Dracula (A Modern Telling) (24 page)

“There must be someone we can call? The police or the FBI or somebody?”

Van Helsing laughed. “You mean the vampire division of the Boston PD? No, my friend, we are alone. No one would believe us. And besides, he is powerful and rich. His lawyers would eat us for breakfast should we defame him. He must simply be killed. There is no other way.” He took a few more puffs and then threw his cigar on the ground. “Let’s go.”

We walked across the street, the five of us, and I noticed for the first time that Van Helsing was carrying the machete and spear that had been used on Lucy. I also noticed a large crucifix strapped to his belt. Arthur and Quincy had guns, and Jonathan, like me, had nothing. He appeared confused and afraid but too involved in this insanity to leave.

Mina’s apartment complex consisted of five buildings and her unit was in the first one. We climbed the stairs and Van Helsing stood outside the door. He nodded to Quincy, who was the biggest among us, and pointed to the door. Quincy took a deep breath and said, “Hope you’re right about this,” before bashing in the door with his shoulder.

The door flung open and we rushed in, Van Helsing ahead of us. In the bedroom, we saw a man, a young handsome man, on top of Mina. She screamed when she saw us and the man leapt off of her onto the floor. But he was no longer a man. His skin had grown scales and his face contorted to something like a gargoyle’s. His teeth now protruded from his mouth and horrible wings flapped behind him. He appeared like some monstrous bat.

Van Helsing held up his crucifix and began the Lord’s
Prayer. Dracula laughed as the crucifix caught fire and Van Helsing had to drop it to the floor.

“You think you can destroy me? I served the cross, commanded nations, hundreds of years before the birth of your grandfathers.”

“You tortured and murdered thousands of prisoners. And for what? You lost your kingdom anyway.”

“I was betrayed. And look what your God has done to me!

“Your war with God is over!”

Van Helsing pulled
out a vile of what appeared like water and threw it on Dracula, continuing with the Lord’s Prayer.

“She
is now mine,” the creature said.

“No!” Van Helsing shouted
.

Jonathan
grabbed one of Quincy’s guns. “Mina!” She jumped at him as he fired at the creature, pushing his arm. His shot missed the creature’s head and hit his shoulder. The creature roared so loudly it shattered the windows just as he formed himself into rats. Hundreds of filthy rats that ran over my feet as they scurried out of the room.

Mina screamed, “No! Do not leave me.”

October 3-CONT

It was later that night that we sat in Mina’s living room as Jonathan and Van Helsing attempted to calm her down in the bedroom. She
was suffering from an acute hysteria that reminded me much of Renfield back at the hospital, and it made me wonder what exactly he was up to right then.

After long hours, they came out of the bedroom, Mina appearing ashen white, and they sat down at the dining table as Van Helsing went to the fridge and got beers for everyone. They sat at the table and I could hear them speaking.

“Dracula fears us,” Van Helsing said.

“No,” Mina replied, “his mind is calm.”

“How do you know?”

“He speaks to me. I can hear his voice.”

“He has a strong mind connection to you. His heart was strong enough to survive the grave. I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“You sound almost like you admire him.”

“I do. In life, he was as great a man as you can hope to have. A Constantine or a Caesar or Alexander. But he chose a different path.”

“I
… I’m becoming like him,” said Mina. “I can feel it.”

He leaned forward and pulled out a gold watch, letting it dangle before him. “I want you to help me find him, Mina. I’m going to hypnotize you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then you will allow me to do it?”

“Yes.”

“Look at this watch. Do not look at anything but his watch and listen to the sound of my voice. You see nothing but this watch. Your mind is blank and your eyes are getting heavy. Your muscles are flexing themselves, starting with your toes. They curl into the floor and then release and when they release, all your tension is released with them. And now
your calves … and now your thighs….”

Van Helsing went on like this for another four or five minutes before I saw Mina’s eyes close and her head begin to bob in a hypnotic s
tate. I experienced hypnosis in medical school and have used it several times myself, but it is not much addressed, as it remains a complete mystery to medical science. Though we like to attack Freud, the only explanation for hypnosis is a bypassing of the conscious for the unconscious.

“He calls to me,” Mina whispered.

“What do you hear, child? What do you see?”

“My
prince calls to me over cold seas. He is traveling home, where he will grow strong. And I will go to him and join him in his castle.”

October 4

We discussed into the early morning exactly what Mina meant. Jonathan thought she might’ve meant the Los Angeles home owned by the band, but Van Helsing didn’t think so. He thought Dracula was going to his ancestral home, in a nation that doesn’t exist anymore. Somewhere in Romania.

A discussion was had about whether authorities should be involved. Quincy, a former marine, thought that the military might be able to help.

“They can’t,” Van Helsing said. “And even if they could, as you’ve seen, bullets do nothing. We must go to him. To his home and face him there. And don’t think, any of you, that you can run from this. He’s now seen all of your faces. He will haunt your dreams until the day comes when he visits you as he did Lucy. We must kill him, there is no other way.”

We booked flights for London
for the next day and from there to Bucharest. Van Helsing, who’s been there before, said that the only way to get where we’re going is to take a train from Bucharest and then a carriage to the village that’s our destination.

Tonight, I made a visit to the hospital and let them know I would be gone at least a week. I checked on my patients and ensured that they were doing well. I wanted to see Renfield and went to his room.

“Where is he?” I asked an orderly walking by.

