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The Worst Thing About Having Dracula as a House Guest

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"So, it's been about a day and a half since the incident," Guillermo reports, "and, um... honestly I don't think he's even noticed." Grimacing, he runs a hand down his face. "I don't even... I mean, damn, even for him... that's cold. I don't know what to think."


"I don't know why you are so surprised," says Nadja. "This is only how Dracula has always been with his brides! It is like one of those revolting hoarding addictions that he refuses to get any help for. Yes, there is certainly a kind of woman who needs only one smouldering look and she is swooning at his feet—oh, yes, my dark lord, make me your eternal bride!—but no-one is forcing him to bite so many of them! And by pretty much the next morning, he's lost interest already."


Nadja turns to her left, expectant. "Isn't that how it is, Ioana?"

The camera pans to reveal one of the two surviving brides, reclining comfortably in the opposite seat, holding a teacup. "Oh, you have no idea!" she agrees, in what may be a Romanian accent. "You know, it was only the two of us when we got here—myself and dear Francine. But every time we travel, he just has to pick up some cheap souvenir—and then most often he's lost it again without even noticing! So we are two, and then we are three, and then we are two again, and does he care? Feh! Anyone who tells you the Count loves to count has never lived with the man." Her obvious frustration with this topic doesn't stop her beaming at Nadja. "It is so nice to talk to someone from outside the household for a change!"

"We were just talking about what it is like to live with the Count Dracula, for as long as Ioana has put up with him," Nadja tells the camera. "You know, I have to ask, why do you stick around? There are always plenty more bats in the sky!"

"Well, he does have his qualities, you know," says Ioana, with a sly smile. "What can I say—after so many years and so many brides, he could not help but have picked up a thing or two! And the life has its other privileges—you don't get such a regular stream of deliciously naïve young travellers stumbling into every castle in the Carpathians. Nowadays, of course, they all want to see your yelping reviews and to know the wifi password, but they keep on coming all the same! Besides, Dracula is... let us say he is away so much that you have the place to yourself most of the time." Smile slipping, she adds, "Not that he's all that much more present sometimes in what we like to call his inter-mortem phases." Ioana lets out a dramatic sigh. "You think you know what you're getting into, becoming his bride, but I swear, as soon as there is even a whiff of a Van Helsing on the horizon, it's like there's a fifth person in your marriage!"

"Ah," says Nadja, "Always, it comes back to the thing with Van Helsing!"

"I'll bet that's where he is right now." Ioana's lip curls in distaste. "Hanging around there like a bad smell. You won't believe it, but he's even moved one of his dirt boxes into the empty place across the road, just so he can lurk all the closer."

"No!" shrieks Nadja. Ioana nods animatedly.


Back on Van Helsing's street, Dracula emerges from the lower story of the house Guillermo's been using for his stakeouts, awkwardly, brushing some dirt from a shoulder. Across the road, Van Helsing gives him a cheery wave. He's watering again.

Moving stiffly, Dracula crosses the road to approach him. An attentive observer might notice his eyes occasionally flickering to the nozzle of the hose, which he stands as far away from as possible.

"Hello again," Van Helsing greets him. "I thought I'd seen you around lately—have you taken the old place at number 6?"

"I have... lately taken up residence there," Dracula manages, in his usual sonorous tones. "It was... unoccupied."

"Yes, it has been for some years now—so nice to see they've finally found a buyer," says Van Helsing, every inch the friendly neighbour. "If you're not busy, would you like to come in for some tea? Call me old-fashioned if you will, but I always like to get to know my neighbours."

"You would... invite me into your home? So freely?" Dracula shoots a side-look at the camera, obviously having trouble with the notion it should be so easy.

"I just did, didn't I? Come along, I'll put the kettle on."


At the house, Guillermo is also pouring tea—or at least, he's topping up Nadja and Ioana's teacups from a teapot, though close examination would reveal the fluid within isn't precisely tea-coloured.

"It was just the same with the last Van Helsing reincarnation," Ioana is saying, "Did you hear how that went down?"

Nadja leans in expectantly. "Oh, yes—Eketerina was telling me..."

"Oh, her," Ioana makes a face. "You cannot believe the half of what that woman tells you. Honestly, why Vlad ever bothered with her to begin with... but that is neither here nor there. We were talking about Van Helsing! And I tell you, by the time Dracula found him, he was more than ready! You know, I think he'd been taking ideas from those movies they made about him."

"Movies..." says Guillermo, "you mean that one with Hugh Jackman?"

Ioana frowns at him, displeased at being interrupted by the help. "No, I mean the ones where he is for some reason a black Van Helsing who is part vampire! Those ones!"

"Oh, the Blade films?" says Guillermo, catching on.

"Yes, the Blade Van Helsings!"

