The Mammoth Book of Dracula (28 page)

The pounding of hooves, amplified a thousandfold by the trees, thunders. The ground shakes. The forests tremble.

Van Helsing’s cavalry explode out of the woods and fall upon the camp, riding around and through the place, knocking over wagons, dragging through fires. A dozen flaming torches are thrown. Shrieking werewolves, pelts aflame, leap up at the riders.

Silver swords flash, red with blood.

Van Helsing dismounts and strides through the carnage, making head shots with his pistol. Silver balls explode in wolf-skulls.

A young girl approaches Van Helsing’s aide, smiling in welcome. She opens her mouth, hissing, and sinks fangs into the man’s throat.

Three cavalrymen pull the girl off and stretch her out face-down on the ground, rending her bodice to bare her back. Van Helsing drives a five-foot lance through her ribs from behind, skewering her to the bloodied earth.

Van Helsing:
Vampire bitch!

The cavalrymen congratulate each other and cringe as a barrel of gunpowder explodes nearby. Van Helsing does not flinch.

Harker’s Voice:
Van Helsing was protected by God-Whatever he did, he would, survive. He was blessed.

Van Helsing kneels by his wounded Aide and pours holy water onto the man’s ravaged neck. The wound hisses and steams, and the Aide shrieks.

Van Helsing:
Too late, we are too late. I’m sorry, my son.

With a kukri knife, Van Helsing slices off his Aide’s head. Blood gushes over his trousers.

The overture concludes and the battle is over.

The gypsy encampment is a ruin. Fires still burn. Everyone is dead or dying, impaled or decapitated or silver-shot. Van Helsing distributes consecrated wafers, dropping crumbs on all the corpses, muttering prayers for saved souls.

Harker sits, exhausted, bloody earth on his boots.

Harker’s Voice:
If this was how Van Helsing served God, I was beginning to wonder what the firm had against Dracula.

The sun pinks the skies over the mountains. Pale light falls on the encampment.

Van Helsing stands tall in the early morning mists.

Several badly wounded vampires begin to shrivel and scream as the sunlight burns them to man-shaped cinders.

Van Helsing:
Hove that smell... spontaneous combustion at daybreak. It smells like ... salvation.

~ * ~

Like a small boy whose toys have been taken away, Francis stood on the rock, orange cagoul vivid against the mist-shrouded pines, and watched the cavalry ride away in the wrong direction. Gypsy extras, puzzled at this reversal, milled around their camp set. Storaro found something technical to check and absorbed himself in lenses.

No one wanted to tell Francis what was going on.

They had spent two hours setting up the attack, laying camera track, planting charges, rigging decapitation effects, mixing kensington gore in plastic buckets. Van Helsing’s troop of ferocious cavalry were uniformed and readied.

Then Shiny Suit whispered in the ear of the captain who was in command of the army-provided horsemen. The cavalry stopped being actors and became soldiers again, getting into formation and riding out.

Kate had never seen anything like it.

Ion nagged Shiny Suit for an explanation. Reluctantly, the official told the little vampire what was going on.

“There is fighting in the next valley,” Ion said. “Baron Meinster has come out of the forests and taken a keep that stands over a strategic pass. Many are dead or dying. Ceausescu is laying siege to the Transylvanians.”

“We have an agreement,” Francis said, weakly. “These are my men.”

“Only as long as they aren’t needed for fighting, this man says,” reported Ion, standing aside to let the director get a good look at the Romanian official. Shiny Suit almost smiled, a certain smug attitude suggesting that this would even the score for that dropped picture of the Premier.

“I’m trying to make a fucking movie here. If people don’t keep their word, maybe they deserve to be overthrown.”

The few bilingual Romanians in the crew cringed at such sacrilege. Kate could think of dozens of stronger reasons for pulling down the Ceausescu regime.

“There might be danger,” Ion said. “If the fighting spreads.”

“This Meinster, Ion. Can he get us the cavalry? Can we do a deal with him?”

“An arrogant elder, maestro. And doubtless preoccupied with his own projects.”

“You’re probably right, fuck it.”

“We’re losing the light,” Storaro announced.

Shiny Suit smiled blithely and, through Ion, ventured that the battle should be over in two to three days. It was fortunate for him that Francis only had prop weapons within reach.

In the gypsy camp, one of the charges went off by itself. A pathetic phut sent out a choking cloud of violently green smoke. Trickles of flame ran across fresh-painted flats.

A grip threw a bucket of water, dousing the fire.

Robert Duvall and Martin Sheen, in costume and make-up, stood about uselessly. The entire camera crew, effects gang, support team were gathered, as if waiting for a cancelled train.

There was a long pause. The cavalry did not come riding triumphantly back, ready for the shot.

“Bastards,” Francis shouted, angrily waving his staff like a spear.

~ * ~

The next day was no better. News filtered back that Meinster was thrown out of the keep and withdrawing into the forests, but that Ceausescu ordered his retreat be harried. The cavalry were not detailed to return to their film-making duties. Kate wondered how many of them were still alive. The retaking of the keep must have been a bloody, costly battle. A cavalry charge against a fortress position would be almost a suicide mission.

Disconsolately, Francis and Storaro sorted out some pick-up shots that could be managed.

