These Our Monsters

by Katherine Davey

  ***

  Letter from Florence Stoker to Dr Andrew Billington, Harley Street, London, August 21st 1890

  My dear Andrew,

  I am fulfilling my promise to write to you about Bram’s health. I have resisted the desire to write sooner (we have been now a week in Whitby), hoping that with the passing of time I might have better news. I regret to tell you, however, that the contrary is the case. Bram is more disturbed than ever. During the day, he has none of his usual energy and vivacity. He seems weighed down by a kind of languor. I fear that Mr Irving has drained all his reserves of energy and there is nothing left for his wife. In the evening he comes alive a little. He writes furiously in his journal (which I have dared not open for fear of confirming my anxieties about his state of mind) and demands not to be interrupted while doing so. Over dinner, he discourses volubly, but his thoughts are often disordered, and at times might be taken for no more than the ravings of a madman. He has become quite obsessed with an incident that occurred on the evening of our arrival here. A young girl was found dead from a fall in a churchyard. Bram propounds wild theories about the true cause of her death, while simultaneously holding that the police suspect that he is guilty of her murder and are only waiting for him to incriminate himself to tighten their noose. When I have persuaded him to leave our rooms, he looks constantly about him, believing that he is everywhere being followed.

  These last two days have seen a worsening of his condition. He has quite turned day into night. Since our arrival, he has been unable to sleep and noisily paces our sitting room, muttering to himself. He comes abed only towards dawn and dozes fitfully for a few hours.

  O Andrew, I fear the worst. I know that any suggestion of Bram visiting a doctor here in Whitby would be met with scorn (you know how pig-headed he can be), and in any case I fear that the physicians here in the provinces lack the wherewithal to deal with such a case. It would be too great an imposition to ask you to travel so far, but I plead for your advice and ask whether you might send some draught or tonic to subdue him. It remains my hope that if we may only break this cycle with some proper rest, our dear jolly Bram might be restored to us.

  [Signed]

  Florence

  ***

  Letter from Dr Andrew Billington to Florence Stoker, August 22nd 1890

  Dear Florrie,

  You must not vex yourself. The mostly likely explanation for the symptoms you describe in your husband is simply exhaustion. I do not doubt that some sleeping draught might ease his condition, but without examining him in person I am reluctant to send a prescription.

  Your misgivings about my provincial colleagues are entirely without foundation. As it happens I know a local man for whom I can vouch without reservation. His name is Dr John Agar and he has a villa on the West Cliff. As well as being a first rate physician, he is a convivial and entertaining host. I have written to tell him to invite you to dinner, where I am sure you will spend a pleasant evening and he will have the opportunity to observe Bram without the formality of a consultation. I have no doubt that an evening in Dr Agar’s company will in itself have a restorative effect.

  With warmest wishes,

  Andrew

  ***

  Abraham (Bram) Stoker was born to a middle class family in Clontarf, a few miles north of Dublin, in 1847. He was a sickly child, unable to walk until he was seven. His mother Charlotte was a great storyteller and Bram was weaned on the Irish lore of banshees, fairies and the Dearg-due, the flame-haired bloodsucker who was said to tempt men with her beauty before drinking their blood. Young Bram found himself under the care of his Uncle William, a doctor specialising in bloodletting. The application of leeches was the then current treatment for childhood measles, and decades later Stoker would describe his most famous creation as ‘like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.’

  Stoker’s health recovered and he developed into an able athlete and student of sufficient calibre to enrol at Trinity College. He then joined the civil service, but it was his unsalaried role as theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail (at that time edited by Sheridan le Fanu, author of the famous vampire story Carmilla) that would lead to a life-changing meeting. Henry Irving was the leading actor of his day, and having read Stoker’s review of his performance as Hamlet in 1876, he invited him to dine at his suite at the Shelbourne Hotel on St Stephen’s Green. Two years later he appointed him manager of the Lyceum theatre in London which he had recently acquired. The pair became inseparable. They worked, dined, drank and toured together. Stoker was in Irving’s thrall, but Irving depended on his manager for everything.

