Slave Of Dracula - Renfield Part 9

It did not drive from his mind his utter loathing at himself. It did not root out his fear that one day that blind l.u.s.t would prove too much for his strength, and would lead him, too, in ;pite of all he knew, into the red nightmare of Un-Death.

And that he would enjoy it.

He drew in deep breaths of the cold air. It was autumn, the threshold of winter. Though Hampstead Hill lay far from the Thames, the sooty reek of its fogs drifted through the graveyard, and through the trees southward he could see the dull glow of the city's gas- lamps. Here in the cemetery it was quiet, the birdless quiet of winter, save for the soft, terrible scratching at the marble door of the tomb.

Man is born to Sin, as the sparks fly upward. His friend and student John, who did such good work among those troubled in their minds, might have been able to explain this curious, desperate l.u.s.t that seemed to operate in tandem with his genuine affection for Lucy and for her friends, his deep horror and pity !<,r the="" situation="" in="" which="" they="" all="" found="" themselves.="" john="" had="" proclaimed="" often="" that="" he="" held="" no="" belief="" in="" sin,="" nor="" in="" the="" doctrines="" of="" predestination="" and="">

Charcot was his G.o.d, and Bernheim and that young Austrian Freud. In them he would doubtless have found some rational ex- planation for the feelings that, despite all he could do, scorched Van Helsing with shame.

Or perhaps, he thought, I am only mad.

But mad or sane, it did not change what he knew to be facts, which others these days ignored, or walked in ignorance of. That humankind was not alone upon the Earth.

That there were indeed more things in Heaven and Earth than were dreamt of in the philosophy of Hamlet's friend Horatio or of anyone else: hidden powers whose aims and perceptions were as different from those of humankind as humans' were from those of the sponges beneath the sea.

That the Un-Dead walked, as they had long walked. And that their bite would spread their condition to others, if they were not stopped.

R.M.R.'s notes 28 September 27 flies, 9 spiders, 4 moths, 1 mouse -19 flies, 4 moths ? spiders -12 spiders ? mouse Seward back, but so distracted as to be completely unaware of the mouse (a gift, I am sure, from Nomie, my faithful little Nomie.) He is gray-faced and shaken, like a man who has looked down into h.e.l.l.How can h.e.l.l have shaken him? He rules one of its tinier Circles. Does he not yet know this?

28 September-night Seward departed shortly before nine.

In the darkness of his dream, Renfield saw again Lucy Westenra's tomb. Night lay thick on London, thicker still on this suburban wilderness of headstones and tombs. He could smell the soot-laden fog, hear the whooping screech of the owl, the frantic squeak of the mouse it seized. Taste the blood.

Four men came over the cemetery wall, Seward and old Van Helsing and two others. The younger of these two-the youngest of the four-followed hard on Van Helsing's heels as the old mail unlocked the marble door of that ghostly pillared sepulchre, a golden- haired G.o.dling in black, like a young Siegfried. He looked inquiringly at the old professor as they gathered around the twin coffins, then at Seward. To Seward, Van Helsing said, "You were with me here yesterday. Was the body of Miss Lucy in that coffin?"

"It was."

"You hear." Van Helsing turned to the other two, Siegfried and a tall, stringy man with the faded remains of a deep tan on his long-jawed face, a long sandy mustache and a rough blue greatcoat such as Renfield had seen Americans wear, who got them second-hand from their Army. "And yet there is no one who does not believe with me." With that rather confusing double negative, Van Helsing took his screwdriver, and unfastened the lid of the coffin. Siegfried-who was, Renfield guessed, Seward's good friend and successful rival Arthur Holmwood, the new Lord G.o.dalming-and the American both backed away a step, and in the glow of the dark-lantern the American bore, Renfield could see they were steeling themselves for the stink of a body ten days dead.

He could see their faces change when they smelled no such thing, even before they stepped forward to look.

"Professor, I answered for you," said the American. "Your word is all I want. I wouldn't ask such a thing ordinarily-I wouldn't so dishonor you as to imply a doubt; but this is a mystery that goes beyond any honor or dishonor. Is this your doing?"

