The Mammoth Book of Dracula (38 page)

Deschamps pressed something into my hand. “My card, sir,” he said. “You will be a welcome guest in my home. Perhaps, Count, you will honour us with a visit very soon.”
An invitation—my sanction!

“Alas, sir, business is to take me away for some weeks,” I lied. “But when I return ... well, now that you have so kindly invited me, I doubt you will be able to keep me away.”

We all laughed at this supposed pleasantry as I made my farewells. The pathetic foolishness of humans. How easy they can make it for we
Nosferatu.
Now that I had received Deschamps’s gratitude-impelled invitation, nothing could gainsay me entrance to their dwelling place. And I would act upon that invitation, sooner than they could know, to dine with a member of their family. As I walked away from them my tongue lapped at lips and fangs as if I were a beast of the forest confronting a helpless fawn.

Despite the passions tearing at me, I did not plunge in rashly as would have done a young
Nosferatu.
No, instead I spent several evenings and nights reconnoitring the Deschamps home, merging in with the light ground mists which crept lazily through their property, exploring the layout of house and gardens, casting forth my mind to identify and know family members and servants and their locations during those crucial nocturnal hours. Containing my patience was a burden, for I was torn by the almost irresistible cravings which torment my kind in these circumstances.

At length I chose my night. Generally the household retired at about midnight but I stayed my hand with difficulty for another hour or so beyond the time when I sensed that the last occupant had fallen asleep. At the end of this lull I made my way to that part of the house below Josephine’s own balcony and bedroom window.

I scaled the outer wall with ease, instinctively finding finger- and toe-holds imperceptible to humans, gaining the balcony within brief moments. Despite the night’s humidity windows and screens were firmly closed, doubtless to prevent access of pestilence-ridden night-flying insects. The family were patently unaware of other, more potent, dangers of the night. The windows were neither let nor hindrance to me and I slid with ease through the tiny gaps available.

The moon was full that night and shed its golden light into Josephine’s chamber, casting chequered shadowy patterns on floor and walls almost to ceiling height. The apartment was huge—as becomes that in the home of a wealthy family—and was well appointed with fine antique furnishings, the centrepiece being a fine leather-topped escritoire with chair upon which a silken gown had been carelessly tossed. Against the wall opposite the windows was a vast and solid four-poster bed with heavy drapes held back by loops of silken cord.

There, in charming disarray, lay my sleeping Josephine, mane of hair spread across fine lawn pillows like dark weed in a milky sea, a single sheet pushed back to well below her waist. Her soft lips were parted and with each gentle breath she took I could hear the Lorelei song of virgin blood.

With my mind I summoned her to wakefulness and slowly she roused, stretching lazily and gazing around the room until she spied me there at the window. With a gasp she sat up, as if about to scream for help. I placed a finger against my lips, imposing silence upon my victim, my love.

For seconds only she resisted and then yielded, mentally and physically, relaxing back against the pillows, eyes shining in terrified fascination. She made but one more sound. “You!” she gasped.

For long minutes I did no more than stand and watch, partly to appreciate her beauty and partly to whet my appetite to the full with anticipation. Then in response to an imperious gesture of my hand, Josephine slowly loosened the top of her nightgown, drawing it aside to reveal one perfect breast, the dark nipple stark against the white flesh. I could see the gentle throbbing of a vein in her neck. I settled by her side, taking one hand in mine to kiss it gently.

“This is a dream,” she whispered.

“It will be but as a dream,” I told her. “A recurring dream of which you will have no memory. And from the dream you will slip into the longest sleep of all, a sleep from which you will awake immortal to take your proper place at my side.”

I lowered my head and drank deeply, more deeply than I had intended that first night but love knows few restraints. I drank my full and more from the fountain of that wine which gives life to us all whether
Nosferatu,
human or animal. During the day that followed and the days following that, I rested more completely than I had rested for many long years.

