Dracula Unbound (22 page)

“You'll have to be responsible for something sometime, Larry. You know well that your mother lies in her last sleep in the mortician's. We identified her, remember? You've been suffering hallucinations.”

He stood up shakily. “I'll have myself a shower. Honey, I will give up on the hooch. Promise. But I'll stake my life my mother … What am I saying? Stake? That's it—it's the curse of Clift's graves. You said there was evil and you were right. Mother has … become a vampire. She's become a vampire. That's it—she's become a vampire.”

Looking frightened, Kylie shook her head and attempted nonchalance.

“They do not permit vampires in Enterprise City—bad for tourism. Go take that shower.”

“Okay—and thanks for coming back to me, hon. I really appreciate it. My next model plane I'll name after you. We'll go to the funeral parlor in the morning and take a look … you know, at Mina. If there are any telltale signs, stigmata—and I tell you there will be—I am going to
act
. You'll see I'm not the wimp you think.”

“Get in that shower, you brute!” Smiling, she made as if to kick him.

They slept fitfully after that. Next morning saw them sitting in an ice cream parlor, Trix's Licks, just off Main Street. Through the plate glass window of the parlor they could survey the mortician's shopfront while gathering courage to go over. Trix herself brought their sundaes as they sat companionably at the counter. Kylie smiled her thanks, then looked gloomy again.

As is frequently the case with young married couples, both of them had changed their minds overnight.

“I'm frightened of your drinking, Larry, dear, that's the truth. But I know you are no alcoholic. You had a bad experience. Why should I try to deny it? Maybe your mother did visit you. That note she left—‘Joe you bastard'—doesn't that show she was in deep trouble of some kind? Maybe she has become a vampire.”

Larry shook his head. “I can't believe in vampires in daylight. It's that novel you're reading getting to you.”

She laughed. “Now you sound like your father. The Church has a proper sense of the battle of Good against Evil. It's a very ancient battle. Belief in devils and vampires goes way way back, and has to be well-founded for that reason.”

When he made no response, Kylie watched him, sitting next to her, elbows on the counter, a colored straw at his pink lip. He was gazing calculatingly across the street at the stained glass in the mortician's window. Maybe he's planning to deliver his groceries there, she thought, then hastily retracted the treachery.

But of course the unspoken question was, was their marriage always to be like this? Could she find in herself sufficient depth of character—of love—to stick with Larry Bodenland, to elicit responses that were more than perfunctory? Why was it she was always having to mop up his spew? And to tell him things? And to offer advice? Why couldn't it be vice versa?

Because when she looked at it coolly, she did not want a mother role. She liked playing the good obedient daughter. Was she not a shade fonder of Joe, bossy though he was, than of his son?

“It's only your and your father's rationalism which seeks to deny the supernatural.” A verbal prod.

Larry shook his head.

“We live in a scientific age.”

So the clock was stuck at cliché time. “Where there is no vision the people perish.” She had to stand by him, to try to induce vision into him—if not for Larry's sake, then for her own. You could not live isolated; you had to do something for others. Otherwise she'd be as dead as he was. Poor Larry. Yes, it was already ‘poor Larry.'

What did vampires think about most of the time? Maybe they didn't think. But what did Larry think about, when you came down to it? Girlie magazines, screwing, Wild Turkey, and 12X Cheesecake (Fruits of Forest Flavor) to Be Stored at 0° F …

“I mean,” he said, turning to her with an effort, “if you blot these bad things from your mind, they'll go away, you see, hon? The way you can persuade yourself you're not going to get a cold.”

“Okay. What if the bad things won't leave your mind? Maybe you should face them—turn and face them, not run from them. You say it's a scientific age—the age of the gas chamber. Then be scientific and face the facts. Your mother tried to suck your blood, so you told me. And worse than that. Get you in a sexual embrace.”

He wondered gloomily to himself if this was the way their marriage was going to go, with Kylie perpetually trying to get the edge on him. He could not find the strength to defy her this morning, when his head ached.

