Dracula (A Modern Telling) Page 12

  “Do not eat,” he said.

  “I’m hungry.” I attempted to pull away from him but his grip was unlike anything I had ever felt.

  “It is a trap. Do not eat or drink anything.”

  “Get away from me.”

  He leaned in close, his eyes flickering in the dim light. “Do not eat. You must trust me.”

  Somehow, I did. Though I was famished, I did not eat or drink. The man was wandering the room, mingling with the guests, but at one point he came over and sat down next to me.

  “You must relieve your bowls,” he said, “and urinate. Right now. There is privacy just outside. Do it now. Go!”

  I didn’t even hesitate. I ran outside and found what would now pass for toilets but were really just stone blocks with holes cut out of the top so that excrement fell into a ditch in the ground. I did as was instructed and then went back inside. The man was nowhere to be found so I went to sit at the table again when two arms wrapped around me. Guards had taken hold of me and I looked back to Radu and Mehmed and they were laughing as they watched.

  The guards dragged me out of the banquet as I fought with all the strength my young body could bring forth, but more guards were added as they saw I was struggling. They pulled me to a side room and pinned me down to the floor, at least two of them sitting on top of me. They undressed me from the waist down. I thought they meant to rape me, something that the Moslems were known to do to their prisoners. But they did not. Instead, they retrieved an … item, something the shape of a cylinder with a pear bottom. They lubricated it with oil and pushed it into my rectum. I was screaming incoherently at this point, but that only made them laugh harder.

  After that, when I was to the point of fainting with the sudden pain, they tied my hands and legs together and then flipped me over onto my back, at which point they used a thin piece of silk or velvet to tie off my penis, much like a tourniquet. I screamed more, but was numb from pain at this point. The men stood up, laughing to the point of urinating themselves, and locked me in the room.

  I don’t know how long I was in this room. I can’t imagine the unbearable pain I would have been in had the man at the banquet not warned me. It was still excruciating beyond belief and most of that time was spent sobbing on the floor, unable to sleep, but it could have been worse.

  One day, guards came and untied me. They pulled the object out of my rectum and untied my penis. I soiled myself right then, which made them chuckle as they lifted me and carried me out of the room. Standing there, waiting for me, was Mehmed.

  “I trust you see I can do whatever I wish with you.”

  I looked him in the eyes. “One day, far in the future, you will regret that.”

  He laughed. “Idiot boy. I spare you for one reason only: your brother.”

  I knew this to be false. I don’t think Radu would have spoken out to protect me. I think Mehmed was unable to kill me because his father had forbidden it. It was advantageous for the Turks to be allied with us as well. They wanted footholds in Europe. The Moslems of the time felt it was their destiny to conquer and control the world, and Europe was the starting point. If they could conquer Europe, the rest of the known world would fall easily.

  I was taken back to the house I had come from. A slave girl prepared a bath for me and afterward I was dressed in fine linens and allowed to eat. I sat but didn’t eat anything, though my stomach roared in pain. I did not trust food any longer. Instead, I rose and walked out to the courtyard of the house and sat next to a small stream that ran through it. The weather was boiling hot and I would occasionally dip my feet in the stream or soak my head. I had nowhere else to be and no one else to speak with, so I did this all day.

  At night I walked the grounds and saw two guards stationed at the doors. I did not understand why they feared me escaping; for I had nowhere to go, and should I return to my family, even if I knew where they were, my father would no doubt disown me for disobeying his orders to stay with the Turks.

  As night fell, it seemed the city grew even louder. Such masses of people crowding together looking for a night’s entertainment set off an energy that like nothing else. People have a very unique place in this universe and it is attuned to us in a specific way. When many of us gather together, you can sense the general mood of the crowd.

  “How do you feel?”

  I was startled because I thought I was alone in the house. But the man from the banquet stood behind me.

  “I am hungry. I haven’t eaten.”

  “It won’t happen again. Come inside and eat.”

  We went to the room where they had laid out food and we sat on the floor. I hesitated, but his face was so calm and serene I felt at ease, and tore into the food.

  “The Turks don’t eat on tables. They only bring them in for European guests. Shall I have one brought for you?”

  “I don’t care,” I said with a mouthful of food.

  “My name is Amaury. I am a guest of the Sultan, same as you.”

  “Why did you help me?”

  “Because I can look inside a person, young Vlad. I can see what’s inside you. It’s fire, a fire that could bring this entire empire down to ash.”

  I scoffed. “I am nothing anymore. I cannot even feed myself without fear.”

  “When I give you the gift I am to give you, you will never have to feed again. Not like this.” He grinned and it sent a shiver up my back. “I foresee you becoming a great king. A great, and awful, king. Your name will inspire fear through centuries. I have seen it.”

  “How have you seen it?”

  “Visions. If you open yourself to them they will guide you. But you must have a clear mind and a calm soul. Inside, you are a storm. You must learn to calm that before we can proceed. I will show you how.”

  “How are you going to calm me?”

  “By letting you see Elizabeth.”

  I said nothing for a long time. “How do you know about her?”

