Something about him seemed terribly familiar to me, and as I listened to his voice with its weary, sand-like quality, I came to realize that I was looking at my Van Helsing. I proceeded to tell the proprietor of my problem, and asked him if he would be willing to read the part of Van Helsing for my presentation to Sir Henry at the end of the week. He was deeply flattered, and of course accepted my offer.

When the time came for the rehearsal, I found him outside the theatre, nervously pacing by the performers' entrance. "My dear fellow, we are all waiting," I said. When he said nothing in reply, I opened the door wider and said, "Please, come in and join us." He did so, and the rehearsal began.

It was the most magnificent reading of the novel I have ever witnessed. He captured not only Van Helsing's weariness, but his near-mad drive to destroy Dracula, as well. His performance was a prism of compa.s.sion, fury, wariness, dedication, sadness, and strength.

When it came time for his "This so sad hour" speech, he had all of us transfixed. He was Van Helsing.

Then, at the conclusion of the scene, he began to laugh.

It was the sound of an ancient crypt door being wrenched open.

The spell was immediately broken. "My dear fellow," I said to him. "May I inquire what you find so humorous about this very tragic scene?"

"That you see it as tragic at all is what amuses me," he replied, only this time his voice was not that of either Van Helsing or the sandy-voiced proprietor I had met at the bookshop the previous day: it was the voice of Count Dracula-not only as I had heard it in my imaginary conversations with him, but as the others in the cast had heard it, as well. I looked upon all their faces and knew that this was the voice of the Count as we had come to believe it would sound.

Speak of d.a.m.ned places, Mr. Fort, and you speak, on some level, of belief. Emotions resonate. Electrons dance. Equations collapse and are replaced by newer, equally possible equations. Call it the collective unconscious or the hive mind of the ma.s.ses, but the emotional charge had built and surged down the c.u.mulative lines of our psyche and found not only focus but form.

He changed before our shocked eyes; from man to bat to wolf to rodent to owl to insect, then back again, then a hybrid of all creatures, plus man-a sight so unspeakable I have never been able to bring myself to put its description onto paper for fear of being labeled mad.

Count Dracula rose up before us in all his dark, majestic, terrifying glory. "My thanks to all of you for our little talks at night," he said, smiling a lizard-grin and exposing his awful teeth. "I have searched for centuries for a proper form in which I could enter your world, and you have so thoughtfully provided one for me."We began to run for the doors, but he became shadow and beast and speed itself: none of the cast made it any farther than the stage-left dressing room entrance before he fell upon them and opened their veins with his teeth. His strength was superhuman, his speed that of the wrath of G.o.d Himself-if indeed such a Being exists at all.

I huddled behind a stack of risers, listening to the terrified and soon-silenced screams of my cast as the Count fed on each and every one of them. After what seemed an eternity, he found my hiding place and lifted me up as easily as one would a newborn child.

Holding me by the throat, he glared at me with his glowing red eyes and said, "I wish to thank you personally, Mr. Stoker, for giving me life. But you have also made it necessary for the others who populated your novel to enter this world behind me, and so I must take my leave of you for now. Since I now know the ending of your story, I feel it is my duty to change it on this side... but you needn't worry about further revising your ma.n.u.script. I think it will be satisfactory to have the world believe that I am a fict.i.tious creation who was summarily dispensed with at the conclusion of your little melodrama."

And with that, he released me, and disappeared into the night.

Shortly thereafter, the members of my cast rose to their feet, undead all, and made their way down into the bas.e.m.e.nt of the theatre and, from there, into the sewers of the city. They are still there to this day.

And I sorrow for what I unleashed upon them and the world. Dear G.o.d, how I sorrow.

I sat in the darkness of the theatre in stunned silence for several minutes after Mr.

Stoker finished telling his incredible tale. The man was obviously mad... but there still lingered in my mind a whispering doubt. And there was, after all, that unearthly wolf on the stage with him.

"How can I help your unbelief?" came a voice.

I had been staring at Mr. Stoker. His lips had not moved. I looked, then, at the wolf by his side.

It spoke again: "Your unbelief, Mr. Fort. How can I help it?"

The wolf moved forward, hunkered down as if to pounce, and at once became an army of rats that swarmed across the stage and into the orchestra pit and emerged in the aisle as the proprietor who had led me down here. "Does this help?" he asked of me.

I rose to my feet and began to frantically make my way over the seats toward what I believed to be the staircase I had descended earlier. My heart was pounding against my chest with such force I feared it would smash through my ribs and tissue.

The proprietor became several bats who quickly swooped down and around me, a.s.saulting me with their wings. I fell to the floor and the bats collided in a flash of darkest shadow and became the proprietor again, only now he was much younger in appearance,taller, stronger.

