Dracula the Undead: A Chilling Sequel to Dracula

by Freda Warrington

  By now tears were running down my face. His words undid me. I managed to hold myself upright in my chair but I was racked by sobs.

  “He need not die, Mina. I can give him immortality.”

  “Make him–”

  “Immortal, yes.”

  “Undead!” I cried in horror.

  “Whatever term you care to use, the point is this; what mother would not desire her son to live for ever? Or to outlive her, at the least. Mina, I have not touched a hair on his head; do you not trust me with him? I could almost love him like my own. Three kisses, so gentle he would not even feel them in his sweet sleep. Of themselves they would not kill him; I can be as delicate as I am brutal. But when his time comes – ah, then you need not mourn his death. For you know he will rise again, and come back to you, and be with you for ever. Your angelic, loving son.”

  *

  My brain is on fire. I cannot rest or sleep for the endless grinding of my thoughts. When Dracula left me, it was without touching me physically; he took no more blood from me, nor did he force me to drink his. But with his words about Quincey, he did something far worse.

  I will not sell my soul for my own immortality. But for my son’s–!

  Oh dear, dear God, what have I done to be so tormented, so cursed?

  16th November

  Thank heaven for shorthand – I write at speed, and in inexpressible distress.

  After Dracula had gone, and I had finished my diary, I lay down beside Quincey and stroked his golden hair. He stirred in his sleep; I promised him that we will soon go home. He murmured, “But this is home, Mama. Elena says so.”

  Now I curse the day I ever befriended her!

  I fell asleep, and slept very deeply, almost as if I had been drugged – indeed, I am now certain that I was.

  When I woke, it was well into morning, and Quincey had gone.

  I ran down to his room; there was no sign of him or Elena, and the fire was dead in the grate, as if there had been no one there for hours. The door from the keep to the house was locked as always. I was frantic for a few hours, though I endeavoured to be as calm. I knew where the Count must be – unless he also had deserted me.

  But at midday – a very foggy, grey day, with leaves dropping like brown rain from the trees – I heard the locks and bolts being drawn back. I ran down the stairs and was met half-way by Dracula. He looked grim and angry, quite unnerving me.

  I told him I could not find Elena and Quincey. “I heard nothing. My son was gone from my side when I woke!”

  “They have left Carfax,” he said simply.

  “Why?”

  He took my wrist and led me back to my room. “Elena has taken Quincey away, against my wishes,” he said, low and furious. “She has defied me.”

  I could not understand, and said as much. Dracula seemed as outraged as I was distressed. He answered, “Yesterday she begged me to make her Undead. Her impatience angered me, and I refused. She is jealous of you, beloved. This is her revenge against us both.”

  And it is worse than Dracula himself taking my son – for at least he has some authority, some integrity; he may be a devil, but at least a familiar one! Elena – who knows what is going on in her tormented mind? I put my hands upon his chest and implored him to help me find her.

  “Of course,” he said. He was calm again, and so tender I was comforted. “Mina, whatever else I may be, in this you can trust me. We will find her together. She went on foot; she cannot have gone far. Make ready to leave.”

  As he went to the doorway, a thought occurred to me. “But how did she get past the dogs?” The Count did not answer; he began to turn away, but I was insistent. “Surely I would have heard a commotion, at least? They would not have let her pass in silence.”

  “But I trained them to treat her as a friend,” he replied. “That was my misjudgement.”

  “What if Van Helsing and the others are watching the Abbey? They might have seen her leave. They may see us leave, and follow.”

  “The worse for them, if they do,” he said harshly. “But these are my concerns, not yours. Your presence will ensure that your foolish hero-husband and his accomplices keep their distance.”

  I am still being used as hostage, I know, but my only care is to find Quincey. I can but pray that if Jonathan and the others follow us, they do nothing to endanger Quincey’s life.

  “And if Elena has taken a carriage, or a train? How are we to find her?”

  Dracula answered, “She cannot escape me, for my blood is in her, and wherever she goes, her brain cannot help but call to mine.”

