by Karen Essex
That night I had a horrific dream. It began well enough, as they usually did. I was rolling on wet grass, letting it tickle me blade by blade, my limbs stretched out in ecstasy as I reached out into the night air—light, fresh, and skimming the surface of my body like gentle fingertips. Suddenly, I was jerked upward and imprisoned in arms that were foreign and mean. Angry arms. The lovely aromas on which I had been feasting disappeared, and I was thrown onto something hard, a floor perhaps. I was too frightened to open my eyes. I felt a lash across my back and I howled. Then came another slap, and I curled up like a snail to try to protect myself. A voice screamed at me: Devil’s imp, Satan’s girl. Tell me the truth! Who are you, and what have you done with my daughter? I started to suffocate, gasping for air, trying to reach out for help.
The next thing I knew, I was sitting up in bed, shivering and choking. I did not know where I was at first, but my eyes adjusted and I took in the environs of the room at the asylum with its canopy above and its dark panels of drapes enveloping the bed. I found that I could at last breathe and let out a heavy sigh. Jonathan lay beside me, holding a pillow against his body like a shield.
“You were screaming in your sleep,” he said.
“What was I saying?”
He pulled farther away from me, clutching the pillow even tighter. “You were denying that you were the devil’s child.”
“You look frightened of me, Jonathan!” I said. “I am the one who has had the bad dream and needs comfort.”
He tossed the pillow aside and put his arm around me. “Poor Mina. I am not frightened of you, but I am living with many fears. I have seen things and done things that must be expurgated from my psyche. That is what the doctor says. Then and only then will my soul be cleansed.”
The next day Jonathan informed me that Dr. Von Helsinger thought it best if he slept in a separate room. “Only for a little while, Mina,” he assured me. “I will soon be better.” I wondered if this was part of a scheme between Seward and Von Helsinger to separate me from my husband. Would Seward have confessed his affections to Von Helsinger? I decided that it was time to talk to him myself. I sent him a note and waited for a reply, but received none. I had a queasy feeling in my stomach and could not look at my breakfast. As the morning wore on, I felt more and more agitated.
Since Seward had told his staff that I was to be given free access in the asylum, I no longer needed permission to walk the halls. One of the staff directed me to Von Helsinger’s study, which hummed with the bass of male voices. I assumed that one of those was my husband’s and I rapped lightly on the door before opening it.
To my great surprise, Arthur Holmwood—Lord Godalming—was pacing the room while Seward, Von Helsinger, and Jonathan sat in big leather chairs. Von Helsinger’s pipe was clamped between his yellowing teeth, filling the air with a spicy aroma of nutmeg and cinnamon. Arthur’s overcoat sat in a rumpled heap on the floor where presumably he had thrown it. His hat lay atop it on its side so that I could see the label of the expensive London hatter. He was pale as sand, and his blond hair was stringy. The men were startled to see me and rose out of their seats.
“Lord Godalming,” I said, “what a surprise. What brings you here?” No one spoke, and I wondered if I my question had been a rude one. After all, Godalming was Seward’s dearest friend. Arthur started to speak, when Seward shot him a warning look. But Arthur was in no condition to be contained.
“It’s Lucy,” he said, looking at me with mad eyes. “She is not dead.”
“Now, Arthur,” Seward said, “you don’t want to upset Mrs. Harker.” To me he said, “Perhaps you should let us handle this.”
I was not about to leave. I walked further into the room and took a seat.
“What do you mean, Lucy is not dead?” I asked.
“She is not dead,” he insisted. “I have seen her with my own eyes!”
Those eyes at this moment were bloodshot. He looked as if he had not slept or changed his clothes in days. Von Helsinger’s pipe smoke was probably saving us from the smell of Arthur’s rank-looking shirt.
