Hammer Horror: Dracula

by Elphinstone Dalrymple

Dracula, bedevilled master of all that is evil, rises from his grave seeking blasphemy, evil and the blood of beautiful women.

DRACULA

A Gothic Romance

by

Elphinstone Dalrymple

After the Classic Hammer Film

'I promise... that if I see any evidence of bad dreams I will wake you at once.'

Bram Stoker

A dedication to the friendship and memory of

Elsie MacDonald

1: Land Beyond The Forest

In the late afternoon of what had been a long and wearying day, a rickety calèche breasted the high, rugged summit of the Transylvanian Alps. There remained icy caps on the soaring twin peaks of 'God's Seat', cones of blue-tinged snow glistening against the dimming firmament of a misty sky. A frigid wind had begun to seep down from the frozen altitudes, to pour between the alpine cliffs, breathing a languorous path into the ravine, trailing a thin, translucent veil over the ancient and supernal palisades. The wind brought with it a profound anticipation of cold, even though up until now, the sun had been shining warmly all day and the sky had been sterling bright. The montigenous slopes were a collage in deep berylline, of ochre, olive, and nigrites, of conifer and fir trees, between whose trunks and branches the fast and fleeting shadows dashed. Over the darkling forest, over the mountain's jagged gradients, over the ripple of earth and woodland, the gravid storm clouds stained the view black-bronze in the last waning rays of the sun. Across the divide and majestically visible from the rutted track that took the coach upward, there towered the splendent vista of the Borgo Pass. Below the whirling yellow spokes of the carriage wheels, spinning at times only a scant metre from the serrated edge of the trail, was the deep plunge into the abyss. It was a long fall into the ravine, a fall that would smash anything into a thousand shattered pieces.

A presage of chill communicated itself to the passengers huddled within the carriage. It brushed their skins with the unwelcome agency of a whistling wind that permeated through any crack not sealed against the weather. These strange itinerants were knotted together in their inclement and confined space, not wanting the familiarity of touch that came abruptly with the jostling. However, contact with their fellow travellers could not be avoided. As the passengers bumped into each other they attempted to feign indifference. Upon every collision each would grunt, squirm and then look away through the clouded glass of the rattling windows. To their consternation they could see that the day was ending and that storm clouds were brewing, and they furtively watched the dimming sky with agony sketched into their faces. As the sun's light became diffuse, so too did a presage of doom take a grip on their sensibilities.

Rumbling upward, the carriage reached a slightly wider section of the way only to turn sharply into a narrower curve, and at that point in the precipitous climb a large stone plunged from the vertical cliff wall towering above. It fell to the right of the coach, spinning a tumbling revolution as if slowed by time itself, showering the vehicle in a rain of shrapnel. With a hammering crash the larger rock smashed against the ragged edge of the mountain, bounced and plummeted over the side, falling into the gorge, snapping the trunks of several trees in its descent. The passengers started with fright at the roaring calamity, and a brief spray of pebbles peppered the driver's head, but he paid the incident little heed and continued to worry and goad his team mercilessly.

The Dragon's Spine, as it was colloquially known, twisted though the land on a line that led north, a range of treacherous pinnacles whose highest points were the two pointed peaks of the Borgo Pass. These pallisades stood inflexible against the backdrop of the darkening heavens, crowned with icy tips that were aligned side by side, one slightly higher than the other. They made the imagination conjure a great gate, one that might have led to God's kingdom, but this could not have been further from the truth. The clouds became darker, threatening lightning and thunder and the Pass become dimmer, casting indelible shadows into the valley. The sky had so quickly changed from blue to primrose and then to ultramarine and finally it had deepened into plum and steely gloaming. Despite the urgency of the clamouring night it was most certainly an astonishing view.

All day, since the dawn had awoken the world, the carriage had been rumbling along rutted roads, careening in a wild ride beyond the Germanic border, crossing into the netherworld of Romania. Every fifteen kilometres or so the team had been changed, and now that the coach had crossed the Douane Station borderline at Ingstadt and headed up the mountain, the passengers were worried lest the driver might have to spare the horses. There had been a delay at the border that had frustrated both the driver and the passengers, the second such delay they had experienced this day, and the lines of uncertainty were now etched deeply in everyone's faces. There could be no further delay, that was the imperative, and the passengers muttered about the unremitting protraction caused by the Douane. It was decretum unspoken that they fly over the mountain, faster than an eagle, but the Custom's official had found a discrepancy in the papers of one of the passengers, a Tzigane woman. Her travelling documents had not been dated correctly and suspiciously they did not appear to be at all genuine. This was an official cause for concern, for these itinerant people could not be trusted. Who could be certain from which province she hailed and on what day, and which authority had issued the documents? One could never be certain with these Gypsy types, for they only pretended ignorance when in reality they were crafty and mischeivous. Nobody could stomach their fallaciousness and knavery, for they robbed your purse and seduced your daughters, and hid their deceitfulness behind the subterfuge of language barriers and ignorance. They were considered untrustworthy and transitory, and they knew many ways to weave around jurisprudence. Much to the chagrin of the other travellers, the woman had delayed the departure of the coach, and wasted time arguing in her strange and babbling tongue, a dialect that was as jumbled as her decorum. None could discern coherence in any word or phrase, for she seemed to speak in several broken languages. In their impatience, all the travellers averred that she must be mad, and after some lengthy discussion, amid gesticulating limbs and raised voices in Romanian and then German, the Custom's Official had given up on the problem regarding her papers.

Beyond the border demarcation the coach driver rode his team into a wild and ungoverned hinterland. The carriage dashed through forests of poplar and mountain ash, over low stone bridges and along pothole rutted roads. As the atmospheres flickered into twilight, the agitation among the passengers became more apparent, a tense anxiety that they must be over the peaks before the setting of the sun. It was said that if you travelled at night in this part of the country that you went without wit, that brigands and robbers would be the least of your dangers, that even God himself would forsake you in your foolishness. Warnings were uttered in whispers, but never spoken out loud lest something dark and evil be called up by the tongue of the speaker to physically drag them off to the netherworld. Superstition in this land held the hearts of the local peasantry in a tenaciously strong grip indeed. It was considered unwise to think that ancient fears and beliefs should be laughed at and flippantly dismissed. Such was the sin that foreigners so often committed, ignorant in their own way as was the gypsy woman. Perhaps this superstition seemed silly to the city-dweller who knew nothing of the lore of the land, but in this isolated province, to be benighted could mean doom. Easy it was, to dismiss words of warning, but when the moment of judgment arrived it would be too late, for the cautionary word of advice was not to be taken with a grain of salt. This was a wilderness as mysterious and as far removed from any civilized place marked on any map and as inhospitable as the north and frozen world of the ancient race of Volsung. To those who presumed to hail from the more sophisticated climes of Bucureşti and Constanța, this land was posited at the precipitous edge of existence, the 'Land Beyond the Forest', beyond mystery, beyond all space and time, beyond all that was tangible, and all should indeed take heed and journey through it swiftly.
Jonathan Harker was one such stranger, viewing the spectacle of the Pass from the carriage as the vehicle strained in a desperate race against the fading daylight. Rickety and swaying perilously the carriage traversed briskly through the lowland, through forests ways with trees as tall as church spires and past lakes glistening like broken mirrors in the golden light of the sun. Twisting and turning, the road had begun a noticeable elevation as it snaked the route like a great horseshoe around the mountain. This soon pronounced the perilous climb up to the peaks to the spectacular vista of the Borgo Pass, and with the climb came the chill. However, the passengers were far from worried about the drop in temperature, for what mightily concerned them most, considering their luck of the day, was the possibility that they would be obliged to dismount from the carriage due to the steepness of the ascent. To be slowed to a walk now meant certain doom. Jonathan had been jostled and pitched all day as the coach flew wildly over narrow and deeply scarred roads, and now its team were almost half dead from their exertion. All thought of personal safety had obviously fled the driver's mind, speed was of the essence. The horses had been keeping a steady pace for almost half an hour and now, whipped to the last of their strength and speed, they were beginning to flag with the climb. Wet with sweat, their nostrils flaring, they laboured ever upward. Still the road scaled higher and treacherous as the carriage ascended the mountain along the Dragon's spine. The vertiginous heights on either side rose sheer and vertical, the road delivering the travellers between the two soaring alpine leviathans of slate and basalt. The Pass loomed ominously, blotting out the failing sunlight with its two towers of black rock. The narrow road wove through its middle, bisecting the Carpathians, and, on the opposite side of the mountains, it coiled down into the valley beyond. The view was a plunging vista, folded and pleated and covered in a thick blanket of green-needled trees. As the coach climbed higher the air became thinner and colder.

Jonathan took in a deep breath and held it down in his lungs for a long moment; he felt a little light-headed but for some inexplicable reason the headiness was not disagreeable, it gave him a peculiarly euphoric sensation of floating that took him momentarily away from the cramped discomfort of the coach. He let go of that breath and brushed a smear of dust from the window in a feeble attempt to obtain a clearer view. To Jonathan, the Pass resembled a great throne. This thought brought a smile to the young man's lips. If it were God's Seat then he supposed it was aptly named, with its crags like jutting armrests and the twin high backs that touched to the clouds. Aptly named if you ascribed to religion. Strange it was that he found himself caught in an undeniable moment of abjuration, quite literally, feeling like some petitioner between sanctitude and the bottomless pit. Was his journey for good or for ill and what true purpose whorled tangled in his heart? Jonathan did not believe in God, and this made his reasons for coming to Transylvania more complicated. However, his disbelief in the Almighty was simply more than heretical cant, for atheism was a faithlessness that he had always assumed, and no matter the dictates of the genuflecting masses, he could not bring himself to bend his knees for an imaginary god. Nonetheless, he understood that most would say that he was keeping a rendezvous with bedevilment, and that because he was bound by irreligion that he must fail those he loved without Creed. Before the darker clouds had swelled in the heavens, the late sunshine had tinged the blue-white snow on the summits rose-gold; Jonathan could only imagine, in this brief romantic moment, the tortured image of Christ with his thorn-embedded head dripping blood over the rim of the sun. Truly, it was a glorious and yet conflicting scene, and he wondered if he would be able to find the right words to describe it beyond the view of orthodoxy, when he had a spare moment to record it in his diary. The Pass loomed so close and it was a wondrous sight, but as it rose over Jonathan, staving off the sky, a tremor passed through his flesh that he could not contribute to the cold.

Although he professed no Christian faith, it was easy to see why the Borgo Pass inspired belief and was referred to as 'God's Seat', for it was as spectacular as it was formidable, a divide between humanity and the holy, between the cerebral and the sublime, and the one and only portal through which all must pass before they could safely return to the world below. Everyone, despite their odd belief in God, thought Jonathan, at some stage in their life, passes between light and shadow and crosses a bridge to truth. Was he crossing his now? Such was the inherent duality of all purpose- the search for meaning beyond the ecumenical and the tenable. It seemed to Harker that the primitive isolation of Transylvania somehow accentuated this vulnerability in humankind. He did not like its contradictory and frangible nature, so he closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply and shivered in strange apprehension.

On popping springs, the carriage jostled and pitched, hindered from speed now by the steeply growing incline and the road's disrepair and the exhausted horses. Still the driver urged his two mares on, calling to them as if they understood his language, aware in their strong, beating breasts that time was pressing and that the light was going. The road scaled ever upward and became ever more perilous. When the carriage had arrived at the point of ascent about twenty minutes before, there was slight momentary respite. Turning from the window Harker let his eye glance over his fellow passengers, half expecting them to be as awed as he was by the scene. However, as if their reactions had been coreographed, all averted and downcast their eyes and turned their heads to their feet. The people appeared to be deliberately shielding their gaze from the world without and from his questioning gaze. Not one of them now looked up. It was a bizarre and strange behaviour indeed and Jonathan could only guess at its cause.

Earlier in the day, not far from the Klausenburgh inn, the carriage had run into a deep furrow and shattered three spokes. The driver had then walked to the little village nestled in the hills, hopefully to return with a farmer and a wagon to convey the passengers to the inn. Precious time had been lost. The man had come upon a great estate, the holdings of one General Spielsdorf, a retired Serviceman of the Austrian Army, and he had elicited the services of the General's estate manager, a young man called Ebhardt. The fellow had kindly arranged for the repairs to their coach, but this had taken the best part of an hour and a half, and the wait had, beyond question, proven a volatile wait indeed. There had been something of a heated contention between the innkeeper and the coach driver, but this had not concerned young Ebhardt. Thus the stopover had lasted almost three hours, and time crawled to the consternation of the travellers. As Jonathan was diligent about keeping notes in his diary, almost to the point of obsession, he had taken out his journal and recorded the incident in detailed shorthand. Ebhardt had sent for some of his men to fix the carriage wheel and to bring the conveyance back, but they had not yet returned, and this fact began to cause a great deal of agitation.

The innkeeper's countenance began fading to pallor as the clock spiralled ever faster to sunset. Watching the man as he paced up and down began to disturb Jonathan's curiosity and although he tried to fix his thoughts on other things, the atmosphere of foreboding appended any contemplation, like a presage to catastrophe. To ease this unknowable tension, he turned his regard to his fellow travelling companions. These odd people appeared most curious at first, watching suspiciously as he took the red leather-bound journal from his travelling case and set out the ink well and pen on the rustic table-top. Harker had smiled and began hesitantly to form a sentence in shorthand, scratching down the date and time and relevant abbreviated details. Soon thereafter, and less threatened by his activity, Jonathan's fellow travellers lost interest in his writings, either gathering about the fireplace for warmth or lingering beside the landlord's awkwardly jangling music box. Pausing, nib hovering above the blank page, Jonathan glanced about the room. He saw garlic hanging from the beams, garlic flowers and bulbs bunched above the window casements and garlic twined about the struts. If not for the pungent odour the choice of decoration might have been quaint, but he understood that it plainly bore some peasant significance and entered the fact into his journal.

Of Jonathan's travelling companions, those who had joined the journey earlier in Karlstadt, Harker described with a little more detail. The Tzigane woman was the most curious of all. He looked at her and his expression spoke of both embarrassment and contempt, for she was of a wild and colourful appearance, dressed in a bright floral skirt, a linen blouse and a vest stitched with rich embroidery, but unforgivably, her personal body odour was just as colourful. A tattered shawl draped her shoulders, copper rings and little bells jangled at her wrists. With skin tanned and wrinkled by deep furrows, the gypsy was swarthy, her body the tone of dark amber and some of her teeth were missing.

She chanted as she paced, and this set everyone's nerves on edge. Nothing she sang seemed to make any sense, a series of broken cadences that, bizarre as it seemed, rhymed like a song, and her chant grew even more disconnected and aggressive throughout the wait. The woman's dialects were a jumble of discordant outpourings that rose and fell as she strode, till each subsequent rave became a continuous tintamarre. It was impossible for Harker to even describe it as language; and combined with the twitchy jangling of her costume jewellery her gibbering made no reasonable sense at all. Earlier in the journey, at the Customs border, she had caused costly delay, and for this sin, when she approached the others, she was shunned. All shrank back from her nearness when she shuffled toward them, and they sneered and either moved quickly aside or looked away. Her appearance no doubt would have inspired antipathy in any virtuous feminine breast at home but such was not the case now, for she looked the absolute personage of ill luck and bad omen. The thought amused Jonathan as he listened to her incoherent mumblings. Nonetheless it was difficult to ignore her vigorous ranting.

Jonathan wrote that during the travelling little conversation had passed between any of the people in the carriage. He had described how all were like mummers at a funeral, only with lips resolutely stitched together, non-communicative and even sullen. Lack of-conversation, except upon the subject of haste made for a most oppressive journey. Harker paused as he noted this fact, and momentarily pondered their peculiar attitude. He thought that he might ask the reason why the rush over the mountain, but something told him quite clearly that he would receive no satisfactory answer and that he should cease to cogitate upon this anomaly. Out through the window the passengers had only pointed with stabbing fingers, at the descending sun, their countenances gravid and fearful. Then Jonathan noted the priest or friar staring at him; he assumed that the man was a cleric because he wore the garb of some holy order, a russet-coloured cloth with a rosary and crucifix dangling from the waist rope. The man was tall, but robust, with a full facial beard, and he sat by the fireplace under the dangling garlic, waiting and watching intently in silent contempt. Despite his garb the friar had not the appearance nor the bearing of a man of God, for he even carried a rifle, and his unfriendly appearance was rather disengaging and frosty and positively unsociable. His eyes were a peculiar icy blue, almost glacial and cold and each iris was a pinpoint of blackest night. Those eyes warned others off rather than inviting them to succor with Jesus.

Under his scrutiny one might shrivel, and he glared at Jonathan as if Jonathan were the epitome of a fool. Eventually, to Harker's relief, the man looked away. Harker then noted the other two men, one a traveller who also sat silently and did not engage anyone, and the other, who upon taking advantage of what he thought a convivial moment, a boastful and porcine wine merchant. The man seemed to find his true voice at last, liberated freely now that he was not squeezed into the coach, a voice pouring forth like his unremarkable wine, his ego freed from the sobriety of the coach. Nonetheless, the wine merchant had to raise that voice considerably to be heard above the mad woman's shrill chanting. All of them made up an odd little group, Jonathan himself included, journeying from Karlstadt on business as far removed from anything concerning the dealings of his travelling companions.

The first hour in that wayside tavern passed as an eternity passes, and in that horrible vacuum they were served a sparse late lunch of chicken and paprika by a pretty servant girl, Inga, while the carriage wheel was being repaired. Jonathan found the meal strangely spicy, if not basic and pleasantly rustic, and he thought that perhaps such Provencale tastes would not suit the table at home. His mother would have wrinkled her nose at the waft and would have fainted had she been present for the bird's preparation. Arthur Holmwood, his fiancée Lucy's brother, would no doubt have found the dish objectionable and not fit for a cultured table, for Arthur was seriously pretentious and did not like things to fall outside of the boundaries of what he considered normal. Jonathan suspected that Arthur really did not like him either, but that he kept himself civil for his sister Lucy's sake. However, Jonathan suspected that Lucy would have enjoyed the exotic spiciness, and regardless of how Arthur might have disregarded the flavourings as disgusting, Jonathan would take the recipe home. Undoubtedly though, this would probably be the first and last time he would eat the dish. When Harker had finished his meal, and sipped a glass of brandy, he put aside his diary for a moment and wrote a quick letter to his friend Doctor Van Helsing, telling him that he had arrived safely in Klausenburgh and that he was, if anything, a little travel weary from the long day and slightly unsettled by the vague hostilities of the locals. He had asked the pretty serving girl, Inga, at the Golden Keys tavern if she would be so kind as to send the letter on for him in the next post to the Netherlands province of Utrecht, and she had smiled her acquiescence as she tucked the missal into her apron pocket. Jonathan had smiled back and there was a twinkle in her eyes, but the girl had dropped her own smile quickly under the landlord's grey-toned scowl. As she returned to the scullery she had cast her glance back over her shoulder, nodding as she did so and Harker knew that she would not forget to post his letter. He returned to his journal and promptly noted the Innkeeper's unfriendliness.

To Harker, Inga's had been the only amiable face he had so far encountered in his journey into Transylvania. The gypsy woman had quietened enough to eat her lunch and a sullen gravity had fallen over the room, and that tension was evident in the twitchy countenances of everyone therein. After a protracted silence, the wine merchant cleared his wide throat and seized upon the opportunity to make comparisons about the inferior quality of the local wine to his own. His wine, he declared was superior in excellence, vintage, sweetness and character, pressed from the most succulent Kékfrankos and Hárslevelű grapes. Nonetheless no one was listening to his vaunts. When the vintner had finally fallen quiet there then recommenced the heated discussion about time and haste. The Innkeeper had already informed them that their carriage had broken three spokes and would take some time to repair. This had caused much alarm; the merchant could not possibly wait another day, for his trip was imperative; he had stocks to purchase and vendors with whom he must trade and the others argued that soon it would be dark and that they must hurry, they had to be over the mountain before the sun expired, that was imperative.

Disquieted, Jonathan had put down his nib and slipped a hand into his own coat pocket and felt for the chain that Lucy had given him when he had proposed marriage. He thought to loop the chain again about his throat but an invisible pass checked him and stayed his hand. He was not of the Christian faith, and to wear it seemed hypocritical, but he so wanted to please Lucy and not mock or deride her beliefs, so he had accepted the crucifix with quiet resignation. He retrieved it and held it in his palm. It glittered in the firelight. Lucy had been insistent that he always wear it, but he disliked the thing dangling about his neck. In truth, what did such a fatuous religious bauble mean to him? The moment after he had left Lucy behind and departed, Harker had removed the trinket from about his throat and placed it in his pocket. The act made him feel as if he had betrayed an innocent. He recalled that he had felt a ripple of confusion disturb his inner circumspection, and a sense of hypocrisy because he was courting. Nonetheless, though he refused to acknowledge the mythomania at the core of Lucy's existence, he knew that to win her love and Arthur's approval, he must veer cautiously alongside sanctimony. When the gypsy woman's vocal had dropped sufficiently and it was relatively quiet again, it was the friar who at last spoke.

'That cross,' he pointed a finger at Jonathan's open palm. 'Why do you not wear it?'
'Why?' Harker replied, feeling as if the man were somehow aware of his irreligion, and unable to give an honest answer to the question that would not cause offence. People thought you were mad if you told them that you did not believe in God. However, by the same token, were they not mad for believing? In that moment of interrogation Jonathan felt most uncomfortable. He understood the superstitious belief they might have held, but what ate away at his heart now was the horrible doubt caused by such belief. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, there was a nagging implication that whispered if he were to accomplish his journey's end, he was going to somehow need the strength of faith and the righteous hand of God. The thought placed him in a difficult place. His friend, Doctor Van Helsing, although a rational man and scientist, had intimated that religious belief should not be discounted in this quest, even as he maintained an air of scientific conviction. This seemed at odds with reality, a clash of faith and science, and Jonathan did not understand how a person could possibly acknowledge both ideas and present any form of rational argument for one over the other. Nonetheless, Professor Van Helsing, though a man driven by the externalities of science, did not seem to live in the same world that most men inhabited. The man was by profession, a blood specialist, driven by scientific disciplines, and yet he was also something of a theologue, obsessed with research, so much so that Jonathan had grown to almost worship the man's obsessiveness and genius to the point of anthropolatry. One could be forgiven the juxtaposition of faith and learning, of Hierophant and priest, in that the Professor had somehow manage to distance himself from the internal knot of sensuality, but the resultant celibacy also seemed to strangely remove Van Helsing from reality. It appeared to Jonathan the most peculiar of quirks, that the chivalry of romance was almost an alien concept to Abraham Van Helsing. Perhaps that was the true gist of the man's 'spirituality', to remain pure and unstained, so like the priests of the Catholic faith, so that nothing in the world ever swayed him from the true path of purity. Van Helsing, the mentor, was unsullied, or fanatic, and pondering his chaste and monk-like existence only made Jonathan think even more potent thoughts. Conceivably, Jonathan only wanted to see his mentor as faultless and princely, yet it was painfully obvious that Van Helsing, he who was so engaged in his obsessive battle for 'good', was far from perfect despite his chastity, and perhaps blind to the simple virtues that love offered.

Upon receiving no answer, the priest pressed another question. 'Where are you going?'
A shiver of disbelief had surged through everyone when the name of Jonathan's destination slipped from his tongue. All the faces in that room had become a shade paler, and even the fat merchant stilled any further repartee. The peasant woman jingled and jangled and proceeded to make weird signs with her hands and she began to chant one word over and over again.
'Nosferatu!'
'Young man, do you have loved ones at home?' The friar spoke soberly, his countenance stern. Jonathan looked at the monk and a little flush of embarrassment coloured his face. He nodded.
'Then for their sake, if not your own, if the dictates of reason will not dissuade you, listen to the dictates of your heart.'
'I am afraid I do not quite understand...'
'Think of how they will suffer, then reconsider,' interjected the prelate.
'I thank you for your concern' returned Harker politely, 'but I suppose I am an obstinate fool.'
'Obstinate, no,' piped the merchant. 'Mad is what you are. Mad as a lunatic!'
Jonathan managed a bemused smile. 'Pray, good sir, why would that be?' A reckless feeling, almost visceral in its intensity, pressed Harker further. 'I appear ignorant. Is there something that I should know?' With the question came a raging fear that passed from face to face and caught everyone trembling. 'Please?' Their perceived danger seemed terribly real and as all the colour drained from their faces they heard a howling in the woods. The women crossed themselves and huddled closer. Were they merely afraid of the wolves, or was there something else at work here, some bedevilment that made them quake so? After a momentary pause, and when the wolves had ceased howling, the monk addressed the young man again. His piercing eyes became sympathetic but his tone remained severe.
'I am a man of God, son, and the words I speak are words that I feel in my humble way, God might speak.'
'If dissuasion is what you wish to speak,' replied Jonathan, 'then those will not be the words of God.'
'Blasphemous too,' retorted the merchant. 'Mad and blasphemous!'
'Can anyone guide me to my destination?'
'You will find no one to take you there!' The innkeeper retorted. 'You must go with these people and continue over the Pass before the night comes. Do not...'
'Well, would someone just tell me the directions?' Harker interupted, both bemused and perplexed at their reticence. His words rudely cut off, the Inkeeper grunted loudly and turned aside.
'Perhaps there is nothing we can do.' The priest shook his head. 'I would like to think that I was not superstitious, my calling should verify that...' Jonathan felt the word hypocrite rising to his tongue but he choked it back. There was no point risking an argument about the nature of metaphysics, especially since his own reasons for being here were composed of a similar conflict.

'However, I must say to you, that the place to which you go is the gate to hell itself. The powers of darkness and evil are paramount...the light of goodness...'
'Nosferatu!' The gypsy woman screeched, abruptly cutting the monk's words short. The strange intonation this time sent a shudder through Jonathan, rippling his nerves because it echoed harsh and alien and with dire warning. The sound of the word suggested something ineffable, something foul and hideous. Perhaps his insistence on knowing was foolish and the word rather than evoke a blessing was in truth a pronouncement to damnation. Until this day, Jonathan had never heard the word before, but there could be no mistake, it resonated with superstition, like some form of corrupted Slavonic or Greek dialect. The woman's feral demeanour gave the impression that she might have descended from some wild and ungoverned region, and her songs were mad and he could not stop thinking of her as a demented outcast. Maybe she was both outcast and mad. Had they not inferred the same of him? Yet did it really matter in any case, for her cries were obviously premonitory.

'Nosferatu! Nosferatu!' Again the woman scolded, standing before Jonathan's table and pointing at him with a frenzied finger.
'Why, that's not Slovak, is it?' Jonathan spoke hesitantly, knowing that he was beyond recognising anything in the fragmentary corruption of whatever language it was she spoke. No, no, it certainly wasn't Germaic. Perhaps she knew of no other definition for what she was trying to say, and in her confusion had misquoted some arcane reference and mixed it up with the Teutonic. It was possible that she was born of mixed cultures. That might have accounted for the strangeness of the word, nonetheless, the exclamation seemed to carry an explicit portent.
'Exkomunikovať! Nemŕtvy!' The priest said aloud.
'Now we have Greek or Latin!' Jonathan said to himself, shaking his head as gravity and cold suspense held the room in thrall.
'I am sorry, I don't speak either Greek or Slovac,' Jonathan apologised, signalling with hopelessly inappropriate hand gestures that he failed to comprehend either vernacular. How the gypsy chopped and changed her own gestures, flailing, pulling at her hair, quaking. All her protestations did no good, for Jonathan could not conceive her wild warnings.
'Nicht...' The woman looked to the friar with wide eyes and the shadow of midnight moved swiftly across his face.
'Genug!'
Under his reproach the woman stumbled in the unfamiliar tongue of German.
'Nicht tot!'
There came an audible gasp, but from whom, Jonathan knew not. The woman looked around at the others but nobody responded, their eyes were either shut fast or looking to the floor. The Tzigane's eyes were desperate and her words sent another little shiver up Harker's spine. What exactly did she mean by 'not dead'?
'This is not the city,' said the priest, his tone solemn, waving abruptly at the woman so that she should be silent, however, she ignored the man. 'You have entered what this agrarian lot call the 'Land of Phantoms', and you should go with care!' He stared with hard intent at Harker. Upon this address Jonathan had turned ineffectually to the landlord, shrugging his shoulders, his palms open, his brow furrowed and confused. The landlord repressed a sneer.
'Father Sandor, there is nothing we can do,' spat the landlord, his voice raised over the gypsy woman's rant. Jonathan glimpsed the pretty girl Inga, clutching her apron into a knot, her face creased with terror. 'Now please, do us all a kindness and do not speak to this man anymore.'
The priest looked at the gypsy woman sternly for a long moment, but his icy stare did not freeze her into silence. She remained blithely unaffected. Turning away he wound his fingers through the rosary that was tied off at his waist until the crucifix inched upward into his palm. His knuckles were changing to white as they clenched the figure of Christ, his other hand grasping the barrel of his rifle. In silence, he looked at Jonathan but he said no more. From that moment on Jonathan too had been shunned. It made him feel uneasy and horribly tainted; now all he wished for was to be back in Karlstadt with Lucy or in Utrecht with his friend the Doctor. Yet here he now found himself climbing the dizzying heights of a Transylvanian peak in a coach that pitched and swayed and promised to veer over the next precipice at any moment.

Despite the hostility, the coach driver had agreed to drop Harker near his destination, but for the sake of everyone's safety, he would not leave the road and Harker must walk his last few kilometres unaccompanied. Now, inside the careering vehicle, all but the priest who now rode on the box beside the driver, squirmed and held tight, pushed uncomfortably against each other as the vehicle strained up the mountain.
'These people are different to us,' that was the gentle excuse that his pretty fiancée Lucy would have used, but Lucy wasn't here now and if she were she would have gently reprimanded him for his fatigued and increasingly obdurate thoughts. He had tried to be the civil and polite Jonathan Harker that Lucy and all else knew best and loved, but this journey had brought him face to face with such taciturnity and vaguely muttered villainies that even gentle Lucy whose sagacity and preciousness, never wavering in the face of difficulty, would have been hard pressed to remain without prejudice.
'Their beliefs and customs are not like ours so you must always be patient and understanding.' Jonathan could picture her perfect lips as they parted and her tinkling voice as it uttered this imagined dialogue, but it made no difference to the moment and he could not apply her wisdom to the faces that surrounded him. It was easier for him to fantasise Lucy smiling and flattering his vanity, telling him that he was always 'patient and understanding' when in truth he was not. Lucy was an angel who always talked sense no matter what and never appeared to condescend to anyone. She was happy even when it rained and smiled for others when they were sad. Yes, Jonathan thought that he loved her most dearly. However, inside his flesh there was a strange space where he encountered the liar and the traitor, for he had taken on this journey under a ruse of deception. If Lucy had pressed him, not that she would have done so even though they were soon to be married, he would not have been able tell her the truth. This awful contradiction truly bothered him.

Some months ago, on holiday in Lübeck, before the preparation for this journey, unchaperoned by her brother Arthur or his beautiful wife Mina, they had taken a stroll, hand in hand. Together, they walked upon a bluff above the river Trave, gone momentarily from the world and its turbulent and yet fatuous affairs, alone, a rare thing away from watchful eyes. How foolish such notions were, for Jonathan, with respect to Lucy, was as chivalrous as any wooer could be, and on that high spot, as the sun made its descent beyond the curvature of the earth, Jonathan had proposed marriage and Lucy had accepted. Proposing that they wed seemed to be the right thing to do, even though such vows made him cringe with self-loathing and weakness. The idea of marriage was conventional and safe, but it was still an idea that knotted up his courage, for it was orthodox and represented a ghastly prison, filled with a stifling mundaneness that must eventually provoke the heart's hidden desires. Marriage was comfortable and yet it confined, and there was a darkness in his coil that did not wish to bow to convention, and yet, in that convention there would always be a place to hide. Above the world they stood, upon the brink of the precipice, upon the edge of unconscious fear. That verge had Jonathan teetering at the lip of the spiritual and the sexual, filled with both repression and disillusion. Later, upon their return home, Lucy had presented him with a silver chain, a rosary that she had blessed by a priest in the Gothic Cathedral of St. Mary in Lübeck, and gently looped the trinket about Jonathan's neck...
'I…' he had begun to protest, because he wanted to tell her he was not certain that he believed in God or the Devil, and that it was his fellow man who would judge him harshly if they knew the secret desires in his heart, but Lucy silenced him by placing a slender finger upon his lips. In her ignorance, she declared that surely everyone had some sort of belief. To possess incertitude regarding the 'Maker' was not wise.

'Then the Maker made me as I am...' Jonathan had thought, hesitanatly fingering the string of beads.

'Wear it, my love,' Lucy had insisted. 'If not for any other reason but for my sake, for love's sake.' She had then whispered that she loved him regardless of his atheism, smiling as she did so, aching within her breast that he would still find faith. Jonathan had looked at the glinting crucifix and it was strange that despite his lack of belief, despite its tortured evocation of blood and violence and abject misery, the bauble seemed to evoke a peculiar calm. No doubt Lucy needed conviction even if he could not benefit from its fantasmal protection. His faith, he had always assumed, lay in the tenable world and not the world of the irrational. How was he to believe in a supernatural god when the earth revolved about the sun and the sun caused the plants to grow and the plants made the air he breathed? Was Lucy's trying to convert him to Christianity a portent to what must come after marriage? If she thought his salvation in Christ was not irrevocably lost and that it was within her power to bring him to it and to a divine happiness and paradise, then was she wrong to believe in miracles? He had tried to maintain a stoic detachment regarding this divide, but his heart was not so easily swayed. If the problem of faith existed now, then what lay ahead? Her brother, Arthur, had he suspected Jonathan's lack of belief, or what truly lay at the core of his being, would no doubt have forbidden their union. Troubled of thought, Jonathan doubted he could ever share in Lucy's Christian dedication. If this journey was intertwined with his search for belief then it foreshadowed a death sentence. If Jonathan was sacrificing for love, was it really for the love of Lucy Holmwood?

In her innocence, Lucy had smiled at him as if she really knew his thoughts, but she did not, or so Jonathan had convinced himself. However, it was difficult to pretend that you loved someone and resign yourself to forever wearing both a ring and a mask. The young woman's lips were a carmine arch that glistened, her teeth like pearls, and she used her smile to beguile, but that was surely not enough. She had pulled her auburn hair back and tied it with a bright blue silk ribbon. Jonathan had wished to say to Lucy that his journey would be brief and that all would be changed when he returned, that his business could not be put off any longer and that it was best she did not know the reasons.

'Think only of our wedding day' he had reassured her, lying as he departed, kissing Lucy's brow and touching uncertain fingers to her smooth cheek. Looking off into the distant unfathomable horizon beyond Jonathan's shoulder Lucy had felt a strange quake ripple through the frame of her body, though she did not tell. It was almost as if she had glimpsed something other in the vague distances, a cloud perhaps that had no actual form passing fleetingly over the sun, something indefinable and ethereal in the air. It was as if lightning shot from the ground, up through the soles of her feet and flashed to the lightning streaking downward from the high vault of the sky. The abrupt sensation of being caught between poles, of powerlessness and doom and yet electrifying, was as mystifyingly terrible as it was energetic. The sensation erupted in a blinding flash of light that filled up her vision and deafened her with the tidal surge of blood pulsing in her veins. A question had sprung to Lucy's lips but she had repressed the urge to articulate it lest it taste of misfortune, that it foreshadowed that which she did not want to face, that Jonathan should not return- and that as a result, she would soon be upon the brink of something wondrous. Lucy trembled as the feeling gradually dissipated in the passing of a score of heartbeats. Still, though it left her chill and melancholy, she attempted a warm smile. Lucy had looked up into Jonathan's face and questioned him only with her eyes. In those eyes burned a fever, an earnestness behind the blue, filled with love and understanding and yet with fear. If only her life could be as happy as was her brother's, she would know contentment and joy. Arthur's wife, Mina, was so gloriously beautiful and kind and temperate, everything that a man could wish for in a marriage, and she wanted with all her heart to be just as dutiful and affectionate for Jonathan as Mina was to Arthur.

Lest disaster strike, Jonathan accepted the crucifix. Only then might he think to justify the long hours of research that often kept him up late, to forsake the early hours of the morning that might keep him from the arms of his betrothed. If what Van Helsing had proposed was true then he must have the fortitude to go on and Lucy must never know. It was better this way. He had told her only that he was travelling to a place outside the marked province, a strange place called Transylvania. The word had sounded like music when it was uttered by Van Helsing, a strangely haunted refrain full of beauty and yet with danger too. It was not unlike the howl that had just sounded ghostly in the thin air. He did not tell Lucy that in such a place as Transylvania, science might have no order, for it was peasant superstition that held sway in such a place, and not science. As much as he protested his disbelief, it was superstition that drove his resolve. Inside, the lie haunted the mind- that he was going for vainglory rather than for the good of mankind; he did not want to admit that he was attempting to prove his courage and his manhood. That test was not for Lucy's sake. Whatever lay at the end of the road could not possibly be of supernature, a mystery that challenged fundamental belief. Still, Jonathan's interior was vexed, and he did not want to complicate his emotional state further by thinking about the possible dangers of his journey, dangers he truly did not understand or believe. His mind was thus engaged in a wrestling match, for it wanted to explain the nonsense he had agreed to investigate as being the product of madness. However, he would like to stay among the familiar, and should providence acquiesce, to return to a promise of domestic bliss, even if he failed to stop the notion that his lot was one of mactation and that his heart was the sacrifice.

Jonathan wished to believe that his journey into the Carpathians was only to prove his friend, Van Helsing, misguided. Guilt assailed him when he thought this, but nonetheless it was true. Somewhere in his core, Jonathan was convinced that Van Helsing's research was based on fairy tales. His mentor had come upon a ghastly and savage tract born of delirium that had somehow flimsily linked blood spillage to blood science. In some part of his rational mind Harker doubted that he could ever bring himself to acknowledge that the truth of the matter was in an explanation of the supernatural rather than rooted in the real world. If he had not known Helsing better he would have surely thought it all absurd. Doctor Van Helsing had gathered what he deemed as incontrovertible evidence regarding the matter, albeit from that which countervailed truth, from historical tracts and folktales. These stories had throughout the passing of centuries become what most would now conceive as the distortions of a warped fantasy, and men had been locked up in the 'irrenhause' for believing less. In this dawning age of scientific fact, the stories told in such wild woods as Transylvania had no basis of truth whatsoever. One story had commanded Van Helsing's reason, a tale of unspeakable depravity and of an enchanted life, of a nobleman torturer who was killed in battle and was buried in a secret tomb near Bucharest. A man whose tomb on the Island of Snagov now lay empty and whose corpse walked the earth in a perpetual hunger, thirsting for living, human blood. Such things were difficult to believe, still, Harker could not entirely shake Van Helsing's insistence that such things were true, and he saved the questions of skepticism until all could be disproved. At some point in the course of their friendship, Van Helsing had planted in Jonathan not so much a seed of doubt but the germ of curiosity. Yet there was another reason, a more secretive reason why he had elected to go on this wild journey, and it was not because he did not believe in the power of absolute evil, but irrationally perhaps, because he idolised his mentor.

From the city of Utrecht to the city of Karlstadt, Jonathan had embarked upon a wild ride. The journey had been a bone-rattling one that had taken all day, and he was tired, and Jonathan knew that no matter what the outcome or what he personally believed, he must not waver nor let his guard down, too much depended on his success. Nonetheless, in a romance, he dreamed that he would return in the midnight hour as the hero, just like his priestly friend, to come before his mentor upon naked feet, having washed his hands thrice in pure spring water, having taken no viand, his body pure and victorious. He would emerge the victor, having conquered superstition in a strange land, though by choice he would not have come to this land beyond the forest. However, he had chosen his lot and he could not refuse. It was not merely a case of having to do what had to be done, for in his heart Jonathan would have given anything to be back in the University, seated in the library among the books, talking with Van Helsing, debating the true nature of the physical world, and at other times to humour Van Helsing's predilection for supernature. It was warm and comfortable and safe in Utrecht. This primeval landscape was an inhospitable and dangerous terrain. Fear of the unknown, fear of what horrors men could perpetrate, not phantoms, stoked a strangely chill fire in Jonathan's soul. As if in answer to his fear, a wolf howled, one single, solitary and mournful, strangely musical note that made the gypsy woman put her hands to her ears and once again begin her ravings. Jonathan held fast to a strap, his knuckles turning white from lost circulation, the leather looped through his fist. He looked from the grimy window but there was nothing to see, no demon wolf emerged from the cathedral of trees. As the clouds grew darker with the promise of a storm, the carriage flew recklessly through a thick veil of misty cloud. Momentarily, beyond the filthy glass, all sight of the trees and the rocks was lost, and Jonathan could make out little more than an ugly greenish-brown smudge. Thankfully he glimpsed no sombre pelted canine in the fog.

When the horses emerged from the mist the way became even more treacherous and narrow, and he saw rocks flying into the chasm, thrown from the mad revolutions of the wheels. At any moment, the carriage might slide into a rut or be hurled over the jagged edge into the ravine and smashed into a thousand splintering pieces. The wolves would come then, loping from the shadow places to feast amid the wreckage, to tear the flesh and lap the spilled blood. Harker struggling to shut the awful vision from his mind, could only keep his grip and cling to a silent hope that this would not occur. The way was steep and the plunge to the earth nasty and deep, the stony road as slippery as winter ice. It seemed an eternity had elapsed in which Harker had endured being pitilessly tossed about, his body jarred and shaken until every bone ached, especially his arms for clinging tight to dear life. Still the carriage climbed and once Jonathan had cried out to the driver to slow down, but his shout had fallen upon deaf ears. The man did not let up until, upon the point of exhaustion, the horses crested the Pass, their nostrils belching white flame, their lips flecked with foam.

'Please, let this ride be finished soon,' he told his heart and closed his eyes to shut out the whirling vista that flew by in a smudge beyond the dirty glass.
'Ich spüre den bösen Schatten des Schlosses!' The wine merchant gasped, anxiety breaking out in a cold sweat upon his brow.
'Mai la munte!' shouted the coach driver, and the air grew thinner and the clouds ever closer. Harker tried to think upon those fragmentary words, of evil and castles and shadows that posed a threat just a little further up the way, but the jostling tumbled his mind. It was almost impossible to even think of Lucy with his head so full of dizzying chaos. Squeezing his eyes shut, Harker held tightly to his strap, for if the end were to come he did not want to see the world opening beneath him like the maw of a terrible beast, and he quietly cursed the madman at the reins. Abruptly, as if in answer to his oath the coach slowed and halted but the driver did not descend from his seat. The young man relaxed his grip on the strap and peered through the smear in the glass. Outside the shadows were beginning to paint the afternoon darkly with long phantom fingers that inched across the face of the mountain and pooled about the carriage where it had stopped. From above a stab of lightning zigzagged between 'God's Seat'. The gypsy woman gave another shrill cry, and she stretched out a hand to Harker. Her yellowed fingertip traced a quick line across his forehead, and then she quivered obscenely and she jerked her head and fell into silence. Confused, Jonathan recoiled and shook his head. No one else looked either at him or at the woman or even out of the window.

They had arrived upon a point of transition where the way divided both left and right, between the mountain pass. In one direction, the road plummeted down the opposite side into the valley, in the other the view was lost beyond a thick screen of conifers. A few metres away to the left where the way had split into a crossroad, Harker could see a shrine in which the Virgin Mary held the baby Jesus to her breast. The statue was covered with creeping vines, and beyond this the rocks became terraced, a giant's steps between which the road was squeezed into nothingness. There was a vague impression of something blackly throwing down a vast shadow from above the treetops, a spire or a turret perhaps. Harker looked up but could make out nothing definite. With the blood surging back into his hands, Harker threw open the carriage door and without unfolding the steps jumped down to the stony earth.
It's just ahead...up there!' The coachman spat the words in vehemence, and the horses shook their manes and snorted impatiently, stamping the ground as if to pull away, despite their fatigue. 'Do you still want to go on?'

There was hardly even time to answer let alone rescue his travelling case. Casting Jonathan a contemptuous look, Father Sandor quickly untied a knotted rope and gave Harker's baggage an unceremonious shove. The young man caught the larger bag before it struck the ground, the smaller hit next to his feet. The vintner slammed the carriage door closed.
'Alright coachman,' shouted the wine merchant, 'let's get away from here!'
The driver whipped the team once more into violent motion along the narrow divide. Harker had been abandoned and the night was being swallowed up by the suicide of the sun. Above, in the louring sky, lightning flashed. For the space of a moment Jonathan watched with a strange resentment until the carriage was gone from view. A twinge of loss and regret and abandonment also tugged at his spirit. Somehow, he was uncertain what to do next, as if he could not will his own feet to go forth. A horrible doubt was creeping into his heart, yet he had no choice in this matter and it was far too late to turn home now. Besides, the only way back to the Klausenburgh inn was to walk and that was a long way, he would never reach it until the night became the morning. He stooped and picked up the smaller bag. It was covered with dust. Jonathan shook his head as if to acknowledge his predicament and set forth. He had no other choice.
The shadows of the mountains commenced a sluggish spill down from heaven, deeper with the roiling phalanx of cloud, and walking along the rutted way Jonathan found himself once again questioning his purpose. Transylvania was such an isolated and alien part of the country and though it might appear as an almost begotten blot on the map, Van Helsing had convinved him that the reasons for the journey were not so insignificant. Despite this, Jonathan's head was filled with notions that he had crossed a line, albeit an invisible and imaginary one, and this began to trouble his thoughts. Knowing that he had transgressed into what the peasants called a 'Land of Phantoms' only began to agitate his composure even more. Fear was ridiculous, and yet it was niggling at his insides, like writhing worms, and he hated that feeling. What would happen if he didn't reach his destination before the dark came? The idea of unnameable terror rattled him somewhat, but why did it frighten him? He was being irrational. Another shiver danced over his skin and he tensed his muscles and tried to stave off the chill. Jonathan told himself that fear was the undoing of all things and he must quell his rising doubts. The way was dusking and the sky was squeezing the last beam of light into night. The forest would soon become a haunted and malignant place, a place unfamiliar where savage things hid in the dark recesses of the woods, wolves and bears with sharp claw and ruby eye. What might become of him and what if he did not return? He had heard a wolf howling and he did not relish the thought of meeting with one of those creatures, let alone a pack of them slavering for his blood.

With a nervous laugh, he recalled reading a faded old codex that Van Helsing had once given him, a weird dissertation about wolves that changed their skins and walked on two legs like man. In the legends, they were called Versipelli, creatures that grew into giants, creatures that could only be killed by the hand of a loved one wielding a weapon forged of the pure metal silver. He had given the superstition little credence then, found it difficult to believe that such things were anything other than fervid imagination, but rather argued that the beast's manias were the doings of a deranged mind. The 'Man of the Woods', Petrus Gonsalvus, was a well-documented case of hypertrichosis, but that was a perfectly explainable medical condition, not a fantasy, not a chimera of man and beast that changed its epidermis. Van Helsing had shown Jonathan a series of grotesque portraits depicting Gonsalvus and his children, all dressed in their velvet brocade, their hairy visages illuminating the bestiary, each composed without smiles. Nonetheless, these creatures were people, not the Waldermenschen of legend, not wolf, dog, bear or ape, or a weird amalgamation of all those creatures put together, but people. Yet such was the vivid imagination of the peasantry, that it proved an almost impenetrable bulwark against the advances of science. Superstition was its own dogma, and romance the mouthpiece of the peon. Yet here, alone and with the shadows deepening in the woods it did not seem so fantastic a notion after all that there might be such things as monsters. A whisper of leather wings rippled through the indigo depths and another muted howl sounded from some occluded corner of the woods. A start and a shudder passed through Jonathan. For a moment he hated himself, that he should be frightened by the irrational, like a child in the dark with the sheets pulled up over his head. That made no sense, not when he did not even believe in the possibility of werewolves. Regardless, the young man quickened his step and he gave a nervous laugh. To ponder such things as bats and nasty dogs and lumbering bears and wolves was one thing, but wolves that changed their skins was utterly foolish! Ghosts and ghouls were even sillier, and instead Jonathan determined that he must keep his mind alert. Maybe he should think about Lucy, about their marriage, but thoughts of Lucy and wedded life only conjured up deeper longings of the soul, and a nagging desire to be elsewhere, to be at the Universtity with Van Helsing in Utrecht. Where was his fortitude now, had it deserted him just when he had only begun? Instead to ease his mind he set about composing an entry for his diary, when he reached his destination he must commit it to paper.
'The diary of Jonathan Harker: 3rd of May 1885. At last my long journey is drawing to its close. What the eventual end will be, I cannot foresee, but whatever may happen, I can rest secure that I will have done all in my power to achieve success.'

Without looking back Harker took the left path, clambering over the rocks that had fallen in the trail and began a stumbling, winding ascent. It was difficult to balance his baggage at first, one case being heavier than the other and he slipped twice, almost turning his ankle, before gaining a stable footing in the rocky way. Through the high branches the wind had begun singing a diseased folly and an icy breeze caressed Jonathan's face. Perhaps it was instinct alone that guided him in his climb, his destination calling to him with an insistent but silent summons, to walk this treacherous and narrow divide that lay between fear and exaltation. Long ago the passionate embrace of nature had partially reclaimed this path and the demarcation of the road had been almost lost, or denied. As he walked the slope became gradually steeper, and he realised as he peered into the forest just how deep and unfathomable the black-green woods had become. With gnarled tree roots set tenaciously into the incline and twined branches, it was eerie how some of the trees resembled twisted human shapes, like tortured torsos and skin-stripped skeletons with bony, out-flung arms and malformed appendages. These branches had begun forming an oppressive arch over his head. Jonathan shuddered, thinking how like a railway cutting the path now resembled, the trees intertwining above like the ceiling of a claustrophobic, enclosing tunnel.

The closeness was stifling as he navigated the rocky path, and the path became a gloomy corridor winding up the mountain. Harker quickened his step as much as he could, for it was almost completely dark and the shadows were thickening and the storm was about to break. To the right the forest disappeared into dense green shadows and to the left it was a dappled wall that thinned abruptly before it fell over the edge into the ravine. A bird screeched among the trees and Jonathan's bones almost leapt from the cage of his body. It had sounded so alien, so tortured that he could not help but shudder. Squinting he looked again into the inky depths. It was difficult to make out anything at all, but the shadows seemed to swirl and to dance and confuse the eye, black on black through which the rippling wind shivered quivering leaves. At the forest edge, there was the odd spray of what may have been flowers, blackly purple, inwardly curling buds that reminded him of burnt violets and nightshade. Or perhaps it was such that these blooms only opened dark petals when the moon was eclipsed and the world revolved in total black. None bore any resemblance to any flower he had ever seen before. In the brush, he glimpsed no feather and no wing, and taking a deep breath, he pushed a reluctant foot forward and continued walking.

'The last lap of my journey, from the village of Klausenburgh, proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated due to the reluctance on the part of the coach driver to take me all the way. However, as there was no other transport available, I was forced to travel the last few kilometres on foot before arriving at Castle Dracula.'
Emerging from the tunnel of trees and standing beside a low swaying ash branch, Jonathan set down the larger of his cases and pulled back the bough. The spectacle of his destination at last presented itself, a fortress that touched unto the dimming clouds. Before him, in the last, veiled vestiges of day, rose an image beautiful and picture perfect, its symmetry painted into the backdrop of the tumultuous darkening sky that spread over the Borgo Pass.

'The castle appeared innocuous enough in the early evening shadows, and all seemed normal but for one thing- there were no birds singing.'

No birds singing. It was an ill omen, if you believed in superstition. This muted abnormality redefined the castle's whole aspect, and something inside Harker's soul whispered- beware! A sixth sense told him that this place was not what it appeared to be, and that he should be wary. There was an atmosphere of the eerie and unsettling about the place, and the closer one approached the more unnerving it became. It was uncanny, and it contravened his sceptiscism. He saw in his mind's eye once again the horrified look that the priest had thrown him at the inn. A deathly silence clung to the stone and mortar and the view, a panorama of the Alps beyond the turrets, was a vision that some might have called gloriously picturesque, but to Harker it took on an indefinably sinister tone. In the lapse between one breath and another it had become something darkly ominous rather than innocuous. In truth, the view only seemed to make the structure even more remote and inhospitable, threatening and somehow alive, its tower tall and erect, the all-powerful phallocentic force that dominated the landscape.

In complete arrogance, the castle rose tall and conceited and singularly isolated on its rocky prominence, as if perched at the ragged edge of the world. Like a faultless continuation of the rock upon which its founding slab had been set, Castle Dracula was an imposing mass of interlocking stone that jutted up from the spine of the Dragon. Imperious it overlooked the bottomless pit of the abyss. Unchallenged, this fortress could hold its own against violation and invasion, against any attack, and at the approach to the drawbridge a great iron cannon pointed toward those who approached as if in emphasis of this worrying fact. Invaders could advance from but one quarter, for all other sides fell off into the valley, into nothingness. Stone eagles hovered atop two great obelisks on either side of the drawbridge; their claws spread as if with intent to swoop down upon the enemy and pluck out their eyes. They were the guardians, watching with stony, unblinking stares for those who might dare to breach this stronghold. Great outstretched wings threw down a cold black mantle over those who dared step upon the drawbridge. It was not difficult to imagine that the strange cry Harker had heard in the forest might have ripped itself from the throat of a forbidding creature akin to these ominous sentinels. Under the drawbridge, beneath the walls of ancient stones, ran cold waters fed by a glacial streamlet flowing down from the higher peak. This served as a natural moat, spilling into a spectacular fall on the castle's eastern side.

'As I crossed the wooden bridge and entered the gateway, it suddenly seemed to become much colder due, no doubt to the icy waters of the mountain torrent I had just crossed. However, I deemed myself less than fortunate to have secured this post, but did not intend to falter in my purpose.'

A shivering peradventure gripping his heart, Jonathan Harker paused and looked beyond the tumbling waterfall. A faded prism was arcing in the misty airs above the gushing torrent, and although the sun was now descended and the dark skies louring, a storm but a few heart beats away, Castle Dracula now appeared wholly uninviting. With a suppressed shudder Jonathan cast a hesitant glance over the pointed arches and the high buttresses. Every stone belied the age of the structure. Nowhere was there evidence that the ashlars façade had been eroded by wind or weather, for every line was absolute. Intricately carved mouldings boasted minutely detailed mythological scenes and violent, victorious battles. These scenes were so vivid in their aspects that they almost conveyed the sound and fury of battle. The capitals were beautiful and elaborately detailed and the battlements were like rows of perfect teeth. Although to the casual eye it might have seemed quite serene, perhaps even beautiful, if one blinked and looked deeper, an unsettling aura might be perceived, clinging to the place, something that could not be put into words. Here was a towering structure that had cast its sterling shadow over the valley for an illimitable age and in that shadow enemies had challenged, had been fought and all had been vanquished. That was a history written in another time, but now the higher turrets were obscured in cloud, its windows like eyes blinded to the dizzying fall of the wilderness that it commanded, an uncharted wild wood of trees that covered darkling slopes and rock and ravine.

