Slave Of Dracula (18 page)

The black shape before the window dislimned; the moonlight all but disappeared. White mist poured
through the inch-wide crack in a thin stream that flowed down the wall, across the floor, and under the
door of the cell. Then it was gone.

Renfield sank to the floor of his cell and wept.

Van Helsing came to see Renfield next morning, cheerful-cock-a-whoop, Renfield thought, observing
the old man’s springy step and bright eye with a kind of numb bitterness. They must have found some of
the Count’s crates of earth at Carfax. Of course, it would be Jonathan Harker who’d told them the Count
had bought the old house, and shipped his crates of earth there, so that he could have a place where he
could rest in this foreign land.

Renfield saw it all now. Harker was a solicitor. It must have been he, whom Dracula hired as his agent,
as the Countess Eliz-abeth had said. Harker must have somehow escaped Dracula’s castle in the
Carpathians.

Renfield shuddered at the thought. Enough to give one brain–fever indeed-he couldn’t imagine how
anyone, mortal or Un–Dead, could escape the Count. There must be a great deal more to that young
man than met the eye.

Yet for all their cleverness, he thought despairingly, for all their smug self-satisfaction, neither Van
Helsing, nor Seward, nor His Handsome New Lordship Godalming, nor any of the others had seen the
danger of the Count coming in behind them, taking Mrs. Harker while they were away counting
earth-boxes and congratulating themselves. Mrs. Harker who was innocent and kind, who had gone
walking through the midnight streets of a strange town to save her friend from social embarassment and
chill. The Count must not have killed her-Van Helsing showed no sign of even suspecting that a thing
might be amiss. So there was to be another slow crucifixion, another tortuous game of cat-and-mouse,
such as he had played with Lucy.

And with Nomie, a hundred and ten years before.

“Don’t you know me?” Van Helsing asked, clearly fishing, Renfield thought, for more compliments
about revolutionizing theraputics by his brilliant theories.

“I know you well enough,” snapped Renfield. “You are the old fool Van Helsing. I wish you would take
your yourself and your idiotic brain theories somewhere else. Damn all thick-headed Dutchmen!”

Are you all blind?!?

Evidently they were, for when Seward came in a little later, and tried to engage him in a long discussion
of devouring life and consuming souls, he, too, seemed blithe and cheerful, more cheerful than Renfield
had seen him since the night of his disas-trous dinner for Lucy and her mother, as if the problem of
Drac-ula were well on the way to being solved.

He will come back! Don’t you understand that he will come back?

Renfield was hard put to keep his voice normal, to keep from shouting at Seward or striking him in
sheer blazing frustration, as the doctor talked of lives and souls as if he knew the slightest thing about
them. But at the stroke of noon-the brief period at which the vampire could move and have power-flies
began to buzz in at the window again, and spiders creep out of the wall.

Maybe I have to sacrifice poor Mrs. Harker, thought Ren-field, chewing wearily on a bluebottle, to
save Catherine, and Vixie. It is after all for their sakes that I am doing all o f this. Mrs. Harker’s

kindness had touched his lonely pain, reminding him of how long it had been, since any woman had
spoken kindly to him …

Any living woman.

Oh, my darling, Renfield whispered, the time is coming. When this is done, and poor Mrs. Harker
is his, I shall ask that he let me out o f here as a reward, that he let me go. Then I will return to
you, and we will all three of us be free.

The thought brought him comfort for a time. He returned to catching flies with a lighter heart.

***

Seward put an extra guard in the corridor that night. Renfield saw Harker return late, and prayed that
the presence of Mina’s husband would be enough, to keep the Count away. Yet he watched by the
window in the deeps of the night, and saw the thread of mist creep across the garden, crawl like a
vaporous serpent up the wall, through the chinks in the window casement. Out in the corridor he could
hear Hardy’s snoring deepen–Nomie had told him of how the Count could command sleep, paralyzing
the limbs of his victims or those who sought to guard them. He remembered his dream, of Seward
sleeping like a dead man on Lucy’s mauve satin sofa, while through the open door in the dim firelight the
Count drank Lucy’s blood.

