by Hans De Roos
Wilma was understandably curious then when she began opening the package, but it contained nothing more than a rosary with a brass cross322 and Thomas’s journal, written in shorthand, which is presented in the first part of this story. On the first page she read her own name.
In the evening, when Thomas was asleep, Wilma started reading the notebook and was both frightened and mystified by what she found. Even though she believed everything in it to be a product of her poor husband’s imagination, she was still struck with apprehension upon reading it.
She also began to suspect that Count Dracula and Baron Székely might be one and the same person.
Thomas was ill the next day, and though he managed to do his work he was very distracted. That night he spoke in his sleep, and Wilma knew through his words that he was dreaming of his stay with the Count.
Fjallkonan #10 | 15 March 1901
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Professor and Barrington
WITH THOMAS SUFFERING LIKE THIS, THE DUTCH professor arrived as though he was summoned. Wilma cordially welcomed him, and it wasn’t long before she told him all about her journey to Castle Dracula—and about Thomas’s journal. This seemed very important to the professor, and he asked if he might borrow the text,323 which Wilma had transcribed. He promised to come back the next day and spent the night reading the journal. When he returned, he told Wilma that the notebook was worth its weight in gold, as it shed light upon many things that hitherto had been hidden in the dark.
He said that Thomas was so baffled upon seeing the man on the street in London because in that moment some memory of his stay with the Count must have been triggered. This vague reminiscence, however, must have seemed so unfamiliar to him—now that he’d forgotten all about his stay at the castle and didn’t even know about his journal—that he’d believed he was losing his wits. Wilma then fetched her husband for an interview with the professor.
The professor and Thomas talked for a long time, and Van Helsing came to the conclusion that Thomas was now regaining his memory,324 although he couldn’t remember the incident at Piccadilly on the day of Mr. Hawkins’s funeral.
The professor gave Thomas some healthful advice and asked him to remain quiet for the time being, and to avoid anything that might upset him. He had the journal with him and wanted to show it to some of his acquaintances.
A few days later Barrington came to visit Wilma. He had just returned to London and now travelled to Exeter—where Thomas and Wilma lived325—to learn about Count Dracula’s real estate purchase in London. She informed him that Thomas was recovering his memory, and that his diary had been found.
Barrington andWilma agreed that he shouldn’t talk with Thomas until he had consulted with Van Helsing, and they arranged to meet again in two days.
Van Helsing and Barrington arrived at the appointed time and had a long talk with Thomas, after which Barrington came to Wilma once more to tell her that he wondered about the professor’s views. He respected him highly, but he thought him a religious sentimentalist, prone to superstition. He said that he personally didn’t rely on anything other than facts and thought that there had to be a logical explanation for everything that was said about Count Dracula and his accomplices, even though these stories seemed bizarre to many people.
With these words he left their house.
Professor Van Helsing began to explain his research and its results to Wilma, saying, “The inventions of the nineteenth century are amazing. They have created a new world, teaching us to recognize the forces of nature that our ancestors either had no knowledge of or which they ascribed to the supernatural. Nowadays scientists can hardly dismiss any phenomenon as inconceivable within the limits of physical law. Nature has an infinite range of such laws, but human perception cannot fully grasp them because the sensory organs aren’t sophisticated enough.
“There must be powers and principles that our descendants will someday discover, even if we do not know them now. They will learn to understand these forces, and domesticate and control them. Who knows, perhaps there is a world of invisible beings influencing us to act on behalf of good or evil,326 depending on their intention.327
“I—and many other thinkers of our time—have reached the conclusion that such creatures do exist and that they obey certain laws which are unknown to us, as they are equipped with an entirely different range of gifts and powers than we are.
“Folklore recognizes many things that science knows nothing about, or which scientists deny. One such thing is the fact that there are creatures wandering about here on earth after they die.328 Let’s consider such a being, as a person, for example, who has lived sinfully in life, as a criminal or murderer. He departs like any other man, but his soul cannot break free from the body, which binds it to the earth. The soul then remains attached to the corpse and—by some law that we do not know—can settle in it again, bring new life to it, and use it, furthermore, to satisfy its natural lusts. In order to maintain this existence, however, this vermin must feed off the blood of living humans—and by virtue will never stop killing.
“So it is said in folklore, to which we may add that these un-dead creatures329 are, according to popular belief, supposedly able to influence other people—not only the wicked, but also the weak.”330
They discussed Lucia’s death and the professor said,
“I have every reason to believe that this innocent girl was afflicted by the same forces I speak of now—or by a kind of hypnosis, which these enemies of mankind use to turn decent people into their tools, once they manage to gain power over them. She, who was carried to her tomb adorned in the white garments of innocence, now has this same effect on her beloved; she is now trying to pull him into the grave with her.331
“I am convinced that the Powers of Darkness are spreading around us. We find many examples in the newspapers pointing to it, but our friend Barrington is of another opinion, claiming he can explain all in a much different way.”
