by Syrie James
“That is quite all right, Doctor. I have the whole night before me, and I am not at all sleepy.” And I was desperate, I mused silently, for anything which might help divert my mind from thoughts of Mr. Wagner.
Dr. Seward put the first cylinder into the instrument and adjusted it for me, showing me how to start and stop it in case I should wish to pause. “The first half-dozen of these cylinders will not horrify you, and should tell you something of which you want to know. After that…” He did not finish the thought; instead, he handed me a folder that contained a collection of pages. “No doubt there will be gaps in the story. You may find this correspondence of interest, which is related to the case. Arthur Holmwood—Lord Godalming, now—returned my letters, so that we could keep a record of all that had happened. We also have Lucy’s few diary pages, including the entry she wrote several nights before she died, describing the wolf who broke through her bedroom window.”
“Lucy’s diary pages?” I opened the folder and glanced through it, a jolt of emotion coursing through me when I beheld a page with my friend’s familiar handwriting.
“I suggest you go through it in chronological order, or I fear it will make little sense to you.” With a grim look, Dr. Seward crossed the room and—as if trying to afford me some privacy—sat down with his back to me and returned to his reading.
Although I longed to read Lucy’s words, I set aside the folder for the moment. Starting up the phonograph, I put the forked metal to my ears and began to listen. Although the first part of Dr. Seward’s diary was a long and disturbing observation of one of his patients—a mentally unbalanced man called Renfield, who had a predilection for catching and eating flies, spiders, and small birds—it was the first time I had ever heard a machine talk, and I found myself riveted by his every word.
For the next few hours, I never moved from my chair except to change a cylinder. This madman Renfield (with whom I was shortly to become acquainted) seemed to be of great interest to Dr. Seward. Mr. Renfield alternated between bouts of gentleness and violence. One night he escaped from the asylum and ran off into the woods, where he scaled the high wall into the grounds of Carfax, the deserted house next door. They found him pressed against the door to the old chapel behind the house, crying:
“I am here to do Your bidding, Master! I am Your slave, and You will reward me, for I shall be faithful. I have worshipped You long and afar off. Now that You are near, I await Your commands!”
Another, similar incident followed, equally strange. When they captured him, Mr. Renfield grew calm upon seeing a large bat flapping its silent way to the west across the moonlit sky. Dr. Seward was puzzled by these occurrences at the time. Now that we knew the house in question belonged to Count Dracula, I wondered: was Dracula himself inside the chapel at the time? Did this lunatic Renfield’s mania in some way connect him to the Count?
The story then progressed to focus on dear Lucy, the part of greatest interest to me. It alternated between Dr. Seward’s phonograph diary entries and his correspondence with Arthur Holmwood and others. Tears streamed down my face as I listened to Dr. Seward’s anguished voice, telling the details of Lucy’s suffering in those last, agonising weeks of her life.
Oh! If only I could have been there to help her! If only the four good men attending her had known what we knew now, about the nature of Lucy’s ailment and the identity of her foe! But they had all been in the dark—all save Dr. Van Helsing, of course—but his efforts were in vain, and he dared not voice his terrible suspicions until he had proof.
Dr. Van Helsing performed four separate blood transfusions on Lucy, taking blood first from Lord Godalming, then from Dr. Seward, then from himself, and then—when it seemed that there was no one else to ask—from Mr. Quincey Morris, the wealthy, young American from Texas who had also loved Lucy to distraction and had come in response to a telegram from his old friend, Lord Godalming. Four transfusions in only ten days! It was incredible! Each one seemed to briefly breathe life back into her, but by morning Lucy appeared to be sick and bloodless again. Her appetite disappeared. She grew weaker and thinner. At last it was clear that she was dying.
As the men gathered around Lucy’s death-bed in misery, she sank to sleep; but then there came a strange change. Lucy’s eyes flew open; they were dull and hard, and when she opened her mouth, her canine teeth were visibly sharper than all the rest. In a soft, voluptuous voice which the men had never heard before, Lucy said:
“Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!”
Although startled by this transformation, Arthur bent eagerly to kiss her; but Van Helsing caught him by the neck and hurled him almost across the room, crying, “Not for your life! Not for your living soul and hers!”