He shuddered, pressing down a blob of ice cream in the glass so that the strawberry flavoring rushed up to the top.

“Don't remind me. To think my mother—”

“We have to help her, Larry. If Joe was here he would approve of that.”

“Right. It's the curse of Clift's grave,” he repeated, reaching out for her hand. “We'll do something between us.”

In a happier mood, they stared out across the street.

A lumberyard stood next to the mortician.
ENTERPRISE TIMBERS
, proclaimed a large sign.
WOOD CARVED TO YOUR REQUIREMENT. FENCES, STAKES
.

The bald mortician greeted them when at length they entered the funeral parlor. His hands were fluttery this morning, like doves seeking lodgment in his pale suit. When Kylie showed him a bouquet of flowers she had bought, the man merely nodded, without interest.

“Your lamented mom is in a casket now. Unhappily, we had a little accident in here last night, overnight. Hooligans, a rough element … the Old John site attracts a number of undesirables from other states … they desecrated the establishment.”

“What happened exactly?”

The mortician blinked rapidly and the doves fluttered again. “A Lounge of Rest is not the proper place for necrophilia, sir.”

“Convenient, though … May we take a final farewell of Mother?”

He managed to smile and nod while seeming to shake his head. “We who as yet evade the Old Reaper … we gain spiritually from gazing on the countenances of those who have entered eternal peace …”

He led the young couple into his inner sanctum where the air was dim and sacred and a plastic sign, designed to console the bereaved, said,
SUNLIGHT NEVER CEASES
. Kylie gripped Larry's hand.

The mortician untied a mauve ribbon and removed the lid of Mina's casket with a flourish.

Mina lay in the semidark, hands folded on chest. Her expression was severe, her mouth red. As the lid came off, her eyelids flickered. She opened her eyes and stared up at them.

Then she spoke. Her voice was thick as if encrusted with mold.

“Larry, I need you. I'm—not what you think … Come to me.”

The little mortician ran for it. Larry stood fast, staring down at the distorted version of a face he had loved.

“Mother, you're dead. Don't you know that? Dead.”

“No, no—beyond death—something different. I hope for everlasting life. And for you if you come. And your daddy.” Her mouth worked, sticky and crimson. The words of promise were belied by her expression of overwhelming avidity.

As he gazed down in revulsion, her hands grasped the side of the casket, white in her endeavor to lever herself up.

“Not at that price, Mother.”

Kylie had lost her head and was running after the mortician, yelling for a priest to come and administer last rites.

Larry yelled too. “I'll save Daddy from that fate!” He pulled out the timber stake he had been concealing under his sweatshirt.

Bearing down with his own weight, he drove it between Mina's ribs.

Her cry was unearthly. She clawed at him in her last agonies as he sank toward her, forcing the stake down into her heart.

At last she was still, and he backed away, his face bloody with lacerations.

“You see,” he said aloud, “I can do it. I can do it.”

He tucked his mother's arms tenderly into the casket. Already her face was resuming the lineaments of the woman he had loved so desperately all his life.

Sobs wracked him. “God bless you, Mom,” he said. His tears fell on her lined face.

Walking unsteadily, he found Kylie weeping in the outer office.

“They sell crucifixes, Larry. I'll buy one and put it in the casket. Maybe you'd put it in for me.”

“I did it. She's at peace now. I dared to do it. It was the right thing, wasn't it?”

She put her arms round him.

“You did just great. Now you'll have to explain it to Joe when he returns—if he ever does.”

11

On arrival in this alien Tripoli, Joe Bodenland had fallen foul of his old enemy, depression. Once he was locked in the police cell, this mood fell away. His spirits always improved when faced with a new challenge.

The cell was basic and only doubtfully clean. He could walk four paces one way and three the other. It had no window. In the passage beyond, however, a television screen burned. He could squint at it and see what was going on, although from his oblique angle the three-dimensional effect was distorted. From it he learned something of the desperate situation in which the Silent Empire found itself in this mortal year of 2599.