Harker's glance travelled down the walls of this omnipresent château and stopped upon a door at the bottom of a treacherously narrow stairwell. An odd scent permeated the thin air, drifting up through a barred grill in the portal. Harker caught it as a dusking breeze swirled up from below and along the drawbridge.
It was an odour of perfume, of a florist shop, of crushed flowers but with an undercurrent of something else, something nasty. As he drew closer the rank fetor did not abate, for it was a revoltingly sickening odour that no one could endure for long. A momentary flicker of disgust wrinkled over Jonathan's face. Whatever it was that lay beyond that door hinted at corruption. Perhaps it was a midden that had not been cleaned, rank with putrescence that wafted into his nostrils with the stench of flesh that had decayed in an open grave. The murrain was sickening, and down there, thought Harker, with a premonition perhaps, the stench heralded a stark and horrible revelation waiting to be discovered. It made the stillness and the solitude of Castle Dracula, elevated and dissevered from the tenuity of rest of the world even more desolate and uninviting, and Harker didn't like it at all.

Jonathan had begun to feel the stirrings of unpleasant reservations in the pit of his gut, an awful dread co-mingled with a little thrill, a frisson, a last warning to flee, to run and never return. He bit down on his lower lip and drew in a long breath and looked up to the top of the tower. A flutter of wings passed over his head and the shadow of a great bat rippled fleetingly over the edifice, blackening the portal of the main door. Jonathan started and hunched down, to shield himself, and the flapping shadow wheeled away into the inky folds of twilight. Before the space of a heartbeat had passed it was as if the building had somehow registered his apprehensions, for the tall doors of the main entrance creaked ajar upon a void blacker than midnight, bidding Harker enter and be lost forever.

2 : Castle Dracula

Within the castle Harker expected to find a servant waiting beyond the door, someone to usher him in from the darkening world without. He found no one to greet him, no valet, no maid, only shadows like coal-dyed eddies that rippled all the way up to the vaulted ceilings. It was chill within the château; a glacial cold swirled about his body then rushed upward into the spaceless heights. The icy draft touched his cheek with a chilly caress and he shuddered yet again. Squinting, to sharpen his focus, Harker peered up into the vast high darkness. Vaguely, Jonathan could just make out row upon row of sculpted ribs fixed into the smooth stone, their carved arches disappearing as the view surrendered to black. Up there, the calcified terraces were riven with what must have been spectacular mouldings, but they too were indistinct and steeped in shadows. Raised galleries were punctuated by stairs and endless corridors that seemed to branch off into nowhere. Filaments of watery light showed through the slender apertures of loopholes, narrow slits high above in the gloom girded by circular stairs that ascended to infinity and possibly even beyond. Heavy beams and high transverse struts interlocked to hold the titanic structure upright and rigid in an everlasting and steadfast embrace. This great house seemed so much bigger when one stepped within its walls, for everywhere the eye could perceive the dim spaces expanded into the firmament or an abyss of distance and time. There was no doubt at all that its imposing edifice could never fall.

The first room Jonathan entered was a huge but sparsely furnished parlour; its walls were hung with massy deep blue velvet drapes, its arches decoratively carved in the Byzantine style, and the room writhed with cloying darknesses. Harker narrowed his eyes and frowned into the gloaming. Dead silence entered with him and hovered upon his lips. No sense of motion existed here and all was still. No wind, no breath, no flicker of candles, no sound. Stillness and silence accompanied him as he passed through the parlour, under the arches, and down a long dimly-lit passage. For some moments Jonathan walked with hesitation in his step, navigating the corridor that fell off into open rooms, room after room, and each room similar; in a maze of empty chambers and winding corridors, the young man feared he might lose his way. All was so quiet that even his footsteps did not sound upon the flagstones but seemed absorbed by the granite; and the castle was cold and devoid of human warmth. He began to wonder if anyone really lived here at all, that perhaps his journey had been a jest and he was a wandering ghost; it could easily be imagined that this most certainly was a haunt for spectres. It was deserted and gave no contrary evidence that the emptiness had not been so for a long time. Through a wide hall he crept, now conscious of each silent footfall, almost too afraid to make any sound that might shatter the deathly pall and disturb the shadows. He turned into another corridor that led to a great double door standing slightly ajar. In the semi-dark Jonathan could just make out a crack of light spilling through those doors. What might lie beyond that entry was anyone's guess, but at least there was true light and where light shone someone might be waiting. He restrained an abrupt impulse to call out and walked cautiously up to the heavy oaken panels. Without a touch the doors folded back, opening by some unknown volition and Jonathan entered a warmly lit chamber.

Harker peered in. Firelight flickered from a burning grate, and there was a great wheel suspended overhead, ringed with unlit tapers. A chain fastened to an iron ring cloven into the wall passed through another at its apex and kept the wheel as motionless and as still as the rest of the house. The soft firelight might have given the room a surreal, almost inviting atmosphere had it not been for the sheer and utter desolation of human perdition and abandonment. Harker hesitated upon the portal and glanced about. Being uncertain if he should enter made his skin crawl. It was the unknown that disturbed him, and he tried to cast away thoughts of the unnatural, silly notions of things to which he could give no credence. Into what pit was his stoic atheism slipping? Left of his vision were four twisting pillars that reached to the floor above, and bisecting the centre of these was a grand staircase that made a mountainous ascent to a wide, deserted gallery. Impenetrable darkness kept the upper storey of this chamber to itself, dividing candlelight from a realm of black shadow.

The room was richly decorated, but the style was one of austere taste, and mostly antiquated. Flags and pennants drooped limply from iron spikes; exotic animal heads watched him with glittering obsidian eyes. A feral boar, a lion, a bear. Each death mask frozen in an attitude of both shock and violence. The effect was unsettling. The floor upon which he walked was inlaid with a pattern of large black and white parquet squares. A many-pointed star of white and green veined marble marked the focal point of the room. A dais and a great carved chair commanded one wall. Harker stepped forward, and once it was done, once his feet had crossed over that threshold, there was of course to be no turning back. He walked across the room, thinking as he trod cautiously that the chambermust have served at some point in the house's ancient past as a throne room. After many steps, he came up to a long oaken refectory table that stood beneath the rustic chandelier, and upon it Jonathan set down his cases. Just beyond the table a stack of pine logs crackled and blazed in an open fireplace. Above the fireplace, sculpted into the stone and vibrantly painted was an escutcheon emblazoned with red and gold stripes.
The gilded motto spelled:

'Fidelis et Morten: Loyalty and Death'

Above the crest a galleon was sinking in a tempest while two Dragons, each clasping golden tritons and possessed of razor-sharp claws, fought over the shield. Their fanged mouths were stretched wide, ready to spew flame, or to fan the winds that were sent the ship to its doom. Even the elements were at the mercy of the might and power of this house. Nonetheless, to whom was the vow loyalty and death intended, to whom was such fidelity meant? If he was to assume that this hearth and home were supposedly the wellspring of faithfulness, was he also to assume that such presumptions, as they might be ascribed in that crest, bore a more profound and disturbingly unpleasant message in this place? In that crest violence conquered all. Was he to meet the dragon...the Nosferatu? Was he to prove his fidelity here or was it his destiny to sink to the lowest of depths and be damned? Jonathan shivered in premonition over this oddly sombre motto and what its legend really implied. To whom were his own loyalties intended- to Lucy, to her love, or to another? To God? Perhaps the only way to truly be loyal was to be dead? However, did that imply that one's true loyalties were to an Almighty deity who would deliver you beyond death into everlasting life? In that case, what kind of eternal existence was implied...happiness or torment? What sacrifice was spread on the altar between the living and the 'not dead'? The answer to that was a disquieting vagary and Jonathan shuddered involuntarily yet again, and turned his attention to the dinner table. The carved oaken bench was laid with flawlessly gleaming silverware and one solitary but beautifully elegant Venetian crystal wine glass and a bottle of fragrant Tokaji. Trapped in a weird world of distortions, Harker watched his own reflection as he extended a hand and reached forward to lift the lid of a silver tureen. Lifting the dome released the odd aroma of another dish that he'd never eaten before, but he could not define what the dish might have been. Pork or veal? It certainly was neither fish nor fowl. What looked like rolled cabbage leaves, almost grey in their unappetising appearance, stuffed with some unknown meat, was revealed, steaming away on the silver platter. There was something more than unpleasant about the smell, a hint of that unnameable whiff his nostrils had caught on the drawbridge, an underlying waft of something nasty. Harker wrinkled his nose and replaced the lid. Exotic hothouse fruits glowed waxen in the light of the fire. Only silence attended him.

The young man turned his gaze to an envelope that rested beneath a tall candelabra. It was sealed with crimson wax, a seal that bore the same stamp in the crest above the mantle. Reaching out a hand, Jonathan picked up and opened a box of tinder; he struck a flint and lit two of the candles. When the flames burned steadily orange he blew out the match and picked up the envelope. As he felt the paper, his fingertips cautiously seeking anything sharp within its folds, Jonathan hesitated for a long moment before he broke the wax seal and removed a letter. The paper was almost transparent and the amber shades of the candle flames danced through its thinness. He could also see the blood-red glow of the fire in the grate through the sheer paper. The note was etched in a beautifully flowing script:

'I am sorry I was unable to be here when you arrived. Eat well, make yourself comfortable. Dracula.'

A curious, shadowy flicker passed over Jonathan's face; it might have lit a dark thought or it might have been a herald of fear, regardless it changed his features into a troubled mask. Walking around the length of the table his fingers let the translucent paper fall into the fireplace. It was instantly reduced to cinders. Harker threw a new log into the hearth, took up a brass poker and stirred the fire. As the flames danced hotly the ire of thunder rankled over the Carpathians bringing with its passing absolute darkness to the world, and for Harker numerous infernal fantasies that stirred his fortitude with terror.

Perhaps an hour elapsed; time seemed listless here as if the atmospheres were atrophied and pulled upon the hour's heels. No clock presented itself anywhere but for the fob watch Harker carried in his vest pocket; he did not take it out to check the time. Eating sparsely, finding the food unpleasant and not to his palate, as if too many spices were concealing the taste of corruption, Harker put down his knife and fork. The taste made him think of vegetables that had struggled to grow in clay and of meat that had hung far too long in a smokehouse. Even the wonderful and exotic fruits on display, the pineapple, the oranges and the figs, gave off a pungent smell and no doubt possessed a similar flavour. Wherever the Count had procured such fruit made Harker wonder, for he could not imagine how they had grown here in Transylvania. Harker's appetite disappeared quickly and there was no way he could force himself to eat any more. Instead he rose from his seat and took from his smaller valise a black case, opened it out and removed a red-leather bound volume and a set of scribes. Setting the book before him he sat again and opened the slim box containing the writing nibs and the ink. Pressed into the book's leather front cover were two letters in gold- J. H.

Harker opened his diary and reached for a pen. For a moment he hesitated, drawing in his thoughts from earlier in the day, and then the brass nib touched the paper and he began recording those thoughts. He had conjured upon the gypsy and her strange innotation- 'Nosferatu', and he remembered the horror that had spread over the faces of his fellow travellers when he had told them his destination. Jonathan's mind swirled with a darkness that he almost felt, and he recorded his ascent to the castle with trepidation. As he began to write his elbow pushed against a platter and the silver discus dropped to the floor with a resounding crash, the noise rising like canon fire to the heights of the towering ceiling. The abrupt cacophony caused Jonathan to start, as if in response to a gunshot, and knots of bread and cutlery skidded to various points of the veined-marble star. Quickly he set down his pen and leapt from his chair, shaking his head at his own fright and clumsiness and kneeling, he began to gather up the scattered bread and knives.

A weird sense told Jonathan that he was no longer alone; a hyperborean breath of coldness had suddenly blown up behind his back, a numbing chill that reached out and laid a frozen hand upon his spine. The cold penetrated his clothes and clutched at his skin, at his belly, at his sex. With a disgusted shiver, he felt the hackles tingle along his neck and a little thrill pumped through his veins. It was perhaps the same sensation he had felt as he had crossed the wooden drawbridge and looked down at that formidable door, only this time it was more profound, more intense. There was a vague hint of feminine perfume in the air. Jumping to his feet he spun around. The woman had appeared from nowhere, her light step gliding silently over the floor. She was voluptuous in form and yet at the same time ethereal, a peculiar combination of beauty and carnality that floated rather than walked. An artist's brush had painted on the vermilion tint of her lips; her skin was the shade of alabaster and her hair blacker than a raven's plume and braided, coiled and woven with stars. The garment she wore was milky white and practically transparent, Hellenic in style, as if she belonged to another era, to a time of the ancients and there was not one line of her lovely symmetry that did not fill Jonathan Harker's gaze with awe. His vision came to rest upon her eyes and they were the colour of opals, a milky green with a golden fire for pupils. Those eyes spoke of passion and delight and danger too, of something animalistic. He had never seen eyes that colour before in all his life.

'I'm sorry,' Harker spoke softly, keeping his tone modulated, afraid that his voice would dry up in his throat. 'I did not hear you come in. You startled me, I'm afraid. My name is Jonathan Harker. I am the new librarian.' He tried to smile but the attempt died on his lips. This woman's beauty would have challenged Helen's. Harker had no time to return the silver tray to the table before the woman moved forward swiftly and threw herself upon him. Her chill hand closed around his arm and then her touch leapt to his shoulder. This abrupt familiarity gave Harker another surprise. Though she looked delicate her grip was like a vice. A volt went through the barrier of his clothing and tingled along his skin, awakening in his body a sudden, burning wave of desire.
Involuntarily Jonathan stepped back but the woman clung to him. He did not know what to do, or how to react in his paralysis of guilty pleasure.
'Will you tell him you've seen me?'
'Who?' Jonathan asked, perplexed.
'You mustn't tell him. Promise me!' The strange woman insisted.
'Count Dracula?'
The woman nodded her response.
'Not if you don't wish me to,' said Harker, his voice low and gently reassuring. 'Count Dracula left a message for me... I assume he is away on business...'
'You will help me, won't you,' the beauty insisted, imploring and beseeching in a piteous tone. 'Say you will. Please.'
Although Jonathan was taken with her plea he could not deny the thrill of her touch. He felt the pressure of her grip and the sinful caress of her lithe body against his own, but he did not peel her hands away. That she was oddly cold, as carved marble is cold, made the contact slightly repellent but the closeness of her flesh confused his thinking; she should have been warm, like Lucy was warm. The odour of heliotrope floated from the beauty's skin, a heady perfumed scent, thick as if it were masking something bad, underlying something, like everything in this castle reeked of something undeniably revolting.
'If there is anything that I can do I'd...'

'There is,' the woman cut his words short, as if time were precious, time in which she might be discovered. 'You can help me escape. He never lets me go out. I am confined to this house.' Her voice trailed away and she glanced furtively about the chamber, distracted by a vague breath of wind swirling through the throne room. Again with the breeze came a resurgence of that smell of something nasty. It made the air thick and stifling, made it difficult for him to catch a breath. Harker gasped and the breath caught in his throat. Nervously, the woman looked back at Jonathan. Her nearness and her eyes, her entreating eyes were tricking his mind and clouding up his senses. What about Lucy, what would she think if she had the misfortune to see him now? Surely, she would be less understanding. Nonetheless she was not here to see. Jonathan's frame stiffened and his skin reacted, he felt his hands grip the woman's arm lightly, his fingers curling upon her white shoulder. He could hardly believe his own forwardness, for such a gesture would not be permissable at home. Catching himself he tried to pull away. Gently pushing the woman back, he saw that there was a look of fear in her green eyes, but there was something else that shone there too, desire perhaps, and a vivid, carnal desire at that. The woman was no supplicant, and she raised her chin proudly despite the glint of fear in her countenance and dared another glance over her shoulder. She looked covertly about the great chamber as if she were afraid someone might espy her and mean her harm. Harker followed the direction of her eyes but saw nothing. They were the only two in this room and he wasn't even sure at this moment if this woman was real or a dream, or worse, a phantom. She did not turn her face back to his but continued to stare warily into nothing.

'How then can I help you?' Harker asked at length, bringing her back to the moment. She snapped her head about as quickly as a cat leaps when startled and her eyes blazed with malachite fire. Those eyes were myopic, jade stars they were, scintillating, and Jonathan beheld an all-consuming darkness, vast and dangerous pulsing beyond the infinity of their golden centres. Those eyes that had petitioned now seemed to taunt, and they promised something that surpassed anything he had ever touched, kissed or loved. If he looked too deeply he knew he might be lost, give up his free will and forever be damned. Such would be his punishment for the sudden desire he felt rushing through his veins. What this glorious beauty might offer, his pure Lucy perhaps could never give. However, was either his true desire?
'Take me away from here,' she importuned, her voice whispering, her words hanging upon the point of desperation like some tentative punctuation mark that could never be inserted into the end of the sentence. Thrusting forth her bosom she frantically grabbed at the lapels of his coat.
'Why?' Harker asked ineptly, for he could not think of anything else to say and his question sounded trite and almost ridiculous. Although a weird discomfort assailed him, he placed his own hand over hers and gently began to loosen her clutch. It was best to pull away, but she resisted his fingers, yet how smooth her skin felt, so silky and so pale, like a Bernini sculpture. Hers was the flesh of Daphne, held from flight by Apollo, cold stone chiselled into soft skin, curling hair, stripped of diaphanous fabric. The gorgeous creature hesitated for a moment and for one split second Harker felt lost.

'He is keeping me prisoner,' she said bitterly and then closed her eyes, her expression changing to one of distress and then to one of sadness, all this happening in the passing of a moment. She reminded him of a luminous bloom, one fashioned from an opaque wax or pale glass, and yet still somehow fleshy and wanting someone to touch it, linger over it with a long caress, to admire its exquisite form. It seemed incredible that such a lovely creature would be someone's captive, never able to leave the confines of this fortress. What of her family, where were they, or her friends? Could she not write to them and ask for help rather than importune the likes of him, Jonathan Harker, librarian and perfect stranger? She was a burning enigma, a tragedy made flesh and her words were spoken with no sense. Jonathan did not want to commit to any foolish promise.

'Is it Count Dracula?' Jonathan insisted, shaking his head and waiting for her to tell him. She remained silent, her tongue seized behind her teeth. 'Is Count Dracula keeping you a prisoner?' Jonathan's question again went unanswered. 'I'm afraid I don't understand.' Harker shook his head in confusion. All this had happened far too quickly for him to comprehend anything. It brought back into his veins that dreadful rush of terror he had been trying so hard to suppress. Her closeness confused his prudence and made him feel uneasy. She was certainly a mystery. There were many questions he wanted to ask of her. How had she come to be here, in this castle at the edge of nowhere? Who was she and what was her name? Why was she dressed so, her clothes reminiscent of another place and another time? What had Count Dracula to do with her imposed confinement- was it punishment? Was she a concubine? Jonathan had to stop his thoughts from running on and as he struggled to retrieve that rational part of his mind she perceived what could only have been a half-suppressed tone of reticence in his voice, and nodded in answer to his question. 'That's dreadful, but what can I do?' The woman made no reply. Still, he refused to believe that her situation was hopeless. Perhaps there was a way that Harker knew to help, a way pointing to freedom, but he had to understand what was going on first. The woman appeared desperate and he was ignorant of whatever unhappiness chained her heart.

'Oh, please!' Abruptly she began to beg. 'Please, help me to escape.'
A sharp chill snaked into Jonathan's heart, struck and lodged its tainted fangs somewhere close to blind fear and began again to poison his heart with intimate desire. As the last syllables fell from her lips a frosty wind erupted through the motionless expanse of the red velvet drapes, the smouldering fire in the hearth flared up as one bright orange flame, the candles all but expired and a monstrous shadow blossomed from the darkness at the head of the great staircase. The woman let go of Harker's coat and dropped her gaze. Turning abruptly, she fled the room. Watching her go, the young man was momentarily piqued by bewilderment. All that remained of her form was a fleeting glimpse of her white gown, her sandals barely touching the stone floor as she ran. The room had somehow changed its perspective and it had become smaller and darker, and he diminished within its walls. It was a visual illusion and the mood of sudden, real terror was almost palpable. Like some hideous Spectrum conjured from the Underworld, the dark slid across the room and lifted a skeletal finger to Jonathan's lips. Poised upon his mouth it froze his tongue into a lake of ice. The nightmare clutched at him and squeezed his body so that the warmth of his blood leaked away into the soles of his shoes. On the edge of terror, he looked up. His eyes travelled the ascent of the staircase and then with a visible shock he saw something forming in the tumult of shadows, something dark and hideous. A pillar of black, an apparition, frightening and alarmingly threatening, stood at the top of the staircase. It was a tall, immobile shape that was stained darker than the pitch in which it roiled, deeper than the shadows that tumbled about its shape. It was difficult to define the image from the surrounding dark, but there was a flash of red, the quickest glint of ruby fire from within its maddened depths.

Harker's eyes widened in surprise as the darkness suddenly moved and began to spill down the stairs, its shapeless width seeming to fold and retract and become something other, morphing and contracting into itself. So quickly did it alter that Jonathan only half-glimpsed what could not possibly have been composed of reality; a vision of great wings and two points of magma red that might have been eyes. The thing was a glimpse of the fantasy, a vision of something that flickered and blazed and vexed time and space in a spinning, whirling vortex of black flame. Jonathan took a faltering step back and terror swept through his body. The thing flowed down the stairs, flowed like spilled ink and the closer it came the colder the room became, and the black thing separated from the shadows and precipitously took on solidity. Soon it reached the final step of its descent, all over black and still retaining its aura of rippling, fiery shadow. Abruptly, as if by magic the candles came to light again, the darkness was exiled, and the shadow crossed from its midnight pool into the warm illumination of the firelight. For the first time Harker looked upon his host and he gasped with strained relief.
'Mr. Harker, I am glad that you have arrived safely.'
Harker could hardly find his tongue to speak, what he thought he had just witnessed was impossible, but he forced out the words- 'Count Dracula?'
'I am Dracula, and I welcome you to my house.'
The flare-up in the fireplace settled, the tapestries and hangings were once again stilled, but now the room was strangely alive as it had not been alive before. The chill abated and the stone walls seemed to sing with a vibrant tone. There was presence in the chamber now, a vital and darkly alluring aura, an immediate change in the atmosphere, an energy that radiated from the Count. Harker felt it penetrate to his bones, not entirely chasing away his irrational fear but mixing it up with awe and wonder. The Dragons in the coat of arms blinked with eyes of garnet as they observed Harker captivated by his host. Dracula was a man who towered above Harker, a man clad from toe to tip in the blackest of garb. His was a face saturnine, and he wore a flowing ebon cloak, fastened at his throat by a golden chain and clasp, and the clasp was engraved with the same motif displayed over the fireplace. In his countenance Dracula was gaunt, but he was handsome, his face alive and irresistibly attractive. Dracula's features were those of a dark god that had been carved in antiquity, his eyes deep and piercing and knowing, like a faun, like Pan. Those eyes were polished and shining, whirling galaxies in which something dreadfully beautiful but unspeakable was glimpsed, a terrible mystery that one might uncover too late. They were as profound and as endless as eternity, born like suns accreted out of a void of violent chaos, black holes in space that pulled at you, tugged at you, dragged you towards an infinity of non-existence.

'I must apologise for not being here to greet you personally,' Dracula continued, his voice melodious and reassuring, 'but I trust that you have found everything you needed?' Harker heard each word, listening from a place where time had begun to slow, to grind to a halt in a place where Dracula's atonal silver-tongued excuses were mouthed like visual syncopations linked to the beating of the heart. It was either a spell that Harker felt softly caressing his soul or that he was simply becoming extremely weary. All was confusion and he did not understand. Dracula watched his guest with those blackly gleaming eyes, the younger man's gaze locked to the nobleman's and Dracula knew somehow that Harker shuddered within. Yet even as Jonathan felt the ripple pass through his body he saw only the face of a black revelation, of a promise of darker things through which he might pass, and of unending pleasure. Jonathan's skin went damp and flared hot, a scarlet flush briefly staining his face. If the strange woman had sparked desire within Jonathan, then the Count burned hotly with that desire a thousandfold, as hot as the sun.
The world wavered and Jonathan felt unexpectedly unsteady on his feet, and a tide of shadow washed over his body. Jonathan was wilting and his heart quaked, and the sensation shook him, the dragon shedding a rain of diseased scales before his eyes to expose his inner core. What of Lucy? For her sake, he knew he must keep his guard, keep his body, his mind, his being unstained. The Count lifted the corners of his mouth into a cordial smile. It was like he had perversely read Jonathan's mind. Dracula moved slowly, sinuously, in the manner of a jaguar, that stealthy great and beautiful but dangerous cat that inhabited the impenetrable jungles of the American south, and Jonathan shook his head and with some effort he dragged his eyes from the Count. Jonathan could feel his skin becoming hotter under his clothes. In those lost seconds, he might have discovered a perverse new world of existence and of desire, to know the shape and form of Dracula's body under its mantle of black, to feel the touch of his host's skin, the silk of his hair, his flesh, but thankfully the trance was broken and Jonathan was able to look away. In self-disgust Jonathan stumbled back a step and looked down at his feet, gasping for breath. Dracula merely watched, not moving a muscle. after a moment had passed Harker apologised.

'Thank you, sir,' he managed to say, stiffly regaining his sensibilities and his composure. Jonathan shivered, not knowing what powers of disgust had led him to think such obscenity. His host was possessed of a distinctive quality, a dark quality, and a sensual quality that could not be denied. 'It was most thoughtful of you to have a meal prepared for me.' What else could he say in his attempt to appear normal? He could not deny that he felt horribly uneasy and that Dracula was of a most persuasive and commanding presence.
'It was the least I could do after such a journey.'
They stepped apart and Harker was thankful for the divide. Dracula continued to watch Harker's every movement with fixed attention, mapping the man's body as the tiger watches its prey before the strike. It seemed that every mote, every atom that composed the image of his guest was being burned into the retinas of Dracula's depthless eyes, and Harker knew it and it chilled him to the core. Again, the sound of Dracula's voice rang courteous and congenial. The young man suddenly felt light-headed, almost giddy and a wave of exhaustion washed through his veins.
'Yes,' replied Harker wearily, 'it is a long journey.'
'It has been tiring for you, no doubt.' The Count hadn't dropped his smile all the while that he spoke, and he waved a hand in the direction of the upper floor. 'Permit me to show you to your room.'
'Thank you, sir.' Harker hurriedly collected his writing tools and his journal and returned them to the little black case. Folding his coat over his arm, the same arm the strange woman had gripped but minutes before, he straightened his shoulders and managed a weak smile. Jonathan wanted to ask Dracula who the woman was but his tongue was stilled, remembering his promise, and instead he took up his hat then stooped to pick up his other travelling case. Dracula extended a hand, a finely chiselled, beautifully manicured, niveous hand adorned with a great golden ring; sparks glanced off its multi-facetted onyx dome, and were the ghosts of Dragons sleeping in that dark stone too?
'No, please, allow me,' the Count insisted and Jonathan withdrew his own hand. For a brief second their fingers touched, the warm and the chill collided in a moment that should not have existed, and a conduit of icy energy leapt between them. Harker imagined the fingers dancing up his forearm, along and over his shoulder, down his back…between his thighs, and he pulled his own hand away as if he had been burned. 'Unfortunately, my housekeeper is away at the moment.' Dracula smiled as he spoke his excuses, gripping the suitcase handle and standing erect, his eyes never leaving his guest's. Like a tower composed of black he loomed over Jonathan. 'A family bereavement, you understand.'
'Yes, of course,' returned Harker stuttering, but he did not understand, not at all. Surely many would have tended a house of this gigantic size. Aside from the strange woman he was sure there could be no one else in the castle; he was alone and it made his isolation from the world he had left even more pronounced and weighed heavily upon his heart. Dracula stepped forward and led the way. Into the lofty castle heights, they ascended, to briskly transverse a wide gallery littered with furniture collected from many centuries past. Chiselled woodwork gleamed as if it had been lacquered that morning, tapestry and upholstered trimmings presented vivid colours to the eye. Paintings and animal skins and pennants decorated the thick stone walls. There was not a speck of dust anywhere. Dracula spoke briskly as they climbed higher.
'However, I think you will find that everything has been prepared for your comfort.' It was difficult to keep pace with the Count, for every step Jonathan took the man in black seemed to take four. They strode up another staircase, this one not as wide as the first but still mountainous.
'How soon may I start work, sir?'
'As soon as you wish. There are a large number of volumes to be indexed.'
At the end of these words they arrived at what was to be Harker's room, Dracula appeared to open the door, though it may have opened of its own volition, Harker could not be sure as the Count, carrying Jonathan's case, had not extended a hand to do so. Silently they entered. A silken carpet was spread over the cold stone floor, its colours and patterns of flowers and mythological beasts were, like the furniture elsewhere, vibrant and rich. As in the great dining hall below there was no clock to capture the passing of time. A claret-coloured tapestry hung about the canopy of a mahogany tester bed, a scarlet and gold coverlet and a tasselled bolster made the bed look comfortable enough. Near the bed stood a screen with a frame of lacquered rosewood, its panels were woven with tapestry, displaying a triptych. They depicted a hunting scene composed of Botticelli's 'Nastagio degli Onesti'. The scenes were both beautiful and disturbing; in the first a young woman was being brought down by a hound; in the second her fallen corpse was being disembowelled, and the last was almost a duplicate of the first. Surreal and violent they were the stuff of bad dreams. Harker could not bring himself to appreciate the art or the allegory; he wished it were not decorating what was to be his sleeping chamber. An ornate blanket box as big as a coffin ran the width of the foot of the bed; here Harker placed his coat and hat, and Dracula set down Harker's luggage on the floor at his feet. The smaller case Harker placed on the open shelf of a great solid walnut writing bureau, its bevelled glass windows reflecting the warm light of the fire; its many drawers carved with peculiar geometric designs. On a games table, red and white chessmen had massed their ranks but none seemed ever to have been moved into battle. They were paused in the game, but despite this fact no dust had accumulated anywhere and it was evident that no one had entered, let alone occupied this chamber for a long time.
'Is there anything else you require, Mr. Harker?'
Harker found that it was with difficulty that he listened to Dracula's words. The timbre of Dracula's voice had changed again, for now it ran so fast as to thread each word together without pause. Surely it was the altitude of the Borgo Pass making the air thinner that caused Jonathan's breath to be short and his mind to stumble. The vocals were a scramble and Harker began to feel faint. He now wished only to be alone. Surely this castle existed only in a dream, the world here seemed to stop and start, to slow and to gain speed, to twist and warp so without warning from one moment to the next that it made Harker dizzy.
'No, I don't think so. You've been most kind.' All that Jonathan really wanted to do was to lie down and sleep, and Dracula watched him as he shuddered. Jonathan reached out to steady himself, and his hand closed upon the Count's arm, and Dracula, with blazing eyes stared into his new librarian's pale visage.
'On the contrary, it is entirely my privilege.' Dracula gripped his companion with steely fingers, and Jonathan staved off a rush of giddiness. For the life of him he knew not what was happening, and Dracula lifted the arch of his lips into what only a fool would have considered a genuine smile. When he spoke his voice sped up and then slowed down.
'Mr. Harker, are you not feeling well?'
'Tired...' Jonathan managed to say. 'So tired. I am sorry...' The young man took a deep breath and let go of his host's forearm. Still, Dracula's closeness had the effect of a drug and every syllable the dark man spoke intoxicated Jonathan's senses.
'I consider myself fortunate to have found such a distinguished scholar to act as my librarian.'
Such flattery was for fools thought Harker and he wished to tell the Count. It was his friend, Professor Van Helsing, who had suggested the initial proposition, that Dracula's library was vast and therein would be a whole new wealth of knowledge. It was Van Helsing who had composed the initial letter if introduction. Jonathan's senses were being manipulated and his emotions confused. What was the relevance of ancient histories, tracts and fictions and putting numbers to them when the world of the sensual so blatantly beckoned? Van Helsing could know nothing of that! Nonetheless, what obscene magic was at work here? Listening to the trailing echoes of Dracula's voice, Jonathan thought them an allure, but they were an invitation to what? With a few slow breaths, Jonathan again slowly recovered his senses.
'As I told you, sir, in my letter,' Harker lied, and he knew Dracula no fool. 'It will be a pleasure for me to be able to stay here where it is quiet and peaceful. I like quiet and seclusion,' Jonathan, his tongue stumbling over numb syllables, not wanting to finish that last corrupt thought, somehow knew that he was not believed. 'The work that I shall do on your behalf is small payment for such relaxation.'
Dracula continued to smile.
'This house,' Jonathan added hastily, 'I think, offers that.'

Yet what else did it offer? In the quiet and seclusion of this haunted palace, this xanadu, was suggested a notion that you could fulfill any desire you might choose to dream, and no one would ever know. No one would ever know, not even Lucy, for neither he nor his host would tell. Dracula was powerful and commanding, and his ivory flesh evoked things that Jonathan could only conjure in his imagination. Ah! Such erotic pleasures unrestrained, with the flesh inexhaustible. This was a room in a mantle of cloud, secretive on a precipice overlooking a dark void, wherein mouths would join and legs would merge and teeth bite into skin, wherein reason would be all but abandoned and tenderness forsaken. The shadows and the sheets of the bed could conceal their skins, all entwined in one another, and with that strange woman too what a night of carnality he could know! How Jonathan thought that it would have been so easy to fall over the edge of precipice… Deception and blindness shimmered in Dracula's folds. Entrapped in such depravity, this house could be the end of the world for any who ventured here, and Harker understood this, and yet he was powerless. Had he not felt its primal pull from the moment he had taken in its vista, the moment he had become aware that no birds sang? The guise of librarian was a ruse and he was none too sure if Dracula suspected otherwise. If he did then there was good reason to be afraid. Still he must challenge his fears, he had to resist the desire and remain strong. Dracula's aura was so potent, powerful and seductive, and the power went against all the beliefs that Jonathan held as fact. That power enveloped the flesh with its conceit, it hinted at all that was false and depraved. It was, thought Jonathan, almost supernatural, for want of a better word to describe Dracula's ability to snare. Surely the man was versed in the art of hypnosis, for there could be no other explanation.
'Then we are both satisfied,' the Count spoke rapidly and his lips deepened at the corners, and there was a horrible suggestion of impropriety in his words, an emphasis that made Jonathan shudder. The Count stepped away from his new librarian and Jonathan gasped silently, but he could not help but think that his host might never be satisfied.
'An admirable arrangement,' Dracula stated matter-of-factly, and Harker lamely nodded his concurrence.
'However, there is just one more thing, Mr. Harker.'
An unmistakable and profound accent of significance attached itself to that one word- 'more'. There was something not stated and yet ominous, thinly veiled in Dracula's dialogue. What was Dracula implying? What more might happen this night and were Dracula's words meant to frighten? Harker suspected with another cold little thrill that an unspoken threat underpinned his host's congeniality.
'I have to go out, and I will not be back until after sundown tomorrow. Your impression of me must be abysmal, but what I must do is unavoidable.'
'Not at all,' replied Harker.
'Until then, please look upon this house as your own.' The Count spoke quickly, and his swift speech was a mixture of geniality and danger by implication. 'Goodnight, Mr. Harker.' Dracula did not bow and for a stilted moment he did not move.
'Good night, sir,' Harker managed feebly, but he was far from convinced of his host's sincerity and could never imagine a house such as this as his own, only the night thrived here. Soon enough the Count whirled about, a black raven, stretching its wings, and he left the room. Jonathan stared for a long moment into nothing as the door closed; not registering that it did so of its own accord. He was relieved to finally be alone, relieved that the Count was gone. Being close to the nobleman seemed to strangle all sense of self, to suffocate the will and to weaken one's mind. Yet being in Dracula's presence also provoked a pseudo-erotic realism, and in that fantasy Dracula became the seducer of the visitor from a distant town. The thought of it both thrilled and disgusted Harker. For all his supposed sophistication Harker knew it in his heart that something he wanted to deny had sparked within his skin. The Count was as mystifying as he was cordial, as dark as the night and as seductive as the Devil. He had felt the man inside his head, prickling his thoughts with an irresistible glamour and it frightened Jonathan. It was an impossibility, but in those thoughts Jonathan was horrified and yet elated as Dracula deflowered his body, and that violent urge then conjured distaste and loathing and the duel was set between his love for Lucy and this unnameable depravity. This overt desire for this other man's flesh made Harker feel sullied.
Harker shook his head so that he might clear his thoughts and opened his Gladstone bag and for the second time that evening he removed his diary and nibs. He placed these on the desktop and then, almost hesitantly he removed a silver frame and opened it, setting it atop the writing cabinet. His eyes were full of longing and he forced a strange smile. Never, he must never commit to writing down those obscene desires he was feeling and damage his love for Lucy. A knock sounded upon the door and the door opened. Count Dracula re-entered the room without invitation. He strode to where Harker stood before the desk and spoke quickly, as if he were needed elsewhere and could barely afford the time to waste.

'As I shall be away for so long, I think it better that you should have the key of the library, Mr. Harker.' Dracula proffered a long iron key. It looked more like the key to a dungeon than one that opened a bibliotheca. What other door or secret did the key portend to unlock?
'Thank you.' Harker accepted the key and tested the weight of it in his palm. It was as heavy as it looked and polished to a pewter sheen, and it was cold, a frozen sliver of silvery iron that might have been retrieved from the bedrock of the icy torrent that ran beneath the drawbridge. He tried to smile but couldn't, reaching over instead and placing the key on the desktop.

'You will find the library to the left of the hall.' If Harker could remember the location of the hall! It was then that the Count sounded slightly distracted as he spoke, and Jonathan realised why. His host's gaze had locked upon the gilded frame that had been set above the bureau.
'May I?' Dracula extended his hand so that Jonathan would be obliged to take the frame down and give it up. A terrible notion crossed Harker's mind that if he did so he would be giving up more than he could ever imagine. Harker tried to quell the horrible implication of the thought as soon as it had blossomed within his skull, especially hypocritical considering the desires that had just passed through his mind. Harker did not move to take down the frame. Dracula merely smiled and waited while time hung expectantly like a line of stops at the continuation of a paragraph. When the tableau at last broke Jonathan felt a frisson pass between them, some awful doom-laden eventuality that had been set in motion and that nobody would be able to stop.
'Yes,' Harker replied reluctantly, reaching up and taking the picture frame from the cabinet, 'certainly.' Some sick and warped corner of Jonathan's mind whispered to him again that strange and rapturous song, that aria sung by Dracula, notes that went directly to Jonathan's core. It was as if his mind was not his own, his thoughts snared in a web of binding that bent him irrevocably to the Count's will. Dracula was so close and his body so vibrant… Harker again found himself having difficulty concentrating; the man in black seemed composed of things that had no name and he emanated a physical power that could scarce be denied. Another moment with beauteous evil brushed Jonathan's essence and a foul promise stained his psyche with the colour of divine filth. Jonathan beheld Lucy staring out at him from the gilded frame, her eyes blue and innocent. He could hardly stand to look at her portrait, feeling a dreadful weight that he did not understand crushing his heart. Quickly he handed it to Dracula. Again, lightning passed from fingertip to fingertip. Harker snatched away his hand. Dracula's eyes appeared to flicker red, two fiery gems caught in the glow of the fire reflected from the diamond cut glass of the desk. It was as if he knew what Jonathan was feeling, there was the hint of a tainted smile twisting the corners of his scarlet mouth. The impression of sharp-tipped teeth vanished before it could register fully. An illusion? Jonathan could not be sure.
'You are fortunate to own acquaintance with such a lovely young person. Your wife, perhaps?' Jonathan's host asked cordially after the young woman. Harker blushed and conceded the contrary, clenching his fingers into fists and then uncurling them, wiping his palms on his trousers. No, he was not married to Lucy, he had barely even touched her lily-white skin let alone experienced the joy of being married to her, and he had never deigned to taint her honour by ever having imagined their bodies entwined together in the gross and carnal thoughts of desire that consumed him under this roof. Yet upon this thought he could not stem the rush of heat again spreading through his veins; a return of that not so unwelcome craving that he had experienced with the dark-haired beauty earlier in the evening, and now with the Count.

The reality of this desire unnerved Jonathan and he wanted to run away from himself, to get free from Dracula. Perhaps this was the captivity to which the nameless Hellenic beauty had alluded. The mind's slavery, and the flesh trapped. He should not be thinking such things, and he reprimanded his obscene desires. Here, in this secluded place anything might be possible, his flesh could be reduced to ashes by a touch, by a kiss. If he were to act upon chivalry and help the sylph to escape how might she repay his deed? He could see the lovely woman standing before him, her garment falling away from her breast and her hand reaching forward to clutch at his member, her lips gleaming. He could have her and nobody would ever know. Lucy would never know. Yet Dracula would know! Dracula was smiling at Jonathan and Jonathan shook his head to dispel those tainted and lustful imaginings, because instinct told him that Dracula would know everything and do anything.
'No, she is my fiancée.' Harker forced the words out of his throat as if he were confessing to some horrible crime. He wanted to snatch the frame back from Dracula but some hideous force held his arms at bay. He must not say another thing; he knew this but some power was drawing everything out of his heart, ripping revelations out like pages being torn from a banned book. He berated himself. How could he be feeling such profane longings when here was Lucy's picture with a face so pretty and so loving? He felt shamed but the shame was all mixed up with a sordid pleasure. Marriage to Lucy was what the world expected of him, but was it what he really longed for in his heart? He suspected that Arthur Holmwood knew this already. All those nights that he had spent studying in the company of his mentor, Van Helsing... It was as if a virulent disease had contaminated all sense of what was pure, a sickness that debased the flesh with an overpowering wanting for things forbidden. Yet at the same time was wholly exquisite.

Dracula's eyes devoured the portraits, for there were two pictures, two angles of a lovely, gentle face, a young woman in the bloom of health and vitality. Jonathan did not want to divulge her name, for if by doing so he would somehow betray her completely and despise himself for the rest of eternity. There was something horrible taunting his thoughts and it told Harker to seal his lips. He was on the brink of betraying himself and he had begun to wish that he had never come to Castle Dracula. If only Van Helsing had thought of another way...
'Lucy. . .' By saying her name he felt as if he might be offering her up as a sacrifice. Dracula sensed the reserve in Jonathan's tone. 'Lucy Holmwood.' Dracula's black eyes glittered again, and Jonathan could have sworn that the Count's lips pursed in an unwholesome and wicked smile as he mouthed the woman's appellation. Too late, it was done and Jonathan could not take his words back, he had spoken Lucy's name. Somewhere deep in his coil he knew that he had condemned her, to what he didn't know, it was just a horrible, gnawing fear that his world was now irrevocably changed, as was Lucy's, and doomed, and it could never be righted. Jonathan reached forward to take back the frame, but Dracula held it fast. A strange look of confusion crossed Harker's features, and that confusion could not mask the underlying revulsion and horror that the tall, dark stranger stirred within him. For a protracted moment it seemed that the two men struggled for ownership of the female flesh, almost to the point of vulgarity. With a sly smile Dracula handed the portrait frame back to Harker.
'Lucy. What a delightful name. She is pretty, born at dawn, surely! You are a most fortunate man, Mr. Harker,' said the Count, and his voice was almost a whisper, so low that Jonathan had to struggle to hear. 'Charming. . . Charming.' From somewhere far off a wolf howled and the sound sent a shiver through the librarian. It was no use denying fear, for Dracula knew all the thoughts born in Harker's mind and there was nowhere to hide, and nowhere to hide Lucy either.
'You are most kind.' Jonathan's response was a lie, but he could think of nothing else to say, and he felt like the serpent charmed by the Fakir. He had again begun to feel sick in his stomach. An uncomfortable silence then fell between the two men, a silence that clamped their tongues in their mouths and held them fast. Neither spoke, they just stared at each other as if time had frozen. The moment seemed to go on forever though in reality it lasted for all but a few seconds. It was Dracula who broke the ice in their throats.
'Can you hear that?' the tall, dark man asked.
Through the open window came a plaintive howl. The sound and the cool evening breeze stirred the hairs on Jonathan's neck into standing. A sudden and dreadful fear returned to his heart.
'A wild dog?'
'More likely a wolf,' responded the Count, and as he spoke he smiled. The words conveyed perhaps a warning, were suggestive of veiled meaning and Jonathan stood tense.
'The forest is thick with them,' said Dracula, and he glanced towards the window.
The world held its breath for another moment and Jonathan did not know how to respond.
'Well... I must leave you now, my friend. Once again accept my sincere apologies for the unsociable way I have been forced to neglect my duties as host. Good night. Sleep well, Mr. Harker.' Dracula said nothing further and turning on his heel, abruptly left the room. Once alone, a sigh of relief came from Harker's lips. His breath condensed in the air. His first thought was that he must flee, for Van Helsing was right, this man was an abomination. How could Jonathan ever have doubted his mentor? Yes, he must flee, but that would be imposssible, for was not the forest thick with wolves and besides, betraying his friend was unthinkable? Still the wolves howled. Perhaps he should close the window. As he stepped forward to shut the panes, Jonathan heard the unmistakable click of the key in the lock, and distracted he turned and hurried to the door only to find that it would not open. For some unknown reason Dracula had sealed him fast in this room. It made no sense to Harker, for had Dracula not already given him the freedom of the house? Perturbed, Harker tried the door once again but his efforts to make it open were useless. With the worst of fear thumping into his heart yet again he returned to the bureau and sat down and opened his diary.

'At last I have met Count Dracula,' he began to write falteringly, pausing to dip his nib in the ink. 'He accepts me as a man who has agreed to work among his books... as I intended.'

It was at that moment that his features darkened. That shadow in his face was suggestive that his thoughts though deeply troubled, were intent upon purpose. In his heart he wanted to believe that Count Dracula was nothing than a man, one of a cruel disposition, one of power, high-bred yet infamous, not one with a bent towards magic. Count Dracula, descendant of a warlord, born under the sign of Mars, could not be anything other than a nobleman tyrant. To think otherwise was outlandish, and yet still something unfathomable clutched at Jonathan's heart. There was undeniably a fiendish and seductive energy to the man, and thinking this Jonathan closed his eyes and then opened them again, and this was the moment of truth, the moment when he had to write, to commit his real purpose to paper.

'It only remains for me now to await the daylight hours when, I swear, with God's help, I will forever end this man's reign of terror.'

Jonathan looked at the sentence he had scratched out in shorthand, and pondered its ambiguity and its hypocrisy. It seemed like a foolish slip of the mind if he were hoping that God would aid him in his mission, especially when he so often protested that he found it impossible to believe in the Almighty. It was utterly confusing to his sensibilities that this man Dracula could be a supernatural monster, and yet he quivered at the thought and closed his eyes. Van Helsing swam into his vision, a man of science and yet he too believed that Dracula had survived beyond the boundaries of the grave. Jonathan wondered what was happening to his rationale, and all so suddenly. It was Lucy's crucifix and all the equivocality surrounding faith that had abruptly caught him. The image of Doctor Van Helsing gleaned in Jonathan's eyes. The man was a pillar of strength and purity, of knowledge and action. Thinking of Van Helsing made Jonathan strong, but it caused angst too and caught him in perjury. Jonathan told himself that he must cease such thoughts, for Lucy was the one that he must think about now, and by her influence be guided. For Lucy believed in God and perhaps, just maybe, that was enough faith for them both. For if one were reduced to speaking so figuratively, maybe it was after all God's help he would need, but hope between himself and the Almighty would be difficult to reconcile as his faith was not strong. Nonetheless, had Jonathan risen from his desk and looked from his high window, he might have had reason to question his atheist vulnerability.

3: Violated

Jonathan slumped uncomfortably in the chair, a high-backed and rigid piece of antiquated furniture with scrolled arms painted in gold leaf; the verdure seat was overstuffed. Despite his discomfort Harker had dozed off, the sporadic warmth of the fire having lulled him down into the false security of sleep. He drifted into vague and blended dreams, troubled dreams that seemed so vivid and real.
Jonathn had risen and crossed to the window and opened it. In the night without the wolves had ceased to howl, but having conquered the sun, the moon arose from the edge of the void. Under the glimmer of her silver beams the Dragon lay stretched in the earth, nestled, resting, dreaming. Jonathan could see the loop of its tail coiled about the foot of the Borgo Pass, and the procerity of its horns were colossal pinnacles of stone that violated the sky. Above its undulating fins, amid the sparkling welkin of stars, the constellation of Cephesus Draco burned vividly. Blazing, as if born in a nebula, was a great garnet star, throbbing and incalescent and red with anger. Jonathan, as he beheld the star, became aware of the burning nature of violence. This star was the light of the Dragon's eye. Below the moon, the sphere of the earth was spinning. Its revolutions were a vortex in eternal space, turning in an arc, and upon its curve all the glades and valleys and the forest, from canopy to carpet were sung blue-silver beneath her radiant, resplendent rays. On the slopes of the Borgo Pass, in the filtered silver moonlight, the shadows rippled in the forest.
Under the brown epidermis of the earth, deeper than the tree roots, deeper than the planet's skin, under steadfast slate and boulder, the Dragon had sunk its claws into the fiery core of the earth, holding fast, even as it slept. Jonathan was witness to the Dragon's birth in fire, born in calcidity, spawned in some unknowable force of creation. This fire had raged from immateriality eons ago when a star, just like Cephesus Draco had exploded with a force long before humans populated the earth. Its light had speared through space like an arrow. From this light came heat, and from the heat density, and from the density coalesced solidity from the dust of the nothing. In this way, the Dragon come into being, and thus it was composed of all things, light and dark, day and night, fire and ice, pliant and corneous, volatile and vaporous, fluent and alluvial. The Dragon was the stuff from which all and everything had been composed, all and everything before there was anything.
Jonathan watched on with dreaming eyes as the planet formed and its surface cooled after the violence of cataclysmic collision, after an accretion of stardust. The Dragon had found its claws, its wings and its breath of fire, after which it had laid down its head and folded up its wings, and under their shelter the valleys and plains of the earth had wrinkled into a wide and undulating blanket. It's veins were the rivers that flowed into distant, heaving oceans, its muscles and scales were the sheer cliffs, the ice sheets and the isthmus where continents met were its sinews, and its belly was the vast impregnable, burning stomach of the planet. Nevertheless, as the Dragon slumbered and its claws still gripped, its tail snaked and probed and looped about the world, stirring the mantle, stimulating the larval vortex and bringing forth dreams. Illumined in celestial glow, the Dragon's finned back stretched into an arched phalanx of rippling, towering granite. The panoply of the Carpathian Alps was a black silhouette against the silver blue and ultramarine sky.

Once, long ago, a herald stone had roared from the void of space and sliced through the blue of the sky. The great rock had smashed into the earth with titanic force, blasting away the top of the mountain, devastating the valley. Every tree had snapped like twigs in a storm, every trunk had caught fire, and everything upon the mountain had burned to cinders. The land had roasted and the sun had gone out, and a thick, black cloud had plunged the earth into perpetual winter. Nonetheless, after an eon, the earth had recovered. The passage of time saw the Dragon grow new scales and new fins and new teeth, and breathe new fire. Now a restless wind sighed icily over the Dragon's spine, and the wind promised sleet. Trees on the alpine slopes shivered as the wind caressed and nudged their sturdy trunks. These ancient Cambrian pylons had roots that ran deep into the ground, cracking through boulders and ever spreading as they probed to the subterranean realms of Hades and down.

The trees were hardy and steadfast, their tips tall and phallic, their roots clinging to the everlasting scales of the Dragon until the high ascent at last thinned their growth. High up in the algid mists, cold slate replaced bark and cone and needle, frost and rime replaced flowing streams and light was eternal twilight. At the pinnacle of the range no tree could grow, but an illimitable age had watched their evolution upon the mountainside, had observed the miracle of death and rebirth, of shoots and roots and high reaching branches like dark arms that wished one day to tear down the sky. A millennium had blinked by, but time as Jonathan Harker knew time was as nothing to this wooded labyrinth of bark and leaf.

Still the earth renewed over and over and over again. On the scales of the Dragon, in the dappled camouflage of the trees, there were born creatures of the night. In the green of the woods the owl roosted and the serpent quietly slithered, the widow spun her woven trap and the beetle clicked a staccato rhythm. From its hidden depths, the wolf sung a plaintive aria to the hovering moon. Sometimes a bird fell amid the fallen leaves; sometimes a beast crawled into the shadows to lie down and die. When this happened, the worms worked furiously in the shades, devouring the foliage; the flesh and the feather, the hide and the horn and the tooth until nothing of the corporeal existed. These things moved almost imperceptibly, shifting slyly, dancing to the music of the night, and they cast odd shadows in the light of the moon, shadows that resembled nothing like solid shape or form. Elusive shapes they were, composed of uncertainty, secretive and aphotic, squirming and writhing and vaguely half-etched.

Perhaps they were but phantasms made manifest in the shards of broken moonlight. There were dreams there too, enfolded into the new and black forest, dreams made somehow real, nightmares, things that vanished before the eye could give them spissitude, shape or form. These things were hardly tangible, writhing within a forest that was filled with shadows, overflowing, restless. Stealthily alive was the wood, alive with an ever-shifting army of phantasms and fantastical mirages that lurked and stalked in the dark. If the eye were quick enough these spectres might be caught in the vision peripheral, occluded, shimmering shapes fleetingly imagined and then vanished into the nothing that had spawned them. One might see the lurid flame of a red eye or catch the blur of a velvet wing in the tops of the branches. Just what this fleeting penumbra pursued and hunted was a mystery, but they slithered and crept and flew, mutated by the darkness and diseased. They were night's denizens, things that might have crawled up out of some horrible infernal pit, preferring the beclouded places of the nightmare over the shining aureate light of day. Rapidly flitting between trunk and twisting roots, they waited in their shaded lairs to pounce and consume any unsuspecting victim. Some had been given familiar names like 'wolf' and 'bat' and 'snake' and 'spider', and others, the deity spare whosoever spoke the words aloud, appellations that might only be sounded in the mouth of madness. Such names should be unspoken and forgotten.

