by J. S. Barnes
I took another long sip. I was thinking hard.
‘Already you perceive possibilities, Mr Salter. I can see that you do. Why, yes. The old energy is visible once again in your eyes.’
‘Maybe, my lord. Or at least… yes… I can see where I might begin.’
MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
16 November. We have settled now into something like a routine which, if not precisely agreeable, is nonetheless sufficient to steer the ship of our family through these arduous times.
Miss Dowell has proved to be something of an angel in human form, a tender nursemaid who has become quite devoted to the Professor. She begins and ends her days by the Dutchman’s side and she sleeps in the room adjacent to his lest he should, at long last, awaken. In all this she is unflagging and makes not the slightest suggestion of any complaint. Whatever Jack is paying her, it cannot possibly be half so much as she deserves.
The Professor himself sleeps on, drifting, I fear, ever farther from us and nearer to the undiscovered country. Only occasionally – in the fierceness of his beetling brows or in that benevolent smile which passes sometimes fleetingly across his lips – do I glimpse anything at all of the man whom I used to know and admire. Otherwise, he is fading still, passing from us in sad instalments. Our duty is to protect him until the end as once he shielded us and led us all together into battle.
So have our recent days been spent, in watchful care. Jonathan has been kept busy by his work although I think that this business has affected him more than he might like to admit. It has stirred old and unspoken memories. We have reached a point in our marriage at which sustained familiarity may have rendered necessary the revivification of certain now-buried aspects. I have tried to talk to Jonathan of these concerns, yet he hides in his solicitor’s duties or else in the comfort of wine. This morning I said to him that if he will not confide in me then he ought at least to unburden himself in some diary or journal as he did once long ago. He said only that he would consider such a course of action. We all need some distraction. I hope that Arthur and Carrie will visit with us soon, and Jack too, although his practice seems now to absorb almost all of his time.
It is, however, Quincey for whom most of my concern is presently reserved. He remains with us, still free from his schoolwork on compassionate grounds. I know how devoted he was to the Professor, who was a grandfather to him in all but blood. Yet the boy seems remote.
He spends hours by Van Helsing’s side as if the sheer fact of his presence might serve to heal the patient. When not in the sickroom he has taken to walking the grounds alone. In the company of Miss Dowell, he seems all but overcome with shyness, his face stained with scarlet. I am given to understand that all of this is common enough in boys of his age, yet there are moments in his silent observation when, although I do not care to admit it, he makes me almost nervous.
Motherhood is a most curious experience, about which no woman whom I have ever known sufficiently well as to even approach the discussion of such matters, has ever felt herself to be truly prepared. There are such changes, both external and also within, in the depths of one’s emotions.
After Quincey was born, the bleeding seemed so very prolonged. Even the physicians were startled at its persistence.
They always say, the wise women and the old mothers and those who have no longer any daily contact with their progeny, that one feels love from the moment of birth, that one is somehow filled up with it, to a hitherto undreamed-of degree, like a chalice filled to overflowing. There is in this much truth but, somehow, not quite as much as I would once have hoped.
It is normal enough, I suppose, that one may not always like one’s children. Yet is it ever to be considered natural that one might, in one’s darkest moments, come actively to fear them?
LETTER FROM SARAH-ANN DOWELL TO THOM CAWLEY
17 November
Dearest Thom,
Here is a letter as I promised you I would write when we parted. I hope you will keep your end of our bargain and write to me too. I think of you often, dear Thom, and of the future we’ve talked of. I hold you in my heart like I hope you hold me in yours. I suppose you ache for me as I do for you. How long it has been since we were alone!
Now I must write a few lines on my news. I am safely arrived at the house of Dr Seward’s friends, Mr and Mrs Harker. The place is big and lonely. Far from the village, it is surrounded by fields and trees. Though I am pleased to have been set free by the doctor, for (as you know) he always looked at me the same way a cook looks at the best joint of meat, this new arrangement is almost as strange. The patient is a Dutchman, very ill and not bound long for this world. He sleeps always and is easy enough to tend to.
The head of the household is a stern fellow who I hardly see. He seems troubled, for he was (so I believe) much loved by the dying man. He drinks too. I can smell it on his breath. Smell it like I once smelled it on my father but how as I never smell it now, dear Thom, on yours.
His wife is very kind to me and says as she is grateful for my arrival. She sometimes seems doubtful and I have even seen her hide from my approach in other rooms and wait till I have passed before she cares to emerge. And then there is their son: Quincey. He is but lately turned twelve years old but he seems so grave in his manner that he might be a deal older. He has noticed me and that I do not like. He looks at me with a hunger in his eyes which he does not yet completely understand. But it is a hunger all the same. He stares when his parents are not with him. I admit it puts me out of sorts. Sometimes it is even as though he looks at me with the lechery of an old man and not with the confusion of boyhood at all.
Do write soon, dear Thom, and tell me you is well, working hard at the shop and keeping out of trouble.
