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‘Oh, this is so wicked! Bram, desist!’ cried his wife.
‘Please, sir – your heart,’ said van Helsing. ‘Resume your seat.’
But Stoker would have his way, limping about the hearthrug, at once sinister and comical, reciting in a high chant unlike his own voice:
His faith is great – I cannot touch his soul –
But what I may afflict his body with
That will I do, and stew him in disease …
He interrupted himself with a fit of coughing.
‘What would Henry say? – And him about to be made a knight!’ exclaimed Mrs Stoker.
‘I beg you, to bed at once, sir,’ said van Helsing. ‘It grows late.’
‘No, no, I must continue work on my novel. Must, must. More chapters. Lucy Westenra is in mortal peril –’ And he dashed from the room.
A gloomy silence followed. Van Helsing sat at an escritoire, rather ostentatiously writing something, muttering to himself as he did so. Florence Stoker sat tight-lipped, stabbing at her embroidery until, with a sigh, she abandoned it and rose, to stand by the fire staring at the mantelpiece abstractedly.
‘It’s a fine painting, Mrs Stoker,’ Bodenland said, referring to the Bronzino, to break the silence.
‘It was originally called “An Allegory”,’ she said. ‘Though an allegory of what I fail to see. Something unpleasant to do with … disease, we may suppose.’
The flatness of her tone did not invite response, leaving Bodenland leisure to ponder on the delights and difficulties of family life before, restlessly, she returned to her chair.
Something sought release. She looked at the ceiling to announce, ‘Sometimes he’s shut in his study for hours.’
‘That must make you feel very lonely, Mrs Stoker,’ said Bodenland.
She rose, preparing to retreat for the night, and said, grandly, ‘I can survive anything, Mr Bodenland, except bad taste.’
A few minutes later, van Helsing put away his writing materials. He picked up a candle in a silver candlestick and offered to show Bodenland up to his room.
‘You seem to be rather a romancer, sir,’ he remarked, as he led the way upstairs. ‘Your presence clearly disturbs Mr Stoker.’
‘What if the man’s soul is being destroyed?’
‘Ha ha, I think I may claim to be a man of science. This is 1896, after all, and the “soul” has been pretty well disproved. Men get on famously without souls. We turn left at the top of the stairs.’
‘Well, suppose it was possible to travel through time, to the years ahead, to obtain medicine for Stoker’s condition?’
Another dry laugh. ‘You are a romancer, indeed. Just along here. Most facts of science are known by this date. Winged flight may become possible in a couple of centuries, but travel through space or time – quite impossible. Quite impossible. I’ll stake my reputation on it. Here we are. I’ll leave you the candle. Let’s just see all’s well, and the windows properly fastened.’
Bodenland entered the dark bedroom first, conscious of the fatigue brought on by the events of the last many hours.
The bedroom was warm. A small gas fire burned in the grate. He lit the gas mantle over the mantelpiece from his candle, thinking incredulously as he did so, I’m lighting a real gas mantle …
A woman’s taste was in evidence. There were frills round the curtains and round the wash-stand. Over the bed was a pokerwork text in a wooden Oxford frame: Thou Shalt Not be Afraid for Any Terror by Night. Psalm XCI.
While he was taking in these details, the doctor was checking the window catches and adjusting the chain of garlic across the panes.
On the wall by the door hung a map of the world in Mercator’s projection, framed by the flags of the nations, enlivened by pictures of battleships. The British Empire was coloured in red, and encompassed a quarter of the globe.
Pointing to the map, in the glass of which the gas light was reflected, Bodenland asked, ‘Would you suppose there was once a time when Hudson Bay didn’t exist, doctor?’
Van Helsing looked askance, as if he suspected a trick question.
‘Hudson’s Bay didn’t exist – until it was discovered by an Englishman in the seventeenth century.’
Bidding Bodenland a good night, he left the room, and closed the door quietly behind him.
Slowly removing his jacket, Bodenland tried to take in his present situation. He found the room, large though it was, oppressive. Oil paintings of Highland cattle in ornate gilt frames occupied much of the wall space. On the bedside table stood a carafe of drinking water and a black-bound New Testament. He sat on the bed to remove his shoes, and then lay back, hands linked under his head. He began to think of Mina and of his pretty new daughter-in-law, Kylie. But would he ever be able to control the time train and get back to them?
His eyes closed.
Without any seeming discontinuity, the processes in his mind continued, leading him to leave the house he was in and descend some steps. The steps were outside, leading down a rank hillside fringed by tall cypresses; then they curved, broken and dangerous, into a crypt. The air became moist and heavy. He searched for somewhere to put down a burdensome parcel he was carrying. The underground room seemed enormous. A stained glass window let in a pattern of moonlight which hung like a curtain in the waxy atmosphere.
‘No problem so far,’ he or someone else said, as he seated himself in a chair.
Three maidens in diaphanous robes stood in the moonlight. They beckoned. All were beautiful. The middle one was the most beautiful. The coloured glass threw warm gules on her fair breast.
It was this middle creature who advanced on Bodenland, drawing aside her white robe as she came. Her smile was remote, her gaze unfixed.
He knew her and called her name, ‘Kylie! Come to me.’
He saw – with shut eyes but acute mental vision – the pale and loving woman who had so recently become his daughter-in-law. For those beautiful features, those soft limbs, that sensuous body with its delectable secrets, lust filled Joe’s body.
As he opened his arms to her, she bent eagerly towards him, letting the long dress fall away. He caught her scent, like a forgotten dream.
Now her arms were almost round his neck. He felt them intensely, was filled with rapture, when a pistol shot rang out.
Kylie was gone. The stony structure of the crypt faded.
He was back on the bed, his arms tingling with cramp behind his head. The long-horned cattle stared at him from the walls of the room.