The chill wind whispered in the forest below Jonathan's tower chamber, and as it shivered through the interlaced and vaulted heights of bough and branch, rankled in the depths of decomposed foliage, it sought for one such abomination; its breath a withering malediction groaned into the malodorous air. This night, like endless nights gone before, the wind was agitated among the ancient trunks, wailing in this dusky and hushed sylvan theatre, morose in its tireless wanderings. It sighed about these scaly, wooded towers and it sang a strange song, a mournful threnody, like something living, but something that lived in sorrow, longing in its melancholy. It winnowed free loose bark and dry sprigs, seeking in and under and through, leaving nothing untouched in its quest. Its voice called insistently, darkly and demanding to something only it knew could answer, but no answer was returned.

Jonathan sensed the wind and its impatience. The sylvan world shivered as the wind resolved to leave the wood and to continue someplace other, someplace higher, to scale the steep slope of the mountain with a longing that it should ever onward and ever upward to where the air grew thinner and the earth reached for the sky. Along its path there were ancient caves that gaped like open mouths in its ascent. The wind sang its sorrow through these cold, deep hollows in the rock, sounding an aria as it blew through wondrous pipes. The strange music it orchestrated rose into the ether, syncopated with the howl of the wolf and the rustle of nocturnal wings. As spin-drift it reached for the moon and spun a dozen revolutions about the mountain peaks before it blew at length upon a structure not created by wild nature. It whirled about smooth, tall pylons and rippled through the sculptured plumage of stone eagles, it reeled along a bridge of splintered timber and tightly packed stone and it paused ever so briefly upon the lip of a descent into an ultimate and irrevocable darkness. Stillness held the world in thrall then, a stillness that froze all life rigid. Even the ever-shifting entities in the forest became frozen and fearful and held to the darknesses and would not be espied. Before stillness itself shivered the wind to a halt, it gusted, blowing through Jonathan's chamber window and rifling the leaves of his diary. On the page was written one word- Nosferatu.

What the wind had sought was here, high up on the mountaintop. It rested thirty metres below Harker's room, in the gibbous cradle of the castle's bowels, cleverly concealed from any prying eye, even those that could see in the dark. It had slept the daylight hours away for six centuries, or longer perhaps, rigid in its mythic slumbers. The tribulations of Cronus meant little to this creature, for it was the spawn of shadows, and in the shadows, it was untouchable. Here, high up on the mountain, no human dared to venture or dared challenge it, and nothing ever had. The wind having come upon this bower mournfully kissed the smooth carved stone that covered it, caressed the rock with a lover's stroke, and it sighed as it lingered, both elated and yet cheerless that it had at last found that for which it had searched. Time to awaken, the wind softly goaded, but the creature's face, though hidden beneath a veil of shadows, remained an unmoving and unresponsive mask of ivory and agate. There were no perceptive ripples in its skin, no undulations that creased and twitched cheek or brow, and there was no indication that a restless living force was indeed animate in its countenance at all.

Only the shades were ceaseless, passing over the impression of a firm jaw line and tightly shut eyes, of hard and cruel and red lips on the brink of opening unto a snarl or a scream. This mask was crowned with jet locks blacker than the mouth of midnight. Its form was bound in crêpe. Though all this was only an impression of form and that form was not tenuous, not quite real. Thus, empty and rejected, did the wind retreat. In the foul chamber where the thing slumbered, fleshless things could be glimpsed, the length of what had once been a thigh, the yellowed, curved remnants of a ribcage and scapula, the grinning teeth and empty eye sockets of skulls, and the long-tapered slivers of pointing, accusing fingers. These ghastly remnants were the creature's only companions during the hours between dawn and dusk, throughout the long and cyclic seasons of lost centuries. These were the remains of dead people. Shadows drifted over the discarded bones and coloured the whole chamber slate. The atmospheres were stale and the air stank like the grotto of a wolf's mouth.

On this spot unconsecrated, now covered by the impenetrable stones of this dungeon, the creature had once died and merged with the Dragon. Under a similar moon it had been reborn after dark, birthed in a suite of shadows redolent with the stench of the grave. It had not been a birth as humans conceive birth; for in the darkness its new 'life' had come into being like a thought is conjured, somehow existing but intangible, a black spark in absolute pitch. The Dragon had created something new, and emerging in an instant from a sombre womb and as elusive as the night is black this creature cleaved unto the dark during the daylight hours, still as a stone, unmoving, like a corpse frozen in rigor. The Dragon, in its gift of new life had also given this thing new laws by which to abide. Those doctrines proclaimed that it would be other, and that it must forever be in fear of the spiritual. It was gifted no soul, and it could never receive the peace of true death. One 'life' lived in mockery of life, and no soul granted, and so the creature must henceforth harbour a vile hatred for all things Almighty. Belief was a weapon that kept it at bay, a magic that proclaimed that it could not walk by daylight with humans, nor share their joys and their loves, nor look upon their holy symbols. Belief proclaimed that it could never see the sun, that the fire of the star would reduce its un-living flesh to cinders. In shadows, it inhabited only the crypt and the mausoleum, and it could not go where humankind could so freely go during the daylight, and it knew resentment. It did not wake to warming sunlight and it did not sleep in a soft bed of flowers, instead it lay still as stone in a corrupted bed of disease infested loam, mimicking the dead, wrapped beneath a grey and cereous shroud that covered its form. Waking unto light was not to be its charted destiny, and its torpor in a bower of shadows kept it secret in the cradle of un-being. At midnight, its mouth was kissed by the lips of the rat.

It was almost midnight now, and, in the grip of the dream, if Harker had been able to check his pocket watch he might have realised time's plight, for the tiny hands, like the revolutions of the planet, were moving counter clockwise between the light and the dark. The creature was restless and hungry, and it craved for places where the land and the people and the titanic bowl of the great world flooded together in a fountain of gore from which it could slack an unnameable thirst for blood. For although it was sovereign over all dead things, the elusive and emotive power of love as opposed to carnal gratification was a desire over which it had no command whatsoever. Seething under its violence was a desperate desire to love, yet not one living being could ever offer that fidelity.

As the wind departed the moonlight shone through Harker's window, casting a weak light upon the neatly written symbols in his diary. He remembered having finished a sentence upon one most awful word. It was a word that described horrors beyond anything he could ever possibly know. It was a name that recalled the abominations of King Pest, and it proclaimed the identity of the Ruler over Ravens, the Prince of Darkness. That name was an appellation that conjured to the mind, to bad dreams, to the nightmare, all that belonged to the shadows, all that was the Dragon and all that was withered. For the letters that spelled out this terrible identity were a livid and black scar on the virgin white of the page. The name, granted to one christened in blood- the Nosferatu was DRACULA.

From its bower it arose, a gigantic thing darker than the night as it flowed like liquid from the shadows and crawled obscenely along the drawbridge. Therein the silver moonlight Jonathan dreamed its passing boiled the icy waters of the moat, churned them charcoal and vermillion. Such a revelation as Harker might never have known, something not composed of the workings of what Christians credited to their God stalked into the night. Unseen, the black thing passed between the towering pylons upon which were perched the sculptured birds of prey, slithering through their talons, leaking between their beaks. The Devil clothed in shadow-skin passed as black vapour in the wind, weaving beneath those stone wings with cloak outspread and turbulent. This thing had no purity about its form as had Jonathan's mentor, Van Helsing; it had no deific link with Heaven, and it was a conjuration born of the minions of the damned. Even as it passed into the night, Jonathan shivered with a ripple of true evil, a frisson that he should not have ignored. He might have had a precognition of something that was not flesh and blood as man is flesh and blood, something upon the cusp of destroying not only himself but all and everyone he loved. Such evil was the adversary of mankind, the baleful dead. The thing blended with the night and became a twisted and unrecognisable part of the darkness.

It was dusk in the port town of Lübeck, and the sun was falling to its death over the line between the sea and the sky. The faint lamp of one solitary red-tinged star was fading into the dimming panoply. Jonathan had climbed to a cliff-top that overlooked the town, and he could see the schooners with wide white sails in the Elbe canal, and beyond them the bay and the sky-dyed ocean. Closer to shore, the waves were flying angrily against jagged slate teeth, throwing salty spume up as high as thirty metres. Every now and then he could feel little droplets of water speckling his lips and cheeks, the taste of salt upon his tongue. From over the boiling waters a wind blew and sang a Lorelei's song in his ear, played a choir of oft-changing pitches that filled him with a weird expectation. From his point of elevation Jonathan could also glimpse the dual spires of the Gothic Cathedral of St. Mary, and beyond that were lined up row upon row of crow-stepped gable houses. There were no people in the streets.

The strident voice of the wind swirled about him, rising quickly from lullaby to melody and then into the shrill and clamorous dissonance of booming thunder. How quickly a storm had risen. Silver fingers of lightning stabbed out of the sky and the upper atmospheres of the sky dome were abruptly deepening to mauve. There was no moon and only the that one star which was soon engulfed, as if Hope had been obliterated. Soon there was only the darkness, and something came from that darkness, the shape of a shadow, someone without a face. Between the shifting dusks, Jonathan assumed that the shadow was his beloved Lucy, for it could be no other. She was so close to his body that he thought his nostrils piqued by her female scent, and his senses began reeling, but in a most strange and agonising way. It was as if he longed for her touch and yet was repelled at the same time. Despite this inner confusion he could feel her radiance, feel the galvanic electricity of her life force. If he reached out he thought that he might almost touch her, almost run his fingers through the cascade of her red hair.

Lucy's figure floated within the shadows and refused to reveal its true form, composed of moonlight and ribbons of mist, gowned in a veil of white against the purple sky, and Jonathan swore that he could make out her fleshy silhouette through her gown. There was a glimpse of things mysterious, of the budded nipple and the triangle of her sex. How he told himself that he wanted to hold her. Try as he might to convince his heart that her lithe and lovely body was his desire, he faltered. For in the dream he understood the awful truth that this was a falsehood, that something was not right. Was it he who had changed, somehow awoke from a long and disturbing dream, or was it Lucy? Though her face remained ambiguous, this figure that he saw, she was not in soul like the Lucy he believed he supposedly cherished and hoped to make his wife. Yet, what was it about her that had changed? What had smeared black that which he had convinced himself was white? In the dream he reprimanded himself, for part of him knew it wrong to think of Lucy as a possession.

He did not own her, and his paradoxical lust was a deception that he had tried so desperately to deny. So desperate indeed that it had turned now into some hideous and dark fantasy. Those lusts were not for her, but regardless they had inched their way out of the coil of his skin and they wanted liberation from the fugue state that posited him as bond-slave between the evil of this world and the dark glory of the next. What was his ideal of Lucy? That she should be dutiful and respectful, obedient and therefore ultimately lifeless? She could never be that, and if she were then could he really love her when he was in love with another?
Jonathan, couched in his chair, stirred in his troubled slumber and twitched slightly, and groaned. That was not what he wanted for love. No, Lucy should not wilt under his hand, become as a spectral and lifeless thing, something robbed of its agency, robbed of its life and its passion. The real and raw emotion of his troubled faith had driven his heart into an imbroglio of piteous sufferance. Stretching out his arms he grasped for the phantom in his dream, tried to hold her, but Lucy only laughed, a strange ghostly echo of a laugh, and turning from the cliff edge she leapt away from him. As the shadows ran before her, Jonathan ran after, but she refused to be caught. Nonetheless, he had to catch her up, embrace her, and tell her that all he really needed was that she love him, for the sake of the world, and that he would care for her and that they could be happy. He would drown all other desires, kill them, never admit them, lock his truth away in a black room and never visit it, ever! Yet the guilty spur of lust that Dracula and his concubine had hooked into his heart spelled the vile truth. Such a truth could not be dislodged.

The strange woman in Dracula's castle, beautiful as she was, meant nothing to him. Thinking, dreaming of Dracula's flesh entwined in his own was an abomination, a sorcery conjured from the wellspring of darkness, but neither was it Harker's true desire. Here, in Castle Dracula, it would be so easy to give in, to become a slave to one's loins, ensnared in lust, upon the point of screaming an agony before some dreadful fatality claimed you. Jonathan was riven with guilt. How could he ever explain that his heart was fired by the cool and calculating intellect of his Doctor friend, scoured with passion for the chaste and celibate Van Helsing? Jonathan knew that he could never tell and that he must participate in a charade no less similar to the one played out in the Holmwood's happy household. Mina Holmwood was indeed beautiful, but Lucy's brother Arthur was as cold as a fish. That Arthur had never really liked Jonathan did not actually bother the young man, for the truth was in Arthur's attitude. Harker was bound to learning, bound to books and a veritable hermit, and in Van Helsing he had found someone just like him, who understood... Understood what? Jonathan was fooling himself, for no one could ever understand. As for Holmwood, he doubted that Jonathan had the means to even earn a decent living to support Lucy. Yet still, for Jonathan, Arthur was blind, for the Holmwood's vows were nothing short of a myth that concealed the true nature of their 'happiness'. Was everyone bound by the chains of unhappiness? Harker knew inadmissibility wherever he looked, so what made Arthur so weak that he did not see the potent life force that Mina possessed, and what made Van Helsing so oblivious that Jonathan worshipped the ground upon which he walked?
Higher up the hill Lucy chased the shadows, and Jonathan chased Lucy, and the wind chased the clouds about the sky. Doom chased everyone and everything. Doom bit and chewed at his entrails. The darkness splashed over Lucy's face, the lightning illuminated his. Before them both loomed a great ruin, an old abbey at the periphery of the world. Languorously, stone by stone the decaying edifice was now crumbling, falling, following a descent into the abyss, its splintered blocks rolling in slow motion like huge marbles over the cliff and into the sea. He could hear them booming as they smashed apart on the rocks below and the roar of the fragments as they were scattered into the foaming waters. His own perfidy was as thick and as heavy as those rocks. A waxen light was shining in one of the last windows of the ruin, a window partially intact with coloured glass, crimson and indigo remnants of broken stained crystal. The lightning streaked brighter and its luminance shivered in a spectrum glass of dancing, fiery streaks. Looking up to the sky Lucy groaned, pointing to the heavens, and her lips glowed with lustre in the galvanic fulgence.
'Look,' she exclaimed, though the sound of Lucy's voice was haunted. 'God's seat!'
There were indeed mountains in the clouds, snow-tipped peaks about which curled a sleeping dragon. Beneath the dragon's folded wings was a ruin, and amid the crumbling tumuli Jonathan made a lunge for Lucy but she easily evaded him. Following as best he could, his feet were soon upon a rutted path, and the path ran up along a mountain divide and into a forest of stakes that were three times as tall as a man. The staves, hewn saplings that were lathed smooth and chiselled to narrow, sharp points were embedded into the earth. All the stakes dripped blood. Beyond the forest of pikes was a drawbridge, guarded by stone eagles, and beneath these birds of prey and between rusted spear-tipped gates, the ghostly wraith that was Lucy passed. She danced nimbly, stepping in and out of the shadows, stepping between the dragon's teeth, disappearing within the crumbling edifice. The night and the shadows fell upon a floor of cracked stones.
They stood in the remnants of a room with night for walls and whorls of grey mist for its roof. Beneath their feet was a vast chequer board cut from massive granite flagstones. Lucy kept ahead of Jonathan but stayed just close enough to lead him a maddening dance. She moved and then he moved, neither came nearer to touching the other, both were always one square out of reach. Jonathan was caught in a surreal game of draughts, and he wanted to hold Lucy, for only by doing that could he reassure himself of his love. The Count and his lure, Van Helsing too, would be forsaken, and Jonathan could pull both himself and his Lucy back from the bleak and terrible shadows of the night. He would forget other loves by exorcising them into oblivion. If only he and Lucy could stand together on one white square, only then perhaps the dirt that had spattered his spiritual being might be cleansed away. He had tasted a putrid slice of temptation in his heart, a sample that he told himself he had no wish to taste again, even if it meant giving up his true love, Van Helsing. Jonathan shivered because he knew that lust's unrest would forever ferment in his veins no matter how much he denied the fact, and the vague and shadowy Lucy seemed to perceive his mind and she giggled. The sound of her laughter was like chimes rung in glass and it was discordant, it blended with the faint echo of the bells at St. Mary's in the town in the valley below. Her voice didn't sound at all like the woman he loved. Beckoning with a slender hand, Lucy led the chase from square to square, flitting behind columns and hiding in alcoves. From the blackness, she extended her ivory white arms, tentacles they were, undulating and writhing as if with a lyrical serpentine life and bid him come closer. Soon he would be entangled in them, smothered, consumed- dying a slow death.

The earth shuddered as a titan rock crashed into the sea, the stained window trembled and the sky vault opened as if it were a great tome, spilling forth torn pages awash with scarlet stain. Then came the people, legions of them come to life from the pages raining from the night. These phantoms moved from the light into the shadows, woodcuts rent from parchment, and yet they lived and breathed, no longer prisoners in the ethereal paper upon which they had been printed.
'See me,' cried one phantom, 'and know my pain!'
'Look upon me,' cried another, 'and know what it is to be damned!'
'I am already damned,' Harker whispered, and the phantoms laughed mockingly, as if they knew of his doomed love. Jonathan's head was filled with confusion, for he did not understand. The dead pressed close, leaving the shimmering impress of ghostly feet on the cold chequered flooring. There a clod of earth, there a vermilion smear, and they whispered to Jonathan that he should not stay lest he be damned like them, beyond eternity. They whispered and they cried aloud, each of how their bodies had been beaten and broken to build this place and how their blood had flowed into the mouth of the Dragon. When they were exhausted and unable to go on, the Dragon had them seized.

'Lord,' bemoaned a ghost, 'I was unable to bring myself to do what you ordered me to do.'
That the miscreant could not slice open his wife's belly and eat of the flesh of the baby therein, had spelled his doom. The Dragon immediately had the man impaled upon a stake. He was thrown to the ground and a tapered skewer pushed slowly into his anus, up behind his bowel, deflected off his sternum and out trough his mouth, after which the stake was raised aloft, rivulets of gore stickily into the mud.
'In agony I lived for two days, my body slowly sliding down that needle-pointed stave of pine!'
Jonathan groaned at the tale, and felt as if he would vomit. Men, women and children, all and without discrimination, were transfixed upon the hill near the chapel, and under their writhing, contorting and rotting bodies the Dragon feasted, ate meats while maggots rained about its head. Amid the putrescence The Dragon once asked of a visiting nobleman: 'Do you not mind the stink?'
'Yes,' replied he, and he too was thrown onto the ground and stripped and a sliver of oiled poplar slowly thrust into his body. In the thrust, cunningly shoved into his entrails, there was precipitated a shrieking torrent of blood that poured into the Dragon's cup. A ruby meade that the Dragon swallowed.
Children were impaled through the head, women had their breasts cut off and were forced to eat their own severed flesh, men's eyes were burned out, noses cut, ears sliced, legs and arms severed, genitals mutilated by fire, babies buried alive... The dead sorrowed not that the Dragon now slept in the earth, but they feared it had awoken and taken on an undead but human likeness. The darkest force of life had changed form, now as the returning dead, thirsty for more blood. When it walked at night as man it would again be insatiable. Jonathan could make no sense of this babble but in his core, he knew the words were a warning. Their voices were a thousand that became melded into one, a muffled raucity that cried- 'Run, run! Flee quickly while you can!' They waved with their hands for him to go, to go now and never return.

Amid the groans and the cries and the sick repulsion and disgust, beyond the gore-dripping forest of the shuddering dead transfixed upon pointed staves, the dreaming Harker teetered, his boot squelching into a puddle of blood. He felt horribly giddy and the voices were pleading with him but it did no good, something stronger than their entreaties bound him to this place and would not let him go. He knew the right thing would be to take Lucy and be gone, to escape from the nightmare. How might Lucy be saved, no matter how noble his intent, if he could not save himself? The dead clamoured all about him in a whirling dance, he felt their chill hands reach out and stroke over his body, upon his thighs, upon his member, and the cold exhalation of every phantom breath.
'Nosferatu!' He heard them shout, an echo of the gypsy woman's warning. 'Not dead…not dead…not dead!'
In the grip of a madness, Harker was encircled. He felt faint and he felt sick.
'The Dragon lives and yet lives not...' they moaned, their voices like a howling in the wind.
Under ruined arches, in the crumbling monastery, Harker saw the earth peel back as if it were a citrus rind, and accept the dead remains of the Dragon. A great rock sealed the mouth of the grave, just as a rock had sealed the tomb of Jesus.
'The grave in Snagov is empty!'
He knew not where Snagov might be or what had been buried there, and struggling free of their revenant clutch, going limp and almost blinded, Jonathan fell, skidding in a pool of gore. There he floated and the blood rose around him like water in a bath. Immersed he was as one paralysed, watching but unable to move as the spectral things slithered into the blood, one after another beside him, dissolving, disgorging putrescence till it welled up and began to fill his open mouth. One gagging spasm of vomiting was all it took and the ghouls dissipated. He saw them through a red-tinged view as they returned to their leaves of yellow parchment, dripping blood as they were pinioned again on their pikes, thrust back up into the air. Blood spilled from Jonathan's open mouth, and then he heard Dracula's voice: 'To act as my librarian…'
The echo sounded over, words that were laced with pulchritude and horror. Yes, an act, that's all it was, and Dracula was no fool. Would Harker be called upon to index mouldering tomes or to record unspeakable carnalities? Abruptly there were books scattered everywhere. Harker wiped the empyreumatic smear of gore from his lips with the back of his hand and stood up. From somewhere far away a vulpine creature sang to a moon that had not yet risen, the sound carried upon a restless, searching wind. He skidded on the floor, attempting to gather in armfuls of the books. Each history there written became stacks growing higher, and higher.
'There are a large number of volumes to be indexed…index…ind…'
A lexicon closed in ochre pages and leather bindings, linguistics all splashed with blood. Was that the price that one must pay here, to become something damned, imprisoned in an inventory of dead history? He caught one last glimpse of Lucy as she stepped nimbly around the volumes and quickly from a black square into one of light, and then his dreams were pierced by what could only have been a scream, and the scream escaped from the lips of his intended. The shriek cracked like a rifle shot into the aural spaces of the real world. Jonathan awoke with a start as if a titan hand had punched him in the heart.
It was difficult to know if he had really heard anything at all, everything hereabouts, in this château, was so frightfully silent, it was abnormal. Perhaps it was the cry of a hare being taken by an owl; Jonathan knew that out there the forest of the night was strange and savage and might not be so different a realm than in what existed within these castellated walls. Out there surely must be many sounds that he'd never hear again in all his life, strident cries and tuneless cacophonies vacillating in the restless airs; yet how could he be sure when he remembered with a chill that upon arriving no birds were singing? Yet had he really heard anything at all, had he not, after all, been dreaming?
Thankful that he had awoken, Harker rubbed his eyes and stretched his body. His muscles complained about the time they had spent cramped upright in the chair; he massaged the back of his neck. He had not intended to fall asleep and he couldn't remember doing so, but fatigue had claimed him and ushered him into those terrible slumbers. From his waistcoat he took out his watch and he was confused, for it had ceased to tick; he had let it wind down. No doubt the hour had passed midnight. It was then that he heard the faint click of the lock turning in the door. Instantly he leapt towards the door, but by the time he reached it and put out a tentative hand, hesitating, wondering why the door should now be unlocked, only silence existed in the corridor without. His fingers closed about the curved handle and he pressed downward, pulling the door open abruptly. To his relief nothing greeted him.
Cautiously he stepped over the threshold and quickly glanced up and down along the length and breadth of the gallery. It was difficult to see anything in the faint half-light for most of the candles along the way had burned down in tallow streamers to the ends of their wicks. He stole along the landing where grim faces on canvas followed his every step with stern, disapproving eyes; his blind shadow clutched tightly to his body as if it were afraid to venture one step further. In the dark at the top of the gallery the young man paused and put his hand into his pocket. He could feel the hard crossbeams of the little silver and jet crucifix Lucy had given him 'For my sake… for my sake… my sake...' It was odd that the cross felt strange between Jonathan's fingers, giving out a galvanic charge that cut through to his heart, and his heart began to beat just that little bit faster. Jonathan clasped the tiny trinket, wrought from polished silver pinned with tiny nails to delicately worked jet. It felt hard and yet somehow soft, iron and crushed velvet; he let the filigree spill between his fingers. Jesus, in his agony, was steeped in a surprisingly abstract, yet erotic perdition. Jonathan shuddered and he sensed an odd tingle in his grip, as if a tiny, hair-thin fissure had passed up the long bar of the cross. Perhaps such an object did not belong in a place like this. He let go of the cross as if it had burned his palm and dropped it back into his pocket, retracted his hand. Fear and loathing and desire were confusing his rationale and stripping his brain of their defences.

Looking down from the gallery his vision fell upon a long finger of light retracting, lessening into a sliver, shrinking into a crack of illumination as a door below was slowly closed. For a moment Jonathan waited, straining his eyes to penetrate the darkness, but a growing curiosity propelled him forward. Was that a muted rustling sound that his ear had faintly captured, a dull whisper in darkness somewhere between a sigh and a summons? He took a deep breath and forced his legs forward, moving toward the sound, stealthily descending from the heights of forever. At the bottom of the black well Harker scanned the shadows. Nothing stirred in the shades and no flicker of light gleamed. Silence reigned. Quietly he crept up to the door and gently tested the handle, it gave without resistance and Jonathan stepped into the room. This then was the library, a wide expanse, from floor to ceiling, of row upon row crammed with volumes in vellum, their gilt spines lit by a burning fire in the grate. Near the inglenook was a low narrow stool where one could sit before the fire, warming oneself as one read. At first glance, the far wall appeared unbroken, a continuous succession of ancient tomes and rolled scrolls, but it was bisected in the middle by the gaping mouth of an ornate and carved nave in which hung the portal of a heavy oaken door. Underfoot the flagstones were black and white patterned marble, uncannily like the ones in the throne room, like those in the ruin in his dream. The centre design here was not a star but of astrological symbols that Harker recognised as the signs of the Zodiac. The Sun, the Moon and the Planets, the four triplicities of the elements and the division of the diurnal from the nocturnal were all intricately marked in painted gold and black in the centre of the room. Flawlessly the design was rendered in a great circle. Light and shadow opposed the workings of time, presaging the mythological forces of good against evil. A large and rotating terrestrial globe stood closer to the door, its cartography the countries of an antiquated world, decorated with peculiar fauna and flora, ships and sea creatures like the dragons in the crest. The earth was tinted in faded brown, the ocean in aqua and cobalt. The map was raised within a half meridian on a tripod of bronze in the ancient Roman style, with lion monopodium legs and winged griffins.

A long, sturdy refectory table carved from oak pointed toward a window where a bank of red velvet drapes were drawn over the night. Books were piled up on the table too, some were bound together in stacks with twine; others lay singly scattered over the tabletop. Some were open. Candlesticks burned at either end of the table and the air was thick with that peculiar, seraphic odour of Heliotrope and decomposition that Harker had smelled upon his dusky arrival. The young man could see no one in the room and the only sound was the faint crackle of the leaping flames flickering in the fireplace. A crest of Dragons was etched above this hearth too. For a moment, Jonathan stood still with his back to the door through which he had entered, bemused by the thought that the key to the library lay upstairs on the desk in his room. Why had Dracula given it to him if the room was unlocked? Even as he thought this the door through which he had passed closed with a faint click and Jonathan spun around. The lovely creature that had intruded upon his repast and had vanished when the Count had appeared now stood in front of the door. She blocked the way with her lithe body, preventing Harker from exiting. For Jonathan, there could be no retreat. The two faced each other, still as statues and mute in deadlock. A moment elapsed and time was frozen into rigor, and all Harker could do was look at her, look upon her loveliness. Abruptly she ran to him, throwing a frightened glance over her shoulder as she did so.
'Mr. Harker, you will help me?'
She smelt of that overpowering and cloyingly sulphuous perfume that he had smelled wafting in the air, and although Jonathan appeared composed she shook his nerve. Her sinuous and curvaceous figure again filled his eyes, the pink of her skin showing through her robe, the black cascade of her hair a flying tempest of storm cloud. Jonathan could once again hear the resonance of his heart beginning to pound in his ears and he knew he was unwillingly succumbing, that his desires were being manipulated. He must resist, he told himself, but her allure was so compelling.
'If it is at all possible,' he told her, keeping his voice low for her sake, and for his own, should Dracula be nearby and hear them, who knew what violence might transpire? He meant to help her if he could though he had no idea of the consequences to such an action. 'Tell me, why is Count Dracula keeping you prisoner?'
The woman looked at him anxiously.
'I... I cannot tell you that.' She dropped her gaze to the floor and nervously half-turned away.
'Then how can I help you?'
'You're not...' The beautiful woman paused. 'You're not one of...' She looked at him with a curious and wary stare.
'One of what?' Jonathan asked, confused.
'No, you couldn't be,' she continued enigmatically. 'You're strong and warm...'
'If I'm to help you,' he insisted, 'I must know.' Jonathan doubted that the strange woman would divulge her secret no matter how hard he pressed, and he was confused by her enigma.
'Why? What difference can it make? I'm sorry.' Apologising, she threw another furtive glance over her smooth white shoulder in the direction of the great oak door. Her cloudy green eyes were filled with fear and it was as if she expected it to spring open at any given moment. 'It's not possible.'
Jonathan had begun to again feel uneasy, there was something in her dialogue and her demeanour that hinted at twilight and unspoken fears; he was at a loss to understand but he could not deny her an audience, nor could he stem the rising tide of his fear. If he was to help her he would need more information, but even if he managed to whisk her off to safety what was to happen then? To where would they go? The longer he lingered the more deeply he became ensnared.
'You make it difficult for me,' he said frankly, his words edged with a hint of frustration. Despite this fact he found it almost impossible to be blunt. An overpowering sensation was making his body and his mind dissolve. It was all too unreal. The woman's closeness was affecting him, but it was as if he were enwrapped within a veil of mist and could not disentangle his limbs.
'Lucy will never be your wife,' said the whisper, Jonathan knew that those words were truth. Although Lucy's body was exquisite and soft and glorious, hers was not the flesh for which he longed. He tried to resist the calling, telling himself that it was wrong to feel this way, yet even looking away from this strange woman's glorious face almost proved impossible, and there was no longer any control over his thoughts, no denying her beauty, no denying neither her flesh and her body. If he didn't get a grip on his fortitude now he'd be lost, intuition warned him of this certainty and still he felt himself falling. Yet how could he relinquish what she offered, resist those lips, for they were glistening and red, the ripe colour of pomegranate seeds, like fruit waiting to be tasted. Rotten fruit!
Part of him inexplicably wanted to hold her and to kiss her, and part of him struggled violently within to repel. This up-rush of contrary emotion confused his head and knew that he mustn't give in, for Lucy's sake, for Van Helsing's sake, despite the temptation. No, he must not think such things. This place had a dreadful effect on one's mind, it had abruptly brought to the fore all that was base and voluptuary, it threw blinding dust in your eyes and scalded your skin with the white-hot brand of lost self-control. Dark powers were indeed at work here, dangerous libidinous and forbidden powers that were unbridled, released in tumbling waves whenever this woman or the Count were close. How could Harker deny this now? Within the walls of this castle roiled an all-consuming, sensuous evil. It was almost disgusting and so difficult to resist. Valiantly Jonathan struggled to regain his senses. Looking into the woman's eyes Harker said as calmly as he could:
'After all, I'm a guest here. If I'm to help you, I must have a reason.'
'A reason!' The woman ejaculated with incredulity, and there was hatred in her voice, a loathing as hard as steel. He knew the hatred was not intended for him. 'You ask for a reason! Is it not reason enough that he keeps me locked up in this house, holds me against my will?'
The young man felt helplessly inept and completely confused. The voluptuary stepped away from Harker, and stood by the etiolated sphere of the world. Angrily she spun the earth. 'You can have no idea of what an evil man he is or what terrible things he does. I live with fear all of the time.' Jonathan could only speculate on the mysterious and heinous deeds to which she hinted. Spinning, the globe of the world slowed its revolution, and now her anger was turning to remorse, and she looked as if she were upon the brink of tears. It made her seem somehow vulnerable. Perhaps there would be no harm in comforting her. Harker wished to reassure her despite his apprehensions, despite the caress and manipulations of collusion, though he had no idea who she was or what it was he could do to help. He wanted to tell her that everything might be all right, that she stressed for little reason, but such small comforts would only prove ineffectual, he knew as much. Some isolated spot of purity in his soul battled in his core. He stopped himself from reaching forward and clenched his hands into fists, his body quaking. She watched and half-smiled and moved away from him, circling the world, placing her hand upon the map of some distant and unknown land. That was the land of the ruined heart, the land beyond the forest. Perhaps her thoughts really were to flee, to go to a faraway country where she might never be discovered, if only she could convince the new librarian to help. Her fingers moved to the pole of the north, a frozen and isolated region, a prophecy that no matter what, Jonathan's assistance would account to nothing against her gaoler, Count Dracula.
'I could not, dare not try to leave on my own,' she said piteously and Harker could only read what he understood as torture in her eyes. 'I know, no matter where I hide, that he would find me, and he would bring me back here, to this place!' A flicker of terror blanched the beauty of her face. Through the flimsy material of her gown Jonathan's eyes could see the roundness of her breasts, how her bosom rose and fell with every breath, and he saw too as he glanced lower the triangle of her pubis, a shadowy crown of black spun silk. She glanced up into his face and saw his staring eyes, bending slightly forward as she did so, her movement languid, calculated. He could see quite clearly then the carmine shade of her nipples and he did not look away. Instead his throat ran dry. A storm of contradictory emotion swept upon him and he heard her whisper that all he needed to do now was to put his parched lips to those breasts and kiss them, taste them...lick them!
'Yet, with you to help me,' she insisted, moving a step closer, 'I would have a chance. There is nothing I can do against him, but you are strong, you can fight him. Oh, you must help me!'
The beautiful woman moved swiftly then, ran to Harker and grasping at his coat lapels she looked desperately into his eyes. 'You must!' She implored, shaking and trembling, her voice verging on the edge of hysteria. Harker felt her chill closeness. It was not normal, no one was that cold. He forced his body to become as stiff as a statue but he was still unable to push her away. She shook the young man as if to bring his resolute immobility to life. 'You don't know what he will do to me if I can't get away. You're the only one who can do anything. You're my only hope. You've got to help me. You must, you must!' He didn't even realise he was saying it, but before he could catch himself the pledge had slipped from his tongue.
'I will help you, I promise.'
As the vow passed from Jonathan's lips she laid her head upon his shoulder, and she licked her red lips, passing a hand over her right bosom. Pressing her body close to his she moved against him, an exquisite and slow gyration that made his blood quicken and his breath catch in his throat. He had never been this close to female flesh before, not so close that his every muscle and sinew might turn to water. It threw his whole being out of kilter, this woman touching him as he'd never been touched before, ardent and compelling. It was repulsive and yet urgent, a biological necessity that could not be overcome, and yet still it revolted him. Once again came the awakening of shame and guilt. Yet the stimulation was compelling and exciting, and he was spellbound by her perfume as it filled his senses with the headiness of incense, made his head reel. Jonathan told his arms to thrust her off but they would not obey, her fervent insistence kept him rigid, kept him trapped, kept him hanging. Her thigh pressed hard against his, and in its silken pressure was an invitation to an agony of iniquitous longing; it remade her cold flesh, her marble skinned being into a thing of accursed loveliness against which there was no defence.
'Please don't distress yourself,' he managed to utter hoarsely, his words burned to a whisper by the rising inferno within his soul.
'Thank you,' she whispered lowly, knowingly. 'You'll never regret this, never. What you have promised I will remember until my dying day,' she vowed. 'Thank you.'
There was a moment when there was no sound inside the library; a pall hung over its entire breadth and width. The planet seemed to have stopped its rotation around the star, the air seemed choked. The fire in the grate ceased to crackle and spit, its Vulcan tongues stilled, and no breath of air stirred in the rafters. All was as quiet as the grave. The woman rested her raven head upon Jonathan's shoulder and began to peel away the strap of her gown, slowly exposing her breast. She stroked it lightly and the nipple contracted, then she took his hand and began to guide it over her cool, ivory skin. Lost he could not push her away; it was like she had some indescribable power over his mind, and her flesh filled his consciousness despite its unnatural chill making a parody of his contrary sensibilities. He had never been with a woman before, never lay with another body under his, his body new and misogynous. Jonathan didn't care anymore, what he wanted now was to taste her lips, even if they were verboten. He wanted his own lips, his tongue to sample the passionate, his hands to grasp the wondrous and the vulgar. As she pressed against him, Jonathan felt a thrill, and imagined his mouth leaving her lips and tasting her bosoms, yearning to satisfy her unspoken suggestion that he lap like an animal at the font of her body. Jonathan did not know himself anymore. Lucy need never know, Van Helsing need never know, Arthur and Mina Holmwood should continue in ignorance- it would be his one dark secret, something he could lock up in the black vault of memory. As if the woman had read his thoughts she responded with an eager, tumultuous lascivious shudder.

How she writhed with an almost aggressive sexual desire, sinuous, as if possessed of a devil, rubbing against him. Jonathan closed his eyes, his heart quickening as a drum beats, his sex involuntarily hardening. He did not know himself, for this was not the desire of his heart. Praying that he should not release himself yet, no, not now, not while lust held him in its flame, Jonathan was consumed of the thought that he wanted to put his sex inside of her fervid body before the pinnacle of his desire was reached. Even as he thought this wickedness he did not see her eyes as they changed, but each iris had narrowed and their colour had deepened, two brilliants that flared from opaque green to a harsh emerald. The pupils had become cat-like slits and then the whole of those terrible flaming eyes rolled back into their sockets, turning white. A crippling paralysis had gripped Jonathan's body, his manhood insistent against her thigh, her movements against him calculated, but he could do nothing about it and neither did he wish the moment to cease. Her eyes rolled back and blinked and the green fire about the blackest pupils flamed with incendiary sparks, and her vision was intent upon the vein throbbing in Harker's throat. She could see it pulsing vividly and smell the red tide of blood surging just under the skin. She clung to Jonathan and her grip was one of steel and she opened her scarlet mouth to reveal two long and pointed teeth at the corners of her lips. Violently she sank those teeth into that throbbing vein.

Deep went the bite, deep with the burning pain of scathing nettles, fixing him as a hook snares a fish. It was a moment of rapture and of all consuming pain. In horror Jonathan felt his sex throbbing hard as he tried to pull away. The physical pleasure and the terrible pain were twin sensations, giving the woman that one moment longer so that her fangs might hold his throat in a torment of crimson suffering. Together they merged, two-as-one dancing a ghastly waltz across the space of five steps, her mouth sucking at the blood pumping from his wound, her clutch as tenacious as steel. If he could have found his voice Harker would have screamed, but his throat was seized and his benumbed mind aflame. He tried desperately, roughly to grip her jaw and wrench it agape, but the creature clung vehemently and would not let go. A warm rush of blood began to spill from Harker's torn throat and what did not pass between the woman's lips flowed down his neck and blotched his clothing. Clutching frantically at her, uselessly curling his fingers into her ebony locks, he was struggling to be free. Dizziness was beginning to take him; he could feel the burning heat of a vitriolic poison surging through his veins and for Jonathan the world began to reel.

At that moment when Harker was upon the point of collapse, the door bisecting the wall of tomes erupted open with a splintering crash. A numbing blast of icy wind exploded into the chamber and Dracula filled the door, black as a storm, his frame gigantic, his face a grotesque mask of wild fury and savage passion. His eyes were burning coals and his mouth was pulled back in a hideous snarl, giving vent to a wrathful bellow that signalled the release of the venomous teeth embedded in Harker's neck. The woman withdrew her fangs and blood spurted from Harker's rent throat, staining her gown and sprinkling the floor. She snarled, spinning to face the Count and spitting in a fit of thwarted rage. Dracula's face was splashed all over with blood, it ran from his lips and had smeared the Dragon clasp; it coloured his hands a livid scarlet. The demon roared his fury at the sacrilege the woman had committed, that she had dared to take that which belonged to him, and like a great cat he leapt from the alcove and over the width of the table. In the passing of the blink of an eye the Count gripped the woman by her hair and tore her from Harker, her woven midnight locks tumbling free as she fell.

She twisted violently about as Dracula threw her to the floor, contorting in an obscene commingling of woman and serpent, and narrowing her eyes she glared and shrieked. Harker felt the world dropping away from his vision and through darkling eyes he saw the woman scrabbling to her feet, her naked bosom heaving and convulsing, dotted with spots of his blood, her hair a raging black cloud. It was all too much for Jonathan to bear, his head was spinning and a painful scorching fever, beginning at the scars in his throat had begun to map the insides of his body. A howl of rage spewed from the vampire woman's tongue; rage that she had been cheated of her feast of blood, her kill. She glared at the Count and he at her and his fingers became hooked claws, his visage a feral apparition of frenzy as he crossed the room toward her. Crouching like an animal she cursed him and ran the thick worm of her tongue over the clotting scarlet stain that was Harker's blood. With blazing eyes radiating a ghastly and unholy light, she sprang up and once again flung herself at her victim. In the space of a heartbeat the Count had gripped her arm and wrenched her back; she struggled and snapped like a viper, scratching and hissing and throwing her head about in a paroxysm of inflamed madness. Dracula slapped her with the back of his free hand; the resounding crack should have broken a man's neck. Harker put his hand to his bleeding throat and the warm liquid squirted into his palm, ran between his fingers, and the pain was excruciating. He didn't know what to do, his legs were turning to water and he could hardly stand up but he had to intervene. The woman was screaming and writhing and the Count hit her again and again, yet still she raved and tried to throw him off, stretching out a grasping, clutching hand toward Harker, her naked breast dripping with gore. With all the effort, he could muster Jonathan staggered forward and put up a hand as if to signal the horror to stop.

Dracula discarded the woman as if she were a rag doll, tossing her aside so that she collided with the stone mantle, her bones seeming to snap with a terrible and resounding crack. As swift as lightning Dracula's grasp closed about the younger man's bleeding throat. Wild passion blazed in the Count's features making his two infernal eyes appear twice their size, and they were as red and as hot as burning, binary stars. He smelled the sweet aroma of Jonathan's fresh blood and Jonathan smelled the foul stench of the grave. The pressure of Dracula's grip was firm and instant, a vice that squeezed Jonathan's throat and closed off the air to his lungs. For Harker, the great room in which they struggled become a place darker than the blackest reaches of space. The demon licked its already bloody teeth as it beheld the blood oozing through its corpse fingers and a look of sick appetency twisted the vampire's lips into the parody of a freakish animal snarl. Dracula brought his salivating mouth closer and closer to Jonathan's neck. Those ghastly, mucous-dripping, razor-tipped awls grazed the librarian's skin, and Harker heard a voice in the back of his mind telling him that this was the bestial penalty he must pay for his interference, for his giving in to lust, for his not believing; the horror was splashed all over Dracula's terrible features. Dracula's lips quivered like moth's wings against Harker's skin, and then abruptly he began to suck, to drink his librarian's blood.
The pressure of Dracula's lips on Jonathan's throat sent a thrill through the young man's body, and the drawing and sucking and the closeness of the vampire's heaving body made water of Jonathan's limbs. The air was almost completely gone from Harker's lungs and as his mind spun in those final moments before stupor, he felt another sensation as the Count sated himself at the crimson font of warm life. As the humiliating stab of ecstasy flamed and contracted within his body, Harker climaxed in an abrupt ejaculation, and he imagined, quite vividly, that his hot emission spurted liquid fire into Van Helsing's mouth. It was Dracula's ultimate gift of perversity, a pleasure that Harker would never know, and there was a sick triumph in the vampire's obscene victory. Weakly, near the edge of blackness, Harker attempted to grope within his pocket for the tiny crucifix Lucy had given him, but his fingers had turned limp as if they possessed no bones and the world was rapidly darkening. If the cross afforded protection then one had to believe...but Jonathan had no faith and he was doomed. Abruptly Dracula drew back his mouth and let Harker go, and two streaks of crimson jetted from the scars in the young man's throat. Harker gasped and dropped to the floor and struck his head on the jutting corner of the long stool near the fireplace. Spinning in the final vestiges of his senses Harker heard the woman shriek, a dreadful animal cry of torture and he caught one last glimpse of the creature that was Dracula lift her flaccid body in his arms and disappear through the nave, the door crashing shut behind him. Mercy took Harker then and gave him over to oblivion.

The sun made a feeble attempt to flood watery light over the many-turreted walls of Castle Dracula. The golden light of day was not welcome, only things of the pit could enter herein, and the eight-foot thick walls greedily sucked in the amber rays and murdered them amid the shadows. The near mountains crouched about the keep as if to conceal it from human sight; the water falling from the open vein of the mountain stream rushed on, pouring over the jagged precipice making the frigid atmospheres misty, concealing the high towers in cloud. Stillness gagged the valley. Aphony clung to the rocks and the conifers that covered the slopes and clogged up the throat of the deep and distant gaping carapace in the earth below. Time slipped away and by the late afternoon the waning glimmers of the failing sun threw the last of their beams through the coloured glass of a room set high in the pinnacle of a tower. The room was occluded; two candles were dying as their wicks simultaneously burned out expelling twin strips of curling blue smoke in the air, the fireplace was dead with spent coals. On a great crumpled bed lay Jonathan Harker, his head at the foot end, pressed against a coffin-like blanket box and propped up on a bolster.

Slowly, and with a groan he became conscious. For a while he could not think of what could have happened to him. Groggily rubbing the remnants of sleep from his eyes Harker had to pause, realising that there was blood on his hands, dried blood. His heart skipped a beat and then confusion took over and rattled his brain. How did he get blood on himself and why was his throat so dry? It hurt just to breathe and to swallow was even worse. He fished into his vest pocket and popped out his fob watch. With a groan, he remembered that the timepiece was useless, for it had ceased to tell the hour, its tiny hands frozen stiff, the minute hand seemed somehow warped. Putting the dead timepiece back into his pocket he stumbled weakly to the window and looked out through the coloured diamond-shaped panes. Abruptly he realised with an awful thrill of terror that soon the sun would vanish yet again and he would be defenceless.

Harker's head spun and he felt dizzy, and he thought that he must sit a while and regain some strength. Yet to do so would draw him closer to darkness and all that he had come to do would not be accomplished, all would be lost. He would be forsaken, never to return home. He needed Van Helsing to be here with him now, needed the older man's strength and wisdom and needed his guidance because he knew he might fail in this task. Jonathan had been foolish in his disregard, and even as felt for the cross in his coat pocket, Lucy's gift of protection that he had so flippantly dismissed, he repented. Pulling it out he looked at the crucifix closely. To his horror he saw a hair-thin fissure running through it from top to bottom. Even as he watched the body of Christ bisected, the chain broke and two pieces of black and silver fell to the floor. The awful finality had come upon him at last, struck him down in a moment of weakness. He had let his guard down and he was lost now, lost even to the God in whom he had refused to believe. There was no power on earth that could change that now, not even if he accepted the Creator into his life. He had become the victim of something feral, something as old as time, and parasitic. Jonathan did not understand the vampire as Van Helsing understood the creature, and Jonathan lamented that he had not listened with an open mind. He did not possess the older man's fortitude and learning and he had been intolerant and ignorant. All Jonathan knew right now, at this moment, was that soon it would be dark and the night would bloom with fresh horrors.

Somewhere within this castle's walls the demon slept hidden from the light of day. If only Harker could find that place all might be put to right. That vile smelling abyss under the drawbridge, that had to be where he must look first. Jonathan was certain that one or the other of these monsters rested there during the day. He needed his courage to stay true, needed the strength of his heart to carry him to victory. From the window, he looked down through the the veils of swirling mist to the stone plumage of the eagles, down to the drawbridge he had crossed the afternoon before, down to that grated door and the reeking fistula beyond. A feeble shaft of sunlight pointed the way like a straight and piercing arrow, right to that spot, and Harker knew then for certain that his suspicions were confirmed. A brutal resolve had hammered home his purpose for coming here, and Van Helsing had told him that he must be prepared to know the face of evil. That the evil already festered within his mortal coil, Jonathan did not contest, but these creatures, they were not the illusory product of his own troubled mind, but real and dangerous and corrupting.
'Only the Devil will be your ally there,' Van Helsing had warned, 'and you will not acknowledge even his foul host.'
'Likewise, how can you?' Jonathan had replied. 'However, are we men of science or necromancers?'
'We must keep our minds open,' Van Helsing had responded.
'Still, we are not primitives!'
'Regardless,' ventured the Doctor, 'all religious activity is predicated upon the behaviour of a group. We too, you and me, we are part of a collective and we must remain strong together. Our search in this particular science has led us to Dracula, and though his nature seems defined as 'evil' I am far from inclined to view it as abstract, even if we must employ religious ritual in our defence!'
'This monster we run against,' Jonathan continued, 'might me really be Vlad Țepeș returned from the dead? How is that at all possible? Surely the man I go to seek is nothing than a madman's descdendant.'
'That may be so, but if it is not then his flesh has been buried but undecomposed, so do not dismiss such powers so readily,' advised Van Helsing. 'If Dracula can bring vile trickery and death upon mankind, if he is truly a vampire, then he was made so through some past and awful contagion. In our modern world, he is the agency by which virulence is spread. This creature has the supremacy to perpetrate dreadful harm on anyone he chooses. He destroys all who he touches. He sleeps in the tombs of the dead by day and rises at night to inflict his foul malediction upon the innocent. He drinks blood to stay 'alive' and his curse is hostile and destructive. Jonathan, we must accept that Dracula is not a creature bound by the same laws that bind you and me. He may not merely be haunted by some unnameable dread, he is that dread. Our researches show that monsters like Dracula may have always walked among us, we were just too blind to see, and now behind modern science they hide, ever more certain in their filth. Regardless, if Dracula is a vampire, then as the legends tell, he has certain mortal limitations, bound by the physical manifestations of purity, like running water and the odour of garlic- things which we have read about in many curious histories. That these defences might exert a strange power over him is almost certain, though I suspect that such forces cannot destroy him, for he might truly be that which we should fear, a reanimated corpse! You ask how can I, Abraham Van Helsing, say and believe such a thing? Unfortunately, we know so little about this being because the creature has never been studied. Perhaps it is a disease of the blood that animates his dead flesh, a virus that must be fed by its host. If that is true, and I suspect that it is, we must set aside all our assumptions about life and our prejudices about faith, because soon you are to go and you will meet with that creature and your mind must be alert and ready for battle.'
'You know that I trust in your learned judgment, Doctor Van Helsing,' Jonathan had replied. 'I wish only good things for Lucy, and for our everlasting friendship.' How courageous Lucy would think him if he should return a victor against violence, a champion against dark forces! That was the lie that Jonathan told himself. Nonetheless, it was not simply this thought, and the vision of Lucy's pretty face that spurred Jonathan's determination, that drove him forward. No, it was the erotic paradigm in which his emotions were caught, and although he could not sublimate Eros, neither could he obliterate his repressions. How could his inner conflicts be resolved, for there seemed to be no release from love? How could he convince himself or the rest of the world that there was truth in his Platonic love?

Therein his veins ran both fire and anxiety, for there was no chance in this life that Jonathan could ever make physical his wicked impulses. Were those feelings not as evil and destructive as all that the vampire stood to represent? If he should succumb in his confusion, caught between the holy and the damned, he would fail the man he wished to impress the most, Van Helsing. However, the Doctor seemed immune to sexual temptation, stainless and ignorant to the sensual, unlike Dracula, truly revealed now as a monster, who must never have reign over the world and its pure young blood. Much was still to be learned, but what Jonathan had come to do must be finished and there was no room for weakness in his heart now. Perhaps Van Helsing was right, perhaps a virulence was responsible for reanimating the dead flesh of the monster, and that was why Jonathan insisted that he was the one who must go to the Carpathians, for if he went then perhaps he would die and his living torment of unrequited love be ended. Even if he were to die in the doing Jonathan must complete his mission, if not for the good of all mankind but for the love of his mentor.

Harker staggered to the chamber door and tried the handle. It was no surprise to him that it was locked; there could be no budging a panel made of such sturdy timber. Slumped against the door in a moment of wretched defeat, trying to clear his thoughts and to think of what to do next, Jonathan knew he must escape from this prison and the window presented the only exit by which such a deed might be accomplished. It would be a dangerous and difficult descent, but from ledge to ledge, and buttress to buttress, if his strength and his courage did not fail him he might make it out alive. Regardless, he felt so weak. It was a crazy thought to scale the outer walls of Castle Dracula. How could it ever be accomplished? Jonathan moved shakily to a little table, a swift fortification of brandy may make his blood pump faster, may give him a little more strength; he freed the stopper of a decanter and poured a generous glass, but before he could drink it he put his hands up to his neck. How violently hot and painful it felt. Agony and horror seared itself into his features. He knew then from where the blood had come, the blood that splattered his clothing and stained his fingers. It was his blood, his own ichors; his life force. Hurriedly he rummaged in his Gladstone bag and found a small rectangular traveller's mirror. There, reflected in the chromatic glass, was the hideous truth, the twin cicatrices- the bite of the vampire, the scars of Dracula.
With the terrible suffering of realising one's own absolute doom, he understood exactly what had happened to him and that he was now infected and forever damned beyond death. Even as he looked upon himself he saw the terrible truth revealed before his startled eyes, that his own image was fading, becoming translucent, that he was changing. Harker dropped the mirror and buried his face in his hands. He sobbed because he knew that he might never see Lucy or Doctor Van Helsing again, and he sobbed for redemption and forgiveness from the God in whom he had never believed. He sobbed for absolution for his weaknesses and desires. This then was his punishment, his mortal existence forfeit to the perversity of demons. He looked up to Lucy's portrait and he begged silently that she might forgive him his infidelity. Jonathan knew that he would never see her again. Trembling he opened his diary.

'The worst has happened. I have become a victim of Dracula and the woman in his power. It may be that I am doomed to be one of them. I can only pray that whoever finds my body will possess the knowledge to do what is necessary to release my soul. I have lost a day. Soon it will be dark. While my senses are still my own, I must do what I set out to do. I must find the resting place of Dracula and, there end his existence forever. Soon it will be sundown, and they will walk again. I do not have much time.'
In that moment Jonathan had tripped over into the abyss. At the lip of Hell, he confessed to having a soul, but with the soul tempted there came evil pleasures. Was this how God had ordained that man should be? Temptation was voluptuous and all consuming, and if Jonathan's love could not be made certain in the land of the living, might it be fulfilled from beyond the grave? The thought horrified him, that he should perpetuate the horror by passing his kiss to Van Helsing. Sullied. He had been sullied, his interior scandalsied. Shaking with violent contradiction, from his traveller's case Harker took out a bound and corded leather pouch and forced its bulk firmly into his right coat pocket. Into his left pocket he placed his diary and with one last glance at the chamber door he pulled back the velvet drapes. Pulling down the handle he pushed the window open, and a wind was buffetting the walls. Jonathan peered out into the fading daylight. It was a long and vertiginous drop to the ground from here, but he had decided that the only way out was to creep along the ledge until he arrived at another aperture. When the window was open wide enough, Harker lifted himself into the frame, and a moment later he squeezed out onto the ledge and began to inch along the ridge. He was thankful that it had not begun to rain, but the stone was narrow and slippery with the residue of the storm from the night before, and holding tightly to the rough masonry, with slim fingers gripping the mortars, the young man stood up upon the parapet. The wind picked up again at that moment and clawed at his body and stung his eyes, and in terror he pressed his face to the stone and froze for a second, buffeted by the gale. It was almost the duration of a long, long minute before he had the courage to inch forward, and the wind tore at his coat and made to spill the contents of the satchel in his pocket.

