Slave Of Dracula (7 page)

canine teeth, like an animal’s fangs. Renfield closed his eyes as the blood began to flow down, hid his
mind in thoughts of flies. Big fat horse-flies the size of lichis, each bursting with the electrical fires of life.
He did not even dare think, Let her alone …

Wotan-or whatever that thing was truly called-would not like that.

Already Renfield understood that what that shadowy deity wanted, maybe more than life, was power.
For him, there could be no disloyalty.

***

R.M.R.’s notes

19 August

The bride-maidens rejoice the eyes that wait the coming of the bride; but when the bride draweth nigh,
then the maidens shine not in the eyes that are filled.

***

“It’s Renfield, sir.” Grizzled little Langmore blinked in the dimmed gas-light of the hall. He’d clearly
expected to find Seward -in bed. “He’s escaped.”

Seward had been expecting it. All day Renfield had been rest-less, prowling his room by turns wild
with excitement and darkly sullen. When Seward had turned in after his final round ,rmong the patients,
though depressed himself, he had elected not to inject the chloral hydrate which had, he realized, become
something of a habit over the past three months. Instead he’d prepared for bed, but sat up re-reading
I_ucy’s latest note, short and polite though underlain with sadness, for she suspected her mother was far
more ill than she was letting on … all the while listening, as if he knew there would be trouble with
Renfield as the night grew deeper.

“I seen him not ten minutes ago, when I looked through the Judas, sir.” Hardy pushed open the door of
Renfield’s room as Seward and Langmore came striding down the hall. “Sly, he is. Layin’ on his bed
lookin’ like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”

The muggy cool of the night-breeze met them as they entered the room, where the window-sash had
been literally wrenched from its moorings in the wall, bars and all. Seward shivered, thinking of the
strength that would have taken.

A sudden paroxysm of rage or terror? He hoped so. The thought of the madman being actually that
strong at all times was not a pleasant one. He glanced around the little room, to make sure there wasn’t
some clue, but it looked much the same in the light of the attendants’ lanterns: the narrow cot-like bed
had not been displaced from its position along the right-hand wall, the assortment of tumblers, cups, and
boxes that contained Renfield’s living larder were still neatly ranked on the floor op-posite.

Stepping to the window, he caught the pale flash of what might have been a nightshirt, dodging among
the trees by the intermittent whisper of the waning moon. The yellow gleam of a lantern told Seward that
Simmons was already on the trail. Heading for Carfax, it looked like.

“Bring a ladder and follow us to the east wall,” he instructed Hardy, took his lantern, and hung it on his
belt. With more than a slight qualm, he slithered through the torn-out ruin of the window, hung by his
hands from the sill for a moment, then dropped to the ground. Langmore at his heels, he set out through
the darkness on Renfield’s trail.

“There he goes, sir,” Langmore whispered, and Seward held up his hand. Renfield’s hearing was
sharp-he’d demonstrated more than once his ability to track a fly by its buzzing above the sound of
conversation-and he’d be listening for the smallest noise of pursuit. Or would he? Seward had
encountered madmen and madwomen who seemed to think that mere escape was enough; that they
could elude pursuers as if they were birds.

With a heart of furious fancies,

Whereof I am commander; sang the old ballad-

With a burning spear

And a horse of air

To the wilderness I wander …

Not for the first time he wished his old friend Quincey Mor-ris were with him, Quincey who’d learned
tracking from a cou-ple of Commanche who’d worked on his father’s Texas ranch. Quincey could be
relied upon to keep quiet and obey orders without question, something Seward wasn’t sure he could
count on from most of the attendants.

The white blur of Renfield’s nightshirt shone against the dark of the Carfax wall long before the pursuers
were anywhere near him, then vanished as he dropped down the other side.

Seward cursed. In addition to exploring the Carfax park it-self, he’d walked around the perimeter wall,
both outside and in, and knew it to be badly dilapidated, low enough in several places for a man to easily
climb. It might take Renfield a little time to find such spots, but the thought of chasing him through open
countryside in the dead of a pitch-black night made him shudder.