  Stoker’s energy was boundless. Despite the enormous demands placed on him by Irving, he still found time in 1878 to marry Florence Balcombe, a penniless but beautiful colonel’s daughter from Falmouth. Later, perhaps hoping to step out of Irving’s shadow, he began to write. Of his first novel, The Snake’s Pass, an Irish-set tale of lost treasure, Stoker’s biographer Barbara Belford concludes that, ‘his writing habits … were always better suited to the short story.’ Of a later novel, The Athenaeum gloomily pronounced that ‘the book bears the stamp of being roughly and carelessly put together … the less said about The Shoulder of Shasta the better for everyone concerned.’ There is, of course, only one work for which he is remembered. Dracula was certainly not roughly and carelessly put together. Stoker completed it in the Kilmarnock Arms hotel in Cruden Bay in 1897, but the idea had been gestating for seven years, if not since he heard the story of the Dearg-due at his mother’s knee. And despite his wide travels, it was the sleepy port of Whitby that he chose for the Count to affect his entry into England.

  ***

  Extract from the journal of Bram Stoker

  Whitby, August 24th 1890

  We spent this evening in the company of Dr John Agar, who has a villa on the West Cliff only a short walk from here. I have not been in a sociable frame of mind, but Florence persuaded me, and I’m glad that I acquiesced.

  The evening began with a glass of port in Dr Agar’s library. His large collection of books included not only the usual works of history, poetry and romance, but also a considerable number of works devoted to folklore and the occult. He took us on a tour of the room, pausing now and then to slide a volume from the shelf and pass it to me to peruse. His eagerness spoke, I thought, of the want of sophisticated society that those who live in provinces must suffer. Florence, in her charming manner, drew us away from the shelves and the conversation in which we had become absorbed. He turned his attention all to her, as men are wont to do, and patiently answered her enquiries. He has led a fascinating life, serving as ship’s doctor on voyages to every corner of the globe, as well as spending some years as chief surgeon in the Asylum at Caterham. Despite being in his fifties, he has never married. ‘Some men,’ he said with a hint of sadness, ‘are simply not made for such things.’ When Florence asked why he had settled in Whitby he deflected the question by asking instead what had drawn us here. Before either of us had the chance to answer, a housekeeper entered and informed us that dinner would be served. We then removed to a panelled salon decorated by paintings and artefacts accumulated on Dr Agar’s travels. A great fire roared in the hearth.

  Dr Agar was a generous host and our glasses were never permitted to empty. So diverting was his conversation that I barely noticed the dishes we were served, but I am certain I ate with an appetite that has been lacking in recent days. It was only when the meal was over, and our tongues had been loosened by wine that our talk returned to the subject of our present domicile. Whitby, Dr Agar informed us, was a very singular town. ‘There is,’ he said, ‘a dark thread running through the history of this place.’ He then glanced towards Florence and said that some topics were not suitable for such congenial company. Florence assured him that there was no subject that need be debarred from her ears, but nevertheless insisted that, due to the hour, we must presume on his hospitality no further. Dr Agar nodded his assent. He then, under the pretext of showing her
a painting, drew Florence away, while I warmed my buttocks at the fire and finished the cigar I was smoking. When he returned he pressed a number of volumes into my hands, promising that he was sure they would be of interest to me, and with that we made our departure. It was long past midnight when we stepped out. The sky was clear and the waning moon was a crisp crescent, unfettered by clouds. Florence remarked on how fortunate we had been to make Dr Agar’s acquaintance and I heartily agreed. Across the harbour the silhouette of the Abbey stood sentry over the town, but I averted my eyes from it, to thus eschew any unsolicited visions. The streets were silent, other than for the distant yowling of a hound. As we walked the short distance to Royal Crescent, however, I sensed that we were not alone and felt the familiar creeping sensation on my scalp. For fear of alarming Florence I neither gave voice to my feeling, nor so much as glanced over my shoulder. Instead I remarked on the chill of the night air and quickened our pace so that we might we regain our rooms with alacrity.

  I had thought to look over the volumes which the good doctor has so kindly lent me, but a great torpor has come over me. I must lay down my pen and welcome it, as sleep has not come easily to me these last days.

  ***

  Letter from Florence Stoker to Dr Andrew Billington, August 25th 1890

  Dearest Andrew,

  I cannot think how to repay you. Yesterday we were welcomed into the home of Dr Agar, and a kindlier, more fascinating gentleman we could not wished to have met. We spent the evening in most stimulating conversation, with no hint of our true purpose. Before we took our leave, he found a pretext to draw me away to another room, where he gave me his impressions. Bram, he said, was unquestionably in a restive state of mind (over dinner he had frequently interjected with bizarre remarks, made a propos of nothing), but the doctor was of the opinion that exercise and a general avoidance of sensation and excitement would prove adequate remedy. He gave me a powder which I could administer without Bram’s knowledge, and this I did on our return to our rooms. Bram is now sleeping with a tranquillity that he has not known since we arrived here. I am so greatly reassured. I know that you would not wish any recompense for this service you have done me, but please know, dear Andrew, that I am in your debt.

  With deepest gratitude,

  Florence

  ***

  Extract from the journal of Bram Stoker

  Whitby, August 25th 1890

  I awoke this morning feeling quite restored in energy and humour. For the first time in many weeks, my sleep was undisturbed by unwelcome visions. Such was the depth of my slumber that I missed breakfast. What a fine fellow John Agar is to have produced this effect. And what captivating company he is. I must renew my acquaintance with him at the earliest opportunity. This afternoon Florence and I took a walk along the sands to Runswick, where we took some simple fare at an Inn, surrounded by fishermen with hands and faces as gnarled as driftwood. Their talk was all of the sea and those it has taken. Florence was in good spirits, which pleased me as she has lately been in uncharacteristically melancholy humour. She confessed that she has been concerned about my health and seemed relieved when I admitted that I had not felt quite myself. We discussed our evening with Dr Agar and agreed that we had been fortunate to find such congenial society in a backwater like Whitby. It was only then, as we looked out across the bay, that I recalled the phrase he had used at the conclusion of the evening.

  […]

  Later

  I have begun I believe to unravel the dark thread of which Dr Agar spoke. Like the loose thread of a hem, one cannot help but tug at it, irrespective that in so doing one may destroy the garment. Florence and I dined at home in companionable silence, fatigued after our trek along the sands. Afterwards, she kissed me on the forehead and made me promise not to be long in following her to bed.

  I turned to the books Dr Agar had lent me. The weightiest of these was The History of Whitby and of Whitby Abbey by Lionel Charlton, dating from 1777. As I turned the pages I discovered that certain passages in this and the other volumes had been annotated by Dr Agar or some previous owner. I shall here summarise my findings, in the hope that in committing them to paper I might expose the fallacy of the disturbing conclusions to which they point.

  The great Abbey of Whitby was established in the seventh century by St Hild, a nun who – in a similar way to our own St Patrick – is said to have driven the snakes which infested the surrounding area from the very cliffs along which I had walked on my first evening here. St Hild was herself bitten by an adder, but she was inexplicably unharmed, save for two small lumps on her arm. Local superstition has it that this driving away of the snakes manifested itself in the frequency of the coiled ammonites found on the cliffs and shores here and sold as charms to ward off evil.

  By the twelfth century a ritual termed the Penny Hedge ceremony had arisen in these parts. On the eve of Ascension Day, townspeople cut wooden stakes and erect a fence along the shoreline, shouting Out on ye, Out on ye. The origins of this tradition are said to lie in the accidental killing of a hermit-monk by huntsmen, after a boar they were pursuing ran into his hut in the vicinity of the Abbey. This implausible story is dismissed by Mr Charlton as no more than ‘a fiction’, but if one construes that this killing was neither accidental nor that its victim was an innocent monk, but was instead a more sinister type of being, it requires no great leap of the imagination to see why it might have given rise to a ritual involving the cutting and driving of wooden stakes.

  The thread continues. In the thirteenth century a man called Thomas Chaloner discovered the cliffs of Whitby to be rich not only in ammonites but also in Alum, a valuable commodity in the production of dyes and curing of leather. At that time, the Pope held a monopoly over the trade in Alum, and Chaloner, not having the competence to manufacture it himself, travelled to Italy and induced two of the Pope’s men to travel in secret with him to England to set up an Alum works. These men, it is written, were transported in casks, but the subterfuge was discovered and the Pope issued a curse on the three of such ferocity and length that a portion of it is worth recording here:

  May they be cursed in living and in dying, in eating and in drinking, in being hungry and in being thirsty, in fasting and in sleeping, in slumbering and in waking, in walking and in standing, in sitting and in lying, in working and in resting, in pissing and in shitting, in sweating and in blood-letting. May the Son of the living God, with all the glory of his majesty, curse them; and may heaven, with all the powers which move therein, rise up against them to damn them, unless they shall repent, and make proper satisfaction for this their crime.

  While I cannot speak to the importance of the Alum industry to the Pope’s empire, his fury at this loss of two mere artisans seems wildly excessive. The cause of his great ire goes unmentioned in the curse, but two details lead me to believe that Chaloner’s plot involved something more sinister than the manufacture of Alum: first, the men were said to be transported in casks – there is but one creature which, requiring the sustenance of the soil of its native land, would necessitate such an extraordinary means of conveyance. And, second, that the Pope is moved to curse them in their ‘blood-letting’. Could there be a clearer indication of the true nature of these alleged artisans?

  Having tugged at this thread, I cannot fail to reach the conclusion that this tranquil place is no less than a portal; a gateway to these islands for those shape-shifting blood-suckers designated around the globe as Strigoi, Estries, Jiangshi or Vampyres.

  It then struck me quite forcibly that it was not the creature I encountered at the Abbey that had followed me here, but I that had followed him. And that, furthermore, it was conceivable that it was not he that was my shadow, but I that was his.

  ***

  Letter from Florence Stoker to Dr Andrew Billington, August 26th 1890

  Dear Andrew,

  I write in great distress. Bram, I fear, has quite lost his senses. He was awake all night with some books lent to him by Dr Agar, and this morni
ng has been raving unintelligibly about adders, ammonites and various creatures of the night. Of course, I do not know the medical terms, but he seems to be not in possession of his reason. I ran at first to Dr Agar’s villa, but despite my pleas, his housekeeper insisted that he was asleep and could on no account be disturbed. Not knowing where else to turn, I have packed up our belongings and had them sent to the station. We shall return to London this very night. I fear this place has had a most unnatural effect on Bram’s state of mind and can only hope that the leaving of it will restore him to me.

  I beg that you might find time to call on us at the earliest opportunity.

  Yours,

  Florence

  ***

  Extract from the journal of Bram Stoker

  Whitby, August 26th 1890

  When I set down my pen last night, I had no thought for sleep. I set out first for the harbour and then through the narrow streets which lead to the steps of St Mary’s. Knowledge is the enemy of fear, and the insight I had gained had dissipated the terror I felt on my first evening here. I walked briskly, like a man unburdened, but as I approached the steps the old creeping sensation came over me once more. My scalp tingled and a current ran down my spine. I felt a weakening in my legs which brought to mind the paralysis that afflicted the first years of my existence on this planet. My mind was unaffected, however. My plan was to seek out the Devilish creature and through confronting him, somehow make myself his master. I passed the Black Horse Inn, where I had once or twice taken an ale and listened to the stories of the locals, and the little shops selling Whitby jet and ammonites to tourists. All was silent. The clock on the church tower showed three o’clock. As I began my ascent to the cemetery I felt a presence by my side. I carried on, feigning an indifference I did not feel. A figure was by my side, dressed I could perceive from the corner of my eye all in black. Then it spoke: ‘It is decidedly late for a living soul to be abroad at night.’