by Dacre Stoker
I walked a solid ten paces before he spoke these words, but when I stopped and turned back towards him I found him to be only a few feet behind me, even closer than before. There had been no clicks of the cane, no shuffling steps on the cobblestones; he was simply there at arm’s length. Although he was otherwise motionless, the red silk lining of his black cape danced along behind him, fluttering in little waves as if alive. There was no wind to speak of, not so much as a breeze, only the cool evening air, which seemed to become cooler still in his presence. The flickers of the cloak were the only evidence that he had moved at all.
The man grinned slightly, and I saw those teeth again, those god-awful teeth.
I pictured the torn neck of Appleyard as he was lying upon O’Cuiv’s bed, a wound that might have easily been inflicted by these teeth. In an instant, I pictured the man leaning over the body, his mouth tearing into flesh with the appetite of a savage beast. I shook this ugly image from my mind and returned my gaze to him, hoping the anxiety in my bones was not evident. “What is your friend’s name?” I asked the question, knowing the moment this man uttered the name Patrick O’Cuiv I would bolt off down the street at my fastest. I could see my house from here, the tall gables visible over the other rooftops, but that sanctuary seemed a desert away.
His smile widened and his head tilted again as if I asked the most profound of questions. When he finally spoke, the name that escaped his lips was not the one I expected. “Why, Ellen Crone, of course.”
My heart thudded, and although I attempted to conceal it, I have no doubt he registered my surprise at hearing this. Again, his eyes caught mine, and I found it difficult to turn away. The grip he had on me! As if he could reach into my thoughts with those eyes and extract whatever facts he wished, holding me there until finished. I was reminded of a snake charmer I once witnessed as a child. The man mesmerized a king cobra with nothing but his eyes and the movement of his head and body. He put the snake into a hypnotic state so strong he was able to pick it up and place the killer serpent inches from his face without fear of a bite. All the while, his eyes remained locked on the creature. I couldn’t help but wonder, if he looked away, even for a brief instant, would the spell have broken? Would the snake strike?
I wanted to look away.
I wanted to look away with all my heart and soul, but I simply could not. I stood perfectly immobile, as if this man gripped my head with both of his long, bony hands and held me at arm’s length, eye to eye.
“When did you last see Miss Crone?” he asked in that thick, smooth voice.
“Not since childhood,” I replied softly. The instant before the words left my lips, I told myself I would say I knew no such person. I intended to tell this man, this stranger to me, this hypnotic snake charmer, nothing. “She left when I was scarcely more than a boy.” The words flowed from my mouth as if I were in a dream state, an outside observer. I said this knowing I could say nothing else even if I wanted to. And I did want to. But I was no longer in control.
Oh, those eyes! Those horrid, godless eyes. They bore through me, piercing every inch of my soul with a blackness blacker than the blackest pitch. An itch erupted so deep within my skin it was as if ants were crawling over my bones. I wanted to run. I wanted to run so badly, yet my will held no power over my body; there was only this man somehow holding me inert and compelling me to speak against my every wish.
“If you had, you would tell me, correct?”
I heard these words not with my ears but my mind. I told him about the time I saw her at the sweets shop as a child, then again while at college, and finally I told him how I thought she was at the theater only days ago. When I finished, his lips twisted into the most fiendish grin, and the force with which he held me fell away. My body slackened and drooped, my muscles aching with exhaustion.
His hand went to my shoulder and squeezed it, almost a caring gesture but with enough pressure to induce pain. “I have not seen her in many years; a visit is overdue. Should you run into her again, you will give her my best, will you not?”
“But your name,” I heard myself say. “I do not know your name.”
At that, he released my shoulder and the grin returned. I could not help but look at those teeth, those savage teeth, glistening white, accentuated by dark red lips and his pale, vein-stenciled flesh. “You should hurry home; your wife needs you.”
He was gone then. I do not know if I lost time or he simply vanished, for after such an encounter even that crazy notion did not seem so far-fetched. One second he was standing there, mere inches from me, and the next there was no sign of him. I looked up and down the street to no avail. My house beckoned to me in the distance, and I welcomed the sight.
Again I ran.
I ran as fast as my tired legs would take me, and all the while I felt eyes on my back. I pushed through the door and closed it quickly behind me. The instant it shut, a heavy force thudded against the other side with enough strength to jostle the light fixtures in the room. I pulled the curtain aside from the window next to the door and witnessed a black dog, the largest dog I had ever seen. It crossed my yard and disappeared among the trees. The creature glared back at me only once before disappearing, its eyes a glowing red.
Upstairs, Emily cried out.
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
11 August 1868, 9:30 p.m.—I ran my hand over the soft velvet seat of my brother’s coach. “Thornley has done well for himself.”
Matilda studied the interior, too, her eyes drifting over the meticulously carved and polished mahogany, stained a beautiful chestnut brown.
