Karen Essex

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by Karen Essex


  The phonograph stopped playing, and Von Helsinger’s rough voice gave way to the ghostly moans of the institution wafting into the room. I put down the pen, letting the blood flow back into my hand after my furious scribbling, but Von Helsinger’s words hit me like blows to the body. I had stopped breathing and now took a deep intake of air, hoping it would clear my head. What was this man doing advising his already adulterous patient to go to prostitutes? I could not decide what was more insane—that remedy for his ailment or the idea that he had been attacked by supernatural creatures, an idea encouraged by that redheaded menace who had stumbled into my life in Whitby. And even more baffling, Jonathan seemed to be living out the same erotic, blood-drinking experience that I had in my dream. Why were both of us being haunted?

  I bent over, resting my head on my knees, hoping that I would not black out. Suddenly, I heard the door creak open, sending a fresh shiver up my spine. I looked up. Mrs. Snead was looking at me suspiciously. I sat up, blood rushing to my head. It took me a moment to speak. “Oh, I must have dozed off,” I said.

  Her strange, sideways glance was blank. She cast her eyes downward at the notes in my journal. “Are you done here, madam?” she asked. “I cannot leave my duty unless I lock up behind you.”

  The second cylinder sat untouched on the shelf. “Would it inconvenience you terribly if I stayed another thirty minutes?” I asked.

  She agreed to return later and begrudgingly left the room, closing the door behind her. I waited for several interminable minutes before gathering the courage to reach for the cylinder. I slowly substituted it for the other, trying not to make one incriminating sound. I started the machine and reached for my pen. Von Helsinger cleared his throat and began speaking.

  “We must remain skeptical of Harker’s claims while entertaining the possibility that they are true, at least to a degree. The reality that he encountered vampire women is remote, but he might have fallen into a coven of self-proclaimed witches who take men’s blood to use in magical spells. It would behoove me as a metaphysician and a man of science to travel to Styria and investigate the matter. Perhaps I shall do so in the spring. It would be interesting to see how the harpies, whether mortal or not, would react to a transfusion of male blood, if I could find a way to do such a thing. Perhaps young Harker might help with this. At the very least, I would like to procure samples of their blood to study.

  “In the meanwhile, I am committed to remain God’s warrior on a crusade to obliterate the evil brought upon the female by the sin of Eve. God created woman to be pure and naïve, but the sinners Lilith and Eve were not satisfied with His will and tainted their sex. If God had wanted woman to have knowledge, would He have forbidden her to pick from the tree? Yet today’s woman would transform Europe into the new Gomorrah with her demands to turn nature upside down.

  “I admire the work of Sir Francis Galton, but I do not believe that his theory of eugenics will have any impact. We will never be able to prevent the inferior classes from breeding. More realistic is to create a female that is a better breeding machine able to produce superior progeny. Once the transfusions are perfected, the female recipient will genetically assimilate the higher traits of the male—strength, courage, moral rectitude, rational thinking, even superior physical strength and health—and will thereby bring a healthier biological profile to the mating process. I believe that in the future, we will not only improve the quality of the female through the transference of superior male blood but also may create an überbeing, or even an immortal being—not the fiends of Harker’s description but a noble, godlike creature.

  “The transfusions must be perfected! Why some patients react to the transfused blood with high fever and shock I do not know. The young wife of Lord Godalming, a woman even more duplicitous than most, may have had blood that was inordinately female, which reacted badly to its opposite, that of strong and virile males. In the coming days, we will observe the effects of the infused blood on the other inmates. I predict that we will see miraculous improvements in the behavior of some of these hysterics.

  “I hold to my theory that blood transference is the key to expedited human evolution. The female, strengthened by male blood, will be relieved of her biological and moral weaknesses, and from the union of two superior beings will come a race of supermen with the highest and purest of human qualities and the most desirable genetic characteristics.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  With trembling fingers, I placed the cylinder back on the shelf. A few months ago, I could have blithely written Von Helsinger off as an eccentric, a mad scientist in a horror story, a Frankenstein who wished to compete with God as a creator. But too many strange things had happened in recent times. Any rules by which I could deem someone either mad or sane no longer applied.

