She said, after Dr Seward had gone with Van Helsing, “I fear I will lose my husband to Dracula even now; I mean, if not physically, that I will lose him to his obsession. He wants science, rationality. The irrational unhinges him.”
“But he works with the insane every day of his life, and has done so for years!” I protested.
“But that is why he works with them,” Alice answered. “To understand, to make sense of nonsense. He must go out and fight it, like St George against the Dragon – out of fear as much as courage. The irrational never goes away. It comes back again and again, in different forms, to try the strong and the weak alike.”
I am sitting alone in a pleasant guest-room, which is cosy enough; yet certain companions seem all too close. By that I mean the chill of the night, the moans of the asylum inmates, and the howling of dogs from the grounds of Carfax Abbey.
*
19 November
Last night, as I sat playing cards with Alice in the drawing room, we heard someone pounding at the front door. We both got up, startled. Then one of the maids came in looking worried, and said, “A woman and child to see Mr Harker, ma’am. The woman seems indisposed.”
The visitors were shown in, and there in the doorway stood Elena, holding Quincey by the hand! I was so astonished that I could say and do nothing. Quincey looked sleepy and bewildered; seeing me, he cried, “Papa!” and rushed to my arms!
As he left her side, Elena fell forward in a dead faint.
Quickly we took her upstairs to another bedroom, revived her with smelling salts then gave her water and drops of brandy. While I sat with her, Alice took charge of Quincey, fed and bathed him and took him to her own room. (I can only hope that his child-like trust in Elena has shielded him from realizing the peril he was in.)
Elena had all the signs of Dracula’s attentions: ragged, unwholesome wounds in her neck, a rapid heartbeat and shallow breathing. Her flesh was tinged almost to pale yellow and drawn back against the bone, her teeth prominent under her taut lips. Her eyes were large and brilliant in lakes of purplish-black, so thin the bones of the eye-sockets shone through. Her lids kept falling with sleep.
She looked very sick – near to death.
When we had revived her, she clutched at my arm and tried to haul herself up. “Your friends,” she gasped, “they are pursuing Dracula? Why not you?”
“I am injured,” I said. “But I don’t understand. How is it that you came here? Where is Mina? We were told that Dracula had taken you all away!”
She spoke with effort, between wheezing breaths. “Dracula took only Mina with him. He told her I had run away with Quincey, that she must go with him to bring us back. Dracula lied to Mina, and I lied to my uncle.”
“But why?”
“It is my uncle’s fault, for coming here and telling him about Beherit and the Scholomance. I wish Dracula had not gone! But he insisted he must go to the Scholomance at once. He needs Mina as his hostage; that is the only reason he took her, not that he truly wants her – not as he wants me. He lied about Quincey and me to ensure her co-operation. We would have slowed him down, you see; the boy would not have withstood the journey. So Dracula told me to hide with him in Carfax and remain there until he returned.”
“But we searched Carfax!”
She gave a smile that showed her long teeth horribly. “You did not search well enough, Mr Harker. There are many hidden rooms into which you did not even glance.”
“But why have you come to us now?”
“Because I am dying,” she said, her voice fading. “I feel myself growing weaker and weaker and I am afraid. I do not want to die and abandon Quincey to starve alone in that great, deserted house! Help me.”
I held her hand and wept. So Elena has still some human feelings left for us, after all! “Of course we will help you. God has not deserted you. Thank you, bless you for bringing our son back to us!”
*
I went in to Alice, and found her putting Quincey to bed with hot cocoa. Strangely – and to my immense relief! – he seems well. I thought the damp of Carfax would have put a strain upon his lungs, yet he is alert and rosy-cheeked.
I took Alice aside, and asked if she had ever assisted in a blood transfusion.
“Of course. I have assisted my husband in many medical procedures.”
“I am going to give Elena a transfusion of my blood. We may save her life.”
She looked sternly at me. “No, Jonathan. You are not strong enough.”
“I disagree.”
“Jonathan,” she said firmly, “the dog-bite you received is infected; do you want to risk passing that infection to our patient and poisoning her blood? Let me do it. I am large and strong, with blood to spare!”
I could not but admire Alice’s courage. We attended Elena together. I gave Elena a draught of laudanum to drink, that she might sleep through the operation; Alice fetched her husband’s transfusion equipment.
What an extraordinary picture we must have made by the warm light of the lamp and the fire. Alice sat by the bed, connected to Elena almost as a mother might be to her new-born; meanwhile I sat and stroked Elena’s pallid, high forehead as the faintest flush suffused her cheeks. Poor dear girl! All she had done against us was forgotten; all I felt for her at this moment was the most tender sympathy.
I felt a little uneasy, I must admit, performing this operation without the supervision of Seward or Van Helsing. Presently Alice began to look pale and listless, and we knew it was time to call a halt.
Now I have sent her to bed – she has Quincey in her room – while I sit up with Elena, and write in my journal in the hope of keeping myself awake. Elena looks so peaceful. Perhaps, now she is out of Dracula’s grasp, she will turn away from evil and become the sweet, good woman she should be!
I wish we had word from Van Helsing. Are they still in England, or on their way to the continent by now? Will Dracula have gone by ship again? Is Mina utterly lost to us? My eyes cloud, and I cannot think clearly upon any of these questions.
20 November
I fell asleep where I sat, to my eternal shame. I remember only one thing more of the night; that as I was beginning to doze, Elena’s eyes opened and she spoke to me with heavy, laboured breaths. She said something of this kind: “Take this, Jonathan. It is the remainder of my journal, the main body of which I left in Exeter; read it all, if you have not done so already. Then you will know my heart. I will write no more.”
She pulled some folded papers from her breast and thrust them into my hands. They were covered in her tiny writing. I put them aside and said, “Hush. Go to sleep now.”
The next I knew, it was full daylight and Alice was shaking my arm. I was sitting up in the chair, aching all over and so stiff I could barely move; this the result of my injuries and sleeping in so awkward a position. The morning sun pierced a gap in the curtains, widening to a veil of light as she drew them back; and this veil fell beautifully across Elena, who lay peacefully beneath the covers.
I leaned over her, and saw at once that she was dead.
Her eyes gleamed like slivers of dark glass under the half-open lids; her mouth hung slack like an old woman’s, and her fingers were curled in pain. I started back with a cry; I could not, cannot believe that our treatment failed to save her! I was distraught, but Alice’s serene practicality calmed me somewhat.
She examined Elena for signs of life; finding none, she closed the girl’s eyes, composed her body, and drew the sheet over her face with a sigh. “Poor dear. Poor ill-used soul! Come, Mr Harker, come down to breakfast.”
“I cannot eat.”
“Then take some tea, at least. We can do nothing for her now.”
We said a prayer, and left the room.
Now I cannot avoid the suspicion that the blood transfusion in some way hastened her death, rather than delaying it. I did not say this to Alice, of course. I have no reason for my doubt, I am sure her blood was wholesome. But, oh God, what if, in trying to cure Elena, I h
ave killed her?
Later
This day has seemed endless. Pain pervades my whole body; I cannot separate physical enervation from the gloom that lies over the house. One shades into the other. No news from Van Helsing. I am constantly aware of Elena’s corpse lying in the closed room above us.
As darkness began to fall, I could no longer resist the compulsion to view the body. I crept into the room, and drew back the sheet...
Ah, God, her face! It was tilted slightly towards me, and in death had taken on a fresh bloom of youth. Her cheeks and mouth were restored to their firm, flowing lines, her forehead was smooth. Her lips were slightly curved in mysterious amusement, and her hair lay thick and glossy upon the pillow. The full black crescents of her eyelashes, lying upon her cheeks, glittered as if tears were gathering between them. Her appearance of beauty, after all that had happened, flooded me with horror.
I screamed. What happened next is confused; I recall it as if through a black curtain. My only thought was that I must save us both from further evil. The bag of Van Helsing’s, which I’d placed in this room to be out of my sight, lay on the floor against the dresssing table. I opened the bag and took out a long wooden stake, sharpened to a lethal point. Gripping it as best I could in my left hand, I had the point poised over Elena’s heart when Alice dashed in and grabbed hold of my arm.
“Jonathan, what are you doing?” she cried.
I struggled with her, to my shame – my only excuse being that I was half out of my mind. “I must stake her through the heart! It’s the only way to save her soul!”
Alice’s grip was enough to keep my wavering hand from its task. I had thought she would understand the necessity; but when it came to the point, a surfeit of common sense overwhelmed the belief she had professed to hold in our experiences with the Undead.
“Stop it!” she said, as to a child. “The body of this unfortunate young girl deserves to be treated with respect. How can you think to defile her? She is no vampire, she is dead, God rest her soul. In the name of mercy, Jonathan, leave her in peace!”
I let her take the stake from me. She replaced it in the bag, which she then closed firmly and removed from the room. Drained of my passion, I could see that from her point of view I was acting insanely. I had not the strength to resist her. I left Alice to replace the sheet over Elena’s face, and to lock the door behind us.
“I will send for a doctor in the morning, then the undertaker,” she said more gently. “Perhaps we will have word from my husband, too. Then all will seem better. You still have a fever, Jonathan; you should have a sleeping draught and an early night.”
Alone, I broke down and wept. Elena was so young! I can’t stop thinking of her body, cold and stiff behind the locked door. I keep imagining her, warm and pliant as she was in life, when first she came to us; the way she used to sit with Quincey on her knee, her dark head bent over his golden one as she murmured to him. And then so waxen-beautiful in death, like an effigy, and the lamps burning around her death-bed, and her corpse stirring beneath the sheet.
21 November
When she came to me in the night, I thought I dreamed; that memories were invading my sleep, becoming real and walking around me like ghosts.
I heard her voice first. “Jonathan, Jonathan.”
I opened my eyes and saw her drifting towards me, a soft white shape in muslin. As she leaned over me her hair slid thick and lustrous over her shoulders and brushed my face. Her eyes shone, her complexion was of lilies and roses, so silken and dewy that I longed to touch her cheeks. I had left one lamp burning very low, and in its glow I saw the sheen of her full red lips. She ran the tip of her tongue over them and the sheen became a gloss.
Paralysis lay on me. I felt no shock, for it was as if I had known she would come – known since the first moment I met her. I was afraid, yes, but my terror seemed delicious. My longing for her was wicked and unashamed. I lay in blissful anticipation, waiting for those glistening lips to touch mine, for the hard white teeth to indent my neck. Mina forgive me! I felt I had waited seven years for this...
Elena drew the covers away from my body and slid alongside me. Her body was not cold but hot like a furnace. With my good arm I held her to me and let her press her voluptuous mouth to mine. She arched her back, forcing her body against me all down its slender length. Her wantonness made my heart race. When her leg slid up and over mine I was lost, slithering down into a lascivious pit, all sense of right and wrong suspended.
The tip of one of her eye teeth touched my tongue, so sharp it drew blood. At that she hissed and stiffened, drawing back like a snake. Then her head went down, shuddering, to my neck, and two hard points touched the shivering skin of my throat. I felt her tongue churning against my flesh, unutterably thrilling, urging me to the brink of a raging delight. Then she bit down. The flesh broke. I gasped. I had never anticipated such pain, such intensity of sensation; no one could know or imagine until they themselves felt that infernal kiss! Agony and dizzy ecstasy swept me out of myself.
I was drawn down into a whirlpool, red and crimson and black all swirling together, faster and faster, until at last I dissolved into her, and she into me, and there was red fire, and then blissful peace.
All the time I knew that this sin would condemn me to hell – and it will, for I cannot repent of it. If she came again to me now I would still...
When it was over, she lay with her arms about me for the longest time, and I did not want her to leave.
She whispered that she loved me. “This is love, Jonathan, not the pale shadow of it that you share with Mina. Do you wonder that she and I fell so easily to Dracula? Do you still think her an angel, and me a devil? Well, we are the same. She fell to him with a thousand protestations of virtue and reluctance and shame; I did so with honesty. That is the only difference between us.”
I wanted to protest that she was wrong, there is such a quality as virtue, but I could find no words or strength to say so. She went on whispering against my cheek, “What misery it is, that one man and one woman may know only each other. I may love Dracula, and many other men and women, and lie with them like this and drink their heart’s blood, but I will never love you any the less for it. Bury me close to your dwelling, that I may come to you again.”
The stirring of protest grew stronger. I took a deep, quick breath. I was enmeshed. What use to get Mina and Quincey home, unhurt, and to continue our lives, when this fiend would only come again and again to draw us into the dark? For I could not destroy her. I was hers. As fallen as Lucifer.
“Let me tell you what it is like,” said Elena. “Where did I write to, in my little journal? To the place where Dracula kisses me upon the stairs under the lattice window, the third and last time? And then he is kind again, and tells me his plan, and I agree to it all – for he promised me eternal life. Behold, he has kept the promise! But at the time, I think I have been cheated.
“When Dracula has gone I go to the chapel. I feel my heart labouring from the loss of blood, the breath swift and shallow in my lungs... and I cannot understand why I am still alive. My limbs tingle and pain shoots through me. How much more, then, must it hurt actually to die? I recall a great groan of despair issuing from my throat, my whole body shaking with the force of it. Tears blind me and I curse silently at fate, or God, or the vigour of my own body – whatever has cheated me of immortality!
“The thin light of dawn reaches into the chapel, and in it I see my Uncle André lying in an open tomb. His hands are folded on his breast, his eyes open but sightless, his lips ruddy with my blood. But he does not look content in his catalepsy. His face is strained into an expression of distress so ghastly that I recoil. I tell him the lie, that Dracula is taking us all away. His eyes come open and he grips me with stone-cold hands. “Don’t go, Elena, don’t go,’ he says.
“‘You must leave too, in secret,’ I tell him. But he says, no, he must wait for Abraham to come again. I answer, ‘Abraham Van Helsing will kill you!’ But my uncle
will not listen and so I leave. I weep. I fear I will never see him again. So unfair that Uncle André has the gift of immortality and hates it – while I long for it, yet am still trapped in that weak, living form!
“Alone in a little, secret chamber with Quincey, in the top of the keep, I feel death coming upon me at last. Ah, so painful, Jonathan, like suffocation. There is no air, and your limbs burn with needles, and your heart flutters like that of a mouse. My sight darkens. I panic; I imagine myself dead, and not rising again, and poor Quincey crying over my body. Too piteous. I never wished him harm; I love him like my own.
“I hardly recall coming here. I have some vague image of Alice Seward sitting by me, and her blood passing into me, and thinking that this is a great irony; she who would look on me with loathing if I took her blood in the manner of a vampire, gives it this way quite willingly! At first I am dismayed, to be drawn back from death’s brink. Later I feel all my veins on fire, as if her blood was warring against mine, and killing me. And I am glad!
“The pain is not in death, dear Jonathan; it is all in life. The blackness that claims me is sweet. When I open my eyes I feel that several centuries have passed. But all pain is gone, and the darkness has opened up its sweet secrets to me, as I knew it would. I don’t even mind that Dracula is gone now. I don’t need him any more. I have all I want. Freedom. The warm blood of the living.”
She rose over me again.
I don’t know what alerted Alice. Perhaps I cried out. Of a sudden the door opened, there was a flood of lamp-light into the room – and in came Alice in her night-clothes, with the large wooden crucifix that Van Helsing had left us held boldly at arm’s length. She resembled a Valkyrie!
“Leave him, foul demon!” Alice shouted. “Begone, in the name of God! Begone!”
Elena rose on her knees, facing Alice, her hair tangled and blood smeared around her mouth. Seeing the cross, she uttered a horrible shriek; a mix of frustration and pure terror. The transformation of her face was ghastly. All the sweet softness of her expression contorted to demonic white fury, reminding me starkly, horrifically of what I had done, the nature of the thing I had allowed into my bed – into my wife’s place! I groaned, but could not move.
Dracula the Undead: A Chilling Sequel to Dracula Page 23