Dracula Unbound Page 11

  “Do you long to be a hero?”

  The question was unexpected. “It’s a strange thing to ask. My shrink certainly thinks I long to be a hero … One thing, I have a need for desolate places.”

  Giving him a skeptical look, Stoker said, “Mm, there’s nothing more desolate than the stage of the Lyceum on a slow Monday night … What does your family think of you?”

  The interrogation would have been irritating on other lips. But there was something in Stoker’s manner, sly, teasing, yet sympathetic, to which Bodenland responded warmly, so that he answered with frankness.

  “If they can’t love me they have to respect me.”

  “I wish to be a hero to others, since I’ll never be one to myself.” He clapped Bodenland on the shoulder. “We have temperamental affinities, even if you come from the end of the next century, as you claim. I knew it the moment I set eyes on you. Now have a butcher’s hook at this, as the Cockneys say.”

  The workshop was crammed with objects—a man’s version of the ladies’ drawing room. Curved cricket bats, old smooth-bore fowling-pieces, a mounted skeleton of a rat, stuffed animals, model steam engines, masks, theatrical prints, framed items of women’s underwear, a chart of the planets, and a neat array of tools disposed on shelves above a small lathe. These Bodenland took in slowly as Stoker, full of enthusiasm, began to talk again, lighting a gas mantle as he did so.

  “My Christian belief is that there are dark forces ranged against civilization. As the story of the past unfolds, we see there were millions of years when the Earth was—shall I say unpoliced? Anything could roam at large, the most monstrous things. It’s only in these last two thousand years, since Jesus Christ, that mankind has been able to take over in an active role, keeping the monsters at bay.” Foreseeing an interruption, he added, “They may be actual monsters, or they may materialize from the human brain. Only piety can confront them. We have to war with them continuously. If Jesus were alive today, do you know what I believe he would be?”

  “Er—the pope?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. A Bengal Lancer.”

  After a moment’s silence, Bodenland indicated the workbench. “What are you making here?”

  “Ah, I wanted to show you this. This is part of my fight against the forces of night. Sometimes I wish I could turn the gun on myself. I know there’s evil in me—I’m aware of it. I must ask you about your relationships with the fair sex, so called, sometime.”

  He held out for examination a cigar box full of carefully wrought silver bullets, each decorated with a Celtic motif running about the sign of the Cross. He exhibited them with evident pride in their workmanship. An ill feeling overcame Bodenland. The sickly light of the gas mantle seemed to flare yellow and mauve as the room swayed.

  “These are of my own manufacture,” said Stoker and then, catching sight of Bodenland’s face, “What’s the matter, old boy? Cigar smoke getting to you?”

  Recovering his voice, Bodenland spoke. “Mr. Stoker, you may be right about dark forces ranged against civilization, and I may have proof of it. What do you make of this?”

  He brought forth from his jacket pocket the article he had retrieved from Clift’s ancient grave in the Escalante Desert. In his palm lay a silver bullet, its nose dented, but otherwise identical to the ones in Stoker’s cigar box.

  “This was found,” he said unsteadily, “in a grave certified scientifically to be 65.5 million years old.”

  Stoker was less impressed than Bodenland had expected. He stroked his beard and puffed at his cigar before saying, “There’s not that much time in the universe, my friend. Sixty-five point five million years? I have to say I think you’re talking nonsense. Lord Kelvin’s calculations have shown that, according to rigid mathematics, the entire limit of the time the sun is able to emit heat is not greater than twenty-five million years. Admittedly the computations are not exact.”

  “You speak of rigid mathematics. More flexible mathematical systems have been developed, giving us much new understanding of the universe. What once seemed certain has become less certain, more open to subjective interpretation.”

  “That doesn’t sound like progress to me.”

  Bodenland considered deeply before speaking again. He then summoned tact to his argument. “The remarkable progress of science in your lifetime will be built on by succeeding generations, sir. I should remind you of what you undoubtedly know, that only three generations before yours, at the end of the eighteenth century, claims that the solar system was more than a mere six thousand years old were met with scorn.

