by J. S. Barnes
Letter received with great relief and joy. Do come on seventeenth. Much to discuss and much I wish to ask you. All my love, C.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM
16 December. On the last occasion when I set down words in this modest diary of mine it was from a Roumanian hospital bed. How things change and shift; how events adopt the most beautifully strange of patterns. I pen these sentences in a Viennese bordello.
In spite of the unfamiliarity of the city, there is a sense in which I believe myself to be back once again where I belong: surrounded by the accoutrements of sin, luxuriating in the sensuous and the forbidden. Having survived the castle in the Carpathians (whatever the designs of the treacherous Ileana may have been) and to be once again at the side of Gabriel Shone, I ought by rights to feel only contentment and relief.
Yet, although superficial and transitory pleasure has been mine these last few weeks, any more abiding joy has waned like moonlight in the dawn. I feel a sense of burgeoning anxiety, a steady, rising fear which clings to me. It grows, this subtle vexation, insinuating itself within me, like ivy upon some ancient wall.
For a man who but lately declared himself to have discovered a grand new purpose, Gabriel, far from hurrying back to our homeland to pursue his stated destiny, has adopted a policy of leisure and carnal distraction.
Earlier, on the train, I asked him why his movements seemed now so languorous, when before he had spoken so loftily of his political ambitions, of his intention to take up his hereditary post in the Council of Athelstan. He only smiled, as if at a secret joke, then turned his face towards me, a face which somehow, according to the capricious laws of desire, seems only more striking as a result of that terrible damage which has been wrought upon it.
‘We have time yet. We cannot return to England till something passes from the world. A force that, even in abeyance, still exerts influence. We are exerting caution, at this stage in our plans. Be patient, Maurice. Once the gateway is clear we shall pass through it and then everything will happen very quickly indeed. Until then, we are permitted to move at a pace of our choosing. The time will come soon enough for work and for action. The demands upon us will be strenuous indeed. For now, why should we not rest and enjoy ourselves?’
He fixed his gaze upon me, his expression filled with a kind of promise. In all our acquaintance, he has been a man of rare persuasiveness and personal magnetism – so much so that even I fell immediately into line behind him, obedient as a mastiff.
I cannot leave him, nor can I go back or ahead of him. And so I sit and I wait and I wonder.
We have been in Vienna for a day and a night. Whereas Brasov and Bucharest are thick with the legacies of the past, Vienna is surely a city of the future. All here is sleek modernity. Youth is abroad upon every street and down every highway. Everything is change and flux and is reflective of new perceptions of the world. Curiously, and to my surprise, I like it not, preferring instead the shadowed avenues of the east, the barely tempered wildness of Roumania. Perhaps this new century is not for me – at least, not for long.
Our current abode, situated in the ancien quartier of this brash and thrusting settlement, is a little more redolent of days that have vanished, although, of course, it has of necessity the tinge of youth.
It was Gabriel who found the establishment, sniffing it out with the air of the knowledgeable wanderer. Tonight I found I could not take my pleasure, tired as I am and in occasional pain from my ordeal. He is next door while I write in this antechamber. Therein lies also another reason for my voluntary absence. Since Roumania, Mr Shone has acquired new appetites, those which twist the ordinary into something troublingly outré.
For he has come, this amiable Englishman, to like to watch, unmoving, as a boy before him opens a vein. Time and again have I seen it, this weird ritual. Shone looks on inscrutably, first as the blood pours and then is staunched, as the very stuff of life itself is unstoppered, decanted and enjoyed.
FROM THE DIARY OF ARNOLD SALTER
16 December. Down to the Embankment again, close to the selfsame patch where I almost put a full stop to my own obituary. This time I walked farther on, strolling into a much more prosperous stretch where the railing is secure and the Thames less of a menace.
Cool winter sunshine. The reflections on the river were almost pretty. I was there to meet my associate, Lord Tanglemere, though, for the purposes of necessary secrecy, we were not to greet one another or show by our expressions any familiarity or recognition.
