray for him," Harker murmured, and gave her hair a little proprietary touch, which must have disarranged it, for a small restorative fingering by her own hand followed in a moment. "What have you there in your hand, Mina?"

"Why, it's a gold ring. It was here in a crevice between the paving stones, and I picked it up. Do you think I might be allowed to keep it?"

"I don't see why not, my dear. I believe the proper owner is not likely to come looking for it now. Ha, hum. Quincey, Lucy, show some respect, do not sit on the tombstones, please."

Have I seen Mina since? Why yes, I must admit, a time or two.

Jonathan died of apoplexy, raging at Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Mina lived to be ninety-five, and breathed her last in an Exeter nursing home in 1967, and was interred in her family's plot nearby. In St. Peter's Cemetery, as a matter of fact, not far from this very snowdrift where we sit…

Van Helsing, God rest his own perturbed soul, was right about one thing at least…

When I have mixed my blood with theirs, often enough, they all must walk after they appear to die. Exceptions are extremely rare. Some, like Lucy Westenra, bestir themselves in a mere three days or less. With some it takes three years or more. Modern embalming methods are to be considered, for if the vampire heart is nearly destroyed it needs a long time to regrow. But it will do so, if destruction is not utterly complete. But after that regrowth, more healing time will pass, time in which the buried body, still quiescent, restores itself inexorably to youth. And after that…

The bond has stretched twixt Mina and myself, but never broken. And I have come here tonight to welcome her into a new life. A life in which I trust she will find, despite its continuation of earthly sorrows, some great joys too, unknown to those who merely breathe… Mina!

The tape ends shortly, the only sounds on its remaining length being the hissing of snow and wind around the windows of the car, and what some listeners describe as faint and distant peals of laughter, one feminine and gay, one masculine and deep.