As promised, Thornley had ordered the coach prepared quickly, and we were off to Clontarf with little delay. His driver had hitched a team of four horses for the trip, insisting it was no bother and would only improve our time. I also had observed him loading a shovel into the back of the coach; no doubt it was Thornley who had made the request for such a directive did not originate with Matilda or me. The shovel reminded me of the gruesomeness of the task at hand and I tried to shake the implication away, but it lingered. If Matilda harbored any concerns, she made no indication, appearing perfectly calm, devoting her time to writing, with the occasional glance out the window. There was little to view at this hour; most people were safely tucked away with their families behind closed doors. The coach rocked on thick springs and swayed from side to side like a boat. I found the motion to be rather comforting, although sleep escaped me. The anxiety burned deep within me, and it was all I could do to keep from jumping out of the coach and running alongside to burn off some of this energy.
As we passed the road to Artane Lodge, then Marino Crescent—the dignified Georgian row of houses—and number 15, where I was born, an overwhelming nostalgia washed over me. Although we still lived relatively close by, I rarely returned, for this place only generated memories of my illness, years in bed wondering if I would live to see the following day. Matilda, on the other hand, looked out with a fondness I simply did not share. Was this wrong of me? Perhaps. This was, after all, just a place. Did places harbor memories? I often thought they did, recollections both good and bad somehow absorbed by the walls. I couldn’t help but wonder who lived there now. Did another little boy dwell in my little attic room and look out the very window I had looked out of so many times? Maybe he watched us now as we rolled past the park into the white mist.
In the distance, I spied the steeple of St. John the Baptist Church, and I felt the muscles in my body tense, knowing we were close.
Matilda must have sensed something, too; she placed her pad aside and again took to the window. “He was buried amongst the suicide graves just outside the main cemetery,” she said. “I never told you this, but I visited his grave as a child, shortly after Ellen left us. I don’t know why, but I was drawn towards it. I suppose after reading the articles, I wanted to see for myself.”
“Is the grave marked?”
She
nodded. “A crude stone bearing his name.”
The driver maneuvered the coach into the lane off Castle Avenue, which took us to the outskirts of the cemetery. The stone wall topped by black iron seemed endless, foreboding, not a place we should find ourselves at this godforsaken hour, and although I had not detected another living soul in some time, the fear of getting caught was palpable.
We came to a stop amongst a group of poplar trees, just out of view from the road. The driver tapped twice on the roof.
“Are you sure we should do this?” I asked.
Matilda was already halfway out of the coach, the driver’s large gloved hand reaching to help her down the step.
As I exited, the driver handed me the shovel and glanced nervously up and down Kincora Lane. “I cannot leave the coach here, so I am going to circle the block. Should I come across anyone, I will do my level best to distract them. When you are ready to leave this place, meet me back here.” He glanced at the shovel. “I would offer to help, but I think if I leave the coach here it will just draw unwanted attention.”
“I understand.”
“Bram! Let’s go!” Matilda said in a loud whisper. She pulled herself halfway up the wall and peered over the other side, the cloth of her petticoat waving beneath her.
“She is a feisty one,” the driver said.
“That she is.” I glanced down the empty road. “Head back to Clontarf Road and drive around for thirty minutes. That should give us enough time. We’ll listen for the coach coming back up Castle Avenue. You’re less likely to attract attention if you stick to the market district and the harbor; these areas are fairly lively, even at night.”
“Yes, sir.” The driver tipped his hat and climbed back into the seat. With dispatch, he was gone, the steady clip-clop of the horses’ hooves dwindling to nothing.
“Bram!”
I turned just in time to watch Matilda slip over the top of the wall and drop to the other side with a thud. “My God, are you all right?”
I went to the wall and peered through a small crack. Matilda stood on the other side, brushing dirt from her dress. “I’m fine,” she said in a hushed tone. “Toss me the shovel.”
I lobbed the shovel over the wall a little to the right of her, then, first checking up and down the road, I jumped straight up and grabbed the iron spikes at the top of the wall. I pulled myself up, careful not to catch my clothes on the ironwork, and launched over the top. With a quick push off the wall, I jumped to the ground, landing on my feet.
“I half expected you to jump straight over the wall,” Matilda snickered.
“Perhaps next time.” I took in the graveyard, its rolling hills of somber grass and mysterious mist. “Where is it?”
She pointed southward. “The traditional graveyard ends at that walkway; the suicide graves are on the other side of the old church wall.” My sister started off in the direction of the ruins.
“Careful!”
I retrieved the shovel and raced after her. The air felt very still—not even the slightest breeze worked through the willow trees—the branches slept soundly, each one casting a thick dark shadow upon the ground. The only light came from the moon as the gas lamps were extinguished when the cemetery closed to the public at eight in the evening. Wood mice scurried about, angry at the intrusion, their eyes on us and following at a safe distance.
“Is there a guard?”
Matilda thought about this for a moment. “I imagine there is.”
My eyes drifted to the church at our left, now inky and silent. If anyone was inside, I detected no sign. I could see the gate from here, too, but no movement beyond it. “He is probably walking the grounds.”
When Thornley first enrolled in medical school, he told me many of the students retrieved corpses from the graveyard for the purpose of dissection. I found this appalling, but he said they were left with little choice. The schools and hospitals supplied only a few bodies and those went to students hailing from wealthy families with the means to make such a purchase. While our family seemed well-off compared to most, there wasn’t enough money in the coffer to secure a body. Although Thornley never outright admitted to participating in such a gruesome endeavor, he didn’t deny taking part, either. I imagined him strolling through a graveyard much like this one with shovel in hand, hoping to retrieve a fresh specimen in the name of science. Perhaps with this same shovel.
