Will Hill - Department 19

Jamie sat down next to the plaque, his back to the wall, and closed his eyes. He sat there for a long time, the scent of roses in the air, feeling more alone than he had ever felt in his life, wondering where his mother was, wondering whether she was even still alive.

Some time later, he could not have said how long, he heard the soft crunch of footsteps coming across the grass. From his low vantage point he couldn’t see beyond the walls of the garden, and so he waited for whoever was approaching to present themselves.

The head that appeared above the low brick wall was greyish-green, with a shock of black hair combed comically neatly into a side parting, and two thick metal bolts emerging from the neck below. Frankenstein stepped through the entrance to the garden, turning his enormous frame sideways so he would fit through the gap, and walked along the wooden path, the thump of his feet against the boards deafeningly loud, an ominous sound at odds with the gentle smile that regarded Jamie as the monster approached.

Frankenstein wore a dark grey suit, the white shirt open at the collar, the huge metal tube that he had fired in Jamie’s living room again hanging from his right hip. He sat down next to Jamie without a word, seemingly perfectly content to enjoy the garden and the morning sun that was bathing it in warm yellow light.

“How did you find me?” Jamie asked quietly, his gaze focused on the roses in front of him, rather than on the man beside him.

“Infrared sensors in the ground,” Frankenstein replied, his voice irritatingly cheerful. “You left a nice red heat trail on the monitors. Wasn’t hard to follow.”

Jamie grunted.

“So you found me. What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you, Jamie. There are things you need to know. Things that are going to be hard for you to accept.”

“Like what?”

The monster looked away, and when he spoke, it was in a soft voice.

“A long time ago I made a promise to protect the Carpenter family. One of your ancestors saved me, and in his memory I’ve kept my word for more than half a century.”

“Saved your life?”

“Yes,” Frankenstein replied, then looked at Jamie. “But that’s not the story I want to tell you now. That one’s for another time.”

“But—”

“Don’t ask me. I’m not going to tell you, so let’s not waste our time.”

Jamie looked at the monster. Frankenstein was regarding the teenager with something that seemed close to love, and he wondered what had happened to provoke such loyalty. Suddenly Frankenstein’s fury in the hangar made sense; he had let Jamie get away from him, in a place where anything could have happened to him.

“OK,” he said. “So is that it? I’m guessing it isn’t.”

“I’ve concluded that the best way for me to continue to honour that promise is to tell you what I think you need to know. I think it’s too late for your life to ever go back to being normal, if it ever was. Would you agree?”

“Yes,” said Jamie, simply.

Frankenstein nodded, and began to talk.

“My suspicion would be that your father never really told you very much about your family. Am I correct?”

“He told me I had an uncle who died when he was very young. And that my granddad was a pilot in World War Two. That’s about it.”

“Both those things are true. Your Uncle Christopher died at birth, when your father was six years old. And John, your grandfather, was a highly decorated pilot. He flew a Hurricane during the Battle Of Britain. Did you know that?”

Jamie shook his head.

“He was a fine man. By 1939 he’d been out of the RAF for nine years. But he re-enlisted the day Britain declared war on Hitler’s Germany, against the wishes of your great-grandfather, who is the man with whom this story really begins.”

“I don’t know anything about him,” said Jamie. “I don’t even know his name.”

“His name was Henry Carpenter. He was a good man as well, at least the equal of his son. And everything that has happened to your family for the last one hundred and twenty years, everything that happened to you and your mother yesterday, can be traced back to the fact that he worked for a truly great man, a legend whose name I suspect you will know. Professor Abraham Van Helsing.”

Jamie laughed; a short, derisory noise, like a dog’s bark. He didn’t mean to, and the monster swung him a look of deep annoyance, but he couldn’t help it.

Come on. Seriously.

“Van Helsing wasn’t real,” he said, smiling at the monster. “I’ve read Dracula .”

Frankenstein returned Jamie’s smile.

“Believe it or not,” he said, “that will make this considerably easier.”

“I’ve read Frankenstein too,” said Jamie quickly, before he lost his nerve.

“Good for you,” said the monster. “Might I be allowed to continue?”

“OK,” said Jamie, disappointed. It had taken all his courage to mention Mary Shelley’s novel.

“Thank you. Now, there are certain truths that you are simply going to have to come to terms with, and the quicker the better. Professor Van Helsing was real. The Dracula story, and all the people in it, is real; it happened almost exactly as that lazy drunk Stoker wrote it down. The vampire seductresses who distract Harker from his escape plans are fictional; the wishful thinking of their author. As is the Count’s ability to turn into a bat, or a wolf, or anything else for that matter, and the happy ending that Stoker attached. None of the men who survived ever returned to Transylvania, for reasons I’m sure are understandable. But the rest is close enough. All of which means, in case you need it spelling out for you, that vampires are real. Although that shouldn’t be too hard for you to believe; you met two yesterday.”

Jamie felt like he had been punched in the stomach.

“The girl who attacked me...”

“... was a vampire, that’s correct. As was the man I fired at in your living room. His name is Alexandru. And he is the main reason we’re sitting here now, having this conversation.”

“Who is he? What will he... what will he do to my mother?”

“I’ll get to him. The business with Dracula occurred in 1891, two years after your great-grandfather took work in Professor Van Helsing’s house. The men who survived the journey to Transylvania, whose names you no doubt know...”

“Harker,” said Jamie, distantly. “One of them was called Harker.”

He turned and looked at the bronze plaque on the garden wall, saw the names engraved on it, and felt things start to click into place in his mind.

You believe him . Or are starting to, at least. My God.

“Jonathan Harker,” Frankenstein replied. “That’s right. He, along with Professor Van Helsing, John Seward and Arthur Holmwood, swore an oath when they returned home, a promise they would remain vigilant, and deal with Dracula again if it was ever required.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from the teenager.

“It wasn’t,” Frankenstein continued, quickly. “Trust me, he’s dead. Unfortunately, he was not the only vampire in the world; merely the first, and the most powerful. He was a man once, the Prince of a country called Wallachia, named Vlad Tepes. A terrible man, who butchered and murdered thousands of people. In 1475, his army lost its final battle, and he disappeared along with most of his supporters, until he appeared a year later in Transylvania, calling himself Count Dracula. With him were his three most loyal generals from the Wallachian Army. Three brothers; Valeri, Alexandru, who you met yesterday, and Valentin. As a reward for their loyalty, Dracula made them like him, along with their wives. And for four hundred years, they were the only vampires in the world, their power and their immortality jealously guarded by Dracula, who forbade them from turning anyone else. But when Dracula was killed, the rules died with him, and the brothers began to convert a new army of their own. In the last years of the nineteenth century, the condition began to spread. And it’s still spreading.”