He sat up, sick, cold. Had he heard a real shot?
Rising, he padded over to the window and drew aside a curtain a little way.
Two moons shone over the haunting nineteenth-century landscape, one in a clear night sky, the other its sister, its reflection, in the ornamental pool. The gazebo was a ghostly thing, its Chinese chimes not stirring. On the terrace, the statues stood in their dramatic attitudes, casting their shadows towards the facade of the old house.
Among the statues was a human figure. It was Stoker, his ginger coloration made snowy by the moon.
Breaking the chain of garlic flowers, Bodenland opened the window and leaned out.
‘What’s the matter? I thought I heard a shot.’
Stoker looked up, his features made brutal in the diffused glow.
‘Keep your voice down. You aren’t going to be too bucked with this, Bodenland. I’ve had to perform a soldierly duty. As I was turning in I heard a bit of thumping, armed myself, and came out here to see what the devil was going on.’
‘The driver …’
‘That’s it – your driver. He emerged through the door. Like a ghost. One of the Undead, my boy! I put a silver bullet through him in self-defence. It’s the only thing that stops his kind.’
‘I’ll come down.’
The window next to Bodenland’s was thrown open and van Helsing thrust his head out into the night air. He was wearing a night cap.
‘Now we’re in trouble – real trouble, you understand? What are you going to do with the body? You’ll be charged with murder.’
‘I’ll come down, Bram,’ said Bodenland. It was the first time he had used his host’s Christian name.
‘Better stay where you are. There’s another presence out here.’
‘What?’
Stoker paused before answering, and glanced about.
‘A woman’s presence. I’ll be in soonest, don’t worry. I’ll heave this damned corpse back into the shed. We’ll worry about it in the morning.’
‘Are you frightened?’
‘Heroism, Bodenland, what we were talking about. Get to bed, and sweet dreams. And you, doctor.’
Bodenland withdrew his head and closed the window, but stood looking at the silent terrace. When Stoker disappeared, dragging the corpse, he returned to bed. But hope of sleep had been shattered.
Although he admired Stoker’s courage, he still could not persuade himself to believe in vampires. His experience told him they existed, his intellect denied it. Of course, that paradox played to the advantage of vampires, if they existed. But they did exist – and somehow below the level of human intellect.
He paced about the room, trying to work it out. The human intellect originated in the neocortex, the grey matter of the brain. Below lay deeper layers, much older on an evolutionary scale than the neocortex – layers of brain common to other mammals, the limbic brain, primed by instincts such as aggression and submission and sexual response: the very instincts which propelled the processes of life on the planet.
Suppose there was a type of creature which was subject to different processes. A creature like a vampire, without intellect, and therefore almost safe from human molestation. The human species would undoubtedly kill off all vampires, as they had almost killed off wolves, if they only could believe wholeheartedly in the idea. Once you got the idea, vampires were not particularly hard to kill – to exterminate. Were they? The silver bullet. The shaft of light. The religious symbol. The stake through the heart.
He stood and stared abstractedly at the pokerwork legend: Thou Shalt Not be Afraid for Any Terror by Night … Nevertheless, the human race was afraid, always had been …
Always had been …
Vampires – if they existed – he could not resist adding the saving clause – were older than mankind.
How much older? Really millions and millions of years older, as Clift’s discovery seemed to prove?
Why were they so feared?
They were a disease.
They brought death. Worse than death, the existence of the Undead. If legend was to be believed.
And they preyed on humankind by activating one of the strongest instincts below the neocortical level, the great archetype of sex.
As a flower attracts by its scent.
His dream … The incestuous dream of union with Kylie, dead or alive. Repugnant to his consciousness, evidently delightful to some more primitive layer of sensation …
Of a sudden, he connected the dream with the female presence which, if Stoker was to be believed, walked on the terrace below.
As he thought of it, of that shadowy thing he was wise to dread, a wave of desire came over him.
He fought it back. ‘The pestilence that walketh in darkness …’ Was that how the rest of the psalm went?
To calm himself, he measured his strides about the bedroom, trying again to think of the problem scientifically.
Why else were vampires so feared?
Because they were parasitical. Parasites were always feared.
If they long preceded humans on the scale of existence, then they had once preyed on other living things.
What had they been – he caught himself avoiding the word – what had vampires been before they became parasitical? Before that dreadful need for blood arose?
Many arthropod bloodsuckers existed – bed bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, ticks, all parasitical on man. As the fossil record proved, those creatures were about in the busy world long before mankind. Even before birds and mammals.
All those little plagues to human life were originally innocent suckers of fruit juice and plant juices. But the taste of blood proved addictive and they had become enslaved by parasitism.
Blood was a dangerous beverage. An addiction like any other drug.
And vampire bats …
So what had vampires been, many millions of years ago, before they became enslaved?
It was a short distance from gnawing on a wound to drinking its substance … From swooping down through the air to being called to swoop … From inciting the dread to inciting the lust …
Almost in a fever, he thought he had glimpsed what turned an aerial predator into the pestilence that walketh in darkness. Sick with the sound and smell of the gas jet, Bodenland went to the window and flung back the curtains, letting moonlight enter the fuggy room. Brushing away the strings of white flowers, he threw open the window and took some lungfuls of air.
The moon still floated upside down in the pool.
Of Stoker there was no sign.
The woman stood there on the terrace, tall against the figure of a putti. She looked up at him, eyes agleam with a cold green fire.
His heart turned over. But his intellect remained cool.
Distantly, the clock in the asylum tower chimed one in the morning.
She lifted her arms and flew up to him.
She was in the bedroom, among the domestic things with her dead eyes, walking, gliding, rather. Close to him – and he staring with his hair standing on end.
