Fred Saberhagen - Dracula 01 - The Dracula Tape

VIP免费

2024-12-23 0 0 432.51KB 113 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagen

The following is a transcript of a tape found in a recorder in the back seat of an automobile belonging to

Mr. Arthur Harker ofExeter , two days after the freakishly heavyDevon snowstorm in January of this

year. Mr. Harker and his wife, Janet, both suffering from exposure and exhaustion, were admitted to All

Saints Hospital, in Plymouth, on the morning following the height of the storm. They spoke of abandoning

their auto on an impassable road near midnight, but seem never to have given any convincing explanation

for leaving the relative security of their vehicle at an hour when the storm was at its worst, nor of exactly

how they reachedPlymouth . All Saints Hospital is some thirty kilometers from where their car was found

in a drift on theUpham Road , just outside St. Peter's Cemetery and virtually on the edge ofDartmoor .

The Harkers' physical condition and the state of their clothing upon arrival at the hospital suggests that

they may have walked across country. Their car was undamaged when found, and although all its doors

and windows were locked the key was still in the ignition, which had been turned off. The petrol tank

was approximately one-third full.

The voice on the tape is masculine and rather deep. It speaks English with an indefinable slight accent.

Three linguistics experts consulted have given three divergent opinions regarding the speaker's native

tongue.

The general quality of the tape, and the background noises detectable thereon, are, in the opinion of

technical experts, consistent with the hypothesis that the tape was in fact recorded in an automobile,

engine running at idling speed, heater and blowers operating, with gusts of high wind outside.

The Harkers dismiss the tape as "some joke," profess no interest in it, and refuse all further comment. It

was first played by rescue workers who found the car and thought the recorder might hold some

emergency message from its occupants. They brought the tape to the attention of higher authorities

because of the references to violent crimes which it contains. No external evidence has been found to

connect the tape with the alleged vandalism and grave robbing at St. Peter's Cemetery, now under

investigation.

… this switch, then my words will be set down here electrically for the world. How very nice. So, if we

are going to tell the truth at last, then what real crimes can I be charged with, what sins so utterly damning

and blastable?

You will accuse me of the death of Lucy Westenra, I suppose. Ah, I would swear my innocence, but

what is there to swear by that you would now believe? Later, perhaps, when you have begun to

understand some things, then I will swear. I embraced the lovely Lucy, it is true. But never against her

will. Not she nor any of the others did I ever force.

At this point on the tape another voice, unidentifiable, whispers an indecipherable word or two.

Your own great-grandma Mina Harker? Sir, I will laugh like a madman in a moment, and it is centuries

since I have laughed, and no, I am not mad.

Probably you have scarcely believed one single thing that I have said to you this far. But I mean to go on

talking anyway, to the machine, and you may as well listen. The morning is far off, and at present none of

us have any place to go. And you two are well armed, in your own estimation at least, against anything

that I might try to do to you. Heavy spanner clutched in your white-knuckled right hand, dear Mr.

Harker, and at your good wife's lovely throat hangs something that should do you more good, if all

reports are true, than even such an estimable bludgeon. The trouble is that all reports are never true. I'm

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

the last stranger you'll ever welcome into your car out of a storm, I'll wager. But I intend you no harm.

You'll see, just let me talk.

Lucy I did not kill. It was notIwho hammered the great stake through her heart.Myhands did not cut off

her lovely head, or stuff her breathless mouth—that mouth—with garlic, as if she were a dead pig, pork

being made ready for some barbarians' feast. Only reluctantly had I made her a vampire, nor would she

ever have become a vampire were it not for the imbecile Van Helsing and his work. Imbecile is one of

the most charitable names that I can find for him…

And Mina Murray, later Mrs. Jonathan Harker. In classic understatement I proclaim I never meant dear

Mina any harm. With these hands I broke the back of her real enemy, the madman Renfield, who would

have raped and murdered her.Iknew what his intentions were, though the doctors, young Seward and the

imbecile, could not seem to fathom them. And when Renfield spelled out to my face what he intended

doing to my love… ah, Mina.