"But they're not..." is as far as Guillermo gets before giving in, sensibly realising this isn't a misconception worth the argument.

"What I mean to say," says Ioana, turning back to Nadja, "is there was no mistaking the real Van Helsing knew what he was doing! But you were telling me this new Van Helsing has been born with the weak brain of a helpless nobody? Is that true?"

"You tell her, Guillermo!" says Nadja, "You've seen him, yes?"

Guillermo has other things on his mind. "Hang on, the last Van Helsing... that was after the Blade movies? That was only like twenty years ago!"

"Yes, it would be about the turn of the millennium," says Ioana, "what is your point?"

"But the new Van Helsing—the guy Dracula's been stalking—he's way older than that. He'd have been alive back then—he's like, 40? 50, now? You can't have two reincarnations at the same time, that doesn't make sense!"

Ioana waves a hand, disinterested. "Eh, with Van Helsing, who can even keep track? Sometimes he is one man, sometimes he is another, sometimes he has killed Dracula while he was already dead! He just gets around somehow!"

Guillermo turns to Nadja, "But that's how it works, right?"

"I guess?" says Nadja, who doesn't seem to get his point either.

"But that means either Dracula has the wrong Van Helsing," says Guillermo, looking into the camera in horror, "or this is the same Van Helsing who killed him back in the 90's, and..." He dashes for the door.

A second later, he comes back to put the teapot down, and dashes off again.


At Van Helsing's house, the owner is just showing his guest inside. The front door opens on a short hallway, the walls largely obscured with sheeting.

"Excuse the state of the place," says Van Helsing, closing the door behind them, "we've been redecorating."

"Ah," says Dracula, faintly.

"Yes," Van Helsing reaches with something on the wall, "we were thinking perhaps something in a religious theme..."

With one tug of a cord, the sheeting falls away—revealing ornate, metal crosses lining every wall.

Gasping in pain, Dracula turns to flee—but his way is blocked by Van Helsing himself, brandishing another crucifix inches from his face.

"Really, Dracula?" says Van Helsing, conversationally, "Cameras this time? How many hints did I have to send you, just to get you over here, and this is how you thank me? As if all that nonsense with the book wasn't bad enough."

"You..." Dracula manages, between writhing shrieks. There's nowhere for him to move that doesn't leave him vaguely ping-ponging between one source of pain and another.

"You know, I genuinely wondered if you were playing along when I first pretended not to recognise you," Van Helsing goes on. "But I actually had you going, didn't I? I must say, I'm not at all impressed. You'd think we'd been through this song-and-dance enough times for you to have acquired some grace."

Dracula, now crawling away, grasps for the doorknob of one of the hallway doors, only to flinch away in pain.

"Silver-plated," says Van Helsing. "Don't they look nice? Quite the expense, and they take no end of polishing, but there's no substitute for the real thing."

Dracula flops back over onto his hands. "Van Helsing..." he groans.

Van Helsing sighs. "Is that all you've got to say for yourself?"

Dracula does manage a further series of hissing gurgles as Van Helsing and his advancing cross force him to the floor, but this seems to be about as much intelligibility as he has left.

Kneeling beside him, Van Helsing shushes him gently. "It's not as though you give me much choice, you realise. Quiet, now." From some unseen pocket, he draws a wooden stake. He's still wearing the gardening gloves he had on outside. "It'll all be over soon."

The camera cuts to the front porch, where Guillermo has his hands pressed up against the front door, watching the scene as best he can through a decorative stained-glass panel. As Dracula's gurgles fade, he turns to the camera with a look of horror.

The scene fades out.


"So!" says Nadja, "Dracula is dead! Van Helsing killed him! What a shocking ending that no-one could have predicted to such a shockingly predictable affair!"

Beside her, Laszlo shrugs and leans on his hand. "You don't think they're going to try and get us to do that thing where they do half our interviews again, only now they expect us to pretend we didn't see it all coming a mile away, do you? Because I, for one, am not the actor it would take to make it convincing."

"They'd better bloody not," Nadja agrees. She looks back to the camera. "In case you are wondering, we saw Ioana off at the port this evening—she's going to have the castle all to herself again, how nice!—and she took the rest of the soil back with her, so at least that is off our hands. Meanwhile, apparently her sister-in-marriage Francine has found some sort of long-lost family up in New England she means to reconnect with, so they are parting ways. As for the little Renfield man... he is still here, I think? We are not sure what to do with him, but at least he is cheap to feed."


'The little Renfield man' is currently dusting the mantlepiece with exaggerated care. Spotting something behind an ornament, his face lights up in joy as he plucks a live spider out from some dark corner and holds it up to the light.

"Oh, that's not a brown recluse you've got there, is it?" calls Colin Robinson, approaching.