Van Helsing replied, with no more emotion in his voice than if the question had been one of hat-size rather than honor, "I swear to you by all that I hold sacred that I have not removed nor touched her." And he explained, with the calm of a man in the witness- box, the events of two nights before. "Last night there was no exodus, so tonight before the sundown I took away my garlic and other things. And so it is we find this coffin empty. So" -he shut the slide of his lantern, leaving them in the dark "now to the outside."

Renfield turned in his sleep, whimpered with fright. Someone was watching, someone was listening, someone standing very near them in the darkness. Someone who could smell the blood in the veins of the four men, who could see them clearly, even when the heavy scudding clouds concealed the moon.

Someone who drew back, even as G.o.dalming and the American leaned forward to see what Van Helsing was doing as he worked his flour paste through his fingers again, caulked up the c.h.i.n.ks in the door. "Great Scott," said the American, pulling a foot- long bowie knife from a sheath at his belt to cut tobacco for himself, "is this a game?"

"It is."

"What is that which you are using?" asked G.o.dalming, and Van Helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered.

"The Host. I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an Indulgence."

You mean you have a priest who believes, like you, in the power of the Un-Dead, thought Renfield. He knew perfectly well that no Pope, nor any member of the organized Church, would issue an Indulgence for such use of the consecrated wafer. By their silence-G.o.dalming, as a true-blooded scion of an English n.o.ble house, was by definition Church of England, and most Americans couldn't have described the difference between :I Catholic and a Druid-both men were struck dumb with su- perst.i.tious reverence: the American even endeavored to spit his tobacco in a quiet and seemly manner. In the darkness the watcher-watchers, Renfield could feel their minds-stirred, then stilled. They could feel Lucy's approach long before Van Helsing whispered, "Ach!"

Moonlight flickered on something white in the avenue of yews. A child cried out, in fear or pain. Or perhaps, thought Renfield, deep in the well of sleep, it was his own cry that he heard. The light of Van Helsing's lantern fell on Lucy's face, on the crimson glisten of blood on her mouth, which trailed down to dribble her white gown.

"Arthur." With a casual motion she threw to the ground the child she had been carrying in her arms, held out her hands. The men standing ranged before the tomb might have seen only the demon fire in her eyes, but Renfield thought, too, that she was still a revenant, still tangled in the madness of new death and animal hunger.

His own mouth burned with the memory of the spiders he'd eaten-each sweetly charged with the flickering energy of the flies-with the murky deliciousness of the blood he'd sucked out of the mouse that morning. Had Langmore come then and tried to take it from him, he thought he, too, would have turned on him, with just such wildness in his eyes.

"Come to me, Arthur," she whispered, and moved forward, her bare arms outstretched. "Leave these others and come to me.

My arms are hungry for you." The words whispered like a half-heard echo of dreams of pa.s.sion, never filled ... Never filled by Arthur, in any case. "Come, husband . . ."

With a desperate sob, young Lord G.o.dalming opened his arms for her, but Van Helsing-as Renfield knew he would-stepped between them, holding out a small gold crucifix upon a silver chain. Lucy drew back with a cry, and Renfield felt it again, the minds of those who watched from the darkness beyond the tomb. The shiver, at the burning energy that focussed in sacred things. It was as if, seeing with their eyes, he saw the deadly glow that could sear otherworldly flesh, shining forth not only from the crucifix but from the caulking that sealed the door of the tomb.

Lucy swung around a few feet from the door, mouth open in rage to show blood on the long white teeth, trapped and furious. In a quiet voice Van Helsing asked, "Answer me, o my friend! Am I to proceed with my work?"

G.o.dalming slipped to his knees to the damp gravel of the path, buried his face in his hands. By the light of Van Helsing's lantern Renfield saw Seward's face, as he looked down on the golden head of the younger man. G.o.dalming's voice was barely audible.

"Do as you will, friend. Do as you will."

