by Michael West
My mother was a remarkable woman — strong-minded, ambitious, proud, a writer — she hoped that I, too, might one day become a person of letters — a visitor to workhouses for wayward and indigent girls, and above, she was a proponent of women’s rights — much like her close friend, the mother of Oscar Wilde. I sincerely believe that, were it not for her kind ministrations on my behalf, I might have surrendered to the illnesses that plagued my early years. But she gave me strength and a sense of self-worth, and for that alone I shall always cherish her memory.
When I became of college age and was accepted at Trinity on an athletic scholarship — you would not know it to look at this pathetic body now, but there was a time when I was a champion. I was a record breaker, in my day … and, I must admit, I gained a reputation among the members of my class for a somewhat exaggerated masculinity — some would even call it polemical. But I assure you that I was never less than chivalric toward the ladies with whom I kept company. I often wonder now if my way with the ladies back then is not the reason I am being punished in my final days with a wife so distant and frigid I might as well be wed to a corpse.
In 1871 I graduated with honours in science — Pure Mathematics, which enabled me to accept a civil service position at Dublin Castle. That same year I began to review theatrical positions in Dublin, and in 1876 I was privileged to review Sir Henry Irving’s magnificent performance in “Hamlet.” Shortly thereafter, we became great friends — or so I thought.
The great actor is a strange beast, indeed, Mr. Fort, for his ego is such that it requires — nay, demands — constant feeding. Sir Henry was much like a child in that way. He took more of my friendship than he ever did return, but I was simply too awestruck by the man’s genius to take notice of this.
I became his stage manager when he took over management of the Lyceum Theatre. That same year, I began to publish my writings — The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland. It was released to unanimous indifference from critics and the public alike. Sir Henry urged me to explore more ‘universal’ themes in my work, much as Shakespeare and Milton and Marlowe did in theirs. The man was simply hoping that his lap-dog assistant would, perhaps, compose a play in which he might once again take center stage and be the focus of attention … but I digress.
I served Sir Henry well and loyally over the years. His opinion of my writing remained, as always, dismissive … until I wrote Dracula. On this, he at last expressed an opinion. ‘It is absolute, pandering rubbish,’ he said. Still, in ‘reward’ for my many years of service and friendship to him, he agreed to allow me to stage a dramatic reading of the novel before its release from the publisher.
The novel was, as I’m sure you know, quite dense, and so several long, sleepless editing sessions were required in order to make the work an acceptable length for theatrical presentation. During this period in the latter part of 1896, I insisted on being able to rehearse with a cast so as to determine the success of my editing process. Sir Henry would not allow his personal company of actors to be ‘inconvenienced’ — his word — with a ‘work in progress,’ and so left it up to me to assemble a cast of unknowns with whom to rehearse the piece. It took me several weeks, but at last I had my cast — with the exception of an acceptable actor to portray Abraham van Helsing. But I shall come to that.
You need to understand that, during this period of intense concentration, the character of Count Dracula became even more alive to me than he was during the years of research it took to create him and write the novel. He was so alive to me, in fact, that I often found myself talking with him as I would stagger home nights after hours of emotionally draining rehearsal. ‘My dear Count,’ I would say, ‘have I lost all perspective where you are concerned?’ I did this to relieve my anxiety: if the novel were not reduced to an acceptable three-hour theatrical entertainment, Sir Henry made it quite clear to me that he would not permit me to present the work to the public … not in his precious theatre. And so the Count became my constant companion, sir, my father-confessor, my only true friend.
I began to realize that they only way for the work to be made right, it was necessary for me to make the cast believe in the Count as fiercely as did I. I spoke to them one night of my imaginary conversations with the Count, and though they were at first amused, they came to understand that my dedication to the project was unflappable. I have to say, they were far more accommodating to me than Sir Henry’s personal players would ever be with him; being unknowns, there were no egos to soothe or feed. Until the last rehearsal, it was the purest, most enjoyable theatrical experience of my life.
Soon, all of the cast were holding conversations with the Count. I recall encountering the actress who portrayed Mina Murray one night during a break in the rehearsal: I found off-stage left, sitting with her book, eyes closed, whispering, ‘Why does someone as remarkable as you, dear Count, have to be so very, very wicked?’ It moved me, sir, to hear that — and not only from her, but from all of the cast members. Oh, the stories I could tell you of their recountings of their conversations with the Count. They came to believe in his existence as much as I.
Remember: emotions resonate. They seethe, trapped, waiting for release, waiting to be given form.
The deadline for my final draft of the performance text was rapidly approaching, and still I had not found an actor who I felt would adequately convey the essence of Van Helsing. It may seem a somewhat selfish point, but the other actors had so refined their vocal interpretations of my characters, had given them such life, that to bring in an actor who would less than their equal would have been an insult to them.
Then one evening, after having ended rehearsal early, I found myself in this area of Little Russell Street, and came upon this very bookshop. As I wandered among its many volumes, the proprietor took my aside and asked, ‘Are you Mr. Bram Stoker, author of After Sunset?’ ‘I am,’ I replied, seeing with some delight that he held a well-read copy of that very short story collection in his hands. ‘I am a great admirer of your stories,’ he said, offering the book to me, ‘and I would be honored if you would inscribe my copy.’