  “I told you, I have seen it. I will take you to her so you may see that she is safe. And then I have a gift for you. Once it is given, you will see everything clearly.”

  We sat a moment looking at each other. I was going to ask him how he would manage to take me to Elizabeth, but there was something about his eyes … they held a fierceness that I couldn’t break away from.

  He hissed like a snake and leapt from a sitting position. He landed on me like a boulder. It was like trying to push off a mountain. He held me down and tore the flesh of my neck, which is the scar you see here. And he drank. He drank for a long time, until my heart was beating furiously at the injustice of its death. You see the heart pounds harder when it is drained of blood so quickly, and I could hear it in my ears like a drum. But there were two beats I heard … the other … Amaury’s. Our hearts seemed to sync in a slow, rhythmic pounding that decreased over time as the blood drained from me and into Amaury.

  I felt cold and began to shiver. I couldn’t speak but I managed to say, “Let me go, please.” He did not, of course, and in fact dug deeper into my neck.

  When he did finally release me, he stood over me like some demon. His eyes were blazing with a brutality I have never seen. My blood dripped from his lips and chin onto his clothing and he licked at them like an animal. He then fell on me again but did not bite. Instead, he whispered in my ear.

  “Death is simple, my dove. Slip into it like a warm bath.”

  My eyes grew so heavy I couldn’t keep them open any longer, and I didn’t have the strength to crawl or scream out. And even if I did, there was no one anywhere near that would hear. Amaury grinned as he sat above me and he took his wrist and sliced open a vein, black blood drizzling out like rain. He put it to my lips and blood slid down my throat. I didn’t have the strength to swallow he had drained me so much, and Amaury had to hold my nose until I was forced to do so.

  My vision blackened and I suddenly felt the sensation of being lifted off the floor. Away from myself, as some describe a near-death experience. I saw my body
lying on the floor, Amaury on top of me, but I, my consciousness, was hovering above. And in instant I was gone.

  I was suddenly in a room with a fire in the hearth. I saw several young girls sitting about the fire playing with little wooden toys, and from behind me I heard the sweetest voice I knew.

  I turned to see Elizabeth sitting on a chair, mending torn clothing. She glanced up at her sisters and smiled sorrowfully and I could see the fear on her face. I ran to her, imploring her not to be afraid, that I was here and I would never leave her side again, that it was a mistake what I did, and that I never should have left her for a moment.

  And as quickly as it had come, the vision was gone.

  Amaury pulled his wrist away and stood. “I will be back later. Accept the pain. It is probably the last you will ever feel.”

  Pain. How wrong he was. He condemned me to a life of pain, when he told me that I would feel no more. But as I lay there I didn’t know this. All I knew was that a fire was seemingly burning inside my belly. It was so agonizing that I fainted several times. I was drenched in sweat and gasping for air. I had to get to somebody. I had to have help.

  I rolled over and the simple movement caused waves of fresh misery and I screamed. I pressed one hand to my belly and with the other I began to crawl. I cannot describe to you how much I was suffering. I was dying in the most painful way I thought a man could die: a foreign body was eating me from the inside out. Perhaps science would describe it as a type of massive cellular destruction. Whatever was in my blood was attacking my cells one by one.

  I was near the door when my lungs stopped working. I was trying to scream but only animal-like grunts escaped my lips. My heart grew louder and louder in my ears, starved and dying. In a final, sharp instant, life finally left me, and I lay on the ground … my hand outstretched to the door for help that would never come.

  I awoke at night, numb. The moon was shining through the windows of the little room and the noise was high again. My eyes fluttered open and I realized they had been closed though I had clearly been seeing the light in the room. I lay motionless, and suddenly the sound of the city became unbearable. I could hear every word of every person outside, and every horse and camel and merchant and prostitute and beggar, every shoe on the cobblestone roads and every mother that wept for her children because she could not feed them, every cutthroat attacking a new victim.

  “You will grow accustomed to the sounds,” a voice said from the darkness.

  I sat up, my head throbbing, and still felt pain in my stomach. “What did you do to me?” I spit.

  Amaury grabbed me and led me through the doors and into the night air. He had to hold me up because I was too weak to do so on my own, and he showed me a world I hadn’t known existed.

  Every bead of sweat on the people that passed before us, every stone on the road, every shimmer of moonlight that made jewels sparkle … it was beautiful. The world itself, the mundane that I had neglected my entire life, was striking. I was like a child looking at the world for the first time in wonder.

  “You will be hungry soon,” he said, “and you must feed. But you are no longer mortal. Your mortal body has died, Vlad of the House Dracul. It exists no more. You have soiled yourself with urine and excrement. That is the last vestige of mortality you will ever feel. Your body will become hard but you will have heightened sensitivity. No one will feel sensual pleasure like you do. But it comes at a price. You will never see a sunrise again, nor watch the butterflies as they flutter in a field. The world is darkness to you now, but even in darkness there is beauty. Nothing is ugly to God.”