~ * ~

It took Josephine Deschamps one week to die. The family physician and the specialist he consulted were no Van Helsings. They puzzled over their patient at the beginning and they puzzled until the very end. They assigned nurses to her day and night but they were no obstacle for I needed to do nothing more than entrance them deeply before coming to Josephine.

On that final night I was at the bedside studying my soon-to-be consort. Her flesh was pallid and drawn, the sole colour being two bright spots of fever on the now skeletal cheekbones. The eyes which looked back at me glittered madly, while pale lips pulled back from hueless gums and white teeth which were taking on the sharper aspects of
Nosferatu.

“Soon, my love,” I reassured her.

“Soon, my master,” she replied, voice weak and resigned.

I took nourishment from Josephine for the final time then opened a vein in my wrist, holding it to her mouth so that in turn she could drink. She clutched fiercely at my hand, like a feeding baby clutching at the mother’s breast. Then she collapsed back. She would be dead by dawn, I knew. Then it would be but a short wait until the rebirth.

I knew that funerals tend to be held swiftly in the Southern States, such is the corruptive quality of the climate. I also knew that because of flood risk in the local environs, interments were frequently above ground in stone niches. I guessed that a family of status such as Josephine’s would have its own crypt somewhere in or near the city and I had spent a little time searching for this. When I did find it, I was pleased with it, for it was a large, plain edifice, unadorned save for double bronze doors and a simple plaque inscribed: DESCHAMPS.

Josephine’s mortal remains were taken to a funeral parlour popular with the wealthy. Late at night, after the last mourners had gone, I slipped in to view the body. I told the attendant mortician that I was a family friend just returned from Europe and that having heard the sad news I was constrained to pay respects. He led me to a tiny chapel where the open casket rested on a bier beneath a wall-mounted cross. I dared not approach too closely; to allay suspicion I mendaciously explained to the attendant that I was a Mussulman.

Nonetheless, I could see Josephine clearly enough from where I stood and noted that cheeks and lips were full and red with apparent good health, that a little smile seemed to touch the wonderful mouth. I was pleased with this, for the signs were now there that she was
Nosferatu.
Resurrection varied in my experience but it was unlikely to be more than three or four days before she emerged from the tomb, ravenous and ready to be tamed and tutored.

The day of the funeral was dull and heavily overcast and I watched the actual interment from beneath the shade of a grove of trees beyond the graveyard. I began my vigil that night and for several nights thereafter, shielded by localized fog which I had summoned to the area. There was no sign of Josephine emerging but I remained calm for I know how very much the return can vary from person to person.

You may wonder at my apparent unconcern, but the truth of the matter is that it is a far better thing for new
Nosferatu
who have been entombed to make their own way to freedom. It is an essential part of the process of discovery.

After the fourth night I began to feel alarm and by the sixth night I could only conclude that something was seriously amiss. Perhaps some bumbling primitive had sealed Josephine’s coffin with a cross, inadvertently denying her release. I had to discover the truth for myself and find some way to release Josephine from her prison.

I passed through the knife-edge gap in the bronze doors and entered the resting place of several generations of Deschamps where each coffin was sealed into the vault wall by a stone slab. Each of these was adorned solely with the name of the occupant, as a quick search revealed with the newest, deepest incision: JOSEPHINE DESCHAMPS 1901-1922.

I ripped the slab from its place and revealed the casket which I lifted down carefully. I scrutinized the external dimensions but could see nothing like a cross or religious icon which might have held Josephine helpless and immobile. I tore away the lid, the deeply sunken screws screaming in protest as I did so.

Josephine lay there peacefully, still with the healthy look that I had observed in the funeral parlour. It was now well into the night and she should have been responding to the initial cravings for human blood. I examined her carefully but could see no visible signs of Unlife. Baring my chest, I incised a vein and blood spurted freely. Lifting Josephine to me, I pressed her mouth firmly to the wound.