Thank God at least Hardy had the wits to move quietly, or as quietly as a big man carrying an
eight-foot ladder without a lantern might be expected to-

“Stay here,” Seward breathed, as Hardy set up the ladder against the wall. “He may think he’s safe for
the moment; if he thinks we’re on his heels, he’ll be away like a hare.” When he put his head over the
fern-grown capstones, he could glimpse Ren-field again, making his way toward the dark bulk of the
house. “Slip over as quietly as you can and spread out,” he whispered, retreating down the ladder a few
steps and looking down at the upturned faces of the three attendants. “Hardy, circle around to the right,
Simmons and Langmore to the left-whatever you do, try to keep him from getting out the gate onto the
high road.”

Had the new tenants-or at any rate the carters who’d lugged in the dozen huge crates of their goods
that afternoon–remembered to lock those rusted gates of oak and iron? Had they been able to make the
crazy old locks work, either on the gates or on the house?

Seward tried to push the thought away. “And for God’s sake, keep quiet.” he added. “Keep your
lanterns as dark as you can manage. If you hear me shout, come running.” At any rate, thank goodness,
he reflected as he slipped over the wall in what he hoped was an inconspicuous fashion, Carfax wasn’t
inhabited yet. He might have to go chasing a semi-naked madman down the highroad and into the
marshes, but at least he wouldn’t have to deal with neighbors enraged or terrified by a midnight
incur-sions. Since the FOR SALE sign had disappeared from the gates, he’d watched for signs of
habitation-or even of preparation for habitation, so as to get the address of someone to write to-but so
far there had been nothing. It was as if, having purchased the place, the buyers had been content to let
Carfax sit in its crum-bling Gothic glory, as it had sat since at least the Napoleonic wars.

Tangled ivy crunched underfoot. Something-fox or rabbit–darted wildly away through the undergrowth
that choked most mf the park. Carfax had clearly begun life as a small castle, of which part of the keep
and a chapel remained, a ruinous appen-dix clinging to the side of a four-square, mostly Tudor dwelling
now largely swallowed up in ivy. The gardens were in as poor a state as the house; twice Seward’s path
was blocked by tangles of overgrown hedge, and once he found a fragment of cotton nightshirt snagged
up on a half-dead rosebush. He could hear Renfield’s footsteps, a dry harsh rustle in decades of dead
leaves, making still for the house.

I shall have to find the new owners somehow, thought Sew-ard, and speak to them about
having that wall repaired. The house agent must have warned them, in any case, that they were
buying property next door to a lunatic asylum. The thought of Renfield breaking out again after the
new owners were in residence flitted nightmarishly through his mind. Probably no danger to them, but
God help Fido or Puss if he happens to en-counter them in the park.

“. . . Master . . .”

The word breathed in the darkness, and Seward froze. A mutter of speech. Speaking to whom?

Seward could have sworn the house was empty.

He crept nearer, not breathing, straining to listen as he rounded the corner of the black leaf-shrouded
bulk.

The clouds had parted, letting through a thread of moonlight that showed him the half-circle of the
chapel, the stained but-tresses ragged with ivy and the arched clerstory windows sunken eyeless sockets
in the wall. There was a door set in the wall, flanked by columnar attenuated saints leperous with moss.
Ren-field’s white nightshirt made a blur in the embrasure.

“I am here to do your bidding, Master. I am your slave, and you will reward me, for I shall be faithful.”
He brought his hands up, filthy and stained with moss, as if to caress the iron handle, the padlocked bars.
“I have worshipped you long and afar off. Now that you are near, I await your commands, and you will
not pass me by, will you, dear Master, in your distribu-tion of good things?”

Selfish old beggar, thought Seward, suddenly amused. He be-lieves he’s in the Real
Presence o f God and his first thought is for the loaves and fishes-particularly the
fishes.

Still, there was something in the intensity of Renfield’s hissing voice that set alarm-bells ringing in his
mind. Religious mania took a number of truly unpleasant forms. He wouldn’t want to deal with the
complications it would add to the existing obses-sion with zoophagy …

“Who is there?” Renfield swung around, his square, lined face convulsed like a demon’s.