But that was long ago. She was an old, old woman when she went to her grave in 1967.

And all the men on theDemeter. If you have read my enemies' version of events I suppose you will tax

me with those sailors' lives as well. Only tell me why, in God's name why, I should have murdered

mem… What is it?

At this point a man's voice, conditionally identifiable as that of Arthur Harker, utters the one word

nothing.

But of course. You did not realize that I could speak the name, of God. You are victims of superstition,

sheer superstition, which is a hideous thing, and very powerful indeed. God and I are old acquaintances.

At least, I have been aware of Him for much longer than you have, my friends.

Now I can see you are going to wonder whether the crucifix at the lady's throat, from which you have

begun to derive some small measure of comfort, is really efficacious at all in present company. Do not

worry. Believe me, it is every bit effective against me as—as that heavy spanner in the gentleman's right

hand would be.

Now sit still, please. We have been cut off alone in this snowstorm for an hour now, and it was half an

hour, not until you tried to watch me in the rear-view mirror, before you even began to believe my name,

were convinced I was not joking. Not pulling your legs, as I believe the idiom has it. You were quite

careless and unguarded at the first. If I had wanted to take your lives or drink your blood the gory deeds

would now be done.

No, my purpose in your car is innocent. I would like you just to sit and listen for a while, as I try once

more to justify myself before humanity. Even in the remote fastnesses where most of my time is spent, I

have caught wind of a new spirit of toleration that supposedly moves across the face of the earth in these

last decades of the twentieth century. So once more I will try… I chose your car because you happened

to be driving here tonight—no, let me be strictly truthful, some arrangements were made to cause you to

come along this way—and because you, sir, are a lineal descendant of a dear old friend of mine, and

because I have learned that you habitually carry this tape recorder in your car. Yes, and even the

snowstorm has been arranged, a little bit. I wanted this chance to offer this testament, for myself and

others like me.

Not that there is anyone else quite like me… Sir, I perceive by the condition of the ashtrays that you are

a smoker, and I would wager you would like to smoke. Go ahead, put your spanner down in handy

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

reach, and puff away. The lady too might like a cigarette, at such a trying time as this. Ah… thank you,

but I do not indulge, myself.

We are going to be here for a while… I have seen few snowstorms heavier than this, even in the high

Carpathians. Without doubt the roads will be impassable until sometime tomorrow at the earliest.

Lacking snowshoes, it would take a wolf to get about in snow like this, or something that can fly…

I suppose you'll want to know, or others will, why I should bother with thisapologia pro vita sua. Why,

at this late date, attempt to defend my name? Well, I change as I grow older—yes, I do—and some

things, for example a certain kind of pride, that were once of great moment to me are now no more than

dust and ashes in my tomb. Like Van Helsing's desecrated fragment of the Host, which there went back

to dust.

I have been there myself, there in my tomb, but not to stay. Not yet to stay beneath the massive stone on

which the one word's carved, just…Dracula.

TRACK ONE

Let me not start at the beginning of my life. Even penned in here, listening at close range to the words

from my own lips, you would find the story of those breathing, eating days of mine too hard to believe.

Later on, it may be, we will have some discourse of them. Had you noticed that I do not breathe, except

to get the wind to talk? Now watch me as I speak and you will see.

Maybe a good point to start from would be that early November day in 1891, at theBorgoPass , in what

is nowRomania . Van Helsing and the rest thought that they had me, then, and brought their chronicle to

its end. It was snowing then, too, and my gypsies tried, but with only knives against rifles they could not

do much when the hunters on horseback caught up with me at sunset and tipped me out of my coffin, and

with their long knives went for my heart and throat…

No. I have the feeling that I would be telling too much backward if I began there. How's this? I'll start

where the other chronicle begins, the one that you must be familiar with. It starts early in the previous

May, with the arrival in my domain in Transylvania of one Jonathan Harker, a fledgling solicitor sent out

from England to help me with the purchase of some property near London.

