Blood of the Impaler (13 page)

Mr. Stoker himself does not fully believe our tale. This is evident from his reaction to the Professor's request, a request to which he acceded willingly but with a clear sense of confusion. He had expected that the Professor would wish his name changed also, but the Professor told him that he had no concern for his professional reputation and no fear that he might be called upon to explain his actions. But he did say he feared that the book might become popular, and that if it does, it may lead the curious to seek out the sites of the events and thus perhaps unwittingly unleash more of these creatures upon the modern world. I have never been able to bring myself to ask if the Count, in his undeath of four centuries, created only three others in his native land like unto himself, but it is the terrible possibility that other undead creatures prowl the Carpathians that impelled the Professor to make his request. Mr. Stoker agreed as a matter of courtesy, and so he has changed the names of the towns and cities in central Europe to conform to a false geography.

The Professor also told him that he was too old to undertake upon another quest such as the one upon which we all embarked seven years ago, and so he wished his identity to be hidden from those who might seek him out for help, even if Mr. Stoker chooses not to hide his name. So Professor Van Helsing of Rostack in Germany shall be Professor Van Helsing of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Our names, of course, Jonathan and mine, shall remain unchanged, in accordance with the agreement. It is a small price to pay in exchange for fifty percent of the royalties.

Mr. Stoker sees no need to change the names of those who did not survive, and so our dear friend Quincey Morris shall remain himself, as shall the brave lunatic Renfield, and our friend Lucy.

Lucy. I have not thought of her for years. Lucy. Poor Lucy.

20 November.
- I am so worried about little Quincey! Jack cannot fathom his behavior, and all he has been able to suggest is that we wait until the Professor arrives next week and has the opportunity to observe the child. He has been restless at night and so terribly lethargic during the day, and each mealtime has become a battle of wills between us. The boy simply refuses to eat! At first I feared that his lethargy bespoke the presence of the same disease that afflicts my husband, but Jack assures me that consumption is not a contagious disease.

And yet I fear, yet I fear. Dear God, if it be Thy will that Jonathan be taken from me, I pray that I do not live to bury my son!

28 November.
I
wept with joy when Professor Van Helsing stepped from the train today at the station in Whitby. So much love radiates from that old, weary face, and I felt his aged frame tremble with emotion as I embraced him, my dearest friend, my protector, my shield.

He has spoken with little Quincey at length and has watched the child in play and at rest, and he has shaken his head and said that he cannot begin a diagnosis until he has had more time to observe and contemplate. I know that I was unrealistic in my hope that the Professor would be able to look at Quincey and understand immediately what is wrong with him. My memory of all that the Professor knew and said and did during that horrible year after Jonathan went off to Transylvania has made me think our dear old friend omniscient. He is not, of course, and a diagnosis will take time. And he has told us that the problem may be nothing more than a silly mood of childhood, which may be passed by and forgotten with time.

I pray that he is correct, and I feel a stirring of hope and a growth of ease just from his very presence. Dear, strong, wise Professor Van Helsing!

6 December. -
I am writing only to distract my thoughts and still my heart and keep my trembling hand occupied as we await the arrival of the police. My little boy has disappeared. My dear, sweet little Quincey is missing.

17 December.
- Eleven days since I entered my son's room to find his bed empty, eleven days such as I hope I shall never suffer through again. Though the boy is again beneath our roof, he is bound by a strait-waistcoat from Jack's hospital, and we must wait until morning for the priest.

It is not over. We all thought that it had ended on that dusty Transylvanian road seven years ago, but it is not over, and I am polluted, I am unclean, I am the carrier of a plague, infecting my own darling little boy with my filth.

I cannot write more. I know that I must set the story down, but I cannot do so now. Now I must weep and I must pray, and I must go as a child for comfort to Professor Van Helsing, whose heart, too, seems to be breaking from the conclusions he has drawn.

I shall set down the words when the torment in my mind eases. Now I cannot write more.

18 December. -
Jack has given me a sleeping draught, but his estimation of the amount required to calm the engine of my nerves has fallen short of my need, and so I cannot sleep. I shall strive to keep the pen in my hand, for I must set this all down. Even now the sun is rising, and the priest may arrive soon, so I shall not waste time. I know not what the final outcome of this may be, but a record must be made.

Twelve days ago, as Jack and the Professor were enjoying late-night brandy and cigars (Jonathan having already fallen asleep in his bed), I went to look in on Quincey as I do every night, as I am certain all mothers do with all children, only to find his bed empty and his window open. I must have lapsed into shock, for when at last I rushed from the room to fetch the others, I was drenched and frozen from the snow that the wind was hurling through the window.

Jack and the Professor came at once to search the child's room, and I must have been babbling hysterically about kidnappers, for the Professor shook me roughly and forced me to examine the scene carefully. I know that the gentle old man would not have been so brusque had my condition not demanded it. "Look, Madam Mina, look!" he said. "The latch on the window is still affixed to its mate, and it has been broken off on the inside. And see the ground below the window, see the one set of small footprints in the snow." He shook his head and frowned. "The child runs away, my dear lady. He is not kidnapped."

"But why would he do such a thing?" I wept. "We have worked so hard to make a good home for him!"

"I do not know, Madam Mina," the Professor said, "and there will be time enough to discover the reason once we find him."

And so we sent for the police and they searched the grounds and found nothing. Quincey's footprints led to the main road through Whitby and then disappeared, buried beneath the still-falling snow. No trace was found of my dear little boy, not in Whitby and not in the surrounding countryside. With each passing day my hopes sank lower and lower, and my despair and sorrow grew. Jonathan was so devastated by Quincey's disappearance that his health began to fail, and I overheard Jack tell the Professor that he might not survive the ordeal.

