The Mammoth Book of Dracula (33 page)

“Come with me, please.”

Jerome Howell trailed his host up a wide flight of uncarpeted stairs and along a bare upper hall to the rear of the ancient house, where the fellow stopped before the last of several doors and produced a ring of keys. He inserted one into an old-fashioned lock. Strange, Howell thought with a touch of apprehension. How many people kept bedroom doors locked?

Entering the room, the fellow placed the lamp on a bedside table, and by its light Howell saw that the room was a large one. It had four windows. The bed was a massive old four-poster of pine. Completing the furnishings were two ancient chests-of-drawers and a bedroom chair with faded rosebuds on its skirt of chintz.

“The bed is ready,” the tall man said in his mellow voice, with just a trace of a smile. “Perhaps you should retire at once, no? You appear to be very tired, sir.”

“Are you sure this won’t inconvenience you, Mr Hode?”

“I assure you, it is no trouble. Let me get you something to sleep in.” Striding to a chest, the man dropped on one knee to open its bottom drawer. “Here now. These will fit you, I believe.” He placed a pair of grey flannel pyjamas on the bed and turned to lift a long-fingered hand in farewell. “Goodnight, sir. Rest well.”

He went out. Howell heard the key turn in the lock and realized he was a prisoner. A prisoner in a town called Ellenton, in the state of New Hampshire. And suddenly, with the shock of that frightening realization, all the rest of it flooded back into his memory.

He knew his name. He knew he was a vacationing professor of philosophy whose hobby was the investigation of psychic phenomena. He knew he had received a letter from the town of Ellenton, signed by twenty-two of its citizens, imploring him to come to their town and investigate reports of vampirism—especially the rumour that the most renowned vampire of them all, Count Dracula, had chosen to pay the town of Ellenton a visit and was now in residence here.

More and more came back. He remembered he had planned to arrive in Ellenton about three in the afternoon but had been delayed in Portsmouth by car trouble. He recalled that hours later, when it was dark, he had picked up an old woman—one of the two old women now in the almost bare parlour downstairs. Then an old clunker of a car had run him off the road—perhaps deliberately—and when he regained consciousness in his wrecked car, his passenger was no longer there. She could hardly have escaped injury, but still she had vanished.

And now this house. And this tall, thin, handsome man who could easily be the Count Dracula of history, written about so vividly in Bram Stoker’s famous novel, and described in the letter the Ellenton group had sent him when soliciting his services. And the locked door. Shaking with fear, he hurried to the door and tried to open it.

It would not budge.

A scratching sound at his back caused him to lurch about in panic and look at the windows. All along, he had been telling himself he did not trust this house or these people, and should not risk going to sleep here. Now he knew he should not have ignored those instincts!

Dark shapes had appeared at all three windows, blocking out the faint wash of moonlight. Were they birds or bats? Bats, of course! Huge ones with monstrous wings and ugly, mouth-agape heads. In each of the three mouths gleamed a pair of dagger-like fangs.

Simultaneously the three hurled themselves at the bubbly old window panes.

Despite his years of research, he half expected an implosion of shattered glass but there was none. The winged things passed through the panes without breaking them. The only sound accompanying their rush was the wet-towel flapping of their wings.

With an ear-splitting cry of terror Howell hurled himself at the locked door. It shuddered under the impact but would not yield. Flung back, he fell to his knees, and as he jerked about to face the intruders, a last lingering memory returned to him.

In wild desperation he clawed at his throat, where a golden cross should have been dangling from a golden chain.

The cross was not there.

But seconds later the fangs were. Three gleaming pairs of them, driving deep into his neck.

~ * ~

When he awoke, he was lying on the bed and the tall, handsome foreigner sat there beside him, smiling down at him. “There are some things you should know before you go on with your life here,” the fellow said calmly. “Things about life itself, if I may. Do you recall being run off the road by two young men on your way here?”

“Yes,” Howell heard himself saying.

“You were not their first victim, of course. For quite some time now they have been robbing strangers who passed through here—frequently killing them in the process, as they so nearly killed you. And we, my two aged ladies downstairs and I, have been blamed for these atrocities because the two young men make it seem that those attacked are the victims of vampires. You yourself have their false vampire mark on your neck, in case you haven’t noticed.”

He paused, shrugged, then leaned a bit closer. “Sadly, these two young criminals are not remarkable in this day and age, friend. Just listen to the news any evening on television or read it in the daily papers. A fifteen-year-old youth rapes and kills his grandmother, and who cares? A girl in Texas, only twelve years old, beats to death an infant barely able to walk. Mere children burn down a house because they decide they don’t like the man who owns it. All over this sad country, all over the world, insane violence increases while those who should be trying to stop it shrug their shoulders and look the other way.”

Howell lay there staring up at him.

“So the two ladies downstairs sent for me, and I came,” continued the man with the accent. “Not to stay here long, you understand, but to help if I could. Because someone must step in to put a stop to these horrors. Don’t you agree, Mr Howell?”

To Howell’s surprise his mind was functioning normally again, but he still needed a moment to absorb and evaluate what he had just heard. He frowned then. “But if you do to these people what you always did—what, apparently, you have just done to me—they will become one of
you,
won’t they? One of us? Isn’t that how it works? The victim becomes a vampire too?”