  “Time has been expanding ever since. In light of later perspectives, sixty-five million years is no great length of time. We understand better than Lord Kelvin the source of the energies that power the sun.”

  “Possibly you Americans might be mistaken? Do you allow that?”

  With a short laugh, Bodenland said, “Well, to some extent, certainly. This bullet, for instance, proves how little we have really been able to piece together the evolution of various forms of life in the distant past.”

  Turning the bullet over in his palm, Stoker said, “I would swear it is one of my manufacture, of course. You’d better tell me about this extraordinary grave, and I’ll strive to take you at your word.”

  “It’s pretty astonishing—though no more so than that I should be here talking to you.”

  He ran through the details of Clift’s discovery, explaining how the dating of the skeleton was arrived at.

  During this account, Stoker remained impassive, listening and smoking. Only when Bodenland began to describe the coffin in which the skeleton was buried did he become excited. He demanded to know what the sign on the coffin looked like, and thrust a carpenter’s pencil and paper into Bodenland’s hand. Bodenland drew the sign as he recalled it.

  “That’s it! That’s it, sure enough—Lord Dracula’s sign,” said Stoker in triumph. “Two fangs with the wings above!” He seized Bodenland’s hand and shook it. “You’re a man after my own heart, so you are. At last someone who believes, who has proof! Listen, this house has drawn evil to it, and you brought more evil with this feller in my toolshed, but we can fight it together. We must fight it together. We’ll be heroes, the heroes we dreamed of—”

  “You’re a great man, Mr. Stoker, but this battle’s not for me. I don’t belong here. I have to get back home. Though I certainly invite you to see the vehicle I use, parked down in your woodlands.”

  “Listen, stay another day.” He grabbed Bodenland’s arm lest he escape at that very minute, and breathed smoke like an Irish dragon. “Just one more day, because tomorrow’s a special one. Come on, we’ll join that old fool van Helsing and have a glass or two of port and talk filth—if the wife’s not about. Tomorrow, that great actor whom I serve as manager, Henry Irving, bless his cotton socks, is to receive a knighthood from Her Majesty Queen Victoria at Windsor Palace. It’s the first time any actor has been so honored. Now what do you think of that? Come along too—it’ll do your republican Yankee heart good to witness such a deed. After that you can vamoose back to Utah or wherever you want. What do you say?”

  Bodenland could not help being affected by the enthusiasm of the man.

  “Very well. It’s a deal.”

  “Excellent, excellent. Let’s go and toast ourselves in some port. And I want to hear more about your adventures.”

  8

  Lethargy was a deep snowdrift, chill yet at the same time warm, comforting, inviting you down into even more luxurious depths of helplessness, down, to a place before birth, after death.

  Mina saw her own death like the snowdrift. When she opened her eyes, there were long muslin curtains billowing in the draft from the window. She was too weak to rise. She saw the curtains as her life—the gauzy life that was to be, after the consummation of death.

  Dreamily she recalled remote times, remembered the name of Joe, her Joe. But now there was another lover, the dream lover of legend. He was come again, he was in the ch
amber, advancing toward the bed.

  She tried to rouse herself, to lift her head from the pillow. Her hair spilled about her but there was no strength in her neck. He was bending over her, elegant, powerful, distilling an aroma she drew in through her nostrils like a narcotic. When he opened his red mouth, she found strength enough to open her legs, but his attention was on the flesh of her throat. She felt the lechery of it, breathed deeper, swooned, fidgeted with desire to experience again the bite of those fangs, that sweet evacuation of life.

  He in his black garb was something different. The insanity of his fantasy spilled over through their linked alleyways of blood. She saw, felt, lived the secret world of the Un-Dead to which she would soon belong.

  It was being transferred, his bridal gift to her—

  The great sweltering herbivorous beast dashed from the riverbank, sounding alarm to other hadrosaurs grazing nearby. It was a mottled green in coloration, yellow and white on the tender belly, with an elaborate headcomb. It balanced its ponderous body on graceful legs and gave a melancholy call as it ran. Mina heard herself scream, saw her companions scatter and white birds sail up in alarm from the Cretaceous marshes.