We met by a pre-arranged point against the iron fence. Pedestrians swarmed everywhere – all the pageantry of London, from city men to skeevers, flower sellers to fine society ladies. The air was thick with the stink of the river and the disagreeable smell of our fellow human beings. Odd how detectable that reek still is, even when you are surrounded by folk of the better sort.
As expected, our encounter was brief but significant. He was waiting for me with his dog, the wolfhound, on a leash by his side. The animal sat upright, panting. I approached, ducking through a line of schoolboys and their clucking, ineffectual master. Coolly, I took up my position and gazed down at deep, fast-flowing waters. The noble lord, meanwhile, crouched beside his pet and made a display of rubbing the back of the beast. No passer-by took the slightest notice, no doubt mistaking us for a couple of weary but unacquainted old men.
Without looking up, Lord Tanglemere said expressionlessly: ‘I trust you are heartened by our progress.’
‘On the contrary, my lord,’ I said, staring fixedly at a tugboat on the far side of the river. ‘I am frustrated and disappointed.’
‘But you ought not to be. The piece in the Gazette concerning the unfortunate Lady Godalming was both striking and efficacious. It caused quite a stir. One hears much talk of it even now.’
‘Yet nothing since!’ I retorted. ‘In spite of repeated efforts to secure a pulpit I’ve heard nothing at all. That young pup Carnehan has responded to not one of my messages. He has neither seen fit to summon me nor to give me leave to speak again from the paper I used to know better than the back of my own right hand.’
‘I do sympathise,’ Tanglemere murmured. He stroked the animal’s back and cooed. The beast shuddered. ‘But such things cannot be rushed.’
‘And more than that,’ I said, getting into my stride now, ‘the way in which he is driving the Gazette in entirely the wrong b—y direction. His choices are dreadful – dunderheaded! He doesn’t understand his own audience. He’s never moved amongst them as I have.’
‘I did hear tell…’ The aristocrat craned his head upwards at the sky, as if examining the patterns of the clouds. ‘I did hear tell that the figures of circulation have, in fact, increased rather markedly under Mr Carnehan’s control.’
At this, I only swore, almost too quietly for anyone to hear.
‘Have patience,’ said Tanglemere. ‘Hubris is the prerogative of youth. It won’t be long now until your voice is heard once again all over this land.’
‘And then the Council takes control?’ I said, with what was almost certainly too great a degree of eagerness.
‘Eventually,’ said the lord, ‘if all goes according to plan.’
‘But when exactly?’ I asked. ‘And how, my lord? How?’
Tanglemere rose to his feet. His dog did the same. He tugged briskly on the leash, and together man and animal started to walk away. The lord called back to me over his shoulder in a manner which would have seemed brash in a younger fellow.
‘The fire has already been lit, Mr Salter. You need wait only for the flames to start to spread.’
And with that enigmatical remark, at the present time it seems I must be content.
MEMORANDUM FROM REVEREND T.P. OGDEN* TO DR R.J. HARRIS†
17 December
Headmaster,
I write in a state of some anxiety concerning a boy.
He is a first-former (Simeon House) named Quincey Harker. I instruct him in Theology. I wonder if you can place
him? He is a quiet and thoughtful child, rather watchful in his manner. You may, I fancy, more readily recall his mother, who has visited the school on several occasions and has about her a most striking manner and demeanour.
His name might also be familiar to you in consequence of his recent prolonged absence due to the illness of a family friend. The business was all most unorthodox. This ought not to surprise us, for, from what I have seen and heard, the Harkers are a most unorthodox group of people.
Yet this alone is not why I write to you today. The issue is graver still.
While Master Harker was absent from these halls I and others sent to him much of that work which he missed while he was keeping vigil by the bedside of this aged greybeard. Quincey is considerably behind in his labours and much overdue, although, to give the boy all credit, he is shewing signs of considerable industry in order to keep pace.