You see, I had been rousing myself from a period—somewhat extended—of great lethargy, quiescence,

and contemplation. New voices, new thoughts, were heard in the world. Even on my remote

mountaintop, green-clad in the forests of centuries, well-nigh unreachable, I with my inner senses could

hear the murmurings acrossEurope of the telegraph, the infant splutterings of the engines of steam and

internal combustion. I could smell the coal smoke and the fever of the world in change.

That fever caught in me and grew. Enough of seclusion with my old companions—if one could call them

that. Enough wolf howlings, owl hoots, bat flutterings, half-witted peasants hissing at me from behind

contorted fingers, enough of crosses waved like so many clubs, as if I were a Turkish army. I would

rejoin the human race, come out of my hinterlands into the sunlit progress of the modern world.Budapest

, and evenParis , did not seem great enough or far enough to hold my new life that was to be.

For a time I even considered going toAmerica . But a greater metropolis than any of theNew World was

nearer at hand, and more susceptible to a preliminary study. This study took me years, but it was

thorough. Harker, when he arrived at my castle in May of 1891, took note in his shorthand diary of the

"vast number of English books, magazines, and newspapers" I had on hand.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Harker. I have rather more respect for him than for the others of the man-pack that was later to follow

Van Helsing on my trail. Respect is always due courage, and he was a courageous man, though rather

dull. And as the first real guest in Castle Dracula for centuries, he was the subject of my first experiments

in fitting myself acceptably back into the mainstream of humanity.

Actually I had to disguise myself as my own coachman to bring him on the last leg of his long journey

fromEngland . My household help were, as some of the wealthy are always wont to say, undependable,

even if they were not so utterly nonexistent as Harker was later to surmise. Outcast gypsies.

Superstitiously loyal to me, whom they had adopted as their master, but with no competence as servants

in the normal sense. I knew I was going to have to look after my guest myself.

The railroad had brought Harker as far as the town ofBistrita , from which a diligence, or public

stagecoach, traveled daily to Bukovina, a part ofMoldavia to the north and west. At theBorgoPass ,

some eight or nine hours along the way from Bistrita, my carriage was to be waiting, as I had informed

my visitor by letter, to bring him tomydoor. The stagecoach reached the pass at near the witching hour of

twelve, an hour ahead of schedule, just as I, taking no chances, drove my own caleche with four black

horses up close behind the diligence where it paused in the midnight landscape, half piny and half barren.

I was just in time to hear its driver say: "There is no carriage here, the Herr is not expected after all. He

will now come on toBukovina , and return tomorrow or the next day; better the next day."

At this point some of the peasants on board the stage caught sight of my arrival and began a timorous

uproar of prayers and oaths and incantations; I pulled up closer, and in a moment appeared limned in the

glow of the stagecoach's lamps, wearing the coachman's uniform and a wide-brimmed black hat and false

brown beard as additional disguise, these last props having been borrowed from a gypsy who had once

traveled as an actor.

"You are early tonight, my friend," I called over to the stagecoach driver.

"The English Herr was in a hurry," the man stammered back, not meeting my eye directly.

"That is why, I suppose, you wished him to go on toBukovina . You cannot deceive me, my friend; I

know too much, and my horses are swift." I smiled at the coach windows full of white, scared faces, and

someone inside it muttered fromLenore: "Denn die Todten reiten schnell[For the dead travel fast]."

"Give me the Heir's baggage," I ordered, and it was quickly handed over. And then my guest himself

appeared, the only one among the passengers who dared to look me in the eye, a young man of middle

size and unremarkable appearance, clean-shaven, with hair and eyes of medium brown.