  She took evasive action, running from side to side yet still hearing the hot breath of pursuit.

  “What’s your name, and where’s Joe gone?”

  “You must forget Joe. You now have an immortal lover.”

  Indeed, she heard his footsteps close. Thud thud thud. Screaming, she ran into a gingko grove, thinking to evade the heavier predator that way. Behind her, too near her tail, the wretched sound of branches being snapped like teeth breaking from a bottom jaw.

  “Where did you come from? Tell me who you are, so I can know you.”

  “Beyond your imagining lies the ancient burial site in a once green land. It was destroyed. Remote ancestors there have been disturbed in their rest.”

  “What’s this to me? Why can I not breathe?”

  “The Living have desecrated those graves, causing a crisis among us, the Un-Dead. You might say a religious crisis.”

  She heard the ghost of something too dessicated to call a laugh. It came again, from the sky. It brought a new alarm. For she had left the carnivore behind. She had been driven from the family. Now there was a new threat. As a shadow fell over her, she looked up, craning her neck, her throat. A pteranodon was swooping down upon her, wings closed to speed its dive.

  “Why don’t you take me? Why delay so long? Will I be immortal in your embrace?”

  “You will be immortal in my embrace.”

  “It’s all I ever dream of …”

  And as she looked up at those fangs, she fell and sprawled among ferns and it unfolded its spectacular wings—

  And with the last of her strength she threw back the bedclothes to expose herself utterly—

  And it closed its jaws about her neck—

  And as his mouth tasted her flesh and the current flowed—

  And as she fought with death—

  And Mina began to writhe and moan and come at last—

  Through—

  “Yes, Mr. Bodenland, that was when we were staying with the duke. And later we were so proud, because the Prince of Wales came backstage and shook Bram’s hand.”

  “It was during the run of The Corsican Brothers.”

  “Edward. HRH. He’s such a dear—and rather a one for the ladies, I’m given to understand.” Florence Stoker fanned her cheeks with her hand at the thought of it. “HRH works hard, and so I suppose he feels entitled to play hard. Do you work hard when you’re—at home?”

  “Some would say, too hard. But a man’s work is one way in which he establishes his identity.”

  She sighed. “Perhaps that is why we poor ladies have no identity to speak of.” And she shot a glance at her husband.

  Bodenland would have preferred to be alone to think over the implications of the day’s events. He listened with only half an ear to Mrs. Stoker’s chatter. They were at the port and cigars stage, sitting about the log fire, under the Bronzino painting, with van Helsing saying little.

  Stoker jumped up suddenly, to give his impression of Henry Irving as Mephistopheles.

  “Oh, this is so wicked! Bram, desist!” cried his wife.

  “Please, sir—your heart,” said van Helsing. “Resume your seat.”

  But Stoker would have his way, limping about the hearthrug, at once sinister and comical, reciting in a high chant unlike his own voice:

  His faith is great—I cannot touch his soul—

  But what I may afflict his body with

  That will I do, and stew him in disease …

  He interrupted himself with a fit of coughing.

  “What would Henry say?—And him about to be made a knight!” exclaimed Mrs. Stoker.

  “I beg you, to bed at once, sir,” said van Helsing. “It grows late.”

  “No, no, I must continue work on my novel. Must, must. More chapters. Lucy Westenra is in mortal peril—” And he dashed from the room.

  A gloomy silence followed. Van Helsing sat at an escritoire, rather ostentatiously writing something, muttering to himself as he did so. Florence Stoker sat tight-lipped, stabbing at her embroidery until, with a sigh, she abandoned it and rose, to stand by the fire staring at the mantelpiece abstractedly.

  “It’s a fine painting, Mrs. Stoker,” Bodenland said, referring to the Bronzino, to break the silence.

  “It was originally called An Allegory,” she said. “Though an allegory of what, I fail to see. Something unpleasant to do with … disease, we may suppose.”

  The flatness of her tone did not invite response, leaving Bodenland leisure to ponder on the delights and difficulties of family life until, restlessly, she returned to her chair.