As Dr. Van Helsing stood between them like a lion at bay, a spasm of rage flitted like a shadow over Lucy’s face; then she blinked, and her eyes and face returned to their sweet, innocent loveliness. Putting out her poor, pale, thin hand, she took Dr. Van Helsing’s hand and drew it to her. “My true friend,” she said in a faint voice. “My true friend, and his. Oh, guard him, and give me peace!”
Moments later, Lucy died. The men who loved her and had been devotedly caring for her were broken down with grief.
“Poor girl, there is peace for her at last,” Dr. Seward said quietly, dashing tears from his eyes. “It is the end.”
“Not so; alas!” Dr. Van Helsing replied grimly and enigmatically. “Not so. I fear it is only the beginning!”
At the funeral-house where Lucy’s body lay in state, Dr. Seward and Lord Godalming were astonished to discover that all of Lucy’s colour and loveliness had come back to her in death. Indeed, she looked so beautiful, they found it hard to believe that they were looking at a corpse. It was only a day or two after Lucy and her mother were laid to rest in their family tomb near Hampstead Heath that the mysterious woman in white began making appearances in late evening, leaving little children paler than she found them, with tiny wounds in their throats.
By then, Dr. Van Helsing had returned from his trip to Exeter to see me. Armed with the new information from the journals I had given him, he at last openly declared his suspicions about the vile creature who had bitten Lucy and the fact that the strange woman on the Heath was Lucy Westenra herself, now a vampire and risen from the dead!
Dr. Seward thought his friend had gone mad. Dr. Van Helsing set out to prove his theory. That night, he and Dr. Seward went to the eerie graveyard and entered the Westenra tomb, where the professor sawed open Lucy’s coffin—and proved that it was empty. Dr. Seward at first blamed grave robbers; and even when, after leaving the tomb, they rescued a missing child and observed a white figure flitting back towards Lucy’s grave, Dr. Seward refused to believe that it could be Lucy.
The next day, however, when they opened Lucy’s coffin again, they found her lying within as if asleep. Although nearly a week had passed since she was buried, she appeared more radiantly beautiful than ever.
“Are you convinced now?” said the professor, as he pulled back Lucy’s lips to reveal her sharp fangs. “She is Un-Dead! Here she rests by day, and she walks by night. With these teeth, the little children can be bitten. Lucy is young vampire. She start with small things, and have yet no life taken; but in time she will move on to larger ones and prove of great danger to all.” With a woeful sigh he added: “It is hard to think that one so beautiful I must kill in her sleep.”
Dr. Seward was horrified, even more so when Van Helsing revealed the known method to kill the Un-Dead: they must drive a stake through her body, fill her mouth with garlic, and cut off her head. It made Dr. Seward shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the woman he had loved; and yet, was it really so terrifying if Lucy was already dead?
Dr. Van Helsing decided not to perform the final deed on the spot. He feared that Arthur, who was still in a quandary over how lifelike Lucy had appeared after she died, might be haunted for ever by fears that they had made a terrible mistake and buried his love alive.
And so it was that in the wee hours of the 29th of September, Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward revealed to Arthur and Quincey all that they had learned, and what they meant to do. It was only with the greatest insistence that Van Helsing was able to persuade them to put their doubts aside and their faith in him, for they had a great and terrible task to perform—but he would not do it without their blessing.
As I listened to Dr. Seward’s account of the ensuing events, the horrifying images he created were so vivid in my mind, I felt as if the proceedings were unfolding before my very eyes.
Late that night at the churchyard, Dr. Van Helsing proved to the startled men that Lucy’s coffin was again empty. He re-locked the Westenra tomb, then pressed into the crevices around the door a putty made of crumbled Host (sacred holy wafers, consecrated in the celebration of the Eucharist) which he had brought with him from Amsterdam, and which he said would make it difficult for the Un-Dead to enter. After this, the foursome waited in ominous silence amid the gravestones. In time, the group spied a woman advancing towards the moonlit tomb, dressed in the white cerements of the grave and carrying a little child.
