The Dracula Tape Fred Saberhagen (great reads TXT) 📖

to greet me and speak to me as a friend. It was all true, then! True, what I had heard and read, of the noble English respect for the private affairs of every man! Though it had seemed to me earlier that Harker carried this tradition of respect too far, now I saw how valuable such an attitude could be for my purposes.

      Pacing the floor and pulling my mustache in excitement, I spoke of the glorious history of my family and my race; of Viking ancestors come down from Iceland to mate and mingle with the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame “until,” I cried, “the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia, had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What devil or witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?” And I held up my arms — like this.

      “Is it a wonder,” I went on, “that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back?” I recounted with love and joy the feats of the decades of my own breathing life: “Who was it but one of my own race who crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph! They said that he thought only of himself. Bah! What good are peasants without a leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it? Again, after the battle of Mohacs, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, and we of the Dracula blood were amongst the leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekelys — the very name means ‘guardians of the frontier’ — and the Dracula as their hearts’ blood, their brains, and their swords — can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. But now the warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonorable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.”

      I raved and praised myself, as I say, and my little Englishman was tolerant of it all, but he was dull, dull, dull. A brooder, but no dreamer, he. There was no imagination in him to be fired. But then to be honest I must admit that with more imagination he might have fared even worse in Castle Dracula than he did.

      On the next evening, that of May eleventh, I had a last lengthy discussion with Harker on the conduct of business affairs in England, which concluded by my asking him to write some letters home.

      I inquired: “Have you written since your first letter to our friend Mr. Peter Hawkins, or to any other?”

      “I have not,” he answered, some bitterness audible in his voice, “as I have not yet had opportunity of sending letters to anybody.”

      “Then write now, my young friend,” I said, putting a conciliatory hand on his shoulder. “Write to our friend Hawkins and to any other, and say, if it will please you, that you shall stay with me until a month from now.”

      “Do you wish me to stay so long?” His lack of enthusiasm at the prospect could not be concealed. He was obviously brooding upon some difficulties of his own, but I still had high hopes of being able to win him over.

      “I desire it much,” I said. “Nay, I will take no refusal. When your master, employer, what you will, engaged that someone should come on his behalf, it was understood that my needs only were to be consulted. I have not stinted. Is it not so?”

      He acquiesced with a silent bow, but had on such a troubled face that I knew I had better take an interest in the contents of the letters he sent out. I therefore added: “I pray you, my good young friend, that you will not discourse of things other than business in your letters, except of course that it will doubtless please your friends to know that you are well, and that you look forward to getting home to them. Is it not so?”

      On taking my leave of him that evening, with his letters in my hands along with some correspondence of my own relating to my projected trip, I paused at the door, my conscience somewhat troubled.

      “I trust you will forgive me,” I said — Harker only looked up, his face closed against me — and I went on, “but I have much work to do in private this evening.” Our larder was depleted. “You will, I hope, find all things as you wish.” He continued to be sulky, and I had a strong premonition of plans going wrong, trouble just ahead.

      Before going out I added, “Let me advise you, my dear young friend — nay, let me warn you with all seriousness — that should you leave these rooms you will not by any chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle. It is old and has many memories, and there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely. Be warned! Should sleep ever be like to overcome you, then haste to your own chamber or to these rooms, for your rest will then be safe. But if you are not careful in this respect, then —” And I finished my speech with a hand-washing motion. Still he only continued to look at me, a dour and increasingly frightened man.

      And that, of course, was the night on which he happened to see me