Brian Aldiss - The Monster Trilogy

Everything looked prosperous, safe, snug, repressive. Stoker looked through the curtains and muttered in Bodenland’s ear, ‘I’m worried about that hostage you put in my shed.’ In other respects, he played the role of genial host.

Clutching a decanter of red wine, he ushered his doctor in to the proceedings. Dr Abraham van Helsing was a fussy little man with a sharp bright face and cold bony hands. He wore a velvet suit and smelt of cologne. He laughed and smiled rather much when introduced to Bodenland.

‘And you should be resting, Bram, my friend,’ he said, wagging a finger at Stoker. ‘You should not be embarking on a heavy meal, you understand?’

Bodenland thought there might be some truth in this observation, reluctantly though it was received by his host. Before them were laid a huge cold home-cured ham, a leg of mutton, ptarmigan, and a grand brawn jelly, which trembled slightly in its eagerness to be eaten. A little tablemaid circulated with a tureen of chicken and celery soup.

‘It’s the full moon tonight,’ announced Stoker, tucking his linen napkin under his chin. ‘The lunatics will be restless.’ Turning to Bodenland, he added by way of explanation, ‘The lunatic asylum is next door to us – quite a way through the trees, I’m happy to say. Used to be a priory, in the days before Oliver Cromwell. It’s quite a pretty place, as such places go. I thought I saw someone or something out on the terrace, by the way, but we won’t go into that. Mustn’t spoil our appetites.’

‘You’re like my father – nothing spoils your appetite,’ said Florence Stoker, affectionately, smiling at her husband.

‘I’m big and tough and Irish – and can’t help it.’

‘Nor can you ever take a holiday,’ added van Helsing. ‘You’re too dedicated to work.’

‘And to Henry Irving,’ said Mrs Stoker.

Stoker winked good humouredly over his soup spoon at Bodenland.

‘Well, it was Henry’s Mephistopheles gave me the notion for my Count Dracula. I’m sure I shall have a hit, if I can ever get the damned book finished.’

‘When do you hope to finish?’

Ignoring the question and lowering his voice, Stoker said, ‘It may be because I’m writing this novel that the house is surrounded by eerie forces. Van Helsing doesn’t seem to understand – in fact only the loonies next door seem to understand. Must be going loony myself, shouldn’t be surprised.’

‘You’re sane, we live in a nice scientific world and the soup’s delicious,’ said van Helsing, soothingly. ‘Every single problem in the world will soon be capable of a scientific resolution. Just as the savage populations of the world are being brought into the arms of civilization, so the already civilized world will soon be turned into a utopian meritocracy.’

The conversation became more general. Mrs Stoker spoke of the happily married state of each of her sisters. Servants brought in more food. More wine was poured.

As Bodenland was confronted by huge green blancmanges, plum pies with ornamental pastry crusts, bowls of cream, jellies, and trifles decorated with angelica, Stoker reverted to the subject of asylums, which seemed to prey upon his mind.

‘Many of the poor fellows in the asylum suffer great pain. Dementia and its sores are treated with mercury. It’s agonizing, I hear. It’s a matter of wonder why such suffering should be visited on humanity, Mr Bodenland. Would you care to visit the asylum with me?’

Bodenland shook his head.

‘I’m afraid all that interests me is getting home.’

Stoker leaped from his chair with a sudden impulse and went to peer through the window again.

‘It’s a still night,’ he declared, in the voice of one announcing the worst. ‘It would be ideal for cricket now, if only it was day.’ He laughed.

‘Come and eat your trifle, Bram,’ his wife said, sharply.

Certainly, the night was still. The full moon shone across the woods that choked the valley, to glitter on the massed slate roofs of the asylum. A bell in the small clock tower crowing the institution chimed midnight, spinning out its notes as if about to run down. The cool light glittered on rows of window panes, some of them barred. It sent a dagger of light plunging down through the narrow orifice of Renfield’s skylight to carve a square on the stones close by where he lay on his pallet of straw. During the day he had attacked a male nurse, and was in consequence secured in a strait-jacket, with his arms confined.

He amused himself by alternately grinding his teeth and humming like a fly trapped in a jar.

‘Ummmm. Ummmm. Ummmmmmmm.’

His eyes bulged in their sockets. He stared unblinkingly at the white square on the floor nearby. As minute by minute it slid nearer to him, it changed from rancid milk to pale pink, and then to a heartier colour until it appeared to him as a square pan of blood.

He stretched his neck to drink from it. At that moment, the whole cell was flooded with moonlight, and a great joyous humming sounded as if a thousand hornets were loose.

Crying in triumph, Renfield sprang upward, arms above his head in the attitude of a diver. He was naked as the day he was born. He burst through the skylight and landed gracefully on the icy slopes of the asylum roof, which stretched away into the distance like ski slopes.

As he danced there, a great winged thing circled overhead. He called and whistled to it with a flutelike noise, playing imagined pan pipes. Lower it came, red eyes fixed upon the naked dancer.

‘I know your secrets, little lord, I know. Come down, come down. I know how human blood makes you sick – it makes you sick, yet on it you have to depend, depend, deep end. Jump in the deep end, little lord …’

It circled still, the beat of its wings vibrating in the air, scattering moonlight.

‘Yes, you come from a time when all blood was cool and thick and slow and lizard-flavoured. That time of the great things, I know. They’ve gone and you have only us, little lord. So take my blood at last, slopping in its jug of flesh just for you – and I shall poison you. Ummmm. Ummmm.’

He pirouetted on the rooftree and the great winged thing swooped and took him. It enfolded him lasciviously, biting into him, into the creamy flesh like toffee-apple, as it wrapped him about with the great dry wings, biting, drinking deep with a love more terrible than fury – and then with disgust, as it flew off, vomiting back the blood into his empty face.

Renfield sniggered in his sleep. His eyes remained open and staring like glass buttons on a child’s toy, but he dreamed his terrible dream.

Red curtains closed over the eye of the moon as van Helsing pulled them together after a brief scrutiny of the terrace. The Stokers were leaving the dining room as they had entered, arm-in-arm. Bodenland was following when the doctor tugged at his sleeve and drew him back.

‘Permit me to ask – is there a pretty little Mrs Bodenland back home where you come from?’ He looked down at his nervous hands as he spoke, as if ashamed to pry.

‘I’m married, yes, doctor. That’s one good reason why I am bent on getting home just as soon as I can.’

He made to move on, but the doctor still detained him.

‘You understand why I enquire. I am in charge of Mr Stoker’s health. The conjugal arrangements are not good in this household. As a result – as a direct result —’ He paused, and then went on in a whisper. ‘Mr Stoker has unfortunately contracted a vile disease from what the French call a fille de joie , a woman of the night. You understand?’

Not being fond of the doctor’s fussy little ways, Bodenland made no reply, but stood solid to hear him out.

Van Helsing tapped his temple.

‘His brain’s affected. Or he believes it affected. Which, in the case of brains, amounts to much the same thing. He believes – well, he believes that mankind has become the host for a species of parasite beings, vampires, who come from somewhere distant. I speak scientifically, you understand. From one of the planets, let’s say. He regards this as the secret of the universe, which of course he is about to reveal. You can never trust a man who thinks he knows the secret of the universe.’