Dracula Unbound (9 page)

Larry made his way through the thick traffic, yelling cheerfully to other drivers out of the window as he went. Once he had parked, he fought his way through to the trailer he had hired.

There Kylie was awaiting him, her fair hair capturing the sun.

She threw her arms round him. “I've been here all day. Where've you been?”

“I was drowning my sorrows in Enterprise.”

“You got a girl there?”

“I ain't that enterprising. Listen, Kylie, forgive me, sweet. I shouldn't have walked out on you as I did, and I've felt bad ever since.”

She was happy to hear him say it.

“We were both too hasty.” She stuck her tongue in his mouth.

“Come inside, on the bed,” he said. “I'll show you how I feel about you. I've had three days here, kicking my heels and feeling bad.”

“Bed later. I got in this morning with Mina. I flew to Dallas and she flew me here in her plane.”

“That old Bandierante? It'll fall to pieces in the air one day.”

“Come and see her. She's worried crazy about Joe. You'll have to tell her—and me—exactly where he is and what happened.”

He made a face but was in no mood to argue.

The Bandierante was the plane from which Mina Legrand liked to skydive. She had left it on an improvised landing field at the edge of the desert, five miles away. She had paid dearly for a rusty old Chevy in order to be mobile. They caught up with her in a mess of traffic on what had become Old John's main street. Mina had climbed out of the car to argue more effectively with a cop trying to control the flow of automobiles, one of which had, perhaps inevitably, broken down.

She turned an angry face to her son.

“And where have you been? What have you done with your father?”

He explained how Joe and Clift had disappeared in the inertial beam. There was every reason to believe that by that means they had managed to get aboard the train.

“And where are they now?” she asked.

“Look, lady,” said the cop, “now it's you holding up the traffic flow.”

“Oh, shut up!” she snapped.

“I been here three days, Mom, three days and three nights I waited in the desert by our flags,” Larry said. “No sign of anything.”

“You're as big an idiot as your father.”

“Gee, thanks, Mom. I'm not responsible. You're responsible—you made the news announcement.”

“When have you ever been responsible! What do you think, Kylie?”

Ever tactful, Kylie advised her mother-in-law to take things easy, shower, and maybe do a little skydiving, since she had her plane. Joe could surely look after himself.

“Well, I'm just worried crazy,” Mina said. “You'll find me in the Moonlite Motel in Enterprise if you want me. I can't face going back to Dallas.”

“Dallas—anywhere, lady,” said the cop. “Just get moving, will you please?”

Mina jumped into the driving seat and accelerated sharply, bashing another automobile as she left.

The cop glared at Larry as if he was responsible.

“Thanks for your help, Officer,” Larry said.

5

The institution stood in parkland, remote from the town. It was four stories tall, all its windows were barred, and many whitewashed in addition. With its acres of slate roof, it presented a flinty and unyielding appearance.

If its front facade had a Piranesi-like grandeur, the rear of the building was meager, cluttered with laundries, boiler rooms, storage bins for coal and clinker, and a concrete exercise yard, like a prison. In contrast was the ruin of an old abbey standing some way behind the asylum. Only an ivy-clad tower, the greater part of a chapel, with apse and nave open to the winds, remained. The once grand structure had been destroyed by cannonfire at the time of Cromwell. Nowadays its crypt was occasionally used by the institution as a mortuary, particularly when—as not infrequently happened—an epidemic swept through the wards and cells.

At this time of year, in late summer, the ivy on the ruin was in flower, to be visited by bees, wasps, and flies in great profusion. Inside the institution, where the prevailing color was not green but white and gray, there was but one visitor, a ginger man stylishly dressed, with hat and cane.

This visitor followed Doctor Kindness down a long corridor, the chilly atmosphere and echoing flagstones of which had been expressly designed to emphasize the unyielding nature of the visible world. Dr. Kindness smoked, and his visitor followed the smoke trail humbly.

“It's good of you to pay us a second visit,” said Dr. Kindness, in a way that suggested he meant the opposite of what he said. “Have you a special medical interest in the subject of venereal disease?”