A search was mounted for Shiny Suit, so that a definite time could be established for the rescheduling of the attack scene. He had vanished into the mists, presumably to escape the American’s wrath.

Kate huddled under a tree and tried to puzzle out a local newspaper. She was brushing up her Romanian, simultaneously coping with the euphemisms and lacunae of a non-free press. According to the paper, Meinster had been crushed weeks ago and was hiding in a ditch somewhere, certain to be beheaded within the hour.

She couldn’t help feeling the real story was in the next valley. As a newspaperwoman, she should be there, not waiting around for this stalled juggernaut to get back on track. Meinster’s Kids frightened and fascinated her. She should know about them, try to understand. But American Zoetrope had first call on her, and she didn’t have the heart to be another defector.

Marty Sheen joined her.

He was mostly recovered and understood what she had done for him, though he was still exploring the implications of their blood link. Just now, he was more anxious about working with Brando—who was due in next week—than his health.

There was still no scripted ending.

~ * ~

The day that the cavalry—well, some of them—came back, faces drawn and downcast, uniforms muddied, eyes haunted, Shiny Suit was discovered with his neck broken, flopped half in a stream. He must have fallen in the dark, tumbling down the precipitous mountainside.

His face and neck were ripped, torn by the sharp thorns of the mountain bushes. He had bled dry into the water, and his staring face was white.

“It is good that Georghiou is dead,” Ion pronounced. “He upset the maestro.”

Kate hadn’t known the bureaucrat’s name.

Francis was frustrated at this fresh delay, but graciously let the corpse be removed and the proper authorities be notified before proceeding with the shoot.

A police inspector was escorted around by Ion, poking at a few broken bushes and examining Georghiou’s effects. Ion somehow persuaded the man to conclude the business speedily.

The boy was a miracle, everyone agreed.

~ * ~

“Miss Reed,” Ion interrupted. She laid down her newspaper.

Dressed as an American boy, with his hair cut by the makeup department, a light-meter hung around his neck, Ion was unrecognizable as the bedraggled orphan who had come to her hotel room in Bucharest.

Kate laid aside her journal and pen.

“John Popp,” Ion pronounced, tapping his chest. His J-sound was perfect. “John Popp, the American.”

She thought about it.

Ion—no, John—had sloughed off his nationality and all national characteristics like a snake shedding a skin. Newborn as an American, pink-skinned and glowing, he would never be challenged.

“Do you want to go to America?”

“Oh yes, Miss Reed. America is a young country, full of life. Fresh blood. There, one can be anything one chooses. It is the only country for a vampire.”

Kate wasn’t sure whether to feel sorry for the vampire youth or for the American continent. One of them was sure to be disappointed.

“John Popp,” he repeated, pleased.

Was this how Dracula had been when he first thought of moving to Great Britain, then the liveliest country in the world just as America was now? The Count had practised his English pronunciation in conversations with Jonathan, and memorized railway timetables, relishing the exotic names of St Pancras, King’s Cross and Euston. Had he rolled his anglicized name—Count DeVille—around his mouth, pleased with himself?

Of course, Dracula saw himself as a conqueror, the rightful ruler of all lands he rode over. Ion-John was more like the Irish and Italian emigrants who poured through Ellis Island at the beginning of the century, certain America was the land of opportunity and that each potato-picker or barber could become a self-made plutocrat.

Envious of his conviction, affection stabbing her heart, wishing she could protect him always, Kate kissed him. He struggled awkwardly, a child hugged by an embarrassingly aged auntie.

~ * ~

Mists pool around Borgo Pass. Black crags project from the white sea.

The coach proceeds slowly. Everyone looks around, wary.

Murray:
Remember that last phial of laudanum ... I just downed it.

Westenra:
Good show, man.

Murray:
It’s like the Crystal Palace.

Harker sits by Swales, looking up at the ancient castle that dominates the view. Broken battlements are jagged against the boiling sky.

Harker’s Voice:
Castle Dracula. The trail snaked through the forest, leading me directly to him. The Count. The countryside was Dracula. He had become one with the mountains, the trees, the stinking earth.

The coach halts. Murray pokes his head out of the window, and sighs in amazement.

Swales:
Borgo Pass, Harker. I’ll go no further.

Harker looks at Swales. There is no fear in the coachman’s face, but his eyes are slitted.

A sliver of dark bursts like a torpedo from the sea of mist. A sharpened stake impales Swales, bloody point projecting a foot or more from his chest.

Swales sputters hatred and takes a grip on Harker, trying to hug him, to pull him onto the sharp point sticking out of his sternum.

Harker struggles in silence, setting the heel of his hand against Swales’s head. He pushes and the dead man’s grip relaxes. Swales tumbles from his seat and rolls off the precipice, falling silently into the mists.

Murray:
Good grief, man. That was extreme.

~ * ~

Rising over Borgo Pass was Castle Dracula. Half mossy black stone, half fresh orange timber.

Kate was impressed.

Though the permits had still not come through, Francis had ordered the crew to erect and dress the castle set. This was a long way from Bucharest and without Georghiou, the hand of Ceausescu could not fall.

From some angles, the castle was an ancient fastness, a fit lair for the vampire King. But a few steps off the path and it was a shell, propped up by timbers. Painted board mingled with stone.