Yet the essay that he wrote for me while in absentia is perhaps the most troubling composition I have read in almost two decades as a schoolmaster. Its subject was to describe and to trace the origins of a ritual in our Christian tradition. Most of the boys, quite naturally, elected to write upon the sacrament of Holy Communion, others upon Baptism and others still (Cairncross, of course, and his partner-in-crime Archibald minor) with a little too much relish upon the possibilities of marriage. Harker, however, wrote something very different, a choice that was more than merely idiosyncratic (a trait which, in any case, I tend to discourage) and struck me instead as a matter of profound disturbance.
Headmaster, the boy wrote his disquisition upon no less a subject than the Rite of Strigoi.
It may be that you are unfamiliar with this dreadful ceremony. Indeed, I hope that you are.
Suffice it to say that it is a ritual of rare and most unChristian ferocity. It is meant to remove the last portion of a soul from the body of one who has, since birth, been used as a vessel to prolong life after death. The ritual is the final act in a vile resurrection. It restores a ghoul to the whole of its strength and results in the absolute destruction of the host.
Naturally, you and I well know such folk beliefs to be nothing more than rank superstition and foolish irrationality. There is something thoroughly absurd in the survival of these antique and pagan creeds into our century. Nonetheless, I find it most sinister that the Harker boy should be so drawn to such macabre topics. He wrote, Headmaster, with such fervour upon the subject, with an almost wild enthusiasm.**
I cannot imagine where he first stumbled across such information. What manner of library does his father possess? For there is no book in these halls which might have guided him in such a profane direction. He is at present still more sulky than before and thus will not easily be drawn.
I think in this matter that we must tread carefully. I would be most grateful, Headmaster, for instructions on how best to proceed.
Yours,
T.P.O.
* Chaplain of Somerton School, 1899–1912
† Headmaster of Somerton School, 1878–1905
** How odd it is to hear at such a distance of my own peculiar behaviour as a boy. So many changes have taken place since that it is much like reading of the actions of another, quite different person. This is, I suppose, in part true.
MEMORANDUM FROM DR R.J. HARRIS TO REVEREND T.P. OGDEN
17 December
Thank you for your memorandum of this morning.
This ‘Rite of Strigoi’ is not known to me. Harker, however, is. As you surmised, I find that I can most readily recall his mother. I shall speak to the boy forthwith. Let it not be forgotten that we are to these children moral guardians as much as we are scholastic guides.
JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
17 December. With Quincey returned to school and Mina gone to the Holmwoods, I find myself somewhat at a loss. Such is the paradox of the married man: when one is in the bosom of one’s family, one craves only sanctuary and individual space, but when they are away one misses them with unexpected fire.
When I saw off my wife this morning, upon the train to London, where she will pick up the branch line to Godalming, she confessed herself much concerned as to the wellbeing of poor Carrie. I think that she sees in her – as, of course, did Arthur – something of a surrogate for the late Lucy Westenra. The recent article in the Gazette has scarcely set her mind at rest upon this and other questions. Although I am not certain that I truly believe it to be so, I assured her nonetheless that all would yet be well.
Lady Godalming is a fragile and, I have always thought, rather a complicated woman. Yet she has the attention of Arthur and Jack as well as the considerable resources of the family fortune. Mina agreed with me but tentatively and I could tell that neither of us was wholly persuaded by the argument.
A weak smile, a passionless kiss upon my cheek and, amid much slamming of doors, clanking of machinery and voluminous clouds of steam, she was gone. The bulk of the day I spent in legal and professional business. For supper, feeling suddenly and most unusually eager to be amongst other people, I took myself to the inn in the village where I ate a serviceable pie and drank an abstemious pair of ales. I thought that it was rather pleasant to sit anonymously for a time amongst strangers and to think of nothing of any particular significance at all.