Renfield turns to Colin, all wide-eyed curiosity. "What did you call it?" he asks, his spider still clutched carefully between his fingers.

Colin Robinson produces one of his more annoying laughs. "Yeah, most folks assume we don't get them up in New York City, but I hear those crafty little bastards will come sneaking up from the southern states on packing crates all the time... have you not heard of the brown recluse?"

Renfield listens to all this with fascination. "Do you know a lot about spiders?"

"Oh, buddy!" Colin Robinson claps him on the shoulder, not quite making him drop his prize, "you are gonna be so sorry you asked!"


"Well, the good news," says the Guide, leaning heavily on her hand in a way that suggests that 'good' is a thoroughly relative term, "is that they found Van Helsing's missing member in amongst Dracula's things after his departure. The bad news is that it was no longer in its jar, and..." She makes something of a face, "yeah, after what he's probably done with it, I'm not sure we even want it back anymore."


A close-up shot of that same preserved body part—now safely rehomed in its jar—zooms out to reveal Laszlo tightening the lid back on.

"Her loss," he says, cheerfully, "our gain! Relics with this sort of history don't fall into a man's lap every day—this will go marvellously in our crypt! I think I'll even get a plaque for it," Raising his other hand, he begins plotting out his intended text in front of his face, "'The genuine and original stake of the notorious Van Helsing, which hath been deeply thrust upon multiple occasions into Dracula's body—sometimes perhaps even into orifices which already existed—and some of those times," Laszlo waggles his eyebrows, "perhaps even consensually!'"


Guillermo, meanwhile, is packing up his stakeout.

"I guess I figured I'd just do what they do in the movies," he says, sounding sheepish. "Watch the guy, figure out his routine, find out what we were dealing with. But I got nothing out of him this way. I guess Van Helsing DNA is more stake in than stake out, you know?" He winces. "Ugh, I take that back—please tell me you'll cut that pun, I don't believe I said that. Anyway, I gave it some more thought, and I realised maybe that same DNA gives me another way in, so I'm trying something new."

Outside, Professor Van Helsing is, once again, working in his front garden—but this time it's Guillermo who approaches him from the street.

"Um, hi," he says, a little awkward.

"Hello," Van Helsing offers, pleasantly. "Can I help you with something? Mr...?"

"Guillermo, please," says Guillermo. "You're, uh, Mr. Van Helsing, right?"

"Professor, usually, but yes."

"Uh... well, this may sound a little weird," Guillermo pushes on, "but I did this DNA test a while ago and it turns out... we may be... distantly related?"

"Oh. Really?" Van Helsing blinks at him, rising from his flowerbed. "You wouldn't be from the... oh, what was the Spanish branch of the family again—the de la Cruces?"

"Oh my god," says Guillermo, impressed to the point of being a little taken aback. "You know about us?"

"My goodness," Van Helsing hurriedly pulls off his gloves so he can shake Guillermo warmly by the hand. "What an unexpected pleasure! Please, do come inside!"

Guillermo throws a quick smile at the camera, and follows him in.


Though the crosses lining the entrance hallway have been taken down, even Dracula probably couldn't have made it far into this house without noticing something of a theme. The bookshelves are lined with titles on vampirism, the undead and the occult. There can't be many places in this house one could find oneself without something cross-shaped relatively close to hand, be it on an ornament, a lampshade or a bottle-opener. On the wall, beside what can only be a portrait of a former Van Helsing in action, there's a black-and-white line drawing of Dracula himself. A brief glimpse through a bedroom doorway reveals another copy on the bedside table.

"...but after the cauterisation, the good news," Van Helsing is saying, animatedly, waving a lit cigarette for emphasis, "if you've any holy water on you, is that the bite wound itself should just about wash away. It's quite remarkable in action."

"Oh my god," says Guillermo, looking a little queasy. "You've actually done that?"

Van Helsing looks at him kindly. "It's an extreme measure, I'll grant you, and I'd gladly recommend any means of prevention over such a cure—but desperate times, and so on. I can at least promise you it does work, should it come to that."

Guillermo swallows. "So... are the whole family vampire hunters?" In front of him is a very large chart mapping a very twisted family tree. Parts of it may be suspiciously cross-shaped.

"Oh, goodness no," Van Helsing tells him, good-naturedly. "If we were all at it, we'd run out of vampires. No, we mostly focus on keeping Dracula out of trouble. He's always back, sooner or later—will be this time too, I'm sure." His gaze travels to the mantelpiece, his fingers briefly coming to rest upon a funeral urn carrying Dracula's name, though the year on the urn is displayed by a four-roll number dial, much like you'd find on a combination lock. "He's so reliable on that account I suppose I'd be a little disappointed if he wasn't. But he's a relatively known quantity in most other respects—we know what to expect from him, after all this time." Here he pauses, smiling at himself self-consciously. "Well, I say 'we'—it's mostly me, in one lifetime or another."