I love you and I miss you. All my kisses,
Sarah-Ann
LETTER FROM LORD ARTHUR GODALMING TO MINA HARKER
18 November
Dear Mina,
I hope that all is as well as can be expected at the Harker home. I met Jack in town some days ago, who told me of the Professor’s sad lack of progress. Might Carrie and I pay you a visit soon? The twenty-first would be ideal for the two of us if it is also agreeable to you. We would see you all again after that sadness which truncated our last visitation and I should like once more to hold that noble Dutchman’s hand and to thank him for the good that he has wrought.
In that spirit, we are still as we ever were, a crew of light with shared responsibility, each for the other. It is my understanding that Jack is paying for the services of a nursemaid. It would be our privilege if you would permit Carrie and me to account for all those further incidental expenses which are bound to arise as a consequence of Van Helsing remaining in your care.
I do hope that we shall see you soon. Carrie wishes in particular to speak to you. Her condition is a delicate one and I know that there is much that she longs to ask you concerning the mysteries of new motherhood. She is finding the transition more difficult and considerably more painful than she had imagined.
I remain, your very good friend,
Art
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM
19 November. Three days! Has it truly been three days now? Or four?
Four. Yes. Is that correct? I think that, surely, it must be. Four days, since last I committed my thoughts to paper. Three – perhaps – since we have been trapped in this dreadful place, prisoners in an unending nightmare.
I write in an agony of desperation and despair, surrounded by horror and lost in a miasma of hopelessness. Time has no order here. It defies, wilfully and with contempt, the natural way of things.
From the last page of my diary I see that I described our encampment and that weird, half-glimpsed congress between Ileana and Mr Shone. What I wrote then may seem strange enough – fraught with confusion and fretful desire – yet my pronouncements are, I know it, those of a still sane man, albeit one who has been weak and foolish. But these fresh scribblings, if ever they be read by any living per
son, must seem nothing less than the ravings of a Bedlamite.
I feel all but certain that I shall die here, lost in this place of madness and disease. Yet perhaps these final lines of mine will one day be discovered and the full truth known or guessed. Might this ragged testament not even perform some useful public service, to act as a caution for the unwary? Might it not, if there be any justice, provide at last the necessary justification for this infested edifice to be burned to the ground?
But I should put things in order. Yes, I should strive to forge some sense from this awful, whirling chaos. I must urge myself to write the truth, even while my dearest friend in all creation screams and wails by my side.
* * *
Our hike through the Carpathian Mountains was arduous and long. Gabriel, quite naturally, fared better than I for he is a stronger, younger and more supple man. Yet even he, as we ascended and ascended, was seen often to shine with perspiration and to breathe laboriously. On four separate occasions, I even saw his hands shake at the prolonged and unstinting nature of our ordeal. Often I wished to stop and endeavour to recuperate but I was in this granted by our guide not the slightest quarter. Indeed, Ileana forced us onwards as we wound towards the summit. She seemed tireless, inexhaustible, and – it might as well now be admitted frankly – something more than human.
I do not know how long it took, that terrible climb. Did we pitch camp for one night? Two? All to me is murky and unclear, as swirling and treacherous as mist. Yet somehow I can see us – in my mind’s eye – three puny pilgrims ascending the peaks.
At last – after who knows how long – we reached the Borgo Pass. From here lay before us only more climbing, still steeper and more harsh than before. We had no choice but to go on, to go higher still and to move ever upwards.
Once I laid a hand upon the shoulder of my friend. I know not from where I gleaned the courage yet I found it within me to say: ‘Gabriel? Please. Must we? There is still time, is there not, to turn around? To go back to civilisation.’
He did not look at me or slow his pace. His voice, when he spoke, was oddly light and even approximated cheerfulness. ‘Oh, but it’s too late. Have you not yet realised, Maurice? It’s far too late now for any of us.’
I said nothing but only sighed, dropped back and lagged behind. In pain, and weary as I was, I still followed, caught up in the irresistible field of his gravity.
At long last we reached a plateau. The mountains still rose on either side of us, and I felt as though we were as the smallest, squirming life in the midst of that range. Nonetheless, there was a palpable levelling out as well as a sense that we were again in a place that might at least be habitable, if far from desirable.
In the distance, we saw a vast and ruined structure: a great courtyard, and beyond it the tumbledown turrets of an ancient castle, stark against the horizon.
We stopped for a moment, so that we might savour the occasion.
‘It is almost being upon us now,’ said Ileana, ‘the castle of the king.’
As she spoke, it began to snow, gently at first, then with increasing urgency. Most unexpectedly of all, the scene about us seemed suddenly beautiful – as though we had stepped not upon a desolate elevation in the depths of a forsaken country but rather into some old and elegant painting, as though we were moving into a panorama drawn from myth. Without feeling the need to say more, the three of us walked on, yielding without question to our destiny.
I have no wish to write – not here and not now – of what we discovered in that dreadful place, in the castle which had been, for generations, inhabited by the line of the dragon. I have no wish to write of what we found in that dank courtyard, nor even less of what we saw within, in the labyrinth of those filthy, echoing hallways, in those long-abandoned banqueting rooms which smelled of ancient smoke and ashes, of the bats which flew up at our approach or of the spiders that lingered too long in the light and seemed to me almost as big as fists. No, I shall say nothing either of the library with its odd English books, all of them horribly moist with fungus. The London Directory. The lists of the Navy. Whitaker’s Almanack. It was as though the present were in some fashion the subject of mockery from the past.
Nor can I be persuaded to describe in any detail those empty – yet somehow still resonant – crypts beneath the upper levels, in which the memory of death was everywhere, in which we heard the rustling of rats and other vermin. And where we heard what was assuredly – but impossibly – something like laughter in the dark.
As to what occurred after the hours of our initial exploration, I cannot, if truth be told, now recollect each individual incident. Time, as I have said, is not honest here and I am granted only flashes of what occurred. This is what I can recall.
Something falling, some shadow, over us.
The smile of Ileana and the cries of Gabriel. The look upon his face as he clapped his hands like a child.
Then, the letting of blood.
Her teeth. Her sharp white teeth.
Something which befell me, of great pain and simultaneous ecstasy.
Something pressed to my lips – a silver cup, a vessel of antiquity, an unholy Grail – from which I was forced to drink.
Burning, burning in my throat. The sensation of something starting to unfurl within me, something old and hungry.
The howling of wolves, the children of the night, so much closer than before, as I lay, suffering, upon the ground.
A shout – of mingled triumph and pain – from Shone.
* * *
Did we descend, all of us, into a fever? Into some nervous attack? Might this explain our present predicament? Surely it must be so. For to countenance anything else would to be invite absolute insanity.
Less than one hour ago I regained consciousness to find myself in an old, four-poster bed in a chamber in the castle, feeling more fully awake than I have for too long. Of Ileana there is now no sign. She has left us, I think. What her true purpose may have been in bringing us to this evil relic I cannot and dare not contemplate. As for Gabriel, my once-beautiful, once-perfect, once-angelic boy there is only a husk, an echo of what he was.
For I woke, less than an hour ago, to find him beside me, groaning in pain, his hands and face covered with blood and offal. I cannot coax him to speak. He is driven mad, I think, or at least he has ventured as near to that precipice as any man might go.
Something has been done to him. Some terrible wound. Some outrage.
Dear God, but his left eye has been removed! Now a gory socket gazes sightlessly out. He is frantic with agony. He seems not to know me. His whinnies of terror rise high in these uncaring mountains to mingle with the dreadful shrieks of the wolves.
What is to become of us now? What?
How blissfully easy it would be for the two of us – the actor and the one-eyed man – to fall together into insanity and death.
Jesus of Nazareth, if you have the slightest shred of reality, I call upon you now to save us!
Or the other – the Fallen One – if you will rescue us, then I am yours.
LETTER FROM ARNOLD SALTER TO CECIL CARNEHAN*
20 November
Dear Mr Carnehan – or Cecil (if I may),
I trust that this message finds you in fine spirits. Certainly, I hear nothing of you but good things. The Paper thrives under your guidance. The choices you have made might not have been those I would have selected were I still in your position, but that is the nature of change. The old must give way to the young. ’Tis the order of things and nothing to be scared of.
Though let it not be forgotten by the newer generation that those of us who have gone before and have yet to pick out a tombstone, may still have a store of well-earned wisdom to share.
With this in mind, I wonder if I could visit you soon (at your convenience)? Retirement suits me well enough but I wish to bring a proposition. I trust you will indulge an ‘old dog’ in this request.
I look forward to your prompt response.†
Yours,
Salter
* Deputy editor of The Pall Mall Gazette 1901–1904.
† I have been unable to find any trace of a response from Carnehan. I wonder if one was never sent and that Salter, tired of waiting, simply presented himself at the younger man’s office. Such an act would have been altogether in character.
MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
21 November. I am so very tired, yet I know that I must write at least a few lines before bed.
Tonight, Arthur and Carrie Godalming paid us a visit. Art spent some considerable time alone with the Professor. He emerged from his vigil looking pale, forlorn and very much older than his years. He said little save to remark that he would tell Jack, with some measure of urgency, to visit us again at his earliest convenience.
We ate supper together. It was agreeable enough, though Quincey remained all but silent throughout. Sarah-Ann was invited but did not join us, wishing instead, she said, to attend to some correspondence of a personal nature. I suspect that she has a sweetheart to whom she writes, no doubt staining the pages with tears while declaring her deathless love. How well I remember the earliest days of our courtship, when so sharp was the desire to communicate with one’s beloved that it was all but a need. Not, of course, that one would ever be desirous of living the whole of one’s life at quite so heated a pitch!
After supper, as Quincey went to bed and the men retired to smoke, I took dear Carrie aside and did my best, as her husband had requested, to speak to her. Poor thing – she should be so excited at their news yet she seems positively cast down by the prospect of motherhood. I asked her why she felt as she did. Since she is young and healthy and in an excellent position, the reverse ought to be the case. She gave me a curious look and in reply would say only this: ‘I am so fearful, my dear. I am so awfully afraid.’