  Jonathan’s experience with the women in Styria reminded me of some of the things that Vivienne had described. Yet Von Helsinger had not leapt to the conclusion that Jonathan was mad. Suddenly, I wanted to see her, to see if her stories held any further clues to these mysteries. But I had no idea if I could convince Mrs. Snead to give me access to a patient at this late hour.

  I neatly packed up the volume I had opened and went to put it back on the shelf, but out of nowhere, thunder exploded in the sky, and I dropped the book on the floor. It fell upon the broad plank with an echoing thud. I stooped to pick it up, but the clock chimed half past the hour, and the noise made me drop it again. Frustrated, I fell to the floor and clutched the leather volume to my chest, which was how Mrs. Snead found me.

  “Madam?” She came toward me, leaning over me. “Are you well?”

  “I dropped a book, that is all. Mrs. Snead, I would like to see the patient Vivienne, the older woman with the long white hair,” I said.

  Mrs. Snead took a step away from me as if I had frightened her.

  “I realize that the hour is late, but didn’t Dr. Seward tell you to afford me access to what—”

  “Madam, I am afraid you don’t understand. It will always be too late to speak to that poor soul now. Vivienne is dead. She died earlier today.”

  “That is not possible!” I knew that by my reaction, I must have sounded mad, but the news stunned me. I had just visited with Vivienne, and though she was crazy, she was not physically ill.

  Mrs. Snead stared just to the left of my cheek, as if she were addressing an invisible sprite on my shoulder. “She’s dead, all right, poor old soul. She went into paroxysms this afternoon, shivering with fevers and chills and the like. I called the doctor out of his meeting with the older doctor and Lord Godalming and Mr. Harker. It was after you left the room, madam. By the time Dr. Seward arrived, she were gone. I believe he said it were a stroke, madam. ‘She’s out of her misery now, isn’t she, Mrs. Snead?’ That is what the doctor said. He was very sad.”

  This unexpected culmination to the day’s bizarre events shattered my already fragile state of mind, and I started to cry. “Please tell me that you are lying, Mrs. Snead.”

  “Madam, I ain’t lying. You can see the body if you like.” She offered this with the ease with which she would offer a cup of tea. “’Twon’t be carted off till morning. We use the cellar as the morgue.”

  I followed Mrs. Snead downstairs and outside to the rear of the house. A slanted rain struck us as I waited for her to disentangle the cellar key from her bulky ring. She opened the door, and we stepped into the wet, moldering air of a low-ceilinged brick room. A single torch cast light on a cot, covered with an old, graying sheet. Vivienne’s long white hair fell over the side of the cot, hanging almost to the floor, like some lengthy dust ball that had gathered over the years.

  We walked closer, and I noticed that the room was used as a wine cellar, walls lined with diamond-shaped wooden bins, many of which were filled with bottles—an odd juxtaposition to the lifeless body on the cot. Mrs. Snead approached the body, and I followed her, unsure why I had come. Without asking me, she pulled back the sheet, revealing Vivienne’s face and chest. She looke
d as if she were asleep. Her eyes were closed, and the torchlight cast a warm glow on her face, making her seem lifelike and not pale like the dead. She wore a loose, unbuttoned nightdress, and I noticed a tiny drop of blood marring the sleeve. I did not want to ask Mrs. Snead’s permission to lift the sleeve, nor did I think it proper to begin to undress the dead. Bracing myself, I took Vivienne’s cold, stiff hand. Closing my eyes, I began to pray. “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” I opened my eyes slightly. Mrs. Snead’s hands were in the prayer position at her chest and her eyes were shut tight. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done …” I continued to pray, eyes open, sliding Vivienne’s sleeve higher up her arm until I saw what I suspected I’d see: a fresh wound at the inner elbow covered with a patch of blood-soaked gauze.

