Fred Saberhagen Vlad Tepes 01 The Dracula Tape

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Cutting off the head with a metal blade, which is practicable once wood has
shattered the vampire heart, serves to interrupt the nervous system, thus
preventing the still-active brain from orchestrating a regeneration of damaged
heart tissue, which would otherwise be quite possible. Another safety measure
for the vampire hunter is to leave the point of the stake in place, at least
until the vampire's body as a whole has reached an advanced stage of
decomposition. This requires a period of time which varies with the
individual, and is usually longest for those who like Lucy have not been long
in vampire life. The old, oldnosteratulike myself may disintegrate, like Poe's
M. Valdemar, almost at once when we are staked.
As for the garlic stuffing, I can only guess that it is used in some
confusion of this butchery with culinary art. Though I have never heard of any
of the breathing actually trying to eat vampire flesh, I am sufficiently well
acquainted with their other habits that I should not be too much surprised.
So, they took away such life as God had given Lucy, and I in my poor,
well-meaning way had tried to help her to retain. When they were done they
soldered up her mangled body in its coffin and then went outside and sealed
the tomb, and looked about to find "the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the
birds sang, and it seemed as if all nature were tuned to a different pitch.
There was gladness and mirth and peace everywhere& " And Arthur bestowed on Van
Helsing his profuse thanks.
One bat in the ointment remained, however, and the professor would not let
the others leave the graveyard before he had them all formally enlisted in "a
greater task: to find the author of all this our sorrow and to stamp him out&
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do we not promise to go on to the bitter end?"
TRACK FIVE
Of these events surrounding Lucy's murder, as I say, I knew nothing at the
time. When I left her alone with Van Helsing in the graveyard I considered
that it was beyond my power to protect her further, and so turned all my
thoughts toward the problem of my own survival.
Lucy had told me that one of her physicians was a Dr. Seward, director of an
asylum in Purflect; and unless that whole neighborhood were given over to
madhouses, I judged it likely that Seward was my own next-door neighbor as
well as a consultant of Van Helsing. Then there was Harker, whose journal at
least Van Helsing had somehow read; and Harker, who had arranged so much for
me, knew that I was likely to be found at Carfax.
I did not know if Harker himself was back in England, or even if he was still
alive, or sane. Nor did I know where in England Van Helsing might be staying.
Dr. Seward was of course another matter, and I judged his asylum the best
place to start in keeping an eye upon my enemies. It was a very old stone
house though not quite as ancient as Carfax of many rooms, on two floors, much
of the ground floor being given over to the rooms or cells for lunatics. The
clientele came from the upper classes, and some of the best families of
England were represented Renfield himself was an example.
On the night of September twenty-ninth I ghosted in bat-form around this
converted mansion, observing what I could wherever blinds were open. The first
figure that I recognized was that of my erstwhile visitor Renfield, sitting
placidly, with folded hands, in a ground-floor room whose window had been
lately reinforced with heavy metal bars and fresh timbers. As I flew past I
saw a sort of inner light come over the madman's face, and he started up from
his poor chair that with a simple cot made the chief furnishing of his
room and began to approach the window; but I flapped on my way, not wishing to
provoke any sort of outburst from him.
In other ground-floor rooms the handful of other patients then in residence
rocked ceaselessly upon their beds, or stared at their contorted fingers, or
paced the floor. And from behind the half-closed blind of one such room came
utterance in tones of such dismal, groaning sorrow that even I must draw near
to see whose voice it was. I caught a glimpse of book shelves, paneled walls,
and then&
It was Dr. Seward's study, and in fact his voice, although it did not issue
from his throat. Seated at a desk with her back to me was a sturdy,
brown-haired young woman, her fingers poised above the keys of a strange
machine that clacked rhythmically and printed words upon a sheet of paper that
wound itself spasmodically through it on a roller. Upon the young woman's
curly head rested a device of forked metal whose cupped ends managed to
embrace both her ears, and from these ear cups issued Seward's voice though
of course I did not recognize it then tuned to a groaning slowness that
enabled the typist to keep up. From the headset a wire ran to a nearby table,
where a cabinet contained a spring-driven mechanism that made things turn, and
a needle rode lightly in the groove that wound about a waxen cylinder.
It was a simple type of early phonograph, of course how far from that to this
small wonder that I hold in my hand! on which Seward was wont to keep his
journal, which his new ally Mina had just volunteered to transcribe. I
recognized her almost at first sight as Lucy's friend, the girl who had come
to lead Lucy home from the Whitby churchyard at midnight.
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On Mina's finger a wedding ring now gleamed, where none had been before; but
I had no doubt of my identification. A female servant chanced to enter the
room and Mina's voice, coming out faintly through the leaded glass when she
spoke briefly to the girl, was the same that had called out "Lucy! Lucy!" on
Whitby's tall cast cliff, that August night that already seemed so long ago.
The servant went out and a few moments later a stalwart man of about thirty
entered. He had a rather stern, commanding look, though his voice when he
spoke was mild enough: "And how is the work progressing?"
Mina's machine ceased clacking and she removed her headset. "Slowly but
surely, Dr. Seward."
"I expect it will be a great help to have it all in typescript, Mrs. Harker."
What Mina replied, I do not know. I sat there on the windowsill for a full
two minutes, blinking my little bat eyes, stunned by the club of coincidence [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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