Slave Of Dracula (12 page)

Before the broken window, shorn of its protective wreaths, the whirling motes of moonlight began to
coalesce, Wotan’s red eyes burning within the core of their shadow.

In his dreams Renfield began to howl, though so deep was he under the chloral hydrate that even that
could not bring him out of his stupor, could not spare him the dream’s inevitable con-clusion.

***

He woke hanging in the straps of the padded room, sick from the chloral hydrate, the taste of blood
and filth in his mouth. Footsteps in the hall, Hennessey’s sloppy shuffle and another: “‘ere, Dr. Hennessey,
you know Dr. Seward doesn’t ‘old with strangers comin’ in an’ disturbin’ the patients.”

“Disturbing the patients?” Hennessey’s fruity chuckle glinted with a knife of hardness underneath. “My
dear Langmore, those poor souls are so disturbed already I doubt they’d know the dif-ference between
my good Herr Gelhorn here and yourself, or care if they did know. And there’s never been any proof that
it does them a particle of harm, no matter what Seward likes to say.” His voice lowered. Renfield could
almost see the nasty sidelong gleam of his eyes, and smell the reek of gin on his breath. “But if we’re
going to get into the subject of things Dr. Seward doesn’t hold with, I’m sure he has opinions about
keep-ers who help themselves to the laudanum in the dispensary. Opinions just as strong as his crochets
about students of the hu-man condition being admitted to observe the lunatics.”

Keys jangled.

“Now this gentleman, my dear Gelhorn, is a sad case indeed. A true wild man, he spends his days
catching and devouring spi-ders and flies, and sparrows, too, if he can get them. He’s a sort of pet of our
good Dr. Seward, whom he repaid last night by a murderous attack. When the keepers laid hold of him,
he was crawling on his belly, licking up Dr. Seward’s blood from the study floor.”

That’s a lie! Renfield wanted to scream at them, as the door opened to reveal Hennessey and his latest
paying “friend,” a weedy and anaemic-looking young man clothed in the old-fashioned tailoring typically
found east of the Rhine. Drunken bastard, it is a lie! That was only my dream. How dare you speak
of my dreams?

Young Herr Gelhorn stepped back in alarm, blinking pale eyes behind the square lenses of his
spectacles. “How he glares,” he whispered. “You are right, Herr Doktor Hennessey. It is a beast indeed.”
And he licked his pale lips, fascinated.

“He was a nabob, an India merchant,” Hennessey went on, with an Irishman’s deep delight in telling a
tale to an obviously riveted audience. “They say he did murder any number of Hin-doo savages over
there, in his murderous rages.”

Renfield screamed, “Liar!” and Hennessey’s red face beamed at having elicited a response.

“When he was brought in here, having been found wander-ing raving through the streets of London, he
never would say where his wife and daughter were, nor what had become of them. His wife’s family
comes here time and again, begging if he’s whispered a word of ‘em . . .”

“Lying blackguard!” Renfield hurled himself against the straps that bound him, feeling the red haze of
murderous rage surge like an incoming tide around his brain. “You bastard bog Irish, you keep your
tongue off a woman whose shoes you’re not fit to lick!”

Both men fell back, but Renfield saw Hennessey’s head cock, listening, and a calculating light come into
his eyes. He sees a way to make me speak of Catherine! thought Renfield, with a sudden and terrible
clarity. He’ll tell Lady Brough every word that I say!

Swallowing his rage brought a physical convulsion, twisting in his bonds and slamming his head back
against the padded wall behind him, again and again, trying to blot out Hennessey’s satisfied smirk.
Instead he brought to mind the image of his own big hands closing on the man’s throat, twisting and
tearing. Bet-ter yet, his own teeth ripping into the man’s veins, the gush of blood into his mouth, feeling
the buck of Hennessey’s gross body beneath his own as the Irishman began to die. Smelling death,
hearing him gurgle and gasp as Renfield drank his blood.

Renfield went limp in the straps, gasping himself. He was alone in the room. Voices retreated down the
hallway, “Is he ever so?” asked the German hesitantly. “I am a poet, you see, as I told you, Herr Doktor

Hennessey, a poet of the Gothic, of madness, of the inner secrets of the mind.”

