The Monster Trilogy. Brian Aldiss
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A bell in the small clock tower crowing the institution chimed midnight, spinning out its notes as if about to run down. The cool light glittered on rows of window panes, some of them barred. It sent a dagger of light plunging down through the narrow orifice of Renfield’s skylight to carve a square on the stones close by where he lay on his pallet of straw. During the day he had attacked a male nurse, and was in consequence secured in a strait-jacket, with his arms confined.
He amused himself by alternately grinding his teeth and humming like a fly trapped in a jar.
‘Ummmm. Ummmm. Ummmmmmmm.’
His eyes bulged in their sockets. He stared unblinkingly at the white square on the floor nearby. As minute by minute it slid nearer to him, it changed from rancid milk to pale pink, and then to a heartier colour until it appeared to him as a square pan of blood.
He stretched his neck to drink from it. At that moment, the whole cell was flooded with moonlight, and a great joyous humming sounded as if a thousand hornets were loose.
Crying in triumph, Renfield sprang upward, arms above his head in the attitude of a diver. He was naked as the day he was born. He burst through the skylight and landed gracefully on the icy slopes of the asylum roof, which stretched away into the distance like ski slopes.
As he danced there, a great winged thing circled overhead. He called and whistled to it with a flutelike noise, playing imagined pan pipes. Lower it came, red eyes fixed upon the naked dancer.
‘I know your secrets, little lord, I know. Come down, come down. I know how human blood makes you sick – it makes you sick, yet on it you have to depend, depend, deep end. Jump in the deep end, little lord …’
It circled still, the beat of its wings vibrating in the air, scattering moonlight.
‘Yes, you come from a time when all blood was cool and thick and slow and lizard-flavoured. That time of the great things, I know. They’ve gone and you have only us, little lord. So take my blood at last, slopping in its jug of flesh just for you – and I shall poison you. Ummmm. Ummmm.’
He pirouetted on the rooftree and the great winged thing swooped and took him. It enfolded him lasciviously, biting into him, into the creamy flesh like toffee-apple, as it wrapped him about with the great dry wings, biting, drinking deep with a love more terrible than fury – and then with disgust, as it flew off, vomiting back the blood into his empty face.
Renfield sniggered in his sleep. His eyes remained open and staring like glass buttons on a child’s toy, but he dreamed his terrible dream.
Red curtains closed over the eye of the moon as van Helsing pulled them together after a brief scrutiny of the terrace. The Stokers were leaving the dining room as they had entered, arm-in-arm. Bodenland was following when the doctor tugged at his sleeve and drew him back.
‘Permit me to ask – is there a pretty little Mrs Bodenland back home where you come from?’ He looked down at his nervous hands as he spoke, as if ashamed to pry.
‘I’m married, yes, doctor. That’s one good reason why I am bent on getting home just as soon as I can.’
He made to move on, but the doctor still detained him.
‘You understand why I enquire. I am in charge of Mr Stoker’s health. The conjugal arrangements are not good in this household. As a result – as a direct result —’ He paused, and then went on in a whisper. ‘Mr Stoker has unfortunately contracted a vile disease from what the French call a fille de joie, a woman of the night. You understand?’
Not being fond of the doctor’s fussy little ways, Bodenland made no reply, but stood solid to hear him out.
Van Helsing tapped his temple.
‘His brain’s affected. Or he believes it affected. Which, in the case of brains, amounts to much the same thing. He believes – well, he believes that mankind has become the host for a species of parasite beings, vampires, who come from somewhere distant. I speak scientifically, you understand. From one of the planets, let’s say. He regards this as the secret of the universe, which of course he is about to reveal. You can never trust a man who thinks he knows the secret of the universe.’
‘I’m not so certain about that, doctor. The secret of the universe – provided there is such a thing – is open to enquiry by anyone, by any interested party, just like the secrets of the personality.’
‘What secrets of the personality?’
‘Like why you rub one index finger against the other when you talk … No, wait, doctor, I’m sorry. That was impertinent.’
The doctor had turned on his heel in vexation, but Bodenland charmed him back, to ask what treatment he was giving Stoker for his disease.
‘I treat his sores with mercury ointment. It is painful but efficacious.’
Bodenland scratched his chin.
‘You won’t have heard of penicillin yet awhile, but I could get a hold of some. And in a very few years Salvarsan will become available.’
‘You’re making no sense to me, sir.’
‘You know, Salvarsan? Let’s see, would you have heard of Dr Ehrlich’s “magic bullets” at this date?’
‘Oh.’ The doctor gave a chuckle and nodded. ‘I begin to get your drift. Bram Stoker makes his own magic bullets – to kill off his imaginary vampires, you understand.’
At that juncture, Stoker himself put his head round the dining-room door.
‘There you are. I thought you must have gone into the study. Mr Bodenland, perhaps you’d care to inspect my workshop? I generally spend an hour pottering in there after dinner.’
As they went down a side-passage, Stoker put an arm round Bodenland’s shoulders.
‘You don’t want to pay too much attention to what van Helsing says. He’s a good doctor but —’ He put a finger to his temple, in unconscious imitation of van Helsing’s gesture of a few minutes past. ‘In some respects he has a screw loose.’
On the door before them was a notice saying, Workshop, Keep Out.
‘My private den,’ said Stoker, proudly. As they entered, he drew from an inner pocket a leather case containing large cigars, and proffered it to Bodenland. The latter shook his head vigorously.
He studied Stoker as the ginger man went through the rigmarole of lighting his cigar. The head was large and well-shaped, the ginger hair without grey in it, though a bald patch showed to the rear of the skull. The features were good, although the skin, particularly where it showed above the collar, was coarse and mottled.
Feeling the eyes of his visitor on him, Stoker looked sideways through the smoke.
‘Here’s my den. I must be always doing. I can’t abide nothing to do.’
‘I too.’
‘Life’s too short.’
‘Agreed. I am always ambitious to make something of myself.’
‘That’s it – cut a dash at the least, I say. Needs courage.’
‘Courage, yes, I suppose so. Do you reckon yourself courageous?’
Stoker thought, squeezing his eyes closed. ‘Let’s put it this way. I’m a terrible coward who’s done a lot of brave things. I like cricket. You Yanks don’t play cricket?’
‘No. Business and invention – that’s my line. And a lot of other things. There are so many possibilities in the world.’
‘Do you long to be a hero?’
The question was unexpected. ‘It’s a strange thing to ask. My shrink certainly thinks I long to be a hero … One thing, I have a need for desolate places.’
Giving him a sceptical look, Stoker said, ‘Mm, there’s nothing more desolate