- III -

Inside A Tomb

"Are you sure you did not consume the elixir yourself?" Doctor Victor Frankenstein asked for the second time since he had entered Henry Jekyll's Bethlem laboratory.

"I am absolutely sure, Victor, I'm telling you!" The chemist's voice was both troubled and angry as it echoed through the vast room. Indeed, the myriad vials shivered on their shelves to the sound of tinkling glass.

It had been a long time since Frankenstein had seen his friend in such an agitated state. Truly worried about his wellbeing, he wished to help solve the riddle of what had caused his amnesia, but his thorough examination had yet to lead to any plausible results. Henry seemed to be in best of health, at least physically.

"Please calm yourself," he tried to pacify him. "Do not think about what you forgot and just tell me what you can remember."

"Alright, alright," Dr Jekyll took a deep breath. "I can recall standing here at the workbench, preparing a dose of the serum – a double – for that one patient who was seemingly resistant to the previous injections. Then, a sound, maybe a knock on the door. And after that, nothing, nothing at all until I woke up here in the chair again. I could not even remember the patient's name and later I was told I had just signed his discharge papers! Can you believe that?"

"So, it all seems to be related to that man, doesn't it?" Victor observed. "May I have a look at his file?"

"Here," Jekyll said as he handed him a brown cardboard folder. "But I already went through it a half dozen times. Apart from the immunity to the elixir, there is nothing special about him. He was a lunatic like every other in this facility."

Victor took the file from Henry and his eyes widened in surprise. He didn't even need to open it to prove his friend's point wrong, for the name on the cover appeared quite familiar to him.

"R. M. Renfield, that is the patient you are talking about?"

"Exactly," the chemist confirmed.

"Well, then I can assure you that there is indeed something special about him," Frankenstein replied, smirking.

Jekyll furrowed his brow, staring at the physician in disbelief, eager for him to go on.

"That man..." Victor's face turned serious again. "...is a vampire."

To thirst and find no fill – to wail and wander
With short unsteady steps – to pause and ponder
To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle
Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle;
To nurse the image of unfelt caresses
Till dim imagination just possesses
The half-created shadow, then all the night.

– P. B. Shelley

Within a week, the autumnal fog had dissolved, swept away by a stiff winter wind. This afternoon, Renfield was waiting outside the second estate for an agent, who was of good reputation, but on this day he was already half an hour late. When he felt the first snowflake against his cheek, he decided to no longer cower in the corner of the trellis door and instead wait inside the pub across the street, from where he would have a view on the estate.

At this hour the tavern was not overcrowded and so he chose a table near one of the large windows and ordered a cup of tea. The youth who brought it eyed him a bit too curiously, causing him to check his appearance in the mirror behind the counter with a brief gaze. He looked as gaunt as always, slightly anaemic, but didn't show any obvious signs of his inhuman nature.

After picking a paper from the news rack, he sat back down again, reading about the still ongoing wave of fatal casualties in the aftermath of the toxic smog. He hated to be reminded of these times, not because of the suffocating atmospheric inversion that trapped the sulphurous stench and prevented any escape from its foul consequences – but rather those dreadful past events that still troubled him day and night.

The sound of rattling glasses being collected off a nearby table startled him out of his dark thoughts, and he looked up at the ginger haired waiter boy, who was reaching for his untouched cup.

"I'll bring you another one, Sir," he said in a puerile voice.

"No, thank you," Renfield replied absent-mindedly.

"But Sir, this one's cold as ice by now. I'll bring you another on the house," the boy insisted.

In a swift reflex action, Renfield caught the adolescent's arm.

"I said: No, thank you!"

Maybe his features seemed a bit inhuman after all, maybe his eyes had lit up in that strange blue colour again, for the waiter stared at him, affrightened. In addition, he could feel the boy's pulse quicken and his temperature rising beneath his fingers. Appalled at his visceral reaction, he let go of him as swiftly as he had seized him and turned back to his newspaper.

After the boy had stumbled away to the counter, Renfield tried to concentrate on reading again, but he was unable to trace the lines, his senses tensed up, his throat going dry. Surely, he had drunk an adequate amount of blood from his Mistress's silver cup in the morning. Hadn't that been satisfactory enough?

Suddenly a fluttering sound reached his sensitive ears. A fat moth, seemingly startled out of his overwintering cranny, shakily landed on his table, crawling about, before coming to rest at the edge. Without a second thought, Renfield snatched it up and quickly shoved it into his mouth. It was stringy and tasted bitter but provided just enough life to help him clear his thoughts of the temptation to pursue that pulsing sound of the waiter's heart, and that sweet smell emanating from the boy's veins.

Before the soothing effect could subside, he fumbled a penny from his pocket, put in on the table and fled the pub in a hurry before he did anything else that might possibly expose him as being more than he appeared to be. On his way home, his thoughts constantly circled around Lady Lucy's beautiful porcelain neck.

And when the grave restored her dead,
When life again to dust is given,
On thy dear breast I'll lay my head –
Without thee where would be my heaven?

– Lord Byron

A thin layer of snow covered the still fresh earth on Vanessa Ives's grave, when John Clare removed the old, withered flower bouquet and put a new spray of amaryllis into the vase. He stood there for a while like he often did, remembering his kind friend, when he heard footsteps coming from the cemetery gate.

Carefully he peeked around the corner of a hedge and to his surprise saw the lady in white heading down the path to the aristocratical mausoleums. She was, however, not alone as usual. Next to her walked the lad from Bethlem whom she had linked arms with.

A strange feeling rose within John's chest at the sight. Was it jealousy, he wondered, and if so, did he envy the man in person, coming from a lunatic asylum into the service of a lady, or his physical closeness to the woman he himself could only watch from afar? Unable to explore his feelings at this moment, he followed them out of sight and their notice as he always had, and probably always would do.

Renfield had been elated upon hearing that he was to accompany his Mistress on a walk to her family tomb. For days he had longed to spend more time with her and in addition it was a welcome distraction from the dry paperwork.

At first, he had followed her lead, a few steps behind like he thought a good servant would, but to his delight, she soon had gestured for him to walk by her side and had taken his arm. Even through layers of fabric and the furry sleeve of the polar fox coat she wore he sensed her slow pulse as well as a faint hint of warmth, for her temperature seemed high compared to the cold air.

Oh, how he wished to feel more of her than that glimpse of a touch. What would it be like to run his fingers through these fiery locks that so neatly fell from under her white, wide-brimmed hat? How would she react, if here and now he were to pull back that bothersome tulle veil of hers and just kissed her lips? His cheeks burned all over at the mere thought. Struggling not to let these sensual musings wander further and change into lewd fantasies again, he was truly relieved when they stopped at an impressive mausoleum.

The limestone building sat on a broad pedestal and was crowned by a gothic style arch that rose high up in the yellow-grey gloom above them. The inscription on the frieze read Godalming in silver letters. His Lady took out the key to the heavy metal door, which opened with an eerie sound as if the tomb itself was groaning. Then they both descended a dark stairway into the dank heart of the mausoleum.

When John saw them entering a large, elaborately built mausoleum, he dared to approach it, even touch the cold stone. He then looked up at the pediment and beheld a name he had long desired to discover. So, it was Lady Godalming he had been watching for so many days. A faint ray of sunlight shone through the clouds and onto his face, when he joyfully loped down the path to the cemetery gate.

At the bottom of the stairs, all daylight seemed to be but a distant memory and no mortal eye would have been able to see. He, however, could make out a wide, but low-ceilinged room, masoned of black marble, with two polished sarcophaguses of the same material placed in the middle.

His Mistress lay down the white rose she had brought on the right one, the one with the name of her husband inscribed on the lid. Renfield would have expected to read her name on the other, for it wasn't unusual to in case of death of one spouse prepare a grave for the other. But the letters on the left sarcophagus strangely enough formed the name Lucy Westenra.

He must have sceptically looked at the ladder inscription, for his Mistress explained under her breath: "My maiden name. I was buried here before I married Arthur."

His eyes widened in disbelief.

"You were buried, Milady?" he asked, his almost shaky voice sounding eerily loud in the subterranean room.

"Yes, Mr Renfield," she confirmed in a bitter tone. "On the eve of my transformation into a creature of the night, my body was so completely drained..." She paused, taking a deep, but steady breath, then corrected herself. "...He had drained me so completely that my family thought me dead. I had no pulse, I didn't breathe, my skin felt cold, so the doctors wrote out my death certificate and the next day they buried me in this tomb."

Renfield sucked in the mouldy air, aghast.

"You woke up locked in a coffin?" he dared to inquire. "How dreadful!"

"No, my dear," Lucy whispered. "I had been conscious all the time. In my weakened state it took me three days to get out of the sarcophagus, or at least I believe so, for I had lost any sense of time within the endless night down here."

He covered his mouth in dismay upon her horrifying narrative. Now it dawned on him why her favourite colour was the brightest white.

"Abandoned," she relentlessly went on, "I did not know what I had become. A ghost? A spirit? A living corpse? I knew only my primal urge, the thirst for blood, and so I roamed this cemetery on an endless quest for nourishment. Days passed by before I felt restored to my old self. This was when I found my Arthur again, still gravely mourning me. He was as shocked as you when he realised they had buried me alive. We cut off all ties to our families then and got married right away. Unfortunately...", she sighed and an expression of deep sadness spread over her pale features. "...our halcyon days did not last long."

For a moment the black crypt lay in complete silence. Then, a choked sob echoed from the polished walls. Richard Mortimer Renfield was leaning against the long side of the sarcophagus, on the verge of slumping down, his face burrowed in his hands.

"Oh God, Lady Lucy," he cried. "And I sincerely thought I had been through hell!"

She took a step towards him and suddenly he felt her tiny hands caressing his shoulders.

"My poor boy," she addressed him just like back then in Bethlem. "We all have our cross to carry."

When he looked up at her, his features drenched in tears, she added: "But the two of us no longer have to carry it all alone."

On the day of his rescue, he had still been restrained while she had comforted him, thus only able to rest his head against her shoulder. Tonight he was free to follow his innermost desire to touch her, and so he threw himself into her arms, pressing her fragile body to his in a desperate embrace, weeping into the soft white fabric of her dress.