It was the American-Morris, Renfield remembered his name was, Quincey Morris-who helped bring G.o.dalming back to his feet, while Van Helsing moved cautiously past Lucy to uncaulk the putty from the door. In Lucy's place, Renfield supposed he would have simply fled, yet where could she go? If, in fact, she could find no rest other than in the place where she had been buried, where could she fly?

Like Catherine, he thought, before he and she had bought those other houses for her and Vixie to disappear into. Before they'd set up bank accounts, and papers, proving that she and her daughter were people other than the women Lady Brough was looking for, to take their money back for her own.

Lucy slipped through the c.h.i.n.k in the door like smoke, like the figure in a dream, as Nomie, Elizabeth, silent Sarike had come through the broken pane of gla.s.s into Renfield's room eight nights ago. Van Helsing prodded the putty back into place, then went to where the unconscious child still lay in the moonlight of the path. "Come now, my friends." He lifted the little boy in his arms. "We can do no more 'til to-morrow. There is a funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that. The friends of the dead will all be gone by two . . ."

So intent were the men, grouped around Van Helsing, that they glimpsed nothing of the three shadows that followed them along the avenue toward the low point in the wall. The three Wives had, Renfield noticed-seeing them clearly in his dream for the first time-disposed of their own pale old-fashioned ;;owns and wore now dark modern walking-dresses, stylish and nearly invisible in the thick gloom of the gathering clouds.

"As for this little one, he is not much harm, and by tomorrow night he shall be well. We shall leave him where the police will find him, as on the other night; and then to home." Darkness drifted then into Renfield's mind, and his dream segued into the thick heat of India, the stink of the Hoogly River, and white ants crawling in armies up a tree in his garden in Calcutta ...

But he thought, as Van Helsing laid the sleeping child down against the cemetery wall, that he heard the Countess Elizabeth laugh.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

They killed Lucy at a little after two.

Renfield felt it, like the distant memory of pain, stabbing his chest and darkening his eyes. Far more clearly he felt Dracula's fury, like the mutter of thunder and the taste of ozoneous stormwinds sweeping down the mountains, to tear the valleys to pieces in their wrath.

He sank onto his bed and crushed his hands over his ears, then over his eyes, then over his heart, trying to blot out what he heard and saw and felt. Mostly what he was conscious of was terror.He'll find them-Elizabeth, Sarike, Nomie. He'll say Lucy's death was their doing.

He'll say I helped, or kept my silence, o f my own accord. The Wives are too powerful for him to burn, and the men-Van Helsing and Seward and the others-too wary now, and too prepared.

But within the coming growl of that terrible storm he knew that Dracula would ma.s.sacre someone in his revenge, and would not much care who it was.

In a frenzy of terror Renfield scrambled to his feet and ran to his boxes, to devour every spider, every fly, every moth, and even the second mouse that Nomie had caused to crawl under the door of his room early that morning.

None of it helped.

Late in the afternoon Seward returned from London, with a sweet-faced, pretty, dark-haired woman whom Renfield, watching the driveway from his window, recognized as Lucy's friend Mina. She seemed both smaller and older than she had appeared in his dreams, more delicate and yet stronger than steel. She had come a long way, he thought, since she'd giggled and hugged Lucy and Mrs. Westenra in the Whitby train-station, saying good-by to them for what turned out to be the last time. Like her other clothes, her mourning-dress was worn and a little out of fashion. She carried a small traveling-bag, and as Seward helped her down from the carriage, he took from beside her feet a small, heavy square box which Renfield recognized as the case of a portable typewriter.

As they pa.s.sed around the corner of the house toward the shallow front steps, Renfield heard old Lord Alyn in his barred front bedroom begin to howl, the others along the hallway taking up the din, until the cacophony blew around the eaves of the house like the screech of storm-winds in the dead of night. Mina-Renfield wished he knew her surname, for the sake of good manners-broke stride with a shudder, then steeled herself and followed Dr. Seward out of sight around the corner, and into the house.

