Dracula (A Modern Telling) (4 page)

As we drove, I was astounded how quickly we descended the hill. It seemed like it had taken an hour to get here and only took ten minutes to get down. But it didn’t matter because we were soon on the freeway in the midst of the city I had come to see. Before too long, I could see the Hollywood sign li
t up for some special event. The sign looked much smaller than I had anticipated but it was so iconic I couldn’t help but feel thrilled to see it.

“Try this,” the Count said, mixing me a drink from a little bar next to him.

I took a sip and at first it was bitter, and then I was hit by a floral fragrance and the taste of many odd herbs, no one herb overwhelming any other. I found the drink quite refreshing.

“What is it?” I asked.

The Count smiled as he leaned over and kissed the girl he was with. He bit into her lip again and it made me uncomfortable as Charlene was now caressing my chest. She gently took my chin in her hand and turned to make me kiss her. I resisted. But she planted her lips so firmly on mine that it must’ve shocked me because I found her grip like a bodybuilder’s and I couldn’t pull away.

We were soon at a dance club with a line out front that seemed to go around the block. The limo pulled to a stop in front of it. My head, at this point, felt light and warm. I wasn’t drunk
— though I felt a slight buzz of alcohol — but there was a calming effect to the drink I had that was at the point of being hallucinogenic. I felt a warm euphoria, as if everything was right with the world. As we got out of the limo, Charlene held my hand and led me inside the club past the bouncers. Many of the girls in line screamed as they saw the Count, and he held up his arms and took a slight bow as they began snapping photos.

One of the bouncers, a tall black man w
earing sunglasses though it was night, smirked at me in a most awful way as I went in. As if I was such a fool and unworthy of being there.

Charlene tugged at my hand
, and we entered.

The club was so loud the music seemed li
ke it might break my bones. A large dance floor was filled with writhing, sweaty bodies, and up near a stage were women in cages, making out with each other. Lights shining up from the floor gave them an ethereal appearance.

We climbed down some stairs and went to the back of the club and climbed up another set of stairs and through a red velvet curtain. In the back, gathered together with an assortment of women, was the rest of the band.

I recognized the drummer, the bassist, the two guitarists and the keyboardist, but there were two other men as well and I guessed they were roadies.

The room looked like it
had been torn apart; Cristal bottles were strewn about like empty Coke cans. Massive amounts of cocaine were lined up on the tables and I could see some of the girls on a couch were cooking up heroin.

Behind all this was a large wooden chair almost like a throne
, elaborately carved, with a red satin pillow on the seat. The Count sat there like a king objectively looking down upon his subjects.

The bassist took a long line of coke and looked up to me. “You the reporter?”

“Yeah.”

“Welcome to hell,” he said as he laughed. He threw me the straw he was using and I took it and placed it back down on the table.

“You should do a few lines. Keep up your strength.”

“I’m
fine, thanks.”

Charlene came up from behind me and put her arms around my neck as if protecting me. It sent a chill up my back and I noticed for the first time how cold her skin was. She playfully bit my ear and tried to get me to go into a side room with her but instead I pulled up a stool next to the Count.

And that’s how we sat, with the band getting so loaded they could hardly walk and me sitting next to the Count who appeared like a statue on his weird wooden throne. A few of the band members tried to have sex with the girls they were with but they were so high they couldn’t do it.

“I like the energy,” the Count said, leaning close to me. “Youth gives off an energy that is lost with age. That’s why I come here.” He looked to me, his eyes gray as steel. “You should relax and unwind, my friend. Charlene is trained in the arts of pleasure. You will never experience anything quite like her.”

I glanced down and saw Charlene on her knees in front of me. Her hands were caressing my thighs and they moved up to my belt. I pulled away and in an instant she was sitting on one of the couches on the other side of the room, hiking up her skirt. The drink the Count gave me must’ve made me start hallucinating because I didn’t even see her move.

“I’m not feeling well,” I said.

“No, you’re fine. Enjoy yourself. Do a line of cocaine. I’ve heard it’s pleasurable in the sense of power it gives you.”

I felt weak and my will was draining. Charlene was behind me now and she tilted my head back and kissed me hard on the mouth. She pulled away and licked my neck and it sent chills up my back. She must’ve hit nerves that have not been hit before because waves of pleasure went through me and I shuddered
as her teeth lightly touched my skin.

“
El este al meu!” the Count bellowed. Charlene squealed as if she were a child and immediately let go of me and was gone.

“I don’t feel good, Count.”

“Just the effects of the drink. I have many more questions for you. Perhaps they will distract your mind.”

He asked me all sorts of varied questions. He would begin on one subject and then immediately go to another. He was like a sponge. He
asked about various bands and how they grew so successful and where I thought the music industry was heading. He asked about the United States and its founding and culture and told me more about his home in Romania.

Before long, I felt the chi
ll that came with dawn when you’ve stayed up all night. I always figured this is something akin to the turn of the tide. I thought of my grandmother who had once told me that when people die they generally die at dawn or at the turn of the tide.

“It’s morning!” the Count proclaimed suddenly. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you up so long. You’ll have to try and be less interesting,” he said with a courtly smile. He stood and in an instant was gone.

I sat looking around the room at the band members who were passed out by now, some of them with bloodied noses or arms that dripped down onto the plush carpets. A woman in a tight black leather dress came through the velvet curtains.

“The Count has asked that I drive you back to his home. Come with me.”

We drove in silence in a large black SUV and the woman drove as if we were on fire. She blew through red lights and stop signs, and on the freeway she cut off at least three different cars and then slammed on her brakes to make them swerve. She would laugh when they started honking and then speed off again.