Nonetheless, guilt found me soon enough and I returned home. The house was still and silent. I went to the highest floor and sat beside the sad, recumbent figure of Van Helsing. How pale he seems. How frail. How profoundly reduced from the man I used to know.
I took his bony, liver-spotted hand in mine and clasped it tight. The only sound in that chamber of sickness was the heave of his breathing. I thought how greatly he would have hated this long indignity, how he would have chafed against these weeks of enforced silence.
The past rose up then and I felt a great sob surge through me. I stifled it as best I could but it left my lips as a kind of anguished sigh.
A moment later I heard footsteps by the door, a turning of the handle, and before I knew it, I saw before me Miss Sarah-Ann Dowell. As pretty as ever, she looked tired and sorrowful.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘I heard a sound and I suppose I wondered…’
‘Only me, I’m afraid.’ I tried a half-apologetic smile. It was, I am sure, the consequence of the alcohol that I had earlier imbibed, but as I spoke my throat and mouth felt dry. I swallowed uncomfortably.
She smiled. ‘It’s nice to see you, sir.’
I averted my eyes and looked down at the Professor. ‘His condition?’
‘Oh, quite unchanged, sir. No difference at all.’
‘Well, thank you. For your hard work. It is greatly appreciated, you know. By all of us. And also, I fancy, if only he could say so, by him.’
She blushed at this, then exhaled, rather miserably.
‘I hope you aren’t too unhappy here,’ I said. ‘Yours is a fine calling and I fear we have not been the best of hosts.’
‘Oh, you’ve been very kind to me, sir. I cannot say otherwise.’
‘And yet,’ I said, ‘I think there is some sadness in you.’
‘My sweetheart…’ she began, then immediately stopped the flow of her words. ‘I mean, that is to say, I’ve got some questions of a personal nature which weigh on my mind.’
For a little while a silence hung between us, before, conscious of something shifting, I said: ‘Tell me then. Tell me everything.’
An instant later, I was on my feet and she was in my arms, clinging to me and sobbing aloud and unburdening the whole of her heart.
DR SEWARD’S DIARY
(kept in phonograph)
18 December. I know, I know that I have been absent for too long from the tide of events. Yet this journal still fascinates me. More, I appreciate, than it ought.
I can feel it, rising in me. The power of obsession.
The new cipher is inexplicable and I can recognise only stray words. All I can see is the outline of how it was that a man might come to accept his own damnation.
<
br /> I think – yes, I think that the key to this new iteration of the code may lie with another. With an old ally of Renfield’s before his damnation. The old policeman named Martin Parlow.
I have no wish to abandon my friends or my responsibilities here. And yet I have to know the truth. I must know everything, if only to free myself from the python-grip of this awful need to understand.
Why should it matter, at so great a distance of time? The old monster is dead, after all, and his hapless slave gone to the great beyond before him. Everything is safely buried and covered over. Why should I be drawn to the snare, like some unwitting creature, by this most curious of books?
I have no answers except to say that this thing has me now. The only answer is to act like one who is lost and bewildered in a maze, to seek a path to the centre of the labyrinth so that escape might finally be realised.
With this in mind, would it be so very wrong of me to take a sabbatical from the world? To journey elsewhere? To find the truth about the diary, about Mr Renfield and the interconnection of the present with the past? I fear it must be done. I wish never to disappoint anyone at all. But I have a purpose now again, a true quest.
I shall leave this narrow room and seek out that which is hidden. I will find Parlow. I will know everything. And, then, at last, all the clamouring voices in my head will fall silent.
MEMORANDUM FROM DR R.J. HARRIS TO REVEREND T.P. OGDEN
19 December
Reverend,
Further to our correspondence concerning the Harker boy, I wanted to set your mind at rest. I am uncertain, however, if I can achieve this aim entirely.
I summoned the boy in question to my study yesterday. He presented himself before me at the appointed hour in an apparent spirit of utter meekness. He shewed neither surprise nor curiosity. There was no sign about him of fear or trepidation.