He bid farewell to the couple and left, but Wilma placed no faith in his words, regardless of how much she respected him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The People in Carfax
THE FOLLOWING CHAPTER IS BASED ON A JOURNAL written by Dr. Seward332—the Directing Physician at the asylum in Parfleet—who was previously mentioned in this story.
The mental hospital where Seward was Director stood directly opposite the Carfax building that Count Dracula had purchased.
Barrington now set off to visit the doctor and find out what was happening at Carfax.
Dr. Seward told him that a lot of work had recently been done to Carfax, and that costly furnishings had been moved in. He saw lavishly decorated carriages arrive there with some regularity—far more luxurious than was usual in this part of the city.
When Barrington asked Seward whether he’d perhaps noticed a carriage that set itself apart from the others, the doctor told him about a particularly extravagant carriage drawn by grey horses, carrying servants in grey uniforms—and a ravishing young woman, whose face indeed had an extraordinarily striking look about it. From Seward’s description, Barrington believed her to be the French Ambassador’s wife.
“Yet it was not the sight of the magnificent carriages that caught my attention most of all, but rather the strange and suspicious chaps moving about Carfax, especially in the evening.”
Before he left, Barrington thanked the doctor for the information and asked him to keep an eye on Carfax and the goings on there.
Later that day, as the doctor sat down for dinner, he was handed a calling card bearing the name of a certain Countess Ida Varkony. The card had been delivered by a servant in uniform, carrying a message from the Countess asking the doctor to call on her as she was suffering a bout of some malady she was susceptible to. She apologized for sending for him at such a late hour but hoped he would come all the same, as she lived right across from him at Carfax.
The doctor was very curious to look around the old house, which had been
uninhabited for a long time, so he went along with the servant without delay. When he arrived at the door another attendant welcomed him inside, and as he entered a French maid greeted him and showed him into a grand hall with old embroidered tapestries.
When the doctor arrived a woman rose from a divan and came to meet him.
It was no surprise that the doctor—though well known for being a calm and controlled man, averse to frivolity—was so taken aback that he lost all composure and manner;333 he’d never before seen a woman of such strange, indescribable beauty. To him, she seemed so different from other pretty women, as if she had come from another world. She was tall and sleek, both graceful and radiant. Her hair was thick and black; her eyes unusually large and deep, with long black lashes.
But despite her being of such exquisite beauty, the doctor felt a pang of alarm upon seeing her, as though he’d laid eyes upon some wonder of nature that might prove dangerous.
After the Countess had greeted the doctor she sat back down on the divan. She spoke French with a foreign accent.
The doctor asked some questions about her health, and she answered them all if rather casually. He soon learned that she had a habit of fainting334 and was suffering from insomnia, cardiac arrhythmia and convulsive seizures. She said she’d recently recovered from a fit and had a hard time sleeping after that, so she would like to be hypnotized. Dr. Seward knew the technique very well—though he rarely practiced it. This time, however, he yielded to persuasion, but putting the patient into mesmeric sleep turned out to be harder than usual. In fact, he didn’t succeed until he took the lady’s hand. He then gave her a hypnotic suggestion: after going to bed she would fall asleep and sleep well all through the night, and then she would wake up again in the morning feeling refreshed and revitalized. After the procedure he woke her from her trance, and she thanked him dearly for his help, saying that she hoped he would do this for her again soon.
The hypnotic treatment had an unusual effect on the doctor himself. He felt weary the day after, and he thought of nothing else but the Countess and what had happened between themin the house across the way.
Towards the end of the day, he went to visit her and was escorted to her bedroom.
She was lying on the bed as though she were dead and didn’t open her eyes, yet she seemed to be speaking, her voice sounding as if it were coming through the ceiling:
“Good evening, Doctor. She is dead now, but you must revive her. Do whatever you can.”335
He couldn’t find any signs of life.
“You must first hypnotize her,” said the voice.
After many attempts to revive her and massaging her limbs,336 he managed to bring her back to life, but it had the same effect on him as before, as if he were losing much of his own life force; as though his blood were seeping away from him, just like when the Dutch professor had drawn his blood for Lucia. He even had the impression that it was Lucia herself resting there in the bed.
Finally he came to his senses, as if waking up from a stupor, and at that same moment the Countess awoke as well. She made him promise to return the next day then asked the parlormaid to show him to her brother in the next room. He introduced himself as Prince Koromezzo337 and enquired as to how the lady was feeling, but the doctor said he wasn’t yet able to judge her condition. Prince Koromezzo asked the doctor to become her personal physician and requested that he do them the favor of returning at nine o’clock in the evening.338 She would by then have recovered enough to receive him.
Fjallkonan #11 | 20 March 1901
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Evening Party
THAT EVENING DR. SEWARD WAS WEARIER THAN USUAL and took chloral before going to bed.339 He slept deeply and quietly until morning but still felt feeble and tired when he awoke. He had to pull himself together in order to perform his regular duties and took a nap in the afternoon, waking up again at nine o’clock, at which time he felt well enough to visit his patient across the street.