The Count neither materialized, nor troubled to speak to him. Only the mist flowed across the floor,
and beneath the door of Renfield’s cell, while Renfield crouched on the bed watching it in sickened
silence. When it had passed, he fumbled open his boxes, devoured every spider and fly within them.

Catherine, he thought, oh my beloved, forgive me! And Mrs. Harker, my dear sweet Madame
Mina, forgive me, too!

The cold deepened. The little camel-back clock in Seward’s study spoke three sweet tones. But sleep
would not come, and instead of lessening with Dracula’s departure from the house-as surely he must have
departed already?-Renfield’s agitation grew.

Mist gathered in the garden, before his window.

Dear God, has he come back for me? Come back to give me my reward?

The red glint of eyes. Six of them.

Renfield flattened against the wall in terror.

They took shape, and seeped around the casement of the window like a mist.

“So this is how you say, `help’?” The Countess Elizabeth strode forward in a towering rage, and
Renfield buried his face in the meagre pillow of his bed. “We say, that our erring hus-band is not to go
about England taking other wives who please him better, and this is how you go about serving us? By
saying, `Come,’ when he comes knocking at your window like a lover singing a serenade? Get your face
out of your bedclothes and sit up like a man!”

Renfield obeyed. The Countess’s eyes blazed red as fire, her lips were drawn back over fangs like a
wolf’s. Sarike, at her shoulder, grinned though she probably couldn’t understand the Countess’s
thick-accented German, and licked her sharp teeth.

There was blood on the dark ruffles of her walking-dress, both dried and fresh.

“What could I do?” whispered Renfield. “He would kill me!”

“He will kill you, once he can come into this house!” re-torted the Countess. “But until you invited him
in, you were as safe as if you sat on the altar of a church!”

“There are a dozen madmen whose minds our husband could have touched in dreaming,” broke in
Nomie. “You know what he is, with those who pledge their word and then betray it.”

“Coward!” The Countess’s voice was like the hiss of a ser-pent. Her red eyes narrowed, and she
reached to Renfield with her clawed hand, and picked the wing of a fly from the corner of his mouth.
“Glutton. You would betray us for pottage.”

For lives, thought Renfield, too paralyzed with terror even to whimper. For Catherine.

“So now he drinks the blood of this-this Englishwoman. This schoolmistress. This type-writer
lady whose husband leaves her alone, like a fool, to be cuckolded by the Lord of Darkness! He of all
men should know better than that.”

Sarike’s smile widened and her eyes gleamed with demon evil, and she said, “Jonathan,” in her sweet
crystal voice.

The Countess sniffed. “He’ll be her first kill-I’ll bet you my pearl earrings on that.” Her eyes slid
sidelong to Nomie. “And I’ll further bet that the bitch won’t share.”

Then she looked back at Renfield. “If he completes his kill. Pah! He fools with them and fools with
them, whispers to their dreams, until they come willingly, swooning at his feet.” Nomie looked away.

The Countess went on, “You know, do you not, that it is only those who drink the vampire’s blood in
their turn, who be-come vampires-and then only those who have the strength, the will, to hold on as
death rolls over them; to hold on to the will of their master. That is why he seduces them. He makes them
love him too much to let go of their lives.”

In the silence that followed these words, Nomie gazed out the window as if she were enduring a
beating; only once, very quickly, she pressed her hand to her mouth.

“She has a core of steel in her, that one.” The Countess’s deep voice was hard. Her black hair, where it
trailed in tendrils from her chignon, made streaks of night across a face white as the waning moon. “He
will use her against me-against us,” she added, with a glance at her sisters. To Renfield she said, with an
outstretched finger of command, “Stop him.”

Renfield gasped. “How?”

“By doing what you should have done last night. By raising an alarm. By showing some courage.”

“I am a madman, in case you haven’t noticed!” protested Renfield. “I am locked in a cell! I did
everything I could, every-thing!”

“You did what you could to be taken out of the house,” re-torted the Countess. “I notice that not one
word passed your lips concerning the precious Madame Mina’s being taken out of the house.”
Renfield reflected that this business of seeing things in dreams obviously worked both ways. “That
imbecile poet Gelhorn could have done better.”