As soon as he was on the seat beside me I cracked my whip and off we went. Holding the reins with

one hand, I threw a cloak round Harker's shoulders, and a rug across his knees, and said to him in

German: "The night is chill, mein Herr, and my master the count bade me take all care of you. There is a

flask ofslivovitzunderneath the seat, if you should require it."

He nodded and murmured something, and though he drank none of the brandy I could feel him relax

slightly. No doubt, I thought, his fellow passengers in the coach had been filling him with wild tales, or,

more likely and worse, just dropping a few hints about the terrible place that was his destination. Still, I

had great hopes that I could overcome any unpleasant preconceptions picked up by my guest.

I drove deliberately down the wrong road at first, to kill a little time, for that chanced to be the night, the

Eve of St. George, on which all treasure buried in those mountains is detectable at midnight by the

emanation of apparent bluish flames. The advance arrangements for my expedition abroad had somewhat

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

depleted my own store of gold, and I meant to seize the opportunity of replenishment.

Now you are doubting again. Did you think that my old home was much like any other land? Not so.

There was I born, and there I failed to die. And in my land, as Van Helsing himself once said, "There are

deep caverns and fissures that reach none know whither. There have been volcanoes… waters of strange

properties, and gases that kill or make to vivify." English was not Van Helsing's mother tongue.

Never mind. The point is that I took the opportunity of that night to mark out a few sites of buried

wealth, of which there were likely to be several, as we shall see. My passenger was quite naturally

curious at these repeated stoppings of the carriage, at the eerie glow of faint, flickering blue flames

appearing here and there about the countryside, and at my several dismountings to build up littlecairns of

stone. With thesecairns to guide me on future nights when I was alone, I would be able to recover the

treasure troves at my leisure.

I had expected Harker's natural curiosity at these events to break forth at once in questions, whereupon

I, inmycoachman's character, would be able to demonstrate irrefutably that marvels unmet inEngland

existed here inTransylvania. Thus he would be led by degrees into a frame of mind receptive to the real

truth about myself and vampires as a race.

What I had not reckoned with was the—in this case—damnable English propensity for minding one's

own business, which in my opinion Harker carried to lengths of great absurdity, even for a discreet and

tactful young solicitor. There he sat, upon the exposed seat of my caleche, watching my antics with

thecairns but saying nothing. He called out at last only when the wolves, my adopted children of the night,

came from the darkness of the forest shadows into the moonlight close around the carriage, staring

silently at him and at the nervous horses. And when I came back from marking my last trove of the

evening, and with a gesture moved the wolves away and broke their circle, Harker still had no questions,

though I could sense his stiffness when I climbed into driver's seat again, and knew that he was quite

afraid. Harker's tenseness did not ease during the remainder of our ride, which ended when I drove into

"the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose

broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky," as he was shortly to describe my

home.

I left Harker and his baggage at the massive, closed front door and drove the horses on back to the

stables, where I roused with a kick the least undependable of my snoring servants to take care of them.

Ridding myself on the way of false beard, hat, and livery, I sprinted back through the clammy lower

passages of Castle Dracula to resume my own identity and welcome in my guest.

As I paused in the corridor outside the rooms I had made ready for his lodging there came into the dark

air beside me a shimmering that would have been invisible to eyes any less attuned to darkness than my

own; came voices tuneful as computer music and no more human; came the substantiation in the air of

faces three and bodies three, all young in appearance and female in every rich detail, save that they wore

without demur their clothes a century out of date. Not Macbeth on his moor ever saw three shapes

boding more ill to men.

"Is he come?" asked Melisse, the taller of the dark pair of the three.

"How soon may we taste him?" Wanda, the shorter, fuller-breasted one inquired. With the corner of her

smiling ruby lips she chewed and sucked a ringlet of her raven hair.

"When will you give him to us, Vlad? You've promised us, you know." This from Anna, radiantly fair, the

senior of the three in terms of length of time spent in my service.Serviceis not the right word, though. Say

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

rather in terms of her endurance in a game of wit and will, which all three played against me without stop,

and which I had wearied of and ceased to play long decades since.