I took the book from him with thanks, and proceeded to uncap the pen he offered, but somehow I managed to cut the tip of my thumb in the process. I bled a little upon the first page — not enough to ruin it, but enough that it could not be easily or neatly wiped away. ‘Please do not worry yourself,’ said the proprietor to me as I signed my name to the title. ‘It can be taken care of.’
After I returned the volume to him, he took it behind the counter and knelt down behind a shelf of books. A few moments later he emerged and showed me — much to my surprise — that the blood had been successfully removed from the title paper. I noticed — but did not think much of — his licking his lips several times after emerging from behind the counter. ‘I must say, Mr. Stoker, that I am greatly anticipating the release of your new novel.’ ‘You may be one of the few persons in England who is,’ I replied, and we shared a jovial laugh at my remark.
Something about him seemed terribly familiar to me, and as I listened to his voice with its weary, sand-like quality, I came to realize that I was looking at my Van Helsing. I proceeded to tell the proprietor of my problem, and asked him if he would be willing to read the part of Van Helsing for my presentation to Sir Henry at the end of the week. He was deeply flattered, and of course accepted my offer.
When the time came for the rehearsal, I found him outside the theatre, nervously pacing by the performers’ entrance. ‘My dear fellow, we are all waiting,’ I said. When he said nothing in reply, I opened the door wider and said, ‘Please, come in and join us.’ He did so, and the rehearsal began.
It was the most magnificent reading of the novel I have ever witnessed. He captured not only Van Helsing’s weariness, but his near-mad drive to destroy Dracula, as well. His performance was a prism of compassion, fury, wariness, dedication, sadness, and strength. When it came time for his ‘This so sad hour’ speech, he had all of us transfixed. He wa
s Van Helsing.
Then, at the conclusion of the scene, he began to laugh.
It was the sound of an ancient crypt door being wrenched open.
The spell was immediately broken. ‘My dear fellow,’ I said to him. ‘May I inquire what you find so humorous about this very tragic scene?’
‘That you see it as tragic at all is what amuses me,’ he replied, only this time his voice was not that of either Van Helsing or the sandy-voiced proprietor I had met at the bookshop the previous day: it was the voice of Count Dracula — not only as I had heard it in my imaginary conversations with him, but as the others in the cast had heard it, as well. I looked upon all their faces and knew that this was the voice of the Count as we had come to believe it would sound.
Speak of damned places, Mr. Fort, and you speak, on some level, of belief. Emotions resonate. Electrons dance. Equations collapse and are replaced by newer, equally possible equations. Call it the collective unconscious or the hive mind of the masses, but the emotional charge had built and surged down the cumulative lines of our psyche and found not only focus but form.
He changed before our shocked eyes; from man to bat to wolf to rodent to owl to insect, then back again, then a hybrid of all creatures plus man — a sight so unspeakable I have never been able to bring myself to put its description onto paper for fear of being labeled mad.
Count Dracula rose up before us in all his dark, majestic, terrifying glory. ‘My thanks to all of you for our little talks at night,’ he said, smiling a lizard-grin and exposing his awful teeth. ‘I have searched for centuries for a proper form in which I could enter your world, and you have so thoughtfully provided one for me.’
We began to run for the doors, but he became shadow and beast and speed itself: none of the cast made it any farther than the stage-left dressing room entrance before he fell upon them and opened their veins with his teeth. His strength was super-human, his speed that of the wrath of God Himself — if indeed such a Being exists at all.
I huddled behind a stack of risers, listening to the terrified and soon-silenced screams of my cast as the Count fed on each and every one of them. After what seemed an eternity, he found my hiding place and lifted me up as easily as one would a newborn child.
Holding me by the throat, he glared at me with his glowing red eyes and said, ‘I wish to thank you personally, Mr. Stoker, for giving me life. But you have also made it necessary for the others who populated your novel to enter this world behind me, and so I must take my leave of you for now. Since I now know the ending of your story, I feel it is my duty to change it on this side … but you needn’t worry about further revising your manuscript. I think it will be satisfactory to have the world believe that I am a fictitious creation who was summarily dispensed with at the conclusion of your little melodrama.’
And with that, he released me, and disappeared into the night.
Shortly thereafter, the members of my cast rose to their feet, undead all, and made their way down into the basement of the theatre and, from there, into the sewers of the city. They are still there to this day. And I sorrow for what I unleashed upon them and the world. Dear God, how I sorrow.
-----
I sat in the darkness of the theatre in stunned silence for several minutes after Mr. Stoker finished telling his incredible tale. The man was obviously mad … but there still lingered in my mind a whispering doubt. And there was, after all, that unearthly wolf on the stage with him.
“How can I help your unbelief?” came a voice.
I had been staring at Mr. Stoker. His lips had not moved. I looked, then, at the wolf by his side.
It spoke again: “Your unbelief, Mr. Fort. How can I help it?”
The wolf moved forward, hunkered down as if to pounce, and at once became an army of rats that swarmed across the stage and into the orchestra pit and emerged in the aisle as the proprietor who had led me down here. “Does this help?” he asked of me.
