The Elixir

by George Willson

  “How?” David asked.

  “I don’t know!” Van Helsing screamed in frustration. “No idea. He was alone in here. I was in there. How was I to know he was going to die sixty seconds later? I thought you were keeping watch.”

  “I was keeping watch,” David said. “Vladimir managed to sneak all the way to the castle walls. Arthur and I ran in here to see if we could find him. Arthur found him before I did, and Voivode was already down.”

  Van Helsing struggled for a response. All he managed to say was, “Typical. Just typical.”

  “Are you blaming this on me too?” David asked.

  “I don’t want to see you again, David,” Van Helsing said. David opened his mouth to respond, but Van Helsing held up a hand. “You were helpful in this case, and I am grateful. Without Voivode, we might not have found the cure. But without Voivode, we would not have needed to find the cure. Just like every other major calamity I have experienced, you’ve somehow been at the root of it.

  “Look, bad things happen. I get that. But it seems like whenever you’re around, they are at their worst. I can forgive lots of things. Ignorance? No problem. Stupidity? Forgivable. Mistakes? They happen to all of us. Somehow, something about you goes beyond all of that and magnifies a problem to as bad as it can get.”

  “Professor Van Helsing, surely,” Seward began, but Van Helsing interrupted him.

  “John, I know what you’re saying, but this is different,” Van Helsing said. “David, I want you out of my life again. Please leave. Your assistance is no longer required.”

  “I have nowhere to go,” David said, starting to realize his situation. “I have no family. I have no home. Everything I had was tied up in him, and now he’s gone too. I have nothing. I don’t even have anything to do.”

  “That isn’t my problem,” Van Helsing said, “and unlike you, I still have too much to lose. I just don’t want to see you. I can’t take the risk.”

  David nodded and turned to the door. “I know who I am, Abraham,” he said. “I know I seem to attract trouble. That’s why I left the Rastem. I can’t go back to them, though. Not now. I would feel out of place.”

  “Find something,” Van Helsing said encouragingly. “Regardless of what happens when we come across each other, I know you have a good heart. I know you try. There was a time when I also lost everything. I went out and found it. You have to do the same.”

  David nodded. “All the best, Abraham,” he said.

  “The same to you, David,” Van Helsing said.

  Seward walked up to David and shook his hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you, sir,” he said. “Good luck.”

  Jonathan was right behind him with another handshake. “Good-bye, David. It was nice to have finally understood what went on out there, and if you do need anything from a solicitor back in England, please contact me.”

  Mina also shook his hand as she stood beside Jonathan. David looked into her eyes, and he still marveled at how much she resembled Beth. He was grateful that some part of Hauginstown was still out there somewhere, whether they knew it or not.

  “Thank you for everything, sir,” Mina said.

  “Thank you,” David replied, and then he looked to all of them. “Thank you all.”

  David walked to the front door, dropped the drawbridge, and walked outside. There was a big world out there, and to date, he had never explored it. He needed to find himself, and so with newfound freedom, he did what every great man does when looking for answers: put one foot in front of the other.

  June 1896

  EPILOGUE

  Abraham Van Helsing walked into the home of Jonathan and Mina Harker and took a seat. He had received a telegram from Mr. Stoker asking everyone to meet there for an announcement he had regarding the book he had been working on. Van Helsing was keenly aware of this book as having been based upon what had happened seven years ago, and he had requested that Stoker leave the Fempiror out of it. The last thing they needed was attention.

  A boy of about five ran into the room and jumped on Van Helsing with a big hug.

  “My, Arthur, you are getting big,” Van Helsing commented. “You’re about as big as my son.”

  “How old is he?” young Arthur asked.

  “He’s a little older than you are,” Van Helsing said, smiling at Jonathan and Mina. They had named their son after their friend, Arthur Holmwood, and their infant daughter, Lucy, was sleeping soundly in the other room while everyone prayed she stayed that way during Mr. Stoker’s visit.

  Mr. Stoker arrived shortly thereafter along with John Seward, and they all awaited Mr. Stoker’s announcement.

  “I have finished my version of our adventure,” Stoker announced. “As requested by Dr. Van Helsing, I have removed the Fempiror elements, and as such, used a bit of, shall we say, supernatural license to tell the story.”

  “Is it to be published soon, then?” Jonathan asked.

  “Well, my publisher and I are going around on some aspects of it, but it should be out next year,” Stoker said. “I brought my draft with me, if you care to have a look.”

  Stoker removed a thick manuscript from his bag and handed it to Van Helsing. He looked at the title and then back to Stoker.

  “The Dead Un-Dead?” Van Helsing asked. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “You will have to read it to find out,” Stoker smiled.

  Van Helsing flipped through several pages, and then glanced back to Stoker.

  “I thought you were going to change the names,” Van Helsing asked.

  “I changed mine,” Stoker smiled. He changed his voice to an American accent. “I’m from Texas.”