I strode into the rooms I had prepared for Harker, poked up the hearth fire previously laid and lit,

moved dishes that had been warming on the hearthstone to the table, and sent words over my shoulder

into the dim hallway outside. "I've promised you just one thing in the matter of the young Englishman, and

I'll repeat it once: If any of you set lip against his skin you'll have cause to regret it."

Melisse and Wanda giggled, I suppose at having irritated me and having gotten me to repeat an order;

and Anna as always must try to get the last word in. "But there must be some sport, at least. If he stray

out of his rooms then surely he shall be fair game?"

I made no answer—it has never been my way to argue with subordinates—but saw that all was in

readiness for Harker, as far as I could make it so. Then, an antique silver lamp in hand, I dashed down to

the front door, which I threw open hospitably, to reveal my now-doubtful guest still standing waiting in

the night, his bags on the ground beside him.

"Welcome to my house!" I cried. "Enter freely and of your own will!" He smiled at me, this trusting alien,

accepting me as nothing more nor less than man. In my happiness I repeated my welcome as soon as he

had crossed the threshold, and clasped his hand perhaps a little harder than I ought. "Come freely!" I

enjoined him. "Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!"

"Count Dracula?" Harker, trying to unobtrusively shake life back into his painfully pressed fingers, spoke

questioningly, as if there might still be some reasonable doubt.

"I am Dracula," I answered, bowing. "And I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the

night air is chill and you must need to eat and rest." I hung my lamp on the wall and went to pick up

Harker's luggage, overriding his protests. "Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is late and my people are not

available. Let me see to your comfort myself." He followed as I carried his things upstairs and to the

quarters I had prepared for him. One log fire flamed in the room where the table was spread for supper,

and another in the large bedroom where I deposited his bags.

With my own hands I had prepared the supper that awaited him—roast chicken, salad, cheese, and

wine—as I did most of the meals that he consumed during the weeks of his stay. Help from the girls?

Bah. They affected to be like infants, who can sometimes be stopped from doing wrong by threat of

punishment but cannot be forced to do things properly. It was part of the game they played with me.

Besides, I did not want them ever in his rooms if I could help it.

So with my own hands, hands of a prince ofWallachia , the brother-in-law of a king, I picked up and

threw away his dirty dishes and his garbage, not to mention innumerable porcelain chamber pots. I

suppose I could have brought myself to scrub the dishes clean, like any menial, had there been no easier

way. True, most of the dishes were gold, but I was determined not to stint on my guest's entertainment.

Also, should I ever return to the castle from my projected sojourn abroad, I had little doubt of being able

to recover the golden utensils from the foot of the three-hundred-meter precipice which Castle Dracula

overlooked and which provided an eminently satisfactory garbage dump. The dishes would be there,

dented by the fall no doubt, but cleansed by the seasons and unstolen. I have always had a dislike of

thieves, and I believe the people of the villages nearby understood me on this point, if probably on

nothing else.

In the month and a half that he was with me my increasingly ungrateful guest went through a sultan's

ransom in gold plate, and I was reduced to serving him on silver. Toward the end, of course, I might have

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

brought his food on slabs of bark, and he would scarcely have noticed it, so terrified was he by then at

certain peculiarities of my nature. He misinterpreted these oddities, but never asked openly for any

explanation, whilst I, wisely or unwisely, never volunteered one.

But to return to that first evening. When my guest had refreshed himself from his journey and rejoined me

in the dining room he found me leaning against the fireplace and awaiting him in eagerness, as hungry for

intelligent conversation and first-hand news of the great outer world as he was for good food.

I gestured him to the table, saying: "I pray you, be seated and sup how you please. You will, I trust,

excuse me that I do not join you; but I have dined already, and I do not sup."