“Er—faith, no, sir. It's just that I happen to be in the theatrical profession and am at present engaged in writing a novel, for which I need a little firsthand information. On the unhappy subject of … venereal disease …”

“You've come to the right place.”

“I hope so indeed.” He shivered.

The doctor wore his habitual bloodstained coat. His visitor wore hairy green tweeds with a cloak flung over them, and tugged nervously at his beard as they proceeded.

During their progress, a lanky woman in a torn nightshirt rushed out from a door on their right. Her gray, staring eyes were almost as wide as her open mouth, and she uttered a faint stuttering bird cry as she made what appeared to be a bid for freedom.

Freedom was as strictly forbidden as alcohol or fornication in this institution. Two husky young attendants ran after her, seized hold of her by her arms and emaciated body, and dragged her backward, still stuttering, into the ward from which she had escaped. The door slammed.

By way of comment, Dr. Kindness waved his meerschaum in the general direction of the ceiling, then thrust it back into his mouth and gripped it firmly between his teeth, as if minded to give a bite or two elsewhere.

They came to the end of the corridor. Dr. Kindness halted in a military way.

“You're sure you want to go through with this?”

“If it's not a trouble. ‘Some put their trust in chariots …' I'll put my trust in my luck.” He gave as pleasant a smile as could be. “The luck of the Irish.”

“Please yourself, certainly.”

He stood to one side and gestured to the ginger man to approach the cell door at which they had arrived.

A foggy glass spyhole the size of a saucer punctuated the heavy panels of the door. The ginger man applied his eye to it and stared inside. “‘For now we see through a glass darkly,'” he muttered.

The cell was bare and of some dimension, perhaps because it occupied the corner of the building. Such light as it enjoyed came from a small window high in an outer wall. The only furnishing of the cell was a mattress rumpled in a corner like a discarded sack.

A madman sat on the mattress, combing his hair thoughtfully with his nails. He was dressed in a calico shirt, trousers, and braces.

“This fellow is Renfield by name. He has been with us a while. Murdered his baby son and was caught trying to eat its head. Quite a pleasant fellow in some moods. Some education, I suppose. Came down in the world.”

The ginger man removed his eye from the glass to observe the doctor.

“Syphilitic?”

“Tertiary stage. Dangerous if roused.”

The ginger man looked down at his shiny boots.

“Forgive me if I ask you this, doctor, but I was just wondering if you felt pity for your patients?”

“Pity?” asked the doctor with some surprise, turning the word over in his mind. “Pity? No. None. They have brought their punishment on themselves. That's obvious enough, isn't it?”

“Well, now, you say ‘punishment.'” A tug at the beard. “But suppose a man was genuinely fond of a woman and did not know she had any disease. And suppose he was in error just once, giving in to his passions …”

“Ah, that's the crux of the matter,” said the doctor, removing his pipe to give a ferocious smile. “It's giving in to the passions that's at the root of the trouble, isn't it? Let me in turn pose you a question, sir. Do you not believe in hellfire?”

The ginger man looked down at his boots again and shook his head.

“I don't know. That's the truth. I don't know. I certainly
fear
hellfire.”

“Ah. Most of the inhabitants of this mental institution know the answer well enough. Now, if you're ready to go in—”

The doctor produced a key, turned it in the lock, slid back two large bolts, and gestured to the ginger man to enter.

The madman, Renfield, sat motionless on his mattress, giving no sign. A fly, buzzing aimlessly about like a troubled thought, made the only noise. It spiraled down and landed on a stain on the mattress.

The ginger man took up a position with his back against the wall by the door. After the door closed behind him, he sank slowly down, to balance on his heels. He smiled and nodded at Renfield but said nothing. The madman said nothing and rolled his eyes. The fly rose up and buzzed against the square of window, through which clear sky could be glimpsed.

“It's a lovely day outside,” said the ginger man. “How would you like a walk? I could come with you. We'd talk.”

After a long silence, Renfield spoke in a husky voice. “Nobody asked you, kind sir, she said. I'm all alone. There once was ten of us. Now no one knows the where or when of us.”

