The Dracula Tape

by
Fred Saberhagen

The following is a transcript of a tape found in a recorder in the back seat of an automobile belonging to Mr. Arthur Harker of Exeter, two days after the freakishly heavy Devon snowstorm in January of this year. Mr. Harker and his wife, Janet, both suffering from exposure and exhaustion, were admitted to All Saints Hospital, in Plymouth, on the morning following the height of the storm. They spoke of abandoning their auto on an impassable road near midnight, but seem never to have given any convincing explanation for leaving the relative security of their vehicle at an hour when the storm was at its worst, nor of exactly how they reached Plymouth. All Saints Hospital is some thirty kilometers from where their car was found in a drift on the Upham Road, just outside St. Peter's Cemetery and virtually on the edge of Dartmoor. The Harkers' physical condition and the state of their clothing upon arrival at the hospital suggests that they may have walked across country. Their car was undamaged when found, and although all its doors and windows were locked the key was still in the ignition, which had been turned off. The petrol tank was approximately one-third full.

The voice on the tape is masculine and rather deep. It speaks English with an indefinable slight accent. Three linguistics experts consulted have given three divergent opinions regarding the speaker's native tongue.

The general quality of the tape, and the background noises detectable thereon, are, in the opinion of technical experts, consistent with the hypothesis that the tape was in fact recorded in an automobile, engine running at idling speed, heater and blowers operating, with gusts of high wind outside.

The Harkers dismiss the tape as "some joke," profess no interest in it, and refuse all further comment. It was first played by rescue workers who found the car and thought the recorder might hold some emergency message from its occupants. They brought the tape to the attention of higher authorities because of the references to violent crimes which it contains. No external evidence has been found to connect the tape with the alleged vandalism and grave robbing at St. Peter's Cemetery, now under investigation.

… this switch, then my words will be set down here electrically for the world. How very nice. So, if we are going to tell the truth at last, then what real crimes can I be charged with, what sins so utterly damning and blastable?

You will accuse me of the death of Lucy Westenra, I suppose. Ah, I would swear my innocence, but what is there to swear by that you would now believe? Later, perhaps, when you have begun to understand some things, then I will swear. I embraced the lovely Lucy, it is true. But never against her will. Not she nor any of the others did I ever force.

At this point on the tape another voice, unidentifiable, whispers an indecipherable word or two.

Your own great-grandma Mina Harker? Sir, I will laugh like a madman in a moment, and it is centuries since I have laughed, and no, I am not mad.

Probably you have scarcely believed one single thing that I have said to you this far. But I mean to go on talking anyway, to the machine, and you may as well listen. The morning is far off, and at present none of us have any place to go. And you two are well armed, in your own estimation at least, against anything that I might try to do to you. Heavy spanner clutched in your white-knuckled right hand, dear Mr. Harker, and at your good wife's lovely throat hangs something that should do you more good, if all reports are true, than even such an estimable bludgeon. The trouble is that all reports are never true. I'm the last stranger you'll ever welcome into your car out of a storm, I'll wager. But I intend you no harm. You'll see, just let me talk.

Lucy I did not kill. It was not I who hammered the great stake through her heart. My hands did not cut off her lovely head, or stuff her breathless mouth-that mouth-with garlic, as if she were a dead pig, pork being made ready for some barbarians' feast. Only reluctantly had I made her a vampire, nor would she ever have become a vampire were it not for the imbecile Van Helsing and his work. Imbecile is one of the most charitable names that I can find for him…

And Mina Murray, later Mrs. Jonathan Harker. In classic understatement I proclaim I never meant dear Mina any harm. With these hands I broke the back of her real enemy, the madman Renfield, who would have raped and murdered her. I knew what his intentions were, though the doctors, young Seward and the imbecile, could not seem to fathom them. And when Renfield spelled out to my face what he intended doing to my love… ah, Mina.

But that was long ago. She was an old, old woman when she went to her grave in 1967.

And all the men on the Demeter. If you have read my enemies' version of events I suppose you will tax me with those sailors' lives as well. Only tell me why, in God's name why, I should have murdered mem… What is it?

At this point a man's voice, conditionally identifiable as that of Arthur Harker, utters the one word nothing.

But of course. You did not realize that I could speak the name, of God. You are victims of superstition, sheer superstition, which is a hideous thing, and very powerful indeed. God and I are old acquaintances. At least, I have been aware of Him for much longer than you have, my friends.

Now I can see you are going to wonder whether the crucifix at the lady's throat, from which you have begun to derive some small measure of comfort, is really efficacious at all in present company. Do not worry. Believe me, it is every bit effective against me as-as that heavy spanner in the gentleman's right hand would be.

Now sit still, please. We have been cut off alone in this snowstorm for an hour now, and it was half an hour, not until you tried to watch me in the rear-view mirror, before you even began to believe my name, were convinced I was not joking. Not pulling your legs, as I believe the idiom has it. You were quite careless and unguarded at the first. If I had wanted to take your lives or drink your blood the gory deeds would now be done.

No, my purpose in your car is innocent. I would like you just to sit and listen for a while, as I try once more to justify myself before humanity. Even in the remote fastnesses where most of my time is spent, I have caught wind of a new spirit of toleration that supposedly moves across the face of the earth in these last decades of the twentieth century. So once more I will try… I chose your car because you happened to be driving here tonight-no, let me be strictly truthful, some arrangements were made to cause you to come along this way-and because you, sir, are a lineal descendant of a dear old friend of mine, and because I have learned that you habitually carry this tape recorder in your car. Yes, and even the snowstorm has been arranged, a little bit. I wanted this chance to offer this testament, for myself and others like me.

Not that there is anyone else quite like me… Sir, I perceive by the condition of the ashtrays that you are a smoker, and I would wager you would like to smoke. Go ahead, put your spanner down in handy reach, and puff away. The lady too might like a cigarette, at such a trying time as this. Ah… thank you, but I do not indulge, myself.

We are going to be here for a while… I have seen few snowstorms heavier than this, even in the high Carpathians. Without doubt the roads will be impassable until sometime tomorrow at the earliest. Lacking snowshoes, it would take a wolf to get about in snow like this, or something that can fly…

I suppose you'll want to know, or others will, why I should bother with this apologia pro vita sua. Why, at this late date, attempt to defend my name? Well, I change as I grow older-yes, I do-and some things, for example a certain kind of pride, that were once of great moment to me are now no more than dust and ashes in my tomb. Like Van Helsing's desecrated fragment of the Host, which there went back to dust.

I have been there myself, there in my tomb, but not to stay. Not yet to stay beneath the massive stone on which the one word's carved, just… Dracula.