Dracula (A Modern Telling) (2 page)

I saw a homeless couple having sex in a small park that w
as littered with used syringes. I saw a gang of kids fighting in the street and a police car drove by, glanced at them, and kept driving.

Amidst this, I saw museums, art galleries, and a coffee shop holding a poetry slam. It was like they were oblivious to the chaos going on outside.

But I’m tired now, and sitting out here as the sun sets is about the only thing in the world I can think of to do. I hear something in the distance though, like a car, but something’s off with it.

Here come
s the driver now! I’ll write again as soon as I can.

May 5
th

The Castle

The driver looked like he’d been on a heroin binge for the past two weeks. He stepped out of the car and came up to me and I could smell the stink of alcohol on his breath. The BO coming off of him made my nostrils burn.

“You Jon Harker?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait here.”

He went and talked to the elderly couple at the door of the hotel and they were speaking in a language I didn’t recognize but I would guess Polish or something similar. I kept hearing one word:
diavol
. I heard it enough that I was curious what it meant, so I got onto Google Translate and searched it in a few different languages. I got a hit on Romanian. It means, “Satan.”

I
gotta remember to ask the Count about all this superstitious BS with the elderly lady and the driver.

The car the Count had sent for me was unbelievable. I’d never seen anything like it. I think it was a Rolls Royce but not like any I’d ever seen. It had an air to it like it was a couple hundred years old
but looked like it just rolled off the factory floor.

The driver finally
left the couple and came over to me. He picked up my bags without a word and put them in the trunk. I was about to get in the passenger seat when I looked to the hotel one last time and saw someone in the window.

It was a middle-aged
woman, overweight with a white dress on. She made the sign of the cross and then closed the curtains. I hadn’t been aware anyone else was in the hotel, and at night I hadn’t heard anyone but the elderly couple moving around.

As we drove up to Holmby Hills,
I was astounded by the beauty of the area. The houses grew into mansions and the yards had peach and plum trees and I could picture gardeners busy at work trimming hedges and watering roses and tulips.

It was evening now and the sun was
still setting in the sky, painting it a golden orange and burning the clouds a light pink. It was beautiful in a way I can hardly describe. Maybe being so close to the Pacific does something to the senses, or maybe the sky just looks different with the ocean so near.

The driver stopped in front of a road going up farther on the hill. The road was gated off with metal spikes that had gold trim. We sat in a silence at least a couple of minutes before I asked him what was happening.

“We’re waiting for someone,” he said.

“Who?”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he turned on the radio. I’d expected heavy metal, like Blood Burn, but instead he was playing classical music, something by Liszt if my ear’s weren’t mistaken. So there we sat: in front of this road surrounded by mansions, until night fell. I tried one or two more times to speak with him but he was having none of it so I stopped and leaned the seat back and just listened to the music.

When darkness had completely surrounded us, and I was nearly fading off to sleep, I heard the roar of an engine in the distance and the screeching of tires. Up the road, I saw headlights barreling down the hill as the gates opened and the car came speeding toward us.

It was a black Mustang, and the only thing I could think is that the driver must be drunk or high. The car stopped next to us and I got a good look at his face. He was pale and his hair was long and greasy; both things I had seen in many roadies before, so nothing really alarming there.

“You’re early,” the driver of the other car yelled through the open window.

“He’s in a hurry.”

“No, I don’t think he is.
You’re in a hurry. You can’t deceive me.”

The lamplight hit the driver of the other car in such a way that I got a really good look at his face. His lips were ruby red with white pearls for teeth and he smiled as he saw that I had noticed him.

“Put Mr. Harker’s bags in my car.”

The driver of the Rolls did as he was told and I got out and went to climb into the passenger seat when I noticed there weren’t any door handles on the mustang.

“You have to climb in through the window.”

I stuck my head in and arms and the driver reached over and grabbed my left arm to help me in. I couldn’t believe his strength. He pulled me through like I
was a child getting into a car seat. No seatbelts were anywhere to be found, and as he sped away and flipped a U-turn, I could see the other driver. As we rode past him, he yelled something to me that I still don’t understand.

He yelled
, “The dead travel fast.”

May 5
th
, Continued

As we sped up the winding maze of the hill, I noticed that there was only one home—a mansion—but it was quite far away and I could only dimly see the lights on from the interior of the home. Both of the car windows were down and the night air was cold, though I could’ve sworn that it had been warm down in the valley.

“There
’s brandy underneath the seat,” the driver said, “if you get cold.”

I didn’t drink any
, though I really wanted some, because as we were speeding along the curves I noticed something: we were driving the same terrain over and over. I tried to use the mansion on top of the hill as a reference point and when I did so I knew it was true. We were driving in circles.

I wanted to ask the driver about it but to be honest he seemed a little out of his mind. I guessed he was
on meth and I knew from dealing with meth addicts—at a job I had as a counselor—that they’re really unpredictable and have savage mood swings. Being alone with him on a dark road away from civilization wasn’t the place I wanted to set him off. So, I held my tongue and didn’t say anything.

After a long period
of silent driving, I checked the clock on my iPhone: it was nearly midnight. I had to double check online at a few different sources because I thought something must be wrong with my phone, but it was fine. I don’t know where the time had gone because I know for a fact that we hadn’t been driving around for six hours. But the evidence was there in front of my face. I looked to the driver who must’ve sensed my alarm and he just gave me a grin and turned back to the road.

