Dracula (A Modern Telling) Read online

  As I lay on the couch and stared out the window, I suddenly got the impression that I was not alone. I looked over to the doorway and three women were standing there. They were nude, and three of the loveliest creatures I had ever seen. Models, or porn stars maybe. Built to be lusted for by men.

  They moved through the room like silk and were on me.

  Pearl white teeth were pressed against ruby lips, their cold hands over my body. Something about them was unlike any other women I had ever met. I longed for them and feared them at the same time. One of them, I saw now, was Charlene.

  Staring into their eyes, I wished they would kiss me. I wished they would rip off my clothes and ravage me, dominate me. I wanted to be dominated and humiliated.

  They were whispering among themselves and they laughed. A beautiful, silvery laugh after so many days when I’d heard nothing but wind in the mansion. Their voices were like water-glasses played softly by a human hand. It was otherworldly.

  “You’re the first,” one said to Charlene. “He’s yours by right.”

  “There’s enough for us all,” she said.

  I lay quiet in a type of anticipation that made me feel like my body would fail me. Charlene ran her hand up my chest and clawed me. Her voluptuous lips were near me and I smelled her breath. It was sweet, like honey, but underneath the sweet was bitterness. Like something perfumed poured over something foul.

  She bent over me with perfect breasts that just lightly touched my neck and sent shivers up my spine. Arching her back, her face was lit by the moon and she licked her lips like an animal. In the moonlight I could see the moisture on her shining, velvet lips, and the red tongue that lapped over the white teeth.

  Her face brushed against mine, and went lower and lower. Past my chin until I felt her on my throat. I heard the sound of her tongue licking her teeth and lips and felt her hot breath against my neck. I felt her lips shivering against the sensitive skin of my neck and I moaned in ecstasy as she grinded her hips into mine. I was hers, and anything she wanted to do to me I wanted done. I was hers to use and discard or to love and cradle.

  The ecstasy, as quick as it had come, began to fade away and I chased after it like a child chasing a butterfly. It was then I became suddenly aware of the presence of the Count. And not just his presence, but his fury. Like a raging storm.

  He moved like an apparition and grabbed Charlene by the back of the neck, throwing her against the wall. His eyes were lit on fire, glowing red in the darkness. I didn’t think anyone was capable of such absolute fury. He growled at the other two women who quickly hid in the dark corners of the room.

  “How dare you touch him when I forbid it!” he screamed.

  Charlene, sadly, as if resigned to her fate, said, “You’ve never loved. You don’t know what it’s like to long for love.”

  Laughter filled the room. It was hard and soulless. The Count turned to me and there was sadness in his eyes that I had never seen before.

  “Yes, I have loved. You can tell this from my past that I loved more greatly than any of you.” He turned to them. “Now go, when I’m done with him, you may have him. But not now.”

  “Can we not have anything tonight?” Charlene said.

  The Count motioned to a bag he had brought into the room with him. Charlene ran over to it and opened it. I thought that maybe my ears were deceiving me but … it was the screams of a young baby. Charlene picked it up with fervor and the three women circled around it, and faded from the room. I could hear the screams of the child in the hallway as they grew farther and farther away.

  Outside I saw the dim, shadowy figures of the women as if they had turned to shadows and then they were gone.

  The horror of it overcame me like a sickness, and I slipped into unconsciousness.

  May 17th

  I woke up in the bed in my room. Last night seemed like a dream but I knew it couldn’t be. My clothes were hanging in the bathroom in a way I don’t usually have them and some of my other things were laying around the room in places I never put them.

  Although my internet connection isn’t on and I’m posting offline, I’m grateful that the Count hasn’t opened my blogging app. If he saw this blog, he would erase it all and probably just destroy this Mac that’s been with me for years.

  I’m looking around this room that has become my prison cell and for some reason I’m comforted. As confined as I feel, as much as I miss Mina’s big brown eyes and the way she kisses me, and the mushroom burger at U Burgers, and my friends at Patsy’s Bar just next door to my condo, I feel relief.

  Anywhere is better than with those three demonic women who are waiting to tear into me.

  May 18th

  I keep thinking the three women were a dream. The color of their lips and tongues against the backdrop of moonlight was so vivid it doesn’t seem real. I went down to the room today to lay on the couch again to see if it would jog my memory, but the door had been slammed shut so hard it had splintered and jammed.

  Later in the night, as I lay in bed, I heard silky feminine laughter from down the hall and could see two pinpoints of yellow at my door, looking in.

  It was no dream.

  May 19th

  The Count has turned on my internet for a brief time. He’s monitoring my emails and activity but I didn’t do anything but hit the post button on my blogger app and it should have posted everything online. Please, please please, anyone out there, call the police and get them here!

  May 19th, Continued

  I can see now why he turned my internet back on. He’s asked me to email Mina and my editor at Rolling Stone and tell them that I’ve completed the interview and will be leaving for home in another week.