  Something sought release. She looked at the ceiling to announce, “Sometimes he’s shut in his study for hours.”

  “That must make you feel very lonely, Mrs. Stoker,” said Bodenland.

  She rose, preparing to retreat for the night, and said grandly, “I can survive anything, Mr. Bodenland, except bad taste.”

  A few minutes later, van Helsing put away his writing materials. He picked up a candle in a silver candlestick and offered to show Bodenland up to his room.

  “You seem to be rather a romancer, sir,” he remarked, as he led the way upstairs. “Your presence clearly disturbs Mr. Stoker.”

  “What if the man’s soul is being destroyed?”

  “Ha ha, I think I may claim to be a man of science. This is 1896, after all, and the ‘soul’ has been pretty well disproved. Men get on famously without souls. We turn left at the top of the stairs.”

  “Well, suppose it was possible to travel through time, to the years ahead, to obtain medicine for Stoker’s condition?”

  Another dry laugh. “You are a romancer, indeed. Just along here. Most facts of science are known by this date. Winged flight may become possible in a couple of centuries, but travel through space or time—quite impossible. Quite impossible. I’ll stake my reputation on it. Here we are. I’ll leave you the candle. Let’s just see that all’s well, and the windows properly fastened.”

  Bodenland entered the dark bedroom first, conscious of the fatigue brought on by the events of the last many hours.

  The bedroom was warm. A small gas fire burned in the grate. He lit the gas mantle over the mantlepiece from his candle, thinking incredulously as he did so, I’m lighting a real gas mantle …

  A woman’s taste was in evidence. There were frills round the curtains and round the washstand. Over the bed was a pokerwork text in a wooden Oxford frame: THOU SHALT NOT BE AFRAID FOR ANY TERROR BY NIGHT. PSALM XCI.

  While he was taking in these details, the doctor was checking the window latches and adjusting the chain of garlic across the panes.

  On the wall by the door hung a map of the world in Mercator’s projection, framed by the flags of the nations, enlivened by pictures of battleships. The British Empire was colored in red, and encompassed a qua
rter of the globe.

  Pointing to the map, in the glass of which the gaslight was reflected, Bodenland asked, “Would you suppose there was once a time when Hudson Bay didn’t exist, Doctor?”

  Van Helsing looked askance, as if he suspected a trick question.

  “Hudson’s Bay didn’t exist—until it was discovered by an Englishman in the seventeenth century.”

  Bidding Bodenland a good night, he left the room and closed the door quietly behind him.

  Slowly removing his jacket, Bodenland tried to take in his present situation. He found the room, large though it was, oppressive. Oil paintings of Highland cattle in ornate gilt frames occupied much of the wall space. On the bedside table stood a carafe of drinking water and a black-bound New Testament. He sat on the bed to remove his shoes, and then lay back, hands linked under his head. He began to think of Mina and of his pretty new daughter-in-law, Kylie. But would he ever be able to control the time train and get back to them?

  His eyes closed.

  Without any seeming discontinuity, his mind continued its processes, leading him to leave the house he was in and descend some steps. The steps were outside, leading down a rank hillside fringed by tall cypresses; then they curved, broken and dangerous, into a crypt. The air became moist and heavy. He searched for somewhere to put down a burdensome parcel he was carrying. The underground room seemed enormous. A stained glass window let in a pattern of moonlight which hung like a curtain in the waxy atmosphere.

  “No problem so far,” he or someone else said, as he seated himself in a chair.

  Three maidens in diaphanous robes stood in the moonlight. They beckoned. All were beautiful. The middle one was the most beautiful. The colored glass threw warm gules on her fair breast.

  It was this middle creature who advanced on Bodenland, drawing aside her white robe as she came. Her smile was remote, her gaze unfixed.

  He knew her and called her name, “Kylie! Come to me.”

  He saw—with shut eyes but acute mental vision—the pale and loving woman who had so recently become his daughter-in-law. For those beautiful features, those soft limbs, that sensuous body with its delectable secrets, lust filled Joe’s body.