Stakes

Prologue

Auckland, 2009

Souls and memories can do strange things during trance.

Dr Seward’s Diary

Dracula, Chapter XXV

When I am back there now, it is early in the morning. High up over the city, in bed, a man sleeping next to me. The clock radio clicking over. Morning Report theme. Bright trumpets, tearing through the bat-wing membrane between sleeping and waking. An arm snaking out, long and hairy, hitting the snooze button, turning over, pulling me into the heat. And me, half-dead from the banging in my head, fighting consciousness. Every dirty part of me hurts. Shrugging the arm away, trying to find a cool place. The sun’s already streaming in. Shrinking from it, the dawn creeping towards me. No curtains to block the light.

I open one eye a crack, as much to get it over with as anything. The pain is atomic, white, annihilating. Streams of dust whirling overhead. I watch the colours change as I get used to the light: yellow, blue, indigo, red. I lie back, watching it stream and flow in eddies like water, through half-lowered lids. It’s very dusty here – watching the twirling is soothing, hypnotic. Easy to forget the dust is probably just flakes of old skin. My eyelids are heavy. I let them fall. I have one hope of surviving this hangover and that is to sleep more. Beside me, under the duvet, a body shifts. Two good pillowcases. Light cotton, freshly washed. He takes them to some place across from his gym. No duvet cover – I can still remember the rustle-y feel of it, like dry leaves.

Where are my clothes? I can see the shiny black toe of a high heel on the floor. It was only meant to be dinner. What time did we finish? Mornings like this, and there are more of these mornings than there used to be, what I tell myself is: You chose this. You are choosing this. It is not without its riches. If I walked out to the kitchen, there’d be plates piled up by the sink: rinds of sirloin, blood mixed in with the gravy, clumps of beans, bright green, oozing lumps of Brie. He feeds me.

I shift a bit on the pillow, the pain a bright spike between the eyes. Nurofen. In the bathroom cabinet, next to the metal tube of liniment, half empty, the navy blue bottle of aftershave. I could no more levitate than go and get it, I’m clung to the bed. The dust streams brighter as the sun gets higher, long curtains of it coming down like Aurora Borealis above our heads. He’s stirring next to me. I push my naked back against him. It feels good, in a bad way.

Dracula says to Jonathan Harker: Be careful where you go to sleep in my castle. It is full of memories and bad dreams for those who slumber unwisely. Harker doesn’t listen; he goes roaming, into a room where he is not supposed to be. Puts his little diary away, watches the dust dance in the light of the moon. Three women in front of him when he opens his eyes again. Ladies by their manner and dress. One blonde, two brunettes. He’s lying on his antique couch, looking up through his lashes at them, like Princess Diana in the Panorama interview with Martin Bashir. ‘There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear.’ The blonde woman comes closer, kneels in front of him, arches her neck, licking her lips like a cat. In the bed, I shut my eyes tight against the morning light. Fuck, I feel ill.

A hand, then, running in long strokes down along my hip. ‘Good morning.’ I can feel the words vibrating in his chest. I don’t answer. It’s better when I pretend to be asleep. It occurs to me: This is the right amount of shame for me. This is how bad it needs to be. The sun’s coming in the window high above our heads, hot enough to burn you up. How did I get here?

And there’s a voice that comes from inside me, then, that sounds a lot like Dracula – nicely spoken, elegant, a real cunt: You walked yourself into this place and now you’re stuck. You and Jonathan Harker, you’re both going to die in here. You never listen, you don’t know when enough is enough.