  Jonathan returned to our room at midnight, his clothes and hair drenched, and carrying an indescribable scent—dirt, decay, and other odors I could not identify. He took off his coat and boots and dried his hair with a towel, rubbing furiously as if he was trying to scrub off his scalp. After a few moments of this, he dropped the towel, fell to his knees, and started pounding the floor.

  “It’s wrong, all wrong!” he cried. When he lifted his face, his cheeks were wet and his eyes wild. He started tearing off his clothes. “I have to get rid of these things,” he said. “They carry the scent of death, Mina. I have seen it and smelled it.”

  He ripped off his shirt, tearing off a few of the buttons, which flew through the air and landed on the floor. His suspenders slid from his broad shoulders, and he fumbled wildly with the inlay of buttons beneath the flap of his pants. When he finished, they shimmied to the ground and he stepped out of them. He started to take off his underclothes when I realized that I had yet to see my husband naked.

  I went to the wardrobe and opened it. “Would you like your sleeping shirt or your night suit?” When he was ill, he had favored woolen men’s pajamas as advised by the doctors.

  “Nightshirt,” he said quietly.

  I heard him stripping off his flannels as I removed the nightshirt from the drawer. When I turned around, he was naked but for his socks and garters, and I saw for the first time his lean physique, the triangle of nut-brown hair on his chest, his slim pelvis, and his penis, which jutted straight out from a thicket of dark pubic hair. An unexpected surge of desire shot through my body, and I cast my eyes downward in embarrassment, but they rested on his long thighs, and I felt the thrill of arousal once more. I had been trying to ignore how much I longed for him to touch me, but my reaction to seeing his body left me unable to deny it. Quickly, without meeting his eyes, I went to him with the nightshirt open at the neck, my hands inside it, ready to slip it over his head. He leaned forward, allowing me to do that, and then tucked his arms into the sleeves.

  “I am going to put these clothes in the hall so that the laundress will pick them up at dawn,” I said, bundling up the wet mass and holding my breath against the rank odor. I put the clothes outside the door and closed it behind me. When I turned around, Jonathan grabbed me into his arms. “I love you, Mina,” he said.

  Before I could respond, his lips were on mine and his tongue was inside my mouth, searing it with heat, probing, searching for something, some answer that I was not sure I could provide. He backed off a little but held me tight against him. “How sweet you taste, and how pure you are.” He picked me up and carried me to the bed, laying me on the velvet duvet. He gathered my hair in his hand. “The first time I saw you, I knew that if my hand ever got hold of this thick black hair I would lose all control.”

  I was titillated by his words, but I had no experience with men’s loss of control. The stranger who made love to me in my dreams was the one in control.

  “You don’t know how much I want to make love to you, Mina. Do you want me?”

  “I do, Jonathan,” I said. “I have longed for this.”

  “Let me see you. Let me see what you look like.”

  I pulled my nightdress up slowly, revealing my legs. “Go on,” he said. His face was expressionless. I squirmed a little so that I could raise the gown even more, pulling it up to my neck, exposing everything. I could not tell by the look on his face whether he was pleased with me or not. His eyes scanned me as if he were taking inventory. “Beautiful,” he said. “I knew that your skin would be finer than silk.” He saw the heart with the key that he had given me before he had left for Styria and he touched it gently with his finger. “You still wear it? Even after what I did?”

  “I have never taken if off,” I said.

  His finger snaked its way down my body to graze the wine-stained birthmark on my thigh. “But what is this?”

  “It has always been there,” I said.

  “It has wings, like a butterfly,” he said, tracing its outline. His trembling finger scoped the entire perimeter and then slid across my thigh. He put his hand over my sex and caressed it very gently, stirring me inside. He closed his eyes and slipped a finger into me. I felt him shiver. “Warm, so warm,” he said. “Living flesh.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at me. “You have no idea what to do, do you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I assumed that my husband should kiss me and touch me. That his lips would linger on my neck and other tender places, and that he would put an erect organ inside me. I expected it to hurt. Was I supposed to be more knowledgeable than that?

