MY DINNER WITH ABE
By Greg Lamberson
The orderly unlocked the heavy metal door and swung it open. Stepping inside the twelve-by-twelve cell, I saw the man called Abraham Van Helsing, dressed all in white and sitting at a table, with a plate containing a Cornish hen and English Broiled potatoes. Looking up from his meal, his eyes sparked with recognition.
"Edward!" He stood, and I noted his trembling hands. "Edward Seward. Thank God. What took you so long?"
I nodded to the orderly, dismissing him. A moment later, the steel door clanged shut behind me, and I heard the lock tumble. "Forgive me. I had patients to attend to. Please, don't let me interrupt your dinner."
Collapsing back into his chair, he leaned forward and tore the hen apart with his fingers. Sitting opposite him, I said, "I see you've cleaned yourself up. You were quite a mess when they brought you in last night." The room reeked of disinfectant.
He stabbed the air between us with a bone picked clean of meat. "I don't belong here, Edward. You know that. You kept Renfield in a room like this, God rest his soul."
"You've been charged with three murders."
"I killed no one."
I set my satchel on the table. "You drove wooden steaks through the hearts of three women, then cut off their heads and stuffed their mouths with garlic."
He swallowed his food. "I had to do that, just as we did to Lucy Westenra." His features softened. "Poor Edward. You must miss her so."
I offered no reaction.
"They were nosferatu, the brides of Dracula."
"Count Dracula does not exist."
"Not anymore, he doesn't. Not since we killed him in Transylvania. We saved Mina's soul, but the vampire king corrupted others during his stay in London. Our work is not yet finished." He jabbed the air with his fork. "They must all be exterminated, for the salvation of mankind."
I shook my head. "Dracula's a fictional character. He was created by an Irishman named Bram Stoker more than a century ago." I removed the hardcover book from the satchel and laid it on the table, the identification tag on its dust jacket facing him.
He recoiled at the sight of the book. "What mad game are you playing, Edward?"
"No game. Dracula isn't real; neither is Van Helsing. Vampires don't exist."
Wringing his hands, he narrowed his eyes. "He got to you, didn't he?"
"No one got to me. The people here call you Abraham Van Helsing because it's the only thing that you respond to, but your name is Avram Jacoby. You're twenty-three years old, not sixty-three. I'm Peter Sloan, not Edward Seward. I'm a police psychologist, ordered by the court to determine if you're competent to stand trial for your crimes. This is twenty-first century Manhattan, not Victorian London, and you're in Bellevue Hospital, not Edward Seward's asylum."
As I said this, his eyes registered shock, then rage, and his features grew younger. Snatching the book from the table, he leapt to his feet. "Liar!" He raised the tome like a weapon, then hesitated, staring at his hand. The book thudded on the table, and Avram collapsed into his chair and wilted like a dying venus flytrap.
"We found the book in your apartment. You'd signed it out from the public library thirty-seven times before it disappeared. That's how the police tracked you down: from an overdue library book. Now, tell me about the women."
Tears rolled down his cheeks, and his chest shuddered. "They rejected me. Ridiculed me. Just like my mother." He wiped away the tears. "Well, they're not laughing now. You should have seen all the blood."
I had seen it, in crime scene photos. "The police found your mother. They needed dental records to identify her body."
"She crumbled to dust after I staked her--"
"You tied her up with piano wire and set her on fire in the bathtub."
His stare turned glacial. "She yelled at me when she found the book. She never understood my passion for Stoker. I felt glad smashing that vase over her head and tying her up. She toasted well. Her face looked like bacon sizzling in a frying pan."
"Do you still feel glad?"
He shook his head, his face draining of blood. His chest quivered, and snot dripped from the end of his nose. I heard a fly buzz somewhere in the room.
"Who are you?" I said.
He bowed his head. "Avram. Avram Jacoby."
"Who am I?"
"Dr. Sloan."
"Why are you here?"
"I killed my mother and those three co-eds. . . "
I had broken through his wall of self-deception. Avram could stand trial.
The fly landed on the bones of the hen. I watched it crawl upside down through the broken rib cage, and when it emerged from the carrion, I pounced on it with the library book. The sudden movement startled Avram, who looked up with wide eyes. Turning the book over, I wiped insect-mush off on the table's edge.
"What are you doing?" Avram dove beneath the table. Face close to the floor, he turned in a circle on his hands and knees. Leaning over, I observed his frantic search. Then he sat up on his ankles, the fly pinched between two fingers, its thread-like legs kicking in the air. A maniacal laugh escaped from deep inside Avram, and he tossed the fly into his mouth.
"Why did you do that, Avram?"
He smiled, and I saw one of the fly's wings stuck on a front tooth. "Who's Avram? My name is Renfield!"