“It must be very lonely.”

The madman roused himself, though still without observing his visitor directly.

“I'm not alone. Don't think it. There's someone always watching.” He raised a finger to the level of his head, pointing to the ceiling. Then, as if catching sight of an alien piece of food, he reached forward quickly and bit the finger till it bled.

The ginger man continued to squat and observe.

“Do you realize what you're suffering from?” he asked softly. “The name of the ailment, I mean.”

Renfield did not reply. He began to hum. “Ummm. Ummm.”

The bluebottle spiraled down again. He had his eye on it all the way. As soon as it landed on his shirt, he grabbed it and thrust it into his mouth.

Only then did he turn and smile at his visitor.

“Life,” he said conversationally. “You can never get enough of it, don't you find that, kind sir? It's eat or be eaten, ain't it?”

As they advanced along the corridor, it became darker and smokier. Both Bodenland and Clift decided that their chances of survival were thin.

The dimensions of the corridor altered in an alarming fashion. The way ahead twisted like a serpent. It appeared as if infinity stretched before them—grand and in some way elevating, but nevertheless formidable.

And then suddenly at infinity the air curdled, like milk in a thunderstorm, and an atmospheric whirlpool formed. From that whirlpool emerged a terrifying figure, beating its way toward them.

“Joe!” yelled Clift. The sound echoed in their ears.

A great leathery winged thing, its vulpine head plumed like something from a Grünewald painting, thrashed toward them. It had an infinite distance to go, yet it moved infinitely fast, despite the wounded slow motion flap of its pinions. Its eyes were dead. Its mouth blazed. It had scaly claws, like the feet of a giant bird. In those claws it carried a brutal blunt gun of matt metal. It raised this weapon and began firing at the two men as it approached.

Phantasm though it seemed, the monster's bullets were real enough. They came in a hail, screaming as they flew. Bodenland dived into a shallow guard's blister to one side of the passage. Clift fell, kicking, with a bullet in his shoulder.

Hardly conscious of what he was doing, Bodenland scrambled halfway to his feet. The blister contained a wheel, perhaps a brakewheel, and little else—except an emergency glass panel with something inside he could not see for shadow. A hatchet? Swinging his fist, he shattered the glass. Inside the case was nothing more formidable than a flashlight.

In those few seconds when death was coming upon him, Bodenland's brain seized on its final chance to function. From its remotest recesses, from below a conscious level, it threw out a picture—clear and chill as if forged of stained glass in some ancient chapel.

The picture was of a great artery stretching through the body of planetary time. And up that artery to the throat of it where Bodenland crouched swam terrible creatures from the very bowels of existence, ravenous, desperate for a new chance at life, stinking from the oblivion that had shrouded them.

This avenging thing on its pterodactyl wings—so the image depicted it—was no less mythological than real; alien, yet immediately recognizable. One of its talons screeched against wood as it slowed in the corridor to turn on him. So monstrous was it, it seemed the train could never contain the wooden beat of its wings. They burned with dark flame.

And it keened on a shrill note, cornering its prey.

Clouds of murk rolled with it as it swerved upon the blister. Bodenland had dropped to one knee. With his left arm raised protectively above his head, he held the flashlight in his right hand and shone it at the predator.

The beam of light pierced through murk to its red eyes. Abruptly, its singing note hit a higher pitch, out of control. It began to smolder inside wreaths of disintegration. It recoiled. The leather wings, fluttering, banged woodenly against imprisoning walls. The immense veined claws opened convulsively, letting drop its weapon, as faster went the beat of the wings.

Just for a moment, in place of horror, a vision of a fair and beautiful woman appeared—dancing naked, shrieking and writhing as if in sexual abandon—couched on gaudy bolsters. Then—dissolved, faded, gone, leaving only the monster again, to sink smoking to the floor.

A great wing came up, fluttered, then broke, to join the crumble of ashes which strewed themselves like a shawl along the train corridor.

Bodenland switched off the flashlight. He remained for a moment where he was.