Renfield by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

000

From his window Renfield watched the hooded yellow blink of the lantern bob its way across the abyss of the garden. Watched it ascend what he knew to be the wall, invisible beyond the leafless trees. Watched it vanish.

Pallid moonlight outlined the nearest tree-trunks, slipped away. Returned, to show the thin streak of white mist that had begun to steal across the garden, mist that glittered in the faint reflections of Seward's study lamp, and from another window where the gas was also turned down low. Somewhere a dog was howling, and Renfield pressed his face to the bars and cried "Dear God! Dear God!" though he could not have said whether he prayed to the disapproving God of whom he'd been taught in childhood, or to Wotan, whose red eyes he saw flickering, flickering in the heart of the mists.

As the black form took shape, hanging in the darkness outside Renfield's window, he thought, That is where I saw Jonathan Harker. In my dream o f the Valkyries. It is he who was the prisoner. He could even now hear Nomie's silvery voice: I am called Nomie, Jonathan ...

But it was not Nomie and her sisters who took shape outside the window now, but Wotan-Dracula-with his red eyes burning through the mist like malign spots of flame.

Black moths beat against the window, crawled through the narrow slot of the nearly shut casement, flopped limply on the floor in the moonlight around Renfield's feet. Though it was night, and chill, big steely black flies swarmed with them, and spiders crawled from the cracks in the paneling, and still the black form took shape in the darkness outside the window.

I am here.

Renfield whispered, "Master."

I am here. You have sworn your love for me; I have brought you good things. Will you not bid me welcome?

The grip of his mind was like iron and ice, crushing and freezing at once. Renfield thought despairingly of that lovely young woman who had spoken so kindly to him, sleeping alone in this terrible house; thought of the long horror of Lucy's death; of the three sisters and their power. He wept, but his voice choked on the name of God as if Dracula's steel grip closed about his throat. In that moment he could have called upon neither God nor man.

"Rats," Wotan whispered-Dracula whispered-the leitmotif of the Traveler God beating in Renfield's brain, and across the lawn Renfield saw a dark mass creeping, like water spreading toward the house, a dark mass prickled by a thousand paired crimson flames. "Rats . . ." With a gesture of his long-nailed hand, Dracula brushed aside the mists that surrounded him, and Renfield saw them, smelled them, the sweet filthy unmistakable mustiness of their bodies. "Every one of them a life. And dogs to eat them, and cats, too. All lives-all red blood, with years of life in it, and not merely buzzing flies!"

Lives, thought Renfield. Strength. Strength for my great work. "All these lives will I give you.

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