Whilst Harker attacked the chicken I read through the letter he had handed me. It was from his

employer, Hawkins, who described his young deputy as "full of energy and talent in his own way, and of

a very faithful disposition," and also as "discreet and silent."

This was all to my liking and I at once began a conversation that went on in the dining room for hours, as

Harker ate and then accepted a cigar. We discoursed mainly on the circumstances of his journey—I was

particularly interested in trains, which at that time I had never seen, and I enjoyed our talk immensely.

Toward dawn a companionable silence fell between us, broken shortly by the howling, from down the

valley, of many wolves.

"Listen to them," I said, for a moment unthinking. "The children of the night. What music they make!" A

momentary look of consternation came into my guest's face; I had forgotten that only a few hours earlier,

as I in my guise of coachman brought him up the winding mountain road, he had seen wolves at

disturbingly close range.

I quickly added: "Ah, sir, you dwellers in the city cannot enter into the feelings of the hunter." And shortly

we took our separate ways to rest.

Not having gone to bed till dawn, and being wearied from his journey, Harker naturally slept until late in

the day, and as I thought would not have been surprised not to see or hear from me until after sunset.

When I looked for him at that hour I was briefly alarmed at not finding him in his own rooms. I had not

wished to shatter the spell of that first evening of human society by trying to explain to him how

dangerous to him certain parts of the castle could be.

To my relief, he had strayed no farther than my nearby library, where to his "great delight," as he

recorded in his journal, he discovered "a vast number of English books… magazines, and newspapers…

the books were of the most varied kind—history, geography, politics, political economy, botany,

geology, law—all relating to England and English life and customs and manners."

"I am glad you found your way in here," I said with honesty, "for I am sure there is much that will interest

you. These companions"—I gestured at the books—"have been good friends to me, and for some years,

ever since I had the idea of going toLondon , have given me many, many hours of pleasure. Through

them I have come to know your greatEngland ; and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the

crowded streetsofyour mighty London, to be in the midst of the rush and whirl of humanity, to share its

life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. But alas! as yet I know your tongue only through

books. To you, my friend, I look that I know it to speak."

"But, Count," Harker expostulated, "you know and speak English thoroughly!"

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"I thank you, my friend," I responded, "for your all too flattering estimate, but yet I fear that I am but a

little way on the road I would travel. True, I know the grammar and the words, but yet I know not how

to speak them."

"Indeed, sir, you speak excellently."

"Not so. Did I move and speak in yourLondon , none there are who would not know me for a stranger.

And that is not enough for me. Here I am noble; I am boyar; the common people know me and I am

master. But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one: men know him not—and to know not is to care not

for. I am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me, or pauses in his speaking if he

hears my words, 'Ha ha! a stranger!' I have been so long master that I would be master still, or at least

that none other should be master of me. You come to me not alone as agent of my friend Peter Hawkins

ofExeter , to tell me all about my new estate inLondon . You shall, I trust, rest here with me awhile, so

that by our talking I may learn the English intonation; and I would that you tell me when I make error,

even of the smallest, in my speaking. I am sorry that I had to be away so long today, but you will, I

know, forgive one who has so many important affairs in hand."

Harker pledged his willingness to help me with my English and then asked if he might use the library at

will. This seemed like a good time to issue my warnings, so I said:

"Yes, certainly. You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where

of course you will not wish to go. There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my

eyes and know with my knowledge you would perhaps better understand."

"I am sure I would, sir."

But I knew that he could not begin to understand, as yet, and I tried to press the point, still without giving

away too much. "We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is notEngland . Our ways are not your ways,

and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences

already, you know something of what strange things there may be."

Thus having led the conversation into the murky region of Strange Things, and seeing my guest nodding

soberly in apparent agreement, I momentarily hesitated, on the brink of trying to Tell All; but no, I

decided, I must first make Barker my good friend.