Guillermo looks down at the family tree again—a number of names on it are circled in red, their dates of birth and death never quite overlapping. "Is it not... a little weird, coming back as your own descendent?"

"It can be," admits the current Van Helsing. "Always best to skip at least one generation—it saves on awkwardness. Though to tell the truth, it's not as though I have much say in the matter. It just sort of happens." He shrugs, idly stubbing out the cigarette.

"And you always remember? Everything?"

"Not everything, not immediately. It varies, lifetime to lifetime. The muscle memory usually comes first, which is no bad thing—it's saved me more than once. The sight of Dracula's charming face usually brings a lot rushing back. You have to wonder if he's not in some way responsible for it all, which is certainly poetic, if true. Of course, the advantage of coming back within the same family is it's so much easier to leave notes to yourself as well." He looks pointedly into the camera. "And now I suppose the next generation will have video footage to refer to. And here I used to feel like keeping a diary was cheating."

Guillermo gives the camera a brief, awkward smile of his own, and looks back down at the family tree. "So, you were telling me about the rest of the family?"

"Oh, yes!" Van Helsing exclaims. "I don't want to seem as though I'm taking all the credit—not when I have so many wonderfully capable children and grandchildren to be proud of. We're so spread-out nowadays it's hard to keep track. There's even a Chinese branch of the family going back nearly a century—and you'd be wrong to assume they don't get vampires out in that part of the world. A lot of hopping around and chasing them with images of the Budda, as I understand it. No, it's certainly not all about reincarnation—I suppose there's something in our blood after all these years." Van Helsing gives his guest a significant look. "You were saying you'd killed a vampire or two yourself?"

"Um, yeah? I mean, I didn't even really mean to, at first. It just kind of happened. I sort of fell into it, I guess." Guillermo fidgets a little. "Has anyone in the family ever, um, become a vampire?"

"It's happened," says Van Helsing, seriously. "Rarely, but it's something of a professional hazard, I'm afraid—though as I was telling you earlier, we have our ways of preventing it."

"Right..." says Guillermo, as if avoiding becoming a vampire is ever likely to feature among his personal concerns.

"But let's not dwell on such uncomfortable topics—here's what I wanted to show you." Van Helsing deposits a heavy display book full of assorted documents and print outs onto the table in front of Guillermo. "The de la Cruzes—you may well have closer relatives who could tell you far more about them than I could, but I know enough to tell you they've produced their own impressive history of monster hunting over the years. Mostly werewolves, I think, but there was an Isabella de la Cruz who made quite the name for herself as a vampire hunter. I don't suppose you've heard of her?"

Guillermo shakes his head, looking down. "Was this her?" There's a reproduction of a painting on the page in front of him, showing a young woman with dark, wavy hair, wearing a silver crucifix pendant around her neck. Guillermo idly traces the shape of his own pendant under his shirt with his fingers, probably not even aware he's doing it.

"We think so," says Van Helsing. "I'm not sure she'd be your direct ancestor, but at least a distant cousin."

"And she hunted vampires?" Guillermo looks up from the page.

"Yes, though not entirely for familial reasons. The story goes that her young lover fell victim to a vampire, so off she went on his trail. But when she finally cornered him, she realised she had the wrong vampire. So off she went again—and I believe in the end she'd slain half a dozen or more before she found the right trail."

"Did she catch him in the end?" asks Guillermo, transfixed.

"They say she hunted him across half the continent," Van Helsing tells him, "and, ah, possibly into the sea to his demise, or possibly he boarded a ship and fled—the account is a little unclear on that point. A remarkable achievement either way—this particular vampire may have been as old as Dracula himself, and a one-time warlord of the Ottoman empire at that."

"He... what?" says Guillermo, suddenly frozen.

"He went by Nandor..." Van Helsing squints faintly at the page. "El Implacable... I assume that's the Spanish translation of whatever he was called in his own language, so in English we'd have..."

"The Relentless..." Guillermo supplies, a little shell-shocked.

"Really?" says Van Helsing, oblivious. "Well, I'm sure you'd know better than I would. You know, perhaps it's just me, but I'd swear I could see some family resemblance between you and Isabella..."

"You're probably just imagining it," Guillermo scoffs, but there's just a little bit of horror in his expression as he looks at the picture again.

Notes:

For still more on the various facets and lasting appeal of Christopher Lee's Dracula, I present you with a few thoughts (and a few more illustrative gifs) on the subject.

And for a little more on just how well Guillermo fits into the Hammer-verse Van Helsing family, I'd also like to share a handy visual reference to the Van Helsing family wardrobe. (See also: my Hammer Dracula and A Few of my Favourite Van Helsings tags.)