He tore himself as if with physical force from the side of the coffin, paced to the door, shoes crunching the brown leaves they had tracked in from outside. “He doubted me when I took him from her kiss when she was dying,” he said, as if speaking to himself, and Seward shivered at the memory of Lucy’s face then, the way her lips drew back from those long, sharp teeth, the gleam of unholy greed in her eyes. “I know he has forgiven me because in some mistaken idea I have done things that prevent him say good-by as he ought; and he may think that in some more mistaken idea this woman was buried alive; and that in most mistake of all we have killed her. Yet he never can be sure, and that is the worst of all.”
Yes, thought Seward, looking down at the moss-stain on Lucy’s sleeve, the blood-spot on her breast. Not to be sure… Not to ever be sure who or what that white form was that he’d glimpsed last night, flitting among the graves with the sleeping child in her arms.
A part of him thought, But Art will never know…
But he’d nursed troubled minds long enough to be aware that there was no certainty whatever that Arthur wouldn’t come to this tomb himself. Would sneak here, drawn as if against his will, too ashamed to breathe a word of his secret to his friends…
And find what?
And what would that do to him, make of him, thereafter? Especially coming, as it did, in tandem with his father’s sudden death from stroke?
All that awareness was in Van Helsing’s voice, too. “I know that he must pass through the bitter waters to reach the sweet,” said the old man softly. “He must have one hour that will make the very face of heaven grow black to him; then we can act for good all around, and send him peace.”
Seward helped Van Helsing fold the coffin’s lead lining back over Lucy’s face and upper body; helped him replace the heavy lid. He felt numb and strange, as if everyone around him had suddenly begun speaking a foreign language, and wondered if this was what it was like for the men and women in his charge, when first they began to go mad. Since his smallest childhood he had quested to know Why, and had followed those longings down the road of logic and science. Indeed, only on meeting Lucy had he begun to doubt that all things could be explained in terms of matter, logic, and the physiology of the nervous system.
Could the Un-Dead be some physical phenomenon unknown as yet to science? Some illness, some condition of the flesh or the brain?
Van Helsing didn’t seem to think so.
Was Van Helsing mad? Seward wondered again.
Was he himself?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Through the night as Van Helsing kept watch in the graveyard, he asked himself the same question.
Am I mad?
He’d asked himself that at intervals throughout his long life, and had never come to a satisfactory conclusion.
He leaned his back to one of the pale-barked sycamores that grew near the Westenra tomb in Hampstead Cemetery, touched with uneasy fingers the thick links of silver chain he’d wrapped around his throat. He wore them on his wrists as well—a woman in Thibet had instructed him in this—and in his hand he carried a rosary twined with garlic flowers. He did not fear Lucy Westenra so much, for he had carefully chinked up every crack in the tomb’s door with a paste of flour and water, mixed with fragments of a consecrated Host, and had hung another crucifix over the keyhole of the door.
But he guessed that Lucy did not always hunt alone.
He shuddered, as Lucy’s sweetly beautiful face returned to his mind.
He had encountered the Un-Dead before, in Egypt, in Constantinople, and in Paris; had heard of them in India and Thibet. Three times had he found himself, looking down into their faces as they slept after their kills—one of those had been a woman he’d known in life. And always it was the same.
They were so beautiful.
He knew what they were. He had seen them kill, and seen the chaos of horror and doubt they left in their wake. He had seen them prey on those closest to them, those whose grief made them willing to believe whatever their returning beloveds told them. He had seen them make others of their own kind, through an exchange of blood with chosen victims, victims who did not merely die but became predators in their turn. He had seen their callousness and absolute selfishness as they chose the death of others over their own discomfort, their own craving for blood.
It was unspeakable, that he should look on the faces of vampire women, and feel what he felt.
Desire so overwhelming as to almost blot out thought.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again almost at once. Fool, these thoughts will only weaken you. You close your eyes, you open them to see Him, to see Dracula, this Dracula that Jonathan Harker write of, Jonathan Harker that marry the sweet Madame Mina, who share with me the letters Miss Lucy write. He tried to push from his mind the admission of wanting Lucy, to bury it under loathing of what she had become, under ironic amusement at the recollection of poor Arthur Holmwood’s passionate ramblings about how the transfusion of his blood into Lucy’s veins had made them husband and wife in the sight of God.