“I could hear the gasp of Arthur,” Dr. Seward explained, “as we recognised the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed! The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness.”
Van Helsing raised his lantern; the men shuddered with horror, for Lucy’s lips were crimson with fresh blood which trickled over her chin and stained her white death-robe. When Lucy—or the thing that once was Lucy—saw them, she drew back with an angry snarl, carelessly flinging to the ground the child she had been holding. As the child lay there moaning, Lucy’s lips curved in a wanton smile, and she advanced languorously towards Arthur with outstretched arms.
“Come to me, Arthur,” she said, in a tone that was diabolically sweet. “Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”
Arthur, although horror-struck, opened his arms to receive her as if under a spell. Van Helsing sprang between them and held up a golden crucifix, from which the vampire Lucy recoiled. She dashed for the tomb, but was stopped outside the door as if by some irresistible force: the Host! Lucy turned to them, her eyes throwing out sparks of hell-fire, and her features contorted with rage and baffled malice, such as Dr. Seward had never before seen on any living face.
“Answer me, oh my friend!” Van Helsing called to Arthur. “Am I to proceed in my work?”
Hiding his face in his hands, Arthur groaned and answered: “Do as you will. There can be no horror like this ever any more.”
From the chinks around the tomb’s door, Van Helsing removed some of the sacred substance which he had placed there. The men looked on in horrified amazement as Lucy, who had at that moment a corporeal body as real as their own, dashed up to this interstice, which was no wider than a knife blade, and somehow vanished entirely through it.
They could do no more that night; so they took the little child to safety and returned in the light of afternoon with the tools required to finish the deed. The churchyard was deserted. Once more they entered the tomb, where they found Lucy lying in her coffin in all her death-beauty. Dr. Van Helsing explained:
“The lore and experience of the ancients, and of all those who have studied the powers of the Un-Dead, tell us that they are cursed with immortality. They go on age after age, preying on new victims, who become themselves Un-Dead; and so the circle goes on ever widening. Friend Arthur, if you had met that kiss before Miss Lucy die, and again last night when she called to you, you might have become nosferatu yourself when you die. The children whose blood she sucked are not yet so much the worse; but the more she draw their blood, the more power she will have over them, and the more they will come to her. But if she die in truth, then all cease; the tiny wounds of their throats disappear, and they go back to what they were before and live in peace.”
The men nodded in silent understanding. This gave way to horror when Dr. Van Helsing removed from his tool bag a heavy hammer and a wooden stake, some three feet long, one end of which was sharpened to a fine point.
“What we do here is a blessing, my friends,” the professor went on stoically. “When by our hand, this now Un-Dead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor dear lady whom we all love shall again be free. Instead of working wickedness by night, she will take her rightful place among the angels. Who shall strike the blow that sets her free?”
Dr. Van Helsing was willing to do the deed; but he felt, for Lucy’s sake, it should be done by the hand of he who loved her best. Arthur, trembling, agreed to do it. Taking the instruments from Dr. Van Helsing’s hands, Arthur placed the point of the stake over Lucy’s heart and struck with all his might. The creature in the coffin writhed and contorted and screamed, while blood from its pierced heart welled and spurted up around it; but at last the body fell still, and a calm fell over it. Suddenly, the men found themselves looking once again upon Lucy as they had seen her in life, in all her purity and sweetness.
“And now, Arthur my friend, am I forgiven?” Dr. Van Helsing asked, laying his hand on Lord Godalming’s shoulder.
“Forgiven?” Arthur said. “God bless you that you have given my dear one her soul again, and me peace.” He shed tears as he pressed his lips to Lucy’s for a final kiss.
They then completed the last, terrible act—cutting off Lucy’s head, and filling the mouth with garlic—to ensure that vampire Lucy could never return and that her soul would be for ever at rest.
“One step of our work is now done,” Dr. Van Helsing said with a sigh, as the group emerged into the early-afternoon sun and air, which seemed doubly sweet after the horrors of the confining tomb. “But there remains a greater task: to find out the author of all this sorrow and to stamp him out. Shall you all help me?”