As usual, Seward gave no sign of having heard a thing.

Like Seward, like Lord G.o.dalming, like the American Morris, this young woman had been Lucy's friend. She must still have been abroad in Europe-with her ailing husband?-when Lucy was taken ill, for Renfield couldn't imagine Catherine, for instance, not being constantly in the house of a friend who was slowly dying as Lucy had died.

Yet what was she doing here?

Seward will tell her, thought Renfield, pressing his forehead to the iron window bars. They were cold, like the day outside.

Wind jerked and twisted at the bare branches of the garden trees. Seward will tell her of the scene in the graveyard, of the bitten children.

And what then?

Seward was pale and silent as he made his rounds, and did not seem to notice that Renfield had devoured his entire stock of spiders and flies. As the house grew quiet that night, Renfield thought he could hear, in the study downstairs, the rapid clatter of typewriter keys, hurrying and pausing, hurrying and pausing, as if to keep up with some unheard dictation, far into the night.

R.M.R.'s notes 30 September 25 flies, 10 spiders Nomie my friend, you are the only one who has offered me the smallest actual a.s.sistance in this terrible time! Has it not occurred to Seward to wonder at the continued presence of so many flies in this chilly weather? Yet it is typical of the smallness of the man's scope.

Another visitor today, Madame Mina's husband Jonathan Harker, Langmore tells me. A tallish thin man whose black clothing hangs loose on an emaciated frame, the souvenir of those weeks of brain-fever in Buda-Pesth. The brim of his hat hid his face as he pa.s.sed around the corner of the house, but he moved like a young man, and looked around him with a kind of nervous alertness: another echo of brain-fever as well? There is something that troubles me about the sight of him, something familiar in his walk and his frame, as if I have seen him somewhere before, and I have a terrible sense of urgency about the lost memory. Could it be that he is one of Lady Brough's creatures, or one of her vile elder daughter's? Langmore says he is a solicitor.

Later-Indeed the eagles gather! I have just seen young Lord G.o.dalming and the American Mr. Morris descend from the Go- dalming brougham (with a team in harness at five hundred guineas the pair, if they were a shilling!). Morris wore a perfectly respectable derby hat in place of the wide-brimmed American slouch he had on last night, his long sandy hair sweeping out beneath it. Curious, to see these men in the flesh whom I recognize from dreaming-could I have seen Jonathan Harker in dream? But when?

And why?

The sight of them gathering fills me with dread, for as the sun sinks I feel, stronger and stronger, Dracula's growing anger, as he lies within his coffin. Like mine, his mind was touched by Lucy's agony this afternoon as that handsome young lordling drove a stake into her heart. Wherever he now lies-in some hideaway in London to which he transported his boxes of earth-in his sleep he heard her screams, tasted her blood, felt her death. Like me, he saw the faces of her killers in his dreaming.

Did he love Lucy Westenra? Perhaps, as he understands the word, he did. But what I feel in his dreaming is not grief, but rage.

He had claimed her by his blood, and she was his.

In life he was not a man to forgive the smallest slight: Nomie told me that men who broke his law, in the smallest degree, were impaled upon iron stakes on the roadsides, and left to slowly die: thus he had his name. Four hundred years of hunting humankind has not taught him either mercy or tolerance.

His rage is like the storm that builds above the Himalayas in the summer heat, lightning h.o.a.rded in murderous dark. I feel it coming. When the storm strikes, G.o.d have mercy on us all!

"Renfield?" The tap on the door had to be Seward. He was the only one in Rushbrook House who ever knocked, and he not al- ways. And indeed, he did not wait to be invited to unlock and enter the room.

Renfield turned from the window, beyond which the hazy red sun was burning itself out in the sky above London's lurid smokes.

"There is a lady here, who would like to see you."

Renfield had caught a glimpse, through the door as it opened, of Mina Harker's black dress. Indeed it would have been far too much to hope, that Catherine would have come at this time. He kept his voice steady with an effort. "Why?"

"She is going through the house, and would like to see everyone in it."