  * * *

  JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

  16 November, evening

  Today I do not know if we have been heroes or lunatics.

  Seward has had a couple of men watching Carfax Abbey. They tell us there’s been no activity, no coming or going, but whether they have been idle or unobservant, I cannot judge. Whatever the case, Dracula has outwitted us.

  We made a second assault on Carfax this afternoon, armed with meat, clubs and a rifle against the dogs. As before the dogs attacked us, but this time we were ready; the meat provided a temporary distraction, and Seward shot two dead before we gained the crypt door.

  We knew that the sound of gunfire – even muffled by the mist and thick stone walls of the Abbey – must have been heard inside. Our hope was that, as it was afternoon, Dracula would still be at his rest. Yet as we entered the crypt, the house had an eerily dead feeling – as if nothing were left there to hear us.

  The crypt was as dark and odiferous as I recalled, the walls furry with grime. Now we had time to look around, I saw that the earth boxes, which he brought seven years ago from Castle Dracula, were still here, apparently undisturbed since we had last seen them. I wondered, but did not voice the question (for it seemed sacrilegious), if the effect of the Holy Wafer was permanent, or if it faded as the Wafer dissolved into the soil? Whatever the case, Dracula seemed not to be using the boxes.

  The first tomb we opened was the one into which Dracula had forced Mina. It was empty.

  We explored the niches, pushing back lids and looking into tombs, finding only ancient skeletons. I remained terrified that we would find Mina in one. Or even Quincey, or Elena. So terrified that I was near to hysteria.

  We did not find Mina, but Van Helsing let out a sudden heart-rending shout. Seward and I rushed to him, and found him staring down at a male corpse that lay wide-eyed in an open coffin on a dais. It was Kovacs. His skin was ruddy, the lips positively swollen with blood and indented by the tips of two sharp canine teeth. On whom had he sated his unholy appetite?

  “Oh, mijn God, André!” Van Helsing cried. He beat his forehead with his fists; he sobbed in such a paroxysm of grief that Seward and I were powerless to help him. When he began to master himself, he said, “It did not sink in until this moment, that this terrible thing has happened to my dear friend! When we spoke to him, it was possible to believe he was still human. But to see him like this – oh, God Almighty, what justice is it that so good a man should come to this?”

  Then the corpse blinked. My heart beat violently, despite all the horrors I have seen – but God preserve me from ever becoming inured to them! The creature that had been André Kovacs turned his head to look at Van Helsing, and red tears ran down his face. That face was still noble and handsome, even in this unholy state. He reached out to Van Helsing. His movements were stiff and waxy, as he fought against the deep vampire sleep.

  “Abraham,” he said, in a voice of rust. “Ah, my friend, you came back to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have betrayed everyone. Forgive me.”

  “You are forgiven.” Van Helsing spoke firmly, although tears welled from his eyes as he produced the stake and mallet from his canvas bag. Seward tried gently to take them from him, for Van Helsing’s hands were shaking; but Van Helsing said, “No. As his dearest friend, it must be me who delivers him.”

  He put the point to Kovacs breastbone.
I waited with beating heart for the end; for the fall of the mallet, the bursting of blood like some obscene red flower as the stake sank deep. And then the fiend gasping, arching its back as it writhed and convulsed, a foam of blood flying from its mouth. Then the silence, the look of peace. I was sweating, almost sick with waiting.

  Just as Van Helsing lifted the mallet, Kovacs’s hand came up and grabbed the stake. “No!” he hissed in a deathly voice. “Don’t destroy me! The library–”

  “Do it,” Seward said firmly. “Don’t falter.”

  Too late. Van Helsing hesitated and lost his resolve. Stake and mallet tumbled from his grip. The corpse sat up in the coffin; I watched in frozen horror as Kovacs put his arms around Van Helsing’s neck. Both were weeping. I felt tears of pity and horror. Then, from the side, I saw the vampire’s mouth open, heard the hiss of breath as he lunged at Van Helsing’s neck.

