It was shortly past dawn when Abraham opened the coffin. He wasn't certain what to expect, but gave the highest likelihood to an underweight vampire sleeping peacefully. He would not have been too surprised to see a scowl on its face, even in slumber, and was accepting the outside chance that, somehow, the vampire had managed to trap the coffin so as to injure those opening it. It was even possible the vampire was awake and waiting. And so nearby stood Seward and Harker. Arthur and Mina waited outside the room, well-armed and ready to provide backup but out of the immediate range of any retaliation the beast might indulge in.
Nerves were strung tightly and when Abraham lifted the lid, it made a creaking and popping sound as the wood released; all but the iron-nerved Van Hellsing jumped at the sudden shock of the loud sound. The lid slid off easily to thump heavily on the stone floor, and the light from the lanterns on the wall clearly illuminated their foe, for the first time since his capture.
Abraham's first impression was that the beast was broken. The monster looked like some tattered and discarded child's toy with all its strings cut. Dracula was prone, stretched out to his full length in the coffin, which was no surprise; the interior was simply too confined for him to lie otherwise. The eyes were half-open, much as a corpse's eyes without the stygian mass of the coins to close them, and the hateful red glow was entirely gone. They looked filmy, nearly grey, the eyes of a corpse and not a vampire. The face was slack, but not due to peaceful slumber, but the slack of a face whose owner had died days previously. The jaw gapped open, the skin slid off the high, overly-protuberant cheekbones, and even the inside of the mouth looked dusty and dry, not glistening with the saliva of a living creature.
Abraham forced his attention off the face of his defeated foe, and began to inspect the rest of the creature's body. He would not touch it, no, not and risk waking it, but the absolute lack of life in the face concerned him. He'd staked a handful of other vampires in his past, having long since learned that to hunt them during the night was pure suicide, and had seen his share of sleeping vampires as a result.
None of them had the air of decay and, well, emptiness, that Dracula possessed. They had all looked undead, like a fresh corpse just barely stripped of vitality. Dracula looked like the sort of corpse that even the most enterprising grave robber would reinter.
His gaze began to move down the body, taking in details. The shoulders rose, bones pressing against the cloth of the beast's shirt, showing the emaciation clearly. The arms lay at the side, extending down past the deeply concave abdomen. But the hands seemed odd. The fingers lay differently than on a human. Somewhat perplexed, Abraham lifted a lantern closer to gain a better look.
They were all broken. Each and every finger, the bones of the hands even, the wrists, twisted and deformed. There was no swelling, no bruising, just the slender fingers, looking like a child had dropped a clay sculpture of a hand and glued it back together badly. No, not broken. Shattered. And then he realized just what had seemed so odd. With no blood, there hadn't been the bloody patch he'd expected, simply a shiny patch of pink. It had not been different enough to see, not immediately.
But the nails had been ripped off the fingers.
The gorge rose briefly in his throat, but Abraham steadied himself and continued his inspection. The legs seemed normal, until he reached the knees. No fabric covered the bones of the knees; the cloth was worn away, shredded. And no skin covered the bones, either. The kneecaps and tendons, the rounded heads of femur and tibia, gleamed up at him, stripped of the thin flesh that should have concealed them. Just past the joint, the covering resumed, the goriness fading into jagged-edged skin which was almost immediately covered again by the dark cloth.
Boots, the vampire had worn boots when captured. And, thick and sturdy as they had been, they had protected his feet from the sort of damage that his body had sustained, yet they were in tatters themselves. The sides were worn through in spots, the thick leather of the soles cracked down the center, the toe box open and exposing the toes. A few of those toes, Abraham was sickened to note, were also missing nails. Unlike the hands, the feet seemed otherwise intact. The ankles, though...one of those feet sagged at an angle that should not be possible with the kneecap pointing up. Boot or no, it had been snapped, twisted out of shape.
Abraham sat back, horrified at what he was finding. True, the damned beast deserved every scrap of pain and suffering it experienced, but Abraham could not determine how it could possibly have been so injured under his care. The only things in the coffin with it had been the thin iron bands around its neck and wrists, bands that remained intact and were entirely incapable of causing this sort of damage. Pain, yes, they could cause pain when the vampire attempted to disobey, a sort of automatic whip for disobedience. But quiescent in the coffin, they would have done no more than discourage escape, not shattered bones and stripped skin and nails away.