“At first, she only came to me in my dreams,” he said to me. The men were silent. “She was bloodied and horrible, in some unnatural state between life and death. She would not speak, but she stared at me as if she hated me, just as she did sometimes in the last days, when she was so ill. It got so that I was terrified to go to sleep at night, but I consoled myself with the fact that these were mere dreams. ‘Holmwood, get hold of yourself,’ I’d say. I restored my grip on reality, and for one night I did not see her, and I slept with ease. But for the past three nights, she has come to me again, staring at me in anger as blood drips from her eyes and her mouth, and gushes from her arms.
“Then, this morning, I awakened, safe in my bed. I rubbed my eyes, feeling relief that I had been dreaming. I took in a deep breath and sighed, but when I took my hands away from my eyes, she was standing at the foot of the bed, bloody, just as she was in the dream. She held her arms out to me. ‘I want your blood, Arthur,’ she said, hissing like the most toxic asp, her tongue long and ugly. She said, ‘Do you not love your Lucy? Do you not want to give me more of your blood?’”
He turned his head away, looking into the fire, burning in the grate.
“Then what happened?” I was completely caught up in his story.
He did not look up. He spoke quietly. “I shut my eyes and screamed, and when I opened them again, she was gone.”
Seward was staring at me with such intent that I wondered if my husband was going to notice. But Jonathan clutched the arms of his chair, his face whiter than Arthur’s, his forehead pinched so tight that his eyebrows could not be distinguished from the furrows.
“Does Mrs. Harker need to be subjected to this, Arthur?” Seward asked.
Lord Godalming ignored his friend. He picked up two pieces of newspaper, waving them at me. “Lucy is alive, I tell you. I saw her, and so have others.”
I scanned the two articles that described a “Bloofer Lady,” who was luring the children of Hampstead away from their playgrounds, returning them hours later or the next day, with wounds at the neck and throat.
“The newspapers print fright stories like this every year as All Hallows Eve approaches merely to sell papers,” I said. “This is naught to do with Lucy.”
Lord Godalming turned to Von Helsinger as if he were about to spring on him. “You just said, before Mina came into the room, that there are women with unnatural powers over men and that they thrive on drinking blood! I believe that you turned Lucy into one of them with your strange treatments!”
Von Helsinger showed no reaction. Seward stood, putting his arm around his friend.
“Arthur, you must get hold of yourself,” Seward said. “With all due respect to my colleague, I believe that you have been having nightmares, which would be a natural response to the death of your wife. I can help you to analyze these dreams and settle your mind, but you must calm down.”
My husband interrupted. “I think we must excuse my wife.”
“As I have already suggested,” said Seward in his doctor’s voice. Seward offered his hand to me to help me out of the chair. To his colleague, he said, “Ring the bell, please.”
I did not take his proffered hand. Remaining in my seat, I said, “I will not be excluded. Lucy was my dearest friend.”
“That is why you must leave, Mrs. Harker,” Seward said. “All this talk of her, bloody and rising from the dead, is too upsetting.”
“I am not upset,” I insisted.
“Mina, let the men handle this.” Jonathan was animated now, his eyes bright, the lines of worry in his face smoothed over.
Von Helsinger reached under his desk, tapping something with his foot, which created a loud buzz. A few seconds later, Mrs. Snead arrived. “Escort Mrs. Harker to wherever she would like to go,” Seward said. He offered his hand again, and this time I took it. As I was leaving with Mrs. Snead, he mouthed the words, Come to me.
In the even
ing, 22 October 1890
At suppertime, Mrs. Snead brought me a tray of food with a note from Jonathan that I should dine alone in the room. Later still, he came to the room to change into heavy clothing.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I will tell you about it when I return,” he said.
I questioned him about what had transpired after I had left Von Helsinger’s office, but he would say no more, only that he was going somewhere with the men.
I had no idea how long they would be gone, but I wasted no time in asking Mrs. Snead to let me into Seward’s office. “I want to make use of his medical library while he is gone. That way I can look through the volumes without disturbing him.”
She let me into the office and lit the lamps before warily closing the door. Worried that she might reenter the room, I pulled a fat volume off the wall and opened it on the desk in front of me so that I might pretend to be reading.