He was trapped in a future blacker than he could have imagined. A large meteor, of a kind long anticipated by astronomers and others, had struck the Northern Hemisphere, destroying or throwing into anarchy the old civilizations of Europe and North America. Much dirt and dust had been ejected into the atmosphere, followed by smoke from extensive forest fires. The result had been a severe screening of sunlight, which brought about two years of inclement winter. In the prevailing darkness, the Fleet Ones had seen their chance. With the aid of the time train, they had come from past and future to the attack, and had prevailed over the disorganized nations of humanity.

The Silent Empire was so called because it had no one to talk to. All other cultures in the Northern Hemisphere had gone under. Now it too was faced with extinction.

All this Bodenland quickly gleaned, for the television channel broadcast nothing but political speeches—speeches made in the studio direct to the camera, or speeches made in the open, addressed to crowds of thousands of people. Speeches designed to whip up defiance for the Empire's last stand.

This was certainly enough to occupy Bodenland's mind. His morale was high. He was unable to conquer the unreasonable hope that either he would be released or that the resourceful Stoker would come to his aid.

However, the hours went by. Food and drink were passed in to him. He ate a hunk of bread, a sliver of goat cheese, and a slice of rotting pineapple.

A warder marched along the passage and switched off the television. Joe was there for the night.

By next morning, his mood was much more rebellious. He refused to look at or listen to the television. The cell was situated so that he had no contact with other prisoners. He paced as far as he was able until a warder came with a key, unlocked the door, and marched him down the passage to the check-in desk.

A tall man in gray flowing robes stood there, head enveloped in a dark-visored helmet. He beckoned to Bodenland.

Bodenland looked from him to the warder.

“Out you go,” said the warder, with a brisk gesture.

“I've not been charged. What the devil was I brought in for?”

The stranger tugged his sleeve and indicated the door.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Money buys much here, even freedom. Do you come or do you wish to remain in the prison?”

“I see your point.” Without further ado, Joe followed the tall man out of the building. He did not look back.

Once they were outside, he stopped.

“Don't think I'm not glad to be out of there, but who are you?”

“Call me Ali, Mr. Bodenland. I represent an official body which welcomes foreigners here—as the Libyans do not. Why should they? These are the last days of the Silent Empire. But you do not have to spend them in a stinking cell. Now, I know a quiet shop nearby where we can have a drink.” The gray-clad man made him a bow.

There has to be a trade-off
, thought Bodenland.
Someone's setting me up
.

The quiet shop was at least shady. Entering from the hazy sunlight, Bodenland could see little, and removed his helmet and visor. Under a deep awning, the glassless coffee shop windows looked out on a grand square. The square was full of activity. Bodenland saw little of it, for his host led the way to a table in the darkest part of the rear room.

As Ali seated himself, he clicked his fingers, and immediately two long-handled brass mugs of coffee were brought on a brass tray, together with two tots of water.

“You care for something to eat?”

“Thanks, no.”

They both sat without words. Bodenland waited for the mysterious Ali to speak, alert for danger.

“Libya is now being attacked. That is why the people are restless. Their time has come. It must have been like this in Byzantium before it finally collapsed after the long erosion. Some defiance, more resignation.”

He was not touching his coffee and continued to wear his visor.

“The human race will have had a short run for its money. The much-vaunted brain, the neocortex, proved not to be a winning number.”

“You sound cheerful about it, Ali. Isn't there a super-bomb the Libyans can use on their enemies?”

“Ah, the F-bomb. Well … It's well known that the Fleet Ones cannot invent. Their talents are not with technology.”

“What are their talents? I've yet to learn.”

“You will learn, I'm sure of that.” Said with a smile, though it was hardly visible in their dark corner. “As I was saying, their talents are not with technology. But when they seize on mankind's destructive weapons, the Fleet Ones can copy them in their own factories and turn the weapons back on their own inventors. Their factories are invulnerable, situated as they are in the far future, where the sun grows dark.”