It was time to go to bed, but I kept thinking about B’s strangely feminine bedroom and its cozy bed. Blackula’s warning about not sleeping in any room other than my own came to mind, but I was tired of that old geezer.

I went back into Count B’s room and pulled out a large sofa and placed it in front of the window. Surrounded by soft cushions, quaint furniture, and daydreams of women that may have slept in this bedroom, I looked at the view of the nighttime forests and drifted to sleep.

When I woke up, there were three young Black women standing next to my bed. They cast no shadows on the floor. One had an Afro, one had braids, and one had a weave. All three had long, sharp canine teeth.

“Ay yo! Are you Dr. Martin Luther King Jr?” asked the Black woman with the weave. “Because I had a dream bout you.”

“What … who is … do you mean the Black German man who broke off from the Black Catholic church?”

“Hol up,” said the Afro-haired Black women. “Don’t you be trying to hog him. Mmm mmm, he fine as hell.”

“Gurl, you know he be enough for all of us,” said the woman with the braids. “Denzel Washington here gonna share his thick body with everyone.”

“And if he don’t,” added the weave Black woman. “He gonna get his ass whooped so hard, his bottom gonna be all leg, no ass.”

The Black woman with the weave leapt in bed with me. She got on her hands and knees and sat in between my legs. She arched her back and licked her lips. Her sharp canine teeth gleaned blueish-white in the moonlight. Slowly, she lowered her head toward my lower torso. I tried to move, but my body felt heavy.

“Wait, please,” I said. “I have a fiancée. You can’t do this.”

She smiled and looked up at me. Then she crawled closer to my head. I could feel her hot breath on my neck. My skin tingled as she moved in closer, closer. Her lips lightly kissed the most sensitive part of my neck. Then, I felt the two indentations of her canine teeth. My heart thumped louder and louder.

But then, the room grew cold and dark. A dark hand grabbed the woman’s hair and pulled her back.

“Get your hands off of me!” she screamed.

Count Blackula wretched her out of the bed and onto the floor. With one hand, the woman cradled her head. With the other, she raised her index finger and waved it at the Count.

“Aww hell naw! Anybody who touch my weave – I will cut them.”

Her black eyebrows furrowed, and she snarled like an animal. But the Count’s anger was far greater than hers, as if the fires of Black hell were within him. The lines of his face were deep and hard. He grabbed the woman by the shoulder and flung her across the room. The two other women screamed and flailed their arms. Count Blackula then swept his arm, the same way that I saw the carriage driver sweep his arm with the wolves on the night that I first arrived. All three women immediately retreated into a corner and whimpered.

“Back! Get back!” shouted Count Blackula. “How dare any of your wenches touch him, even look at him, when I had forbidden it?”

A Black woman an Afro said, “Men really be thinking they can treat us like this. This ain’t right, bae.”

“I promise that when I’m done with him, all of you can have your way with him.”

“And what about tonight? I’m hungry,” said the braid-haired women.

The Count took out a sack from his cloak and threw it at the women. I heard a faint cry come out of the bag as it thudded on the floor. The Black women crowded around the bag and pulled out a barely moving child. They cackled and left. But they didn’t go out of the room through the door. They crawled to the window, jumped out, and turned into shadowy flying creatures.

The Count stood over me and swept his arm. My body felt very tired and I passed out.