Eternal.

"Look upon me and fear, Mr. Fort. For I am as real as you dread I am."

He reached down and grabbed onto my jacket with one hand, lifting me off the floor with unnerving ease so that my feet dangled above the aisle like some marionette left hanging on a peg.

I could not take my eyes from his blood-red gaze.

"My biographer, my creator, wishes for his cast to be given their proper curtain call, the one denied them so many years ago." He slammed me down into the nearest seat and held me there with one mighty hand on my shoulder.

"Nothing less than your most enthusiastic applause will ensure your safe exit from this place," snarled Count Dracula in my ear.

An iron grate in the floor near the foot of the stage shifted with a nerve-wracking shriek and was cast aside by a hand that was more bone than flesh.

And the parade of the dead began.

How to describe what I saw? How to convey the pathetic, terrifying, sad, depraved sight which my eyes beheld?

Their flesh-what remained of it-had the color and texture of spoiled meat. Worms and other such creatures of filth oozed in and out of the holes in their faces where once their eyes had resided. The stench of death was sickly sweet in the air. Some shambled, a few crawled, and one-a woman-had to be carried by another cast member because much of her lower torso was gone, leaving only dangling, tattered loops of decayed intestine which hung beneath her like a jellyfish's stingers.

I wept at the sight of them, but I applauded them; oh, how I applauded!

And I was not alone in my efforts.

Surrounding me, each of them as decayed and pathetic as the sad creatures who were a.s.sembling on the stage before us, were all the characters from Stoker's novel, all of them flesh and blood, all of them-thanks to the Count's actions-now equally un-dead: here was Mina Murray and Jonathan Harker; there was Dr. Seward and Lucy, Lord G.o.dalming and Quincey, and every last character from the novel who had partic.i.p.ated in Dracula's destruction, only now they were the destroyed ones... even the great Abraham Van Helsing.

All un-dead and applauding those whose portrayals and belief had brought them into this world and given them life-albeit briefly.

I became aware of several women clothed in white encircling me as I continued to applaud and the cast to take their individual bows.The brides of Dracula surrounded me, caressed me, touched me with their lips and hands. My temperature rose in depraved want for them, and I applauded all the harder for it.

"My cast," intoned Stoker from the stage, gesturing to each member of his troupe. "My fine cast, my dear friends."

Dracula wiped something from one of his eyes. Looking at me, he smiled his awful, b.l.o.o.d.y grin and said, "I am moved, are you not the same?"

"I am," I said, quite dizzy.

The applause from the audience grew deafening. Dracula parted his arms and became a giant man-bat thing with slick flesh. He flew above stage and proceeded to land gracefully in the center of the players.

"Let my brides pleasure you, Mr. Fort," he bellowed above the noise in a voice part human and part beast, "and worry not, for they will not feed on you. You are our messenger now. Leave here, and tell the world, if you have the courage, that I am real, and that as long as men read my story, I shall never die. With the coming years and centuries, my story will be read by thousands, millions more, and each time the book is opened, each time a page is turned, I grow stronger and more eternal! Tell this to the world, sir, if you dare! For in the centuries to come my followers will grow, they will read of me, go forth, and multiply, and there will come a night when the entire earth will awaken and pull in the sweet d.a.m.ned breath of the un-dead, and then I will be as I should have been from the very beginning: The true Prince of Night, the king of my kind! Go, then, and tell them, if you dare."

One of his brides fell on her knees before me whilst another began to tear at my shirt.

The applause swelled as Dracula himself took a bow, and then I fell down into a dizzying pit of desire and darkness.

When I regained consciousness, I found myself outside the Lyceum Theatre, some good distance from where I was staying.

I cannot say for certain how I came to arrive safely back at my rooms at Bedford Place, only that I did find my way back there and was at once taken by the arm and led to an office where I was given a stiff drink of whiskey while a constable was called to take my statement.

"Robbery and a.s.sault" was the official explanation for my condition. I saw no reason to argue their conclusion.

The next day, no fewer than three bodies were discovered around London, the blood drained from their veins.

The next day, I discovered reports of several other deaths in Canada, the United States, and Germany.I returned home soon after, and for the rest of my life continued to gather such stories of bloodless bodies.

I am now an old man and my time is short. It has taken me a lifetime to muster the courage to set this tale to paper. Whether or not you choose to believe this is a matter between you and your conscience. I can no longer say I neither believe nor disbelieve anything. Belief or unbelief, the dark forces of the Universe will have their way, regardless.

At my window last night I beheld the countenance of Mr. Bram Stoker, himself among the un-dead now; beside him was his creation, the Count, and in his eyes was a promise: Soon.