He now took the opportunity to ask what I could tell him of the mysterious blue flames that he had

glimpsed on the night of his arrival, and about the odd behavior of the "coachman." In reply I told him a

substantial portion of the truth.

"Transylvania is notEngland ," I repeated, "and there are things here which reasonable men, men of

business and science, may not be able to understand. On a certain night of the year—last night, in fact,

when all evil spirits were supposed by the peasantry to rule unchecked—a blue flame is seen over any

place where treasure has been concealed. That much treasure has been concealed in this region, there

can be but little doubt; for this is ground fought over for centuries by the Walachian, the Saxon, and the

Turk. Why, there is hardly a foot of soil hereabouts that has not been enriched by the blood of patriots

and invaders." Speaking of the past began to bring it back to me, as it does now; again I felt the

movement of the warhorse beneath me as his ears picked up the sounds of battle, the clash of metal and

the cries of terror. Again I smell the stinks of war; and see the banners and the blood. I remember the

treachery of the boyars, and recall the beautiful, beautiful loyalty to me, thevoivode, warlord, of the men

who worked the land and knew me to be fair. How good it was to breathe the air with them… but never

mind.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

To Harker I went on: "In old days there were stirring times, when the Austrian and the Hungarian came

up in hordes, and the patriots went out to meet them—men and women, the aged and the children

too—and awaited their coming on the rocks above the passes, that they might sweep destruction on

them with artificial avalanches. When the invader was triumphant he found but little in the way of gold or

precious stuff, for all had been sheltered in the friendly soil."

Harker was now at least halfway to believing the tiny marvel of the flames and treasure. "But how," he

asked, "can treasure have remained so long undiscovered when there is a sure index to it if men will but

take the trouble to look?"

I smiled. "Because your peasant is at heart a coward and a fool!" The villagers below in 1891,I had in

mind. "These flames only appear on one night, and on that night no man of this land will, if he can help it,

stir without his doors."

We drifted into other matters, and back at last to real estate.

"Come," I enjoined my guest, "tell me ofLondon and the house which you have procured for me." Whilst

Harker was getting his business papers together in another room I took the chance to clear the table of

his latest meal, linen cloth and all in a bundle a-down the cliffside from a western window, where for a

thousand feet thesoileddishes sang in air before the garbage was knocked off them on the rocks. By the

time he rejoined me I had lit the lamps and was lying on a sofa readingBradshaw's Guide.

The paperwork connected with house buying was complex but Harker seemed competent to lead me

through its mysteries. He remarked once on my knowledge of the estate's neighborhood— that of

Purfleet, some fifteen miles east of the center of London, on the north bank of the Thames—which I had

managed to gain even from my remote location, and I replied: "Well, but, my friend, is it not needful that I

should? When I go there I shall be all alone, and my friend Harker Jonathan—nay, pardon me, I fall into

my country's habit of putting your patronymic first— my friend Jonathan Harker will not be at my side to

correct and aid me. He will be inExeter , a hundred miles and more away, probably working at papers of

the law with my other friend, Peter Hawkins. So!"

I signed what seemed innumerable papers, which were then wrapped for posting back to Hawkins. My

gypsies,Szganyas I called them then, were at the castle frequently, and through both fear and loyalty they

were, in what touched my own person, most dependable. They carried mail for me, as well as bringing

me horses and caring for them. They brought me food sometimes—I will discourse of my eating habits

later—and formed for a long time a useful although shaky bridge twixt me and other men.

When we were done with signing and mailing Harker read to me his notes describing my new estate and

how he had located it. I remember the description well, as I remember the rest of my enemies' journals

for that year. I am not likely to forget a word.

"At Purfleet, on a by-road, I came across just such a place as seemed to be required, and where was

displayed a dilapidated notice that the place was for sale. It is surrounded by a high wall, of ancient

structure, built of heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a large number of years. The closed gates

are of heavy old oak and iron, all eaten with rust."