The other shook his head. “Only when such is desired. Students of the occult—like you, sir—have been making that mistake for years. We need you; therefore you are now one of us. But if we had not needed you, you and I would not now be having this conversation.”

“But what—what do you need me for?” Howell asked.

The other reached out to touch him on the shoulder and said with a smile, “You will soon see, friend. Rest, now, to prepare yourself.” And suddenly he was no longer sitting there on the bed. Howell, the new Jerome Howell, was alone.

~ * ~

Seven days have passed since Monk Morrisey and Dan Clay ran Jerome Howell’s Buick off the road. The two have spent the money they took from the unconscious Howell and are on the prowl again. Seriously, too, because they are out of pot, out of cocaine, out of everything. They spent their last few dollars half an hour ago on beers at a late-night bar.

Dan Clay is behind the wheel this time. Turning his head, he scowls at his companion. “Damn it, Monk, we shouldn’a done it. I shouldn’a let you talk me into it.”

“Done what? Wha’ you talkin’ ‘bout?”

“We shouldn’a stopped for beers. Look.” Dan thrusts his right arm out so Monk can see the watch on his wrist—the watch they took from Jerome Howell a week ago. “It’s almost midnight, for the luvva god. We ain’t gonna find nobody on the road this late.”

It is a sparkly bright New England night. No clouds. A round, near-full moon transforms the road into a shining black ribbon. On the left, just ahead, is an old wooden mailbox on a post.

Looking up from the watch in front of his face, Monk Morrisey sees something step into view from the driveway there. It is a man wearing dark trousers and a white, long-sleeved shirt.

One of the white sleeves flaps up as the man steps into the road to beg a lift.

Monk’s voice gurgles with glee. “Hey, hey! Looka what we got us, Dan! A volunteer!” He makes fists of his hands and pounds his knees. “Ease up, man! Ease up!”

Dan takes his foot off the gas pedal and the clunker slows to a jerky stop. As the man at the mailbox walks toward them, Monk leans forward to peer at him through the windshield.

“Wait, Dan. Jeez. It’s the writer guy.”

“Who?”

“The guy with the book. The Buick we ran off the road the last time we were out. Don’t you remember?”

Dan Clay remembers. The book about vampires. They had thrown it away. And just tonight, when out of money, they had swapped the man’s gold cross for their last two beers in that late-night bar.

“We won’t get nothin’ outa him,” Monk says with a groan.

“We already cleaned him.”

The beers have made Dan argumentative. “Who says we won’t? He could‘ve got paid by now for comin’ here, couldn’ he? He’s been here a week.”

“But he just walked outa the old Hode place, dummy. Nobody in his right mind would be stayin’ in a creepy abandoned house if he had money for a motel room.”

“It’s a roof, ain’t it? And if he believes in vampires, he coulda shacked up there ‘cause he likes old houses. He just needs a ride to town ‘cause we wrecked his wheels, that’s all.”

“Well, all right,” Monk grudgingly concedes. “If you say so.”

They wait then in silence while the author of
How to Protect Yourself Against Vampires
continues his approach. By the time the man leans against the door on Monk’s side, the two in the clunker have even begun to grin a little. But their grins freeze into grotesque expressions of terror when the door is violently jerked open and they see Jerome Howell’s face up close ...

...
and are trapped in their seats by the hypnotic stare of his sunken, glowing eyes ...

... and see the long, gleaming fangs at the sides of his opening mouth.

<>

~ * ~

BRIAN MOONEY

Endangered Species

BRIAN MOONEY, although never prolific, has been contributing short stories to magazines and anthologies for forty years. His first professional appearance was in
The London Mystery Selection
in 1971, since when his fiction has appeared in
Fantasy Tales, Kadath, Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos No.2, The 21st Pan Book of Horror Stories, Space 3: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories, Final Shadows, Dark Ibices 5, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, Shadows Over Innsmouth
and
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror Eighth Annual Collection.

After retiring from HM Customs & Excise, he now lives in Deal, Kent, where he has recently resumed writing fiction again.

Still searching for companionship, Dracula turns to the personal ads ...

~ * ~

WELCOME TO MY house! Enter freely and of your own will!

That is correct, I am your “mysterious” host. And you are Miss Roisin Kennedy. Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring. But come, for you have had a long journey. The night is chill and you must be in need of food and rest.

Please walk this way. We will go into my library, which is comfortable and where there is warmth and refreshment. This great house is old and much of the rest of it is sadly dilapidated. I was told that it was built by one who made his fortune in the 1849 gold rush and who lived out his whole life here as a stingy hermit, neither improving nor renovating. But it is in keeping with my tastes, for I love houses which are old, which proclaim to you of their history.

See, is that not better? A blazing log fire has so much more to offer than other forms of warmth. Its appearance alone can comfort and cheer the weary traveller. I abhor this modern central heating—it is so clinical, do you not think? In the old country the forests were ancient and thick and provided light and fuel for
boyar
and peasant alike. I hear that under Ceausescu my land is polluted by the effluvia of industry and coal-fired power stations. Such an abomination!