She did not respond, hanging limp in my arms with blood trickling down unmoving lips to stain the front of her burial gown. I touched her cheek in wonderment and noticed a greasy feel beneath my fingers. Swiftly I rubbed and her face became a mask, smeared as if by the bloody tears of a clown.
She was masked by rouge and paint!

I laid my mouth to her neck but barely had my fangs penetrated the cold flesh than I was assailed by a foul chemical stench. I tore the gown from the young body. Her torso, from shoulders to pubis, was marred by a hideous Y-shaped cut, crudely stitched. There was no blood inside my darling, only a noxious preservative.

Embalmed!
She had been embalmed! Her heart and entrails had been ripped out and she had been filled with some disgusting laboratory concoction. Josephine was nothing now, nothing more than a ruined husk. Emitting a bestial howl of frustration and rage, I ripped the corpse limb from limb, strewing its parts about that dreadful chamber of the dead. Grief unassuaged, I tore the Deschamps vault apart, destroying coffins and scattering bones and cadavers until there was nothing left for me to ravage.

Had the perpetrators of this vile outrage been cast before me at that moment, I would have made them suffer until they were crying for the ecstasy of death! I thought of the time when as a human ruler I had dined amidst the twenty thousand I had caused to be impaled after a memorable battle. Their anguish would have been as nothing to what I could have inflicted on that night in the Deschamps vault.

Sitting among the carnage I had wrought, I gradually regained some composure. The outrage had been committed and there was nothing now I could do about it. Night was drawing on and although an hour or more to dawn, I should leave before sunrise when my powers would wane.

I stepped forth from the ruin of that shattered sepulchre into slender veils of mist which still blanketed the place. I did not immediately metamorphose into bat or wolf but made my way instead towards the high gates of the cemetery entrance where at last I emerged into clear air. Without warning a beam of light shone suddenly into my face and eyes, momentarily dazzling me although I was able to make out a trio of shapes beyond the glare.

For an instant I thought that I had encountered a police patrol until I heard a familiar voice, triumphant with tipsy and malicious glee.

“Well, look what we got here boys. It’s the old feller who interfered between me and my girl. I told you I thought I’d seen him hanging around here.” My eyes had adjusted quickly and I could now see beyond the flashlight’s brightness. Haydon Lascalles had two friends with him, as big and burly as himself, and his courage was proportionately greater.

“Now my Josephine’s gone,” he was saying. “And gone without even knowing what a good man I’d have been to her. And it’s all this bastard’s fault. Reckon he’s a damned pervert too, always hanging around cemeteries. What we gonna do about him?”

“You sure this is him, Hay?” said one of the others. “He don’t look so old to me.”

“It’s him right enough, Brad. Must have been using hair colouring.” Lascalles sneered at me. “You think that hair dye would get you a nice piece of young ass, Granddad?”

I stared hard at the trio, barely controlling my ferocity. “Do not arouse me,” I hissed at them. “Walk away now and you may all live to see another sun rise.”

My tone had an effect on the third youth, the one holding the flashlight, for he sidled a step or two back. “Let’s leave this, we can tell the cops about this guy creeping round the graveyard at nights.”

“Hell, no!” Haydon Lascalles leaped at me, swinging a huge hunting knife he had snatched from beneath his coat. The weapon passed through me harmlessly and I gave a harsh laugh. Disarming my impassioned assailant, I retained an easy hold on him while disembowelling the one called Brad with an upward sweep of the keen-edged blade. Dashing Brad’s corpse aside, I seized the third man—who was striking at me with the flashlight—and snapped his spine. He fell to the ground, writhing and emitting pathetic mewling noises.

The reek of fresh gore from the gutted carcass that had been companion Brad was too overpowering for me to ignore. Pulling Haydon Lascalles close, I laughed into his face before striking at his throat. He barely had time to glimpse my fully exposed fangs, barely had time enough to recognize his fate and die wailing for mercy; but time enough he had to be plunged into a mental maelstrom of Hell.