  I don’t know why he can’t just let me go. Who would believe me if I told them what I’ve seen here? And if they did believe me, they would just chalk it up to the eccentricities of a rock star. But for some reason he’s gotten it into his head that I have to stay. That I know too much. A thought hit me today that frightened me to my core: what if he wants to turn me into one of those … things that was on me the other night? Some ghostly phantom to be locked away in this place forever.

  May 28th

  Some drug addicts have taken up in the mansion. I say drug addicts because I’m not sure what else to call them. They seem like they just sit in the courtyard and shoot up and absently strum guitars. Some of them will disappear for a while and come back with a bag of hamburgers or a box of pizzas and that will last them a couple of days. Sometimes they have sex right there for everyone else to see like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

  One came up to the mansion near the window and saw me looking down on him. I shouted for help and explained that I was a prisoner but he looked at me like he had no idea what I was saying. It wasn’t until later, when I really paid attention to what was being said down there, that I realized they didn’t speak English. It was close to English, but it wasn’t English. I don’t know what race they are or what language they are speaking, but they don’t appear particularly with it.

  I spent a couple days sitting at the window watching them. Sometimes they would try to throw me up a burger and I would throw them down some trinket from the mansion, a silver candelabra or something of value that they would smile and fight over.

  As I was sitting out on the sill today, watching two women fight over a bag of what I can only assume was heroin, I realized something: they had access to the outside world. And the Count seemed to leave them alone.

  I rushed around my room and went through one of my bags. I found a legal pad I had brought to take notes on and jotted down a full letter to Mina. I folded it up and wrote the address on the outside and wished like hell I had an envelope: I would’ve paid five thousand dollars for an envelope and a stamp at that point.

  I ran back to the window and called to my friend down there, the one that always came up to the window. He walked over wearing a silly type of hat and bowed. I threw down the letter. He picked it up, looked
at it and then back to me. I shouted, “In the mail. Please, you have to send it in the mail. Mail. M - A - I - L. But you have to put it in an envelope with a stamp.”

  He bowed and placed the letter in his pocket. I can only hope he knew what I was talking about.

  May 29th

  The Count came in today and sat next to me. It was pitch black outside, but a full moon slowly crept out of the clouds and illuminated everything in an icy glow. I stared out the window. I could hear those wolves again and it sent chills up my back. I was sitting at the table reading and he sat next to me and placed something down on the table: it was the letter I had thrown out the window yesterday.

  “Some Gypsies gave this to me,” he said. “It’s an insult to friendship and hospitality. But it’s not signed. I wonder who wrote it?” He stared at me a long time, expecting me to say something. When I didn’t respond he continued. “Well, I suppose we’ll never know.”

  He held the letter up to a candle on the table and lit it on fire. It turned to ash and the flames licked his fingers but it didn’t seem to bother him.

  He rose and left the room. I heard a key turn. When I got up and tried the door, it was locked. I went and lay on the sofa and maybe an hour or two passed before I heard the key in the door and the Count walked in. He was in a happy mood, his shirt off, black leather pants hanging off of him. His muscles were something else to see in person. But his skin was ashen gray, like a worn statue.

  “You’re sleepy, that’s fine. Get some more rest. I can’t really do much of the interview tonight anyway. I have some business to take care of. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  He left the room, and I fell into a dreamless sleep. My terror has turned to depression and I slept calmly. Despair has its charms I guess.

  May 31st

  I woke up this morning and everything in my room was gone. Most of my clothes, my recording equipment, my bags; every scrap of paper and writing instrument was gone. The only thing left to me was my Mac and probably only that because I slept with it under my pillow since I suspected something like this might happen. I didn’t think ahead though and my power cord was in my bag. I have half the battery life left. I’m going to have to cut back on these blog posts.

  Everything that could’ve been useful to me inside this mansion is gone.

  June 17th

  I saw a lot of people outside. I ran to the window. They were men wearing torn up T-shirts with greasy long hair. Some of them were young and dressed like hipsters. They were loading a bus and truck with things they had brought out of the mansion.

  I ran to the door, hoping that the main hall would be open and I could run out with them. But my door was locked from the outside.

  I ran to the window and began screaming at them. Some of them looked up, others didn’t. The man, the Gypsy heroin addict that I’d given the letter to, was there as well and he said something to them in a language I didn’t recognize and they laughed at me.

  June 24th

  Last night the Count spent a few hours with me talking about his music. His feet were up on the table in my room and one of the three women was behind him, massaging his shoulders. I had no recording equipment, nothing to memorialize this with, so I assume he just wanted to talk.

  “Rock music is unlike anything else,” he said. “The Romans and ancient Greeks, with all their brilliance, had nothing comparable. I still remember the first time I heard it. It woke me from a sleep much deeper than any sleep you have ever been in. A sleep of centuries. And it woke me. I heard its thump, it’s heartbeat, and it matched my own. I was … mesmerized.

  “It’s a form of savagery, Jonathan. That’s really what it is. But it must work through the intellect. If it doesn’t have melody or structure, or layering or expert instrumentation, it is just noise. It is the beast and the beauty in us, the angel and the devil. There’s nothing else like it.”

