The Dracula Tape

approximately, the matter rests with me. My only material sustenance is blood, warm and preferably mammalian, but I am indifferent as to what species I use for nourishment. For now, take that as given. Later, if we have time, we will discuss how, as I believe, most of my needful energy comes to me by an as-yet-unmeasured radiation from the sun.

Another peculiarity of the vampirish existence is that the reproductive organs, along with other systems of excretion, cease to function; the body throws off neither seed nor waste. This is not to say that we are passionless; far from it. But whereas in breathing men and women there are many raging lusts-go without food two weeks, water two days, air two minutes, and see if I am using the wrong words-besides the lust for mere sexual activity, for us the blood is the life, the blood is all.

The love of women I have known all my life and for me its essence does not change. But its mode of expression had changed when I awoke from my mortal wounds of 1476. Since then, for me, the blood is all. Oh, I can do without the blood of sweet young women for two months, two years, two centuries, I suppose, if there were reason for such abstinence. I have told you that I never forced Lucy, or Mina, or any of the others.

But never mind. It was on the day following the poor village woman's visit that Harker, maddened by fear, dared to climb down the outside of the castle wall from his window, far enough to enter my own rooms. Then following an interior passage down to a lower chapel, he came upon the boxes of earth which I and my friends had been preparing for my journey. And snooping into the boxes, he found in one of them your obedient servant, resting. He might have destroyed me on the spot, had he been clever and malign enough, had his wits matched his foolhardy courage that let him dare that wall. For I, of course, was not aware at the time of his investigation.

The trance of daylight, which we usually-but not always-undergo between sunrise and sunset, actually marks, as I believe, our dependence upon the sun. As breathing men cannot healthfully engage in heavy exercise while eating and digesting food, we of the vampire persuasion are at best somewhat lethargic when in the presence of the sun; nor can any of us bear its unshielded rays for very long.

At any rate, he found me there, within the wooden box half full of soft, moist earth, in trance. The grip of this day-trance is hard to rouse from, as we shall see, and it is apt to be more open-eyed than common human sleep. We do not grow fatigued in the same sense that breathing humans do, yet eventually we must rest, and rest is possible only in the raw earth of the homeland. Why this is so I do not know; time later, maybe, for a theory or two of mine.

Not knowing what to make of my state, unbreathing, motionless, but somehow still undead as well, Harker went back to his rooms; nor, of course, did he mention his intrusion to me later. Four days later, on June twenty- ninth, my plans, and the labors of my helpers, were alike complete. In the late evening I went to Harker and said:

'Tomorrow, my friend, we must part. You return to your beautiful England and I go to some work which may have such an end that we will never meet again. Your last letter home has been dispatched; tomorrow I shall not be here, but all shall be ready for your journey. In the morning come the Szgany, who have some labors of their own here, and also come some Slovaks. When they have gone, my carriage shall come for you and bear you to the Borgo Pass to meet the diligence from Bukovina to Bistrita. But I am in hopes that I shall see more of you at Castle Dracula.' Need I add that I was sometimes more diplomatic than truthful in my conversations with Harker? I most heartily wished never to lay eyes on him again.

My unexpected statement came to him as a shock, beyond a mere surprise. It had a tonic effect; he started to his feet, and I could see his modest store of wits returning whilst he summoned up reserves of courage to confront me, evidently a harder feat than scaling a sheer stone wall.

In a firm voice he finally asked, straight out: 'Why may I not go tonight?'

'Because, my dear sir, my coachman and horses are away on a mission.' In bald fact, Tatra, the only one of the Szgany whom I would have considered entrusting with a delicate mission out of my presence, was at that moment in a village of Bukovina, negotiating for a new horse; the three dear ladies of my household had drained a black stallion of its life the night before, and I expected the Slovaks and their dogs to munch the stallion's flesh upon the morrow.

Harker actually smiled, as if he had trapped me now-it was a smooth, soft, diabolical smile, if I may say so-and I feared from what I saw in his eyes that he was a little mad already, an expectable outcome of his long brooding over fears and doubts rather than having them out with me in open argument. He said: 'But I would walk with pleasure; I want to get away at once.'

'And your baggage?'

'I do not care about it. I can send for it some other time.' When he had written about it in his journal, though, he had cared, accusing me of stealing his good suit and his overcoat and rug, as well as threatening his life and sanity. But now he stood firmly on his feet, looking for the first time in weeks like the confident and capable young man who had come to Castle Dracula in early May.

I sighed inwardly. I did not completely trust the Szgany, even Tatra, to carry out to the letter my instructions regarding Harker, not once I myself was boxed and shipped. So, I thought, why not take him at his word and let him walk down to the pass? The only real danger I foresaw was from wolves, and a word from me to some of them before he started would provide him with such an escort that his safety would be assured at least until he reached the domain of ordinary men, after which he would have to take his chances like the rest of us.

So let him walk, I thought, it is only a few kilometers down to the pass; and though the road was poor it did not branch and it went downhill nearly all the way. I suppose I assumed without thinking about it that he still had some money of his own in his pockets, along with the diary he still retained. I suppose also I really should not complain about the gold coin he stole from me on his departure, as I, or rather my household, was at the same time left in possession of a letter of credit, his best suit of clothes-which I had got a gypsy wench to clean, with lamentable result-and the overcoat and traveling rug mentioned earlier, along with railroad timetables, et cetera, et cetera.

I stood aside from the door of his room, relieved that my guest had finally plainly expressed his obvious desire to leave, and that I could accede to it so quickly and directly that his opinion of me was bound to be improved. I intended to press into his hands at the last moment a few weighty pieces of antique gold, as mementos of his visit. My grand, elaborate scheme was all going to work out after all, I thought. Once Harker had won back to reasonable human surroundings he would change his mind about what had actually happened under my roof, or change his story about it anyway. And going home might do him so much good that any mental breakdown could be avoided after all.

As Harker notes in his journal, it was at this point that I said to him, with a 'sweet courtesy' that made him rub his eyes because 'it seemed so real':

'You English have a saying which is close to my heart, for its spirit is that which rules our boyars: 'Welcome the coming, speed the departing guest.' Come with me, my dear young friend. Not an hour shall you wait in my house against your will, though sad am I at your going, and that you so suddenly desire it. Come!'

I took up a lamp and went ahead of Harker down the stairs, he following hesitantly, testing every footstep as if suspicious of some trap. Meanwhile, using that inner utterance with which I converse with animals, I summoned up to the castle the three or four wolves presently lurking in the woods not far below, which I intended should provide my visitor with safe conduct on his way. I meant to bring them in and introduce them to my guest and let them lick his hands and learn that he was to be treated with good will. They were howling in the courtyard by the time we reached the front door from inside, and as I began to open it they threw themselves into the widening gap. I stood in their way till I could calm them enough to make my wishes clear.

Their noise, however, and the sight of those fanged muzzles, red-tongued and slavering, extending under my arm as I stood in the doorway holding my children back, were too much for Harker. In his diary he credits me with the 'diabolical wickedness' of wanting him eaten alive by the wolves, as well as plotting to have him drained of blood by the three women; two mutually exclusive fates, as it seems to me, beyond even the power of Count Dracula to inflict on the same victim.

'Shut the door!' he cried out, and I turned my head with some surprise to behold him sagging in despair against the wall, hands covering his face. 'I shall wait till morning!'

Obviously, he was after all in no state to be allowed to wander on the mountainside at night. I was bitterly disappointed-with some violence I threw the last howling child out into the darkness, and slammed the great door shut-but I said nothing more to Harker then. In silence I walked with him back to the library, where I bade him a