  “Nothing, dear Mina. You are innocent. Thank God you are innocent.” He gave me a weird little grin, and then he lay on top of me. He pulled up his nightshirt so that our skin connected and he kissed me again, slower and deeper and with less urgency than before. I started to melt into his kisses, pressing against his long, muscled frame, and spreading my legs. He took his hard penis in his hand and rubbed it against my opening a few times before slowly sliding it in. Unlike his finger, his organ felt as if it were scorching my flesh. I cried out, but he did not stop.

  “Does it hurt, Mina?” he asked. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Yes, yes, it hurts,” I said.

  “If you are the right sort of woman, it is supposed to hurt,” he said. “I’m sorry. I hate that I have to hurt you, but it makes me love you even more.”

  It does not hurt in my dreams, I wanted to say, but this was not a dream, and I knew from common gossip that the first time always hurt.

  “I’m going to do it now, Mina,” he whispered into my ear. “Try to relax.” He thrust himself deeper into me, making the pain worse, so much that I thought we were doing something wrong. I found myself appalled at having to endure it. I pushed him away from me.

  “Don’t push me away. Prove that you love me. I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to, at least at first,” he said. He looked more desperate than aroused, his sorrow at causing me pain obliterating any excitement on his face. “The pain is a blessing, you’ll see. You have to get past the pain so that we can have our babies. And we must have them. We must create life to counter all the death around us.”

  I wanted to ask him what he meant, but with his desperation, I did not think I would get a lucid answer. I took a deep breath and tried to let my body go limp. “Good, Mina. Do not resist me.” He started moving again, and I could feel him get longer and harder inside me. He lifted himself slightly to one side and looked down so that he could watch the thing go in and out of me, as if he had to see it to guide it. He slowed for a few merciful moments, sliding it in and out with great care and fascination.

  Suddenly, it began to feel different, better, less hurtful, and almost like pleasure. I stopped panting and let my thighs relax, allowing him deeper access into me. I recognized the same pleasure I had experienced in my dreams, and I caught a glimpse of what lovemaking could be between us after I grew accustomed to having him inside me. But soon, he started moving faster again, and the pain returned. Then he cried out with a force that would have indicated that he was in greater pain than I. With one great propelling thrust, he finished, and I realized that it was over. He let out a deep s
igh, buried his face in my hair that was strewn across the pillow.

  He rolled off me and onto his back. He would not look at me. He stared up at the canopy. I could see his face because we had not turned out the lamps. I pulled my nightdress down around me.

  “Am I so inadequate compared to your previous experiences?” I asked. I was angry and humiliated but still afraid that I had spoken a truth and that he would confirm it.

  “Dear God, no. Is that what you think? No, Mina, it is something far more sinister.” His brows twitched and then tightened in an anguished grimace. “We went to Lucy’s crypt.” He closed his eyes again. “Godalming did not believe that Lucy was dead.”

  My stomach turned, and I thought I was going to be sick. I sat up, drawing my knees up to my chest and covering myself with the velvet duvet.

  Jonathan turned his desperate eyes on me again. “It was Von Helsinger’s idea. He is very persuasive. He is a follower of Mesmer. He will tell you so himself. He can hypnotize a person to do his will!”

  “What did he say to you and the others to make you do this thing?”

  “After you left the room, Von Helsinger suggested all the blood that Lucy had received in transfusions may be bringing her back to life.”

  I went back to that awful moment when the men ejected me from their cabal. “Why did you demand that I leave the room? Was this gruesome scheme in its planning stage before I came in?”

  “No. But when I heard Godalming describe Lucy standing over his bed, I—” He stopped talking and tried to collect himself. He spoke slowly, his mouth forming the words carefully. “Mina, for many weeks now, I have felt haunted by the women I—encountered—in Styria. I did not want to speak of it in front of you. At times, I suspected that you were one of them. Von Helsinger calls it paranoia. Forgive me. Now that we are truly man and wife and I have seen your innocence, I realize that I have been suffering from madness.”

 

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