Slave Of Dracula (16 page)

It was the American-Morris, Renfield remembered his name was, Quincey Morris-who helped bring
Godalming back to his feet, while Van Helsing moved cautiously past Lucy to un-caulk the putty from the
door. In Lucy’s place, Renfield sup-posed 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 chink in the door like smoke, like the figure in a dream, as Nomie, Elizabeth,
silent Sarike had come through the broken pane of glass 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 to-morrow 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.

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 storm-winds 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 massacre 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, watch-ing 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 passed 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 Godalming, like the American Mor-ris, 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 assistance 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 passed 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 some-where before, and I have a terrible sense of urgency about the lost
memory. Could it be that he is one of Lady Brough’s crea-tures, 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 Godalming 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 be-neath 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 hu-mankind has not taught him either mercy or tolerance.

His rage is like the storm that builds above the Himalayas in the summer heat, lightning hoarded in
murderous dark. I feel it coming. When the storm strikes, God 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 every-one in it.”

Renfield wondered if Seward had any idea just how many other people went through the house and
saw everyone in it, be-hind his back. “Oh, very well. Let her come in, by all means. Just wait a moment
while I tidy up.” He gulped down the spi-ders 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 compe-tence 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 mar-ried 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
equilib-rium, 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 er-rors 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 unbeliev-able. 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 encoun-tered 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 entity, and that by consuming a multitude of live things, no mat-ter how low in the scale of
creation, one might indefinitely pro-long 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 strength-ening my vital powers by the assimilation 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 God 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 in-evitable terror of the lightning.

Somewhere in the dark of London, Dracula woke.

He knows they care here.

That awareness went through him like a killing spear, dropping him to his knees, his breath labor-ing
and sweat standing out on his face like a dying man’s.