And am I, then, too, her husband? And your friends John and Quincey? Are we all co-husbands together in a harem?
He tried to picture Lucy as he knew she must be now, a beautiful body inhabited by a demon, a damned soul, that lured children to her and drank their blood. That would not stop with children; that was growing stronger each night.
It did not drive from his mind the white-hot flash of desire that had pierced him like a swordblade, when she’d opened those smoky demon eyes and smiled at Arthur on her deathbed: Oh my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me…
It did not drive from his mind his utter loathing at himself.
It did not root out his fear that one day that blind lust would prove too much for his strength, and would lead him, too, in spite of all he knew, into the red nightmare of Un-Death.
And that he would enjoy it.
He drew in deep breaths of the cold air. It was autumn, the threshold of winter. Though Hampstead Hill lay far from the Thames, the sooty reek of its fogs drifted through the graveyard, and through the trees southward he could see the dull glow of the city’s gas-lamps. Here in the cemetery it was quiet, the birdless quiet of winter, save for the soft, terrible scratching at the marble door of the tomb.
Man is born to Sin, as the sparks fly upward. His friend and student John, who did such good work among those troubled in their minds, might have been able to explain this curious, desperate lust that seemed to operate in tandem with his genuine affection for Lucy and for her friends, his deep horror and pity for the situation in which they all found themselves. John had proclaimed often that he held no belief in Sin, nor in the doctrines of Predestination and Fate.
Charcot was his god, and Bernheim and that young Austrian Freud. In them he would doubtless have found some rational explanation for the feelings that, despite all he could do, scorched Van Helsing with shame.
Or perhaps, he thought, I am only mad.
But mad or sane, it did not change what he knew to be facts, which others these days ignored, or walked in ignorance of.
That humankind was not alone upon the Earth.
That there were indeed more things in Heaven and Earth than were dreamt of in the philosophy of Hamlet’s friend Horatio or of anyone else: hidden powers whose aims and perceptions were as different from those of humankind as humans’ were from those of the sponges beneath the sea.
That the Un-Dead walked, as they had long walked. And that their bite would spread their condition to others, if they were not stopped.
R. M. R.’s notes
28 September
27 flies, 9 spiders, 4 moths, 1 mouse
-19 flies, 4 mothsspiders
-12 spidersmouse
Seward back, but so distracted as to be completely unaware of the mouse (a gift, I am sure, from Nomie, my faithful little Norn). He is gray-faced and shaken, like a man who has looked down into Hell.
How can Hell have shaken him? He r
ules one of its tinier Circles. Does he not yet know this?
28 September—night
Seward departed shortly before nine.
In the darkness of his dream, Renfield saw again Lucy Westenra’s tomb. Night lay thick on London, thicker still on this sub-urban wilderness of headstones and tombs. He could smell the soot-laden fog, hear the whooping screech of the owl, the frantic squeak of the mouse it seized. Taste the blood.
Four men came over the cemetery wall, Seward and old Van Helsing and two others. The younger of these two—the youngest of the four—followed hard on Van Helsing’s heels as the old man unlocked the marble door of that ghostly pillared sepulchre, a golden-haired godling in black, like a young Siegfried. He looked inquiringly at the old professor as they gathered around the twin coffins, then at Seward. To Seward, Van Helsing said, “You were with me here yesterday. Was the body of Miss Lucy in that coffin?”
“It was.”
“You hear.” Van Helsing turned to the other two, Siegfried and a tall, stringy man with the faded remains of a deep tan on his long-jawed face, a long sandy mustache and a rough blue greatcoat such as Renfield had seen Americans wear, who got them second-hand from their Army. “And yet there is no one who does not believe with me.” With that rather confusing double negative, Van Helsing took his screwdriver, and unfastened the lid of the coffin. Siegfried—who was, Renfield guessed, Seward’s good friend and successful rival Arthur Holmwood, the new Lord Godalming—and the American both backed away a step, and in the glow of the dark-lantern the American bore, Renfield could see they were steeling themselves for the stink of a body ten days dead.