I rose to my feet and began to frantically make my way over the seats toward what I believed to be the staircase I had descended earlier. My heart was pounding against my chest with such force I feared it would smash through my ribs and tissue.
The proprietor became several bats who quickly swooped down and around me, assaulting me with their wings. I fell to the floor and the bats collided in a flash of darkest shadow and became the proprietor again, only now he was much younger in appearance, taller, stronger.
Eternal.
“Look upon me and fear, Mr. Fort. For I am as real as you dread I am.”
He reached down and grabbed onto my jacket with one hand, lifting me off the floor with unnerving ease so that my feet dangled above the aisle like some marionette left hanging on a peg.
I could not take my eyes from his blood-red gaze.
“My biographer, my creator, wishes for his cast to be given their proper curtain call, the one denied them so many years ago.” He slammed me down into the nearest seat and held my there with one mighty hand on my shoulder.
“Nothing less than your most enthusiastic applause will ensure your safe exit from this place,” snarled Count Dracula in my ear.
An iron grate in the floor near the foot of the stage shifted with a nerve-wracking shriek and was cast aside by a hand that was more bone than flesh.
And the parade of the dead began.
How to describe what I saw? How to convey the pathetic, terrifying, sad, depraved sight which my eyes beheld?
Their flesh — what remained of it — had the color and texture of spoiled meat. Worms and other such creatures of filth oozed in and out of the holes in their faces where once their eyes had resided. The stench of death was sickly-sweet in the air. Some shambled, a few crawled, and one — a woman — had to be carried by another cast member because much of her lower torso was gone, leaving only dangling, tattered loops of decayed intestine which hung beneath her like a jellyfish’s stingers.
I wept at the sight of them, but I applauded them; oh, how I applauded!
And I was not alone in my efforts.
Surrounding me, each of them as decayed and pathetic as the sad creatures who were assembling on the stage before us, were all the characters from Stoker’s novel, all of them flesh and blood, all of them — thanks to the Count’s actions — now equally un-dead: here was Mina Murray and Jonathan Harker; there was Dr, Seward and Lucy, Lord Godalming and Quincey and every last character from the novel who had participated in Dracula’s destruction, only now they were the destroyed ones … even the great Abraham Van Helsing. All un-dead and applauding those whose portrayals and belief had brought them into this world and given them life — albeit briefly.
I became aware of several women clothed in white encircling me as I continued to applaud and the cast to take their individual bows.
The brides of Dracula surrounded me, caressed me, touched me with their lips and hands. My temperature rose in depraved want for them, and I applauded all the harder for it.
“My cast,” intoned Stoker from the stage, gesturing to each member of his troupe. “My fine cast, my dear friends.”
Dracula smiled and wiped something from one of his eyes. Looking at me, he smiled his awful, bloody grin and said, “I am moved, are you not the same?”
“I am,” I said, quite dizzy.
The applause from the audience grew deafening. Dracula parted his arms and became a giant man-bat thing with slick flesh. He flew above stage and proceeded to land gracefully in the center of the players.
“Let my brides pleasure you, Mr. Fort,” he bellowed above the noise in a voice part human and part beast, “and worry not, for they will not feed on you. You are our messenger now. Leave here, and tell the world, if you have the courage, that I am real, and that as long as men read my story, I shall never die. With the coming years and centuries, my story will be read by thousands, millions more, and each time the book is opened, each time a page is turned, I grow stronger and more eternal! Tell this to the world, sir, if you dare! For in the
centuries to come my followers will grow, they will read of me, go forth, and multiply, and there will come a night when the entire earth will awaken and pull in the sweet damned breath of the un-dead, and then I will be as I should have been from the very beginning: The true Prince of Night, the king of my kind! Go, then, and tell them, if you dare.”
One of his brides fell on her knees before me whilst another began to tear at my shirt.
The applause swelled as Dracula himself took a bow, and then I fell down into a dizzying pit of desire and darkness.
-----
When I regained consciousness, I found myself outside the Lyceum Theatre, some good distance from where I was staying.
I cannot say for certain how I came to arrive safely back at my rooms at Bedford Place, only that I did find my way back there and was at once taken by the arm and led to an office where I was given a stiff drink of whiskey while a constable was called to take my statement.
“Robbery and Assault” was the official explanation for my condition. I saw no reason to argue their conclusion.
The next day, no fewer than three bodies were discovered around London, the blood drained from their veins.
The next day, I discovered reports of several other deaths in Canada, The United States, and Germany.
I returned home soon after, and for the rest of my life continued to gather such stories of bloodless bodies.
I am now an old man and my time is short. It has taken me a lifetime to muster the courage to set this tale to paper. Whether or not you choose to believe this is a matter between you and your conscience. I can no longer say I neither believe nor disbelieve nothing. Belief or unbelief, the dark forces of the Universe will have their way, regardless.
At my window last night I beheld the countenance of Mr. Bram Stoker, himself among the un-dead now; beside him was his creation, the Count, and in his eyes was a promise: Soon.
I fear I may not be alive come morning.
Not that I would have lived that much longer, anyway.