Читать книгу Dracula: The Un-Dead - Ian Holt, Dacre Stoker - Страница 19

The distant bell from the Westertoren rang out a new hour. It chimed every fifteen minutes. The old man no longer noticed it each time it rang, since it now rang so often. Lately, though, the bell had seemed to grow louder, as if it were taunting him, counting down the minutes to the end of his life. He spent most days sitting in his apartment on Haarlemmer Houttuinen looking out of his third-story window toward the Prinsengracht Canal, among his many books. His only connection to the outside world was the stack of newspapers that were delivered at the end of each week at the same time as his groceries.

The old man put on his spectacles and picked up the Times. Some Frenchman had set a new record in aviation. The old man shook his head. Man had no business flying. Even Greek mythology offered a warning in the story of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. The moral of that story still held true to this day: Pride comes before a fall. This new industrial age had betrayed man’s arrogance. The old man turned the paper over and saw the back listing for the society pages. Normally, he did not bother with the goings-on of the upper classes, but a headline caught his eye: “FORMER HEAD OF WHITBY ASYLUM DEAD IN PARIS.”

The old man’s hand trembled as his wrinkled finger followed the text. His heart beat rapidly, his suspicions confirmed, as he read the name of the victim: Dr. Jack Seward.

There were very few details surrounding his death, some accident with a carriage. What had Jack been doing in Paris? The old man reread the date. Jack had died almost a week ago. It had taken that long for the newspaper to reach him. Damn! He rifled through the other newspapers, finding the recent editions of Le Temps, and in one of these a companion article written the day after Jack’s death. He read it as best as he could, though he had forgotten most of his French. It didn’t really matter, for there were only minor new details to be found. A thick fog, the driver of the carriage failed to stop, and Jack, dead in front of the Théâtre de l’Odéon. A tragic accident.

The old man was about to shut the paper when the article caught his attention once more. A witness was quoted as saying he had seen two women climb into the carriage as it fled the scene, but that the police believed the witness was mistaken when he claimed that the carriage had been driverless.

It might have seemed an insignificant detail to the French authorities, but to the old man, it was a beacon of danger. He had always believed there were no such things as accidents.

“Hij leeft…He lives,” he whispered to himself, his heart now racing in fear. He felt a sharp pain in his jaw, as if being impaled by a hot knife.

Within seconds, his chest tightened. The old man reached into his pocket for his brass pillbox. His left arm went numb. His fingers shook as he struggled one-handed to unhinge the tiny clasp. The Reaper squeezed tighter, causing him to drop the tablets onto the rug. The old man opened his mouth to scream in agony, but only a whimper emerged from his dry lips. He fell out of his chair, onto the floor. If he died here, his body would not be discovered until the delivery boy returned the next week. He would lie rotting, alone and forgotten. The old man grabbed a single nitroglycerine pill, placed it under his tongue, and waited for the tablet to take effect. The warm glow from the fire flickered, casting an eerie light into the glass eyes of the taxidermied birds and animals displayed about the room. Their dead stares taunted him.

In a few minutes, he felt warm blood coursing through his limbs again. Death loosened its grip. His rheumy eyes glanced back to the newspaper. The old man knew that death from something as mundane as a heart attack would not be his fate. There was a reason God had kept him alive. With all the strength he could muster, he pulled himself back up into his chair and rose with purpose.