Fortunately, I had convinced Headmistress a year before to purchase a phonograph to utilize in teaching elocution, for there was no better way to rid a girl of her coarse accent than to let her hear how she sounded to others. I looked through the cylinders on his shelf until I found the two that were labeled with my husband’s name. I reached for the first and removed its cardboard cover, afraid of what it was going to reveal.
The cylinder was new, its waxy surface still nubby, whereas for economy’s sake, Headmistress insisted that I use the same one over and over until its surface was smooth. I placed it in the machine and turned it on, praying that no one would hear. I supposed that I could tell Mrs. Snead that I had permission to listen to the doctors’ recordings and face the consequences if she reported me to Seward.
Sitting at the desk, I poised my diary inside the larger volume so that I could take notes. Coughing to clear his throat, Von Helsinger began to speak. “Jonathan Harker, twenty-eight years of age. The patient suffered a severe case of brain fever in which he experienced erotic hallucinations and loss of memory. He was hospitalized and treated, with an extended period of rest in the town of Exeter. Symptoms of neurasthenia, melancholia, and listlessness persist. Upon occasion, he also exhibits paranoia, believing that women, in particular his wife, are in league with the devil. Reasons for this assumption will become clear.”
My pen dropped from my hand, blotting ink on the few words I had already written. Von Helsinger’s voice continued. “Harker claims that while in Styria, the niece of the Austrian count for whom he was conducting real estate transactions, seduced him. He describes the girl as more beautiful than the paintings of Mr. Rosetti, with flowing hair of gold and a naturally red, sensuous mouth. Harker engaged in sexual relations with her, and, in turn, with her and two other women, both described as raven-haired beauties with mesmerizing eyes, red lips, and glittering white skin. All three of the women were irresistible and exotic, and in his words, ‘not pure like our English beauties.’ The women performed what he called ‘unspeakable and unholy acts,’ exciting his ‘most base instincts and desires.’ He was unable to resist them and, in fact, searched them out in the Count’s castle whenever they left him alone. After two weeks, he was no longer able to keep track of time. All three women were practiced in the arts of intercourse and fellation, which the patient had never experienced. Because of this, he awarded to these females magical powers.
“Even under hypnosis, he has had difficulty talking about aspects of the experience, so I asked him to write them down. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:
Ursulina invited me to ride with her one morning. Never have I seen a person, male or female, gallop across difficult terrain with such reckless abandon. Her dazzling blond tresses danced in rhythm with the steed’s long white tail as she galloped across the valley ahead of me; it was as if she were the goddess of dawn riding Pegasus. After exhausting me in the outdoors, she enchanted me in the castle by engaging my senses with feasting and music and dancing, and lulling me with wine, all the while slowly removing her clothing and mine, one agonizing piece at a time. Then she showed me the very meaning of pleasure with her hands, her lips, her mouth, and even her teeth. When she had me in her thrall, and when I was at my most vulnerable, she invited two of her demon sisters to join us. These creatures weaken a man’s feeble will against temptation, thrilling him with every bliss-making act. Oh, they have secrets, sir, undreamt of secrets to bring a man to a state of incomprehensible enjoyment.
“Harker continues to have vivid dreams about the women, especially the one named Ursulina. He cannot release her from his mind, imagining that it is the girl herself who comes to him in his dreams and makes love to him. I proposed that nocturnal emission was a common experience for the male, but he insists that his experience is different. ‘It is not an ordinary dream, doctor,’ he says. ‘It is as if she is possessing me.’ He believes that he acted immorally by succumbing to the women, but he admits that at times, he has had to restrain himself from returning to Styria to look for them. Over this, he feels tremendous guilt.”
Von Helsinger paused, breathing laboriously. I heard him shuffling papers and striking a match, presumably to reignite his pipe. My mind raced. How was I to compete with these seductresses of unearthly beauty and sexual prowess? I, who had kept myself pure so that I might marry a respectable man and, in turn, have his respect? Oh, the irony of having lost that man to degenerate women.