  He inhaled deeply, as if reminiscing on something, and then rose and left the room, the woman behind him blowing me a kiss. The door locked.

  I got up and ran to the window. The roadies I saw are staying in the mansion somewhere and they’re doing some sort of work because I can hear them at night. I heard them now somewhere in the belly of the castle, and none of them were outside. But I saw again a sight that will haunt my nightmares: the Count, crawling out of a window. This time, he was wearing my clothes. And slung over his shoulder was that bag he had thrown to the women and I know now what he does when he goes out at night.

  And just then I thought of something: my clothes. My clothes. If anyone saw him inside a house, snatching away some young child in the middle of the night, they would describe my clothes. I wondered if he thought of this or if he just got some perverse thrill wearing them.

  As I was staring out the window, particles of dust became illuminated by the moonlight. It was an awesome sight to behold because they looked like little stars dancing in the night in front of me. Just when I thought it was done a new crop of dust would blow into the fray and it would start over. I felt my eyes grow heavy and I got the sensation that I should sit down. My mind started spinning … I was being hypnotized.

  More and more the dust danced and the moonlight seemed to grow brighter. And then the dust began to take on these phantom shapes, like a ghost. It reached out to touch me as if it were a hand and I screamed and ran from the window.

  The shapes the dust was taking were of those three women.

  I dove into the bed and covered myself with the bedding. I lay there a long time and didn’t hear anything. Then I heard something from the Count’s room down the hall. It was a scream, like a child’s scream. I’m usually pretty tough, but I began to cry and I couldn’t stop. Once the tears started coming, I couldn’t stop.

  I cried until there was nothing left and I was completely emotionally drained. But the screaming didn’t stop, and now it was coming from outside. I thought I heard someone and I ran to the window. Looking down, I could see a woman there. Young and beautiful like all the Count’s women. She was clutching her heart and crying.

  “Give me back my baby you fucking monster!”

  She was on her knees beating at her breasts and screaming. She looked to me and screamed as if I held any power here and I felt so sorry for her I would’ve cried again if I had anything left. The woman stood and ran to the door of the mansion and began pounding on the door. From up above, in the Count’s room, I heard his voice. It bellowed a great, bass howl. As if responding to it, I heard the howl of wolves in the surrounding hills. Within minutes, a pack of them poured into the courtyard.

  As they circled the woman, she began screaming again, but this time not for her child. The wolves licked their teeth and I was reminded of the three women.

  “Don’t do this,” I shouted in the direction of the Count’s room. “Let her go!”

  The wolves lunged. One bit into her leg and even in the dark night I could see the blood pouring from her, black in the moonlight. Another jumped onto her back and she was flung forward onto the ground as a third bit into her scalp and she screamed a shriek that turned me cold.

  “Count, Count don’t do this! Let her go. Count!”

  June 25th

  I remember once I was hiking through the Andes. We couldn’t reach our destination by dark so we had to set up camp on the side of a mountain in snow that was waist deep. We were freezing that night and had nothing to warm us but a few cups of hot tea. I remember when the sun came up that morning, how filled with joy, just pure joy, I was at seeing the daylight. I knew that someone had to suffer in the night to truly appreciate how glorious the daylight could be.

  That’s how I felt now as the beams of light broke through the window and flooded my room.

  I was comforted in daylight because I never once saw the Count or the women during the day. I was left almost completely alone. The only exception were the roadies that I would sometimes see working in the courtyard or somewhere like that.

  I thought about escape the entire n
ight. But the only place I could see to escape from is where the Count leaves at night: through the window. If he does it, is it possible that I can do it to? The worst that can happen is that I fall and die or break my legs and those awful wolves would be back. It doesn’t matter. Maybe if there is a God, he would accept me. Whatever the outcome, it’ll be better than just waiting here for those three women to finally get a hold of me and tear me apart.

  If this is my last entry, Mina, I love you so much. I didn’t appreciate how much your love meant to me until I didn’t have it with me anymore. I’m so sorry for this. For the life we should’ve had. Those children you dream about are our children, that house you see is our house. We were the old people on the porch sipping lemonade after a lifetime together. That was our life. But I don’t think it will happen now, and I’m just so sorry.

  June 25th, Continued.

  I’m in a quiet section of the house. I crawled out of my window, staring down at the ground the whole time. It made me dizzy and I realized how stupid that was so I looked straight ahead into the mansion walls instead. I can’t guess as to how high up I was, but it had to have been at least four or five stories, with the courtyard below.

  The exterior was comprised of large, mortared stones, and I slipped off my shoes and socks for better grip. If I went really slow, I could climb one or two steps at a time going down. I climbed a few stones and then went to the right to an open window. I crawled in and saw that it wasn’t much different from my room; a guest room. The furniture was the same: old and with portraits of people that looked like the Count. Including a woman that could easily have been my Mina. It’s amazing how similar people can look, even from different centuries.