The lash of the wind blew away the veils of high mist, but the gusts made it difficult for him to see, to discern where the stones met, but he sensed that he was positioned near the pointed Gothic arches and decorative traceries above the main door. This narrow bulwark, barely wide enough for his boots, followed the dark bands of mortar and sandstone about the entire symmetry of the building. Terrified and without respite, Jonathan gripped the stone crenulations and slid one foot along and then he slid the other, and with deliberate and slow step by step, he crept along the tightrope of fear. Averting his eyes he told himself that he must not look down, for if he did he would miss his footing and lose his head and the moment would fling him to the ground and to death. The precarious heights made him sick and giddy, and he vomitted his glass of brandy, teetering dangerously in his convulsions. When he had regained his head and the spasms had resided, Jonathan recommenced his descent, concentrating on the wall of stone against which he huddled, so close that the block was cold and rough and unforgiving against his cheek and bile-stained lips. After a few steps he had to stop again, for the wind again threatened to throw him off balance. Visibility was vastly diminished and his perception of depth was becoming distorted, and a wet film of sweat broke upon his forehead, yet Jonathan inched on. The damp smarted in his eyes, and he almost wept, thinking that he could never reach the sanctuary of the earth. From the inky heights of the roof and the eaves, Jonathan heard a bird of prey screeching, and a winged fancy glided shadow over his clinging form, but he dared not look up. Harker did not know from where his strength came, perhaps it was born of nothing but sheer determination, but he did not waver in his task. It was a sickening elevation upon which he perched, but down there he knew was the crypt to which he must go to perform the heinous rite of obliteration. This day, this hour, 'Before this creature Dracula has risen from the grave,' Harker swore aloud to himself, 'I will destroy the monster's undead flesh and send the demon back to hell!'

With effort Jonathan hauled himself along the granite sill and suppressing his vertigo, Jonathan moved slowly, passing above colonnettes and flamboyant Gothic arches, and at length his feet came against the gaping mouth of a sculpted heraldic beast. The wind whistled in his ear and Jonathan wavered but he managed somehow to grip the carved moulding and lower himself from its open jaw, his toes stretching to the gallery below. Like a shivering lizard he clung with aching fingers to the buttresses and descended, step by faltering step to the ground below. How his fingers pained and his thighs cramped, and there were moments when he wanted to let go, but he did not. Neither could he go back, and he trembled with fear and the fear spurred his resolve.
When Jonathan's boots finally touched the ground, it was already late afternoon and the sun was falling behind the mountains. Almost exhausted from his exertion, Harker gave one last glance up to the high window from which he had crawled and he shuddered. The sun's waning light washed redly over the elaborate phantasy of the castle, staining the stone crimson. Jonathan turned and ran upon shaky legs, making his way down the winding mountain path. The landslide of great boulders that had caused the road to be impassable was now oddly clear, as if some great force had played at marbles and had swept them away and over the edge of the sylvan world, clearing the road. Tall pines had snapped with the impact of tumbling rocks and the boulders had carved a channel into the steep forestry. There was no time to ponder this magic for he must return to the castle before the sun gave up its reign to the moon. At last, upon reaching the ivy-strangled shrine of Mary and Jesus that he had seen upon his arrival, he unconsciously crossed himself and tucked the journal away safely behind the figure of the Virgin, beneath the tangle of ivy. He hadn't even time to question his actions, nor to offer up a tiny hypocritical prayer for his salvation, even if he had known one to recite, and now that the sun was low and dropping between the Borgo Pass, Harker must climb the road upward again. All the while he climbed Jonathan fought his anxiety, but he thought too that he did what he had to do for the sake of truth, not that he could now ever be truthful to himself. Van Helsing's research had told him that the only way to destroy a vampire was to either expose its body to the purifying rays of the sun or to drive a wooden stake through its heart. Harker prophetically recalled the people squirming on the stakes in his dream, nonetheless, the pine stakes he carried in his satchel, they would have to serve.

When at last Harker finally looked down upon that narrow and grated door standing slightly ajar at the bottom of the wooden drawbridge, his breath was dry in his wounded throat and his heart beat wildly within his chest. A foul stench rushed up through the grating, like the stink from a sewer, and it was much stronger and sicklier than it had been before. It almost made him gag again to do it but he placed his foot on the first step and then there was no turning back. He only half understood what horrors he would find down there, the vampire woman reposing in her desecrated adytum and Dracula, Lord of the Dead, both upon the brink of a new and terrible waking. Trembling Jonathan descended. The door opened wider of its own accord as he came up to it, opened upon a twilit tumulus in which two stone sarcophagi dominated the small space. From the parapet Harker looked down upon Dracula. The vampire Count lay in his terrible box on a quilt of grave soil, replete and sleeping as only the undead sleep, his head resting on a faded velvet pillow. The inner sides of his tomb were splattered with gore. Littered about the floor were the flesh-stripped remains of those unfortunate enough to have stumbled upon this chamber of horrors or of those who had been abducted to it; some of the bones still had decomposing ribbons of meat and maggots clinging to them, a wall was lined with grinning skulls. The naked, white corpse of a young woman lay slumped against Dracula's crypt, her throat a sickening circle of torn skin. Discarded on the floor nearby was her severed head, with dead eyes looking blindly up at Harker.

The young man gasped in horror. Jonathan realised that hers had been the scream that had awoken him from his nightmare of Lucy and he wanted to vomit again but he quelled his nausea, and steadying himself he entered and descended the last six steps to Satan. His eyes took in the starkness of that awful crypt. A pervading cold wetness clung to the walls and penetrated through to his skin. Standing before Dracula's bier, Jonathan glared hatefully at the demon. As it rested at length in the narrow confines of its terrible flesh eating box it appeared almost as any other man would appear in his grave, only wrapped up in a cinereous shroud and swimming in blood. The stink wafting upward from the coffin was awful. Dracula lay supine in his crêpe and a mantle of shadows fell across his face. Harker could just define the shape of the vampire's nose and lips; the mouth was slightly agape, a dark red flow of blood streaming from the corners. His eyelids were twitching and his tongue, pointed and furrowed, darted in and out rapidly between his blood-stained lips. In revulsion, Jonathan glimpsed too the pointed yellow tips of the devil's cruel incisors showing over the gory smear of his bottom lip. Here was the thing that Harker had come to destroy, the scourge that resembled a man but was not, a creature that had blighted centuries and had been kept alive by drinking the blood of the innocent.

Harker felt a rush of anger go through his body. While this thing lay slumbering in its coffin the families of its victims mourned and buried their kin. If they were unlucky those murdered unfortunates were in their turn infected and entered the ranks of the undead and returned to roam the darkness and decimate, spreading Dracula's blight far and wide. Harker now knew that while the creature slept it had no power over the living, only in the night could it seduce and feed. The world of science, Jonathan told himself, would have to wait for an explanation; for he knew that he had to destroy this creature while he had the chance. The risk, that this monster should ever leave the confines of this vault to spread its contamination into the world was far too great, and besides, it had caressed and penetrated his core with black and exciting raptures. Jonathan could never wash away that stain. Dracula and his woman had promised something beyond what was loathsome, something that had made Harker hate part of himself all the more than he hated himself already. It was a revolting thought that he had somehow wanted the Count's perverse familiarity, and just for that one split second he had been torn between revulsion and desire.

This creature was disgusting. It was a filthy power that imbued them, these things of the Pit, the power to seduce and to render you helpless before killing you. The truth of it was sickening. The blood had begun to pound in Jonathan's ears, thumping and drumming and the foetid air had become electric. From far off, beyond the perimeters of this cursed realm a storm was gathering, the muted echo of approaching thunder seemed to sound after Harker's every heartbeat. For a minute Jonathan froze and then he realised he must linger no more, the jaundiced light of the sun was being devoured and the circular leaded portal in the wall was dimming. He tore himself away from the Count and quickly crossed to the woman's coffin. She slept too, awaiting the death of the sun to liberate her from her daylight gilded prison. Jonathan beheld the torn dress, the blood-stained bosom and the scarlet painted row of needle sharp teeth. On the lip of the sarcophagus he placed the leather pouch that he had stuffed earlier into his pocket and undid the laces. A half-dozen foot-long whittled stakes rattled together as he did so; in the wallet was also a mallet. What he had to do next made his nerves quake, but he selected a sliver of shaved pine and placed the point beside the woman's left nipple. Raising the mallet in his other hand, he slammed it down with all the force he could manage. A torrent of blood shot up from the vampire's breast, a spray that dotted Harker's face and splashed upon his lips. The woman screamed and Dracula's eyes sprang open.

The last trace of sunlight surrendered to the gathering ranks of black storm clouds. Again, the hammer fell and Harker almost collapsed with the exertion of his failing strength. The vampire woman shuddered violently and the gout of blood stemmed its flow. There were no more cries of agony from within the coffin. A battered nail of wood protruded from the creature's rent breast. Even as Harker watched she began to decompose, her ravishingly beautiful face fell in upon a sea of worms that vomitted from the apertures of her nostrils. Her nose collapsed, and a vile tide of sick liquescence poured forth from her mouth, liquid ooze puddled from between her legs. The stench was dreadful and it rushed into Harker's face. He blanched and snapped back his head, gagging at the putrid gases as they rose out of a carcass that had existed as the living dead for an age uncounted. The maggots supped at her lips and her sharp teeth were laid bare, the gums shrivelled and her once viridescent eyes collapsed in a puff of dust. Withering into shredded tatters, the woman's limbs hung by fraying ribbons of rancid muscle and ligament. Jonathan could see the yellow of her bones poking through the holes that were ripping open in her rotting skin. Nauseated he turned away and took up another stake, but it was too late. The sky had become gravid, and the disk of the sun had died a hopeless death, but only shadows were witness. A storm was moving in over the Carpathians, the sky blackening to pitch in the passing of a moment. Dracula's sepulchre was empty.

Thunder faint and distal sounded in the heights of the Borgo Pass. In a strip of lightning Harker beheld a shade glide down the wall of the outer stairs. It had the shape of wings, huge demon wings and it engulfed the door frame and flooded the crypt with a blackness that swallowed the clandestine vampire hunter's flesh.
Harker dropped the hammer and the stake, he knew they were useless and that nothing could help him now, not stake or cross, not faith, not even Van Helsing. There was no time to whisper Lucy's name, there wasn't even time to offer up a useless entreaty to the God in whom he did not believe. He was weak from blood loss and exertion and the night blinded him and his fate was sealed, it had been sealed from the first moment he had entered the realm of the Ruler over Ravens. Terror almost stopped the thudding of his heart. The beating wings of the nightmare blotted out the young man's face and the door slammed with a crash that synchronised its boom to a clap of thunder. Within the tomb was nothingness then, a vast, long and endless impenetrable eternity of blackest night.

4: Bestial Penalty

Night swallowed the storm and as the thunder dissipated over the Carpathians the darkness gave in to daylight. At the end of a week a carriage arrived in Klausenburgh and stopped outside the hamlet's inn. The 'Golden Keys' was easily located, being the only establishment of its kind in the village. Its frontage was marked by a hanging sign on which were painted two crossed golden keys; leaded windows looked out upon the paved street and shadowy figures could be glimpsed within. The faint metallic tintinnabulation of some musical automata was filtering from inside. A middle-aged man in muted garb stepped down from the vehicle and looked about. There was little to be seen by way of activity; a baker's shop was closed and no one tended the forge at the blacksmith's, there weren't even any children about, not even the bark of a dog could be heard. Everything was listless and seemed on the verge of death. A pall of silence seemed to strangle the little town and would not give up its grip.

The robust innkeeper moved lethargically amid his half-dozen patrons, nodding to them as he stooped beneath a low oak beam. Suspended from this were a variety of curious objects, lanterns, harness straps and pots and knick-knacks, but mostly oddly there were long and dangling bunches of garlic and sprigs of the tuba's lilac coloured flowers bound together with coarse twine. The garlic gave off a faint but not unpleasant odour. The innkeeper walked to his Symphonion music box, a new contraption that he had only just purchased from a Leipzig catalogue, something that his heart had longed for, though he never would have admitted to the fact on account of his manhood; something for which he had saved his coin and finally indulged. With the box had come a variety of tune disks, which he could change as the whim took him.

The music box had arrived two months earlier and the innkeeper, with repressed excitement had overseen its placement near the entrance door. This position was deliberate and primary, because all who entered his establishment must notice and admire it at once. His was not just any old inn, his was the finest, as least he thought so, where sweet music could be heard and all could be happy and relaxed. He thought to himself, when all and everything in this part of the world was dark and miserable, why should there not be something beautiful like music? The local farmers had all protested and joked that they had no need for music nor for foolish caprice; they thought him a buffoon and gently chided his indulgence, but he disregarded their jibes. He justified his guilty pleasure by sturdily professing that the instrument was primarily an entertainment for his customers, and who were they if not his customers? They had laughed at him again and protested that they had no need of such cultural delights, being farmers and woodcutters and smiths, and besides, they knew the landlord had really acquired it for his own enjoyment, not theirs. Toys like the music box were for fancy hôtels and the sitting parlours of city people.

Standing before the tall box the innkeeper looked at his own translucent reflection in the buffed glass and listened to the tones it conjured out of air. The landlord saw his robust image as it seemed to float amid the rotating wheel, dancing to the glorious notes the box played when he wound it with its brass key. The comb over the spurs made a lovely, harmonious sound, and the tinkling of the music let him daydream for a while. He entertained a slight fantasy that he lived in Vienna, that he ate fine dinners every night and that he danced in the palace. The melody from the music box was a gentle reminder of that wish, and entranced the landlord watched the great, perforated wheel as it rotated behind the glass. Round and round, it went, the springs and cogs meeting in harmonious synchronisation to make that pretty sound. Somehow it made his tavern special, though the Golden Keys itself was but a humble stopover for those who deigned to venture into these rustic parts. However, the music box made this inn different, set it apart from those stops typically outfitted for only the most basic of needs. Of course, to others it seemed like a luxury, but it was one of the few things that made the landlord happy, for he was so often divided from outsiders and angry at the world for leaving him poor. At least the whimsy of soft music helped him to dream. He tapped a box of snuff and drew the powder into his nostrils with a quick breath and then, in the middle of his slight pleasure, the main door pushed wide. Everyone in the tavern looked to the new arrival. The innkeeper clicked a lever and the music stilled, the wheel ceased its final revolution and he too turned to look at his new guest. To his disappointment the newcomer paid the music box no heed.

'Good day, sir,' he said to the stranger and he was cordially polite, but there was a hint of undeniable suspicion in the tone of his voice. He did not trust strangers and this one was no local, his dress and demeanour gave that fact away immediately. The stranger cast a long glance about the inn before replying. He saw the usual rural pictures; the platters, the kegs and the steins, but his eye also noted the hanging garlic. The landlord was inwardly offended that his musical contraption did not seem to make a visual impression on the visitor, everyone who came here was supposed to notice it and remark upon its singular merit. Not this one, he only proceeded to remove his gloves and when he'd done that he managed a weak smile.
'Good day. May I have a brandy, please?' The newcomer asked politely, and after he had spoken he blew a warm breath on his fingers. It was so much colder up here in the Transylvanian Alps than it was in Utrecht, and the air in these climes was thinner and the sunshine wan. The cold was an annoyance, and the journey here had not been without difficulty, and a good brandy would warm the chest and liven up the spirits.
'Certainly, sir,' returned the innkeeper, his manner though seemingly convivial was far from it, and hesitantly he strode off to the bar, having suffered the stranger's insult of ignorance. 'Travelling far?'
'Not much farther I hope.' The stranger looked around the room.
What he saw did not describe the environment or state of mind of a happy mood and a sense of well-being. Six unmoving sets of eyes were all fixed on him; six sets of ears all listened intently to every word uttered, but nobody made a sound. All conversation ceased and the overall tone was sober. The man pushed his gloves into a coat pocket and moved toward a crackling fireplace where he might warm his hands. As he did so his eyes made a second sweep of all the impassive faces that stared back at him. Intuition told him all was not quite right here and that these people were trying desperately to hide their unmistakable fear by attempting to show no emotion whatsoever. He turned and addressed the landlord: 'Is it possible to have a meal?' His hand released several gold coins onto the counter; they spun circles, catching the firelight like tiny suns and then collapsed flat on the polished timber.
'Well, yes sir.' The landlord cast a glance to the kitchen entry and called out, 'Inga!' Looking back to his guest he poured and passed the brandy. 'Only a simple one I'm afraid, sir.' He scooped up the coinage as he spoke but his words were not an apology but a genuine fact. 'Verhackertes and Greste Krumpian will have to serve I am afraid.'
The stranger sipped his drink and nodded.
'Your change, sir.' The landlord presented the stranger with a few coins, not even smiling faintly as he did so.
'Thank you.'
The innkeeper moved out from behind the counter, continuing to talk as he moved and drew up beside the newcomer.
'We don't get many travellers in these parts, not those who stop anyway.'
He eyed the man warily, wanting him gone from his tavern; his intuition boded that no good would come of this stranger. Here was a man of perhaps forty -five years, a man whose strength was in his character, for his eyes were bright and confident and as blue as a summer sky. His was a face that was strangely handsome, if not in the classical sense but in the way his features were animated. Inga appeared in the door frame tying up her apron strings. She was young and had a pretty, pleasing face. She smiled at the stranger, but her smile seemed so obviously out of place in a room so full of suppressed hostility. The stranger was not to be so easily distracted.
'You had one a few days ago I believe, a Mr. Harker.'
Inga blanched and the stranger took note.
'Harker, sir?' The stranger knew instantly that the landlord was acting deliberately vague; he placed his brandy upon the counter and pulled a black leather wallet from his inner coat pocket.
'Yes, he's a friend of mine. He wrote to me from this address.'
'Not here, sir,' denied the landlord.
Inga interrupted the two men. 'I remember the gentleman; he gave me a letter to post.' She seemed happy that she could be of help.
'Hold your tongue girl!' The innkeeper barked and Inga's sunny smile melted instantly from her lips. She looked away from the stranger then cast her glance down to her feet and thus reprimanded she dared not look up again. Removing a single, folded sheet of white paper from his wallet the stranger held it out before Inga. The landlord's face turned livid.
'Was this the letter?'
Inga refused to look but the stranger was insistent. The young woman risked a quick glance. 'I'm not sure.'
'Perhaps you'll remember the name,' pressed the stranger, 'Doctor Van Helsing?'
Inga shook her head and reiterated, 'I'm not sure.'
The innkeeper had puffed up his cheeks and the florid tinge of anger was spreading over his face.
'Go,' the landlord commanded sharply, 'and prepare a meal for this gentleman!' He continued glaring with bulging eyes at the girl, but she only managed to quiver like a frightened hare. 'At once, do you hear me?' He pointed in the direction of the kitchen and obediently Inga hurried from the tavern bar leaving the two men to stand-off eye to eye. Unperturbed Doctor Van Helsing refolded the letter and tucked it back into his wallet. He picked up his brandy and took another sip. It was time to extract the truth and he was not going to be fobbed off, he knew the innkeeper was lying; there was no doubt about that.
'Of what are you afraid?'
The landlord remained silent. He wanted to tell this newcomer that he must leave this tavern immediately, that he was not wanted, but instead he shook his head in suppressed fury. A pin might have fallen and its contact with the floor be heard in that confined space; it seemed that nobody dared even to take a breath. The landlord was struggling to remain civil; his face had reddened into an even brighter shade of crimson.
'I don't understand you.' Van Helsing moved away from the burly landlord and lifted his glass to the crossbeam. 'I am simply asking you to tell me where my friend went when he left here. Is that too much to ask?' The surly landlord rolled his eyes in disgust.
'Can't you get it into your heads that's all I want to know?'
There came no reply to his remark, and the landlord puffed up his frame with repellent defiance.
'Shall I start again at the beginning?' Van Helsing's voice was steady, but authoritative. He was not going to be deterred by the proprietor nor the unfriendly hostility of the locals. 'I had a letter from my friend, Jonathan Harker, and he stated that he had stopped here due to his carriage turning a wheel in a rut. Did he or did he not stop here, and if he did, which direction did he take when he left?'
Still the men remained silent.
'I must know the direction in which he went,' Van Helsing insisted.
'Look,' said the landlord brusquely. 'You came here for information and we can't give it to you. Now why don't you leave?'
'I cannot leave. This is a matter of life and death.' Van Helsing shook his head, not to be defeated by their pitiable silence, strange social customs, and doom-laden fears. 'Please, in which direction did Jonathan Harker go when he left here?'
The landlord snarled angrily. 'For the last time, we don't know!'
'Perhaps it would not go astray to be politer to your guests,' said Van Helsing as he walked slowly to the fireplace and pointed above to the fluted pilasters and the mantel.
'Polite!' The landlord retorted. 'Guests!' he sneered. 'Nobody here asked you to come. The man's eyebrows knitted together and his brow furrowed, his face knotted up into an expression of both anger and physical suffering.
'Why all these garlic flowers?' Van Helsing indicated in another direction, waving a finger about the room. 'There, over the window- what are you hoping to keep out?' With his empty hand, he reached up and touched a bunch of garlic bulbs. 'Look at this, garlic here too. Everywhere garlic...'
Van Helsing pulled a string of garlic from a nail and threw it defiantly upon the floor. Briskly the landlord caught him up and his eyes flared with fear and dread, his words stifled in his throat.
'Why is the garlic there? It's not for decoration, is it?' Van Helsing challenged.
'It's drying!' The landlord spat his reply contemptuously.
'It's there for protection, isn't it?' Van Helsing pressed closer. 'It's your protection against vampires. We all know vampires cannot tolerate garlic. Can't you understand that the information I seek can end this terror forever? I must know about my friend if I am to finish the work he started.'
'It should never have been started! Your kind are so arrogant! There are some things best left alone.' With a florid gesture, the tavern owner dismissed Van Helsing. 'In any case, I don't know what you're talking about.' His eyes glared angrily, silently implying that Van Helsing should leave at once and not come back before violence be done. 'I think you do and I think you know something about my friend. He came here with good intention...' Van Helsing cast a rapid glance over the bucolic faces that sat mute and tense, watching and listening. 'He came here with a purpose- to help you.'
'We haven't asked for any help, now leave us alone. We will tell you nothing,' seethed the landlord.
'You need my help all the same,' Van Helsing returned coolly.
'Look, sir,' the innkeeper shook his head and lowered his tone. He was struggling to keep his temper in check. 'You're a stranger here in Klausenburgh. Some things are best left alone- such as interfering in things which are beyond our powers. You should not tarry here.'
'Now please don't misunderstand me,' said Van Helsing, keeping his voice calm and even. 'This is more than a superstition. I know the danger is real.' Van Helsing was all too aware of the belief in 'things' beyond the powers of comprehension, and he of all people understood what many refuted. It had taken a good deal of talk to convince even Jonathan of the nature of the vampire. Once again Van Helsing pointed to the garlic, signalling its significance and purpose. 'If the investigation that Mr. Harker and I are engaged upon is successful,' he spoke calmly but clearly, 'not only you but the whole world will benefit.' He paused and waited for the weight of his words to sink into their heads. 'Castle Dracula is somewhere here in Klausenburgh. Will you tell me how to get there?'
Abruptly the room became as chill as the tomb. Nobody moved and nobody spoke, for to speak, to acknowledge the existence of that evil place might bring some awful calamity down upon the heads of all under the inn's roof. Naming the house of the Devil made the innkeeper blanch as if he'd been struck in the face.
'You ordered a meal, sir,' he said, seething with poorly masked hostility. 'As the innkeeper, it is my duty to serve you.' Inga reappeared carrying a tray with bread and milk. 'Your meal will be ready soon, and when you've eaten, I ask you to go and leave us in peace.' He sealed his lips into a tight line and it was obvious that he would say no more. He turned away from Van Helsing as if the man no longer existed.
'I will bring your meal in a minute, sir,' the servant girl said with a subdued curtsy, 'if you'd like to take a seat.'
'Thank you.' Van Helsing nodded but knew he had to get to the truth. For the moment, he would let the tension dissipate; he had to stop and think this business through. It was going to be virtually impossible to obtain any helpful information from this lot and it made him inwardly angry. Were they so scared or were they so stupid that they refused to believe someone could help them? Surely someone would tell him how to get to Castle Dracula. Someone must have told Harker! He creased his brow in perturbation and unbuttoned his coat, unwound his scarf and placed in over the back of a chair while Inga set the tray on the table before him. She fussed momentarily, placing the knot of bread and pot of milk to one side, watching the innkeeper cautiously from the corner of her eye.
'A gypsy traveller found this at the crossroads near that place,' she whispered to Van Helsing, turning up the corner of a white napkin to reveal the red leather binding of a book. 'It was tucked behind the shrine of the Virgin. Nobody can read it because it's filled with symbols. He told me to burn it.' She shrugged discretely in the direction of the innkeeper. 'Your friend was such a nice gentleman, I couldn't.'
Before Van Helsing could question her further she turned and walked quickly back to the kitchen. Van Helsing, keeping a prudent eye on the landlord gently lifted the napkin so that it still covered the book but revealed the text within. A look of anguish etched itself in his features as he realised he was looking at Jonathan Harker's diary and that this could mean but one thing- here were recorded his friend's last words. Nobody could read it because Jonathan had written it in shorthand; it was almost a certainty now that Jonathan was dead. Or worse, if the truth were at all possible!

Van Helsing had trekked the long mountainous route to Castle Dracula. It had been difficult but he had been able, after much argument, to convince the innkeeper to let him rent a gig so that he could drive himself. Since nobody dared go near the place nobody else's life needed to be imperilled, what he must do he must do alone. What he had come to seek had many an eon ago been birthed in a suite of shadows and it was a thing redolent with the stink of the grave. He knew this, they all knew this, but why they did not do something about the horror he could not understand. Why did Jonathan not believe in the nature of the evil? This thought stumped Van Helsing. If the young man so refuted the truth that held all this region in the grip of fear, why had he risen to the challenge of defeating it despite his non-belief? Did Jonathan merely pay lip service to the danger, and if so, to what end? At the roadside shrine where Harker had left his diary, Van Helsing stopped briefly to acknowledge the Virgin, realising that this was something that Harker would never have done, offering up a silent prayer. The prayer was brief, for although it was still early morning, time was of the imperative. To the left the road began a narrow ascent, there were no rocks or boulders obstructing the way, but in one spot it appeared that the trees on the slope had been snapped in half like giant matchsticks. A terrible misgiving that a coach might have crashed over the precipice made Van Helsing risk a glance from his gig, but the gorge was too deep to see anything definite. Through a tunnel of trees that almost blocked out the light, Van Helsing cautiously steered his gig, and at last he drove through the shadow thrown down upon the earth from the great edifice of Castle Dracula. The castle stood arrogant and inflexible against earth, air, fire and water and nothing composed of these elements might ever change its ageless symmetry. It was ominous and devoid of any warmth, even Van Helsing's breath became as mist in the atmosphere. No glamour though could cast magic into Van Helsing's eye, and he saw the castle for what it was, a dreadful, phallus-like structure perched upon the precipice of the world, ready to rape and destroy the unwary. He pulled his vehicle to a halt and looked across the drawbridge, shuddering at how cold it was. The Doctor leapt down and tethered his buggy to a post and walked the last few yards to stand on the wooden bridge that separated him from the domain of the damned.

All was deathly quiet. There was no wind sighing and no birds singing, the only sound that fell upon his ears was the torrent of the icy mountain stream as it plummeted over the edge at the eastern corner of the castle. It was the sudden intrusion of what sounded like canon fire that made him look sharply about as a team of black horses came thundering over the narrow timber bridge. Madly they were dashing directly toward him. Barely had Van Helsing time enough to leap to the side before the black-plumed funeral carriage tore across the drawbridge, its whirling spokes an invisible blur as it raced by, its cloaked driver whipping the dark horses into hell flight. The force of its passing and the leap aside had slammed Van Helsing against a stone pylon, and from its roost a great carved eagle glared threateningly down. For a moment Van Helsing was stupefied as he watched the hearse disappear from view, catching a glimpse of a white coffin with gilded trims among all the black, slipping recklessly from side to side with the momentum of speed. The hearse plunged down the road and was swallowed up in the tunnel of interlacing trees. Van Helsing wondered about the hearse, for nobody at the inn had mentioned it, especially as it would have had to pass through Klausenburgh to get to this destination. How could they have missed seeing it? Perhaps they had deliberately ignored it like they seemed to ignore everything else. Inwardly Van Helsing despised them for their cowardice. Straightening he brushed the dust from his coat and entered the deserted fortress.

Crossing the threshold Van Helsing entered a maze of corridors and rooms. At length, he found the dining hall but only stepped into deeper silence. The castle seemed to have been deserted for a long, long time, for webs clung to the rafters and wove across the furnishings and the air swirled with dust. He called out 'Harker', still only the ghost of his own voice reverberated about the high vaulted climes. Glancing around furtively he could see nothing that bespoke of his friend's presence, except that the coals in the fireplace were recent and the strange fruits on the table had gone maggoty. Van Helsing had never tasted a pineapple before, and its spiky tips writhed in a cascade of fat grubs, the figs were shrivelled and black. The odours of corruption reeked in the dusty air. Pressing his handkerchief to his nose in disgust, the doctor left the room and took to the great staircase two steps at a time and ran along the gallery. 'Harker,' he called again. He came upon another staircase and this one led up into darkness. Cupping his hands to his mouth Van Helsing tried once more- 'Harker!' There was no response; he didn't really expect one because his heart was full of foreboding. This place was a deserted warren in which you could lose yourself and never be found. The stairs brought him to another gallery and at the far end a door stood ajar.

'Harker?' Van Helsing half-whispered as he paused at the portal of that room, and pushing the thick oaken panel fully open he beheld the chamber in the weak sunlight that filtered in through a diamond paned window, a pale glimmer between the drapes. Half of the window was open and a chill breath of air poured in; Van Helsing shivered. The room was wreckage. Bedding had been stripped and shredded, papers were strewn all about, a regiment of chessmen had been knocked over on their board, some were scattered on the floor; others lay decapitated. Jonathan's luggage had been violated and the contents of his bags strewn and ripped to pieces. Upon the walls were black splashes where Harker's ink bottles had been thrown and smashed, the young man's shirts had been shredded as if by animal claws. Rushing into the room Van Helsing almost slipped on the debris. Broken glass crunched under Van Helsing's boots. He looked frantically about, not knowing what it was he was looking for, but then his eye fell upon an object glittering in the wan light amid the litter. He knelt to retrieve it and groaned as he picked it up. It was the silver frame that had held Lucy's portraits, but now the glass was smashed and the pictures had been torn out.

Only one triangle of photographic paper remained in a corner, the broken glass nicked Van Helsing's glove and cut through to the finger as he pulled the paper free. A trickle of blood seeped through the leather and smeared the ghostly outline of Lucy's white shoulder and throat. Terrible thoughts entered Van Helsing's head, more dreadful than he ever dared think before. He dropped the corner of paper and it blew away in a sudden wind that rushed about the room, settling near the left-hand branch of a broken crucifix made of jet, a holy trinket that had slipped through a silver chain and fallen to the floor. In his haste Van Helsing failed to notice. He had to find Jonathan and he knew what he had to do.

Like the door to the Jonathan's chamber, the door at the bottom of the narrow way stood uninviting. A loathsome stench poured up from the depths, leaking noisome through the iron grill in the dungeon portal, sickening enough to keep any living soul from ever entering. Van Helsing took a deep breath and stifled the compulsion to gag. He descended to the antechamber and hovered upon the entry, raising a hand to push the door open, and looking in, he too, as Harker had before him, peered into gloom. Framed in the doorway the Doctor squinted, and amid the shadows he saw a decapitated peasant girl, her ragged neck flyblown and maggoty, her skin bloated and marbled. Almost gagging, he now half-understood the fear and the reticence that gripped the sensibilities of the local peasantry, why they sealed their tongues and denied the existence of the Devil. Here was one of their kin, perhaps even a daughter. He diverted his eyes and put his hand up to his nose in a feeble attempt to block the stench but it was useless. When, with hesitant steps he entered the chamber, a cloud of flies lifted from their rotting mire and swarmed about his head with furious wings, brushing his lips and buzzing against his face. Van Helsing choked on the black tide. They were reeking disease, disturbed in their supping at rotted flesh, redolent with faeces, and they invaded his throat. With a mad flailing and wild gesticulation, Van Helsing coughed and swallowed the putrescence, ingesting into his throat a twitching mayhem from which he emerged retching.

When at last the spasm ceased, Van Helsing looked from his platform down upon a stone box, and he watched in horrified awe as his own shadow threshed and contorted in the indigo light, rushing serpentine down the steps and along the floor and pouring up the stone and over the lip of the sarcophagus. Inside the box the shadows heaved in a wave, and undulated, throbbing with hallucination and tremors, gripping and cleaving to the corpse that lay recumbent therein. Van Helsing watched, and as he looked over the edge the shadows parted, and he saw that which he'd hoped not to see. The corpse was indeed his friend Jonathan, transformed now into something hopelessly unclean. Harker was supine in Dracula's coffin with his hands folded over his belly. There was no evidence of breathing and though not one hair was out of place a ghastly change seemed to have altered the young man's features. His skin was bruised Egyptian blue in the pitch and gloom, as if some ghoulish symptom of rancidity had overtaken his flesh. A twitching contagion flowed through the coil of his skin, something unspeakable, an infective abomination that ravaged and spread through vein and sinew. His cheeks were ashen and although his eyes were closed they seemed to glow and to pulse with scarlet luminance through the sealed lids. The sharp tips of canine teeth protruded from the corners of Jonathan's mouth, and he was smiling. That smile was almost carnal, suggesting that in his new and awful life, reborn from death, Jonathan knew pleasures and hedonistic delights beyond that which he could ever experience in the land of the living. The smile was an invitation to Van Helsing to share the exquisite raptures of corruption, and Jonathan's tongue snaked from his mouth and licked his blue lips. The sight sent a shudder through Professor Van Helsing and he turned away in disgust.

At the lip of another crypt Van Helsing saw the stakes resting where Jonathan had left them. He descended the six steps and walked over to the coffin. Inside he looked upon the putrescent remains of what had once been a woman. There were no more worms left, they had eaten the last of her undead flesh and transformed into the swarms of flies Van Helsing had disturbed as he entered, but her skeleton lay skewed in the ragged remains of a flimsy dress. One of the stakes stood erect in her rib cage. A reaction of loathing at the proof of this horror and what had occurred was written in Van Helsing's face. As he turned away Van Helsing heard the chink of timber on timber, and his eyes fell upon the hammer and the stake that Jonathan had dropped, the sliver of wood intended for Dracula's black heart. He picked them up and approached Jonathan Harker's terrible bower. Harker's mouth was now open and the fangs of the vampire were plainly visible, long and lethal and sharp, studding his gums with a row of pointed awls. His eyes had opened too, but they seemed blinded because they did not even blink. They glowed with hot fire. Here then was the final evidence that Jonathan could be counted no longer among the living. Van Helsing passed the stake into the hand in which he held the mallet and took off his hat, placing it aside. He must do it now before he lost his nerve. What stretched in the coffin was no longer his friend but a monster that would feed on the blood of the living. It had to be destroyed.

As he reached forward and pulled aside Jonathan's coat lapel, the vampire's eyes followed Van Helsing. The Doctor positioned the tip of the stake over Jonathan's heart, above the bud of his left nipple, and the newly made vampire fixed his undead gaze upon his friend. There was a strange rapture in that look, one of veridical prophecy and even a glimpse of sadness too, but roiled within the regret was a horror. The flesh and the spirit were divided and the carnal was divine. Perfumed with the stench of decay, the young man's body shivered under the point of the shaft, expectant of the ultimate, first and final penetration. Against the shudder, Van Helsing felt the hard length of the stake move, and the wood felt disturbingly warm and fleshy, and it seemed as if it throbbed between his fingers. Abruptly there was pandemonium inside Van Helsing's head, a promise of the soul's intoxication, a whisper of weakness and a shout of vehemence, of a sudden anger and a previously unknown and troublesome, innermost corruptness. It whispered, it sang that they should be enjoying each other, that Van Helsing should worship the phallos, that he had been pure and chaste for far too long- in denial of the flesh, and that sinning and transgression were but a ridiculous folly. The vampire sang into Van Helsing's mind, told him to cast away morality in favour of the libertine's rapacious lusts. Van Helsing was repulsed, and shuddered, for he was still alive and among the living, and the solicitudes of this evil were born of the language of pornography. Mark that here, Van Helsing experienced a baring of the soul, a spiritual undressing that almost crippled his scientific mind, which bespoke of desire and its constrictions, indecent inclinations which were sublimated in waking life. The song sang of the possession of the world, of the night, of forever, and a veil of turbulent shade passed over Jonathan's blue-tinged face. He murmured that he would be supplicant to this wondrous and sensuous temptation, that he would be the anvil for Van Helsing's hammer, his to strike sparks at the forge- over and over. The song Jonathan sang was an aria, and it declared that he wanted Van Helsing's hardness in his hands, in his mouth, that his desire was an agony of pain and his pleasure, his true hunger, was for the blissful, glorious magic that unman's men- for sodomy. There could be joy shared in the torture of human suffering and damnation, and this suffering would transform the flesh into a vital, new existence. Was there nothing but condemnation for such love in the world that they knew, a world that demanded falsity and cruelty? Jonathan's lips smiled lasciviously in undeath, and the crypt was flooded with a blaze of sunlight, and in that flame those lips drew back and the long, sharp fangs glinted. The vampire licked its carnal mouth.
Van Helsing shuddered in horror, for there was unspeakable filth and disgust in the song, and this chamber was a void of nightmares and death, and a living corpse that bore the visage of his colleague. No, Van Helsing could not falter in this act of destruction, here upon the brink of immediate experience, even as Harker was doomed to submit to the violation of the stake. The vampire killer shook himself and Harker's song weakened, and the stagnant air crackled as if alight with galvanism. Caught in a vivid, but nonetheless formidable hallucination wherein Van Helsing heard the words 'I love you,' he sanctified the undead bower with a prayer and then smashed the hammer down swiftly and violently.

5: Premonition

Down to the garden gate they ran, past the white and pink roses and the unfledged ivy that climbed all over the wall just outside Lucy's bedroom.
'I am going to catch you,' Lucy called out and laughed, her quarry, the housemaid's little daughter Tania, giggled and kept on running.
'No, you won't,' the girl called back, skipping as fast as her little legs could go.
'Oh yes I will,' insisted Lucy, coming up close behind Tania, catching her and giving her a squeeze. The little girl dropped down to the grass and squealed. They rolled about on the emerald lawn for a while, each tickling and poking at the other. Lucy thought the smell of the fresh cut grass wonderful as she turned onto her back and looked up at the cloudless blue sky. She wondered what Jonathan was doing at this moment and smiled softly, dreaming whether he was contemplating her.
'You are thinking of somebody,' Tania teased, 'and that person is not me.'
'You are so silly,' Lucy chuckled as she combed her fingers through Tania's hair. Tania was such a little girl, petite and sweet, and Lucy hoped deep within her heart that she too would be blessed with so lovely a child one day soon. That day seemed like a century away and for that matter, so was Jonathan. Why had he been so mysterious about his journey, not even giving a clue as to when he might be expected to come back? Thinking about this only depressed Lucy and she did not want to feel sad today.
'Shall we go down to the arbour?' Lucy asked Tania.
'Oh yes, let's do. We can sit among the roses.'
'And I can read to you,' added Lucy.
'A good story, I hope. Not like the book you left there the other day. I know because I found it. It did not have any pictures in it though,' Tania complained. 'I'll bet it is not at all interesting.'
'I should not expect you to understand,' Lucy laughed. 'It is my own personal little book that I write in, but you looked inside Tania, really!' Lucy's reprimand was gentle.
'I only just looked to see if it had any pictures' said Tania, her lips trembling slightly, her big eyes widening. 'I hope I wasn't being naughty. After all you did forget to bring it with you when you came up to the house.'
'No, my little one,' Lucy tenderly kissed the petite girl's cheek, 'you were not being naughty, just curious.'
'Will you read it to me Aunt Lucy?'
'No,' Lucy replied distractedly, for a strange thought had abruptly filtered into her head- some broken, troubled fragment about Jonathan. It was not that she worried after his safety, but it was some unwanted premonition about the strength of his love. She shuddered visibly and Tania reached over and placed her warm little hand on Lucy's arm.
'Aunt Lucy?'
Lucy slowly turned her head and looked into Tania's face. The little girl was most pretty, and ever so sweet. She wasn't really her niece, but the housemaid, Gerda's, child. 'Aunty' was just an affectionate endearment. 'How innocent' she thought, 'pure and innocent. Can it last?'
'Can what last, Aunt Lucy?' Tania asked, a concerned furrow creasing her angel's brow. Not realising she had spoken aloud, Lucy ignored the question.
'I won't read my little book to anybody. It's not that sort of book.' The woman bit down on her lower lip. A weird and unpleasant anguish was opening dark petals within her soul. She tried to push the sensation away, but its stain seemed indelible and would not be removed. Something was whispering in her ear that her yearning for nuptial bliss would never come to pass, that Arthur and Mina would always possess that which she could never have… that the future pointed only towards danger and sterility… and… even if Jonathan returned...
'I don't understand,' replied Tania, confused. A book that nobody read didn't make any sense to her at all.
'Come on,' said Lucy, trying so desperately to put aside her dire thoughts of growing doom, taking hold of Tania's tiny little hands and helping her to her feet. 'We'll have poppy seed cake afterwards. Would you like that?' The little girl nodded happily and smiled and the two danced on the lawn. 'First things first though,' said Lucy, even as she glanced upward into the sky, into the high bright sun. 'We should go get that book.' Tania was giggling as they skipped down to the arbour, but Lucy's heart was clouded up with foreboding. Petals fell from old blooms like silken teardrops as they passed through the gate, Lucy putting out a hand to catch some in her palm, smelling their fading perfume. Accidentally she pricked her finger on a thorn and a tiny floret of blood welled to the tip. It came flooding in again, that horrible, doom-laden notion that a great juggernaut was approaching that could not be stopped, a great force that must catch her and throw her down. As if caught in a weird dream she momentarily felt that if she were somewhere else she might be spared. She imagined herself in Germany again, on holiday, and then she imagined herself in paradise with Jonathan, but the euphoria was but a deception, for instinct told Lucy that she was trapped in a place where something dark reigned and where her slender throat was pierced by something sharp, like the rose thorns. She looked at the tip of her finger and at the redness of her blood and with her other hand she felt her neck. A light smear of crimson daubed her lily-white skin where the bloody fingertip had touched.
'Are you hurt, Aunt Lucy?'
'No, my sweet,' said Lucy, suddenly parched and thirsty, as if her mouth and tongue had caught fire. She put her finger to her mouth. The speckle of blood stained her lips and welled up on her tongue. It tasted like nectar, repellent and yet somehow delicious, but it did not slack her thirst. She didn't understand. A change was happening to her, within and without, a sense of something that was impossible to fathom, and it was drawing her into its web like the silken trap a fly spins to catch the moth. Lucy already felt the threads binding her bones knotting up with compulsion. She wanted to throw off her garments and run naked through the garden, her uncovered charms blazing like alabaster and ruby in the warm afternoon sun. The spell thrilled and frightened her and Lucy knew the struggle of an awakened carnal love. In the terrible confusion of it all she could only wait, though waiting was timeless and a minute might as well have been a millennium. Worse, there was a peculiar moistness burning between her thighs that would not be denied, and she thought that in the swirling airs she glimpsed the face of a man of whom she had never dreamed. The face inspired thoughts that made her touch herself intimately, and this in turn inspired self-loathing. Yet Lucy found herself recidivist, and her pleasures and agonies all commingled. Lucy turned her eye upon the little girl Tania. How sweet and untainted, how dainty and unsullied. Lucy's eyes burned like candles, but she did not say a word, and Tania watched in her innocence, in her childish fancy, looked upon Lucy's face as it became a mask that hardly even blinked, her gaze wide and wondrous. When Lucy and Tania came up to the arbour the roses had gone wild, three steps up to a niche trimmed in the foliage they sat down upon a bench and thereon was Lucy's diary. Roses and mottled shadows covered lattices and the arbour was cool, perhaps a little too chill, for the day had passed the hour of two. In the shades, they sat and Lucy nervously retrieved her book. She was shaking but she tried not to show her failing composure, and she closed her eyes and Tania stretched out on the bench, her head in Lucy's lap. For a moment Lucy had completely forgotten about Jonathan, and Tania's neck was so slender, like the neck of a gosling...
'You're shivering,' the girl remarked, and Lucy tried to smile.
'I'm a little bit cold,' she told the child, and the child in abrupt distraction began humming a broken melody. Lucy hardly heard the tune for her mind was drifting somewhere far away. Slipping down into a lull of shadows, those shadows sliding like vapours between the occluded lattice and through its over-mantle of compound leaves and prickly stems. In their rapture Lucy remained quite still. She sensed something coming with the shadows, some unstoppable destruction, some creed that rang out her name with a roar and would not be denied. Lucy felt fragile, caught in a tremor of divine agency, her heart, her soul as translucent as the rose petals, her emotions a tempest of ambiguity and nameless tension. The arbour was stilled then, the shadows stifling and yet cold, and the quiet was abruptly preternatural. Soon the afternoon must recede, and time would evaporate into a weird delirium as if her life were a fever dream passing by and uncounted. Tania presently ceased humming and she drifted into sleep, and Lucy sighed. She licked her dry lips, and the metallic sweetness of the blood was dissipated, and she put down her volume with its gilded edgework and took a pencil from a pocket in her skirts. A little breeze began to riffle the tissue thin pages, but Lucy held them down with trembling fingers and although her hand was shaking she began to write:
'I love you, my dearest …'
She found that she couldn't remember who it was that she was professing to love. How odd. There was a deep rut in her heart, and a feeling that was somehow akin to pain. Before the sentence was finished she felt an empty space forming about her body, and her hand ceased its passage across the page, touching the written words as if they were cobwebs, and her mind drew back into nothingness. A shrivelled bloom fell from a withering stem, spilling ashen petals into the open diary. Lucy closed the book upon them and set it down on the bench beside the sleeping child. She watched Tania dozing, watched the freshness of her dimpled skin, of her little white neck, watched until her eyes no longer saw the child's rosy cheeks and cupid lips. Watched in a trance that the stillness did not break. Upon the child's cheek a butterfly settled, black and orange, lightly stepping upon the cherub's lips. Tania brushed it away with a drowsy hand and sighed dreamily. Into the ether the butterfly rose, into a strange cloud that had blown in from the nothing, and Lucy, not moving, not even to smile, hardly breathing, closed her eyes and they were filled again with dark light. Jonathan was not there, but something else was close, something dark and ominous, and alluring and dangerous. Whatever it was it celebrated darkness, and it convulsed in a subterranean stronghold, in a bed of soil dug from a catacomb. This thing pulsed with black vitality, enfolded in a cloak of blood, its smile fearful pincers, its red eyes cruel and lustful. Whatever it was it had passed through time, dreadful and yet glorious in its furtive search to find only Lucy. The young woman told herself this lie, even as a sparrow-hawk plunged from the sky and flapped violently at the lattice, precipitating a rain of dead rose petals. The maddened bird stabbed at the roses with clawed hooks, pinioned in the thorns, and it opened its beak, but no sound came forth, its tongue a darting cardinal flame. Yet Lucy did not flinch, even as she watched the bird expire, its blood upon her cheek. This was the terrible paradox, she knew it, was certain, that whatever force was coming was far from passive, but rather she sensed its ravenous and dangerous subversion of her world. Its search for fulfillment would find her and she would be changed when it found her, changed but elated beyond all worldly measure.

Doctor Van Helsing sat in the Holmwood parlour. The task ahead was going to be difficult. What Van Helsing had to tell them would be complex and testing indeed, and he felt certain that the Holmwood's were almost certain to misunderstand his intention. How could he possibly tell them the absolute truth? Van Helsing would have to exercise a disagreeable falsity, and knew he could never utter the exact truth, for no one would have believed the truth. Nonetheless, he was not given too often to emotional discomfort and he hated becoming closely involved with people. Emotional adjuncts always ended in tangles, and the Doctor believed this not because he possessed a frozen heart, but rather that he was given to the tenable object of reality. He had journeyed from Utrecht to Transylvania and then to here, to see Arthur Holmwood because he now must relate terrible news, and people always took bad news emotionally. Despite his cool demeanour he knew this interview would be one of those rare occasions that might cause a degree of stress even to himself. Arthur Holmwood, from what Jonathan had told Van Helsing, was a relatively stoic person who was not too open to sudden change. The man was not noted for his domestic affection, and even courting Lucy had proven difficult. Jonathan had once confided to Van Helsing that Arthur Holmwood's approval had been a tough nut to crack. In fact, he wasn't too certain that he had the man's approval at all. Upon Jonathan's word, Van Helsing knew that Arthur Holmwood had made his money trading and manufacturing cottons and linens. Holmwood harboured a wish that his sister would marry someone who was self-sufficient, not a chaser of dreams. Jonathan, being a scholar and an historian, perhaps did not meet with the criteria that Holmwood thought best suited a proper marriage.

In a resigned effort to avoid the inevitable, Van Helsing turned his mind to the mundane, taking in his surroundings in the hope of diverting his thoughts, but the rather conservative decors only proved depressing. In this house, everything spoke of the perfect home where nothing could be out of place and where a mote of dust on the mantle over the fireplace would be forbidden. The house, though not cold, was not welcoming either, it just seemed to possess no life, no vitality. Van Helsing had never met with the Holmwood's before, but perhaps his ambivalent feelings about them would prove untrue and ungrounded, yet the house used a voice of its own to tell him that things had stagnated here. If there was comfort, then it was a cold comfort, and if there was love then it was a love that had bred an unspoken disapproval for obvious affection. An almost palpable suggestion of jeopardy seemed to emanate from the decors. An involuntary frisson passed through Van Helsing's frame. Something was not quite right; the heart of this home was frozen. Van Helsing could not shake the notion that his news would further strengthen this chill and that the Holmwood house must only grow colder.

The unwelcoming residence provoked shadows that sat waiting with him, silent in their perfidy. Heavy drapes hung at the windows, wide, tasselled sashes held them open, an oriental fan, a lute, pastoral paintings and china, everything seemed to speak of the cozy, yet it was all so superficial and lifeless at the same time. Doctor Van Helsing had never met any of the people who lived here, but the house spoke for them in a strange and sober voice. They wanted so obviously to project that they were comfortable in their chilly abode, and happy was the home. Perhaps they were rational and reasonable people, but their conceit and their rationale said something completely different. This interview would be made difficult by that fact alone. Then of course there was the dreadful business that had brought Van Helsing here, he couldn't get around that gently, but he did not want to lie. He was about to discuss the death of Arthur Holmwood's sister's fiancé and although he was calm, his inner composure belied the terrible issue he had come to confer. When the Holmwood's emerged from their rooms to greet him in the parlour, and the moment had come upon him to tell them what had happened to Jonathan, Doctor Van Helsing found that he could not do it for fear of upsetting the lovely woman who was Arthur Holmwood's wife. Such was the contradiction of the forces at work in this home that Mina, being the fairer sex, would be too fragile and unable to cope with the bad news. Van Helsing assumed that Arthur would be strong and understanding. When the time came to tell the tale, Van Helsing would only be able to inform them that Harker had died. The statement would be short and direct and quite naturally Mr. Holmwood and his wife Mina would both respond with disbelief. Mina might even faint with grief.

Upon that fact, Mrs. Holmwood blanched slightly but she did not faint, instead she sat down in a floral upholstered chair opposite Van Helsing, her husband standing by her right side. Although disbelieving she did not appear at all to be the type of woman given to fits of fainting or the 'vapours' when presented with unpleasant and shocking revelations. Van Helsing had foolishly misjudged her on that count. Yet he could not ignore the fact that she was beautiful, her golden hair piled up and styled with jewelled combs; she wore a blue-silver satin gown with a white silk magnolia pinned at the centre of her neckline. The only other jewellery that adorned her was a wedding ring and two diamond earrings that caught the light and flashed like brilliants. These subtle ornamentations suggested a restrained and conservative person, though perhaps to assume this of Mina, Van Helsing mused, might be just as unfair. Under the veneer she looked strong; her mouth was perfect and crimson though she wore no rouge and her eyes were the colour of the sea where its horizon was sky-dyed. Van Helsing did not usually have the pleasure of such beautiful company, but he sensed reserve in her countenance and did not stare. He did not wish to risk making Mrs. Holmwood feeling uncomfortable so he turned his gaze to Arthur. Mr. Holmwood was a square-jawed fellow who gave off an acetic masculinity and an air of stuffiness, but at this moment he appeared agitated, tight as a spring coiled to breaking point. It was evident that remaining quiescent was taking some effort on his behalf. After the awkward formal introductions had taken place Van Helsing cleared his throat and began quickly with the horrible revelation of Jonathan Harker's death.
'I realise how fantastic my request must sound, but I ask you once again not to press me for details of Jonathan's death. I'm sorry, Mr. Holmwood, but I really cannot tell you anything more about how he died.'
'Cannot or will not?' Arthur replied coldly.
'Whichever you wish,' Van Helsing returned quietly, making a slightly dismissive movement with his hand but then realising the import of his gesture, rested his hand on his knee. He sealed his thin lips and thought better of saying anything further that he might be called upon to regret. If only Jonathan had met with death under different, normal circumstances… if only…
'You still refuse to tell us?'
'I'm afraid that is so.'
'Doctor Van Helsing,' continued Arthur in an icy tone, not to be put off so readily by a mere string of senseless words, 'I'm afraid I won't accept your refusal, and I am not at all satisfied.'
'Now, Arthur,' Mrs. Holmwood protested, but her husband would not hear a word that she said.
'No, Mina, please allow me to handle this.' He addressed Van Helsing directly, brushing his wife aside. 'I find your whole story of Jonathan's death suspicious in the extreme. You suddenly appear and tell us that Jonathan Harker is dead, and yet you will not tell us where or how he died! How are we to know that you are telling the truth? Perhaps he isn't dead at all.'
Van Helsing held Arthur's gaze and did not even blink. This moment of challenge edged Mrs. Holmwood toward an evident state of uneasiness. 'Arthur!' Mina exclaimed again, touching his forearm with her slender white hand, her wedding ring glinting in the light. There was a suspiciously decadant suggestion in Arthur's accuasation, as if Van Helsing and Jonathan had something revolting and shameful to hide. Arthur ignored Mina's plea and walked forward, closer to Van Helsing. Silently chastised and dismissed she looked upon the visitor, her eyes pleading in silent apology. That was the problem with Arthur, he would never listen to her, nor to anybody for that matter. It was as if her opinions were as nothing. Was she to remain forever obedient and silent? It was not the first instance in which he had disregarded her feelings and her opinions.
'You have the death certificate.' Van Helsing replied calmly, glancing quickly from Arthur to the beautiful woman. Was that certification of Jonathan's decease not proof enough?
'Yes,' Holmwood returned sarcastically. 'Death by natural causes and signed by you!' He pulled an envelope from his pocket and waved the paper before everyone's eyes. 'How convenient! I'm afraid that it is just not good enough.'
'When did he die, Doctor?' Mina leaned forward as she ventured the question. Arthur's growing hostility was making the interview even more uncomfortable than it needed to be, and Van Helsing brought his palms together and interlocked his fingers. He had barely changed his posture during the meeting and though it had only just begun it was as if he had been sitting straight as a plank for what must have been an eternity.
'Ten days ago, Mrs. Holmwood.'
'Ten days ago!' Arthur sounded incredulous. This was intolerable. Why had they not been informed before? 'Where was he buried since we have not received his body?'
'He was cremated.'
'Cremated! By whose authority?' The story had become even more deplorable as it progressed. The whole idea of cremation was blasphemous. Surely his family might have something to say about that! What did Van Helsing take them for, fools and heathens?
'His own,' Van Helsing said flatly, adding quickly before another question was fired upon him, 'and as his friend and colleague, he told me some time ago that was what he wished.' The Doctor understood at that point that Jonathan had not confessed his atheism to the Holmwood's.
'You are out of your mind!' Arthur deplored his disgust, puffing his frame up before Van Helsing. 'You must be insane.'
The Doctor did not even flinch at Holmwood's demonstration. Mina stood up between the two men, dividing them before blows were exchanged.
'You must forgive my husband, Doctor Van Helsing, but you must also appreciate his feelings.'
She took an audible breath and momentarily closed her eyes. Arthur's face creased with utter disgust. Cremation was an unthinkable heresy, a last destruction reserved for heretics and infidels, and this new revelation was most unthinkable. The thought of it only intimated the suspicions he had felt about Jonathan Harker all along. Mina stifled a gasp and turned away. Van Helsing noted her reaction. Of course, they were ignorant of Jonathan's own religious disbelief, and if they had known would Arthur have consented at all to the young man marrying his sister? Probably not.
'Be assured that I do,' replied Van Helsing. 'In return, I ask you to appreciate mine. Jonathan Harker and I were good friends. His death was probably more of a loss to me than to either of you.'
Arthur gave an ejaculation of disgust and spun about on his heel, turning his back on Van Helsing and walked away. 'How arrogant of you.' There was nothing but contempt in the man's voice. After a brief pause Mina went to stand by his side.
'Arthur, please, this is distressing.' Mina was of course upset, but she wished to read the death certificate for herself, even though the news was shocking. She looked on, irritated as Arthur folded the envelope and stuffed it into his pocket. She could not fathom why he withheld the information, for didn't she too have a right to know? The implication was that Arthur wanted Van Helsing to understand that he was master here, and that he would brook no rebuttal of his authority. To Mina, he appeared only ignorant.
'You must know that Jonathan was going to marry my sister, Lucy,' seethed Arthur, his words laced with undisguised misgiving 'Surely you could have written?' It was almost an accusation, and it suggested that Van Helsing was deliberately testing them to breaking point.
'I felt it would have been less of a shock if I told her personally. Now may I remind you that it was not you, nor your charming wife that I came here to see, but Miss Lucy.'
Arthur threw a look of disgust at Van Helsing and retorted. 'I forbid you to see my sister!' He crossed to the mantle and shaking his head he promptly pulled the rope to summon the housemaid, Gerda. He wanted to ask Van Helsing to leave his house immediately but he managed to maintain the last shred of his civility. 'My wife and I will tell her.'
'Well,' said Van Helsing as he rose from his chair, 'that is up to you, of course. If you refuse me permission to see her then I must respect that refusal. I am sorry. Will you please express my sympathy to Miss Lucy? If she wishes to get in touch with me, I am at her service.'
The sitting room door clicked open and the housemaid entered. She was a middle-aged, kindly faced individual dressed in black, her waist bound up in a tight white apron.
'Gerda, Doctor Van Helsing is leaving.' Holmwood told her. 'Will you show him to the door?
'Yes, sir.' Incongruously, the woman smiled amiably as she received her orders.
'Good day.' Van Helsing bowed to Mina Holmwood, and nodded to Arthur. The moment of impasse lingered while Gerda curtsied and spoke to the Doctor. The housekeeper smiled warmly and showed Van Helsing through to the entry hall where he gathered up his hat and coat. Mina and Arthur watched silently as he departed. When he was gone Arthur turned to his wife. He had to confess that he could not make head or tail of what Van Helsing had just told them, except that the man had told them precious little at all. Why had Van Helsing waited so long to inform them? Lucy would be devastated. She had been so ill of late that Mina was not too sure if she should be told of Jonathan's decease, it might only worsen her condition. Why, only a few months before Jonathan had proposed whilst on holiday, but now the joy was fading and it was going to be difficult to tell of his fate. Neither Arthur nor Mina had any of the answers to solve this abrupt and dreadful mystery and make the news any less horrible.
'Why all this secrecy?' Arthur's face wore a puzzled mask. 'Such an arrogant man! I shall report his actions to the police.'
Mina shrugged her shoulders and stood up. Was his question about secrecy rhetorical? Arthur himself did not see that he observed almost as much secrecy within this house, secrecy about his own inner thoughts and hardly ever his emotions. It was interesting to see him indignant now, simply because it was a situation over which he had no control. He didn't even like Jonathan Harker, not really...
'Why wouldn't he tell us?' Arthur asked sharply, and Mina replied as she dutifully caressed his hand.
'Oh, darling, Doctor Van Helsing is a respected and eminent man. He is a lecturer at Utrecht University. Jonathan could only say good thing about him- you know this.'
'Yes, I know that he was one of Jonathan's closest friends. Jonathan spoke of his most warmly.'
'The Doctor has come a long way to deliver this news, Arthur, and to break the truth to Lucy. Whatever his motives you can be sure he had a good reason for them.'
Arthur withdrew his hand and Mina found her fingertips trailing in air.
'Lucy is sick.'
'Yes, I know. In any case,' she continued, 'we can't help poor Jonathan now. Lucy is the one we must think about.' She looked at her husband with his face all knotted up with acrimony, and she saw only a child, and even her unconsciously soothing caress to reassure and to pacify him had availed rejection. Arthur gritted his teeth.
'Is she well enough to be told? It will be a terrible blow for her, but I wonder if all this is for the best.'
'Arthur!' Mina uttered, almost shocked. 'Whatever do you mean?'
'I merely...' Holmwood began, but held his tongue, knowing that if he continued it might did his own grave. 'Nothing,' he muttered, turning away.
'Well, she must know, sometime,' Mina told him, but her words belied the tangle of emotion stirring within her own heart.
'She will hear it from us, Mina, not from him!'
Lucy had not been well of late and Mina had supposed that Arthur's sister had slipped into melancholia due to the absence of her beau. Telling her directly might invoke a turn for the worse.
'We won't disturb her afternoon rest,' said Mina. 'We'll see how she is this evening.'
Arthur put his arms about Mina's slim waist and chastely kissed her brow, and in doing so he seemed to dismiss her once again rather than to concede to his wife's sensibility. Nonetheless, Mina was roiled within by an abstract emotion. She was annoyed by her husband's self-righteous behaviour in the presence of Van Helsing, and she feared that Arthur's intractability would herald a terrible folly. When his lips brushed her forehead there was no passion, only condescension.
Lucy had been quite ill and the sickness had come upon her suddenly. She would awake at night in a fever and feel drawn and tired during the day. Nobody seemed to know what the cause was and Doctor Seward, the family physician, was just as bewildered. He had prescribed several tonics and concoctions that simply tasted awful but did no good. These medicinals were nothing short of nostrums, for none of them were of any efficacy, and when she swallowed them they simply made her queasy all day and all the night. The only peace she was granted from the fever was when she was sleeping, but then her sleep was plagued with strange nightmares and sleep became but a fitful substitute to peace. This afternoon the illness had been more acute, her blood sluggish in her veins. She had been administered a potion for its enriching properties, in the hope that it cleansed her of impurities. With the awful tonic unsettling her stomach, it was with difficulty that Lucy had again drifted into an exhausted slumber. As she slept she was assailed once more by dreams, and they were visions full of conflict and confusion. She was with Jonathan and they were sitting in the churchyard of the old abbey above Lübeck. As they sat Jonathan took hold of her hand and he was whispering how much he loved her, but some worried part of Lucy did not believe his words. She could only watch on with a detached ambivalence as his mouth formed the vows that should have bound them to each other forever. The words flowed like toneless music, echoing into discord. Lucy looked from Jonathan to the grey sky above and then her vision fell upon the tombstones. That was where her love should lead, straight to the cold and lonely grave, for one of the markers bore her name.

A pall had fallen over the abbey; at least it looked like the old abbey where, during their Germanic holiday, high up on the cliff and over-watching the river they had looked upon the bay and the port and the turbulent sea. Nevertheless, the abbey was somehow distorted and resembled a ruin that one might see in lithograph. Jonathan had taken her hand and had placed a ring upon her finger in proposal of marriage and she in turn had later given him a filigree chain. It had glittered at her slender throat, but something told her that she no longer needed the symbol of its protection. Holding it at length she offered it to her young man, and he had smiled condescendingly as she clasped the chain about his neck. The placing of the bauble about Jonathan's neck had heralded an omnipresent future vision that was beyond her comprehension, but she had told Jonathan to wear the crucifix for her sake, even though he did not believe in god. It confused her, this awful presage to doom. Was it simply because Jonathan was going away and would not tell her the root cause for his departure? She did not know. Perhaps if Jonathan wore the crucifix faith would walk with him, even though he had never told her that he did not believe in God. Yet Lucy did not have to be told what her intuition already sensed. Perhaps the prophecy of its iconography might be enough to deflect whatever threat it was that was forming in the black vista of her dreams. Perhaps it could keep him safe- and that he would always think only of her, that her unspoken fears were simply that, a silly, empty fantasy. She wanted, above all things, Jonathan's fidelity until her death.

Nonetheless, was there truth in Jonathan words when he told her that his thoughts were only of her? Even when he should be studying for his papers in Utrecht, even when he ate and when he slept, and even when he dreamed, he professed that she was his only love. He seemed to say the right things, telling her how glorious was her long auburn hair and how he found the light spray of freckles over her nose so charming. Somehow, and he smiled when he whispered, the freckles made her white skin whiter. The pretty young woman liked to think that Jonathan was made heady by her perfumes, by her female mysteries, and most importantly of all by her intelligence. Embarrassment might have made her cheeks turn rosy, but in her heart Lucy was no fading wallflower. If anything, she was everything a man would want and yet she wanted an agency of her own, to be respected as well as cherished. Yet strangely, was he everything a woman could wish for? Jonathan most certainly gave an impression of estrangement, and feeling this made Lucy uneasy. What was it, if it wasn't she that beguiled him? Where was he really when they were together, his voice often trailing off into distraction, his caress brief, his smiles forced? Such thoughts were intrusive, perhaps even destructive, for it paved the way to unrest and unhappiness. Such thoughts were no doubt fuelled by the brief glories of a carnal desire that was promised but always implicit.
What came after that, if they ever were to share the raptures of the flesh? The thought haunted her mind. Lucy was no fool, but she sensed there was something, some tortured undercurrent about Jonathan that could not be completely explained. What awful thing had blown in with the wind and settled this terrible contemplation in her nightmares? In the dream, she hated herself for thinking this and wished herself far away and absolved from these cruel imaginings. They were truly horrible thoughts and unfair to Jonathan, the man she loved. He was gentle and kind and thoughtful and was he not the man she had promised to marry? Yet in her dreaming eye his image was fading, curling up like the roses in the arbour and turning to dust. Drained of life and vitality, Jonathan became an emptiness that dispersed in the ether. When his handsome but passive face eventually dissolved and his false words of love had trickled off into the furthermost corners of the dream, Lucy awoke. She could not, must not tell anybody the plague-ridden things her dream state commanded. Bewildered to the point of stupefaction she vowed she would fight to stay awake rather than suffer such horrors again, but Hypnos always called her down to partake in little slices of death and she had no will of her own to disobey.

Lucy weakened, the fight had debilitated her and she had altered somehow, in the physical aspect she had become wan, in that of the mind her thoughts drove her to the brink of madness. No matter how hard she tried she could not prevent the fever dreams. Lucy saw Jonathan take the cross she had given him from his neck and she saw it split in two- light and darkness fell over both sides of the earth, fate crashed into her world like a comet slamming into a planet. Jonathan's vows of love became indefinable echoes that got mixed up with the explosive sound of devastation and annihilation that masqueraded as a wondrous choir singing in her head. The noise of her blood boiling in her veins rose to a turbulent cacophony. It was Mina gently shaking her that woke Lucy from her slumber. She was happy that Mina had woken her but she knew it would not be too much longer before the dark would claim her eyes again and the phantasms return, not too long before she may not wake again. At first, for some odd reason, Lucy didn't quite recognise Mina. Her sister-in-law looked like an angel, golden and beautiful and leaning over the bedside, shimmering, unreal. Lucy gave a slight whimper and an unaccountable agony drew upon her soul. Mina smiled, perched over Lucy's headstone, beatific above the grave. She was the image of a Seraph that Lucy and Jonathan had sat beneath in the cliff-top cemetery. There, near the ruined abbey, so far away from everything that was real. Mina's golden head was ringed with the flaming aureole of a dying sun, with outstretched arms- doves' wings, her face radiant. The angel was welcoming Lucy into heaven, but that was not where Lucy wished to go. Mina touched Lucy's cheek. It was sad to know that Mina was not made of sculptured marble but was only composed of flesh and blood as was she, reserved for death and decay. Knowing this meant that Mina too must die, just as she herself must die- die even as she was slipping beyond the deep gulf and fast approaching eternity. Death would send the worm to eat her flesh, though Lucy was not entirely certain that the darkness would be final. Something other burned there just beyond the reaches of the dream, Lucy knew it but she didn't understand why or even how she knew. If she reached out her hand maybe she could touch it, but instead her feeble fingers stroked Mina's cheek.

'Jonathan will be home soon, I know it. It's a premonition that I have.' Lucy tried to sound joyous at the prospect, but her voice was listless and her movements lethargic. With a pale face that looked exhausted, and with lips that had become almost colourless, her mien betrayed her true feelings. She knew, and she did not know how she knew, that Jonathan would not come back to her, but she had to lie to Mina, there was nothing else she could do. If she admitted to the presage of doom that clouded up her senses Mina would fret and stress and then Lucy would have no peace at all. 'Go on, you two, put it down to the delirious ravings of a sick person, but you see if I'm not right. Jonathan will be home inside of a week. Then we'll see how long I remain an invalid. I'll get better when he returns, you'll see. I won't need old pompous Doctor Seward to tell me he doesn't know what's wrong with me.'

Lucy's words were untruths, and Mina had no wish to hear them without bringing herself to the brink of tears. Regardless of how Lucy talked of Jonathan as a hero, she must eventually learn the awful truth that he was dead. It was the fate of all women, thought Mina, her heart aching, to be trapped in a tower room, coveted like an ornament that sometimes caught a glimmer of sunlight through a bar-grilled window. That's what marriage turned out to be… that's what had happened to her and so it might have been for Lucy had it not been for Jonathan's untimely death. Mina had no doubt. It was not that she thought Arthur a bad person, but he had all of life's privilege, for he could come and go, and make decisions and never needed to ask the right while she sat dutifully on the sofa threading her needlepoint. Arthur could take her too, upon his own behest, but it was like making love to a waxwork, and their love never saw the fruit of a child. Mina cast a quick glance at her husband, but he only stood stoically at Lucy's bed end, and he harboured not one clue as to the profundity of her inner thoughts. After their marriage, Mina had soon become bored and lonely, despite Arthur presenting her to the wealthy men with whom he made business deals. With only Lucy for company, Mina found that her sister-in-law's interests were not her own. Lucy was quite smart, and vivacious, but still seemed accepting of life's conditions, yet Mina had glimpsed the same fate for unhappiness laid out for Lucy as had been laid out for herself. For Jonathan would have soon retreated to his world of books and to the company of his friend Doctor Van Helsing, spending weeks, months, years, eons in Utrecht, while the world passed Lucy by and the cobwebs gathered over the mantle. The prophecy for Lucy's conjugal bliss would also have tilled a fallow field.

'I won't be a trouble to Doctor Seward or any of you,' said Lucy as she looked to the worried face of her brother standing at the foot of the bed. Arthur, completely unaware of his wife's feelings, was just as bewildered as everyone about the sudden illness that was consuming his sister.
'Lucy,' Mina spoke gently, surprised by the abrupt and destructive thoughts she had suddenly been having about her husband. 'You are no trouble to anyone.' Mina folded back the rumpled sheet and smoothed it over the coverlet. How could they possibly broach the subject of Jonathan's death now? It was unthinkable and unnecessarily cruel. Instead Mina forced a warm smile and whispered, 'Of course, dear. Why don't you lie here and try to get some sleep? Now, rest. Here, let me take one of those pillows.' It seemed a silly thing to say when the pretty young woman had been in and out of slumber all day, but Mina knew that rest was the best she could offer Lucy for the present. Mina removed one of the pillows and Lucy sank back into her bower. 'You've got to get some colour back into those cheeks.'
'Sleep,' thought Lucy, 'but there's no rest in sleep for me, because sleep has no place it can call its own.'
'Good night, Lucy.'
'Good night, Mina. Good night, Arthur. And stop standing there like a big brother, looking all ferocious!'
Awkwardly Arthur approached the sickly form of his sister and stooping rigidly, lightly kissed her niveous cheek. Her skin was clammy to his lips.
'My, we are affectionate this evening.' Lucy managed a smile, though she wanted nothing better than to be left alone. 'Now why don't the two of you go into the parlour and turn down the lamps ...or has love's novelty worn off?'
Arthur gave his wife an embarrassed glance. Lucy laughed, mocking them both. What one did in private, Mina thought, should be secret and not subject to the scrutiny of others. This remark of Lucy's made Mina uncomfortable, that her sister-in-law should imply an intersection in their lives between the proper and the carnal.
'What's the matter with you two this evening? You're like a couple of old bears!'
'It's nothing dear, you're imagining things. Now try and sleep well,' said Mina, more than a little disturbed by Lucy's suddenly overt suggestions. The young woman's words had implied a longing for sensual knowledge, but such ruminating could only lead to debasement and degradation. Some things should remain a mystery, and perturbed as she was, Mina dimmed the lamp, knowing full well that Lucy would not go to sleep.
'I'll try.' Lucy frowned as Arthur and Mina left the room and shut the door.
The dark was whispering in her ear, she could hear it quite clearly, and it was wonderful. Some twisted sorcery had given her a sense of hearing that she had never possessed before, and she was enchanted. Lucy became auditor to an aria that sounded from the world beyond her window. She listened intently to all the notes that were and were not, to the morbidly intense musical scales of the night that invited her to a yearning, crepuscular dance all about the stifling confines of her bedroom. The song was of the spirit and the spirit dwelt in darkness. There was excitement in the black song, it made her heart beat faster and let her hear the music of the night as she had never heard it before. Its lyrics were ineradicable, sung deep within the flesh, a calling from the realm of things unknown, a place where stars were drawn to destruction in the black folds of velvet space, where reality was blotted out, where white clouds were stirred through with ink and consumed and devoured. It was a place where a choir of dark angels sang the most beautiful music ever played for the ear, luring the spirit to cantillate the flesh. It compelled Lucy to climb from her sickbed and open the French doors of her room, the doors that opened into the garden. Half-fainting from the exertion, the young woman found the strength and obeyed. Lucy pushed back her covers and got out of bed. Unsteadily she tottered to her bedroom door and paused there, holding her breath, listening till Arthur and Mina's footsteps had receded down the hall and into nothingness. When she was certain that they would not hear her moving about the room, she crept unsteadily across the cold floor and opened the French windows.
She looked up to the night sky and she beheld the stars as no one alive has even seen them before. They were all the colours of the spectrum, bright blues and reds and green and gold, and they swathed across the spinning galaxy and made her vision reel. The light of the moon was pewter and a radiant beam spangled in the glass of the doors. In that silvered pane, she caught a glimpse of herself, skin as white as the nightdress she wore, her hair a flowing red cloud lifted in the wind as it blew through, scattering a drift of desiccated leaves with its chill breath. Lucy wore a chain looped about her throat, a seven-inch long crucifix that hung from a silver clasp. How it irritated her skin, infecting her and distorting her desires. Lucy reached up and pulled sharply at the chain, snapping it in twain, the metal links leaving a crimson scratch on her neck. Pulling open a drawer in her bedside dresser she dropped the Christ unceremoniously into it and hastily shoved the drawer shut. When she had done this, she returned to her bed to lie down, her head reeling, the room spinning with a maelstrom of whirling leaves. Tonight, she would again answer the invitation that would take her to the dark depths of the soul, into the dangerous realm of the senses. An apocryphal promise sang with the wind, calling to the moon, and her fingertips went up to her throat and lightly touched the satiny skin of her neck. Gently Lucy stroked the two scars imprinted thereon, and scarlet blood welled forth like new born buds.

In another part of Karlstadt, in his suite at the Central Hôtel, Doctor Van Helsing was working late, rattling his brain over the things Jonathan Harker had recorded in his diary. Tired after his travels from Utrecht and the wilds of Transylvania, the Doctor had gone directly to see the Holmwood's, but his interview had afforded none of them any peace. The evening now found him pacing up and down as he read and simultaneously concentrated on the tinny voice crackling from his gramophone. As a scientist, he considered the contraption a device with which to enhance his researches and he was happy for its convenience, he could recall any piece of information at any time, simply by hooking up the trumpet and changing the waxen cylinder. He listened as he skimmed Jonathan's notes. The phonograph stylus slipped in a zigzag over its spinning waxen cylinder, the vibration and the earphone diaphragm decoding the duplication of Van Helsing's own voice. It was truly a marvel. He had a pencil in his right hand and he underlined and annotated references of interest as he paced and listened.
'Upon entering the bedroom, I discovered Jonathan Harker's belongings strewn across the room. The lining of his bag had been torn out in a manner to suggest that someone had been making a desperate search for something. For what? For Jonathan's diary?'
The cylinder continued to revolve and the gramophone to speak.
'On the floor, I discovered a silver portrait frame. The glass was shattered and the portrait had been ripped out. A torn piece still remained in one corner...'
Van Helsing was interrupted by a knock on the door. The Doctor had earlier rung for the porter, but this was not he, for the door opened and there stood the hôtel's under-manager. The man glanced nervously at Van Helsing's recording machine. Van Helsing lifted the needle from the cylinder and the voice ceased.
'Well?' The Doctor asked, perplexed.
'A thousand apologies for disturbing you, Doctor Van Helsing, it is necessary to ascertain when you consider you will be vacating this suite of rooms. Other clients... You understand?'
'I don't know yet,' responded the Doctor. 'Possibly tomorrow, possibly not. I'll let you know.'
Van Helsing waved his hand in dismissal.
'The manager would consider it a personal favour if you gave him as much notice as...'
'I said I would let you know.' Van Helsing found the man irritating. 'Well, goodnight then.' With a final glance at Van Helsing's infernal machine, and unsure if he had made his point clear enough, the under-manager departed. The hôtel had a reputation to uphold and eccentrics unfortunately discouraged patronage.
The Doctor did not know how long he would have to stay, for instinct told him there was something yet to be accomplished. He did not know exactly what, and shaking his head, he returned to his dictaphone.
'The glass was shattered and the portrait had been ripped out. A torn piece remained in one corner. Whose portrait, was it? Was it that of Jonathan's fiancée, Lucy? If so, why had Dracula taken it? What could he have wanted with it?'
He ceased pacing and sat down in a chair, crossed his legs and massaged his forehead, pondering the words. There was so much to think about, but the danger was real and close, he sensed it throbbing obscenely in the shadows of his mind. Van Helsing stood again and returned to his recording machine and replaced the cylinder with another.
'Research on vampires.' Van Helsing's voice spoke from the gramophone, 'Certain basic facts established.'
'1: Light,' his recorded voice continued, 'the vampire allergic to light. Never ventures forth in the daytime. Sunlight fatal...repeat...fatal. Would destroy them.'
Van Helsing located a page that he had previously bookmarked. His note speculated as to why this was so, that the evidence suggested the photosensitive nature of the undead. His thesis proposed that vampires were ostensibly nocturnal and fanged and stealthy by nature, that they attacked quickly and violently like predatory animals and secreted themselves in dark places during the day. The grave was the perfect place to hide recumbent. The world of optical daylight was forbidden them, and exposure to the sun's rays must scour their dead flesh and dissolve their bones. What was it about the light that streamed from the heavens and suggested the spiritual as it burst bright and glorious through the edges of the atmosphere? Being a specialist in the field of blood research, Van Helsing had studied strange anomalies and blood disorders. He knew that porhyria caused a flaw in the body's ability to metabolise the red pigment of blood. With the disease came a fearful sensitivity of the sun, for the ailment, the porhyrins, unthreatening in the dark, became lethally active in the sunlight. Could this suggest the evolution of the vampire? Van Helsing was almost certain that the disease, not the solar disc, most certainly lay at the root of the myth, though the sun, blazing with fire, equally seared and stimulated life. Harnessing the sun's power to slay the vampire by luring the fiend into its rays was gruesome and the resultant dissolution barbaric, but it seemed to propose the most ancient and purifying method by which people had defended themselves against this hideous pest. The vampire was essentially a creature of darkness so it stood to good reason that exposing it to sunlight would prove fatal.
'2: Garlic. Vampires repelled by odour of garlic.'
Pausing for a short, contemplative moment, his pencil hanging in mid-air, Van Helsing was lost in thought. Garlic, as far as he understood it, had its mythical roots in the Roman God of War, Mars, and this would account for its repulsive properties. More likely the herb was hot to the taste, thus accounting for its fiery and warlike notoriety. This connection may also have led to the distinct scientific possibility that the properties of garlic could somehow alter the body's chemistry. Van Helsing surmised that this ability had proved effective in repelling some species of blood-drinking insects and that likely it stood the same for human vampires as well. This thought led to the next, that vampires must sleep in a bed of their own grave earth. If the demon issued forth at night from his unhallowed grave to spread the infection of vampirism throughout the countryside, how did one seal it in its crypt? That the undead rose at night was not contested, but Van Helsing conjectured that the garlic plant contained chemicals that worsened the porphiric symptoms. Smearing the garlic oils might afford a tangible barrier that the vampire could not cross. He recalled to mind the garlic hanging in the Klausenburgh inn.
'Memo: Check final arrangements with Harker before he leaves for Klausenburgh.'
A pang of guilt assailed him, and that was an unforgivable responsibility for his friend's death. Rationale told him that he should put these feelings aside. Both men had known the risks of the journey to Transylvania, and all in the name of science. Harker had youth on his side and in the guise of a new librarian his ruse should have gone undetected, but fate had intervened horribly. Both men had gone over their plans countless times before Harker had set out, yet only death and tragedy had come of it eventually. It made Van Helsing both sad and angry and it filled him with loss too. Harker had not died pointlessly, for though the young man would have contended that Dracula was a madman, Van Helsing understood that there were some things that defied explanation. Yes, he was an erudite man, devoted to research, but there was something unshakable in faith, and he knew that somewhere between Dracula's world and his, faith and proselytism must ultimately clash. He would like to have proved the vampire a scientific aberration, and not supernatural by design, though all the evidence emerging suggested the contrary. The ambiguity confused Van Helsing.
'3: The crucifix, symbolising the power of good over evil. The power of the crucifix in these cases...'
Another knock sounded at the door, interrupting his reverie. Van Helsing marked his page by placing the pencil at length along the spine and closed it, rose from his chair and set the red bound journal on the desk beside the gramophone. He switched the machine off.
'Come in.'
The door opened and the hôtel porter entered, dressed in his uniform black pants and yellow shirt, his black bow tie and deep green apron completing the appearance of absolute efficiency.
'You rang, sir?'
'Oh, yes. I want this letter delivered first thing in the morning. Will you see to that?'
'Yes.'
Van Helsing strode to his writing desk and picked up an envelope then fished a few coins out of his pocket and handed all to the valet. The letter was a brief note to Lucy Holmwood, asking her permission for him to deliver a few personal articles of Jonathan's. Unfortunately he had no way of knowing that the Holmwood's had not yet told the young woman that her beau was dead, nor that she was ill. Van Helsing walked back and stood near his recording machine.
'Thank you,' the Doctor said as he turned away and reached once more for the diary.
'Thank you, sir.' Yet there was something in the valet's tone that made Van Helsing hesitate and turn about to face the man. He was greeted by a look of confusion.
'Anything the matter?' The man stammered, wanting to say something but not wanting to sound ridiculous or prying. 'What is it?' Van Helsing's face was blank.
'Well, I… To tell you the truth, sir, when I was outside I thought I heard you…' he paused in hesitant confusion, 'talking to someone.'
'Well of course you did,' replied Van Helsing. 'I was talking to myself.'
The porter returned a look of dismay and shrugged, unable to fathom at all what was happening. Perhaps this guest had lost some of his wits.
'You won't forget that letter, will you?' Van Helsing reminded the man, oblivious to the manservant's uncertainty.
'No, sir.' He looked at the letter in his hands and nodded. 'Yes.' Bewildered he left the room.
The Doctor gave a little knowing smile. This was the way the world was headed, he thought, and how straight and neatly organised new technology was, pointing the way ahead even if it left the old ways in the dust of its path. The new way would probably never catch the likes of his porter in their grasp. Yet the new direction of the modern world must still leave room for the old, for the unknown and for the metaphysical. At some point the worlds must surely collide. Van Helsing nodded his head, as if to reaffirm and to justify his views, but this train of thought quickly faded because the business at hand was pressing and important. People's lives depended on the outcome of his research. Van Helsing opened the diary and switched the phonograph back on. His voice picked up from where it had left off:
'The power of the crucifix in these cases is twofold. It protects the normal human being but reveals the vampire or victim of this vile contagion when in advanced stages.'

Van Helsing, paused in deep thought and rubbed his chin. This aversion to faith might be simply psychological, as he could think of no justification for the vampire fearing the cross other than the suggestion once again that the true power lay in the belief, not the object. Perhaps it was the collision of light and dark, of good and evil locked in their eternal battle over the body and the mind that caused the vampire's metaphysical conflict. The crucifix itself was a symbol of torture. Maybe it was partly that too, that in the image of the cross the vampire should be reminded of its own unending agonies. Even so, the demarcation line between faith and defiance was at best obscure. The vampire, although its foul lusts seemed born of hell and its form spectral, may have mutated from something credible. Thus, thought Van Helsing, the creature was not completely intangible. Although it possessed a body that was like that of a corpse, it was one that remained incorruptible and did not decompose in its sleeping place. In the tomb, locked away from the sunlight, its power seemed stronger if one believed. For to believe that such a monster existed was an admission to faith, and had not Jesus arisen after three days in the tomb, uncorrupted? Like Christ, the vampire, whose heart had stopped beating, whose blood had stopped flowing reached out seductively from the confines of the grave. That the tainted earth was the only place where the vampire could find rest was yet to present as veritable fact. Nonetheless, Van Helsing admitted that the grave was for mortals a place of death and of final dissolution, an enclosure that the living found filthy and contaminated, foul and disgusting and dark.

As Van Helsing read on, jotting down more notes in the margins, he began to affirm that the vampire was a complex creature and that he was now faced with a most nasty foe. At length, he marked his page once again with his pencil and replaced it on the bench. He reset the gramophone stylus so that it would cut a new track pattern into the waxen cylinder, switched it on and picked up the mouthpiece. He began to speak into it quite clearly and seriously.
'Established that victims consciously detest being dominated by vampirism but are unable to relinquish the practice, similar to addiction to drugs. Ultimately, death results from loss of blood. However, unlike normal death, no peace manifests itself for they enter into the fearful state of the undead. Since the death of Jonathan Harker, Count Dracula, the propagator of this unspeakable evil, has disappeared. He must be found and destroyed.'
In another part of Karlstadt the wind shivered in through Lucy's open window, scattering moon-burnt leaves in its wake. With the wind came the evil. It was splendid in its dark beauty. It had eyes that smouldered like live coals. Something of the twilight and of the elusive and the unreal wrapped its form. In the muted light the dark swarmed with silver-grey and indigo, it moulded a chiselled shape from dreams and tormented lusts. Lucy watched it come to her taking on a more solid form as it approached, still unfinished, cryptic and mysterious. She wanted so much to soar to the heights of Heaven and then be plunged to the depths of Hell.
Lucy would refuse neither option. Dark Angel, Seraph, this was illusion and it blurred the boundaries of what was real and what was not. In its arms, she wished to be unchaste, to partake of carnal joys.

The adumbration was the realisation of her unconscious sin, swelling into the form of the erect phallos, the generative power of dust and darkness. It pulsed and throbbed and moved closer, with kisses and caresses and erotic delights that to Lucy had hitherto been unknown. Not one thought of Jonathan was left to her mind. Who was Jonathan Harker? The name belonged to no person with whom she was familiar. Lucy dared not even blink in case the spell of binding was broken. It was a lure and it covered her. The darkness sang its music, plucked blackened harp strings and conjured songs of the flesh from the depths of the Abyss. The light ebbed and dipped as a cloud obscured the moon and the coloured stars burst into a golden cascade. A strange agony began to spread fire through her body. The pain started at her throat, at the wounds she had touched when she had taken off the cross, and with the pain there was pleasure. A wave of ultimate ecstasy crested over Lucy's flesh, and in its pulling tide it littered glittering chaos. Lucy passed from apathy to glory in the space of a heartbeat and she let the darkness sing her down to even darker dreams.

6: Doctors And Domestics

Gerda opened the door. Doctor Seward was standing on the doorstep with his Gladstone bag in hand, and as the weather had suddenly turned quite cold, he was all buttoned up in a black Livingston town coat.
'Good morning,' said Seward, but he did not smile.
'Gerda, is that Doctor Seward?' Mina asked, coming from Lucy's bedroom. The beautiful woman picked up her skirts and turned towards the reception.
'Yes ma'am.'
'Good morning Doctor Seward, I am so glad you could come.' Mina extended her hand in greeting and the doctor smiled superficially, removing his coat and passing it to Gerda.
'I came as soon as I got your message, my dear.'
'Thank you,' returned Mina. 'I am afraid that Lucy's worse, Doctor, much worse.'
'I see,' said Seward, thoughtfully. 'Well, it's no more than I expected.'
'That'll be all thank you, Gerda.'
'Yes ma'am.'
The housekeeper gave a slight whimper upon hearing Seward speak so about Miss Lucy, and she turned aside and hung his coat upon a peg. The Doctor and Mina watched Gerda until she disappeared into the servant's quarters, and then they walked together, slowly, back towards Lucy's room.
'It seems quite a chill has set in,' remarked Seward to Mina. 'I suspect that Miss Lucy has caught a chill, no doubt.'
'Poor Gerda,' Mina sighed. 'She does love Lucy so. She can't bear that she should be ill.'
'Domestics are all the same,' Seward replied dismissively. There was a cold and aloof tone to his words and a harshness to the set of his mouth. 'Sometimes they form unhealthy attachments to those for whom they work.'
'Oh, I don't think that there is anything unhealthy in the way that Gerda feels.' Mina had to admit that Doctor Seward's contention seemed overly severe. Gerda was almost part of the family. 'She has a little girl you know, Tania. Lucy is good to her.' One should be charitable...
They stopped outside of Lucy's bedroom.
'Be that as it may,' the Doctor warned, 'but a domestic has a place and that place is in the kitchen. Shall we go in?'
Chastised yet again, by another man, and delegated woman's true domain, to be subservian, meek and docile, Mina, in that moment, regarded him a pompous fool. Should she defy his counsel he would no doubt report her to Arthur for her folly.
'Of course,' was all Mina could manage, biting down on her tongue so as to stop any other words erupting forth. She knocked lightly on the panel and opened Lucy's door.
Lucy was stretched out in her bed, under the covers, quiet and seeming to sleep. She was not responsive as the Doctor came up beside her bed. Doctor Seward picked up her limp wrist and pressed his fingers into her flesh to detect her pulse. It was rhythmic, but not vigorous.
'She has been like this since sunrise, when I came to wake her,' ventured Mina. 'She hasn't stirred.'
Seward made a non-committal noise in his throat. Leaning over the young woman he raised her eyelids, but still she did not move.
'What is it, Doctor?' Mina was apprehensive and had begun to clasp and unclasp her hands.
'It is difficult to put her condition into words,' the Doctor spoke with a lofty hauteur, 'that the layman would understand. I'm afraid.'
The man's conceit was unabashed, and Mina began to resent his derisive attitude. How could the lesser female brain ever hope to understand the inticacies of medicine?! Even the most basic medical diagnosis was exclusively the domain of men, for what would a mere woman know in her feminine ignorance?
'Is there nothing you can tell me?'
'I suspect that it may be a rare form of anaemia. That's probably what's sapping her strength.'
'What about those marks on her neck?' Mina was disturbed that Doctor Seward had not even bothered with a further physical examination other than a cursory glance.
'What marks?'
'There, look...' Mina pointed to Lucy's neck. He was blind too!
Seward noted the two crimson scars imprinted on the young woman's throat, but imagining them unconnected with blood loss, he disregarded them, and after a moment stood straight and made another indistinct sound.
'They have nothing to do with her condition,' he asserted, but Mina was troubled and far from convinced that they were unimportant.
'Then what are they?'
'Just some form of sting. A mosquito, perhaps?'
Seward could not attest to the nature of the marks. Distressed by his swagger, Mina wished to argue that he was no final authority and that his diagnosis was nothing more than a veil for ignorance. Doctor Seward and Mina stepped from Lucy's bedroom and Mina closed the door. She took from her skirt pocket an envelope that had been delivered to her an hour before, a note from Doctor Van Helsing that had been addressed to Lucy. Mina had read the letter it contained three times over and had wrestled with her mind as the most appropriate action. Confused, Mina challenged Doctor Seward for more information.
'She seems so much weaker, Doctor.'
'It's a puzzling case, Mrs. Holmwood,' Doctor Seward admitted at last. 'The symptoms are those of anaemia, and I will be treating her for this. It can be a slow process, of course. I hope for more encouraging signs soon. You will need to keep on with the treatment I have prescribed, and make sure she gets plenty of fresh air and red meats...'
'Your ammonia and squills have done little good. If anything, she seems worse afterwards.'
'Please,' returned the physician bluntly, irritated that a mere woman should challenge him and question his diagnosis. 'Let me be the judge of that.'
'All right, Doctor,' Mina conceded reluctantly. 'I will show you out.'
They moved away from the bedroom door and the Doctor put down his bag. Mina gathered up his coat and began to help him into it, unhappy that his visit was all but wasted. Upon that moment, the housemaid's child Tania ran into the room and came up to Mina.
'Please, may I see Aunty Lucy?' she asked, her pretty heart-shaped face tortured with concern.
'Not today, Tania,' Mina told her gently.
'Most definitely not today,' emphasised Seward.
A look of confusion and hurt passed over Tania's innocent little brow. 'Is she ill?' It seemed a strange concept for Tania to understand, that Aunt Lucy could get sick so quickly and that she was not allowed to see her.
'I'm afraid so.'
Tania shook her head in consternation then cast her blue eyes up to Doctor Seward's face.
'Do you know what's wrong with her?' she asked.
'Of course, I do.'
'Then why don't you make her better?' Tania was awfully direct; her words were almost an accusation and they startled both Mina and Doctor Seward. How could Tania make them understand that all she wanted was for Lucy to get better so that the two of them could play once again in the garden? She loved it when they played hide and seek and when Lucy read to her and helped her learn her alphabet. It had been over a week since they had visited the rose arbour. Aunty Lucy had to get better; it didn't seem fair.
'Hush, Tania,' said Mina, reaching out to hold the child's hand.
'Well, why doesn't he make her better? He's the Doctor! My mummy says...'
'Tania,' Mina gently reprimanded, feeling the ire almost burst from the physician. 'We don't want to know what mummy says. Now run along, there's a good girl.'
Doctor Seward could provide no answer that might make the child, or anyone for that matter, feel any more at ease. In fact, he couldn't say for certain that Lucy would get better, she seemed to be slipping away and quite rapidly. Of course, there were different manifestations of the condition, but none of them seemed to apply to Lucy. Her illness had been so rapid that a hereditary cause must be ruled out, she was not with child and she obviously partook of a proper diet. Perhaps it was linked to her menses, but she did not appear to be in that time of month. The blood loss was startling, yes, and Doctor Seward wanted to tell Mrs. Holmwood that he suspected the condition could get worse. Arching his bushy eyebrows, he maintained a resentful silence, because the truth of the matter was that he just didn't know what to do. Inside though, he was not overly vexed. Women always manifested some form of trouble before their cycle began, it was a common story. Mina was staring at him in earnest and the child's interrogation had only made him appear inept and useless, which he sorely resented. Gerda came bustling in and took her daughter by the hand.
'Tania, how many times have I told you not to go bothering Mrs. Holmwood? I'm sorry ma'am.'
'That's all right, Gerda.'
'I only wanted to see Aunt Lucy,' Tania wailed.
'Well you can't,' said her mother sternly. 'Now come back to the kitchen.'
Gerda too felt anxious about Lucy's health but she was embarrassed also for her child's directness. Hugging Tania, and gently reprimanding the child for her directness, Gerda led her from the room. Doctor Seward put on his gloves.
'A child's logic can be most disconcerting,' Seward quietly muttered to himself.
'Yes.' Mina replied, removing the letter again from her pocket and slipping a finger along the edge of the envelope. She dared a quick glance at Doctor Seward but it seemed his thoughts were concerned wholly elsewhere. She wanted to tell him that this diagnosis wasn't enough, that there had to be a reason for this sudden and terrible change in Lucy's health.
'You give me the impression that you would like a second opinion, Mrs. Holmwood?' The physician, in a flash of psychic advocacy, might have read her mind. The thought did not seem to make him happy.
'Thank you, doctor,' she replied graciously, trying not to sound artlessly ungrateful, although he was as pompous an individual as one was ever likely to encounter among the medical men of Karlstadt. 'I'd like to think about it.'
Seward was noticeably disgruntled by the suggestion as they crossed to the main door and Mina opened it and saw him through.
'Well, carry on with the medicine and diet I've prescribed, and plenty of fresh air. You might even leave the garden doors open tonight.' However, despite his words, he held that Mina Holmwood had been transported from reality and that her imprudence amounted to disrespect. Nonetheless, that was just what he expected from any hysterical woman. 'Hopefully,' he muttered sceptically, 'we'll soon blow the germs out of her system.'
'Yes, Doctor. Good day to you.'
'Good day.' Seward replied haughtily, and put on his hat and curtly walked away, thinking that any second opinion would prove useless. How churlish this woman was, and let her foolishness be upon her own head.
When Doctor Seward had disappeared through the front gate Mina closed the door and opened the envelope again, re-reading the letter. She bit down on her lower lip and made up her mind what she must do.
Doctor Van Helsing was gathering the last of Jonathan's things together into a Gladstone bag. He had decided to take them over to the Holmwood's himself, as he had received no reply to his request; these things, especially the diary, might prove for them the key to their understanding of the young man's death. Jonathan's own words would give a voice to the many inexplicable things that Van Helsing's reserve could not. The Holmwood's might understand Jonathan where they could not trust him. Van Helsing was putting the diary into his pocket when the knock sounded at the door.
'I'm so glad you could come, Miss Lucy. I was just...'
Van Helsing turned as he spoke, snapping the Gladstone bag closed just as the porter showed Mina Holmwood into the room. There followed an awkward silence.
'Good morning.' Mina gave Van Helsing a wan smile. She was holding the letter.
'Mrs. Holmwood,' he greeted her, half surprised. 'How good of you to come.'
Mina appeared terribly worried, her beautiful face was drawn with shadows and her eyes were wide, furtive and imploring. Van Helsing politely removed the bag from the chair, brushed away the dust that wasn't upon the upholstery and motioned with his hand that Mrs. Holmwood should sit down.
'Thank you.'
'I see that the note that I sent to Miss Lucy was intercepted... By your husband?'
'No, it was I.'
'No matter,' said Van Helsing, and his voice was gracious. 'It was simply that I wanted Miss Lucy to have these. They were Jonathan's.' Van Helsing indicated Harker's belongings, the contents of the Gladstone bag, and he frowned, registering Mina's concern.
'You did mention in your letter some things of Jonathan's,' Mina began conversationally, but her tone belied her unease, that of course was not the reason why she had come. Separated from the exacting statutes of her home she appeared changed, somehow vulnerable now and alone. She was wearing a chequered woolen skirt and a fur, to keep warm against the sudden cold that had gripped the city. Van Helsing had noted that the weather had become remarkably chilly and though it was spring it was as if winter had abruptly returned with a vengeance.
'Yes,' said Van Helsing, quickly concluding that her concerns were not those stated. 'I have them ready. I would have brought them around myself but…' He lifted the bag to indicate that such had been his intention but found himself unable to finish the sentence. Mrs. Holmwood managed a faint smile to reassure him that she understood his reserve.
'I do understand,' she said, pausing briefly and dropping her eyes, 'but you must appreciate Mr. Holmwood was upset.'
'Of course,' said Van Helsing, inwardly chastising himself for his earlier judgment. 'I only wish I could have been more helpful.'
Mina's emotions were starting to get the better of her and it had been difficult enough without the extra worry of Lucy's sudden loss of health.
'How did Miss Lucy take the news?' Van Helsing asked, knowing almost instinctively that Mina had not told her sister-in-law of Jonathan's fate.
'We haven't told her yet,' she admitted quietly. 'She's ill.'
A visible look of consternation made itself evident in Van Helsing's face. He placed the bag on the table and returned to Mina.
'I'm sorry to hear that. I wish her a speedy recovery. May I ask, what is the nature of the illness?'
At this Mina, almost broke into tears. 'It was all so sudden,' she managed, struggling with her composure. 'It happened about ten days ago. Our family doctor says its anaemia but I'm most unhappy about it.'
Mina looked into Van Helsing's face and there was a plea in her eyes that no man could have refused. She had heard that Van Helsing was a blood specialist, the best in his field and learned in such things, and his knowledge of conditions like the one that now afflicted Lucy, presented an irrefutable connection. Mina knew instinctively the moment that she had interviewed the man, and then received his letter, that here was someone who seemed peculiar but also someone who might understand. Van Helsing appeared confident but not arrogant, and perhaps he alone held the solution, he might be her only chance of saving Lucy. Doctor Seward had not announced the severity of Lucy's imminent danger of dying, but Mina did not have to be told. It was in that ghastly moment of Mina's helplessness that Van Helsing remembered the silver picture frame he had put into the bag. When he turned away abruptly, Mina thought she had implied something terrible about Doctor Seward.
'Oh, I've nothing against Doctor Seward, please don't think that,' she lied, feeling like a hypocrite as the words left her lips, 'but, well, he did say I could have another opinion.'
Van Helsing nodded his understanding but made it quite evident that none of that was important right now.
'I'd like to see her at once, and this time your husband must not stop me.'
Mina stood up and her voice was suddenly urgent. 'Oh, I'd be so grateful.'
'If you'll excuse me…' Van Helsing turned and proceeded to gather his things together, Mina watching him with eyes that pleaded in fear. That she had done the right thing in coming to Van Helsing gave her a short moment of relief. If anyone could help Lucy she knew it was this man.
Lucy already looked like a corpse. Her face had faded to the pastel shade of vaguely pink-tinged chalk, almost indefinable from the bed linen upon which her auburn hair flowed. Her cheeks had sunken to the point where the bones were prominent and her blue eyes had lost their sparkle; those pink lips had lost the colour of the camellia that had bloomed down by the arbour. Mina approached the bed.
'Lucy,' she said gently and although it was painful to look upon Lucy in this condition, to see this ghastly caricature of the lovely young woman Lucy had been, Mina took her hand and stroked it. That hand was so cold. Lucy could hardly even manage the shadow of a smile.
'Hello Mina... I was asleep.'
'I know dear. I've brought someone to see you… Doctor Van Helsing. He's a friend of Jonathan's.' Mina let go of Lucy's hand and gently placed it on the quilt. Mina noticed that for some odd reason Lucy did not look upon the Doctor, but rather her gaze deliberately avoided his face and instead she glanced beyond him. It was as if he didn't exist, or if she did not want him to exist.
'Miss Lucy,' said Van Helsing, coming up to her bedside and sitting close. He reached out and picked up the same hand Mina had held, and he too noted how remarkably cold it was. He felt for a pulse. It was difficult to find it, but it was there, his fingertip at last finding the faint vacillations of Lucy's heartbeat. The subdued pumping of her heart and the sluggish flow of her blood were but weak ripples under her skin. As he did this, Doctor Van Helsing glanced about the room. In a vase on a bedside table were a handful of daffodils, all their yellow chalices were drooping and their jade stems were beginning to bend.
'What lovely flowers,' Van Helsing remarked softly, yet Lucy said nothing. Mina looked to the flowers and could not believe that Gerda had only filled the vase fresh that morning. Lucy smiled at Mina and there was something disturbing in that smile, a smile that knew a secret knowledge that could not be shared. Uncomfortably Mrs. Holmwood went to stand by the foot board and curled her fingers tightly about its carved edge. There seemed to be something unsettling about Lucy other than the fact that she resembled death warmed up, it was something in that haunting, chilling smile, especially when she looked upon you. Still Lucy refused to look at Van Helsing. Mina turned and was about to address Van Helsing when Lucy abruptly spoke.
'Jonathan is dead, isn't he?' Her statement was so direct that it took both Mina and Van Helsing by surprise. Mina could not respond, not even a shrug of the shoulders, for her own voice had frozen in her throat. Van Helsing came to her rescue and nodded the affirmative.
'I'm sorry,' he apologised but Lucy dismissed him with a flicker of her frosty eyes.
'Did Arthur tell you?' Mina managed to respond, even though she knew that Arthur would never have had said a word.
'Nobody told me,' Lucy returned coldly, it was hardly Lucy's sweet voice at all. 'I just knew. Is that why Doctor Helsing is here?'
At this point she deigned turn her glacial stare upon Van Helsing. A shock of evil passed through the Doctor's body, but he suppressed it, and he knew what he was going to find even before he went looking for it, even as she glared.
'Partly,' he began, never once losing his composure.
'Doctor Van Helsing is a Specialist,' Mina told Lucy, stammering slightly, her voice quivering as it teetered on the brink of tears. 'He's come to help you.'
The auburn-haired woman's stare raked over Van Helsing. There was anger in her face and wariness, as if she knew that this was more than just a friendly consultation. She suspected clandestine intent, knew something was not quite right and of all things she did not want this man's 'help'. Somewhere, deep inside, Lucy fathomed the unthinkable, made the connection between Jonathan and the Doctor. Love's tug-of-war unveiled itself, made clear what Lucy had only ambiguously suspected. An abyss of hatred and loathing suddenly yawned before her, and therein these two men embraced. This man was the reason, the root of Jonathan's deepest inclinations, and Lucy felt betrayed by the man she should have married. Whatever Van Helsing hoped to gain in his mission, whatever he believed, thought Lucy, he was wrong, dead wrong, and she would have him damned for meddling in things he pretended to understand.
'Jonathan has told me so many things about you,' Lucy said to Van Helsing, drawing her lips up into a deceptive smile. 'One must trap the fly with honey,' she told herself, and she simpered.
'Nice things I hope,' Van Helsing smiled back.
'Always nice,' the young woman lied as the Doctor examined her right eye and tilted her head so that he could see her neck. This foul, male creature was nothing more than a clown, who repulsed her and made her feel like a fool. What Jonathan did not do to Van Helsing during the day he did to him at night, in his dreams. For Lucy, her life would have been lived in the dim gulf trapped between foolish morality and lurid reality. She felt as if she were the sparrow hawk, caught in the rose thorns and silently screaming as ity died in the arbour, dying in a welter of sacrificial blood. The thought of Jonathan's true desires disgusted Lucy, and his fatuous vows of love and flattery and caresses were rendered meaningless. It was this man he might carress, this man's flesh he desired, not hers. Nonetheless, she also knew that Van Helsing was ignorant of the fact, but this absurdity did not lessen her hatred for either of them.
'Now let's see.' Van Helsing repeated these same actions to the left of her face. 'Ummm...now here...it's quite alright, I won't hurt you,' he told her reassuringly, softly pushing away the flow of fiery hair to expose the white throat. A little shiver went through his nerve-ends, for thereon the young woman's neck he saw the twin scars, the livid kiss of the vampire, the punctures from which it had fed its lust and tasted the blood of the living. The holes were slightly ragged and the blood was scabbed about the rims. The white skin was bruised from the suction of demonic lips. Van Helsing was inwardly horrified. He knew for certain now what he had only suspected when Mrs. Holmwood had told him that Lucy was ill.
'Dracula has risen from the grave!' he almost blurted aloud, and he only just caught the exclamation before it leapt from his lips. The horror of this was that Lucy was intended as a new concubine, to replace the bride that Jonathan had destroyed. Van Helsing cast his mind back to the moment he had found the remnants of Lucy's torn photograph in what had been Jonathan's bedroom in Dracula's castle, and he saw the rotted remnants of the female corpse in the crypt. He should have realised then but he had been such a fool. Van Helsing straightened Lucy's head upon her pillow and felt for her temperature by placing his hand on her forehead. The young woman remained frightfully cold.
'Now don't you worry,' he told her even though he knew she did not believe him, 'we shall soon have you well again.'
'Goodbye, Doctor,' Lucy said emphatically, and the Doctor stood up. It was as if she were imparting a sly secret to which he did not know the answer, and could do nothing about the impending consequences of his ignorance. Lucy's farewell seemed to threaten an end, but not to this session, but more horribly to the imminent cessation of someone's life, more pointedly his. Van Helsing was not to be so easily frightened. There was a brief silence, one that found Mina even more anxious, for she was no fool and she perceived the unspoken dialogue that passed between Van Helsing and Lucy and deemed it nasty. Van Helsing clutched both of Lucy's hands and gently squeezed them.
'I'm sorry you had a wasted journey,' Lucy said to Van Helsing as he let go of her hands and joined Mina at the end of the bed. A little question furrowed Van Helsing's forehead.
'About Jonathan, I mean,' Lucy added with a transparent simper.
'It wasn't wasted, I promise you,' Van Helsing replied, the frown vanishing. 'Good day, Miss Lucy.'
As the Doctor and Mina left the room whispering, and the door shut fast, a vehement cloud of suppressed fury blanched Lucy's chalky face and she spat upon the floor and glared into nothingness.
Outside in the hall, and out of earshot, Mina was the first to speak.
'How could she have known about Jonathan's death?'
'A premonition,' said Van Helsing. 'It's not uncommon.' His voice was calm but somehow his words were unconvincing. Mina felt that the Doctor suspected there was more to Lucy's condition but could not commit his thoughts to words. Not just yet.
'Her reactions were so contradictory,' Mina said, her blue eyes questioning Van Helsing. 'It worries me, frightens me!'
Doctor Van Helsing placed a temperate hand upon Mina's shoulder and led her to the foyer.
'And you have reason to be frightened, but I'm afraid there are more urgent things to worry about at this moment. Those marks on her neck, when did they first appear?'
'Well, I noticed them first shortly after she became ill,' Mina told him, reflecting hesitantly, trying to fix in her head the exact day. 'I asked her about them, and she said that she thought she'd been stung. It is quite possible, of course. Doctor Seward said she must have plenty of fresh air. The windows were open all the time.'
Van Helsing's tone suddenly became grim and serious and his expression went blank. 'Now I would like to try something... Something that might make her well again.'
'Oh, if only you could... Anything!'
'I am not promising anything, but if you do as I say, I shall know in the morning whether my suspicions are correct. If they are, then perhaps we can think of some way to further a cure.'
'Still, there...'
Van Helsing interrupted her abruptly, cutting off her words. 'Mrs. Holmwood, you called me in for a second opinion. If I am to help your sister-in-law, there are certain things you must do to help me however unorthodox they may appear.'
Mina was confused and did not know what to think. Perhaps she had made a mistake coming to Doctor Van Helsing after all; he was now acting so differently it was difficult to believe it was the same man whose words she had defended in her parlour.
'Yes, I know, but...'
Van Helsing moved in close, so close that his words blew his breath upon her face. 'If you love Miss Lucy, be guided by me, I beg you.'
'I'll do anything to make her well again. What is it that you want to do?'
Van Helsing reached for his coat and began to put it on. 'You must get some garlic flowers, as many as you can.'
'We have plenty of it in the garden...'
'Place them by her windows and her door and by her bedside, both the flowers and the bulbs. Put the flowers in vases and place the vases about Miss Lucy's room. They may be taken out during the day but, under no circumstances, even if the patient implores you, must they be removed at night.'
Mina looked incredulous, for was he talking witchcraft?
'This is...' she stammered, and Van Helsing cut her short.
'Let me finish. Then you must take the bulbs and slice them, and rub them along the doors and the window frames. Seal the room with garlic, if you understand my meaning.'
Mina was confused. Where was the man of science of whom she had asked for help, replaced by a fanatic who now suggested remedies that only a peasant woman might heed? She began to object. 'I can understand your actions, but for the life of me I cannot understand your motives.'
'One other thing... Between the hours of sunset and sunrise, all the windows in her room, with the possible exception of a small fanlight for ventilation, must be kept shut.
'Doctor Seward left instructions to the contrary.'
'I do not care what this Doctor Seward said. I cannot impress upon you strongly enough how important it is that you obey my instructions. Do exactly as I say…' Van Helsing paused as if to emphasise his instructions, 'and we may be able to save her.' He lifted a hand and extended the index finger in front of Mina's face. 'If you don't, she will die.'
Horror froze Mina and she could not speak.
'I'll be here in the morning,' Van Helsing reassured her, his voice falsely comforting. Reaching up he touched her arm tenderly. He felt strangely foolish and yet somehow empowered. It was an emotion that Van Helsing could not explain. Nor did he understand how he could rationalise his own contradictions, that he seek in science to explain something inexplicable, to have faith in both spirituality and enlightenment. How could one repudiate the vampire for science or vice versa for that matter?
Mina barely nodded; no words would come to her tongue now, it had frozen in fear. With his warning spoken, Van Helsing left and Mina closed the door and then she bit down on her lower lip to suppress a rising scream.

7: Glorious Promises

The wilted daffodils in the bedside vase were now gone, replaced by odious smelling garlic flowers, and Lucy found the stench unbearable. It choked up her sense of smell and closed off her throat to the point where she could hardly breathe.
Mina had instructed Gerda to pick the garlic from the herb garden, and in the kitchen the housekeeper arranged the purple flowers in vases. It was beyond the woman's understanding as to why, only that Mrs. Holmwood was acting under direct orders from Doctor Van Helsing. Silently, Gerda did what she was asked. The vases she carried to Lucy's room. There she placed one vase upon the bedside table and the other two by the French windows. The housemaid assumed that Lucy slept, for the young woman did not stir as she entered the room, neither did she move a muscle as Gerda drew the bedroom door closed.
However, once the maid was gone, illumined in the weak light of a lamp, Lucy began to gasp and to writhe in her bed. Her brow broke into a chill film of perspiration, and holding in muted screams of torment as if she were suppressing a ghastly personal bedlam, Lucy groaned. There were already five other vases of the pungent bloom placed about the chamber. Why three more? Furthermore, why had they smeared the garlic over the door frame and about the windows, and even on her bed posts?
'Why must I suffer this agony?' Lucy's mind screamed as the nightmare that was craving burned her within and seared her without. Her whole body shook and the damp sweat bejewelled her forehead. Ashen was her skin and clammy to the touch. Hell-fire roared through her veins like magma erupting from the caldera of a volcano. This nightmare of anticipation plunged life and living into a state of damnation.
'Why...why?' groaned Lucy, gasping piteously as she moaned, talking to the maid who was not even there and answering as if she were.
'We must do as Doctor Van Helsing has instructed. He is a wise man.'
'Doctor Seward said...'
'Doctor Seward hasn't seemed to be able to help. We must heed Doctor Van Helsing.'
'I hate Doctor Van Helsing. He knows nothing!'
'He is only trying to help you.'
'I must have been blind to Jonathan.'
'Why, Lucy, whatever do you mean?'
'If he were still alive, Gerda, he would not keep his promise.'
'Promise?'
'His was a dormant predisposition, Gerda. I should have listened, for his obsequiousness for Doctor Van Helsing was there in every word he spoke about the man. Such was my foolishness, for I did not wish to entertain the thought of anything immoral and against nature!'
'Miss Lucy! Whatever are you suggesting?'
'A love that dare not speak its name!'
'You should not say such things!'
Doctor Helsing was the one who had ordered this unorthodox treatment, responsible for the tubers that now populated her bower. How she despised him for this cruel act and for Jonathan, depriving her of a husband and forbidding her a lover. A rogue, that was Van Helsing, intellectual and calculating, but perverse, and Lucy suspected, impotent. She imagined his sex as limp as the daffodils, and she almost laughed aloud. As she thought this her lips drew into a tight line. The smell of the garlic was most intolerable. It created an invisible barrier that prevented the dark from coming to her and if she had not been so weak and if they did not repel her so she would have removed them herself. It was suffocating, as if a pungent mask had been pressed against her nostrils and mouth. The horror of it squeezed at her lungs till they fought for air in a sick and unending wave of nausea. Lucy wanted to die rather than to suffer this any longer, to bleed for her demon lover so long as the cloying stench from those flowers could be cleared and he could come again. She could bear it no more, the harrowing putridity and the thick malodorous waft that constricted her airways; that barred his entrance to her room. That drove her to the brink of insanity.
'How they smell,' Lucy pleaded. 'The odour is terrible!'
'That's probably why he suggested them,' replied the haunt. 'You've been bitten by something, and the garlic will hopefully keep it out of the room. That is why we are keeping the windows shut as well.'
Lucy knew that it would do little good to argue further, and in her fever Gerda came up to her bedside and sat and stroked the young woman's pale hand.
'If you say so, Gerda.'
'I do say so. Now you try and get some sleep. You know that Mr. and Mrs. Holmwood are going out?'
'Yes.'
'You don't mind? I'll be right here, in my room, if you need me.'
'Of course, I don't mind Arthur and Mina going out. Business dinners are so important to Arthur.'
The illusion that was Gerda bent down and kissed Lucy on the forehead. Lucy even felt the ghostly brush of the woman's ghostly lips, and those lips glistened with the exudation of sweat.
'Good night, Miss Lucy.'
'Good night, Gerda.'
The phantom Gerda put out the lamp and walked to the door. There she hesitated briefly, looking back one last time at the invalid young woman, before passing through as if the panel were not even there, leaving Lucy alone in the dark.
In the entrance hall, Arthur was already donning his coat.
'Hurry dear, we don't want to be late.'
Mina came downstairs from their bedroom, dressed in a blue silk gown. 'I am ready, Arthur. I just have to get my cloak.'
Mina did not really want to go anywhere, for she was exhausted, but Arthur had insisted. Sometimes she felt as if she were nothing more than an accoutrement. It seemed somehow objectionable that Arthur should use her as a tool for his economic ventures, an allure to flatter and to beguile his business partners, especially when his sister lay sick with an unknown malady. When Mina arrived at the last step, Gerda had already collected her cloak.
'Thank you, Gerda. Hopefully we won't be out too late.'
'Try to have a good time, and don't worry about Miss Lucy, I will watch over her.'
'Good night,' said Arthur hastily, opening the door.
'Good night, sir.'
When the Holmwood's had gone, Gerda turned and walked towards the kitchen, but she stopped at the door to Lucy's bedchamber. There she hovered and pressed her ear to the panel, listening. There were no sounds from within. Satisfied that all was quiet and well and that Lucy was still asleep, Gerda moved off again to the kitchen.
Hours passed in the stifling confinement, and as the clock moved closer to midnight, Lucy sat bolt upright in her bed; the sheets were moist from perspiration. Throwing the bedding off, disgusted at their sticky heaviness and gasping and fighting as if with some invisible enemy, she lashed out and threw the vase on the dresser to the floor. There it smashed into jagged pieces and scattered the garlic stems onto the carpet.
'Mina! Mina!' Lucy's cry shattered the midnight quiet. In her moment of confusion Lucy forgot that Mina was not at home, that she had gone out to dinner with Arthur. The effort of calling out made her collapse back onto the bed. In her ear, she could hear the lure being sung again, the sensual and sweet calling that pulled at her heart, relentless and demanding. Yet there could be no ingress for the darkness because its way was barred, and so the weak and tortured beauty moaned and clutched at the heart, a heart that beat fiercely within her breast. Gerda heard the cry and the crash and was soon in Lucy's bedroom.
'Heavens, child!' she exclaimed. 'What is it?'
'Oh Gerda, these flowers,' Lucy gasped, 'I can't stand them!' Violently her bosom was heaving and her breathlessness was so pronounced that Gerda herself began trembling in fear. The housemaid ran to Lucy's bedside, sidestepping the broken china and the puddle of spilled water.
'They do smell so, Miss, but Mrs. Holmwood said that…'
Lucy clutched at Gerda's hand. 'I don't care what she said,' spitting out the words between clenched teeth. 'Please take them away. Please!'
Her eyes were staring white and indigo, the iris of each having been squeezed into a pinpoint of black nothing. There was an animal caged within her skin and it wanted out. Lucy implored the maid, and a rush of fever stabbed at her again and again. Yet, when Gerda took her hand the young woman was chill and her mantle clammy. A battle between conscience and responsibility erupted inside Gerda's head, she did not want to go against Mrs. Holmwood's orders, but Lucy was so distressed that she had to decide quickly what she should do. The poor thing could hardly breathe. Lucy perceived Gerda's moment of indecision and managed to sit up again, taking both the woman's hands in her clasp, begging her with wild eyes.
'Well…' Gerda was unsure, for it meant trouble either way, but she did not want to hurt anyone, and besides, what did you do when someone you loved had you trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea?
'Please, Gerda,' Lucy begged. 'They stifle me.'
'All right, Miss. I'll take them out.' There was nothing else for it. If it might help the girl breathe and to sleep then the awful smelling flowers had to go. Gerda turned away to begin cleaning up the shattered vase.
'And the windows. You'll open the windows?'
'Yes, Miss Lucy, if that's what you want.'
With a weak gasp Lucy collapsed back upon her pillow and began shivering. Frightened almost to the raw edge of her wits, Gerda pulled up the coverlet and made Lucy as comfortable as she could. Hesitantly the housekeeper stepped away from the bed, turning toward the French doors, that gaping portal to the night world, its glass shimmering with faint blades of chipped moonlight. Gerda stooped down and picked up the two large vases that blocked the entrance and put them to one side. Next, she unbound the sprig of garlic blossoms tied about the door handle and reaching out she gently pushed at the panels and they flew wide. Lucy gave an audible sigh and Gerda crossed herself and whispered a silent prayer. A chill wind blew in to caress both women, throwing dead leaves upon the carpet. Lucy smiled and there was something unmistakably evil in that slight lifting of the corners of her lips. She could see them outside the window, as easily as a cat sees in the dark, the glittering shower of motes that swirled amid the leaves and pressed against the glass but could not get inside. Lucy watched on, wanting the terrible barrier to be removed utterly so that the putrid stench of the garlic would be dissipated.
'I'll come back for the rest.' Gerda told the young woman, her breath visible in the mist that now smoked in the chilly air. For a second she regretted having conceded to Miss Lucy's wishes, for it was so cold. Perhaps she could return later and close the doors and bring an extra blanket. Gerda left the room with the vases of garlic sprays, and when she was gone Lucy turned her gaze to the scattering of leaves swirling through the door and she gasped with anticipation as the moon blossomed like a great white flower, sterling and lambent from a veil of Cimmerian haze.
The moon alone bore witness, watching with her beaming silver eye from the edge of eternity. Under the sterling luminance of her celestial lamp the nothingness emerged and slithered over the lawn and pooled momentarily before the garden wall. The darkness shifted, moved by rapid degrees, deliberate, passing over the tangled screen of climbing roses. The stems quivered and a century of fanged interlacing knots unravelled like thread, coming undone in the shadows of the night. In the polished pewter beams of the moon the pink buds of the roses atrophied and changed to rot upon their stems, the ivy let loose its stranglehold over the mortars and fell withered and lifeless. The red bricks were stripped naked, laid bare. High up in the eaves the swallows and the doves fell like stones to the ground below with spread wing and closed eye. No crickets made sound, no dog howled. In the surreal half-light, the nothingness devoured the atmosphere about it, staining the now exposed bricks in pitch and seeming to expand, growing bigger as it crawled, folding black velvet in upon itself and by turns to ripple and unfurl though it sustained no form, no reality. Soon its girth enveloped the garden and wall and struck upon the moonlit façade of the house. Spreading over the entire side of the building it undulated and heaved, as if breathing fuliginous air, and perhaps its shape was suggestive of giant wings; perhaps it was not, yet the moon glimpsed this but fleetingly in her great argent eye.

The roses died in a tortured frenzy, their petals discolouring, bled white, their leaves and prickly stems descending into diseased rust. From a frenzied delirium, the nothingness remade itself in their ashes. It was a spectrum from a realm beyond the grave, composed of lurid purple dusks, deeper than the night and it shone as nothing dark can shine. How it sang such a lovely aria, the sinuous fragment of a melody played by Seraphim in the furthermost corners of paradise. Lucy waited breathlessly in her bed, the music filling her mind, her heart pounding. She reached up a finger and gently touched the scars on her slender throat, twin buds of pink that had abruptly split open and begun to bleed; a thin ribbon of scarlet trickled down and stained the niveous linen of her pillow. Lucy sighed and groaned, finding herself immobile, rigid like a corpse, helpless, anticipating. It was out there, Lucy knew this truth, and soon it would be in here, with her- all the glorious promises that death could bring, for she knew that she could not survive this love. Instead of inspiring an ominous horror in her breast, the dark was potent and marvelous. How Lucy's heart pounded, beat as a timpani beats, its tempo rising, rising, heralding the inevitable, her surrender, her final and ultimate conjoining with mad passion. At length it came, the blackness, and she was submissive, wanting, fervent, needing. Thief it was, stealing into Lucy's sleepless nightmare existence, pledging joys that could not be finite, declaring its fervid vows in dulcet tones and lacerating her soul. How it lied to her, just like all else had lied to her, but it did not matter because there was a strange verity in its darkness hovered just outside the diamond-paned glass, luminary in its unholy visitation, invincible in its beauty. It glittered with sinew and muscle and its bejewelled panoply of star-scattered wings dissolved. Glittering with sinew and muscle and spreading shaded wings that melted like black ice, it swirled and altered and changed. Occluded light shone behind translucent eyelids. The demon danced in the shadows, the nightmare made Elysian and Lucy could hear the voluptuary thrumming of the blood in her veins. She seemed fascinated, her body invaded by a wonderful rush of glorious anticipation, the music flowing from the ether, the moon throwing silver fire on the floor.

A gust of wind blew in through the French doors, scattering another maelstrom of dead leaves before it, the billowing folds of some dark and wondrous form tumbling over the falls of forever. The leaves began to cling together, to mould a form, and the woman moaned and threw her head to the side. She wanted to see, wanted her vision to be filled with all that was glory, yet she dared not look and instead cast her gaze aside. Gliding to the bed the night made incarnate throbbed above her, a writhing pillar of shadow and haze, pulsing with violet and indigo, ruby and nacre, large, phallic, irresistible. Closer still it came, a ceaselessly spinning whorl with strobing wings, a beautifully hideous angel of death. Lucy closed her eyes, breathless. Weak, she felt, weak in the presence of such intense beauty. This was real, this was certain whereas Jonathan's love had been a lie. There was no need for the likes of Jonathan Harker anymore, for his love was tainted and disgusting, and this love was exquisite and true. Closer the dark slid, black smoke on black ice, a whirlpool of churning dark pleasures stitched together from deead leaves and broken stars and ultimate joys.

Lucy did not look, could not look, but instead clutched tightly at the coverlet. Her weakened fingers dug into the fabric and her body convulsed. This was the moment of truth, the moment when all else that should happen would count as nothing, all would be as dust, all and everything that composed the world of the flesh inherent in one final embrace, one penultimate kiss. The planet must stop in its revolutions and the sun must go out forever.
Lucy expected the kiss to happen immediately but it did not, instead the darkness touched its cold lips to her cheek and its chill hand to her breast. A thrill of tormented ecstasy sparked through every nerve and instantly her nipples contracted and the shadow hand pushed up under her nightdress and made a slow circular motion, cupping and gently squeezing, tracing a line of icy burning coals over her belly, going lower, lower. She wanted the darkness to split her body in twain, for there was a perverse promise in the things it sang to her ear, a susurrate melody of the grave, but Lucy did not care, this embrace was too exquisite, a rapture, an enchantment. A seduction in diseased poetry. She groaned, helpless in its guile, almost exhausted by sensuality, and twisted her face away, her eyes clenched shut so tightly that she could see only darkness splashed through with throbbing stars. Lucy convulsed yet again, her heart ardent, yet there were wonders to know though the shadows stained her luminous flesh. Her ivory and splendid throat gleamed in the moonlight and the entity descended. Though the thing sang false promises they were not vows of eternal or enduring love. It promised forever, but forever was darkness and nothingness, and Lucy did not care, for her heart pounded upon the brink of bursting. At last the night kissed Lucy with velvet lips. It was a fervid kiss, a delicious, torturous raking as of thorns in her throat. Burning, throbbing. An orgasm of blood. Lucy's joys overflowed into a black and boiling cauldron, and the kiss was as sharp as pincers, even as the searing pain took her willingly into the depths of perversity.

Stiffening and shuddering Lucy entwined her arms about the darkness and the darkness fastened itself like a leech to her neck and the moon went out like a snuffed candle and saw no more.

8: To Sprint Past Midnight

In the morning Lucy was dead. Her head was nestled upon her pillow, her cascade of russet hair flowing over her neck and over the lace, concealing the bites on her throat and the bloodstain on the linen. In the morning light her skin appeared translucent, the veins beneath the surface quite visible but pale blue and collapsed. Her face was a frightful mockery of the pretty girl she had once been.
'There was nothing I could do to save her,' Doctor Seward said to the Holmwood's as he pulled the sheet up over the dead girl's face.
His apology seemed pointless and they knew him completely ineffectual. Arthur held Mina close and Mina was holding in her tears, she did not want to break down, not yet, she knew that would come at the funeral. She couldn't understand the reasons for Lucy's death especially as she had followed Doctor Van Helsing's instructions to the letter. Could Van Helsing have been wrong with his directives? She felt guilty having conceded to what could only be described as sorcery, and she could never admit this part of her foolishness to Arthur. There came a knock at the bedroom door and Gerda emerged from behind the screen that had been put up to shield any view of the deceased should the door be opened. Their main concern was for little Tania, she had not been told and it would damage her irrevocably should she catch a glimpse of Lucy under a shroud and dead. Gerda carried a silver platter and passed it to Arthur. From it he picked up a card.
'I'm sorry, sir,' Gerda said to Arthur, 'but Doctor Van Helsing is here. He insists on seeing you.'
'He insists, does he?' Arthur retorted indignantly. 'I'll tell him...'
Upon his announcement, Doctor Van Helsing walked into the room. He threw both the Holmwood's a cursory glance and moved quickly over to Lucy's deathbed, pushing Doctor Seward aside. He folded the sheet back and took a deep breath, then gently replaced it.
'Doctor Van...' began Seward in protest, but Van Helsing silenced him with a brisk wave of his hand. He approached Arthur and Mina and as he did so Gerda cast her eyes to the floor.
'Mrs. Holmwood, is it true what this woman tells me? Did you do as I asked you?' Van Helsing's voice had an insistent edge.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
'Well?' Van Helsing demanded.
Arthur stepped forward, his hand angrily clenched into a fist.
'If you instructed my wife in anything,' Arthur interjected coldly, throwing Mina an icy glance, 'you have seen the result.' The distraught man pointed angrily at the corpse in the bed.
'Who was responsible for this?' Van Helsing asked brusquely, ignoring Arthur's preposterous intimidation.
'This is your doing, Van Helsing,' Arthur accused. 'You are responsible!'
Arthur was angry and he made a motion with his eyes to the body of his sister, as if to imply Van Helsing's responsibility for the terrible death. If Mina had been acting upon Van Helsing's instructions, why had she not told him?
'You are the reason Lucy has been taken from us.' He thrust an accusing finger at Van Helsing. There was a peculiar ring of truth to Arthur's words, for his sister would not have died had Jonathan not gone to Transylvania, yet how was he to understand his own useless prophecy? Van Helsing understood that all had not turned out as it should, but what could he say without condemning himself further? He turned abruptly and addressed Doctor Seward.
'You are Doctor Seward?'
'I am.'
'Well, Doctor, are you proud of your work?'
'What do you mean, sir,' returned Seward, indignantly.
'This girl here...' Van Helsing looked down at the young woman with the sheet drawn over her face. 'This dead girl.'
'I've heard of you,' said Doctor Seward, his face turning florid. 'You think you are an important man. By what right did you assume the responsibility of deeming what was best for my patient?'
The verbal exchange had become heated and Mina gasped and clutched at her bosom.
'Especially in view of the fact,' continued Seward, 'that it was completely opposite to the treatment that I prescribed. Tell me that, sir, if you will.'
Van Helsing held his stare. 'For what were you treating her?'
Seward looked to Mina, no less for affirmation that his diagnosis was correct. 'Mrs. Holmwood informs me that, acting under your instructions she filled this room with evil smelling flowers and...'
'I know what my instructions were,' the rival Doctor stated flatly. Van Helsing was approaching the limit of his tolerance.
'Then you know that Lucy died as a direct result of what you ordered Mrs. Holmwood to do?'
Arthur could hardly believe that these two professional men were arguing over his sister's deathbed.
'I know nothing of the sort,' replied Van Helsing coolly.
'The room was sealed up with all of the windows and doors shut tight. It's no wonder that the poor woman died. Even if she had been a person of normal health, I conclude that she would have probably suffered the same fate!'
Seward turned to Arthur for affirmation.
'You believe him?'
'I do,' said Arthur bitterly. 'Since you have come into our lives there has been nothing but tragedy. I will ask you to leave this house.'
Van Helsing modified his tone, and facing Mina he spoke gently. 'Mrs. Holmwood. I can only hope that through your grief you can see sufficiently clearly to recognise that what I did had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the death of your husband's sister. Rather, blame the person who took the flowers from this room after they had been placed here.'
'How did you know they had been taken out,' Mina asked, wiping away a tear.
'If they had not been,' Van Helsing responded, 'then Miss Lucy would still be alive.'
'That's enough!' Arthur pointed towards the door.
'Arthur…' Mina began, cut off mid-sentence as Gerda interrupted.
'Please, sir. Excuse me, sir,' Gerda began sobbing. 'It was all my fault. She could not breathe. She looked so ill. She begged me to open the windows and throw away all the plants. Oh, I know you told me not to, ma'am, but I… '
'Gerda,' Van Helsing said gravely, 'what time was this?'
'It was about midnight. I heard a noise and I…'
The woman began to wipe away tears with her apron.
'All right,' Arthur stopped the interrogation, excusing Gerda. 'You may go now.'
'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Oh, I am so sorry, sir.'
Van Helsing watched Gerda leave the room.
'Whatever happened,' stated Arthur to Van Helsing, lowly, but accusingly, 'all I know is that you have caused us nothing but grief. First Jonathan, and now Lucy. Whoever you are and whatever your motives, please go and leave us in peace.'
Doctor Seward arched his lips into a smug smile, enjoying his moment of triumph, and Arthur turned away from Van Helsing and refused to speak another word. He held his wife closely but she could not stem her flow of tears.
There was black everywhere, black suits, black gowns, black plumes, black horses and a black hearse. The hearse drove Lucy's bloodless remains to the cemetery on a day blacker than midnight could ever have been, even though the sky was cerulean. From a church nearby a bell was tolling and the sable horses moved at such a sluggish pace that every clop of their hooves was an agony to the ear.
Arthur had let the arrangements to J. Marx and Sons; the 'sons' had come and taken Lucy away.
'J Marx, Cabinetmaker and Undertaker,' was etched in gilded letters on a sign hanging on a brass chain from the eave. It swung gently above Arthur's head, making a little grating sound in a shiver of chill wind. Arthur had come alone for Mina was too upset. He did not want to go in but he knew he had to enter, for it was his duty. He cast a quick look about and heard the muted draw of a saw and the dulled tapping of a hammer driving nails into timber. He heard horses too, so the stables must be somewhere around the back. None of these noises were intrusive though, but the air was crisp and Arthur pulled the neck of his coat in tighter. The house stood off to the right at the end of Frederickstrasse, it was hemmed in by rows of manicured oleander and magnolia and they in turn, like troops in the forefront, were offset by rows of asphodels. The scents were sweet and quite pleasing, but still connected to death and decay. The fact of this was made even more profound by the loss of his sweet sister who must now share all her future conversations with the worms. A stooped old gardener was diligently pulling up weeds, his rake and wheel barrow nearby.

Arthur went up to the door and pulled the bell chain. Upon meeting Mr. Marx, the man was not what Arthur had expected an undertaker might be like. Rather than being the stereotypical thin and gaunt severity in black, the man was a portly, vague sort of fellow. This did not sit too well with Arthur at all because it challenged the conformity of his world. Marx, it was said knew his business well, and his reputation was better better than any in Karlstadt, so it was Marx who was to take care of Lucy. Mr. Marx shook Holmwood's hand.
'Come in, come in my good man…'
'Thank you,' stated Arthur; he could smell the odour of pine and cedar and strangely enough, it was not unpleasant. The fat man escorted Arthur to a seat; an over-buttoned leather and rosewood monstrosity that had not a shred of comfort in it, but that seemed befitting the severity of the circumstances, and Arthur wanted the arrangements dealt with quickly. A gilded clock ticked away quietly on the mantle above a fireplace. Arthur was thankful for the warmth that radiated into the room.
'It has been terribly cold of late, don't you think?' Marx asked of Arthur. 'Not usual for this time of year.'
'No, no it hasn't been usual' Arthur responded, but now was not the time for small talk about the climate. 'Mr. Marx, when can the funeral take place?'
'Why, tomorrow, if that's all right with you sir. Yes tomorrow. Certainly tomorrow.' Almost as an afterthought Marx added: 'Though it could rain you know?' The muttered sentence was rather off-putting and Arthur thought Marx seemed to be losing himself in this distracted train of dull observations about the weather.
'That would be the best… '
'Gets terrible in the rain,' the Undertaker rambled on, 'always wind up with a cold… '
'Well,' interrupted Holmwood, 'hopefully it won't rain.' The two men looked at each other for a silent moment, Arthur not sure about this peculiar mortician who was smiling back at him, lost somewhere other than the room in which they sat.
'Mr. Marx,' said Arthur at length, 'I should like my sister interred in our family vault.'
Abruptly Marx came back to the business at hand.
'Oh, a family vault. Would you know the lot number at all, by chance Mr.…?'
Had he forgotten Arthur's name already? How was he going to remember to bury his beloved sister? Surely the talk about Marx being the best in his trade were proving quite false.
'Holmwood,' Arthur replied curtly, putting a serious weight on the sound of his own name. Marx was now jotting little notes down in a leather-bound book.
'Had she, your dear sister, been ill for long sir?'
'No, not long at all. She died quite suddenly. It has been a terrible blow to everyone.'
'I am sorry to hear that, sir.'
Arthur did not reply but rather looked down for a moment as if in deep thought.
'Would you like to see her, sir?' Marx put down his nib and Arthur returned instantly to the moment.
'Pardon?' returned Holmwood, broken out of his reverie and almost shocked at the suggestion. He had seen Lucy on her deathbed, seen the sheet go over her face. No, he really didn't want to behold that pale, emaciated visage again.
'You can say a private goodbye to her. Come, I'll take you to her.'
Before Holmwood could object further Marx had taken his elbow and gently helped him from the big rosewood chair.
'I… I'm not sure…' Arthur protested, feebly drawing back, his words drying up in his throat. The aloof and austere Arthur Holmwood of the everyday world had suddenly deserted and left him powerless.
'It's all right, Mr. Holmwood,' Marx assured, increasing the pressure on Arthur's arm and almost pulling him from the seat. 'Everything is all right.'
The Undertaker led him through a door and down a passage to where the sacred heart of Jesus bled in the leaded glass of a double door.
They came into a small chapel. A row of twelve short pews flanked either side, a narrow aisle bisecting them, and at the end of this was a raised dais screened off by red velvet drapes. Above the pall a yellow light streamed vividly through the open wounds of a stained-glass Jesus, done in the same style as the heart in the chapel door. The sun washed through crimsons and yellows and greens, blood dripped from a crown of glass hawthorn.
'I'll leave you for a little while then,' said Marx, and he disappeared quickly for such a large man.
Eerily the curtains slid back to reveal a casket raised up on a marble catafalque, the top half of the split lid was held open by a gleaming brass pin. From some hidden recess, the low sound of atonal organ music began filtering through the walls. At the coffin's head, a tree of candles lent a suffused light to the scene; a cross of polished brass, studded with red garnets, was placed decoratively at the head end reflecting splashes of carmine that fell across Lucy's lips and cheeks giving her features a warm hue. Lucy lay so still in her coffin and Arthur held back, he was on the threshold of something he did not really want to do. The life force had gone and Lucy now looked so unlike the sister he had loved, inert and pale despite the faint tinctures cast by the surreal candlelight. He was glad Mina was not here with him, how it would have upset her. No, he did not want to approach further, yet something compelled him to do so, to step up to the coffin and look upon her fully.
Marx had done a fine job. Lucy lay serene in her Cherrywood box, reclined in a tide of tulle and oyster coloured satin, her head at rest on a blue velvet pillow, her hands clasped together, so calm; so incredibly calm. Her crown of thick auburn hair flowed over the pillow and spilled among golden tassels. By some weird deception of the senses she neither appeared to be deceased or sleeping but to exist somewhere in between this world and the next, dreaming. Arthur felt his arm rising involuntarily, stretching out and reaching within the coffin. He could not stop himself from touching her, his fingers caressing her slim white hand. The flesh was cold but it was supple, her fingertips were painted a pale shade of rose, Marx had lightly coloured her lips. Mr. Marx had also placed a lily with a yellow ribbon by her heart, but the flower had turned limp, its fleshy petals seared and brown, already curling up in termination. It spoiled the care with which Marx prided his work. Arthur looked at Lucy's face and as he looked a slight sweat broke out on his brow and his palms began to feel clammy. This was once a vibrant, young woman with eyes like the colour of the sky and lips like a valentine. For one dreadful second Arthur thought those lips smiled up at him and he saw the tips of what could only have been impossibly long incisors. A sudden chill leapt up Arthur's arm and he imagined for a moment that her eyes were open and that she was staring at him. He let go of Lucy's hand and it fell across her breast, the lily crumbled into ash. A horrible sensation passed through him and he stepped back, his thoughts reeling. The world had altered and two people, one of them close to him had perished. He suspected that Van Helsing understood what he could not and now he could feel an alien rush of fear crawling over his skin. Abruptly the organ music ceased, and shaken and unnerved he found that he could not stay another moment. It had been a mistake to look upon Lucy, a terrible mistake. He should never have come.

Arthur left promptly without saying goodbye to Mr. Marx and once outside in the street took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. He had experienced a taste of evil and his soul had shrieked. Something was terribly wrong and he felt it, knew it, yet what could he do?
The following day the black hearse had taken Lucy's coffin to the graveyard to be interred in a stone crypt in the Holmwood family vault. Behind the coffin walked Arthur and Mina and the housemaid Gerda. The women were heavily veiled in black. Preceded by a priest, the cortège headed towards a mausoleum. A solemn bell was tolling. At the crypt, the priest stood aside and let the bearers enter. When the men had interred the body of Lucy and stepped from the tomb, the priest called for the locksmith to seal the gate, and then he spoke to the Holmwoods, offering them a final blessing, and moved away. It was Mina, who upon looking up through her crêpe, saw that Van Helsing was nearby, watching the funeral. She gripped her husband's arm tightly. After a brief exchange, and motioning for Gerda to stand with Mina, Arthur confronted the uninvited mourner.
'Have you no shred of decency left?'
'Mr. Holmwood,' said Van Helsing, regardless of Arthur's accusation, 'when I told you about Jonathan, I thought it best for your peace of mind to spare you the details of the dreadful circumstances in which he died. However, the tragic death of your sister is so closely linked with Jonathan's that I think you should now know the truth.'
The Doctor reached inside his coat pocket and withdrew a red leather-bound journal.
'I have come here to give you this. When you have read it, you may come to my hôtel suite and insult me until you exhaust yourself. Until then, I shall ask you to hold your peace. I can't expect you to believe me, but you will, I hope, believe Jonathan. Here are his last words… his diary. He has written in shorthand. Are you familiar with the script?'
'Yes,' replied Holmwood. 'Though why shorthand?' Arthur turned his face towards his grieving wife.
'The nature of Jonathan's journal is sensitive. Anyone reading it, the layman, might have thought him mad. Mr. Holmwood, when you have read it,' said Van Helsing gravely, 'you will understand.'
He handed Arthur the red-bound leather journal stamped with the gold initials, and departed. Through her tears, Mina watched him leave.
Mina and Gerda had wept much that day and long into the night till exhausted they slept and knew both troubled dreams. In her own cot, little Tania could not sleep, but wondered why there were so many tears. She wanted to see Lucy but for some reason was not allowed. Eventually she too slept but in the morning, nothing seemed changed for the better, everyone was terribly unhappy. She asked Mina if she could see Aunt Lucy and Mina told her that Lucy had gone away.
'To get better?' Tania had asked back, and Mina had hugged her so tight it hurt, but she didn't answer Tania's question.
Mina sat in her mourning black, busy with her needlepoint; it took her mind away from the loss of Lucy and Jonathan and helped her to concentrate less on the confusion and horror of the last three days. She was sewing the pink bloom of a camellia, her thread marking time as it slid through the fabric. On a deeper level, though, her mind was troubled, and she felt somehow responsible for Lucy's death. However, much she told herself she was blameless, a terrible feeling of responsibility and guilt would not let Mina be, and Doctor Van Helsing had been so abrupt and Arthur so angry. The once seemingly cozy world in which they had all lived seemed to be breaking apart. She rested the sewing frame on her knee and paused momentarily, looking up at her husband.
Arthur stood by the window looking out into the night, sipping a cup of tea. Mina did not know it but it had been difficult for him to grasp all the things written in the scarlet-bound diary he had been given by Van Helsing. Truly, he had to confess to himself that it was all an impossible truth or the worst of nightmares. He had to believe it because the words were Jonathan's. Two of the people in Arthur's life were now dead because of the madness within that journal's pages. The madness rang true, because how could he shake off the premonition of horror he had experienced at J. Marx and Sons? Arthur did not want Mina to read Jonathan's diary, its record of insanity could only prove damaging so he had locked it away in a drawer in his desk. He could only imagine the horrors with which it would have filled her mind.

A thin mist was beginning to creep along the ground in the street outside when he saw the ghost of a policeman pass through the vapour and solidify just inside the garden gate. The veil of fog parted and the policeman's figure took on a clearer tenuity, his uniform just that one shade lighter than the backdrop of the dark. The street lamp glinted off his polished brass buttons. Arthur caught a glimpse of someone with the constable, someone small but he wasn't sure. He walked away from the glass and up to where Mina was sitting, put down his cup and kissed his wife lightly on the cheek. The kiss seemed perfunctory and it was passionless, as it always was. Mina felt as if she were a favourite pet, and without looking up she continued sewing, immersed in her filial duty, accepting Arthur's lustreless affections with a feigned womanly modesty. She gave a wan smile as Gerda came into the room.
'What is it, Gerda?' Arthur asked.
'It's a policeman, sir. He's got Tania with him.' Gerda frowned with concern, for she had put her child to bed over an hour ago; it was unlike Tania to walk in her sleep, and out in the chill night alone- Gerda was understandably shocked. Perhaps the child was fretting over not being able to see Miss Lucy.
'Tania?' Mrs. Holmwood's countenance changed to one of concern. 'There's nothing wrong with her, is there?' It was late, what would an eight-year-old child be doing with a Policeman at this hour of the night? Gerda, wringing her hands nervously had no explanation to offer.
'I don't know ma'am. Just that he has her with him, and they want to see you. Oh, I am so surprised. Just wait until I speak with that child!'
'Show him in, Gerda.' Arthur too was concerned and he gave Mina a questioning look.
'All right, sir.' Displeased with Tania, and upset with herself, Gerda went to the entrance hall and spoke with the policeman. 'Come this way, please. Not you, Tania, I want to talk to you.'
'I would rather the little girl came with me for a few moments, if you don't mind.' Gerda cringed slightly, uncomfortable and embarrassed, but nonetheless she motioned them both into the parlour. A big, burly policeman came into the room holding Tania's little hand. He took off his cap. 'Good evening ma'am,' he bowed his head to Mina. 'Good evening sir,' he saluted Arthur.
'Well,' asked Arthur, 'what is it officer?'
'I found this little girl here.' He looked down at Tania.
Gerda stood behind her child and looked at the policeman, her eyes filled with unease for she was at a loss, as was everyone, as to why Tania should be out in the night. The housekeeper feared that she should be again reprimanded for another horrible negligence.
'She was distressed indeed,' continued the Constable. 'Tell them what you told me.'
Tania broke away from his hand and pushed her face into her mother's apron. 'I don't want to.' She started to cry. Mina put down her needlepoint, stood up and walked over to kneel before the child.
'Oh, Tania, there's no need to be frightened. Now come on over here, sit with me and tell me all about it.' Mina took Tania's little hand and led her back to the sofa. Tania sat down on Mina's knee. 'Now you don't want Mr. Holmwood to think you're a cry-baby, do you? You're a big girl now.' A tear rolled down Tania's cheek. 'Now, come on, tell me what happened.'
Tania continued to cry. Mina lifted Tania's face by propping her finger under the little girl's chin. Their eyes met and Mina dried Tania's tears.
'Well, I was out by myself,' Tania began brokenly, 'and she came up to me, and she said, 'Hello, Tania, shall we go for a little walk?' And I said, 'Yes,' and we went for a walk. And then we sat down and then she went to kiss me, and someone came along and she ran away and left me, and I was alone.'
Tania buried her head in Mina's shoulder and began to sob again. Gerda shrugged and shook her head in confusion.
'Who was she?' Mina asked, gently stroking the child's hair. 'Who did you see?'
Tania was crying and wiping at her tears and trying to speak all at the same time. Gerda watched in speechless anguish, and stood by helpless.
'Come on, tell me. Who was she?'
'Aunt Lucy!' Tania managed to say with her trembling voice and a shudder of horror touched Arthur's soul and pulled an audible gasp from Mina's lips. 'But you said Aunt Lucy had gone away!'
'I would like to speak with this 'Aunt Lucy', if you don't mind,' said the policeman. 'There are one or two questions that must be answered. Where is she? You understand that this could be serious. Enticement of a juvenile is a nasty business. Undeniably nasty.'
'Lucy Holmwood was my sister, officer,' said Arthur, stepping forward, his face tortured by anguish. 'She died three days ago.'
Thereupon a deathly silence hung unspeakable in the air and Tania wailed.
Arthur left soon after the policeman. If what Jonathan had written in his diary could be given any credence at all then he would know the truth tonight and his suspicions would be confirmed. He had felt a touch of evil at the funeral home, a whisper of something nameless in his ear, a shiver that had crawled over his skin and left an indelible mark. He had to know, to see with his own two eyes if there was any actuality to what he had always considered to be fairy tales. Here before him now was opening a world of horrors that he could never have thought possible, not in the world he knew. Had he lived in ignorance and this curse been a dream, his staid world could have gone on unchanged forever, but his sister had died, or worse, become something even more unspeakable. He had gone to the study and taken Jonathan's diary from his desk drawer and put it into his coat pocket and when Mina had retired for the evening he had set out to discover for himself that which he did not want to believe.

A flickering lamp guided him to the cemetery; ground mists swirled about his feet as he moved through the graves. The dead lay in eternal slumbers on either side of his path, stretched out in rows of ivy-strangled neglect. Locating Lucy's tomb was not so difficult in the dark for a sterling moon lit the way with silver fire. Soon he came upon the Holmwood crypt and hesitantly, with his free hand he pushed the grated door inward. The chain rattled and dangled upon the grating and the lock that the smith had fastened to the chain was missing. Holding the lamp high over his head, Arthur squinted into the gloom, the flame dancing with the movement. A twisted shadow loomed up the cold stone wall and for a second his heart stopped beating. With a sigh of relief Arthur realised it was his own shade and quickly recovered from his fear. At all costs, he must keep his nerve.

Floral offerings lay propped about the walls and on the ground were withering sprays and wreaths whose once vibrant colours had now all drained to a sickly brown. Tentatively he stepped up to the stone sarcophagus. The heavy lid no longer covered the sepulchre but lay propped against the side of the tomb. It was solid stone and it was beyond belief that any one person could have had the strength to move it let alone a young woman of four-and-twenty years, for four men had struggled to seal it into place after the interment. The timber casket inside the sepulchre was still sealed, and inscribed on the lid was a brass nameplate that read: 'Lucy Holmwood 1875-1899'. Arthur brushed his fingers over the nameplate and then unwillingly he lowered his lamp. It took a good deal of nerve to grip the lid of the Cherrywood coffin and to throw it open. For a moment Arthur could not do the deed, and he hesitated, breathing heavily, his heart racing. Biting down on his lower lip he counted to three, and drawing in a deep breath, he prised up the lid. Although the colour drained from his face, he had half-hoped that the box would not be empty, and that Van Helsing was wrong and that Jonathan had gone mad. All that the coffin contained was a scattering of earth and the blue and gold pillow from the funeral home, indented with an impression left by Lucy's head. Arthur wanted to believe something other than the terrible truth, he wanted to believe that her body had been stolen by grave robbers- anything but this! Anything! It was unthinkable. In humility, he stepped back and sat down outside of Lucy's crypt, in the limbo of purgatory, and as he waited, Arthur whispered a prayer and drew from his pocket the red book and ran quivering fingers over its vellum.
Tania had woken to the wind whispering her name, calling just as it had called earlier that evening for her to get out of her cot and come to the garden. Her mother, in a bed nearby, stirred lightly in her sleep, her breathing rhythmic and deep, and as Gerda slept, Tania tip-toed from the room. It was as if the child dreamed yet was awake; her bare feet oblivious to the midnight chill. The child crept through the kitchen and let herself out through the door. She was dressed only in her nightclothes when she entered the dark, but the moon picked her out and silvered her way. The night was hushed and nothing stirred but a faraway whispering voice sang to Tania. It poured forth lullaby notes, a melody sung through black lips and it was insistent. She skirted the vegetable and flowerbeds and walked quickly under the holly and the sweet briar. In the dark she did not see the withered asphodels and hyacinths curled parched on the ground, not that she would have comprehended the significance of the trail of death over which her bare feet passed. She left behind the decaying roses that were strewn in the lawn and knew not that something evil had passed this way. Tania slipped unobserved from the Holmwood garden.

'I heard you call me, Aunt Lucy.' Tania stood shivering beneath the shadow-laced canopy of an ancient elm. Lucy approached the old tree and floated up to Tania. Like a spectral thing, she glided over rather than stepped upon the ground, her grave cerements clinging to the curves of her body, her hair a halo of auburn through which sparks of moonlight scintillated like tiny fires. She was dishevelled and her aspect was that of one hunted, or hunting, searching the darkness with fervid eyes- and something was changed in her face. The little girl felt a thrill of terror go through her body, instinct told her something was wrong in Lucy's features, they were no longer soft, there was a nasty, almost cruel hardness in her eyes, and her teeth, gleaming when she spoke, looked sharper and pointed like little ivory spikes. This was not the Lucy who read to her in the garden, she knew it and she wanted to run away.
'Yes, dear.' As if anticipating the child's intentions to flee Lucy reached out and snatched hold of Tania's hand, gripping it tightly. Her grip was a clasp of ice. Tania gasped, but she couldn't run now. 'Come along.'
'You're cold,' the child squirmed. 'Where are we going?'
'For a little walk,' said Lucy as she tugged at the girl's hand and began pulling her along. 'I know somewhere nice and quiet where we can play.'
Lucy had promised this before but then she had abandoned Tania when the man had found them together in the dark; this time there was no one about and she would not let go of Tania's hand. The woman lead the way through the mottled shadows, walking so fast that Tania found it difficult to keep pace, and the hand that gripped hers, it seared her skin as if it were tinged by frost. The bracken and the dead leaves hurt Tania's bare feet but Lucy would not relent nor slow her step. Soon the Holmwood house and elm and the underbrush were left behind and the moon high above was an argent lamp that paved the way with apprehension. Tania did not understand why she was so afraid, she had never been scared with Lucy before, and she wanted to run the other way but she couldn't. With her throat frozen she could not even cry out, for the night world unyielding rushed them onward, gulping them down into the shadows. At length, they came upon a long, high wall over which a thick vine crawled, and along the length of the stones they moved as spectres move, blending whitely into the swirling carpet of ground fog that divided as they ran. Rapidly, they sprinted past midnight and a great iron gate opened the way before them and they passed through. A little wind rippled over their skins. Inside the gate was a stone garden nurtured by the ashes of the dead. This was a wild, eclectic nether land of cracked cherubim and verdigris-tinged seraphs.
Lucy led the way and they descended an overgrown terrace to espy a row of crypts starkly drawn in the lunar beams. The fledgling vampire and the child seemed to float in an ocean of mist as they entered a city of elegantly wrought monuments of granite and marble, a gorgeous celestial valley of richly ornamented tombs crumbling silently under the weight of neglect. Between the rows they passed, under eaves of carved stone, to flit by biers sculptured with fractured rosettes and hung in rigid tassel, the mists swirling in eddies. With flowing locks Beauty reclined upon an eternal bower, guarded by an angel clasping a wreath of laurel; a little boy in stone held up a candle to light his path to heaven, the Lord's Prayer was a broken tablet at their feet. Stone trumpets made a silent clarion call to deaf ears, harps and pipes and chiselled bouquets were detailed everywhere, defiled crosses and mouldering tumuli were aisles through which they flew. Lucy paused for a moment beneath a seraph, her wide eyes fixed upon its benevolent visage. Some disconnected part of her mind recalled the image of Mina hovering over her sickbed, but Lucy was not contemplating the divine but rather in contempt of it. Her grasp of Tania's hand was so tight that the little girl squirmed and whimpered. Moonlit embers crackled through a fan of stone plumage. They were alone at last and safe from discovery this time, and now Lucy could feed.
'Is it much further, Aunt Lucy? I'm so tired,' Tania complained. 'How my feet hurt.' The child rubbed at her eyes.
'I'll kiss you better in a moment, my darling,' said Lucy, her voice rasping over syllables, her hair crackling like electrical filaments in the air. A look of elation and carnal joy was a cloud that darkened Lucy's once pretty face. 'Nearly there my darling.'
The vampire woman smiled, opening her lips to reveal the pointed awls of sharp fangs at the corners of her mouth. She could see the slim curve of Tania's neck and she shuddered as if in ecstasy and stooped to kiss the child.
'Lucy!'
Startled, Lucy let go of Tania's hand and looked up. Arthur could not believe his eyes- he had waited by her crypt for hours and even then, had refused to truly believe that this horror could be anything other than false. Yet here before him, white and in her grave clothes was the walking form of his dead sister. He could barely suppress a shudder of disgust, it was true, Lucy was now a damned soul, but perhaps they had made a dreadful mistake, perhaps Lucy was not dead at all but had been interred alive and had freed herself from the grave. That idea was terrible beyond belief, and impossible too, for she could never have budged the stone that sealed her coffin. No, it must still have been a dreadful mistake, for here was Lucy standing before him, and she was not illusion. There could no longer be any doubt, Lucy was dead and that was the horrible truth, and she had returned from the grave.
'Arthur,' Lucy's sibilant call sounded like drops of water splashing upon a hot stone. 'Dear brother.' She licked her lips and made a passing caress over her bosom, inviting her brother to sample the joys of depravity. Tania looked on in terror and Arthur was appalled. Lucy was lovely and she was horrible too, Arthur had to believe it now. Jonathan's words had to ring true, for Lucy was now a thing of the night, a thing composed of lurid dusks and corrupted by evil. She stood in horrible replica of the woman in Jonathan's diary, the woman he had staked at the castle of Count Dracula. Like that woman, Lucy was beautiful but tainted and enslaved, radiant but obscene. Lucy's pretty face and poise no longer seemed sweet, nor was she innocent, but rather her visage had come alive and burned with carnal temptation and she teetered on the verge of what could only be described as unclean. She smelled of earth and heliotrope and the moonlight in her auburn locks crackled with galvanic sparks. Her vision shimmered. Arthur's eyes widened and the thing that was his sister left the little girl's side and stepped closer.
'Lucy!' Her name was the only thing that could pass between his lips, the only thing he could utter.
She came nearer, passing through the mists that rolled off at either side like water over glass, slithering as snakes' slither, so close now that he could feel the coldness emanating from her flesh. Lucy was smiling. Surely, she could not be alive, it was impossible!
'Dear Arthur, why didn't you come sooner?'

There was something terrible in the way she spoke, a worse implication in her corrupted invitation; it reminded Arthur of an animal that had suddenly learned the art of human speech. The horrible voice put a disgusting inference into the language, a tergiversation so explicit as to make Arthur shudder. In Lucy's eyes, a fire had begun to ignite, it flickered and burned with a kaleidoscope of variegated incandescence, glowing hot and vicious. In that gaze Arthur saw the reality of what damnation meant, saw the mortal coil remoulded in black clay. She had such a red, red mouth, made livid by the whiteness of her skin and her smile, that parting of her lips was truly awful. Lucy's mouth was studded with a row of dagger-like teeth and her tongue darted back and forth with the rapidity of a serpent's appetence. Arthur watched on as the lovely young woman lifted her shroud and began to caress her own body, one hand plunging between her thighs.
Tania gasped with the shame of the act, but how splendidly alive Lucy looked despite this unspeakable and disgusting display. Lucy's face shone with the luminance of a lamp, but tainted, though her skin was so white; the contours of her breasts were plainly visible through the diaphanous material of her cerecloth. Lightly, lasciviously, she stroked her exposed sex. Then within Arthur there erupted a terrible urge to hold her, a frisson that reverberated through the length of his flesh, from head to toe and back again. The feeling tightened at his groin and he was overcome with a wave of desire.
'Come!' she insisted from the furnace of her perfumed mouth, her tongue alive with fire, the hand with which she had touched her sex reaching up to caress his face, trailing the heady scent of her dampened sex upon his cheek, sticky and pungent upon his lips. She stroked his mouth, pushed her wet finger between his lips. 'Let me kiss you.' In that moment, the earth seemed to shudder beneath his feet and Arthur wanted to blot out this ghastly vision but he could not retreat from it, not one step. His whole body had assumed a rigid state of paralysis; every limb, every muscle, apart from his tongue, which sipped at her wet finger, was frozen. A sickening perversity shot a volt of disgust through his frame but he could not pull away. There remained but one pace left between Arthur and Lucy, a divide wider than the distance to the stars, a space shorter than half a breath. Little Tania whimpered and began to sob louder, the dense air closing over her in a shapeless, enveloping cloud, and Lucy reached up both her hands to clasp Arthur's face, to bring her brother in closer to her flesh, to push against him, let him feel the softness of her breasts, all the while stretching her red lips wide with that hideous vulpine smile. Arthur was lost, his own lips soundlessly forming the last echo of her name. He felt his senses slipping away and Lucy readied herself to strike.

In that instant Van Helsing erupted from the misty shadows. With one violent push, he thrust Arthur Holmwood aside and sent him reeling, holding up a gleaming crucifix before the undead revenant. As Arthur fell against the tumuli, Lucy hissed and recoiled, arching back like a cat, her eyes wide with disgust and fear, baring her fangs and making claws of her fingers. The little girl Tania shrieked and clung to the rigid corner of a tomb. Lucy spat at Van Helsing but he did not take his eyes from her, pressing the gleaming cross closer and closer, forcing the demon away until she was trapped against the stone wall of her crypt. In one lightning move Van Helsing touched the splayed Jesus to Lucy's forehead and her scream shattered the darkness and crashed about the avenue of graves. Her white skin sizzled and burned and her seamless brow was seared with an angry red brand in the shape of the naked Christ. Howling she ducked beneath Van Helsing's arm and bolted for the safety of her tomb. Appalled, Arthur ran after his sister.
When Lucy's final scream had subsided Doctor Van Helsing walked quickly over to Tania. The child was crying and trying to hide behind the crypt. The Doctor took off his coat and pulling the little girl gently from the shadows said, 'Put this on.'
'Please, I want to go home,' Tania told him, as he knelt beside her and wiped away her tears.
'And so, you shall. I'll just go and fetch Mr. Holmwood and then we can all go home together.'
'Not Aunt Lucy?'
'No,' Van Helsing reassured her, 'not Aunt Lucy. Now, you sit there and be a good girl. You look like a teddy bear now. Will you wear this pretty thing?'
He hung the crucifix around Tania's neck.
'There, isn't that lovely?' Van Helsing smiled and pulled the coat closer about the child's body. 'Now, you promise not to run away?'
'I promise.'
'Good. If you watch over there, you will see the sun come up.' He pointed above the tombs to where the pink blush of dawn had begun to tinge the sky. Tania nodded and looked toward the horizon.
'Keep warm,' he told her and standing up he turned toward Lucy's tomb.
'You understand now?' Van Helsing faced Arthur over Lucy's open coffin.
'Still, why did Dracula pick her? Why Lucy?' Arthur was bewildered, for he was still finding the horrible truth of Lucy's walking death inconceivable; things like this only existed in horrible dreams and in stories. He was also shamed that he had so mistrusted Van Helsing.
'For revenge. Revenge against Jonathan for what he did to Dracula's woman. When Lucy had become versed in the ways of her new existence Dracula would have taken her home with him. You read my note in his diary about the woman he found at Klausenburgh. This is Dracula's vengeance. Lucy is to replace that woman.'
Van Helsing recalled the broken frame and the triangular remnant of what had been Lucy's photograph that he had found in Castle Dracula. He should have realised it then, should have known that the evil would spread and that Lucy had been marked from the first. He had been a fool.
'Oh, no!'
Van Helsing met Arthur's eyes. 'Ever since Lucy was interred three days ago and became one of the damned, the undead, I have watched her tomb each night. Tonight, she ventured out for the first time. Holmwood, I know your one wish is that Lucy should rest in peace. I promise to fulfill that wish but first, if I have your consent, she can lead us to Dracula.'
Holmwood was dismayed at what Van Helsing intimated and appeared physically revolted.
'She can be Dracula's downfall,' Van Helsing stood firm. 'Sooner or later she must lead us to him, and then, pray to God, we shall be able to destroy his cult of evil for all time. She must go to him soon. She must!'
'How can you suggest such a thing? That she should be possessed by this evil for another second! And what about Gerda's child out there? And the others she will defile? Oh, no, I couldn't. I couldn't.'
'Of course,' Van Helsing replied gently, his request grimly important but he could not risk distressing Holmwood further, he needed his help in this matter, it was vital that Dracula be found and vanquished.
'She must not remain like this, she must regain her soul. There is a way, you know there is.' Arthur implored, his hand closing upon Van Helsing's forearm. 'I demand it. I have the right!'
'You know how it must be done?' Van Helsing's face was implacable.
'I have read Jonathan's diary.'
A long pause followed, broken only by Tania's faint whimper.
'All right. Will you take that child home and then meet me back here in about an hour's time?'
Arthur looked away from the creature that was now his sister, beautiful and yet horrible in her Cherrywood coffin.
'It's all right,' the Doctor reassured him, 'it's nearly dawn. She won't leave the coffin again.'
Holmwood nodded his acknowledgment and knew that what would soon follow would be an episode of unspeakable horror.

9: Liberation

Morning sunlight vainly warmed the cold stone of Lucy's sepulchre, its rays spilling in through the wrought iron grate, dissipating the last translucent ribbons of mist that curled along the ground. The light found Arthur and Van Helsing within the crypt and cast their shadows upon the west wall. Both stood beside Lucy's coffin and both looked upon the woman lying therein. Her head was resting upon the blue velvet pillow, her hair a flow of crimson silk that framed the dreadful cruciform burn on her forehead. Lucy's skin was still pliant and her lips the colour of pomegranate seeds. The shape of her breasts and the pink of her nipples pressed against the translucent fabric of her shroud. Even the curve of her hips and the dark triangle above her sex could be seen. What they were about to do seemed like the most awful desecration imaginable.

Reclined, she looked quite undisturbed, but the dreadful stink of sickness and corruption co-mingled with the grave offerings reeked up from the coffin's shallow confines. It was as if the nauseous stench leaked from the pores of Lucy's skin and Arthur shuddered, unable to disguise his revulsion. Difficult as it was to believe that his sister had become a thing that fed on human blood, a thing that could only find peace through the most terrible means of deliverance, Arthur was forced to face the grim truth. Nonetheless, Lucy had yet to taste her first bloody meal and perhaps she could be released from this foul curse and her soul find salvation. Doctor Van Helsing placed a leather pouch on the edge of the stone box and proceeded to undo the laces that bound it together. Arthur Holmwood's eyes widened in horror at the gruesome display Van Helsing revealed, a clutch of wooden stakes and a rounded mallet. He suddenly felt sicker, his stomach freezing over with a dreadful pain that stabbed at his insides. Outside the crypt a fall of leaves drifted in the breeze, trailing along the ground. A songbird trilled amid the branches of the birch, and the sunshine was bright, the sky blue. The world was in opposition to the darkness and the deviltry happening in the crypt. To Arthur the world and every other thing in it was tranquil and serene, but this vision he looked upon in the tomb, this living-dead thing that was his sister Lucy, it was a nightmare that must be rent by the stake and by violence. It was hideous.

'Is there no other way?'

Van Helsing shook his head in the negative. 'You are now witness to the filth and degradation of this vampire, Dracula, that Jonathan Harker died trying to destroy. I am sorry that your sister should be the victim.'

'This is not my sister,' said Arthur, unbelieving, shaking his head in mortified denial.

'We must!' Van Helsing insisted.

'It's horrible!' Holmwood protested, and clasped a hand about Van Helsing's arm in a futile attempt to stay the man from the violence he was about to do.

'Please try and understand,' the Doctor implored of Arthur, his face set in earnest and knowing full well the import of the dreadful act he must accomplish. 'This is not Lucy, the sister you loved. It is only a shell, possessed and corrupted by the evil of Dracula! He is her bestial master, and if there is but one remaining fragment of her immortal soul remaining, we must set her free from him!' The Doctor gently, but firmly, uncurled Arthur's fingers and pushed his arm away. 'To liberate her soul and give it eternal peace we must destroy that shell for all time! Believe me, there is no other way.'

Arthur stepped forward to take up a stake and mallet. 'I will do it. It is my responsibility and my fault that it happened.'

'No,' Van Helsing declared, his voice sounding stern. 'I must do it. You will forever be scarred if you do this thing. Trust me.'

Arthur backed away, shaking his head in disbelief as Van Helsing picked up a stake and the mallet. The Doctor seemed to hesitate momentarily as if testing the strength of the timber to be certain that it would not split in twain when he drove it home. Arthur wanted to look away but found that even though he tried his eyes were locked upon the horrible spectacle. He pushed back against the wall of the crypt where Van Helsing's shadow stained the stone. The Doctor turned his gaze from Arthur and looked down upon Lucy. Her lips were glistening, almost inviting and her dark lashes brushed against her cheek. For a dreadful moment his resolve almost fled, his moral conscience wavered. This was a beautiful woman whose body he must defile, but he suppressed the guilt, pushed it into a chamber deep within his soul. He had to do what was right or Lucy would rise again and visit her own foul malediction upon the world. No one would be safe, not the innocent child she had lured into the night, not any other living soul whom she should choose to feed upon. He positioned the tip of the stake over Lucy's left breast, the lethal point indenting her grave clothes just above the pale rose of her nipple. Arthur watched on horrified, he thought to wrestle the sharp sliver of wood from Van Helsing's grip and fling it away but his limbs were paralysed and his feet held him rooted to the spot. The hammer rose high, its warped shadow darkening Arthur's staring eyes as it climbed the wall, and then it came smashing down.

The resounding crack was the first horror to assail Holmwood's ear, the second was the awful scream that issued from his sister's mouth. It was a hundred times more shattering than her shriek when the crucifix had burned her forehead. The scream pierced the thick atmosphere of the vault and reverberated from wall to wall. Arthur had never in his life heard such savagery and pain poured forth in one unholy cry. It raked at his ears and stabbed at his nerves. Lucy's eyes opened and almost bulged from their sockets, her tortured shriek continuing in one long, drawn out cacophony of horror. A stream of blasphemies followed the scream, words as profane as the filth in a sewer spewed from her lips, and Holmwood clutched at his chest as if the stake had pierced his own heart. A gout of blood shot up from Lucy's torn breast, splashing a bright red spray over Van Helsing's jacket and staining the white of her cerements. Still screaming her invective, Lucy grabbed at the stake, her cold flesh meeting with Van Helsing's and she tried desperately to wrench it out.

'Sodomite!' She shrieked the filthy accusation at Van Helsing and spat in his face. Sickened, Arthur turned away and clamped his hands to his ears to shut out the dreadful noise of her screaming and her profanity. Such dreadful words should never have come from a woman's lips, not even the mouth of a harlot. Arthur felt his stomach lurch. Lucy let go of the bloody stake and thrashed about like a wild animal, clawing at her executioner, spitting out a further fury of blasphemies, decrying her tormentor as Pathikos, and biting through her lower lip, a gush of crimson bile erupted from her mouth. As Lucy writhed in the rigid length of her burial box, Van Helsing raised the mallet a second time and brought it crashing down again. The woman struggled so much that the hammer narrowly missed striking his own hand, and she fought him, clutching at Van Helsing's arm and almost wrenching the bone from its socket. A speckling of gore christened Lucy's once lovely visage, her eyes rolled back into their sockets and were alight with flame. Another blow drove the wooden spike deep and as far into her flesh as it would go.

Van Helsing felt a victorious surge of energy flood his veins, going through him in a pulse, a throb, something that he had never felt before. He saw her supple flesh under her shroud, the roundness of her breasts and the pinkness of her nipples, enough to inflame any ordinary man's emotional state, and he set his mouth into a grim line. Lucy's flesh was no longer virtuous, but sullied, no longer the virgin but a libertine's dream, writhing in the violence of necrophiliac coitus, splayed under his stake, licentious and wild with savagery. Jonathan should be spared this horror if he were still among the living. Yet the translucent cerecloth was a hindrance, her sex a jewel, her blood flowing like mead. The vampire slayer gave a groan and dropped the mallet but did not withdraw. He stood steadfast and looked on as Lucy's struggles began to lessen, as her body stiffened and her grip on his arm relaxed. At length, her curses became a low moan and then they were silenced, her fingers opening like a dying flower, and she let go. With one final sibilant hiss she went limp and lay still like a broken doll. He saw the fire in her eyes go out, two hellish lamps that abruptly dimmed, their hue dulled by a glazed translucence. She closed her eyelids and her silken lashes rested once again on her pale cheeks. Finally, the tide of blood stemmed its flow and began to soak into the grave soil in the bottom of the coffin. Arthur vomitted, and the foul odour of corruption began at last to dissipate, and Van Helsing motioned for Arthur to approach. Wiping a ropy strand of sickness from his lips, Holmwood was loath to come close to the coffin. The Doctor insisted and the two men stared down upon Lucy's defiled body.

It was then that something miraculous occurred. The demon of possession gave up its hold on Lucy's flesh and the cruciform brand on her forehead disappeared.

It was an eternity that slipped by in the calculated measurement of an hour. In the cemetery Holmwood had turned away from Lucy's coffin and almost fainted as Van Helsing wiped the blood from his hands; it took a short while before he had regained enough of his strength to help Van Helsing replace the wooden lid of the coffin and then the stone covering. Now Arthur sat in Van Helsing's hôtel suite and the Doctor was pulling the stopper from a decanter and proceeded to pour a neat brandy.

'Drink this,' Van Helsing told him and Arthur shook his head.

'I'm all right now.'

'Drink it,' Van Helsing insisted and made Arthur take the crystal of amber fluid.

'Thanks,' was all Arthur could reply. Holmwood swallowed the brandy in one gulp. It burned its way through his body and he closed his eyes for a moment, letting the alcohol work to soothe his nerves. Still the horror of what he had witnessed swum behind his eyelids and he opened them and reached for Jonathan's diary. Doctor Van Helsing was deep in thought; he walked around the back of Arthur's chair while he pondered, lifted a silver box from a side table and withdrew a cigarette. Holmwood skimmed through the journal then marked a page with his thumb. Still holding his empty glass, he tapped with his free fingers on the book's cover.

'What now,' Arthur asked, not wanting to enumerate the horror that had occurred in the crypt.

'Lucy was my only lead to Dracula,' Van Helsing admitted, and he bit down on his lower lips as he recalled the violence he had only just perpetrated. There was no guilt in his face but strangely a look of satisfaction. 'Eventually she would have been bound to go to him.'

'I had to have it done,' Arthur implored.

'Of course.'

'Just as I will now do anything to help you find this fiend. I am sorry for my behaviour earlier on, but I admit I did not trust you. Besides, how could I have known of this? There is so much in Jonathan's diary I don't understand,' Arthur said to Van Helsing, his eyes full of questions that he knew would be impossible to answer. 'Can Dracula really be as old as it says in Jonathan's diary?' It was extremely hard to believe, but then he had just seen a wooden stake pounded into his sister and beheld her face, peaceful in true death, the mark of the possession erased as if it had never branded her skin.

Van Helsing threw him a serious look and closed the lid of his cigarette box.

'We believe it's possible. Vampires are known to have gone on from century to century. Records show that Count Dracula could be five or six hundred years old.' He tapped the end of his cigarette on the lid of the case and struck a match. The tip of the tobacco came to life in fire and a wisp of acrid smoke curled into the air.

'I've carried out research with some of the greatest authorities in Europe and yet we've only just scratched the surface. You see, a great deal is known about the vampire bat. Details of these reanimated bodies of the dead - the 'undead' as we call them, are so obscure that many biologists will not believe they exist. I am going to tell you the truth, as I understand it, about vampirism. Mine has been a synthesis of years of study and research. Of sifting fact from superstition. It embraces the lore and experience of the Ancients, as well as others too, like myself, who have studied the powers of the thirsty undead.'

What Arthur failed to understand was that the vampire was not a creature that obeyed the accepted constraints of time. It was a thing that was born in some horrible and unimaginable way, coming into a dark existence like a thought is conjured- out of nothing, somehow existing and yet still intangible. It could live for an age protracted, for an eon uncounted and cleave its sick and unholy body to the shadows. Some sable hand had fashioned this one, for Dracula was clever, vacuity was not what composed his undead being and his thirst for blood was a hunger perpetual.

'Another thing,' Arthur went on, 'I always understood that, if there were such things, they could change themselves into bats or wolves.'

'That's probably a fallacy.' Van Helsing paused and drew on his cigarette, pondering the notion, this time walking in front of Arthur and taking the empty glass from his hand. 'That the vampire can transform into animals might be a popular misconception, although anything is possible, I suppose. However, I suggest that the vampire might be rigidly bound by some of the natural laws of flesh and blood, like you and I are bound to breathing air. However, I have yet to disprove that they cannot metamorphose into the shapes of lesser creatures. There are tales of men who change their skins into those of wolves, so it is highly probable that the vampire can also shift its shape to suit the moment. There might be an exception though, to the vampire's existence, as opposed to the conception of the werewolf- the vampire cannot die. It must go on, age after age, adding new victims to its unholy cult. Those victims, in their turn, become undead. Two things, and two things alone can destroy the vampire- the first you have witnessed tonight. The second is exposure to the light of the sun. A vampire cannot tolerate the light of day, even indirectly. Holmwood, the study of these creatures has been my life's work.' Van Helsing placed the glass down on the liquor cabinet beside the brandy decanter and turned to face Holmwood. Arthur closed Jonathan's diary and listened attentively. Van Helsing stubbed out his cigarette, and went on with his speech.

'You mean that Lucy could have regained her soul by simply exposing her to the rays of the sun? And yet you drove a stake through her body!' Arthur's face screwed up in disgust. There was a most tasteless suggestion skimming just beneath the surface of Van Helsing's words.

'Restrain yourself for one moment,' cautioned the Doctor. 'I said that vampires could be destroyed by exposure to the sun- they cannot regain their souls that way. What we did was the only way. We have released her soul and given her peace.'

Arthur scratched his head in bewilderment. 'I'm sorry. Please...'

'If neither of these two things happen to a vampire,' Van Helsing continued, 'it will carry on for years, replenishing its body during the hours of darkness with the blood of living humans. I hoped perhaps that you will help me.'

'I'll do anything you say.'

'If you are to help me...' Van Helsing spoke slowly and clearly, 'you must have some protection.'

'Whatever you suggest,' Holmwood replied with conviction and put the book on the table. 'We have to act quickly.'

'Yes, Dracula must be destroyed,' Van Helsing reiterated. 'If we allow him to escape us he will be free to spread his reign of sickening horror for another six hundred years.'

Van Helsing gathered up his coat. 'Of course, you're shocked and confused. How can you expect to understand in so short a time? You've read and experienced enough to know that this unholy cult must be wiped out. Nonetheless, we do know certain things.' Van Helsing paused, knowing that what he was about to say might sound somewhat harsh, but the time for sensitivity was long passed. 'You witnessed one a little while ago.'

Arthur lowered his eyes and repressed a shudder.

'And we also know that, during the day, the vampire must rest in his native soil. Now. . .'

'Yet how do we know where to begin looking for him,' Arthur interjected. 'He could be anywhere, returned to his own home...'

Van Helsing shook his head. 'I think not. He will be here, close to us, waiting for Lucy to come to him.'

Van Helsing began to button his coat; the smoke still drifting from the dead cigarette was a thin blue thread in the air. Arthur looked at Jonathan's diary as if it affirmed without doubt all the proof he needed now that Lucy had met with such a terrible death and had been liberated from an eternity of horror. The doctor straightened his collar. Here he broke off for a moment and sat in a chair facing Arthur.

'When I went to Castle Dracula, a hearse came tearing over the drawbridge.' As if to emphasise this recollection Van Helsing held up the hand, and his face was alight with visible lucidity. 'In that hearse was a coffin. I believe it contained Dracula and a bed of his own earth. During the daylight hours, the vampire must sleep in a bed of its own burial earth.'

Arthur was listening intently, his right eyebrow slightly raised. Perhaps Van Helsing was onto something here. It was what he needed now, someone to think clearly for him until the shock of Lucy's death and rebirth and death had lessened. 'To get here,' Van Helsing continued, 'that hearse would have to come by the frontier of Ingstadt. They'll have a record there of where it was going.'

Arthur nodded his agreement.

'We need that address. Will you come with me to Ingstadt?'

There was a flicker of concern in Arthur's countenance; he did not want to leave Mina alone.

'How long will it take? I must let Mina know.'

an Helsing stood up as Arthur took up his own coat.

'We will take my coach. With any luck, twelve hours should see us there. Every hour that passes increases the chance for him to select another victim now that Lucy is denied him. We must do all that we can to forestall him. If we leave now we should be back by tomorrow morning. And if we cannot forestall him, may God protect the unfortunate creature whom Dracula selects as his next victim!'

The sign proclaimed 'Douane Gollamthaus', and it was hung on the side of a hut where the principalities were divided by a black and white striped barrier. Van Helsing and Holmwood had crossed that border and had entered the station only to find the Frontier Official most uncooperative. He was a stooped individual dressed in his nightshirt and he had sloppily tucked that nightshirt into his trousers, but to little use. Though it was late he had gone to the trouble of donning his official's cobalt, gold-sewn hat, but he did not appreciate the late callers. He was coughing and after he had stopped convulsing he would begin coughing again. When these fits eventually subsided, he adjusted his spectacles at least six times, an irritating habit no less that annoyed Doctor Van Helsing. While he did this he perversely evaded every one of Van Helsing's requests. The two men stood before the Douane's desk and had pleaded with him for the last fifteen minutes, but to no avail.

'I'll explain the whole thing to you again,' said Van Helsing, barely able to hold in his exasperation. 'Just over four weeks ago a hearse was driven through here. In that hearse...'

'Were you here?' queried the official, peering over the round rims of his spectacles directly into Van Helsing's face.

'No, I wasn't,' Van Helsing admitted resentfully.

'Then how do you know it was here?'

'It came from Klausenburgh and it went to Karlstadt. How else could such a journey be accomplished, except by coming through here?'

The frontier official pondered the statement, his brain sluggishly processing the reality. 'True, true,' he said at length, 'Anyhow, carry on.'

'All we want to know is where the coffin was consigned.' Van Helsing removed his gloves and in exasperation put his hands palm-down flat on the desk.

'I'm afraid that is quite out of the question, sir. I'm not at all sure that I can tell you that, you know. Against regulations.' He shook his head for the twentieth time, then added quickly, 'that is not to say that we don't keep official records. Everything is done official here.' He indicated over his shoulder to a wall stacked with papers and bound volumes and scrolls. 'We've got records of everything that has come through here in the last ten years.'

'Then I'll trouble you to go back there and find what I want to know,' said Van Helsing, smiling scornfully as he spoke.

'That sort of attitude won't get you anywhere, will it,' the official returned, offended.

'You didn't say that,' countered Van Helsing, holding down his irritation at the official's obfuscation. 'You said that you didn't know whether you were capable of giving us the information we seek. You have now established that you are in fact capable, just unwilling. There's a wealth of difference.'

'As I said, that sort of attitude won't get you anywhere.' The frontier official remained obstinate.

'What sort of attitude?' replied Van Helsing, quick with his return.

Arthur was beginning to think that their journey had been wasted, that precious time was being lost in useless argument and that perhaps they would have to resort to criminal activity to glean the information that they needed.

'I'm not telling you anything,' said the Douane emphatically. Van Helsing leaned forward so that they were eye to eye.

'I cannot give away information without proper authority,' insisted the official. He waved a voluminous book of ridiculously outdated laws before the two men's faces.

Doctor Van Helsing was not interested in such things and reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a card. 'This is a matter of great urgency. I am a doctor.' He proffered the card as proof in the hope that it would sway his case.

The Douane officer simply shrugged and passed Van Helsing's card aside as if it did not exist. 'I'm sorry, sir.'

Van Helsing retrieved his card and pushed it further under the officer's nose but the man dismissed it again and did not even bother to look.

This was beginning to prove quite exasperating. It had turned into a bickering match over who had authority and who should be privy to it. It was Arthur who took the moment in hand; if you could not catch a fly with vinegar then you must try honey. He pulled his billfold from his inner coat pocket and removed a note.

'You've got to have permission from the ministry in writing.'

'However...' Van Helsing was becoming quite vexed and rolled his eyes in disgust that there could be no reasoning with this foolish individual.

'I have my orders, and I must obey them. It is laid down in the government regulations that, under no circumstances...'

'Look, my friend, either you give me the information that we require or accept the consequence.'

'What are the consequences?'

'I am the consequences!'

Arthur waved his bribe in the air, just beyond the official's reach, gently pushing Van Helsing back to a safe distance. The man looked with new interest at the money, and Holmwood skewered the note on a paperweight pin, but he did not let the fool snatch it up.

'Under no circumstances may an unauthorized person be permitted to examine... '

Arthur skewered another note to the former.

The official glanced greedily at the money and then at Van Helsing and then at Arthur. The question to do or not to do hung perilously in mid-air. Abruptly he put down the law book he had been touting and in a flash the paper weight and the money were snatched up and safely tucked away inside the desk. A scroll of paper rolled down the incline and came to rest against an open ledger and a half-dozen ink stamps rattled before they were once again still.

'Of course,' he made a lame excuse, 'in the case of an emergency, we do sometimes make an exception to that. Seeing this gentleman is a doctor...'

The man half-nodded at Van Helsing and emerged from behind his desk and was wracked by another fit of coughing. No doubt it was all the dust in this place, Van Helsing thought, and he turned his head away from the stream of wetness that sprayed from the official's mouth. 'When did you say it was, sir?'

'May, the thirteenth.'

As if to delay the men further, the man walked up to a bird cage and began to whistle to a somewhat unimpressed canary before attempting to locate the required ledger amid the rubble of disorderly files. At length, he pulled out a folder.

'May the thirteenth,' he said with self-importance. 'Klausenburgh to Karlstadt. Let me see.' He flipped a couple of pages. 'Here it is. One hearse. One coffin. J. Marx, 49 Frederickstrasse, Karlstadt.'

'If we start back now,' said Arthur, putting his billfold back in his pocket, 'we should get to Karlstadt by morning. As soon as the establishment opens we will need to pay a visit to Mr. Marx...'

It was an address that Arthur knew all too well.

10: 49 Frederickstrasse

Gerda entered the sitting room where Mina sat quietly sewing. Looking up at the maid, Mina held her silver needle poised momentarily in mid-air. She had forsaken her black mourning garb for white lace and a glittering sapphire brooch nestled at the dip where her slender neck melded into her bosom. She looked questioningly at Gerda.

'There's a young lad with a message for you,' she told Mina, motioning her head in the direction of the front door. 'Personal, he said. He would not give it to me.' Gerda sounded offended and wanted to comment on the young man's lack of manners but decided to remain quiet. Instead she elevated her chin slightly and pinched her mouth closed.

'All right, Gerda. I'll see him.'

Mina put aside her needlepoint and stood up to follow Gerda, but the housemaid had stepped outside the sitting room already and was heading in the direction of the kitchen. A young man was slouched in the open door-frame, his clothes were grubby, as was his face and he wore a frayed cap. He would have been a handsome lad if someone had given him some soap and a tub of bathing water. His tone of voice and manner were not exactly endearing either.

'Yes?' asked Mina of her youthful messenger.

'You Mrs. Holmwood?' He was blunt and a little bit surly.

'I am.'

'Got a message for you. You're to go to 49 Frederickstrasse right away, he says, and you're not to tell anyone.'

Mina made a stifled sound of incredulity that she suppressed in her throat. 'Who says?'

'Arthur Holmwood, he calls himself. Said you'd know him.'

'That's impossible. My husband has gone to Ingstadt.'

'Not if he gave me this message, he hasn't,' retorted the youth. 'It was 'im who gave me this message. Good night.'

The lad turned his back and walked away before Mina could ask any further questions. Perplexed, she closed the door.

Mina stood chilled in the foggy midnight air looking up at the lamp-lit sign, 'J. Marx, Undertaker and Mortician.' The flame from the lamp was weak and low, and the swirling vapours of mist soon obscured the gilded lettering. She had gone to 49 Frederickstrasse as instructed, but she could not understand why she had been summoned to Lucy's undertaker. Mina shivered at the thought for she did not like being here alone. It was difficult to believe that Arthur would do such a thing as to call her out to a charnel house in the middle of the night, but if Arthur had summoned her then obviously he had a good reason to do so. Although her fox fur and her velvet cloak afforded some warmth this cul-de-sac was as cold as the arctic. Nervously, she looked around and could smell the heady scents of magnolia and asphodel coming through a creeping veil of mist. There was no noise in the street- no doubt because it was late, but a small sound at least, people talking or a dog barking perhaps, might have put her a little more at ease. It made no sense that Arthur had also instructed her to come alone and not tell anyone! What with Lucy's wasting death and the strange circumstances surrounding it, Mina felt rightfully ill at ease. She shivered and pulled on the doorbell. It rang, cutting through the silence like a knife, and Mina's bones almost jumped from her flesh. As the grating jangling ebbed it was replaced again by silence. After the passing a few heartbeats, Mina rang again. Again there came no response. Perhaps Marx had been called out, but Mina did not like thinking about that. It reminded her of the tragedy of Lucy's death and brought Mina to the brink of losing her nerve. She wondered where Arthur could be, and if no one could hear perhaps there was another entrance she could try. Slowly she stepped away from the main building and walked hesitantly toward the rear where the stables might be.

With no torch to guide her in the night and only the moon gleaming sickly through gaps in the fog, Mina stumbled in the shadows. She walked slowly because it was difficult to find the way, the path occluded under the roiling sea of mist. The fog rose like a veil, a wetly cloying shroud, an obscurity of vision and emotion through which she must pass. On the edge of an unnameable apprehension she tried to push her fears aside. Towards the rear of the house she moved, towards the stables and her rendezvous with Arthur. Grey veils of mist curled and parted in her wake, rolling around her and enveloping her, and Mina was not confident that she would find her way back to the street. Quite abruptly the silence broke, and there came strange and fearful sounds from the dark, sounds that lilted and drifted from the ether, the shriek of a night bird and the growl of a...

'Wolf,' gasped Mina, a cold thrill leaping through her nerves. A wolf in the town was impossible, and as she told herself this fact she was not reassured. Despite her wrap another cold thrill shot the length and breadth of her lovely body as a rabbit screamed, no doubt caught in the claws of the owl. Nervously Mina moved on, the walls of the funeral home rising into occultation as the mist billowed about her slim form.

It was difficult to see in the dark, her vision obscured by the mist, but as she strained her eyes she thought she beheld a crack of light emanating from beneath the door to an adjoining building. Perhaps Mr. Marx was up late after all, finishing off some work and just did not hear her call. She walked over to the building and the smell of shaved timbers drifted in the air. She lifted a hand and pushed on the door, and it opened slowly and quietly.

'Arthur?'

With a shudder, Mina entered a coffin workshop where a dozen different boxes from a simple pine to an elaborate cedar casket were stationed on pedestals in various stages of completion. She put a tentative step on a small set of stairs and paused to look about. The workshop, lit by four hanging lanterns that gave off only dulled light was as cold as ice. Mina could just see well enough so that she did not trip and hurt herself, and she pulled her cloak tighter in a failing attempt to keep warm. It was cold outside but it was even colder in here, and what was that sudden and nasty odour lurking under the scents of sawdust and wood stain? The floor was unexpectedly clean, the timber shavings had been raked and swept and stuffed into hessian bags, a great coil of rope hung from a strut, in a rack beside a huge cutting table were bolts of silks and other cloths for trimming.

As her eyes tracked the dim surrounds they came to rest on a coffin that looked strangely out of place where it rested at the rear of the workshop. She was somehow compelled to approach it. Oddly it was white where none of the other coffins were white; it looked like a great block of ice floating in an arctic sea of shipwrecked debris. Mina descended the last of the steps and slowly walked up to the coffin. Moisture was condensing on the box, and the cold, it was glacial, as if winter were about to awake from under the lid. Her heart was thumping a little faster and she had begun to feel panicked. She was about to call out to her husband again but his name abruptly died on her tongue. Looking down, Mina stared at the coffin, and she could not look away, like one hypnotised. A strange music was playing in her ears, so far away, like a dark symphony. Even as she looked upon the ice scape of that coffin the lid began to silently slide back, and all the lamps in the workshop went out.

The sun had only just come up, that moment of the dawning when the world was still partly in shadow and the last stars were blinking out in the sky dome. Arthur Holmwood and Doctor Van Helsing had only just arrived back from Ingstadt and were sitting in Holmwood's parlour drinking tea when Gerda entered still dressed in her nightclothes.

'Are you sure I can't get you anything to eat, sir?' she asked of Arthur, but he shook his head and stood up. 'Stopping out all night and then not even taking the time for a proper breakfast!' Gerda scolded. 'Whatever it is you are doing, it can wait until you've had a proper bite to eat. Please, sir, let me fry you some eggs.'

Arthur was so tired, they had been up all night and neither he nor Van Helsing had been able to get much by way of sleep since the death of Lucy. Rest would have to wait. Soon they must go to J. Marx. Arthur hoped his body and mind were up to it after the horrors he had seen.

'No, thank you Gerda,' he told her, handing her his empty teacup. 'We haven't time, but I would like a word with Mrs. Holmwood before we go.'

'I haven't seen her, sir. Would you like me to call her?'

'Is she not up yet, Gerda? Perhaps she has overslept. Just look into her room, quickly, will you. If she is still sleeping leave her.'

'Yes, sir.'

Doctor Van Helsing sipped his tea. The warm liquid fortified him. He watched Gerda put down Arthur's empty cup and turn to go upstairs. As the housemaid left the room Arthur picked up a napkin and daubed at his lips, then he replaced the cloth on the table. Van Helsing stood up and set down his cup.

'Are you ready?'

Arthur nodded that he was. Both men walked to the door, Van Helsing wrapping his scarf about his neck, Arthur buttoning his coat. They were met by Gerda in the hall, a look of consternation in her face.

'She's not there, sir.'

'Not there?'

'No, sir. Her bed's all made up, but she's not there.'

Suddenly alarmed, Arthur demanded when Gerda had last seen his wife.

Before Gerda could answer, Mina's voice spoke from behind them. All three spun about.

'Good morning.'

'Mina,' Arthur admonished her gently, 'you gave me quite a fright. Where have you been at this hour of the morning?'

She was clutching her fur closely about her throat and her eyes were glittering blue scintillates. Although her skin was the shade of alabaster, Mina looked radiant, as if the fire of life itself were suddenly kindled in her flesh. Arthur had never seen her looking so alive, and this abrupt vivacity found him oddly confused.

'It was such a lovely day,' she spoke softly, looking over Arthur's shoulder at Van Helsing, 'that I got up early and went for a walk in the garden. It was quite delightful. I didn't expect you back so soon.' The scent of lavender and roses clung to her skin and there was another perfume that hinted at pine shavings.

'I'm afraid I've got to go out again.' Arthur's tone was apologetic.

'Oh…when will you be back?' Her hand never left her throat.

'I can't say for sure.' He paused and took in her appearance. Something had most definitely changed about his wife, but he didn't quite know what. She looked joyous and yet furtive at the same time. 'Mina, you look pale,' Arthur commented, stepping forward, his fingertips brushing her cheek. Mina stepped back and turned her head away. The woman cast her eyes downward and her cheek blossomed rosy in a strange embarrassment. Notwithstanding this colouring in her cheeks there was something else about her aspect that made Arthur look deeper. Yes, there was something in her eyes that he had never seen before, not ever in their marriage. There was something new there, a sparkling light that they had never beforehand possessed, shining with a secret awareness that Arthur perceived but could not for the life of himself fathom.

'Are you, all right?'

She looked up and reprimanded him with a gentle irritation in her tone. 'Arthur darling, don't fuss. Don't worry about me. I feel perfectly well. Indeed, it was quite a luxury to have the house to myself last night.'

Her husband leaned forward to kiss her forehead, like he always did, but again she turned her head ever so slightly so that his lips grazed nothing but air. 'Good bye, darling.'

Van Helsing watched as Arthur embraced his wife, and Mina watched Van Helsing. She sensed something in the man that she had not sensed before, a waft of ruination, a scent of pious sanctity, a hint of mischance. The feeling did not make her shudder, but rather it sparked something like resentment in her soul. The Doctor held chains in his hands, chains of illusion and brutish male dominance, and it was only now that she could see them. How blind she had been before. They were bonds far stronger than those with which Arthur had bound her flesh, bound her with the shackle of the wedding ring, but Mina would resist these trammels too, for something far more rapturous possessed her, and there was nothing they could do. Arthur gave a little concerned smile and she smiled wanly in return, but as the two men left the house the smile wilted on her lips and atrophied like a dying rose.

At 49 Frederickstrasse Mr. Marx could barely remember Arthur Holmwood, even when the gentleman pressed him about the recent passing of his sister. The undertaker remained vague and had difficulty remembering anything.

'I am delighted that you two gentlemen finally arrived,' said Max as he flustered and fumbled. 'You know, it is common practice for us to pick up the remains of a loved one and transport them to the city here, but I'm bound to admit that the remains are always called for within two or three days of arrival. Yes, indeed. I was beginning to get quite worried about this case. It's been nearly three weeks, you know.'

Van Helsing gently placed his hand on Arthur's arm and shook his head. They must focus on the matter at hand, Dracula's coffin had to be found, immediately, before the vampire claimed another victim. What Arthur hated the most was the fact that even as he had been here, looking upon Lucy's body, Dracula's coffin had been on the premises, somewhere out back and he had not known. Marx took the two men out the back into the mortuary.

'This is the entrance to our cellars. We keep the corpses... Pardon, remains of the dear ones in the cool of the cellar. You two are gentlemen of the world, there's no need for me to explain why. Is there?'

Arthur and Van Helsing did not respond.

'Perhaps you'd better let me lead the way.' The befuddled old man muttered aloud, 'I know these steps. They can be dangerous.' He began to wildly gesticulate as if to emphasise his point. 'We don't want to have an accident, do we?'

He gave an absent-minded chuckle as the three of them descended the stairs, hardly expecting that his gallows humour would be appreciated. 'No, no, we don't,' he continued to talk in a matter-of-fact monotone, 'but you know, an old man came here once to see his dear departed and he fell down these stairs... Ha, ha... It was quite amusing… yes, he came to pay his last respects, and he remained to share them.'

Holmwood could only shake his head and bite down on his lower lip, this didn't seem an appropriate time for absurd wit, and this was the man who had interred his sister. It made him shudder.

'Quite amusing!' Marx went on but then stopped abruptly. Van Helsing gave Arthur a gentle nudge so that his companion would hold his tongue. 'Well, now, where are we? Where are we? Where are we?' Searching the room Marx leaned over and drummed his hands on a coffin lid. 'It's around the back somewhere. Oh well, it's bound to be at the back, isn't it?' Arthur looked at Van Helsing and shook his head. Marx chuckled absently to himself and waved the two men to bring up the rear. 'Come on, this way, gentlemen, do follow me. I know where it is... This way.'

They moved around a coffin perched precariously on two rickety saw-horses, and Marx bumped into the box, scattering a drift of sawdust in his stumble.

'Oops, sorry,' he muttered, dusting off his coat. 'You'll have to excuse me, but I do sometimes speak to them this way. One becomes, shall we say, friendly with them after a while. This one was a charming girl... really charming.'

Van Helsing could not help but think Marx was suggesting something wholly disgusting. Upon entering into the rear of the workshop, the undertaker froze in his gait, his eyes wide with surprise. After a few incoherent mumblings and gesticulations, he turned and faced Van Helsing. 'Well, where is it? This is extraordinary!'

There were two coffin stands but there was no coffin on them.

'It was there,' Marx, pointed and protested, waving his hands about in disbelief. He paused momentarily in his confusion and put a finger up to his chin, trying to reel in his muddled memory.

'I know it was because I saw it only yesterday… Why I really don't understand who could have moved it.'

Or where it had gone for that matter!

The mystery of the coffin's removal perplexed both Arthur and Van Helsing too. This made their task so much more difficult. What were they to do now? Dracula was toying with them, leading them on; cleverly staying one step ahead. Just how were they to find this thing of darkness before it spread its dreadful blight further? There were no immediate answers on offer.

They were gone for most of the day and eventually the night slid in between purple shadows and chased away the daylight, yet they were still no closer to finding Dracula's lair. Arthur was beginning to show signs of fatigue and Van Helsing, obsessing about the nature of the vampire could think of nothing but grave earth and churchyards and ruins till his mind reeled and he could not focus. They had visited at least eight abandoned premises within the precinct, a derelict manor, an old warehouse among them and not one sign of the monster had presented itself. It was most discouraging. Mr. Marx had said the coffin had been there, and only a day had passed, so Dracula must be close at hand, playing a game of cat and mouse with them, and of course Dracula was winning.

Mina sat quietly under the window; her beauty radiant in the full and sterling glow of the moon. Concentrating at her needlepoint, Mina glanced up every now and again, watching Arthur and Doctor Van Helsing as they pored over a map they had spread before them on the table top. The two men talked in subdued voices. Arthur was holding a pot of coffee and eating a dried biscuit because his stomach had begun to complain.

'The driver of the hearse might have lied to the frontier official about where he was going.' Arthur ventured as he swallowed a mouthful.

'Yes,' returned Van Helsing, casting a quick glance over his shoulder at Mina as if to cue Arthur to lower his voice, 'but that fellow at the morgue wasn't lying. He was really surprised when he saw the coffin wasn't there. He must have had it sometime.'

Mina caught Van Helsing's look from beneath lowered eyelids and paused in her sewing. Once he had turned back to Arthur she tuned her ear to their whispered conversation, intent on knowing what was going on. So far, she had been told nothing, as if there were some terrible mystery that linked them all to the deaths of Jonathan and Lucy that she had no right to know. The contents of Jonathan's diary had been kept secret from her too; for all their good intentions Arthur and Doctor Van Helsing were somehow failing at whatever it was they were being so secretive about, she knew this because she sensed it, their failure clung to them like damp clothes, and she was no fool.

'No,' she could barely hear Van Helsing, 'I think he's still somewhere here in Karlstadt.'

She stopped her needle for the briefest of moments and trembled. Who? Who was somewhere here in the city, and why? Someone who didn't belong, someone who had something to do with the recent tragedies in their lives?

'Where?' Arthur questioned limply, knowing that there was not even the vaguest clue apparent to answer that question. 'This is a big town.'

They had already looked in several places without any success at all. Van Helsing pointed to another location on the map.

'There are not many places he can hide, don't forget.'

If that were true why hadn't they found him? Van Helsing took a red handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped his nose. It was cold, almost as if winter was settling in; the weather had become so chilly; he hoped he wasn't getting a head cold, not when this monster needed to be routed.

'At least,' returned Arthur, munching hungrily through his cookie, 'that's good.' Was it, however, any real comfort?

A ripple of disgust crawled through Mina, and she could not repress its taint. Realising that's how it always was, how it would always be, to be dismissed and reproached, to be ignored…to be forgotten. Vexed, Mina seethed, her chagrin growing darker with every stitch. Cruelly disdained she pinched her red lips together in irritation, and falteringly pushed the needle again through the fabric. In the lamplight, the blush of the camellia was reflected upon her white cheek. If Arthur had even bothered to consider, just for a moment, he might have noticed that his wife's attitude had subtly changed since her 'walk in the garden'. However, Arthur was blind, but her eyes were open, and her mind was on neither pin nor cloth nor scissor nor thread. How electrified the atmospheres had become, the light blazing hotly in the hearth, the air in the parlour growing torrid and stifling. Mina was caught in a dream. Neither did Van Helsing see, but surely, he too could not have been so ignorant, as was her husband, purblind to all the pent-up desires in her heart, the desires she wanted so much to set free. They were both foolish men, one ignorant of sex and the other sexless; both brim full of repression and frustration and hatred for genuine desire. Mina flinched, and the tip of the silver lance thrust just clear of her fingertip, silently, breathlessly she continued to sew her needlepoint. With every draw of the needle thread Mina's thoughts were consumed by another, by a shadow that penetrated her, a shadow who did not take the form of Arthur's passionless and lifeless flesh nor pretended Van Helsing's chaste abstention. With every pull of the thread the shadow filled her and then withdrew and thrust again. Mina was gasping lowly now, but the men did not hear, so consumed were they by their idiotic search for a threat that they did not understand. She saw herself convulsing in the confines of the sepulchre, shrieking out that she was joyously impure and liberated, that the darkness was hers, melded in flesh, drowning in lust. Only with the cosmic power of evil could she be free to feel. With a shudder, Mina tried to divert her thoughts away from her nightmare, by recalling the conversation that had passed over dinner.

'You will stay for dinner, Doctor?' Arthur had extended his invitation to Van Helsing before Mina could speak, and the flicker of a purple cloud passing over the moon had cast a shadow upon Mina's beautiful face. He was not needed here, not now, and he should return to his hotel.

'Thank you. Of course, I will.'

'And you ma'am?' asked Gerda.

'Why do you ask, Gerda?' The interpellation came from Arthur, and the housemaid asking the question had made Mina feel awkward and foolish. She did not wish to explain her absence from the house last night, not that she could easily remember her walk in the night or where she had gone. Somehow it all seemed like a dream that she could not explain, as if there were gaps in her memory. She did remember something though, some inexplicable kindling that had set fire to her nerves. How could she tell of this? Neither could she explain the growing elation and the nervous tension that knotted up her insides as the two men chatted on. Angry that her inner desires might unwittingly be exposed, and embarrassed by the housekeeper's gall, Mina cast her eyes to the floor. Doctor Seward's harsh comment about domestics and their place rang in a corner of her mind. She wanted to silence Gerda for her lack of tact, but instead she reprimanded herself for her obdurate thoughts. Nonetheless, Mina could not completely quell her mind from anger and she stitched up her lips. She did not wish to be drawn further about her absence, and she ignored her husband's inquisitive look.

'I'm sorry ma'am, but what with you going out last night just when I had everything cooked... I just wanted to be sure.'

'Of course. You know I will be in for dinner,' Mina had meekly returned, though the words stained her lips with acid. Dismissed, Gerda had turned and gone back to the kitchen. At the edge of a strange anxiety, Mina had become even more restless. She felt resentful that this house had turned into a trap. Its four walls had begun crawling with the filth of some horribly contaminated domestic ideology, wherein everyone conspired against her freedom. The dining room and the dinner conversation only further confirmed that she existed now in some stagnant, claustrophobic and enclosed space from which there might be no escape. Mina couldn't stand it anymore. Van Helsing had engaged in talk about the bucolic peasantry and their bedevilment and beliefs. To Mina, his zeal was almost perverse.

Mina feigned a nervous laugh. 'All your mysteries,' Mina had responded, trying to conceal her growing rancor. Mina placed her fork on the table, her meal untouched. Unable to eat much, Mina had declared, 'You're just trying to frighten me, Doctor Van Helsing, with these ghost stories of yours.'

'Regardless, the tales are true. I swear it!' Van Helsing had returned in earnest. 'I tell you there is no accounting the things that some of these country people will say.'

'Surely you cannot expect me to believe that anyone could be so simple.'

'Just as I have described it to you, and more even!' The Doctor had insisted.

'Oh no, more I cannot believe.'

'Nonetheless it is true.' Van Helsing, finished with his repast, pushed away his dinner plate and poured himself a glass of water. 'Do you know that there is a district in Styria that is supposed to be cursed by the Devil?'

Arthur had listened attentively, but it was unease that had gripped Mina as the Doctor continued with his tale.'In this hamlet, for it is hardly more than that, the people are convinced that they and their descendants are forever under the Devil's command. No amount of talk or persuasion by visiting clerics will convince them otherwise. If cursed by the Devil they are supposed to be, then that is their lot and they are satisfied with it! They won't even allow any holy symbols in the village. I was there once, and they searched me. They took this from me.' From his coat pocket, the Doctor had produced a crucifix, the one that had branded Lucy's forehead. 'And they would not return it until I left them.'

'That sounds ridiculous,' Mina had commented, and the light had glinted off the crucifix in arrows of gold and the gleam had smarted her vision.

'Still,' Van Helsing had mused, 'it is simply a piece of metal wrought in a certain fashion. Had the same piece of metal been wrought any other way, its significance would be lost. It is what it represents that they feared, not what it is.'

They had finished their dinner and rejoined to the parlour, and now Mina sat in exiled silence on a sofa under the window while these men governed her life and plotted some masculine retaliation against someone mysterious and threatening. With whom were they concerned and what was the danger? Closer and closer and closer the thoughts pressed in, and Mina quaked and her needle quivered unsteadily between trembling fingers. The darkness in her head gathered like the knotted whorls and tattered fragments of a dream, and the dream took on a face that was not a face. That the dream promised her pleasures and joys that were a whole world of existence away from her prosaic marital vows made the beautiful woman's heartbeat begin to thrum. Mina licked at her mouth and her lips were dry and they trembled as if they were brushed by a hot wind, brittle, her nerves crumbling, her flesh turning to ashes. Unobserved, she closed her eyes and imagined in that fervid moment of the fantasy the ravishment of her willing flesh. Mina's head began to spin, her senses to reel, her mind conjuring the dream face that would not form. It was the face of a god, a black god, so handsome and vital, and there were no ripples in the god's skin, only the shades were ceaseless, passing over the impression of a firm jaw and fiery eyes, of wet, crimson lips on the brink of opening unto a snarl. This mask was crowned with jet locks that were blacker than the mouth of midnight. Though all this was only an impression of form, and she gratified the shadow in her willingness to please in every way she could. She saw herself entwined in grave-clothes, opening her thighs and inviting into her body every conceivable perversion. Mina moaned silently, laid out in the charnel-house, her naked body a corpse that was pulsing with every heresy, and she cared not about penance or punishment. The shadow throbbed in her mouth, filled her throat with a mordant dulcification. Like a hoyden, she received the dream into every opening, revelling in the prostration, the wet, the coldness, the humidity, the thrusting, the glorification, the groaning, the penultimate oblation. She saw her naked body all tangled up in the cerecloth, in a shroud, writhing in an open grave, shuddering with ecstasy in the length of the coffin. The fabric in Mina's hands became that shroud, and the needle was sharp and it penetrated the cerement, and the stitch was long and then it was short and then it was a derangement and then it was knotted and then it snapped. The point of the awl ran into her finger and a drop of blood came forth.

Van Helsing tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket. It was Arthur's turn to point to a spot on the map.

'There is an old neglected graveyard about three kilometres from here...' Arthur picked up a pencil and drew a circle on the map near Van Helsing's splayed fingers, 'somewhere in this area. St. Joseph's.' Guiltily he put down the pencil and looked over to Mina. 'Give me just one moment,' he said and touched Van Helsing on the shoulder. Van Helsing nodded and took up a magnifying glass to closer examine the area that Arthur had ringed.

'The only thing that we can hope for is that he has returned to his home,' said Van Helsing wearily.

'Then,' Arthur returned with conviction, 'that is where we must go. We'll tear the place down, stone by stone!'

'What are you two being so mysterious about over there?' As she put her wounded finger to her lips, anxiety was written in Mina's beautiful face. All this suppressing information and what did it ultimately achieve? Arthur gave a low chuckle, ignorant to his wife's growing unease and turned to face her.

'We'll be with you in a moment, my darling.'

His dismissal boiled umbrage through her veins.

'Oh, I am sorry, Mrs. Holmwood,' Van Helsing apologised. A sudden flash of understanding struck him. He had only meant to protect Mina, but perhaps his chivalry amounted to male ignorance.

Arthur quietly approached and knelt before Mina. She was trembling like a leaf and sick of their secrecy. She had ceased her sewing, the silver needle plunged into the fabric as if it were a gleaming exclamation mark, and then she threw the sewing aside. Arthur was ignorant of her ire, even as he took something from his pocket and held it in both hands before her; the object was hidden from her view. The tension within Mina's flesh had reached breaking point, and she sensed waves of hot energy beginning to pulse from the conduit of Arthur's clasp. It was like he held a tiny sunburst in his grasp, something fiery and volatile. Something dangerous and harmful.

'Mina, my dear, don't think I'm being silly,' Arthur told her, 'but I'd feel much happier if, during my absence, you'd wear this for me.' An unembellished cross, dangling on a delicate chain that he'd wound through his fingers, spilled from his palm. It glittered in the moonlight. 'Please don't ask me why, but just wear it for my sake.'

Mina appeared physically repelled and pulled back, almost leaping from her seat. She shook, and her whole body quaked as if wracked by ague. Arthur looked confused.

'Arthur, I...I...' Mina couldn't even finish her sentence because she shook so violently.

'Please, Mina.'

Reluctantly she held out her hand, and Arthur placed the cross into the white cup of her palm. The woman drew in a savage breath and her hands curled into fists, her body was shriven with a convulsion and she stood bolt upright and as straight as a plank. Van Helsing spun around, and horrified, Arthur leapt to his feet. Mina screamed, a ghastly cry as brittle as ice and shrill, the chain dripping from her clenched hand, vapour streaming from the closed lily of her palm. In a terrible fit, she collapsed on the floor. Both men were at her side within the space of a heartbeat, Arthur lifting her head to support it in his lap while Van Helsing searched for her pulse and felt her temperature. Looking to her hand he realised what had caused the seizure and his fingers grazed the chain clenched in her fingers. With difficulty, he forced her hand open and the stigmata presented itself in all its livid glory. Mina had been tainted, branded by the cross and corrupted by the Nosferatu. The holy bauble had seared its shape into her flesh. Both Van Helsing and Arthur looked upon each other in utter horror.

'A fool, that is what I have been,' whispered Van Helsing. 'An utter fool!'

Arthur carried Mina upstairs and had Gerda prepare her for bed. While Mina was being made comfortable Van Helsing investigated further and saw the marks of the vampire in her throat. They were two red and recent punctures. This kiss had befouled Mina's virtue and would recruit her into the ranks of the undead if Dracula were not found immediately. It could only have been inflicted but a few hours ago. It was hard to believe that after all they'd done to protect Mina that Dracula had still made fools of them both. He had not yet claimed Arthur's wife as his prize, for she had to die first and Van Helsing was not going to let that happen. Dracula had to be found before he perpetrated that foul act.

They came down from Mina's bedroom and at the newel post Arthur turned to Van Helsing and said vehemently- 'You said Lucy would lead us to Dracula. Why didn't I listen to you? This would never have happened.'

'You mustn't blame yourself for that, but you must have the courage to let Mina lead us now. We'll give her every protection we can. We will stand guard all night. We will watch the windows of her room. They face two sides of the house, don't they?

'Yes,' whispered Arthur, his stomach flipping at his own ignorance. He should have listened to the Doctor, for Van Helsing and Jonathan were the only two men who had dared challenge this creature and now it had infected his household.

Van Helsing moved in closer to Arthur, it was as if he were reading his thoughts. 'He must be prevented from getting near the house. I know I ask a great deal of you,' the Doctor pressed, 'but you mustn't weaken now.' He placed a firm hand on Arthur's shoulder and looked him straight in the eye.

Van Helsing picked up the crucifix that had seared Mina's palm and handed it to Holmwood.

'How could this have happened?' Arthur looked shocked and bewildered, and fearful for his wife's safety.

'He failed with Lucy and now he is trying to get Mina.' Van Helsing was blunt but truthful.

'Trying!' Arthur heard his voice rising in pitch. 'He has succeeded!'

'Not yet, Holmwood. You and I must stop him.'

'How do we stop him?'

Van Helsing indicated the crucifix. 'This is sufficient to keep him at bay. He cannot pass beyond it.'

'And Mina, is there any hope?'

'Hope! Of course, there is hope.' The Doctor lay a gentle hand upon Arthur's shoulder. 'Until she dies she cannot become one of the damned. We must see that she does not die, for we have it within our power to rid the world of this evil, and, with God's help, we will succeed.'

Arthur was not wholly convinced for he could not understand how Mina had become contaminated with this evil.

'I have my own crucifix for protection,' said Van Helsing, reaching into his pocket. Now, Arthur, if you take the front of the house I will take the rear. It will be a long night and a lonely vigil, but if it serves its purpose, it will be worth a thousand nights over!'

11: The Scent Of Dying Roses

Only the wind suspired lowly through the bushes and the trees though the rest of the night was hushed. The garden lay in a fallow state, strewn in the moonlight were the petals of dead flowers and withered leaves. From somewhere far off a dog began howling and Van Helsing pushed aside a low branch and tuned his ear to the baying. It went on for some time but because of the wind he could not get a fix from which direction it came. The sound of the dog howling eventually drifted away and the wind reclaimed its whispering. Van Helsing continued surveying the dark garden. On the other side of the house Arthur watched too, but he had not the fortitude of Van Helsing even though he clenched the crucifix so tightly that his fingers were turning white. He heard the dog baying and he heard the wind and he imagined he heard many other things. Neither heard the escutcheons in a white coffin lid spinning counter-clockwise against the grain, nor the soft scraping of timber against timber as the lid pushed free and fell to the floor. Neither heard the night as it emerged from its well of shadows.

Mina was breathless, her bosom rose and fell rapidly and she shivered but it was not with fear, but with longing. She had peered from her bedroom window for hours now, silent, waiting. Standing and looking past her own translucent reflection, her image thrown back from the dark glass looked ghostly. Mina had watched the light of the sun drain from mulberry to grape and then give in utterly to blackness. She saw nothing unreal save the branches of the trees moving in the wind and sometimes Doctor Van Helsing or Arthur could be glimpsed crossing through the shades under the beams of the moon. The men were outside the house standing vigil and the servants had retired; the clock was approaching the hour of midnight and the world shivered with a restless quietude.

She had waited long enough; an eternity and she could wait no longer. There was a chill in the air, something other than cold, like the last breath leaking from the purple mouth of a corpse. He was calling for her; she heard the rhapsody of his song and it filled her being. His calling was a conjuration of the joys of the divine. Mina moved away from the window and unlocked her bedroom door and the scent of dying roses filled the frozen air, the smell of a bloom gone rotten and wormy, but somehow the scent was glorious and it made her drunk with eagerness. Out onto the landing at the top of the stairs she stepped and with eyes wide in expectation she looked down.

The Night was standing there in the splintered, roiling shadows, gloating upon her with a fiery gaze, but Mina was not afraid. A frisson twisted a serpentine path up her spine; her nipples hardened and a sticky dampness had begun in the valley between her thighs. She reached up a hand and undid the ribbon at the bosom of her nightgown. The gossamer peeled away, fluttering as does the wings of a butterfly emerging from the cocoon. A rush of heat flamed through the filaments of her body. Every muscle and sinew sparked, every nerve was lit by a cosmic taper, an agony that invaded her flesh, an agony of lust and sweet corruption.

She had never felt this way with Arthur, but strangely that did not matter now, she felt neither guilt nor shame. Arthur's touch was dutifully warm but uninspiring, Arthur's lips were tight and did not speak of amorous promises and Arthur's flesh was like wax, his manhood a taper that did not burn. Mina did not want to break free from this new and altogether wondrous spell, she did not for a second wish to repel the demon, and her body trembled in a series of little quakes, ripples arcing from the spreading wave of the black thing's aura. The thing of darkness called her name, syllables emerging from the enchanted throat of malediction. Yet it was such a beautiful song and it turned her flesh to water, an enchantment that made her reel and almost swoon upon the floor.

The Darkness gave a twisted leer and watched her slide her nightclothes even further down so that the curves of her body were freed; it gloated upon her milky skin and changed the beautiful pitch of its midnight song, went up a note, higher, higher. Obediently Mina retreated into her bedroom. She backed inch by inch toward the bed, leaving the ethereal trail of her nightdress where it fell, and spread her nakedness across a silken width of illusion and false promises. Another shock of desire went through her, a need to feel this thing's lips sealed to her lips, the darkness and her own mortal coil become one thunderous melding; a compact she would gladly make with the Devil. Mina became rigid, then went limp, a little moan escaped from her lips. The thing moved forward and the stocks of lavender and the white daisies in a crystal vase withered and became ash, a silent gust of breath swept them away.

The Darkness began to climb the stairs, flowing upward, a cascade of liquid shades deeper than an oubliette; a phantom conjured from a weave of shadows. Within its billowing cloud a chaos of sparks and molten silver whirled; it crawled up the carpeted steps, twined between the rails and slithered over the etchings hanging in the stairwell, the glass cracked in each gilded frame as it passed shedding jagged slivers soundlessly onto the stairs. From this writhing, insectile maelstrom of shadows it began to take on form, stifling the air with the sickly-sweet perfume of living death. The woman gasped and moaned and sucked the tainted air into her breast and the Night sang with a choir of dark angels. Closer it came, inexorably slow and deliberate, its eyes beaming like torches, like great rubies, its lips like the gaping mouth of a bottomless inferno. As it rose it sang little slices of ecstasy and forever; that every dream Mina had ever dreamed must be cast aside, that now the way was paved to awakening unto a nightmare that was beyond pleasure. The Nightmare filled Mina's reeling mind with splendid perversity, consumed her, enveloped her, and it spilled through the door and the door closed with a muted click.

A cloud obscured the firmament and the lamp of the moon went out. As the vapours scudded over Selene the vigil in the garden became a game of blind man's bluff. Neither Van Helsing nor Arthur could see a thing and in the darkness, the world shivered imperceptibly in its counter clockwise revolution about the sun, gulping down the shadows as it whirled.

The vampire beheld the woman and it smiled as it glided toward the bed. It looked upon Mina's sculptured beauty, her rose-tipped breasts, her ivory thighs, beheld the long tresses of honey-coloured hair splayed over the quilt. She was lovely, a vision more splendid than any goddess and her lips were ripe and glistening, red as blood. Aware of the cruciform stigmata that marked her palm, Mina hid her hand beneath the folds of the fabric. Her laboured breath was hot and with the fingers of her free hand she ran her touch over her belly and began to stroke the golden forestry crowning her sex. In a rapture Mina threw back her head and parted her legs and her scent was as potent as a newly blossomed flower. The demon paused by the side of the bed, a bower for she who must soon dream in the black perimeters of the coffin. Hovering like a bird of prey, a storm of unrest boiled in the wide firmament of its cloak. Mina was almost pleading to be taken, her gaze transfixed to the ruby glowing eyes of her demon seducer. She knew him only as the liberator of her soul; an intimate of Death, a terrifying lover who had died yet lived. The darkness began to take on form, black stars were threaded into hair; a visage was moulded into the face of the most beautiful man she had ever seen. His nose was so finely chiselled, long and slightly flared, his mouth a crimson arch that spoke of depravity and succulent evils that were joys and carnal pleasures. His eyes, they were portals through which eons had passed in flame, alight with the remnants of dead suns and broken stars, they saw beyond the frail garment of the flesh.

From the folds of his mantle he extended white, white hands, the hands of a living corpse for no blood flowed through their veins. His fingers were long and thin and ornamented with one argent band and a strange stone was fixed thereon. It was a stone whose colour was dark but had no name in human language, a finned and scaled worm seemed to awake therein, trapped in the polished gem and singing flame. Dracula perched beside Mina, and Mina lay at the precipice of the world. He leaned forward and she gasped, anticipating his contact, a shudder racing through her body. It was like pain, a sick but wonderful and breathtaking pain that heralded unnameable joys as his fingers touched her breast. The bud of her nipple became a bloom that he stroked in slow, calculated caresses so that Mina's skin contracted, and it was all an agony that she could not scream out her pleasure. His touch went on for an eternity, massaging and kneading and melting her flesh, altering, remoulding the clay from which God had fashioned Eve. Dracula's fingertips were the wings of a moth doing an exquisite dance over her skin, tracing every curve and dip and stroking and coming to rest at the opening of her sex. If it were not his flesh then it was living flame that entered therein, holding her apart and exploring deeply. Hovering, corporeal, he moved over her flesh and down, down and although he had not taken a breath in over six hundred years it was as if a desert wind seared where the wetness of a serpent's tongue slavered.

Mina wanted him- wanted him to fill her body with the fiery organ of his Dragon's tongue. In her adultery, there must be pleasure and there must be agony, both must pierce her soul. Dracula was the lust she had never felt with Arthur, dull and boring, conventional Arthur, and a whorl of white-hot excitement and fervour flooded her veins. Love was unstitched from the fabric of her heart. Instead hunger and thirst assailed her, the thread of her being became tangled up with her desires. She wanted this dark thing to reach into the core of her soul, to wipe the repetitive and stale Arthur Holmwood from her mind, to dissolve her wedding vows, to feel the tremble of hot lips mapping the lily-white expanse of her flesh. A libidinous wave crested over the ocean of Mina's heart, bringing with it a cacoethes of reckless temptation. Riding upon the wave Mina beheld a galleon, and the ship was being tossed about in a tempest. There were two Dragons towering out of the turbulent water, and she recognised one of those serpents as wearing her own face. The other possessed the most wondrous eyes, glowing they were, but with shining darkness. Dracula's was a mouth ready to spew flame, or to fan the winds that must sent the ship to its doom. The ship was her marriage. Mina knew this. Fidelis et Morten. Loyalty and death. Mina chose death, for this hearth and home had become the wellspring of disillusion. It had been the same for Lucy, to be condemned to a loveless marriage, and look what had happen then! If Mina were to ascribe her own destiny, that she abandon fidelity here and now, in the bed of her thankless marriage, to lie willingly with the dragon, then she would. If it were not, then she would happily sink to the lowest of depths and be damned. Perhaps the only way to truly be loyal was to be dead? Dracula was so gloriously beautiful that his presence stained every flicker of light blacker than midnight, realigned the shadows- and yet Mina saw all. She gasped as his mouth left her sex, left the place where Arthur had never placed his own lips, and she closed her eyes and went weak, a conscious agony convulsing every nerve so that Mina was left all but senseless. The vampire dragged his fevered kiss over her hips and once more tasted her breasts; he covered her nakedness with his robes of midnight. Engulfed they were like two beings that nothing could ever separate, dissolving into a flow of blood that poured passed Lethe into the river of endless night.

Dracula drew his lips back exposing a terrible row of fangs and Mina gasped and pulled his head down to her throat. That vulpine kiss was like fire, sinking into Mina's neck so deep that she clawed and groaned and tears spilled from her eyes to fall as shattered diamonds upon the bedding. The darkness erupted in a blaze more intense than a collapsing star, incendiary, and Mina gave herself up to such a delicious suffering that she never wanted to return to the land of the living, never wished to return to the sterile ashes of her marriage. The vampire shook and quivered in its own disgusting ecstasy, drinking from the fountain of her life force, staining her soul black and seeding something dreadful and yet wonderful within her flesh, something that must now grow in a garden of evil, never to be pure again. It lay on her body like ice over the surface of a lake in winter, cold and bathed in polar eclipse, melting joys into the heart of a Vulcan core; Mina could not withdraw, not now, not while this exquisite stupor fuelled the sensual furnace of her being, such a dulcet madness taking away her breath, her life, killing her with the physicality of pleasure.

Her soul was sucked into the black realm of his form, and in that body, she drowned in an ocean of blasphemous lust, the sounds of his feeding was like the tolling of cathedral bells. How the thing was ravenous, an abomination that injected a terrible venom into Mina's veins as it fed, tainted her, corrupted her, so that the darkness that was Dracula became part of her existence. The poison flowed through Mina, through the vessel of her body and it throbbed with a rush of toxins that benumbed her spirit and erased all vestiges of her former life. Without regret she forgot everything and gave up her soul, her marriage vows were blown away as if they were cobwebs threading into the wind and Arthur's face no longer existed, all that remained of him was a pale reflection caught in the mirror of a dead god's eye.

Outside in the garden, from a hidden bower high in the elm where Lucy had met with the child Tania, an owl shrieked and startled Arthur. In sudden and nervous fright, his bones almost leapt from his skin. The moon dipped briefly behind a cloud so that the world was momentarily plunged into utter darkness. Holmwood's eyes flew straight up to his bedroom window to where the soft glow of a lamp still shone, his fingers gripping the cross Van Helsing had given him so tightly that the silver left an indentation in his palm. No phantasm flickered across the frame of the glass. He felt his heart leaping inside his chest thinking that the owl's shriek had been his wife screaming. Even as this terrible thought flashed through his head the moon was reborn from the veil of shadowy clouds. He was relieved that the sound had not come from the house when he looked up into the tree. Reassured Arthur heard a ruffle of feathers and in the high boughs he glimpsed the owl with its huge golden eyes sitting on a branch not far above his head, watching him. He realised his foolish mistake and his lips arched into an embarrassed smile, but the owl made no more cries and flapped away, and all was silent. As silent as the grave.

Eventually the night gave up its grip and Helios conquered the sky. A soft pink blush was creeping over the horizon when Holmwood and Van Helsing met at the front of the house.

'It is nearly light. He will not come now,' said Arthur, placing the rosary into his coat pocket.

'Mina is safe now,' Van Helsing said, rubbing his hands together, yet he could not hide a feeling of reticence. His face betrayed his worry. 'We must keep watch again tonight.'

'Cheer up my friend, we have succeeded in what we set out to do,' returned Arthur, confident that all would be well. 'We have kept him away from Mina all night. Come, let's go in.'

In the entry hall Van Helsing unbuttoned his heavy overcoat and Arthur closed the door. It should have been warmer within the house, much warmer than it was. Cold clung to everything; the men could feel it even penetrating the soles of their shoes and it turned their breath to mist.

'You'd better get some rest,' Van Helsing advised.

'Oh, what about you?'

Taking off his hat Van Helsing nodded toward the sitting room. 'I'll be all right in there, if I may?'

'Right. I'll get you a rug from my room.'

'Thank you.'

Across the bottom of the stair rail Van Helsing threw his coat and scarf, though he pondered putting them back on, the chill had gone straight to his bones. He would light a fire; that would help things warm up a bit. Even as he thought this something truly awful happened. He heard glass shattering underfoot and looked up to see Holmwood rushing up the stairs. The man disappeared into the bedroom and Van Helsing heard one frantic cry of 'Mina!'

In a flash, the Doctor had taken to the steps, almost slipping on the shards of broken picture frame glass that littered the way. Van Helsing bounded up the stairs in double quick time and erupted into the Holmwood bedroom. Mina lay splayed naked over the bed, her lovely skin so very white in contrast to the vivid splashes of blood red that smeared her breasts and stained her thighs. She looked dead, a spent corpse brutalized and flung down, her golden hair flowing over the bedside, her torn throat dripping a pool of gore into the carpet. Arthur fell onto the bed beside his wife and gently pulled up her head, placing it on a pillow. Van Helsing freed the coverlet from the foot of the bed and draped it over the woman's nakedness.

'Quickly,' Van Helsing instructed Arthur, 'if we are to save her life we must not waste a moment.' He called out for Gerda and the maid came running, she choked off a scream and almost fainted when she saw her mistress all pale and bloody. 'Gerda,' Van Helsing told her, 'I need you to get my bag quickly.'

The poor woman hesitated as if she had been stunned. She could not understand what was happening for she had heard nothing, no intruder nor the breaking of the glass. How could this have occurred?

'Now, Gerda, hurry, please!' Van Helsing urged.

Gerda ran from the room with her own scream frozen in her throat.

Van Helsing had studied disorders of the blood for many years. This study in turn had led eventually to a friendship with a scholarly student, Jonathan Harker and through a quirk of fate, Van Helsing's twilight predication of vampires in turn became Jonathan's. There was much still to be learned about these creatures, and most men regarded them as myth or were too afraid to admit that such things could exist. Mina Holmwood lay in her bed at this moment almost drained of the fluids that sustained her life, evidence that such monsters were real indeed.

Transfusing blood from one patient to another was not an operation that was genuinely understood, and it was a dangerous undertaking. Instinct told Van Helsing there was more to this life-saving exchange of fluid than merely pumping one person's ichors into the veins of another. Van Helsing was reticent, but blood was his specialty, and his research had followed in the path of James Blundell, a scientist who had experimented with animals. Without Blundell's valuable research, and the positive results from the subsequent transfusion on a patient suffering a post mortem haemorrhage, Van Helsing would not have had the confidence to now attempt to save Mina's life. The method though was drastic, and at most unreliable, for trying to emulate the experiment had not been so fortunate for those poor souls who had died as a consequence. There was undoubtedly a biological difference between the donor and the patient, but no one understood just what that difference was. There had been much speculation of one kind or another as to what caused some recipients of another's blood to die. Defibrination seemed to destroy the valuable constituents of the blood and coagulation began so quickly that the rubber tubing clotted and the patient invariably expired. Nonetheless, Van Helsing was willing to try, or Mina's fate would be sealed.

Yet here Van Helsing was faced with a terrible choice, and he had to act on faith. If he reasoned that those who survived the transfusions did so because their blood was compatible then he had a chance; an argument he had yet to put forward because most of the medical tribunals did not want to listen, thinking his idea preposterous. Blood was blood as far as they were concerned, how could one person's blood possibly be different from another's? Yet under the magnifying eye of his microscope Van Helsing had observed a variety of subtleties and differences that were so remarkable as to make him ponder the physicality of the vital fluids that flowed through every human being on the planet. He now found himself backed into a corner, his scientific mind having to lead the way. Mr. Blundell had not delved too deeply because of prejudice; and now, Abraham Van Helsing, in this most dangerous hour was faced with taking a weighty chance or Mina would die and then, like Lucy she would return from the dead to roam the night as Dracula's concubine. He had no way of testing his theory, and no time for deliberation. It was difficult to choose whether Arthur or Gerda or even himself, should be the donor. Relying on scientific rationale and perhaps God willing all should go well, he chose Arthur. He was strong and would revitalize quickly; if his choice was a bad choice then Mina was lost anyway and another horror would have to be perpetrated to release her soul. He made Holmwood roll up his shirtsleeve and instructed Gerda to get a bowl of clean cotton wool and some linen bandages.

'Now lie down,' the Doctor commanded as he gently pushed Arthur back onto a chaise that had been moved in close to the bed. When Gerda had returned Van Helsing proceeded to set up the tools he would need. He took from his bag a small case and a kidney dish while Gerda stood watching, still holding her bowl of cotton wool. He handed her a bottle of antiseptic and took from the case a sharp, hollow needle that he fixed into one end of a thin thread of rubber tubing. He inserted another into the opposite end of the tube. This hose was joined in the middle by a squeeze pump. Firstly, Van Helsing bandaged Mina's right arm so that the failing pressure of what little blood was left in her might make the vein stand out visibly. Next, he cleansed the dip in her elbow with the antiseptic and pushed the needle into the unconscious woman's arm. He bound it quickly to restrict any movement should she wake during the procedure. Next, he repeated the actions with Arthur, and Arthur felt the horrible thickness of that sharp sliver going deep into his vein and he tried not to flinch. Taking a watch on a chain from his vest pocket, Van Helsing began to count off the pulse rate as he squeezed the pump. A thin ribbon of scarlet began to worm along the tube from the puncture in Arthur's vein, to weave its twisting course through the pump junction and into Mina's body.

Gerda watched on nervously and remained pale throughout the entire operation, but she did not fail Van Helsing, not once. After some time had elapsed Van Helsing replaced his watch and stopped squeezing the pump. It would be dangerous to take any more of Arthur's blood, thankfully Mina had experienced no negative reaction to the transfusion; a little colour had even returned to her face. Gerda passed Van Helsing a scissor and the Doctor snipped through the gauze that had held Arthur's arm rigid. The Doctor removed the offending needle and dropped it gently in the kidney tray; then he daubed a knot of cotton wool with the antiseptic and pressed it tight over the tiny wound in the other man's arm. A spot of blood leaked out of the piercing but Van Helsing bent Arthur's arm upward to his shoulder. Arthur made to rise but a wave of dizziness went through him.

'Just sit still like that for a minute.' Van Helsing advised Arthur as he cut through the bandages around Mina's arm. Once again, he placed the bloody needle in the kidney tray and made a similar binding for her wound. Van Helsing held up Mina's arm and checked her pulse.

'I think so. Let me see your arm.'

Arthur felt giddy and faint.

'Steady,' said Van Helsing and supported Arthur by holding his back. 'Are you, all right?'

'Just a little dizzy, that's all.'

'That will wear off.'

'Has she had enough?'

'For the moment. Anyway, you have given enough and you cannot spare more.'

'Will she be all right?' Arthur asked, feeling a giddy rush go through his brain.

'If she can rest peacefully. And you must rest too.'

Gerda moved in closer in case she was needed. Holmwood put his hand to his forehead as if holding his head might cease the spinning and make the world still. After a short while the giddiness had passed. The Doctor placed the bloodstained cotton wool in Gerda's bowl and inspected Arthur's arm.

'Yes, yes, that's good.' He timed the man's pulse, then rested his hand on Arthur's shoulder. 'Now, you'll need plenty of fluid. This has taken some time, it's almost evening and you have had nothing to drink. Go down and have some tea or coffee or, better still, wine. That's a good fellow.'

Arthur stood up. It still didn't feel so good but at least he had given of his life to save his beloved and he would do it again till every drop of his blood were gone should he need to do so. 'Don't worry,' Van Helsing assured him, 'Gerda and I will take care of her.'

Arthur rolled down his sleeve and picked up his coat from the end of the bed, both Gerda and Van Helsing watched him as he left the room then the Doctor turned his attentions to the supine Mina. He gently pulled up the bedding and took another look at the fang marks in her neck.

'Just bathe her forehead, will you, Gerda, some eau de Cologne or something? I will need to sterelise those wounds.'

'Yes, sir.'

Gerda retreated to get a bowl of water and a cool cloth.

When she was gone Van Helsing began the grisly task of cleaning his transfusion equipment. Blood swirled from the needles like scarlet ink in the water. Sometime later Van Helsing came downstairs to find that Arthur had finished a glass of claret and was staring off into space. The Doctor gave Holmwood a slight nudge and the man came too, putting his glass down next to an uncorked and empty wine bottle.

'How is she now?' Arthur made to get up, but Van Helsing bid him remain seated.

'She has reacted well.' A fact for which Van Helsing was ever grateful- and that no dreadful complications had followed the transfusion. He looked tired but he knew he could not rest. This unholy parasite must be found and obliterated or more of the innocent would perish. Vampirism would spread like an infection and if it went unchecked the whole populace would succumb.

'Thank God,' said Arthur, his features gone wan, his eyes cloudy but his voice still lucid.

Van Helsing clipped his cuff-links through his sleeves and took his coat from over his arm. Arthur became more animated for the wine was taking effect, and his speech became a little more agitated.

'How did he get in? We watched the house all night! Your theory must be wrong. He can change into something else. He must be able to. How else could he have got in?'

The Doctor put on his coat and drew his fingers through his hair, shaking his head. 'I wish I knew,' was all he could manage to say as he sat down. 'He could have slipped past us, we're not infallible. Surely that's it...and yet...' Van Helsing pondered where he might have lapsed in his vigil.

Gerda came into the room and she too looked exhausted. Van Helsing half-sprang from his chair: 'She mustn't be left!' he ejaculated but Arthur put out his hand and Gerda stepped back. 'I'll go up to her. I'd like to. You stay and rest and have some wine. I'm sure you need both.'

'Madam's sleeping now, sir.' Gerda addressed her words to Arthur, then turned to Van Helsing. 'I was wondering if you wanted some of mine, sir.'

The Doctor gave her a perplexed look, not understanding.

'My blood, sir. For poor Mrs. Holmwood.'

Van Helsing reassured the housemaid. 'Thank you, Gerda, but I don't think that will be necessary.'

Upon his words Gerda breathed a sigh of relief. She had been prepared to sacrifice her blood if it were to save Mina's life, especially considering what had happened to Lucy, but she had not relished the thought of having to do so. 'Well,' she replied, 'I won't pretend I'm not glad, sir.'

Van Helsing relaxed a little.

'Gerda, will you fetch another bottle?'

'Oh, sir,' began Gerda, wringing her hands and physically squirming, 'I don't like to. You know what happened last time when I disobeyed Mrs. Holmwood's orders.'

'What do you mean?' Arthur questioned.

'Well, sir, Madam told me the other day that I must on no account go down to the cellar.'

Doctor Van Helsing's eyes flew wide open in the instant the woman's words left her lips and he leapt from his chair as if he had been catapulted and charged past Arthur and Gerda. A look of confusion etched itself on Arthur's face and he still did not quite comprehend. He grabbed Gerda by the upper arms and began to interrogate her. The woman was on the brink of tears. Van Helsing had grasped the significance of Gerda's words and had run to the foyer entrance and searched around quickly for the cellar door. It was locked, and with his shoulder, he pushed and forced all his weight upon the portal and it opened with a crash. Van Helsing could see, as it was flung wide, that the cellar harboured a white coffin. What a fool he'd been, guarding the house from the garden while this terrible creature hoodwinked them and befouled the women within, its daytime bed right beneath their feet. He jumped down the few steps and ran to the casket, pulling up the lid but revealing only an empty bed of the demon's own grave soil. Dracula was not lying within, and Van Helsing could only assume that once again the vampire was at this moment taking Mina with him to Hell. An ice-cold shadow billowed at the head of the stairs, a thing that writhed and floated and yet had human shape, and it was splashed all over with blood. It filled the confines of the cellar with a stench that was almost unbearable and it hissed, an animal hiss but not an animal of the earth but of one that slithered through the underworld, and its eyes were ablaze with the light of such a hatred that Van Helsing had to shield his own lest his retinas be burned out. The thing spewed forth blasphemies that its nemesis should have discovered its lair, and it gesticulated wildly and wrapped itself up in its cloak of night. Instantly Van Helsing leapt up the steps and but a hair's breadth separated each, vampire from vampire hunter, when the darkness withdrew and the cellar door slammed shut. Van Helsing tried the handle but it would not turn.

'Holmwood,' he called out but no answer came. Van Helsing acted upon instinct and he spun about in the doorway and ran back down to the coffin and withdrew from his coat pocket the same crucifix he had used to brand Lucy's forehead. He dropped the cross into the earth and its rosary spread out in the lining of the coffin, a string of black beads and silver on putrid mould. With a leap Van Helsing ran back up the stairs and beat once again on the door.

'Holmwood, can you hear me?' he cried out, counting the seconds that were flying by, precious, priceless seconds that meant everything between life and death and the damned hereafter. The Doctor rattled on the door and listened, trapped he could do nothing more. What was Arthur doing and was the door so thick that he couldn't hear the racket of this pounding? Perhaps the vampire had sealed it with a spell. The lock had been shattered when Van Helsing had put his shoulder to the door. If Arthur could not budge it open perhaps he was on the other side trying his hardest to breach the seal.

'Holmwood.' Van Helsing yelled and then, 'Holmwood!' yet again. The Doctor was beginning to feel fear surge through his guts, there was no more time to be lost. He pounded and thudded with clenched fists, threw his body against the panel, and just when it sounded as if the timbers were going to split the door blasted open and Holmwood was on the other side. There was no time for words despite Arthur's look of confusion. The question on Arthur's lips would have to wait till later, Van Helsing had not the time to answer; he had to save Mina- that was imperative. Quickly the Doctor pushed Arthur aside and looked about furtively.

'Which way, which way?' Van Helsing thought rapidly, listing in his head all the possible exits. There were three that seemed the most likely, the front entrance, the parlour and the kitchen doors. Van Helsing was about to risk taking the latter when two things happened, a window smashed loudly and a blood-curdling scream ripped down from the Holmwood bedroom above. Both men looked up at once.

Without hesitation, they took the stairs together, bounding two, three at a time, kicking glass shards in their wake, Van Helsing jumping the rail at the top and Arthur entering the room just seconds behind him. Gerda lay on the floor and she was shrieking. Van Helsing ran up to her and Arthur crossed to the now empty bed. The housemaid was hysterical and clutching her head in her hands, the room was in a state of chaos; the bedding had been flung upon the floor, the window shattered, glass was strewn everywhere. Arthur bolted to the broken window and looked out, his fears having taken another blow because their bedroom was on the second floor. It seemed impossible, for how could anyone escape this way and without injury? He could see nothing in the darkness; the shards of coloured glass split under his shoes, and he prayed for Mina's safety. Van Helsing helped Gerda to her feet. At first, she fought him as if he had meant her harm, then realising, in the whirl of chaos and confusion that it was Doctor Van Helsing she began to babble senselessly.

'Gerda,' the Doctor said her name firmly. 'Now what happened?'

Tears were streaming down the woman's face and it was almost impossible to make sense of her incoherent raving.

'He…he,' she managed to stutter after a long moment of hysteria, her eyes wide with terror. 'He was here!'

Arthur came quickly over to her side. Gerda could hardly put two words together and she was searching Arthur's face as if for redemption for having committed another sin and given evil its license over their world. What she had seen she could barely describe.

'I came up here,' she faltered, and then she burst into a terrified scream- 'And he looked like the Devil!' She began babbling. 'He crashed into the room and his eyes were glowing something dreadful. He came in here, and he picked Madam up like she was a baby. His cloak flapped about him like giant wings. He looked like a great bat! Who is he? What is he?!'

'We'll get her back!' Van Helsing ejaculated angrily, spinning about and looking to the broken window. 'Nonetheless,' he insisted, gently but urgently, 'there is no time to lose, every minute hangs in the balance.'

Gerda went limp and almost collapsed, breaking down into shrieks that she muffled with the balls of her fists. There was no time to console her because now they only had a few short hours to accomplish the virtually impossible, to rescue Mina and to destroy the vampire.

'Calm yourself,' Van Helsing told Gerda, straightening an overturned chair and helping her to sit. Van Helsing did not mean to be brusque, but he pushed Gerda down upon the chair. It didn't seem to have much effect on settling her composure. The Doctor passed his fingers through his hair and looked out of the shattered window. Into the dark he looked, but he could see little. He was almost upon the brink of exhaustion himself but he knew he must not falter now. He addressed Arthur. 'No sign of him, but he must have crossed into the garden and gone over the wall at the end. I can see the tracks. We must follow him.'

Arthur's face took on a hard determination. 'If we can catch him up before he reaches his own sanctuary, we can save her. He has a long way to go before the sun comes up. The first thing he'll have to do is find himself a coach.'

'Yes,' breathed Van Helsing, and he could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins. 'He's got to get into his native soil before the sun rises. It's his only chance. And that means that there's only one place he can make for now, his home!'

12: Blue Darknesses

A corpse lay sprawled on the roadside, its limbs skewed at impossible angles. In the weak lamplight cast from their gig Van Helsing and Arthur caught sight of the body of the dead man in the road. The two white horses shuddered to a sudden halt a short distance from the body, the vehicle bouncing on its springs. Arthur was the first to hit the dirt, Van Helsing running a step behind. When Van Helsing reached the spot, he knelt and touched his fingers to the dead man's flesh. The man lay in a pool of blood, his neck had been snapped and his head almost torn free, the flesh had been ripped and savagely gouged, crimson stained Van Helsing's fingers. The body was still warm.

'It's a coach driver,' Van Helsing confirmed to Arthur. 'He's been dead about half an hour.'

Without returning an answer Arthur ran back to the carriage and Van Helsing leapt up and took the reins.

'Gee up!' he called to the horses and iron shoes flashed sparks along the road.

'Do you think Dracula killed that coachman?' asked Arthur.

'Of course, he did!' Van Helsing snapped irritably but he didn't mean to sound exasperated. 'Without a coach, he'd never get home before sunrise. He would be dead.'

'Even if he does get home,' Arthur began to protest, 'we… '

Van Helsing cut him off because he did not want to think of anything but Dracula's destruction. The mere suggestion that they could fail was not a viable option. 'He's got his coach and he's half an hour ahead of us. We must catch up with him.' The Doctor whipped the horses into a full gallop.

'What will he do when he gets to his home?' ventured Arthur, a cold fear gripping his nerves.

'He could hide in the castle vaults for years. We would lose him there,' said Van Helsing and a look of pure horror spread across Arthur's features. 'He'll bury himself somewhere that we won't be able to find him. He will stay buried as long as he needs to...years if necessary.'

'And Mina?' Arthur asked Van Helsing and the sound of his voice was almost a whisper because he dreaded the awful implication of such a thing happening. Both dreaded the truth that she too was tainted and would become one of the undead before the morning rose.

Van Helsing returned a grim look but he did not reply.

'Did you hear me,' insisted Arthur, 'I said what about Mina?'

Van Helsing held his eyes to the black strip of the road. 'There is one way that he can make sure Mina stays with him. He can bury her too!'

Arthur groaned in despair.

'If she dies while entrapped in Dracula's native soil,' continued Van Helsing, 'she will rise again when he chooses to call.'

'Are you saying that Dracula might bury her alive!'

Van Helsing spoke nothing more.

A black carriage came thundering up the road drawn by two black horses, Dracula was at the reins, lashing the animals hard and mercilessly.

The vampire had fled with the supine Mina in his arms. She was still unconscious, her mind locked in twilight. Her undead lover had gathered her into his embrace and borne her swiftly through the garden and into the mist, plunging into a screen of trees that enveloped both in shadows. A short while later Dracula had honed his ear to the sounds of the night; he was not yet far enough away from the Holmwood residence that his pursuers could not catch him up and as he listened he heard horse's hooves clopping slowly up the darkened street. It was a coach drawn by a man muffled against the cold in a thick coat and woolen scarf, his cheeks were scarlet and the chill was frosting on his brows.

The coach moved slowly along the deserted road, the man's breath was a thin ribbon of mist in the air as he quietly hummed to himself. He had not seen another living being for the last hour and now, to his surprise a tall figure clad in black emerged from the trees and laid a golden-haired woman upon the road. She was still, as if she was dead, and a strange little thrill shuddered through the driver. Something wasn't quite right but he had to stop, they might require help, there was nothing else for it. Perhaps there had been an accident and the woman had been hurt. He reigned in his two horses and peered down at the man.

'Are you all right, do you need assistance?'

Before the last words had left his lips the tall man in the ebon cape turned his face upward and the pale light of the moon caught it and glanced off his dagger-like teeth there fixed in the cavernous twist of a feral snarl. With the speed of lightning he reached up impossibly elongated arms, claws hooked about the coachman's shoulders and dragged him from his seat. There was barely time for the startled driver to react as he looked into the visage of evil itself. The creature twisted the man's head about and his neck snapped audibly. Killer and victim were no longer face-to-face. A thin trickle of blood began to pool in the corner of the coach driver's mouth then Dracula raked his fangs through the man's throat. The body had crumpled to the earth, a splash of dark red staining the stones. As the pale moon, waned Dracula threw back the coach door and deposited Mina within, jumped up upon the driver's seat and whipped the two black stallions into the night.

The carriage wound its way along the mapped road, winding in between the trees and climbing the slight elevation that would bring it up to the border station at Ingstadt and then onto the final journey through the hamlet of Klausenburgh and round the horseshoe of the Carpathians and between the Borgo Pass. He whipped the animals cruelly till their hearts were almost upon the point of bursting, and within the trap Mina bounced about but felt nothing, stretched upon the upholstery and mercifully insouciant to the night and its terrors.

The Douane was restless in his slumbers having been wracked all night by seizures of coughing. He had a lingering chest infection and it just would not go away; not after herbs nor breathing and rubbing into his chest ointments that smelled like hell. Because he was awake he heard the thunder of hooves approaching along the road. He got out of bed and was about to put on his coat when he heard the crash. All he could manage was a silly expression of 'Huh!' as he grabbed his hat and put it on and adjusted his spectacles. He thought for one ghastly moment that there had been a terrible accident and that a coach had collided with the lowered barrier. When he emerged into the darkness holding his lamp high he saw that a coach had indeed crashed into the black and white boom gate, not only crashed but passed right through leaving it like a broken matchstick. His second silly expression was a lame 'Oh!' He balled a fist and shook it in the direction of the receding coach. When he attempted to produce a useless 'Hey!' the exclamation was choked off by a fit of coughing and he clutched at the pain in his chest and spat up a gob of mucus. All he could do now was go find some rope and bind the two pieces together and then have proper repairs made in the morning.

Up the forest road the carriage pulled by the white horses was slowing but Van Helsing did not like to whip the animals too much, he knew he'd need their last strength for the torturous mountain climb to Castle Dracula. They too approached the Douane Station but the Station Master was waiting this time, he had heard their approach and he had loaded his rifle and was not about to let anybody get past. Van Helsing barely saw the man in the feeble lamplight, gesticulating with one hand and making a futile show of his firearm with the other. The Doctor lashed out at the horse's flanks with his whip and they too passed through the barrier with a splintering crash and trailing a streamer of knotted rope. One pathetic shot sounded in the air but the bullet might as well have gone in the opposite direction, such was the border master's aim. He watched the coach disappear into the chill darkness then looked back at the broken checkpoint and shook his head. It was too cold out and he'd already fixed it once this evening. He was beyond caring now so he left it in splinters on the road and went back, coughing and sniffling to his bed.

They were on the narrow road to Castle Dracula at last, going up the mountain and approaching to the seat of God.

'It's getting light.' Arthur said and Van Helsing risked a quick glance at the sky. Loose rocks and stones were flying from their wheels, the horses were visibly stressed and the light was coming. Van Helsing doubted that they would make it in time. They passed the roadside shrine and the Virgin Mary watched them with painted eyes. This time Dracula had not blocked the way with boulders, he had not had the time to cast a guile, for every moment counted now, each second drawing his unholy undead body closer to the pure and cleansing light of the sun. The road up was steep and rutted and precarious and the coach veered so close to the edge of the fall.

At last Dracula reined in his carriage, leapt from the box and wrenched open the door that separated him from Mina. He knew the light was coming and that if it caught him he would be trapped, but first Mina had to sleep among the dead in a bed of her own grave soil or his prize would be lost. He pulled the woman from the cab and laid her unconscious body upon the cold ground, stalked quickly back to the driver's box and located the spade stored under the seat. He grimaced and whirled about, his cloak a flying storm of restless nightmares and set about digging frantically in the hard ground just before the streamlet where it formed the moat. The dawn was almost upon them and the castle thrust up like a jutting phallus at the edge of a black world. It seemed to violate, to desecrate the sky, and the sky was a shade lighter than it was a few short moments before making the wild structure a visible silhouette against the backdrop of the valley.

When he was certain the grave was deep enough Dracula threw aside the spade, stooped and lifted Mina up into his arms only to drop her into the pit. She fell as if through the eternity of space, her eyes opening upon the receding mouth of the grave and she wanted to scream but her throat was strangled. Dracula reached for the shovel again and proceeded to bury her, tossing a wad of dirt onto her body, her white gown was darkened, her milky skin smeared. He took another spade full and another and began to fill the hole and Mina awoke at last from her stupor, and screamed. She tasted the earth as the loam struck her but she could not move or claw it from her face, her limbs seemed paralysed, her lips imbibing a tide of grit and filth. At that moment Van Helsing's carriage thundered onto the drawbridge between the guardian stone eagles and he pulled it to a stop behind the stolen coach with a shout of 'Whoa!'

Dracula looked up. His eyes were fierce and he threw down the shovel.

'Look!' Arthur cried out in horror, pointing to the graveside and the demon cloaked in black that had already begun its ascent to escape, flowing up the drawbridge struts and dashing past both men and coaches. With a resounding crash the great oak doors of Castle Dracula blasted open and the vampire disappeared into darkness. Van Helsing leapt from his carriage and gave chase.

Frantically Arthur managed the downward slope, slipping in the loose rocks and the damp earth and at the graveside began scrabbling with his bare hands in the clay in which Mina was buried. He had little or no time at all to free her face so that she should breathe and he could not risk using the spade in case he accidentally hurt her. How his heart beat wildly as he threw the earth off, tossing it away as fast as he could, and soon he caught a glimpse of Mina's golden crown, her white cheek and her red lips besmeared with dirt. She began to regain her life, choking on the loam in her mouth. Quickly he brushed the filth from her face and pulled her upward. Abruptly she vomitted.

Dracula bolted through his house like an arrow shot from a loophole. He leapt like lightning from shadow to shadow and took to the great staircase, flowing up it like ink spilling backward into an uncorked bottle. Van Helsing felt a rush of freezing, turbulent air as he bounded through the doors, a blast that went right through to his bones, but he raced onward, and tracked the vampire with his vision, keeping the monster in sight and following as fast as he could. The light was beginning to alter, even here in these black confines, for the earth was spinning towards the dawn, and the Count knew that if he did not reach sanctuary soon the breaking sun would be lethal and he would be destroyed. Along the gallery he sprang, and halfway up another flight of stairs he dashed, along a passage that was lost unto shadows. For one moment Van Helsing lost sight of his quarry, flinging his body around a turn only to be faced with an empty stairwell. Up the steps Van Helsing began but something stopped him, a sixth sense told him to push wide the library door. Within was the demon, caught in a strobe of shadows, holding a trapdoor half open that was ready to receive him into an abyss of blackness. For the first time Van Helsing faced the enemy. It was a strange and surreal moment, for his eyes saw a man, but his soul knew there was rage roiling from that coil of human likeness. That rage was fire. Here the two, adversary and foe, both poised upon the boundary, the cross-roads, where science and superstition collided. The Count snarled and let the trap slam down and snatched up the nearest thing he could to launch at the vampire hunter. The golden candelabra clipped Van Helsing's ear as it whirled past his head, and he felt the red taper of the candle flame singe his cheek before it was snuffed. With a resounding clang, the candle holder clattered upon the flagstones.

In that moment, the dark leapt upon Van Helsing. It was composed of clays moulded in the underworld, possessed of an alacrity that was beyond human capability, and it could move ten paces in the blink of an eye. Dracula sprang upon Van Helsing and his steely grasp clamped firmly around the Doctor's throat. Gasping, Van Helsing felt the breath being squeezed from his body. Cruelly, Dracula bared his row of terrible fangs, his mouth slavering hot spittle, and he smiled in vicious triumph.

Outside Arthur had freed Mina from her grave. He had at last loosened the earth and hauled her from the cold maw of the ground. For a while he held her close and she had coughed up dirt and clung to him and cried. He told her it was all right but she knew it wouldn't be because the vampire was invincible; no man could best such a thing of evil. It had fed upon her blood, she was now part of its being, and although she could not physically see the struggle taking place within the castle, she could sense it. She felt every surge of violent energy that the demon emitted and its every desire to hold and to keep her till eternity. Part of her did not wish Van Helsing to succeed. In the throne room, the hunter and the quarry grappled around the sphere of the world, and the world spun a shaky revolution. The curvature of the planet was welcoming the golden light of the giant star, turning the Carpathians towards the day. Dracula almost overbalanced the globe, thrusting Van Helsing against it and choking, choking. They did a crippled dance over the marbled floor, crossing the signs of the zodiac as they reeled, and Dracula forced Van Helsing back and down till the man was sprawled over the low stool before the fireplace. Pinned beneath the vampire, Van Helsing could feel the monster's weight pressing rigidly against him, cold as ice and yet scorching. Enwrapping the vampire hunter in its roiling cloak, its steely fingers went tighter, encircling, squeezing, and the blood pulsed, the oxygen leaving Van Helsing's lungs. Dark spots began to dance in the Doctor's vision, and shamefully he felt his sex becoming hard- the searing friction of the undulating demon clamped against his body almost suffocating his senses. There was little breath left in Van Helsing, he would faint soon if he did not act quickly.

The Doctor fluttered his eyes and rolled the balls back into their sockets, then he went limp, and the Count smiled lasciviously and thrust himself into Van Helsing's groin. As the demon strangled the last ounce of air from the vampire hunter's lungs, it covered its pinioned prey in the black mantle of its cloak and it throbbed with obscene, pulsating shades. In that moment of victory Dracula pulled his fanged mouth back and slightly relaxed his grip. It was all that Van Helsing needed, that one fleeting second in time in which, with all the strength he could muster, he broke the vampire's stranglehold and threw the monster back against the fireplace. In the Coat of Arms above the ashes the crest of Dragons responded, seemed to awake beside their shield and drop their tridents. With a wild eye Van Helsing saw them move and stretch limbs that had long been imprisoned in stone. He saw the ship slip beneath the waves. It was an optical illusion surely and one meant to distract him, to take his eyes from the quarry. He took in a gulp of air and massaged his throat and quickly looked away and locked his gaze on the Count. The vampire's eyes burned with hellfire.

The vampire began to inch closer, confident of conceited triumph. Dracula moved sinuously, tall and fluid, his eyes red with rage, and his energy pulsed and swelled and seemed to fill the room. No one would hear Van Helsing when he screamed, and his blood would spatter upon the walls. Dust motes in the air began to whirl and to gather into his cloak, forming some otherworldly solidity of shape and appearance that was not human. The demon was subtly altering. As this occurred the vampire slithered ever so much closer to Van Helsing, like a cat with its prey, and as Van Helsing watched he realised he needed a weapon to defend himself but dared not take his eyes from the creature.

It was metamorphosing, becoming a phantasm of serous flesh and darkly aeriform. Evil incarnate, alive and even more dangerous than Van Helsing could ever have believed. The Doctor now had to admit that here was a creature beyond scientific explanation, yet there was a surreal grace to this damned thing, the closer it came the more seductive its power and Van Helsing began to drink in the beauty of its form. His body trembled and he was again pierced by the strangest arrow of excitement, goaded no less by the thrill of the danger. He could smell the vampire; smell no longer the foul corruption of death but a bittersweet perfume of muscle and sinew and blood. It was serpentine, lithe and sinuous, majestic in all its glory, comprised of the elements and somehow faultless for all its vileness. Van Helsing seemed to know, to feel an unaccountable respect for the creature, and a repulsive desire too, but he knew he had to destroy it.

Dracula moved closer, confident that his next step would snare the prey and that the vampire slayer would fall. Van Helsing could see the reflections of himself in the creature's red, burning eyes and the demon began to slough its skin, dropping flesh-like scales in a cascade of falling stars and black fire. Time began to slow and the dark began to shrivel away and Van Helsing felt his blood singing in his veins. He was at the brink of offering his own throat to the creature, to be as one with it and to know the ultimate existence, to know all of life's secrets and those of death too and be like unto a God. There was a terrible urge inside his skin that told him that his paradise could be found if he only let his flesh be sublimate to Dracula's unrestrained phantasy. The thought of Dracula as his lover was disgusting, but it was only disgusting in one chamber of Van Helsing's turbulent mind. Virtue and harmony were a disunion in this creature, for its truth was beyond the pleasures of the imagination.

Van Helsing's heart was racing and near bursting, but the flesh of the vampire sang to him, sang a melody composed in cunning, and it was as sadistic as it was horribly beautiful. The vampire offered a glorious promise, to exist for all eternity, until the sun collapsed and to never know pain or remorse, to sample every delight that the dark world could make possible. Van Helsing beheld his own hand reach out and touch Dracula's body, he saw his own lips meld upon that fiery skin, work upon the succulent length of the Devil's phallus. The thirst in Van Helsing could not be quenched, for he drew upon the fruit of evil, and it howled so and flamed, and the monster held Van Helsing's lips to its stave until the man was almost consumed by illusion. In the frisson of madness, the vampire hunter shook his head as if to clear it of all these sick and befouled thoughts, and then staggering like one drunk, tore his mind free and began backing away. As he tottered Van Helsing collided with the corner of the long table. Looking up he beheld a sliver of sunlight breaking through a crack where the heavy drapes across the window did not meet. Dracula's visage changed from one of victory to one of abject horror. Van Helsing called forth the last remaining vestiges of his strength and sprang up onto the table and bounded down its length, and the creature leapt aside like a cat but the mouse had evaded its teeth. Ancient tomes went skidding left to right and Van Helsing, reaching the end of the table launched himself into the air and grabbed hold of the thick draperies, bringing them tearing down with the weight of his body.

Sunlight flooded the library. Violently the Count launched himself backward to evade the light, but in the act, he collided with the table and slipped. A searing blade of supernal light sliced viciously across the demon's right leg, instantly shrivelling the leather of his boot and setting fire to his garb. The skin about his ankle crisped and blistered and became as bone and Dracula screamed. The cry was a sound that only the damned could make; it erupted from the monster's tongue raw and intense and like a canon blast it shattered the glass in the window.

Outside Arthur and Mina covered their ears.

Van Helsing quickly snatched up a candlestick and leapt to the opposite end of the table. There he grabbed another candlestick, and brandishing each, laying one across the other, fashioning the symbol of the holy cross, holding it up he trapped the screaming creature in its golden shadow. The Dragons above the fireplace seized once more into stone, they withered and turned to skeletal remains in the Coat of Arms. Daylight caught the black creature in a flood of luminance, peeling away the guise of human-like flesh and revealing the monster that had always festered within. It opened its mouth and spat flame. No name in the tongue of man could have described the thing. The creature changed into a thing conjured from the most lurid nightmare, a thing that no longer bore the semblance of anything remotely human. It was a monstrous chimera of unnameable form, blackness coalesced within violent obscenity. It flapped appendages that were thick and elongated and muscled and winged; wings that beat in a swirling vortex. Dracula's hands became grasping claws and the tips of his fingers popped and become lethal honed scythes. With a snarl of rage, he lashed out, raking razor-edged sickles through the tainted airs, his mouth spewing fire.

The marble floor cracked under the sere of incendiary sparks; heat split a long fissure directly between Van Helsing's feet. The vampire hunter only pressed closer, the heat was intense but he remained steadfast and held his makeshift cross high. A terrible, howling wind tore a maelstrom about the room, ripping the tapestries from their rods and whipping the coloured pennants into a mad mercurial storm. Books were launched as if they were missiles and the wind churned upward into the vaulted heights and lightning tipped clouds blackened the ceiling. The creature on the floor shrieked in the spill of sunlight, forced back as the light sparked from the cross and it shielded its baleful eyes from the holy radiance. Outside the keep the sun blossomed like a new rose over the horizon, shooting golden arrows into the throne room, and with one step Van Helsing was lit from head to toe in a luminance that made his body scintillate with sparks, ringed him with a halo; the cross he brandished flared with a light that would have blinded any mortal eye.

Arthur held Mina close and both trembled at the cacophony thundering from within. Above them the stone raptor atop its obelisk shuddered and a crack ripped through its pylon, going straight downward to the centre of the earth and to hell. The stone grotesquerie toppled from its plinth and fell into the mouth of the open grave.

Throwing out an arm Dracula writhed in agony and Van Helsing watched in awe as the hand sloughed its skin; became a monstrous flapping winged appendage and ignited. There came forth the stench of burnt flesh, charred and impure, and the vampire screamed, a shriek torn from the throat of the damned. From the clouds boiling in the upward reaches lightning was flashing, the atmospheres whirling and taking on a shape that was gloriously beautiful, and yet dreadful in its wonder. The Doctor looked up, for he could not resist the vision, he had to see. The spectacle he beheld was like unto a spirit, a thing that did not belong to tenuity, an entity that unfolded huge wings, arched and veined with lightning. It beat its wings angrily and opened the cavernous abyss of its mouth, ready to spew planet-fire down upon Van Helsing's flesh.

The monster bellowed as it was caught in the aurulent fire, and Van Helsing thought he saw a glimpse of the matter from which the universe was made. Its eyes flickered, a scintillating kaleidoscope of darkness and ruby reds, of etiolated light and ash and thunder. The winged fantasy let loose its fire and it bathed Van Helsing, wrapping his body in blue flame. Yet the fire did not harm the man, it did not tear away his skin and there was no agony. For the pure and stainless cruciform symbol afforded protection in the sun's rays, and for a thing born in the darkness there was none. Van Helsing felt the sun vivifying his every sinew and muscle so that the cross he had made from the candlesticks melded and fused and became a sword of light that he plunged deep into the heart of the vampire.

At that wondrous instant, it began to descend into a pile of fine dust. The vampire's flesh commenced to stream vapour and to collapse into itself, ashes became its hands and its feet, coals expiring became it's once flame red eyes. It became what it always had been, something of the elements, the dust of the earth, expiring on the symbol of Aquarius. The vibratile atmospheres slowed their agitation, the monster's wings shrivelled and its chest cavity caved into mould. It put a smoking claw up to an unrecognisable and hideous face and the passing of countless centuries ravaged its black mantle in the space of a second. The candlesticks sparked golden and then fell apart and clattered to the floor. Beclouded, the thing twitched, and disintegrated, the turbulence of the wind ceased and then all was hushed.

This miracle Van Helsing watched with awe, and when it has ceased he stepped back and took a deep breath. He had defeated the demon and regained hope for the salvation of Mina's soul. Exhausted, he crossed to the shattered window and looked out. He could see Arthur and Mina huddled together in the rose-gold tint of the dawn. Arthur had retrieved a rug from the gig and had placed it over Mina's lap. A fresh breeze blew in through the smashed aperture, it was chilly but no longer deathly cold, swirling a stray lank of hair and Dracula's ashes away and scattering them in its eddy. Nothing remained of the demon now, nothing save the strange ring it had worn. There was no light shining in the black stone and the Dragon within had calcified into bleached white bones.

Arthur looked back at the castle, at its edifice of evil and malignancy, at its impenetrable walls and its rigid tower. The tower rose over him, throwing down a translucent but defiantly phallic shadow, engulfing Arthur with the stain of dissolution.

Inside the library, Van Helsing turned away from the scattering of ashes. He glanced down at the golden ring but he did not pick it up. There was something irrevocably tainted about the thing, something that had made him look deep into himself. Van Helsing did not like what he saw nor what he felt. It was a realisation that took his body, his beliefs, all that he was to the unutterable brink of vile desecration. He had tasted longing, inspired the flame of desire in another, abided perilous derring-do, and wanted craving, forgotten humility.

The monster that was Dracula had unleashed all of this, and now Van Helsing knew that he could never be the same again. The Dragon had sullied a part of Van Helsing's soul that should have remained stainless, and by touching that ring, that binding circlet that had belonged to the creature, only bad things would come.

In the luteous blush of the dawn a chorus of birds began singing, the propitious herald of a new day. Mina looked at the smooth white cup of her hand and she noted a pale glint of sunlight glancing aureate upon her wedding ring. She smiled, but not in rejoicing, for there was revelation in that golden band too and it did not bode celebration. Rather than an affirmation that the evil had been vanquished, the ring became a symbol of total hopelessness. There was something lost now, something that could never be recovered, not by Arthur's false virility or Doctor Van Helsing's supposed priest-like chastity. As Arthur leaned forward he kissed Mina on the lips. Those lips grazed her skin, dry, insipid, comfortless. He had not kissed Mina on the lips for such a long time, and she felt the kiss, passionless and disconnected, and like the wind it seemed chilly and fleeting, and in her heart, she was filled with blue darknesses.