“Ah, you’ve seen him at his best, laddie! Why, he’s attacked me! Torn himself loose from those straps
on the wall and leaped upon me like a wolf. I thrust him back, and when he would have attacked me
again, I stared him down. I have this gift, you see, of controlling lunatics with the power of my eyes . . .”
Renfield screamed after them, “Liar! Liar!”

If Lucy-and her white-haired mother-had died last night, Seward would be away all the day, maybe
more. Hennessey would be back, taunting him about Catherine, trying to force him into rage so intense he
didn’t know what he was saying. Into revealing where they were hiding.

I must be strong. I must be strong.

But he knew he had not consumed life, gained small increments of life, for nearly two weeks. Without
consuming life, he could not be strong.

His pity for the flies, for Lucy, would destroy those he most loved.

He raised his voice in an inarticulate wail of despair, as if even those his ribcage would burst from the
effort to make his cry carry through the padding, through the walls, across the distance to Carfax, where
Wotan slept, glutted and smiling, in his chapel. Help me, Master, for I have need of thee!

***

R.M.R.’s notes

18 September-evening

1 spider

And a paltry, half-dead creature at that. I had thought that brute Hennessey would leave me strapped
to the wall of the padded cell for days, a raree-show for paying customers-yet better that, than to
torment me with the aim of enraging me so that I will speak of Catherine, of Vixie. Yet I dare not speak
of it to Seward-so low am I brought.

Seward returned tonight, dazed and shaken-looking; ex-changed a half-dozen words with me and
ordered Langmore to release me and return me to my own room. I could have con-fessed to murdering
the Queen and eating her heart and he would have paid no more heed to the words than he did to those
that I actually did say. As Langmore locked me into the room, I heard him ask Seward in the hall, “And
how is Miss Lucy, sor?” and to my surprise Seward responded, “She lives, but … she is in a terrible way.
I must return there tonight, to keep watch beside her.”

“Yes, sor.”

Of course, Langmore made no mention of Hennessey turn-ing the ravings of those poor souls in the
other cells to his profit. With luck, the man will think more of making those little profits-and spending
them-than of subjecting me to mental torments, hoping that in my rage I will reveal to him where
Catherine and Vixie are hiding.

How long will this terrible game of cat and mouse go on? How long will Seward be away, guarding her
with his master Van Helsing and, probably, with the girl’s other suitors, those trusted friends of whom I
have so often heard him speak?

How long can I hold out against the demon of rage within myself?

19 September

9 flies, 4 spiders

Not enough! Not enough! I must consume more, to make up for the time I have lost in pity and
sentiment. I must be strong!

I pray, yet receive no answer. Yet he is there, I know it. I feel him.

Has he forgotten me? Or is this a test of my loyalties, my faith?

20 September

He is gone! He has left me! Dear gods, what shall I do?

I was watching the last sparrows of autumn fluttering in the garden trees-not with ulterior motive, but
merely taking joy in the sweetness of their song-when I saw a cart on the high road, making for the old
house at Carfax. It stopped at the gates of Rushbrook House and one of the dirty villains at the reins
came up the avenue, to ask the way-stupid bastards could not find their own trouser-buttons without
instruction!-yet I knew in my heart that it was Carfax they sought. My anger surged up in me and I began
to rate him for the thieving blackguard that he was, anger borne of terror … What shall I do, if my Master
departs, leaving me here in the power of such as Hennessey and Seward?

When the men had gone, Hennessey came in, asking what I meant by my anger-blind, puling fool!-and
with terrible effort I concealed my rage, knowing now how he means to use it against me. He was
half-drunk, having consumed his usual pints of gin with his dinner, though even stone sober (which he has
not been since the reign of the Prince Regent, I shouldn’t imag-ine) he would believe anything anyone told
him, if it would save him trouble. When he was gone, my rage overcame me, and I ripped the latches
from my window and sprang to the ground, running up the avenue, desperate to catch the cart that I
knew would be returning.

I swarmed over the gate before the porter realized what was happening, leaped down onto the high
road just as those mon-sters, those unspeakable bandits, drove their foul cart past, piled high with the
boxes of earth taken from the Carfax chapel. He was in one of them, sleeping the sleep that is not truly
sleep, for He hears, He knows.

I beat on the side of the box, crying to him not to leave me among my foes. One of the carters cut at
me with his whip and I dragged him from the box, blind with rage, knowing only that He must not leave
me, He must not go without helping me.

Hardy and Simmons were hard on my heels down the av-enue, with Hennessey puffing and wheezing
in the rear. As they dragged me back to my cell, I cried out in my despair: “Master, I will fight for you!

They shan’t kill me by inches! They shan’t take you away!”

What shall I do? He has left me indeed.

What shall I do?

20 September-night

It is over.

Nightmares.

Light rain pattered on the gabled windows of Rushbrook House. John Seward stared at the ceiling of
his bedroom and tried to will himself not to dream.

To sleep, perchance to dream …

ay, there’s the rub …

He hadn’t slept in two nights now. His body cried for sleep and cried, too, for chloral hydrate-cried,
sweated, and shook. But Seward knew from terrible experience that sleep after long waking was
particularly fraught with dreams. The thought of the drug holding his eyes sealed shut and his screaming
mind in darkness was more than he could bear.

Was this what his patients went through? Emaciated Rowena Kilmer, jerking from sleep a dozen times
a night to howl and heat her head on the walls? Frantic Grayson, trying to crowd himself into the tiniest
corner of the room, barricading himself behind the bed against the phantoms that only he could see?

Dimly, like the ghostly moaning of the wind, Seward could hear them screaming, somewhere in the
house.

It was long past midnight.

I open my eyes and see the ceiling, with stains on its blue–striped paper like old blood.

Blood! Dear God, what happened to Lucy’s blood? The drops I took from her that first day of
consultation were nor-mal, without the deformed cell-structure of anaemia. It wasn’t anaemia she
died of, but blood-loss. She bled to death, under our very noses, without a drop being spilled on
her pillow. Through the grief that racked his heart cried the betrayed bafflement of a lifetime of scientific
study: It shouldn’t have hap-pened! It couldn’t have happened, not logically, not within the bounds
of any science I’ve ever known! This is the modern age–we’re almost in the twentieth century,
damn it, not back in the twelfth! I should have been able to save her!

Yet all of them who loved her-young Arthur, and Quincey, and even Van Helsing, with all his
wisdom-had been as power-less as he, to prevent her death.

In his mind he saw Quincey Morris bending over Lucy’s body, gazing down at her face with mingled
pity and bewilder-ment in his gray eyes, his leathery six-foot-plus seeming desper-ately out of place in the
white and violet of her boudoir; saw the sharp sidelong look in the Texan’s eyes when they sat in the
breakfast-room. “That poor pretty creature that we all love has had put into her veins the blood of four
strong men! Man alive, her whole body wouldn’t hold it! What took it out?”

I open my eyes and all those questions crowd in, questions that have no answers. I close them …

And throw wide the gates to nightmare.

I have dreams, terrible dreams, Lucy had said, in that same white-and-violet boudoir, but when
Seward had asked after them, she’d put him off, hurried to occupy herself with opening the window.

What would she have told him, he wondered, if she’d spoken the truth?

Images rose to his exhausted mind, images as vivid as reality, that he could not erase. The cold,
alien-looking aparatus of blood transfusion, that he’d operated, not once but again and again in those
nightmare days, when they’d enter Lucy’s room and find her white and gasping on the spotless bed. The
way Van Helsing’s breath had hissed, when in adjusting Lucy’s pillow he’d dislodged the velvet band she
wore around her throat, and revealed those two pale, mangled puncture-wounds above the vein. The
smell of the garlic the old man had insisted Lucy wear around her neck and with which he’d draped the
windows of the room-draperies and necklet they’d found clutched in poor Mrs. Westenra’s hands, when
they’d found her dead on the morning of the nineteenth.

Images more disturbing still, as his mind drifted toward the gates of horn and ivory that poets said
guarded the Realm of Morpheus.

How Lucy, dying, had smiled up at Art Holmwood-Lord Godalming now, with his father’s sudden
death. Her flaxen hair had seemed fairer still against the mourning he wore, and she had whispered, Kiss
me, in languorous passion, her long canine teeth glinting against her bloodless gums. How Van Helsing
had thrust Art away like a madman. And how at the funeral Van Helsing had looked sharply at the
broken and weeping Arthur when Art had whispered over and over that the blood he’d given to Lucy
had been their marriage-bond, since they were denied any other.