I fear I may not be alive come morning.

Not that I would have lived that much longer, anyway.

So I take my leave of you. Do with this narrative what you will. The night is nearly upon us.

An article in yesterday's New Yorker listed Dracula as one of the best-selling books of all time. To this date, it is estimated that somewhere around five million copies in twenty different languages have been sold.

So many readers. So many pages turned.

And he grows stronger with each word read.

There will come a night, he said.

I fear it may be sooner than we think.

I shall lay down my head for the last time now.

G.o.d go with you in all the d.a.m.ned places that you walk.

Soon, such places shall be all there are.

-Charles Fort, the Bronx, May 3, 1942

Renfield or, Dining at the Bughouse

Bill Zaget

The Master comes, not on an a.s.s, but riding the waves, sailing a schooner from Varna.

Not dragging a cross, but hauling his native soil. The dark Transylvanian earth. This is the Master, in whose veins flows the blood of the ferocious and the lion-hearted, of Thor and Wodin, of Icelandic tribes with their Berserkers, the blood of the Szekelys, more potent than that of the ancient witches of Scythia, who mated with desert demons; the blood of Attila and the warlike fury of the Hun, who scorched the earth like living flame; He, who drove back the Magyar, the Lombard, the Bulgar, and the Turk; He the n.o.ble Voivode, Count Dracula, the Son of the Dragon, in The Land Beyond the Forest.

F-f-f-f-flap of wing... Breath of fire... Smouldering... The demon blood... Sea and foam...

Sailing 'cross the Channel... Fifty boxes of earth... Sweet teeth... Berserker... Fallen out...

Believe... Not one...

Whip the child Whip the child Whip the child!

Where... ?

A room... and a meal. Breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? The Last Supper? A feast on St.

George's Eve, yes. And to do it justice: a bowl of mamaliga, then some impletata, washed down with Golden Mediasch, with its queer but cunning sting on the tongue. Or a flask of plummy slivowitz, fit for the Carpathian palate, yes. But not, not the Doctor's bland and lumpen excuse for nourishment. Where is the maitre d'?! Where is the maitre ... ?

Master?

Master?

It's not, you know, is not whipped icing and shavings-the whip and the bladeperhaps-but not all sorts of f-f-f-fruity toppings that appeals. I mean, I used to believe that chocolate was mankind's greatest invention. Right up there with fire and telephone. I no longer believe. It is a child's belief, and I am not one. Not one!

The simple joys have been replaced. Joy is not so simple, now that my sweet tooth has fallen out; and in its gummy place, I swear, a sharper one is growing. As is the craving for more exotic delights.

Ergo, I wait with longing, and in the meantime, dance and rave-extraordinaire-for the good Doctor Seward; but will not, will not touch his culinary offerings, for I have begun to find and forage for myself-as it must be.

They are everywhere, yet are often unseen. They can blot out the sky, yet can seem to disappear. They burrow beneath or hug the surface of the Earth or take wing, and away... !

From the Latin, insectum, meaning "cut into" they are small, as I have been and wish at times to be. They crawl, as I have done and have been made to do. And so many have wings and take flight, as I could not and cannot. Still, the consumption of lower orders, and this, I suppose, is dead centre; the eating of things, that some may prefer to mash with the nasty heel of a boot-what a waste! These creatures may be empty of thought, but are full of vital substance. The building blocks of Life. In some countries, it is believed we become in part what we ingest-imbued with the life of the fallen, and are stronger for it.

P-P-power.

It's all a food chain, round and round. The bigger eats the smaller. And what goes around may come around, but the hunger blots out the thought. Thinking is a terrible thing.

As terrible as feeling... anything. No, I must eat life, step by evolutionary step, in order to break the bonds and forge new links, that I may become truly big or truly anything, and blot out the sky or seem to disappear...

They come to me. The Doctor cannot stop them. They have no bones, to make one choke-imagine that! You see, they carry theirs on their backs; an "ex-o-skeleton" it's called. It holds them together, this protective sh.e.l.l, not to mention giving them a certain crunchy je ne sais quoi. And they can move about in this jointed suit of armor, but they cannot grow. So it's shed at intervals in the process called "ecdysis." They molt and grow and molt and grow some more.

And so the Grand Experiment continues. First, with flies. They sniff my s.h.i.t in the chamber pot and are drawn like, well... flies.

Phylum-Arthrapoda, Cla.s.s-Insecta, Order-Diptera...

The Tale of the Fly First. It was the smell that first attracted it. The fly. And the stillness. The scent of a human female, of a male, and another, who was lying flat-no longer human, but very nearly so.