I thought about what the old woman had said about midnight
, and the anticipation of it sent an icy chill up my back. I’m not the superstitious type but something about being in this place at this time … I couldn’t think of anything else.

As midnight passed, I heard a dog begin to howl somewhere on the hill, hidden a
way by the thick trees and shrubs. It was a kind of sick, fearful howl, and it was taken up by another dog, and then another and another until it seemed like the whole night was filled with nothing but the howling of these dogs.

Howling came from every direction and it
appeared it would be stronger behind us and then shift up in front of us and then it would be right next to the car. They were circling us.

As the mind does, I grew accustomed to the sound. But the howling seemed to grow higher in pitch
, and I had never heard a dog in just that way. As far as I know, there are no wolves in LA. It must be some sort of coyote or dog hybrid.

Soon,
we were surrounded by trees and they arched over the roadway to a degree that made it appear like we were traveling through a tunnel. It continued to grow colder as we climbed farther up the hill, but as we approached the mansion, what the band had called “The Castle” in a prior interview, the howling of the animals faded and I was grateful.

As we drove I became suddenly aware of a light off to the side of the road. Not a light really, more of a flickering blue flame. We didn’t seem to be able to gain on it and out of nowhere the driver stopped the car.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

But he got out without a word, leaving the car running. He ran to the side of the road into the trees and disappeared. I thought about reaching over to shut his door in case one of those dogs appeared but before I could do so the driver reappeared, the blue flame behind him. I swear it felt like I was asleep because I kept seeing that incident over and over on some endless loop. And it caused the strangest optical effect: the driver was standing between
me and the flame, but I could still see the flame. The effect only lasted a second and when I turned my eyes away and glanced back, it was over.

But the driver darted to the other side of the road
, and as I watched him I became aware just how bright the moon was. It was nearly full and illuminated the space around us. In the roadway, surrounding us in a circle, were wolves.

The
ir teeth were bright white and the tongues a deep red. Bellowing at the moon, they seemed to look right at me. I began pounding on the horn, yelling for the driver to get back in. I reached for the door and one of the wolves darted for me. He leapt and I screamed.

I don’t know what happened next, but the wolf was gone. And I saw the driver again, standing in the middle of the road. He swept his arms from side to side and wolves disappeared into the trees.

The driver got in without a word and we started again. I was too frightened to ask anything so we rode in silence. We were enveloped in darkness now as the moon had seemingly disappeared. I figured it must be obscured by clouds, but there were none in the sky that I could see.

“What were those?” I said.

“Nothing.”

It was then that I saw the C
astle.

I didn’t think buildings like that existed in LA. It was massive and surrounded by grass and tall, dark trees. We pulled to a stop in front and I sat quietly as the driver
got out and took my bags from the trunk. He helped me out of the car and his grip was like a vise around my arm.

The mansion was made primarily of stone and much of it was carved in a classic Gothic style. I even saw gargoyles up on the roof staring down at us. It was exactly where I expected the vocalist for a band like
Blood Burn to live.

The driver, without a word to me, got back into his Mustang and took off back down the road. I shouted for h
im but he didn’t answer. Within a few seconds, I could no longer see his taillights, and I was alone.

I turned to the mansion and stared at it. No knocker or doorbell was on the massive wooden door
, which was decorated with metal spikes. I tried pounding on it for several minutes but no one answered.

I sat down on one of my bags and looked up to the sky. I could’ve walked around back but the incident with the wolves had shaken me
, so instead I decided I would wait out there until morning when someone was bound to come out of the house. But I soon realized it was way too cold to spend the night outside and I took out my phone to call a cab. I’d get a nice hotel and then be back to interview the Count in the morning.

I had no bars. I turned the phone off and on but nothing happened. I heard feet shuffling and the groaning of metal and wood as the door opened behind me.

Standing at the doorway was a tall man with black hair that came down to his shoulders. He wore leather pants and a see-through black shirt revealing a body laced with tattoos.

“Welcome to my house. Enter freely of your own will.”

He stood like a statue and didn’t motion at all for me to enter. He wasn’t blinking and wasn’t looking directly at me. As soon as I stepped through the threshold though, he became animated and stepped forward, taking my hand in his.

His hands were like ice. He shook
my hand with so much strength I nearly winced. He was so much like the driver that I wasn’t sure they weren’t the same person, and I asked nervously, “Are you the Count?”

He bowed his head slightly. “I’m Vlad Dracula. Thank you for coming to my house, Jonathan.” Before I could move, he took up my bags. I protested but he just said, “It’s late and all my assistants are gone. You’re my guest.”

He carried my bags up a set of winding stairs. The floors were cobbled stone, something I had never seen in America before, and our steps rang heavily through the house. The Count kicked open a door and inside I saw a well-lit room with a fire in a hearth. The Count placed my bags down and looked to me.

“Bathroom’s on the right, Jonathan. When you’re done, I’ve got dinner waiting in the next room.”

By now, the warmth of the fire and the courtesy Dracula had shown me had calmed my nerves, and I used the bathroom and washed my hands and face. I came out into the hallway. Paintings of what I guessed were long dead ancestors were up on all the walls along with weaponry from the ancient and medieval worlds. It didn’t surprise me: I’d been in plenty of rock stars’ homes and they all had peculiar tastes.