It seemed as if my life were falling apart around me, and were it not for the sedatives that Jack gave me, I think I would have gone mad. Telegrams announcing the child's disappearance were sent to police forces throughout the realm, and the Professor insisted upon paying for notices in each and every newspaper and periodical published in England.

I tried to thank him for his help, but my tears were so fast and heavy that the words would not come, and he took me gently by the hands and smiled down into my face, saying, "Madam Mina, years ago I put my very life at risk for you. Do you think I would not begrudge a few pounds for the little child who bears my name and the names of all whom I love?" I could not speak to respond, and so I merely wept.

It was at last Mr. Stoker who found my little boy. Our literary associate is, of course, the business manager of Mr. Henry Irving, whom I have never had the pleasure of seeing on stage but who is a thespian of some repute. Mr. Irving has apparently spent many hours observing the behavior of prisoners and lunatics so as to improve his representation of such characters on the stage, and one result of this practice is that he has established friendships with hospital administrators throughout the realm. He heard of our trouble from Mr. Stoker, and when he learned of a little boy who had been remanded to a lunatic asylum in Hempstead, he mentioned it to Mr. Stoker, who then made inquiries. The little boy had been found killing and eating a cat in an alleyway in Hempstead town, which action resulted in his being put into the asylum. The child told the arresting constable that his name was Quincey.

Desperate hope seemed to overcome us all when we received Mr. Stoker's telegram, and we departed Whitby for Hempstead almost immediately. Poor Jonathan insisted upon rising from his sickbed and accompanying us despite my earnest entreaties, the Professor's advice, and Jack's orders to the contrary. The poor man refused to stay at home while we went to Hempstead, and so he came along, supported by a cane and Jack's strong arm, coughing and shivering in the midst of the cold wind and snow.

As we sat in the private compartment on the train which was carrying us south, the Professor turned to me and said, "Madam Mina, I had hoped never again to see Hempstead." It was only then, only when I heard those words, that I fully realized that we were on our way to the site of tragedy and sorrow. I looked over at Jack and saw from the look on his face that he, too, had been thinking of the past, thinking of Lucy Westenra, whom he had courted in vain and who had fallen victim to the monstrous evil of the Count.

I of course had not accompanied them on that terrible night, but I have heard it described in frightening detail. It was Lucy's supposed illness, her "acute anemia," which had prompted Jack to send for Professor Van Helsing in the first place, and we all had assumed that her subsequent death was the result of her affliction. Indeed it was, but her affliction was Count Dracula, not acute anemia. It was not an easy task for the Professor to persuade Jack and Quincey Morris and Arthur that Lucy had become so foul and unholy a creature as a vampire, but they could not deny the evidence of their own eyes when they saw her, undead, returning to her grave; and it was in the graveyard in Hempstead, in the Westenra family crypt, that the Professor and Jack read prayers as Arthur drove the wooden stake into poor Lucy's heart.

I do believe that not one of us ever wished again to visit Hempstead; and yet there we were, Professor Van Helsing, John Stewart, Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker, all again on our way to that town. Thank God the Duke of Wellington is in South Africa, for were he here in England, he would of course have come with us, and the memory of that night and his holy if horrible deed would have distressed him greatly.

We reached Hempstead after dark and went immediately to the lunatic asylum that Mr. Stoker mentioned in his telegram. My heart seemed almost to fail when we arrived there only to be told that the child, who we all assumed was my little Quincey, had escaped from his overseers. The man in charge of the institution, a Dr. MacKenzie, was quite upset and understandably embarrassed when he told us that they had not kept a careful watch on the child, and under other circumstances I might have been charitable and understanding. I fear that I was not so on that night. I was in the midst of a bitter, frenzied recrimination of poor Dr. MacKenzie, a reaction to the sudden dashing of my hopes that I would be able immediately to embrace my little boy, when the Professor interrupted me by making a request for a hand torch. The calm and unruffled tone of his request startled me into silence, and I remained in that state as Dr. MacKenzie left the room and returned a few minutes later with a lantern. The Professor thanked him and then ushered us all out and back into the cab that we had kept waiting. When Jack asked him where we were going, the Professor said darkly, "To where the child might be, to where I pray the child is not."

The priest has arrived! I see the coach pulling up to our door even now, and I hear Jack and Professor Van Helsing talking to each other downstairs as they go to greet him. I must interrupt this entry.

(later.)
- With the departure of the priest comes some hope, but I have lived so long with hope frustrated that I dare not wax complacent. This evening will tell. For now, I must return to my record and bring the story up to date.

"To where the child might be, to where I pray the child is not," Professor Van Helsing had answered Jack. The three of us looked at each other in confusion as the cabman closed the door and asked us for our destination. It was the Professor who answered, "The graveyard of the Church of St. Mary."

I gasped and trembled when he spoke the words, for it is there that poor Lucy was laid to rest eight years ago. Jonathan leaned forward and coughed as he said, "Professor, what does this mean?"

"It may mean that I am a foolish old man," he replied, who can no longer distinguish between logic and fear. "It may mean nothing. I speak no more until I am seeing for myself what there is to see or is not to see." And he refused to say another word.

The last time I had been to the graveyard in Hempstead was on the day of Lucy's funeral, and I had forgotten how cold and dismal and windswept it was. All graveyards are cold, to be sure; but perhaps the season and my mood combined to make this one an epitome of desolation. As the cab pulled to a stop, the Professor said to me, "Madam Mina, you should remain here. Jack and I are enough to see."

"To see what, Professor?" I said, weeping. "Is my child in that graveyard? Is my child dead? Does all of this have something to do with Lucy or"—my tongue faltered as I struggled to say the name—"or Count Dracula?"