  “No!” I cried. I brought my cross out of my jacket; in the gloom it shone with uncompromising brilliance. I thrust it at Kovacs’s face and he shrank back, loosing his hold on his friend. Van Helsing staggered back, coughing and rubbing at his throat.

  Meanwhile Seward grabbed the implements and stood ready to complete the task that Van Helsing had left unfinished.

  “I am sorry,” the fiend breathed. “I cannot master my nature.” Lying down again, he put out his hands to Seward and me, as if we held lights that dazzled and burned him. “But I beg you, do not destroy me yet. Listen to me, I can help you. If you destroy me now you will never find your son and wife!”

  “What do you mean?” I cried.

  Seward held back. Van Helsing came to the coffin lip, showing no fear. He said, “If there is anything left in you that recalls and treasures our friendship still, tell us all that you know.”

  Kovacs’s face was at once unnatural and beautiful, like an effigy, his voice deep as a grave, as slow and cold as clay. I was held in fascinated horror as I listened. “Dracula wanted you to destroy me. He knew you would come back. But you are too late. They have all gone.”

  “Gone – where?” All of this shocked me so much I felt that the whole world, not just myself, had turned mad.

  “Dracula will have gone to the Scholomance. It is my fault. There is some great secret of power there that Beherit does not want him to have, but now, because I failed, he will find and claim it. Then no-one, not even you, my friend Abraham, will prevail against him. And he had to take the others with him, for as long as he has them, he knows you cannot touch him.”

  “You mean he’s taken Quincey to Transylvania?” I cried. “But it’s almost winter! The cold will kill him!”

  “When did they leave?” Van Helsing asked.

  “Before midday, I think. Elena came to tell me. To say good-bye. Beloved niece...”

  “Then we have time to catch them before they reach the coast!”

  Seward said, “But he’ll use Mrs Harker and Quincey to keep us away.”

  “But at some time, he must rest on his native earth,” Van Helsing said intently. “Then we strike.”

  “If we can find him!” I said. “He left without detection.”

  “That’s why you must take me with you,” Kovacs said quietly. “I know his destination is the Scholomance. Only I can guide you to it.”

  “Why would you want to help us?” I asked bitterly. “You are one of Dracula’s kind now. Why should we trust you?”

  “Because I must see Beherit again. Even if he destroys me, I can’t die without seeing the library one last time. Ah, the library, Abraham...”

  *

  We did not leave Carfax without making a thorough search. But as Kovacs had said, they were gone. The door to the keep was unlocked, and in two of the chambers we found signs of recent habitation; the embers were still warm in the grates, and I plucked several of Quincey’s gold hairs from the pillows of both beds. But the house was deserted, the caleche and horses gone from the stable.

  When we returned to the crypt to talk to Kovacs once more, a weird fluttering of the air began. The low vault of the chapel was coming alive, rustling, peeling off in sooty layers. The air was suddenly full of flying things: bats and huge moths. Disgust and panic gripped us as they swarmed around our heads. We struggled to beat them off, but more came, flapping around out heads, tangling in our hair.

  Defeated, we turned and rushed out of the chapel, heads down and hands flailing wildly. Dracula’s servants, the beasts of darkness, pay no heed to holy symbols!

  Outside, the remaining dogs let us pass, but once we were beyond them, they came growling after us until they had driven us off the premises. One leapt and bit me hard in my nerveless right arm; I barely realized it had happened until I saw the blood flowing. Seward beat off the dog with a club.

  Disheartened, desperate and exhausted, we retired to Dr Seward’s house. Alice Seward was there to meet us, and we have told her all. She is like a mother to us, and unshockable.

  As we sat over a hurried meal, Van Helsing said, “Of course, it is obvious why Dracula wanted us to destroy Professor Kovacs!”

  “Is it?” Seward said sourly.

  “He wants no other male vampire that might challenge his power. But the fact that Dracula did not do it himself, that he must have us do it – this means only one thing: that the vampire cannot destroy his own kind!”

  “Or thinks he cannot, at least,” said Seward. “The so-called Beherit seemed to have no difficulty in beheading Miklos.”