“Grave robbers tend to come out when there is little or no moon, and there’s too much light evident tonight. It would be too easy to get apprehended. This is the kind of night security finds rest. The guard is probably passed out behind one of the graves with a bottle of rum in one hand and questionable reading material in the other,” Matilda said.
“I hope you’re right.”
“Or he could be right behind us, loaded and ready to deliver a round of buckshot in your tail end.”
“What makes you think he would shoot me?”
“Because,” Matilda replied, “a righteous man would never shoot a lady. Clearly, you would be his first choice.”
“Clearly,” I agreed, “providing he is a righteous man.”
We approached the ruins of the original church with caution. The stone structure stood at the back of the traditional cemetery and still had four walls despite years of neglect; the roof, most likely thatch, had long since rotted away. The western wall stood tall—by far the most impressive, extending high into the sky, once having housed the bell tower. The north and south walls each housed four large windows, which were rounded at the apex and flat at the sill, along with a smaller window towards the front of the church. The back, east-facing wall rose tall and pointed, with an entrance that once boasted a pair of grand wooden doors, but since the church had fallen from grace the doors had been replaced by a single door consisting of black iron bars. My mother and father surely would have shed tears had they seen the building in such a state, for the Holy Baptism of each of their children was recorded here. But it had been deemed unsafe a number of years back, and a replacement had been commissioned. Construction on the new chapel had finished two years ago, at which point this building was officially abandoned.
I peered through the iron bars of the door at the nave inside. The stone floor and much of the walls were crumbling, host to weeds and vines that eagerly climbed the surface for better exposure to the sun, and only two of the original pews remained. A third had collapsed to the ground and had been reduced to rot by the relentless elements. I tugged at the door—locked. I wanted to get inside, to view the space from the interior, but tonight was not the night for such access. I would have to return during daylight hours.
“Come on, his grave is just beyond this wall,” Matilda said.
I snapped to and followed after her, taking one last look at the main section of the cemetery before rounding the corner.
Beyond the walls of the ruin we found more graves, some with the largest stones I had seen so far. Matilda pointed out that this section was still part of the original cemetery, and because this was holy ground the church pastors were typically buried here. We walked past these graves and through thick weeds and came upon the remains of a much smaller wall, this one constructed of stone. At some point, someone had knocked most of it down, the remainder standing about four feet tall.
“This is the original wall of the church. The suicide graves are on the other side.” She stepped over the wall and leaned on a blackened tree stump. “When they buried O’Cuiv, the ground on this side was not part of the church proper. This place was never blessed, and those buried here were considered lost souls not only to the Church but to their families.”
“I remember the stories.”
“When they completed the new church two years ago, they extended the new wall all the way around this property, enclosing this area with the rest. I don’t believe the grounds were ever blessed, though. I found no records; for ma
ny, this place was forgotten. Without the blessing, the new wall is meaningless; the sacred ground ends right here.” She indicated the remains of the stone wall, now nothing more than a pile of stepping-stones. “O’Cuiv’s grave is over there.”
I followed my sister’s finger to a small stone about ten feet away, near the back wall. Weeds grew all around, some waist-high—clover, dandelions, shepherd’s purse. I crossed to the grave, mindful of the other stones haphazardly around. How many burials here were unmarked? Was I treading on one now? Not only criminals and those damned by suicide, but also children. It was commonplace to bury the unbaptized dead here, stillborn babies and the like. When I reached the headstone, I knelt. I found it not to be a traditional grave marker but an actual stone about one foot in diameter. At one time, its surface may have been polished, but not any longer. If not for the name O’Cuiv chiseled into it, I would have mistaken it for everyday rock. The letters of the name were uneven, partially obscured by a thin blanket of moss and worn with time. No dates marked his birth or death, only the crude inscription of his surname. Nobody deserved to be disposed of like this, not even the criminals of the world. I carefully shoveled away the green grass covering the grave and turned to Matilda. “Nobody has been here in years. Are you certain we should do this?”
“If you don’t dig it up, I will.”
There was no arguing with her; she had made up her mind long before we left Dublin. I rolled up my sleeves and again took hold of the shovel. “Keep an eye out for the guard.”
And I began to dig.
The work went slowly. In order to discourage grave robbers, the grave diggers mixed straw in with the dirt, and each bite of the shovel’s blade seemed to uncover more and more of it. It was like digging into a rug, and I found it impossible to dig deeper without first removing the shafts of straw. Before long, Matilda joined in, plucking up the straw and piling it at her side. I told her more than once that I would rather she continued watching for the guard, but she would have none of it, insisting we would be here until morning light if we both did not help. So we continued, both stealing the occasional glance around the corner of the church ruins whenever we stopped to rest. More than an hour passed before I felt the blade of the shovel impact the lid of O’Cuiv’s coffin, and I thought of our driver—he easily had circled twice by now; this retrieval was taking much longer than expected.