Renfield wondered if Seward had any idea just how many other people went through the house and saw everyone in it, behind his back. "Oh, very well. Let her come in, by all means. Just wait a moment while I tidy up." He gulped down the spiders and the flies hastily, without the joy of savoring them. He had a feeling he would need all the strength he could get. "Let the lady come in."

He went to sit on the edge of the bed, so that he could see Mrs. Harker as she entered the room. Seward kept within striking-- distance-as if I could not knock his brains out against the wall if I wished it!-but Mrs. Harker walked in without either fear or hesitation, and held out her black-gloved hand. "Good-evening, Mr. Renfield. Dr. Seward has told me of you."

Renfield studied her face for a few moments, taking in the frank dark eyes, the firm set of her mouth, the air of competence she had exuded even hunting for her friend in the moonlit churchyard. He almost said so, then remembered he was never supposed to have seen her before in his life. "You're not the girl the doctor wanted to marry, are you? You can't be, you know, for she's dead,"

he added, and saw Seward start.

"Oh, no! I have a husband of my own, to whom I was married before I ever saw Dr. Seward, or he me. I am Mrs. Harker."

"Then what are you doing here?" He thought he sounded sufficiently genuine.

"My husband and I are staying on a visit with Dr. Seward."

"Then don't stay."

"But why not?"

"And how did you know I wanted to marry anyone?" asked Seward, a little miffed-as if, thought Renfield, he didn't know that it was common knowledge throughout the asylum.He rolled his eyes. "What an asinine question!"

"I don't see that at all, Mr. Renfield," said Mrs. Harker, as if the conversation were taking place in a drawing-room instead of a bare cell with bars on the window.

"You will understand, Mrs. Harker," said Renfield, "that when a man is so loved and honored as our host is, everything regarding him is of interest in our little community. Dr. Seward is loved not only by his household and his friends, but even by his patients, who, being some of them hardly in mental equilibrium, are apt to distort causes and effects. Since I myself have been the inmate of a lunatic asylum, I cannot but notice that the sophistic tendencies of some of its inmates lean toward the errors of non causa and ignoratio elenchi."

The relief in having an actual conversation, with a young woman whom he was coming to like and respect, was unbelievable. He felt a flash of regret that he hadn't saved out a single fly to offer her.

She would need them, he knew, as much as he.

"It may be that they cannot help it," said Mrs. Harker. "I myself have not your experience, so I cannot judge, but even among the so-called sane of my acquaintance I have encountered some very curious beliefs."

Renfield laughed-the first time, he realized, he had laughed since coming to Rushbrook House. "And I'll wager you would think them a very college of sanity, compared to some of the queer nabs I ran across in India. Why, I am myself an instance of a man who had a strange belief. Indeed, it was no wonder that my friends were alarmed, and insisted on my being put under control. I used to fancy that life was a positive and perpetual ent.i.ty, and that by consuming a mult.i.tude of live things, no matter how low in the scale of creation, one might indefinitely prolong life. At times I held the belief so strongly that I actually tried to take human life. The doctor here will bear me out that m one occasion I tried to kill him for the purpose of strengthening my vital powers by the a.s.similation with my own body of his life through the medium of his blood-relying, of course, upon the Scriptural phrase, 'For the blood is the life.' Isn't that so, Doctor?"

"Er-indeed it is." Seward looked completely disconcerted, and glanced at his watch. "I fear it is time to leave, Mrs. Harker."

"Of course." Mrs. Harker smiled, and took Renfield's hand again. "Good-by, and I hope I may see you often, under auspices pleasanter to yourself."

Renfield rose, and bowed. "Good-by, my dear. I pray G.o.d I may never see your sweet face again. May He bless and keep you!" As the door was closed, the lock clashing harshly, Renfield knew without turning that the sun had disappeared behind Lon- don's black sullen rooflines. He felt it: the flowing horror of bitter-cold air that precedes the storm like a moving wall, the inevitable terror of the lightning.

Somewhere in the dark of London, Dracula woke.