After a few little sucking noises and a deep exhalation, the doctor continued. “I had originally believed that Harker’s sexual naïveté caused him to attribute supernatural elements to an orgiastic encounter. However, what he subsequently revealed leads me to ruminate on a different and more dramatic conclusion. He claims that at the height of ecstasy, which he described as a dark place where pleasure and pain cannot be distinguished, the women took turns breaking his flesh with their nails and teeth and extracting blood.
“I ask myself, is it possible that young Harker was in fact seduced by she demons? Without the factor of the blood taking, it would be presumed that the women were mere harlots, who can also drain the vital forces from a man and leave him in the confused and fevered state Harker describes. But if the blood taking is interpreted literally and not as a hallucination, it is possible that these were vampire women, the unnatural creatures of myth who achieve extended or eternal life by drinking the blood of others.
“I have long heard tales of bloodsucking female creatures and of the incubi who harbor them, in this case, the Austrian count. One of the symptoms of having being bitten by them is the craving it creates for reoccurrence, such as Harker describes. The brilliant minds of the ancient world wrote of these blood drinkers, trying to grapple with their powers. Men like Aristotle and Apuleius, and the historians Diodorus Siculus and Pausanias, wrote of their magic and mystery and the horror they wreaked upon mankind by the seduction of the innocent. They have gone by many names: lamia, witch, demon, succubus or incubus, sorcerer or sorceress. Lilith, the first wife of Adam, was one such fiend. Some believe that these creatures are descended from those who mated with the gods and Titans, creating a terrible hybrid that is neither human nor divine. Some say there exist those who were born mortal and made themselves immortal by taking the blood and vitality of other humans. These are the so-called undead.
“The writer who visits John Seward is full of such tales from the darker regions of Moldavia, Walachia, and the Kingdom of Hungary, places I have never been. He presents a good case for their existence. ‘There can be no great smoke arise be there no fire, Dr. Von Helsinger,’ he says. He is intrigued by my experiments with blood and in blood’s mysterious powers as research for some horrific work of fiction he has in mind. I introduced him to Goethe’s poem “The Bride of Corinth,” about a female vampire, and to the “Vampirismus” of Hoffmann, for which he was most grateful. He has also gathered stories about the vampire from a compendium of medieval sources and folktales: the vampire lives on the blood of others, which he takes by night; he must sleep in a coffin filled with his native soil;
he is active from dusk to just before dawn but sleeps during daylight hours; he is repelled by garlic and Christian symbols such as the Host, holy water, and the cross; he can be killed by a silver bullet or by a stake through the heart and decapitation; and he is able to assume the shape of certain animals with which his species identifies, such as wolves and bats. Fanciful and horrific stuff, most of which I have heard from folktales. But I have found that in researching the metaphysical, it is important to rekindle that part of the brain’s imagination that one left behind in the nursery.
“Is it possible that these fiends or their hybrids, who have fascinated and occupied minds greater than mine, have always existed—biological misfits who have no link on Darwin’s evolutionary chain? If so, I am curious to see if the males and females share the engendered traits in their human counterparts. If Harker was not hallucinating, and he was indeed seduced by supernatural women, whose behavior mirrors wanton human females, then the aforementioned hypothesis is correct.
“In conclusion, when I first began with Harker, I did not dream that his infirmity would reveal the exchange of blood as its possible source. What luck! Thus my lifelong devotion to delineating the essential elements and mysteries of blood is validated once more. One thing is certain: the blood is the life. Its qualities hold the secrets of life and death, of mortality and immortality. Did the ancients not offer human blood to the gods? Did they possess the knowledge that human blood somehow enhanced divine powers? It seems a contradiction, yes. But science is full of paradoxes.
“As for Harker, he is a male and strong, and the loss of blood seems to have been minimal. He does not require a transfusion. With time, he will fully recover. However, he is impotent with regard to his wife. I prescribed a series of visits to a brothel. As a customer paying for the services, he will be restored to the natural position of power over the female and his potency will return.”