The men vowed that they would. They all agreed to meet at Dr. Seward’s house in two days’ time, to form a plan to find and destroy Count Dracula.
I TURNED OFF THE PHONOGRAPH AND LAY BACK IN MY CHAIR, powerless. My cheeks were streaked with tears, and a small, sad sob escaped my lips. Dr. Seward must have heard it, for he jumped up with a worried exclamation, took a case-bottle from a cupboard, and poured me a glass of brandy.
I sipped the spirits gratefully, drying my eyes with the handkerchief the kind doctor offered. “My God,” I finally said, my voice low and broken. “Had I not already known of Jonathan’s experience in Transylvania, I could never believe the multitude of horrors which I have just heard.”
“I was there, and I can scarcely believe it myself,” he replied grimly.
“Through it all, there is only one ray of light: that our dear Lucy is at last at peace.”
“Yes.”
A sudden thought occurred to me. “If I am not mistaken, Doctor, this last dreadful episode, when you—when you killed the vampire Lucy at the graveyard—it only just occurred. In fact, it happened early this very afternoon, shortly before I arrived, did it not?”
“It did, Mrs. Harker. I had just taken Dr. Van Helsing to his hotel afterwards to pack for his trip to Amsterdam, when he received your telegram informing us of your arrival. I finished dictating the last section this afternoon, while you were out.”
“Oh! You poor man. No wonder you seemed so upset to-day at the train station! To think, after all you had just been through, you had to run and meet me—I am so sorry.”
“Do not be. I am glad you are here, ma’am. While you have been listening to my story, I have been reading your husband’s wonderful journal. I have read parts of it twice now, in fact, and it sheds light on many things. Mr. Harker is uncommonly clever, and a man of great nerve.”
“Yes, he is.”
“Scaling that castle wall, and going down to the vault a second time—that was a remarkable piece of daring. I see now why the professor was so keen to have you both join us in our quest.”
; “There is one way in which I think I could be of immediate help, Doctor.”
“What is that?”
“You said you would not know how to pick out any particular part of your phonographic diary, should you have a case you wished to look up. Your detailed observations will, I think, prove invaluable in the task before us. Will you let me copy it all out for you now on my typewriter, as I did with my journal and my husband’s? Then we will be ready for Dr. Van Helsing when he returns to-morrow.”
“A fine idea, Mrs. Harker; but it is well past midnight. You must be tired. Let us return to this in the morning.”
“After all I have just heard, I could never sleep a wink. Please, Doctor: I would be grateful for something to do.”
Dr. Seward capitulated. I brought down my typewriter and set it up on the small table beside the phonograph. He set the instrument at a slow pace, and I began to typewrite from the beginning, using manifold-paper to make three copies. Dr. Seward made a round of his patients while I worked; he then returned and sat near me, reading, to keep me company. At length, he fell asleep in his chair. I typed long into the night, not finishing until after the sun came up. Leaving the typed pages neatly on Dr. Seward’s desk, I slipped quietly upstairs and fell into bed for some much-needed rest.
I had three dreams.
In the first dream, I saw Lucy as a vampire, dressed in her death-robe as she wandered aimlessly across the Heath. She came upon a little child and snatched it up, her eyes blazing like red flames as she bared her fangs and clenched them on the child’s throat. That vision was so real and so frightening that it took me a while to fall back to sleep.
My second dream was a vast improvement—wonderful, in fact. I was sitting in a rocking chair in my house at Exeter, holding an infant to my breast. As I cradled the tiny, chubby form in my arms, I kissed his soft, warm head, inhaling his lovely baby scent as I stroked his tufts of dark hair. He was my baby: my very own child, the first true blood relative I had ever known, a being who was a part of me and Jonathan together. I felt my heart spilling over with love, so much love, more love than I had ever imagined I had inside of me. I knew that I would do anything to protect this child, anything. I awoke glowing with happiness. Some day, I thought: some day when all this madness was over, when the evil Dracula was dead and we could all return to our normal lives, I would have that baby. I would have many babies: to hold, cuddle, sing to, read to, play with, and raise into happy, healthy children. I drifted off again in a blissful haze.