“Then why didn’t he?” Renfield straightened up a little from his crouch. “Why don’t you send him to
rescue Mrs. Harker, or to warn her husband of the danger in which she stands?”

“If you’d ever seen him trying to get his luggage back from a railway porter, you wouldn’t be asking
that.”

“Because you are the braver man,” said Nomie softly, and turned back from the window to look at
him. “And the more intelligent one, I think. Do this for us, and we will do what we can-I will do what I
can-to have you released, or to sunder these bars and spirit you away.”

“Fail,” added the Countess grimly, “and it will be the worse for you, to a degree that you cannot even
imagine.”

And Sarike, like an animal, only smiled again and licked her lips.

Then they were gone.

***

Renfield saw Mrs. Harker briefly the following day, pale and thin, like tea after too much water has
been added to the teapot. Her eyes were sunken and bruised-looking, as if from too much sleep or too
little. Other than that brief glimpse, as she stood on the gravel driveway bidding farewell to Lord
Godalming and Mr. Morris-God knew where they were off to, Harker had left early in the morning-he
saw none of the little band of conspir-ators against the vampire Count. According to Dr. Hennessey, who
made Seward’s rounds for him, Van Helsing had gone to the British Museum. Seward himself was
closeted in his study, making preparations and plans of his own.

Somehow, Renfield couldn’t bring himself to tell Hennessey of Mrs. Harker’s danger: Hennessey who
reeked of gin and whose smutty-minded speculations about the female patients had been audible to
Renfield night after night when the Irishman had chat-ted with the keepers.

In any case, there was no telling what he’d do with that in-formation.

Though the day was chill, flies swarmed to the little sugar he put out. He didn’t even trouble to put them
in boxes, simply caught them and ate them, desperate to increase his strength, to build up the forces of his
own life to meet what he knew would come.

Seward has to make evening rounds, thought Renfield. I’ll tell him then. That will be time to get
her out o f the house.

But Lord Godalming and Morris arrived just at sunset, met by Seward in the avenue. He must have
been watching from his study window. An hour later Van Helsing’s cab pulled up at the door, and
some time after that, Hennessey came again on Sew-ard’s rounds: “Very took up with Dr. Van Helsing,

he is,” the Irishman reported. “As well he might be-great man like that. And he was most kind, most kind
indeed, when I told him at supper last night of my own observations and experiments with training the
demented to behave themselves. Why, he said he’d seldom encountered a system as original as mine!”

Renfield could almost feel pity for the elderly Dutchman, trapped at the supper-table with Hennessey in
full cry.

“If you would, Dr. Hennessey,” said Renfield, “could you please tell Dr. Seward that I must see him. As
soon as may be, this evening certainly, before the house retires to bed. It is vital.”

“‘Course I’ll tell him,” agreed Hennessey. “‘Course I will.” He unscrewed and sipped his flask as he
went out the door. Ren-field could hear him trading a crude joke with Simmons in the hall. I might just
as well, Renfield reflected wearily, have asked one o f my spiders to take a message.

Seward didn’t come. Harker arrived at nine, springing up the steps like Sir Lancelot after dispatching a
not-very-fearsome dragon. Renfield waited at the window, watching the reflected splotches of golden
light from the asylum’s windows perish one by one against the night-shrouded laurels, until only one
re-mained.

Somewhere in the darkness, a dog began to bark. Other dogs, everywhere in the neighborhood, took
up the cry, and in the padded room, muffled by the coir mats of the walls, Lord Alyn howled as if in
response. Like the dogs, the other patients added their voices to his, Renfield picking them out as
Cockneys pick out the voices of the City’s churchbells.

Oranges and lemons,

Say the bells o f St. Clemmons.

Demons scratch at my door,

Screams Emily Strathmore.

How the dark night has fall’n,

Howls Andrew, Lord Alyn.

Mist began to creep over the garden wall. In the veiled sky, the moon was barely more than a
fingernail, yet Renfield saw clearly the slow seep of those winding vapors toward the house. Terror filled
him. He rushed to the door, pressed his face to the Judas, but Simmons was gone from the hall; it
seemed every man on the wing had begun to scream and pound the walls, and Ren-field’s cries were
swept away in the not-uncommon torrent that Seward and Hennessey had long since ceased to hear.