Dracula Unbound by Brian W. Aldiss

Author:Brian W. Aldiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

9

It was growing dark in the woods below the house. Sunset was overcast. Spinks the gardener, assisted by the two men, was loading Stoker’s homemade bullets and some rifles on the time train.

This remarkable vehicle had been inspected with many a whistle of admiration from Stoker and many a scratch of the head from Spinks. The latter was philosophical.

“If it works, then it works, sir, and you needn’t worry. My stomach works, but I don’t need to know the whys and wherefores of it.”

“A sensible approach,” Stoker agreed. “The less you know about your stomach, the better it works, no doubt. Light a storm lantern, Spinks, will you? It’s dark early this evening.”

As the darkness encompassed the three men, as the Earth revolving moved into its own shadow, so the ancient forces of darkness began to emerge. Not being subject to life, they were tireless. While the time train was being loaded, Bella, who had once been alive, was descending some crumbling stairs leading down to a crypt.

She was newly roused from the oblivion which overtook her in the holy hours of daylight. Her hair lay about her shoulders. About her lips was a deadly pallor. Her fragility expressed itself in the lingering way she descended the broken stair. No living man, regarding her, could have resisted the lure of a ruined madonna, fearing his own weakness.

Yet she herself, the magnet for terror, was also subject to terror. She went to a rendezvous with her Lord.

Some reassurance was to be drawn from the atmosphere of the crypt, which was dark and rank. Her keenly attuned ear caught the drip of moisture, the whisper of a spider in its web, and all the sharp-toothed harmonies of decay. It suited her, too, that the stained glass window to one side allowed in only the barest stain of light, red-tainted from the dregs of sunset.

Tombs stood all about. An open coffin lay nearby, lending its gamey flavor to the air. Bella stood by it, slightly luminous, waiting in absolute stillness.

At a sign of some kind, perhaps a change of pressure in the morbid dampness, she sank to her knees, lifting her white hands up to her breast. Her mouth opened and her pale gums made her teeth look longer and sharper than ever.

In the gloom, very distant, a mighty figure materialized. It remained for an instant at the brink of visibility. Then it began its advance toward the kneeling woman. It had infinite space to cover, but it approached at infinite speed. Suddenly it was close, robed in smoldering darkness. Its face was long, pale, powerful. It had horns, rising on bosses from its thick, coarse hair.

It had no majesty. What it had was brute presence, before which Bella cowered.

She addressed him as Lord and Count, and said that Bodenland would soon be finished as thoroughly as the other grave-defiler, Clift. She would not let him escape. She spoke submissively, in her deep growling voice.

There was no doubting the monster’s power when he stood forth as now, horned and in his true guise.

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