  “Who had not yet become Undead. But that is a fascinating idea – a vampire who breaks free of the restrictions that nature and God have placed upon him! And this is the secret Dracula may discover, if we do not prevent him reaching the Scholomance!”

  Van Helsing was animated – even excited. I said, “I don’t know what you find so amusing, professor.”

  “Abstract ideas. The ludicrous contradictions of the natural and the supernatural. You know me by now, friend Jonathan – but I ask your forgiveness for my jocular tone. I cannot stop being fascinated by the unknown, however dire our situation.”

  “But,” said Seward, thoughtfully, “if a vampire can think, and reason, as clearly Dracula can, and feel regret, and self-knowledge, and concern for his living relatives, as Professor Kovacs obviously can – have we any right to destroy such a sentient being?”

  “For pity’s sake, don’t start on this!” I cried. “I shall go mad.”

  Seward put his hand on mine. “I’m sorry, Harker. At least we know Mina and Quincey are alive.”

  “For how long?” I groaned.

  Van Helsing said, “Ah, friend Jonathan, do not lose heart! For I know what it is to lose a son in boyhood, and for this reason I share keenly your sorrow. I too have lost wife and son and have nothing left but my work; therefore I am all the more determined that you shall not have cause to grieve as I have! For all that our brotherhood is diminished, shall not those of us who remain be closer and more resolute to go on to the bitter end? We have received another setback, but if I feel my resolve waver – then I have only to look on your sad face or to think of poor Madam Mina and the innocent child, and I am more determined than ever that the author of this misery must be destroyed, once and for eternity.”

  Solemnly, the remaining three of us remade our promise; and my vow, even though I felt it to be hopeless, was heartfelt.

  *

  Well, I have all the time in the world to write this account – which I do, slowly and laboriously, with my swollen right hand.

  Van Helsing, Seward and Kovacs have gone after Dracula without me.

  I find this unbearable, but there is no choice. I have only one good arm, yesterday’s adventure has aggravated my damaged ribs, and to crown everything I have a fever. I protested, all the time they were making ready, but in the end I was forced to admit the truth. I am unfit to travel. I would only hold them back. I shall help Mina and Quincey more by remaining in Seward’s house, under Alice Seward’s maternal care.

  How intolerable, to be so incapacit
ated! And every wound I have received, to body or mind, has been dealt by Dracula.

  None of us are young men now. I am greatly concerned for Van Helsing, in particular. For all his courage he is, truth be told, a tired and grief-stricken old man. Dracula has sucked the spirit from each and every one of us.

  Chapter Fifteen

  JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

  17 November

  I am certain that my decision to stay behind was for the best. My ribs are so bruised that I can stand only with difficulty. The bite I received from the dog is inflamed, and I shiver with fever; this in addition to the loss of use in my right hand! I am well enough to sit in a chair with a rug over my knees, like some ageing invalid – ah, but for heroic deeds, I am as useless as a girl-child.

  Van Helsing has promised to keep us informed of their progress. As yet, we have heard nothing. He left us a bag containing the usual tools and wards against vampires, in case we should need them, but I cannot bear to look upon them and have removed the bag to the other, empty guest room.

  I wish I could order my thoughts about Mina. In my heart I love her; I know she is still the good, pure woman I married; I would do anything to be the husband she deserves, to brave fire and flood to save her! I cannot bear my enforced idleness.

  Yet in some cold, festering portion of my brain – that I cannot overcome, as if it were some ghastly sore planted by Dracula seven years ago – another Mina lives, and will not be erased. The fallen Mina, who welcomed Dracula’s embraces, who went all too easily into the darkness with him.

  Am I not being unjust? Was there any manner in which she might have stood firm against him, refused his demand that she go with him? I don’t see how. Yet I believe it would be almost better for our son to die, than for Mina to have surrendered her virtue – I mean the rich virtue of her whole, good being!

  Alice Seward is looking after me. She is like a mother, so strong and good. She knows everything; I am glad she is not some innocent who must be shielded from harsh knowledge. I feel at ease with her. We can be gloom-ridden together!