  I stood in awe, unable to speak. The pain in my stomach faded but a new pain rose, akin to hunger and rabid sexual desire simultaneously; but far, far more powerful. The only thing I could focus on was what I saw before me: the men and women that walked the roads. My vision was such that I could see the veins in their necks pulsing with nourishing blood underneath. I longed for them, both as one would for prey, and as one would for a lover. There is no mortal equivalent. I could both love them, and want to destroy them.

  “You must feed,” Amaury said. “You must do as I did and tear into the neck, or anywhere else if you prefer. But the vein in the neck is the easiest and provides the most blood quickly.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “To who?”

  “The people that I feed from.”

  He looked at me like I was a foolish child asking a foolish question. “They will die.”

  Amaury said it so matter-of-factly, with such coldness, that it did not register in my mind for a moment. It wasn’t until later that I realized what he was saying: for us to live, others must die. Our entire existence was predicated on death. But that night, I couldn’t think about that. I felt only the overwhelming hunger, and my mind whirled from the splendor I saw all around me.

  Amaury insisted we find a victim but I had no such desire. I wished only to watch the world. I could have sat down and observed a stone for centuries or the exquisiteness of the moon or an ant busily carrying food back to its queen.

  “I will not kill the innocent,” I said.

  Amaury laughed. “My little dove, when the time comes, you will kill armies of men and watch them die for the simple pleasure of hearing their screams.”

  “I … I want to see Elizabeth again. I want to go to her right now.”

  “Ah, now that would be a good first victim, wouldn’t it? Show yourself that you have lost all the foolish morality that these peasants cling to.”

  “No!” I stood up and grabbed him. He moved with such speed that he was out of my hands and behind me instantly. “You will not touch her,” I said.

  “No, I won’t. You will.”

  Before I could say anything, a wave of pain rushed through me like flowing water and I doubled over.

  “The pain is growing stronger, isn’t it?” he said. “There’s only one thing that can end it.”

  He grabbed me and I felt myself moving so quickly it was as if I were flying. It took only a moment and we were inside a house across the road. We stood in the corner away from the candle light and saw two women inside the home: a mother and a daughter. They were beautiful, with long black hair and brown eyes and the olive, smooth skin common to the people of the city. They were wearing their sleeping gowns … and I longed for them.

  “You see,” Amaury said, “the pain grows stronger. Your blood can sense that food is near. And do not fool yourself, young Vlad, they are nothing but food to you now. You will do things, horrific things, that you never thought possible. And what you will tell yourself is that they are just food.”

  He stepped out of the shadows.

  “No, Amaury, do not frighten them.”

  He grabbed the daughter by the chin and looked into her eyes. Her jaw dropped open and, unblinkingly, she stared into his eyes until I could see she had no will left of her own. Then Amaury turned to the mother who was shouting and did the same to her. Both women sat down calmly and stared off into nothing.

  “Come, Vlad.”

  I stepped out of the dark. Every part of me screamed that I would take these women, that I would tear into them like so much meat and then discard them, but my morality had not left me. I had not killed enough to be numb to it, and I felt a nauseating disgust with myself. Amaury could sense my hesitation and he grabbed me and flung me on top of the daughter. We both hit the floor and my mouth was near her mouth. I could smell the sweet scent of her skin and, without thinking, I licked her and savored the saltiness of it. I turned her head ever so slightly, being as gentle as if I were handling a rose. I felt teeth protrude from my gums and over my lips. My eyes began to water and I tried to pull away but could not.

  “Why are you resisting, Vlad? She is yours. Can you not see that she wishes to become one with you? Can you not see the pain she is in, longing for your kiss? Kiss her, Vlad. Kiss her!”

  And I did. I kissed her neck and licked it as a dog would lick its meat … and then I tore
into her. The smooth skin turned to ragged flesh as I could not puncture the vein and instead shredded it in half. Blood sprayed over my face, warming my now dead skin, but I did not care. I lapped at the blood and then drank as much as I could before she died. I compared this to Amaury who, almost with surgical precision, bit down into the mother and extracted ever so softly just enough blood to sate his appetite.

  As I drank, the world made sense to me. Every war that had been fought and every poem that had been written. I know of no other way to describe this. I knew that I was part of a whole, a continuum, and that though this girl had been my victim, we were one. I felt the pounding of her heart as my own sped to catch up with hers. In our final embrace we were more intimate than any lovers, and her whole life poured into me. Not just her blood, but her memories. I saw them. I saw her life, I felt her fears and her desires and her youthful joy of life … and it was glorious.

  When she died, Amaury tried pulling me away, and had to fling me across the room to get me off of her. I didn’t want to leave her, I wished to stay by her side. I was in love with her, but once he had thrown me off, I saw her then for what she was. For what I had made her.

  She was ashen white and her eyes had lost their youthful glow. Her neck was a slick, bloody mess and it had stained her chest and face. She looked like something on a butcher’s table now. Not the joy and the prettiness I had just felt. I turned away from her and vomited her rich blood.

  “What have you done to me?” I said. “What have you cursed me to?”

  Amaury stood in the shadows and laughed. And it was as if the shadows laughed at me. They laughed … and they spoke to me.

  You will be the butcher of millions. You will be a scourge on the earth that mothers will tell their children about to frighten them. You are darkness now.