“Oh, sorry
Doc, you should talk to Dr. Fielding.”

Fielding was in his office surfing the
internet and sipping a Gatorade. He looked up from under his glasses. “Heard I have to cover another week for you.”

“Yeah, vacation. I appreciate it though, Tim.”

“Forget appreciate, you owe me. I’m going to the Bahamas in the spring and you can run the circus.”

“No problem. What happened to Renfield?”

“Oh, yeah, he passed away.”

“What? How?”

“Heart attack we think. Really strange actually. An orderly heard him talking to himself, begging for mercy, and then it went quiet and he was gone.”

“Why wasn’t I notified?”

“You were. Check your messages every once in a while.”

I left the room and promptly pulled out my cell phone. It
wouldn’t even turn on because it had run out of power and I hadn’t noticed.

Usually, when I get home and get into my own bed, I feel comforted in a way that pract
ically nothing else can do for me. But there was nothing comforting today. At one point, I reached over to the phone that was charging on the nightstand and began to dial Lucy’s number before I realized what I was doing. On nights like this, she was the one I would call to chat with.

A horrible image of Lucy’s head bouncing across a stone floor, a baby screaming
, and Arthur sobbing uncontrollably, it comes into my mind every so often and I have to fight to keep it out. I can’t help but wonder if I’m doing the right thing by going halfway across the world to fight some … creature … that I can’t even begin to understand. The only thing that gives me solace is Van Helsing’s knowledge. And the fact that I happen to know he never rushes into anything without fully exposing every angle to his ridiculously sharp mind. If he feels there is no one else that can do this task, there is no one else.

I toss
ed and turned a few hours and then reached for my phone again and stopped in mid-air. I grabbed the phone and threw it to the ground and turned away.

Octobe
r 5

I sat near Mina and Jonathan on the plane
, with Van Helsing next to me. Quincy and Arthur sat on the backend of the full flight and I could see them pounding beer after beer and growing louder.

Mina was asleep and Jonathan was stroking her hair. Van Helsing watched them and I could see pity in his eyes.

“The vampire’s baptized her with his blood. She’s dying, Jonathan. I’m sorry.”

Jonathan continued
to stroke her hair as if he hadn’t heard what Van Helsing had said. “I won’t let you go through this alone,” he whispered.

Mina open
ed her eyes and I realized she was awake the entire time. She took hold of Jonathan’s hand and reached out with the other to touch his gray hair. “What have I done to you?”

“I did this to us.”

“He’s coming closer, Jonathan. I can feel him.”

“Stay with me. You’re here. You’re safe.”

“I’m so cold.”

I watched them cuddle and felt suddenly very sad.
Sad for Mina, for Jonathan, and for Arthur. I know Lucy would not have been mine. I would have let she and Arthur marry in peace, and I felt sorry for the future that he lost.

We touched down and then waited at the airport a full six hours for our connecting flight.
I tried to occupy my mind by reading but there was no use to it. Van Helsing noticed and sat next to me. He reached over to my iPad and typed “Vlad Impaler” into Google.

“You really think this is the man we’re after?”

“Yes,” he said. “You saw him, Jack. You know what he is. Is this really so hard to believe?”

“It doesn’t feel real. I’m walking into walls, like in a dream.”

“The first time I was exposed to one of these creatures, I was nine years old. They came to my village in the night, several of them. We lived at the base of a mountain at least twenty miles from any other village. They began to systematically go through the homes attacking people. I saw from my bedroom window a young girl in the street that was surrounded by three of them. They taunted her first, like a cat to prey, and then tore her apart. They ripped off her limbs and bit into her skull. They don’t just drink blood, they eat flesh too when they wish, though I don’t believe they prefer it.

“We hid in the local church in the basement. The church was right next to our home so we were able to get there quickly. All
except my mother. She insisted on running upstairs first to retrieve my younger brother. My father and I and my two other siblings ran to the church. I never saw my mother again … but we slept in the church. The entire night I heard the screams of the dying. In the morning, the police were called and they attributed it to bandits. Bandits … so I have known from that moment that I would kill these creatures wherever I found them. And their king. If they have a king, it is this one we chase. Others of their kind have told me about him under … pressure.”

“What do you mean ‘pressure’? Are saying you’ve tortured these creatures?”

“You can’t torture something that’s already dead,” he said with a grin.

The countryside we flew over was some of the m
ost beautiful I have ever seen. The mountains were so tall they seemed to tear into the sky. It was mostly grasslands and snow-covered hills with rocky terrain, but you’d occasionally see a village or small town, all the buildings clustered together as if they had been poured into place from some container.

We landed at the airport and had to rush to catch our train. It was an older model train, something from the 1940s it seemed, but it was well maintained and had an air of elegance that the modern trains I’
ve been on have lacked.

“It’s an hour journey from here,” Van Helsing said, “and then four hours in
a van.”

“Sounds fun,” I said.

Everyone tried to sleep on the train and it appeared like they were succeeding, but I could not. I sat staring out the window. The sky was overcast and I hadn’t seen the sun since we entered this country. The people here, which we’d see when we passed some of them carrying items from one village to the next on horseback, looked like they came from a different century. It was quaint in a way that comforted me. It was pleasant knowing that places like this still existed.

I heard rustling and saw Mina come and sit across from me. She smiled as she bit into a piece of chocolate and then offered me some. I took a little and then turned to the window again.

“It’s pleasant here,” I said. “Like stepping back into a different time.”