Lantern-light flashed in the darkness. Langmore, Simmons, and Hardy threw themselves out of the
shrubbery, catching Renfield as he tried to bolt. Seward, who’d sprung forward and seized Renfield’s
arm, was thrown back against the chapel wall as if he had no weight at all. For a moment it seemed to
him, watching the struggling men, that the madman would hurl them all aside and disappear into the night.
Renfield bellowed and cursed, then screamed like an animal as Langmore twisted his arm, but Seward
thought the madman would have gone on struggling, letting the attendant break his bones, had not Hardy
struck Renfield a stunning blow on the head. The big man sank to his knees; Langmore whipped forward
the arm he held, and Simmons jammed it, and the other, into the sleeves of the strait-jacket they’d
brought.

Whatever momentary fears Seward felt about that blow dis-solved on the way back to Rushbrook
House. Renfield kicked, thrashed, howled like an animal until he was gagged; twisted like a man in the
throes of convulsions. At one point Seward feared that the lunatic would manage to tear himself free of
the strait-jacket, and when they got him into the house-with all the other patients setting up a cacophony
in sympathy like the howling of the damned in Hell-ordered extra bindings strapped around him before he
was chained to the wall of the padded room.

When Seward returned to his own bedroom, he was shaken to the bones: Dear God, and I once
harbored the delusion that I could bring Lucy to live with me in this place?

He sank down onto the bed, trembling. The transformation of a man whom he’d thought of as basically
harmless, to other human beings if not to himself or to any fly or bird that came within his reach, brought
home to him what his old teacher Van Helsing had said to him once: “We are the guardians of the frontier
of darkness, my friend. And that means that for the most part, we must stand our watches alone.”

Ah, Lucy, he thought despairingly, you deserve better than this-better than the danger
you would be in, living here with me, no matter what I could do to protect you. I
underestimated the dangers of that dark frontier: I will not do so again.

In the east-facing windows of his room, past the irregular darkness of Carfax’s broken roof-line, the
summer sky was al-ready staining with first light. Through the walls of his room Seward could hear his
patients howling. And above their cries, a powerful voice bellowed like that of a Titan in chains:

“I shall be patient, Master! It is coming-coming-coming!”

Seward injected himself with chloral hydrate and passed out without even removing his clothes.

***

Letter , R. M. Renfield to his wife

Undated (late August?)

My beloved,

I beg your forgiveness for not having written. I was unavoid-ably prevented, by the stupidity and, I
fear, downright malice of the men with whom I am forced to work in this place. Nothing but the most
urgent consideration would have kept my pen from paper, would have silenced the words of love that

every day dwell in my heart.

Tell our Vixie that her papa loves her, and will be with her again by-and-by.

Your own,

R.M.R.

Hanging in chains on the wall of the padded cell, Renfield dreamed.

For three days he hung there, raving and sobbing at what he saw, at what he knew was happening,
would happen. They gave him laudanum to quiet him, forcing it down his throat when he twisted his head
aside in a vain effort to refuse further dreams.

Don’t send me back there! he wanted to scream at them. He is hunting her, stalking her as a
hunter stalks a doe! Waiting for her to come.

But these words he dared not say aloud, for Catherine’s sake, for Vixie’s and his own.

Wotan was near. Wotan was present, was there, not just in England but less than half a mile distant,
lying open-eyed in his coffin in the crumbling chapel of Carfax, blood-stained hands folded on his breast.

Waiting.

Peace came with nightfall and moonrise, for in those hours Wotan’s mind was elsewhere, occupied with
the business that men occupied themselves with during the day. The sense of re-lease, of relief, was
nearly unbearable. Renfield would lie on the floor of the padded cell each night when at Seward’s orders
he was released from his bonds, listening only to the dim howling of the other patients, to the murmur of
Langmore and Simmons as they played their unceasing games of cribbage in the hall, to the steady soft
ticking of the hallway clock. Yet he was at all times aware of the Traveler, aware of his nearness. Aware
of his power.

Wotan was there, Wotan who held the gift of life in his hand. Wotan whose anger infected his brain and
drove him to screaming rages in the daytime, so that he was chained again on the wall.