The Vampire Bat Man

The Vampire Bat Man - Part 3

Dracula lays on his back on the stone floor, staring up at the ceiling.

The Vein Family's wine cellar looks more like a long, winding cave than a proper basement. When Thomas locked Dracula down here, he explained that, ages ago, his family had worked in concert with several of Chicago's other most prominent families to link their properties together, as part of the slave-smuggling operation the press called "The Underground RailroadTo Freedom". Thomas seemed proud of this. So Dracula strategically withheld the fact that he fought for The Confederacy during that time (in Virginia, under General John Carter).

It has been hours since Thomas locked him down here ("Only a formality. To calm my wife's nerves" he claimed. Dracula listened to his pulse race as he lied. He knew otherwise) and things had become maddeningly boring.

Without his coffin full of dirt from his homeland, Dracula was incapable of sleeping. All he could do is lay still, and let his mind wander.

And wander it did. He thought of drinking that thief's blood. Of taking a man's life for the first time in decades. Of how good, and right it felt.

...But how better yet it felt to be called a "Hero". To--after years spent behaving like a vagrant, like a societal burden-- to be looked upon with gratitude. It spoke to his ego. It reminded him of when he was a nobleman.

Suddenly, Dracula hears a key sliding into the cellar door's lock. The tumblers clicking into place. The knob turning. The door creaking open.

Is it night already? No. He would have felt that in his bones. Dracula and the night were like old friends, and he could sense when she was near.

I couldn't be Thomas, then. He and Dracula made an agreement that Dracula would stay in the cellar while Thomas was working, and Thomas would release him back into the world when night fell.

Then, who could this be?

The Veins' young son, Bruce, quietly tiptoes through the door. A thin shaft of light enters the room behind him.

"You're not supposed to be here," Dracula says. He lets his voice bounce around the cave-like cellar, amplifying it so that he's a loud as God himself (or perhaps that other guy...).

"I know," Bruce says.

"Then why are you?"

"Because I want to ask you a question?"

Dracula waits.

"I want you to teach me how to be like you."

"And why in the world would you want that?"

"Because... when that man pulled a gun on my mom and dad? I was scared. But you weren't..."

A fire lights behind young Bruce's eyes. It's a look that Dracula recognizes from the the young men who served under him, back when he the general of the Wallachian Army. It's the look of righteous fury.

"...you hurt him first. Hurt him bad. So that he'll never hurt anyone else, ever again".

Dracula nods.

"That's true. But the things I can do...what I am...it comes at a cost."

Bruce looks at Dracula, confused.

Dracula reaches out and allows the sunbeam that has entered the room through the door Bruce opened to touch the back of his hand.

His skin smokes. Sizzles. Then bursts into flames.

Bruce jumps back, horrified.

Dracula pulls his hand back. And thrusts it into the shadows.

The flames extinguish.

The darkness caresses Dracula's hand and soothes his pain. It gives his flesh the strength it needs to heal. Which it does, at rapid speed.

In fact, as Bruce watches the muscle sew itself back together, and the skin regenerate on top of it, Bruce is reminded of those sequences in the BBC nature documentaries his butler made him watch on his days off from school, wherein they show the audience a flower growing fast-forwarded one hundred times its natural rate.

Bruce stares at Dracula, mouth agape.

Dracula stares back. There are times when he enjoys being looked at as a monster (for instance: when he is intimidating his prey, or clashing swords with an enemy). But the revulsion in a child's eyes never feels good. It wounds his pride.

Then the sound of a bird singing its salutation to the sun snaps the young man out of his shock, and brings him back to the present.

Dracula laughs.

"You hear that? That's the Rufous-backed Robin. A bird that only comes out in the morning, to great the day.

Dracula looks into Bruce's eyes.

"Have you seen one before?"

"I have."

"You are fortunate. I haven't seen one with my own eyes in over four centuries."

Bruce looks down at the floor.

Dracula gestures towards the door.

"Get out of here. Go into the light. Listen to the robins. Leave the shadows to me."

Bruce drags his feet as he leaves. He closes the door behind him.

As he storms up to the room, he is stopped by the family butler.

"Master Bruce, I know your parents gave you strict instructions not to bother their visitor. May I ask what-- in God's name-- you were doing in the cellar, unattended?"

"Um. I was looking for something."

"And what, pray tell, is that?"

"My BB gun."

"And, for what purpose?"

"Because somebody needs to take care of those damn Robins."