As he exited the asylum he saw a carriage drawn by grey horses arriving at Carfax, and upon entering the hall, he saw an elegant lady being welcomed there. She wore a white coat with exquisite feather ornamentation, and the doctor realized that this was the same lady whom Barrington had identified as the French Ambassador’s wife.
The doctor was then admitted to the Countess.
The lights were dimmed, only slightly illuminating the room. There were about 40-50 guests inside, and although there were both ladies and gentlemen present, there were far more men than women. Although the visitors were speaking in French, the doctor suspected that most of them were from different countries, as every now and then he would pick up a word from a language he did not recognize. He seemed to be the only Englishman there.
Prince Koromezzo greeted and welcomed the physician as soon as he came in. He took him to the Countess, who sat in a corner surrounded by a handful of ladies and gentlemen. She—like the other women—was dressed in glamorous attire; their necks and arms were bare but sparkling with gems. The doctor noticed in particular the necklace the Countess was wearing. It had a heart of shimmering diamonds, with a large ruby at the center.
She greeted the doctor with a slight nod of the head and in the same moment the young lady who’d arrived at Carfax a few minutes before him entered the room with two gentlemen. The Countess greeted her and introduced her to the doctor as Madame Saint Amand. Soon after, everyone rose to their feet as a tall, impressive-looking man entered the room. It was clear he was master of the house, as he was greeted with signs of great respect and everyone gave way to him.340
He spoke a few words with two of the men in the room and then walked up to the Countess. She’d been sitting as proud as a queen, but when the newly arrived gentleman drew nearer, her whole appearance changed and it was clear she was completely under his thumb. They had a brief conversation in some foreign tongue before he headed quickly towards the doctor, thanking him on behalf of the Countess. He said that he’d read Seward’s treatise on hallucinations and optical illusions, which had been printed in some medical journal—an article he believed to be of great significance as he personally performed experiments of this kind. He wanted to make a few such attempts tonight and hoped that the doctor, with his scientific acuity, would observe them.
Then he took the Countess by the hand and led her through a curtained entryway. One of the people in the room turned to the doctor. He was a short stocky man341 with a dark complexion and deeply set black eyes, and he began to talk to the doctor about the upcoming evening program.
“The Countess is one of a kind,” he said, “so it’s quite an event in the history of mankind when a master like Marquis Caroman Rubiano engages such a natural wonder to collaborate with him. Her gift of second sight is very strong—she can perceive the hidden world342 and see into the future.”343
Suddenly most of the lights in the hall went out, and Dr. Seward got the impression that some wondrous things were taking place that were beyond his understanding—as if he were attending some kind of religious ceremony down in a dark cavern. He then had the queer sensation of floating in the air until he lost all consciousness. Finally, he awoke as if from a dream—still sitting in the same chair with the Countess standing beside him, together with Marquis Caroman Rubiano, as he was called.
He suspected his hosts might have used him for hypnosis or some similar experiment.
The Marquis addressed him, explaining that he had fainted. “I hope you get well again soon. Unfortunately, due to your indisposition, you have not learned anything new this evening, but you are welcome another time.”344
The doctor then said his goodbyes and left. The hunchback345 accompanied him home, and when they parted he handed Seward his calling card, bearing the name of “Giuseppe Leonardi,” which—oddly enough—was the name of a world famous violinist and composer. As he arrived at the hospital the doctor heard a cry of distress from the garden at Carfax.
“What is that?” he asked the hunchback. �
�It’s a woman’s voice.”346
The hunchback paid no attention to his question and quickly said goodbye to the doctor.
A short while later the same man returned for a visit, and after talking to him insistently he finally got Seward’s permission to play his instrument for the patients and to allow the ladies from Carfax to accompany him.
(Here is where Dr. Seward’s notes end, appearing as though he hadn’t been able to finish them.)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Conspiracy
A FORTNIGHT HAD PASSED SINCE VAN HELSING LAST visited Harker and his wife, during which time he’d also not heard from Dr. Seward. Thomas Harker was now recovering well and was starting to regain his memory. He no longer doubted that Baron Székely, whom Wilma had met, was none other than Count Dracula himself.
One evening Van Helsing, Barrington, Tellet and Seward’s American friend, Morris, came to the couple’s home.347
Van Helsing spoke to them, explaining that it was their mission to deliberate and find a way to utterly destroy the public enemy they all knew. It had become clear that a conspiracy had been formed to thwart all that is good in society, and that there was but one man responsible for this: Count Dracula. This Count was—as folklore imagined certain creatures to be—half-man and half-animal, and had probably lived much longer than mortal men were meant to.348 Van Helsing explained that such beings were endowed with powers and qualities normal people do not know, but were denied other faculties common to ordinary humans. According to old texts: Such beings could not cross running water, their power dwindled in daylight, and although they could move about among humans, every now and then they needed to rest in the hallowed earth in which they had once been buried.