Dracula Lives (38 page)

The theater was almost full, even the front row. The excited buzz of the Halloween menagerie was like the roar coming from a zoo of monsters. A large percentage of Goths and vampires made black the predominant color.

Speaking softly so they wouldn’t be overheard, Quinn and Johnny went over their plan one last time.

The house lights dimmed. Quinn made pointed eye contact. “You ready?”

“I am so ready,” Johnny said. “Whatever he is, he’s not Superman. One way or another, he’s going down.”

Dr. Paul Bearer went up on stage to introduce the movie.

“Creatures of the night, I bid you welcome. The movie we are about to watch, no one has seen—not even us here at the theater. Markov, the director, said it would ruin the surprise. So whatever horror awaits us, we are all in this together. All we know is that he has promised a new experience in horror, with special effects beyond anything ever shown. He also asked me to end my introduction with these lines from the original stage production of
Dracula
. They are from Van Helsing’s closing curtain speech.”

Dr. Bearer delivered his lines as though he were Van Helsing:

“When you get home tonight, and the lights have been turned out, and you are afraid to look behind the curtains, and you dread to see a face appear at the window—why, just pull yourself together and remember that, after all:
There are such things
.”

He held for the giggly reaction, then strutted off the stage to raucous laughter and howls of approval. The house lights went out, and the audience became silent.

The movie’s opening was a reworking of the opening from Markov’s Poverty Row masterpiece,
The Blood of Dracula
.

A screeching violin straight out of the shower scene in
Psycho
slashed through the darkness. The title burst onto the stark white screen:

Throughout the movie, moans and gasps of genuine terror mingled with nervous laughter. Markov couldn’t have hoped for a better reaction.

Some of the sicker moments got the loudest response. Markov’s beheading of Max and fettering the head to the dungeon wall got applause.

Quiet moans came from Johnny as she watched fifty years of her life boiled down to a two-hour highlight reel of terror. Each time her father became the hideous vampire from
Blood of Dracula
, a soft moan would escape, and Quinn would look to see if she was alright. Watching her face harden after each manifestation, he realized that the movie was making her stronger. He didn’t need to worry about her; she would be ready for battle.

When the moment came for the head of Vlad Dracula to be revealed as still alive, Quinn remembered Markov saying how he had agonized over making that moment plausible in
Blood of Dracula
. The way this crowd had been reacting, Quinn expected howls of laughter. Instead, when Markov turned on the spotlight in Vlad the Impaler’s showcase, there was spellbound silence. It lasted all through their scene, where Vlad passed the crown on to Markov. From that point on the only audible reactions were frightened gasps.

The final scene began, where Johnny and Quinn tried to defeat Markov and his undead followers in the studio. Markov had edited it brilliantly, cutting the nonessential exchanges and asides, leaving only the battle between the two opposing forces. There had been a shocked outcry when the spear had turned Dracula into digital dust. Now there were gasps and apprehensive murmurs as the digital remains began re-integrating themselves. Markov had not cut Johnny’s line as she watched it happening:

“Dear Christ … the magnetism…. It’s mixed with the elixir. God only knows what he is now. Part human, part digital …
part vampire
.”

The final blackout after Markov and the undead entered the movie screen lasted only a few seconds before fading back in. Standing in the great hall of the movie castle, Markov centered himself in the frame and looked straight into the camera to give the audience the full effect.

Lon Chaney’s monstrous Dracula had become Markov’s Dracula, updated for the digital age. Swollen veins zigzagged along each temple and both sides of the neck. Orbits of bone encircled the eyes. The thin black lips parted to reveal a set of jarringly perfect teeth. Two fangs suddenly popped down—curved white needles like the fangs of a snake. The eyes widened into a mesmeric stare far more intense than Lugosi’s, until it seemed they would burn through the screen. Markov pressed his palm against his heart and delivered the line he had waited his whole life to deliver:

“
I
am Dracula.”

The audience erupted into a standing ovation. Security and theater personnel had stationed themselves in all the aisles to maintain control of a potentially volatile situation.

The movie did a slow iris fade, holding on Dracula’s face before going to black. The blackout lasted only a few seconds before fading back in. Markov’s hideous Dracula still stared at the camera, but now he was an actor at his curtain call, basking in the rousing applause. When it finally died out, Dracula held his arm out to the side, as though to draw something offscreen to him. In his most commanding voice he said, “Come … here.”

His vampire breeding stock came to stand beside him. The two males and two females Markov had so carefully nurtured in the Garden showed no signs of having been raised from the dead. They were now gorgeous physical specimens.

Dracula stuck his hand through the screen and opened a portal. “Go,” he said. “
Feed
. Feed on them all.”

They stepped from the screen with Dracula close behind. A loud cry erupted from the audience—a mixture of fear and excitement. Some ran, but most stayed. Many of the Goths and Halloween vampires hurried to the steps on either side of the stage, like groupies waiting for their rock idol.

Quinn and Johnny rushed up onstage with their tranquilizer guns. Security and ushers were fast coming down the aisle. The four undead formed a protective line in front of their master. Quinn and Johnny fired. The darts lodged in one of the males and one of the females. They staggered back a step and looked in confusion at the darts.

“
Go!
” Dracula said to the other two, gesturing for them to use the stairs on the other side of the stage. “
Feed!
”

They did as they were told. By the time Quinn and Johnny finished reloading they were out of range. One of the female Goths had come up the stairs and bared her neck. The male vampire fastened onto her throat, while the female continued on to the blood feast that eagerly waited at the bottom of the stairs.

The sound of approaching sirens began to fill the theater.

The two that had been hit had removed the darts and seemed to be regaining their strength. Moving cautiously past them, Quinn and Johnny raised their guns to kill whatever Markov had become.

He had seen them coming and hurried toward the screen. They fired just as he reached it. Both darts hit him in the back. He staggered and fell, groping for the darts but unable to reach them. He crawled on hands and knees toward the screen while Quinn and Johnny reloaded. They reached him just as he reached the screen. The male they’d hit staggered in to protect his master while the female pulled the darts from Markov’s back.

Markov extended his hand. A portal opened in the screen and he crawled toward it.

Sirens blared and footsteps scurried everywhere.

Standing side by side, Quinn and Johnny raised their guns.

Dracula’s two loyal subjects closed ranks to shield their master.

“You take her!” Quinn said. Johnny’s dart staggered the female. Quinn’s dart did the same to the male. They started to reload, but stopped.

It was too late.

Whoever—whatever—Markov was had crawled into the screen. He stayed on his hands and knees without moving for an agonizingly long moment. Johnny held her breath as she waited to see if the darts had been in long enough to finish him, or if they might have killed Dracula but left Markov alive.

Slowly, keeping his back to the camera, he drew himself up to his full height. Ever the showman, he began a slow dramatic turn. When the turn was complete, he held the pose for the audience to get the full impact.

Johnny felt the leaden beat of her heart as she stared at the monster that had once been her father.

All traces of Markov were gone. His hideous Dracula stood there. An evil grin bared his fangs.

Suddenly his head poked through the screen. His hypnotic gaze scanned the screaming audience as though searching for prey. Finally it came to rest on Johnny and Quinn. Staring straight at them, he delivered his final line with gloating menace:

“I live.”