He could see their faces change when they smelled no such thing, even before they stepped forward to look.
“Professor, I answered for you,” said the American. “Your word is all I want. I wouldn’t ask such a thing ordinarily—I wouldn’t so dishonor you as to imply a doubt; but this is a mystery that goes beyond any honor or dishonor. Is this your doing?”
Van Helsing replied, with no more emotion in his voice than if the question had been one of hat-size rather than honor, “I swear to you by all that I hold sacred that I have not removed nor touched her.” And he explained, with the calm of a man in the witness-box, the events of two nights before. “Last night there was no exodus, so tonight before the sundown I took away my garlic and other things. And so it is we find this coffin empty. So”—he shut the slide of his lantern, leaving them in the dark—“now to the outside.”
Renfield turned in his sleep, whimpered with fright. Someone was watching, someone was listening, someone standing very near them in the darkness. Someone who could smell the blood in the veins of the four men, who could see them clearly, even when the heavy scudding clouds concealed the moon.
Someone who drew back, even as Godalming and the American leaned forward to see what Van Helsing was doing as he worked his flour paste through his fingers again, caulked up the chinks in the door. “Great Scott,” said the American, pulling a foot-long bowie knife from a sheath at his belt to cut tobacco for himself, “is this a game?”
“It is.”
“What is that which you are using?” asked Godalming, and Van Helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered.
“The Host. I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an Indulgence.”
You mean you have a priest who believes, like you, in the power of the Un-Dead, thought Renfield. He knew perfectly well that no Pope, nor any member of the organized Church, would issue an Indulgence for such use of the consecrated wafer. By their silence—Godalming, as a true-blooded scion of an English noble house, was by definition Church of England, and most Americans couldn’t have described the difference between a Catholic and a Druid—both men were struck dumb with superstitious reverence: the American even endeavored to spit his tobacco in a quiet and seemly manner. In the darkness the watcher—watchers, Renfield could feel their minds—stirred, then stilled. They could feel Lucy’s approach long before Van Helsing whispered, “Ach!”
Moonlight flickered on something white in the avenue of yews. A child cried out, in fear or pain. Or perhaps, thought Renfield, deep in the well of sleep, it was his own cry that he heard. The light of Van Helsing’s lantern fell on Lucy’s face, on the crimson glisten of blood on her mouth, which trailed down to dribble her white gown.
“Arthur.” With a casual motion she threw to the ground the child she had been carrying in her arms, held out her hands. The men standing ranged before the tomb might have seen only the demon fire in her eyes, but Renfield thought, too, that she was still a revenant, still tangled in the madness of new death and animal hunger.
His own mouth burned with the memory of the spiders he’d eaten—each sweetly charged with the flickering energy of the flies—with the murky deliciousness of the blood he’d sucked out of the mouse that morning. Had Langmore come then and tried to take it from him, he thought he, too, would have turned on him, with just such wildness in his eyes.
“Come to me, Arthur,” she whispered, and moved forward, her bare arms outstretched. “Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you.” The words whispered like a half-heard echo of dreams of passion, never filled…Never filled by Arthur, in any case. “Come, husband…”
With a desperate sob, young Lord Godalming opened his arms for her, but Van Helsing—as Renfield knew he would—stepped between them, holding out a small gold crucifix upon a silver chain. Lucy drew back with a cry, and Renfield felt it again, the minds of those who watched from the darkness beyond the tomb. The shiver, at the burning energy that focussed in sacred things. It was as if, seeing with their eyes, he saw the deadly glow that could sear otherworldly flesh, shining forth not only from the crucifix but from the caulking that sealed the door of the tomb.
Lucy swung around a few feet from the door, mouth open in rage to show blood on the long white teeth, trapped and furious. In a quiet voice Van Helsing asked, “Answer me, o my friend! Am I to proceed with my work?”