When we arrived at the castle, she pulled up to the front door and said, “Would you like to fuck me?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said
, would you like to fuck me?”

The way she said it was so mechanical, so matter-of-fact, that it didn’t seem sexual in any way. It was as if she had been ordered to say it. “Um
… not tonight. Thank you.”

She shrugged and sped away as I was left in front of the mansion.

May 8th

I Wish I Had Someone Else Here With Me

When I started writing this blog I thought that maybe I had gone into too much detail
, that my readers wouldn’t want to read about the contents of the various rooms here in the mansion. But now I’m glad I went into such detail. There’s something so odd about this place that I really wish I didn’t come. If I had someone, anyone, here to talk to about it I think it’d be fine. But the only person here I can speak with is the Count. Charlene, even, has seemingly disappeared.

This morning I couldn’t sleep and woke at around four while it was still dark. I went to shave with a mirror I had bought
the other night when the Count had taken me to a restaurant. On the way back, I’d asked the driver to stop at a pharmacy. I was staring into the mirror when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It startled me so badly I cut myself and I turned and saw the Count standing behind me. He said “Good Morning,” and I nodded hello. The cut was starting to bleed and the blood trickled down over my chin.

The Count saw the blood and there was an instant change. His eyes filled with a demonic fury and he tried to grab my throat. I pulled back and instead he grabbed the crucifix that was around my neck. He held it in his hand and the change I had seen was gone just as quickly and he said, “Careful how you shave. Cuts are more dangerous than many people think.”

But I couldn’t completely understand what he was saying because I was staring into the mirror. In it, I could see the whole room around me. Everything but the Count. I thought that perhaps it was an optical illusion but as I stepped closer I knew it wasn’t. He just wasn’t there.

“And this thing,” the Count said, angrily taking up the mirror, “is a testament to men’s vanity.” He threw it out the open window and it shattered onto the courtyard below.

The Count left my room without a word and I sat wondering how it was he expected me to shave.

I tried to repress the general uneasiness I felt by reminding myself that rock
stars are weirdos. Every single one, even the ones I thought would be normal. So I went out to breakfast hoping to talk to the Count a little more, but I didn’t see him. Down the stairs into the main area I found a dining room and a breakfast spread out unlike any I had seen. Everything looked imported and fancy and had been arranged so well I hated to ruin it.

There was no one around so I waited a few minutes and then just dug in. As I ate, I pondered how odd it was that I had never seen the Count eat or drink anything. Even when he mixed a drink for me in the limo he never took one himself.

After I ate, I decided to explore a little. I climbed to the lower floors and the upper floors and all I found were doors and doors and more doors. There must’ve been a hundred of them. All locked except one that looked out over the valley. I sat at the windowsill in the room and looked down. There were no screens on any of the windows and I could sit right outside. The view was magnificent. I peered down and saw that I was at least five hundred feet straight up. The mansion had been built on a cliff and the backside was right up to the edge, preventing anyone from getting out.

The layout of the mansion suddenly made sense: it was a prison.

May 8
th
, Continued

When I realized I was being held in a prison, a wildness came over me. I ran up and down the stairs and checked every door. I was shouting for help and I even flipped over the table I had breakfast at. I shouted for Charlene. How much I would have appreciated her icy embrace just then. But there was no one.

I collapsed against the wall and sat quietly a long time. Looking back on it, I must’ve gone temporarily crazy. I m
ust’ve looked like a wild chimpanzee running around in this place. But once I calmed down, I thought it through and realized that the thing I definitely shouldn’t do is tell the Count how I felt. He was the one holding me prisoner and if I told him how I felt he’d just lie to me. And then make sure there was no way to escape. No, I had to keep this to myself.

I heard a door upstairs and knew that the Count was up. I walked quietly up the stairs and stood in the hallway and watched as he made the bed and straightened up. It just confirmed what I already knew: there wasn’t any hired help in the house. No maids or butlers. It was just
him. And I think he was the driver that brought me up here too. Charlene and the other girl were the only other people I had seen.

The one thing I keep thinking about is how grateful I am for that old woman who tried to convince me not to come here. I wear that crucifix around my neck and don’t take it off even to shower. I hold it sometimes and it comforts me. It’s funny, I was raised to think religion is a crutch for the weak and that you couldn’t be a true thinker if you believed in fairy tales, but how much you cling to those fairy tales when there’s no one else there to comfort you.

I think my only chance of getting out of here is to talk to the Count and get him to reveal something to me. I wish I’d made a run for it at that club but somehow I didn’t even have the urge. Looking back on it, that’s probably what the drink was for: to put me out of myself.

Midnight

I spoke to the Count at some length tonight. He must’ve been high on something because he was in a particularly good mood. I asked him about his childhood in Romania and he talked about battles and castles and villages as if he had seen them all himself. His recollection of detail was truly amazing, much better than I’ve seen in other musicians who are usually so self-centered they don’t focus attention to their surroundings.

“People thought the Mongols
were werewolves,” he told me. “They used to cook raw meat on the backs of horses. Or I should say warm the meat, as they preferred it raw with blood. When that was not available, they happily ate the dead. But what witch or werewolf could match the ferocity of a Genghis Khan?” He held up his arms, revealing marble-white forearms, “And that’s the blood that flows through these veins. A Dracula was there with the great Khan, and with Attila before him. A Dracula was there for bloody battle after bloody battle. That is the legacy I was born into. Born into blood.”