"The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the oldQuatre Face, as the house is four-sided,

agreeing with the cardinal points of the compass. It contains in all some twenty acres, quite surrounded

by the stone wall above mentioned. There are many trees on it, which make it in places gloomy, and

there is a deep, dark-looking pond or small lake, evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear and

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

flows away in a fair-sized stream. The house is very large and of all periods back, I should say, to

medieval times, for one part is of stone immensely thick, with only a few windows high up and heavily

barred with iron. It looks like part of a keep, and is close to an old chapel or church. I could not enter it,

as I had not the key of the door leading to it from the house, but I have taken with my Kodak views of it

from various points. There are but few houses close at hand, one being a very large house only recently

added to and formed into a private lunatic asylum. It is not, however, visible from the grounds." This last

was not an accurate statement, as I later discovered; but of course I was ready to make a few

allowances for salesmen's puffery.

"I am glad that it is old and big," I said when he had finished his description. "I myself am of an old

family, and to live in a new house would kill me. A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after

all, how few days go to make up a century. I rejoice also that there is a chapel of old times… I am no

longer young and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth… I

love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may."

We spent a long evening, similar to the last; and this, the night of May seventh to eighth, 1891, was the

last for a long time, many months, when either of us felt that things were going well, indeed, when we

were not pondering each other as enemies, at least in potential.

I had naturally taken the precaution of removing all mirrors from the rooms of the castle that I expected

my guest to occupy or visit. On the third morning of Harker's stay, however, I entered his room early in

the hours of daylight—an uncomfortable time for me—to find him shaving with the aid of his traveling

mirror.

It had been a conceit of mine that when I began to be fully and unquestioningly accepted in the normal

world as human, the psychology of most men and women would not permit them to credit the objective

fact that I cast no reflection in a mirror, at least none ordinarily perceptible to the human eye. Let me say

here parenthetically that film and the cathode ray tube are something else again. But whatever the

outcome of research along this line is to be, on that morning I had deluded myself into thinking that this

reasonable, unsuperstitious Englishman would not be allowed by his own psychology to perceive the

exact truth: that when I entered the room behind him as he shaved, my figure cast no reflection in the

glass.

I was wrong. When I said, "Good morning!" almost in his ear, he was so startled that he reacted

physically and his straight razor made a slight cut on his chin. At the same time I was made aware that he

had indeed noted my image's absence from the mirror, for he alternated his glance from me to it not once

but several times whilst he struggled not to let his bafflement show on his face. This was a blow to me, the

first indication that my plans were indeed impossible, and it hit me hard, though I struggled to maintain

composure.

After a moment Harker gave up looking for me in his glass, returned my greeting in a flustered way, then

put his razor down and began to look for some sticking plaster in his kit. His chin was beading blood.

Hemophile that I am known to be (in the true sense of the word), it is not true that the mere sight of

blood under any and all circumstances is enough to trip me into a paroxysm of lust for the good red stuff.

According to Harker's journal, which is unforgettable to me and from which I quote verbatim, my "eyes

blazed with a sort of demoniac fury" as soon as I saw his blood, and I "suddenly made a grab" at his

throat.

Now I ask you—you enjoy a good rare beefsteak, perhaps? Naturally. Now, suppose you stroll into

the dining room where a guest of yours is finishing his lunch, and observe a morsel of meat left on his

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TheDraculaTapebyFredSaberhagenThefollowingisatranscriptofatapefoundinarecorderinthebackseatofanautomobilebelongingtoMr.ArthurHarkerofExeter,twodaysafterthefreakishlyheavyDevonsnowstorminJanuaryofthisyear.Mr.Harkerandhiswife,Janet,bothsufferingfromexposureandexhaustion,wereadmittedtoAllSaintsHospital...

展开>> 收起<<

Fred Saberhagen - Dracula 01 - The Dracula Tape.pdf

共113页,预览23页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Fred Saberhagen - Dracula 01 - The Dracula Tape

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: