The Dracula Tape Fred Saberhagen (great reads TXT) 📖

fact that my chief residence was likely to be at Carfax. Had our roles been reversed, that very afternoon would have seen me in the moldering chapel there, prying off the lids of boxes whilst whatever brave friends I could muster stood by me, armed with wooden stakes and spears. But as matters stood my foe, the hunter, preferred more devious tactics.

      At this time I knew of Van Helsing his name and reputation, and that he had been one of Lucy’s physicians and therefore might now pose a danger to me; but that is all I knew. I was not even aware that the Harkers were in England, much less that they had seen me in Piccadilly. I continued in the peaceful pursuit of my own affairs, until on September twenty-fifth my attention was caught by headlines in the Westminster Gazette:

EXTRA SPECIAL

THE HAMPSTEAD HORROR

ANOTHER CHILD INJURED

THE “BLOOFER LADY”

      I hastened to read the article, and discovered that the child mentioned was only the latest of a series to have complained, within the past few days, of being abducted and assaulted by a mysterious woman who roamed on Hampstead Heath at twilight. Through some equally mysterious translation of children’s jargon into that of journalists, the unknown woman had acquired the “bloofer” title. Wounds in the throat, no more than pinpricks, were observed in every victim.

      Whilst in a newspaper office, gathering what additional facts I could from a study of recent editions, I looked through columns of death notices to find where Lucy had been interred. It was too bad that since her rebirth she had taken to molesting children; perhaps, I thought, her brain as well as other organs had been damaged by the transfusions. Although essentially I considered her depredations no more my affair than those of Mary Jane Heathcote, alleged murderess of her own child, or of a thousand other madfolk scattered about the metropolis, still I was forced to be concerned by her activities all the same. Van Helsing was very likely to notice the newspaper articles and to be visiting her tomb. This in turn might present me with an opportunity to meet my antagonist, take his measure, reason with him if reasoning was possible or, if it was not, adopt such other measures as might be necessary.

      Of course I expected that any calls Van Helsing might make on Miss Westenra in her new residence would take place in daylight, when they would be safest. New-made vampires have this in common with infants newly born to breathing life: they are much more delicate than they will one day be and their powers are still largely undeveloped. I could walk through a field of garlic in full bloom and not be overcome, or even glare back briefly at the noonday sun, at least in the cool high latitudes. But Lucy in her tender, newborn state would be stunned even by garlic, and could not have long survived exposure to full daylight, even of the tempered English sort.

      On the night of September twenty-fifth I located the Westenra family mausoleum, in the little cemetery near Hampstead Heath, surrounded then by nearly open countryside. Passing like smoke through the vault’s locked doors, I stood on old stone floors strewn with dead and dying flowers from the double interment of three days before. Before me, raised on stone blocks and ornamented by iron and brass, was the coffin of Lucy’s mother, with its freight of peaceful clay. And across the narrow interior aisle from it, similar in appearance, the vessel in which Lucy had been laid. I went to it and, placing my hands upon its oaken, outer lid, could feel the emptiness within its inner, leaden shell.

      Where then was the girl whom I had once tried to help? Out prowling on the heath, most likely, if the newspaper stories gave true evidence. I had my doubts about them. But certainly the coffin was empty now.

      I waited there an hour, rehearsing in my mind what I might try to say and do to help her when she appeared. The longer I waited the less certain I felt of what help I could now offer her, and the less certain also that I had been right in not allowing her to die in the first place. Yet still it seemed to me that it had been my duty to answer her cry for help at Hillingham.

      Suddenly, with a force that keyed all my senses to full alert, the realization came to me that she might not be walking at all as I waited beside her coffin, but that her body might have been secretly removed from this place after being put to its true death by stake and blade. If Van Helsing was as dangerous an antagonist as I had heard, such might well be the case. If Lucy had been so disposed of, there was nothing I could do about it now. I waited half an hour more and then departed, yielding to my doubts, and still with no evidence of her whereabouts.

      At midmorning on September twenty-sixth, and again in the afternoon, I returned to the cemetery in man-shape. In daylight I could not change my form at will nor melt smokelike into the tomb and out again. But I was still looking for my adversary and still thought that daylight was the only time to find him there.

      Very few other people were about. At last, leaning against the outer wall of the Westenra tomb, I managed to pick up a faint radiance of Lucy’s encomaed mind within. She was of course not breathing, but was fully as alive as me. The mysterious and powerful Van Helsing had not, after all, been competent enough to find and kill this baby vampire yet!

      But scarcely had I allowed myself the relaxation of a smile when the thought hit home that Lucy might have been spared simply to bait a trap for me. What was Lucy to Van Helsing? By analogy, no more than