Godalming slipped to his knees to the damp gravel of the path, buried his face in his hands. By the light of Van Helsing’s lantern Renfield saw Seward’s face, as he looked down on the golden head of the younger man. Godalming’s voice was barely audible. “Do as you will, friend. Do as you will.”
It was the American—Morris, Renfield remembered his name was, Quincey Morris—who helped bring Godalming back to his feet, while Van Helsing moved cautiously past Lucy to un-caulk the putty from the door. In Lucy’s place, Renfield supposed he would have simply fled, yet where could she go? If, in fact, she could find no rest other than in the place where she had been buried, where could she fly?
Like Catherine, he thought, before he and she had bought those other houses for her and Vixie to disappear into. Before they’d set up bank accounts, and papers, proving that she and her daughter were people other than the women Lady Brough was looking for, to take their money back for her own.
Lucy slipped through the chink in the door like smoke, like the figure in a dream, as Nomie, Elizabeth, silent Sarike had come through the broken pane of glass into Renfield’s room eight nights ago. Van Helsing prodded the putty back into place, then went to where the unconscious child still lay in the moonlight of the path.
“Come now, my friends.” He lifted the little boy in his arms. “We can do no more ’til to-morrow. There is a funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that. The friends of the dead will all be gone by two…”
So intent were the men, grouped around Van Helsing, that they glimpsed nothing of the three shadows that followed them along the avenue toward the low point in the wall. The three Wives had, Renfield noticed—seeing them clearly in his dream for the first time—disposed of their own pale old-fashioned gowns and wore now dark modern walking-dresses, stylish and nearly invisible in the thick gloom of the gathering clouds.
“As for this little one, he is not much harm, and by tomorrow night he shall be well. We shall leave him where the police will
find him, as on the other night; and then to home.”
Darkness drifted then into Renfield’s mind, and his dream segued into the thick heat of India, the stink of the Hoogly River, and white ants crawling in armies up a tree in his garden in Calcutta…
But he thought, as Van Helsing laid the sleeping child down against the cemetery wall, that he heard the Countess Elizabeth laugh.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They killed Lucy at a little after two.
Renfield felt it, like the distant memory of pain, stabbing his chest and darkening his eyes. Far more clearly he felt Dracula’s fury, like the mutter of thunder and the taste of ozoneous storm-winds sweeping down the mountains, to tear the valleys to pieces in their wrath.
He sank onto his bed and crushed his hands over his ears, then over his eyes, then over his heart, trying to blot out what he heard and saw and felt. Mostly what he was conscious of was terror.
He’ll find them—Elizabeth, Sarike, Nomie. He’ll say Lucy’s death was their doing.
He’ll say I helped, or kept my silence, of my own accord.
The Wives are too powerful for him to hurt, and the men—Van Helsing and Seward and the others—too wary now, and too prepared.
But within the coming growl of that terrible storm he knew that Dracula would massacre someone in his revenge, and would not much care who it was.
In a frenzy of terror Renfield scrambled to his feet and ran to his boxes, to devour every spider, every fly, every moth, and even the second mouse that Nomie had caused to crawl under the door of his room early that morning.
None of it helped.
Late in the afternoon Seward returned from London, with a sweet-faced, pretty, dark-haired woman whom Renfield, watching the driveway from his window, recognized as Lucy’s friend Mina. She seemed both smaller and older than she had appeared in his dreams, more delicate and yet stronger than steel. She had come a long way, he thought, since she’d giggled and hugged Lucy and Mrs. Westenra in the Whitby train-station, saying good-by to them for what turned out to be the last time. Like her other clothes, her mourning-dress was worn and a little out of fashion. She carried a small traveling-bag, and as Seward helped her down from the carriage, he took from beside her feet a small, heavy square box which Renfield recognized as the case of a portable typewriter. As they passed around the corner of the house toward the shallow front steps, Renfield heard old Lord Alyn in his barred front bedroom begin to howl, the others along the hallway taking up the din, until the cacophony blew around the eaves of the house like the screech of storm-winds in the dead of night. Mina—Renfield wished he knew her surname, for the sake of good manners—broke stride with a shudder, then steeled herself and followed Dr. Seward out of sight around the corner, and into the house.
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