The others were back too far to see what Abraham was seeing so clearly, and he blessed that for a moment. They didn't need to see this, didn't need to see the raw pink of a nail bed and the gleam of a bone. They could see the overall injuries, yes, but were mercifully spared the fine details that Abraham was taking in.
Had someone opened the coffin during transit and abused the vampire? No...the nails had still been firmly set. The sea voyage, had it perhaps thrown the vampire about in the casket? For a moment, Abraham pictured the sling battering the vampire about the coffin as it was loaded and unloaded, but then reality stepped in. He'd watched it while loading and unloading, and it had been strapped down in the hold to prevent shifting. A boat ride was no smooth trip, but the craft had been large enough to prevent excessive tossing. No, it had not been assault or the trip that had caused this damage.
Curious and worried, Abraham moved his attention to the coffin itself. He almost expected to see a few hungry rats peeking out at him, but the thought appeared and died instantly. Rats, trapped with a dead body, would have eaten the eyes and stomach out first. Bones would have been gnawed, not snapped and shattered. The interior of the coffin was under the vampire itself, but Abraham found himself frowning. Hadn't there been a lining on the sides of the coffin? Yes, there was some above the vampire's head. Where was the fabric that had lined the sides, covering and concealing the dry wood slabs of the sides? It had given the coffin an air of opulence, that someone would have a coffin lined in fine fabrics simply to be buried. The thin tacks that had held the fabric up remained on the sides, and a few tiny tatters of cloth pinned down under them. Yes, under the vampire...there was the telltale peek of a few bits of the rich material. At some point, it had been stripped from the sides and fallen to the bottom of the casket.
The curiousity and worry began to fade entirely to dread and guilt. The vampire...the damage showed it had been desperate to escape. Desperate enough to inflict grave injury on itself. Knowing and dreading what he would see, Abraham moved to the lid, gently turning it over to reveal the inside surface.
A line of gouges marked it above where the vampire's hands had been. Sturdy oak or not, the damage was impressive. And the tell-tale gleam of foreign materials stood out from it. Fingernails. Down a bit further, dents and long, slick marks of dried blood, from the knees. The base...dented more, with a few scratches from the toes once the boots had been worn through. And another nail, a toenail.
Vampires protected their coffins. Each that Abraham had seen had been carefully and lovingly waxed and oiled. If there were hinges, they were soft and flexible leather or well-lubricated gleaming metals. Dust was never allowed to settle on the coffin of a monster, and that was how he had found them. Most of his hunts had been based on the suspicion of a vampire in the area, then the slow and steady hunt through crypts until a coffin was found that was far too new and too clean for its surroundings.
Dracula had nearly destroyed his own coffin attempting to escape, and had left his own body in tatters. He'd struggled long past the point at which it had to have become clear that he was sealed in too well to escape, past the point of pointlessness, until he was too exhausted to move any more. He'd caused permanent scarring and damage to his beloved coffin in the process. And...he'd been told that Abraham was going to release him, he'd known it was not permanent.
What had the beast gone through?
Abraham pushed himself up off the floor, staring down at his damaged property. He was horrified, but quashed any feelings of guilt with the memories of what the creature before him had done. There was no way to hurt or punish it any more than it deserved, nothing that could be done to it that would not be just.
Instead of worrying about how it had suffered, he pushed his mind onto more important considerations. Would it recover? How long would it take? How much blood would it need? Would animal blood suffice? How much time would have to pass before it was strong enough to begin the experiments that Abraham was longing to work upon it? Would it be too angry, too furious to cooperate, even with the pain and punishment Abraham could inflict?
Abraham nearly reached down to replace the lid on the coffin, but thought better of it. Off, the creature might realize it could now leave. Instead, Abraham beckoned to his silent companions, both of them glaring at the monster and unaware of Abraham's conclusions. They'd remained silent, as requested, giving the creature as little incentive to wake as possible.
It was time to talk about what he'd observed with them. Seward, with his deep experience with the deranged, might offer insight into the vampire's possible behavior patterns. Harker had been an unwilling guest of the beast, and had a very unique viewpoint and understanding of this particular creature's behaviors as a result. Between the three of them, Abraham thought they could be well prepared for when the beast woke that evening.