  Van Helsing smiled and rolled his eyes. “I see you basically recopied the majority of the diary entries. Many of them appear almost entirely unchanged.”

  “That was the beauty of it, actually,” Stoker explained. “Since no one knew what was really going on, everyone tried to make everything as rational as possible. I took a few liberties here and there.”

  “I can see that,” Van Helsing said. “I see you have us all going back to Transylvania at the end, and Mina has some kind of hallucinatory visions?”

  “Well, there are these vampire legends that I drew on to do some of it, and a most fascinating story of a Vlad the Impaler whose surname was Dracul,” Stoker said.

  “Vlad the Impaler stayed at Poenari Castle,” Van Helsing said.

  “Oh, well, I suppose there is a connection there somewhere, but it adds to the depth of it,” Stoker said.

  “You called the vampire Dracula?” Van Helsing chuckled.

  “I was going to call him Count Wampyr,” Stoker said, “but then I changed my mind when I read about the Impaler.”

  “You just came full circle,” Van Helsing said to which Stoker shrugged. “The Dead Un-Dead is a strange title, though. You could shorten it to just The Un-Dead, I’m sure, and get your point across. Or if you like oddly worded titles, you could just call it Dracula. The relation to Draculya will undoubtedly draw some Fempiror interest, but they’ll leave you alone.”

  “I will let you read it in its entirety, if you wish,” Stoker said. “I just have to get it back, so you cannot take it home with you.”

  “I’d like to, thank you,” Van Helsing said, and then he turned to the Harkers. “How are you two doing?”

  “We’re doing well,” Jonathan said. “Before we had the children, we went back to Transylvania to look at the castle. At least from a distance. I didn’t see any Mutations out there, but I didn’t want to tempt fate either. They didn’t leave much when they blew it up. Still, it was good to clear up the memories.”

  “No one would believe any of this anyway,” Mina said. “Bram has his book, but even if he told it all as it really happened, I don’t think it would matter.”

  “The truth would be difficult for anyone to accept,” Seward said.

  “In this tale, we alone know the truth,” Van Helsing said. “We want no proofs, and we ask no one to believe us. Let
Mr. Stoker’s account be ours. His story of Dracula will cover us very nicely.”

  The Fempiror Chronicles

  Continues in

  Second Life

  Appendix

  Pronunciation of the Felletterusk Language

  Felletterusk was the common language of the Fempiror. Use this guide to assist in pronouncing the language.

  a = father

  b = baby

  c = cat, but never sit

  d = dog

  e = felt, unless at the end of a word, then = the ay in may

  f = felt

  g = grand

  h = hi

  i = police

  j = Jacques like the French j (zh sound)

  k = kit

  l = land

  m = maybe

  n = never

  o = hope

  p = person

  r = a cross between r & d, such as the British pronunciation of very (veddy), or the Spanish pronunciation of r in cara (face). It has a very slight trill to it.

  s = simple

  t = type

  u = boo

  v = visual

  w = wish

  y = yankee

  z = zebra

  ä = date

  ö = person, but with the lips brought in to a sort of oo shape.

  ü = like u, but with the lips tightened considerably.

  Diphthongs

  sh = sh as ship

  gh = g as in goat

  ch = k as in kit

  tch = ch as in church

  Unless otherwise indicated, words are accented on the second syllable. Accent usually only differs with the placement of the accent mark (á, é, í, ó, ú) placed on a separate syllable.

  Phonetics of some Felletterusk words:

  Fempiror (fem-PEER-or)

  Rastem (raws-TEM)

  Tepish (te-PEESH)

  Elewo (ay-LAY-wo)

  Voivode (vo-EE-vo-day)

  One more thing:

  The city that rests at the base of the Carpathian Mountains directly below Poenari Castle was rendered as Capatsuneni Ungureni in the narrative. This is a phonetic representation of the actual city name of Căpăţânenii Ungureni, done for easier pronunciation.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  George Willson was born in 1975 and has lived in Oklahoma the majority of his life. Following his graduation from Broken Arrow High School in 1993 where he excelled in the music program, he had a short tour in the U.S. Army as a trombone player before returning to civilian life in Oklahoma. He started by writing musicals, and eventually collaborated on one that had a small scale production in Sweden at about the same time he had a play produced in Tulsa, Ok in 2001. He became a member of the Simplyscripts.com screenwriting community for a time culminating with the production of a short film, No Better Loved Than Lost, and a feature, No Kind Of Life, both of which he wrote, produced, directed, and performed the soundtrack in 2007 and 2009. He is the director of the Broken Arrow Community Orchestra, still writes music regularly, and can play piano along with a dozen other instruments as well as sing, all of which are talents he shares with his church on a weekly basis in its worship team. He has written four novels for the Fempiror Chronicles series, six in another series called The Maze, and currently lives in Broken Arrow, Ok with his wife and three princesses.