!Warning: M (16+)-rated themes: Murder, depiction of violence against animals.
- X -
On The Outside
He could not stop drinking. Swallowing all the rich red liquid, all the sweetest essence of life the boy's beating heart could give in large mouthfuls, Renfield did not waste a thought on the consequences of his actions. Not until the very moment this heart in his grasp stopped and the body in his arms grew limp and cold. Only when Nathan's breath no longer was on his ear, did no longer cause the fragile chest beneath him to heave, he noticed what he had done.
Burning blue eyes wide in the beginning of dismay, he rose from his victim, staring down at the lifeless form, so strangely slack, sunken down the brick wall, and he barely noticed the large drops of dark crimson that fell from his open mouth and stained his flawless white shirt in the colour of his crime.
On the one hand he was utterly shocked by this more than gruesome sight, this horrifying image of what he now seemed to be capable of committing, on the other hand he could sense Nathan's life, all his youth and energy flowing through his own veins, granting him unprecedented power. Never before had he consumed such an amount of human blood, never before had he taken a human life!
Should he not feel guilt and remorse now? For he did not. Should he panic-stricken flee the scene of his dreadful deed? He would not. For some unquantifiable measure of time he stood there in the dark backyard, motionless, then, when a light breath of wind and the first drop of rain touched his cheek, he strategically and efficiently acted.
With steady hands, he hauled the boy's body up from the ground and carried it to a nearby staircase, leading down to an old basement, which seemed to be unused for years, as far as he could tell by the layers of dust and myriads of cobwebs. He laid Nathan down on a pile of rubble between some wooden boxes and covered him with grit and a mothy rug he found in a corner. It would take weeks, maybe months until someone would discover him there.
When Richard Renfield emerged from the subterranean hiding place, the rainstorm set in with its full intensity, flooding the backyard with gushes of icy water and washing away all traces of the crime that had been perpetrated here mere minutes ago. Soon, his hair and clothes were soaked, but he did not bother. With confident strides he headed down the narrow alley and the street, back to Hampstead Heath.
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers
Is faded all – a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once, no more shall ever be
Moors, loosing from the sight, far, smooth, and blea
Where swopt the plover in its pleasure free
Are vanished now with commons wild and gay
As poet's visions of life's early day
Mulberry-bushes where the boy would run
To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done
And on a broken tree he'd sit awhile
To see the mores and fields and meadows smile
Sometimes with cowslips smothered – then all white
With daiseys – then the summer's splendid sight
Of cornfields crimson o'er the headache bloomd
Like splendid armys for the battle plumed
He gazed upon them with wild fancy's eye
As fallen landscapes from an evening sky
These paths are stopt – the rude philistine's thrall
Is laid upon them and destroyed them all
With the beautiful landscape of his once hopeful heart devastated, John Clare's voice was nothing more than a faint, sad whisper, when he recited the second part of his poem to Lady Godalming. After the events of last night, he finally had found the words to create the requested twist to another emotion than happiness and had worked the whole day to arrange them and cast them into verses. Now he stood there motionless and excitedly expected her reaction, but she remained silent, the only sound echoing through the library the patter of heavy rain against the window glass. There was a strange expression of bewilderment on her pale features, of an upcoming awareness, as if she just had noticed something beyond John's own perception. And it seemed to be something ominous.
The second stanza of Clare's poem was as well composed as the first – indeed mirroring deep sadness now, which contrasted the happy beginning perfectly, but Lucy could barely listen to his recitation, for there was another presence drawing near, reaching her mind, and displaying quite different emotions. She could sense her servant approaching the house, she was sure it was Richard, but why did his aura feel so utterly changed? Something grave seemed to have happened to him, nay, something abysmal had befallen him, altering his emotional world completely. Instead of the usual innocent elation upon the prospect of meeting her again, a dark surge of demonic complacency and gloating satisfaction overcame her. Never before had she perceived such fiendish, malignant haughtiness from him. Lady Godalming's beautiful face turned into a grim mask of bitter disappointment. This could only mean one thing: he had broken the rules again!
"Mr Clare," the lady in white addressed the disconcerted poet. "My servant will arrive at the main portal soon. Would you be so kind and intercept him?"
"Milady...?" John answered, surprised by such a request.
"You have heard right, Mr Clare," she confirmed in an intimidatingly emotionless tone. "Go downstairs, relieve him of his keys and make sure he does not enter the house."
Dr Frankenstein had spent the whole day in his shabby attic flat, rereading all his notes on vampires, everything his late mentor Prof Abraham van Helsing had told him and all the knowledge he himself had gained while studying the night creatures. Most of it was, of course, referring to their anatomy, a few lines mentioned the characteristics of blood cells, but he could not find anything on their mind or psyche. The professor seemed to never have considered any mental abilities those beings could potentially possess. Were they able to manipulate their victims' perception? As far as he knew, they had tried to do so with Vanessa Ives. But could they alter or erase someone's memories, too? And if yes, was there a way to reverse this?
Too many questions, too many unknown variables! As an anatomist he simply had not enough insight into psychiatric or psychological matters. For a moment he thought about contacting Dr Seward, but soon discarded the idea, for Henry surely would not accept any help from her ever again. Actually, Victor was not even certain, if he would accept his help. The amnesia, however, troubled Jekyll much more than he admitted, Victor knew this, and he could not stand seeing him in such a condition, could not just watch him suffer. Regardless of his friend's current bad temper, he would not let him down.
Since going through the notes had not led to any conclusion, the next logical step was trying to find some living subject he could continue his studies on or which at least could help him find Henry's absconded patient. With a determined expression on his haggard features, Frankenstein armed himself with a revolver and several scalpels, pulled on his coat and headed down the decrepit staircase.
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close.
But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
So two nights passed: the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin, –
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.
– S. T. Coleridge
In the pouring sleet, Renfield approached the marble mansion with a smug smirk on his lofty features. Of course, he had again disobeyed his Mistress, and of course, he had committed an atrocious crime, but he had taken care of the body, ascertained there were no witnesses, and all his traces were obliterated. He had not been in any kind of frenzy this time, there was no crude brute dragging him back like a beaten dog and he would not faint from the exhaustion of consuming foul animal's blood. No, this time he did not fear any consequences.
Despite his rain drenched appearance he ascended the stairs to the main door with his head held high, sleeking his hair back in a nonchalant motion, before withdrawing the keys from his pocket. On the topmost step, however, he paused for a moment. Suddenly, something felt utterly wrong. A misgiving rose in his chest as if a dark cloud additional to the winter storm was brewing, drawing near from within the house. And indeed, the oaken portal was opened from the inside before he had even touched the handle, and there stood the tall, looming figure of the undead poet, eerily illuminated by flickering light, staring at him with threatening yellow eyes.
"Good evening, Mr Renfield," he greeted him in a calm, but portentous voice. "I am sorry to tell you this, but on behalf of Lady Godalming I request you to hand over your keys and leave."
"Excuse me?!" Richard did not believe his ears. Who the hell did that monster think he was to deny him the access to the mansion?
"Your keys, please, Mr Renfield," Clare repeated, stretching out his hand.
His features contorted in antipathy, Richard took a step towards the burly man, baring a predatory set of teeth.
"I am not taking orders from you, you filthy primitive!" he hissed into his scarred face. "Let me pass or I will show you your place!"
"His place...," a bell-like voice suddenly sounded through the entrance hall. "is in this house, while yours is no longer."
The lady in white descended the stairway elegantly, in all her radiant beauty, engarlanded in a snowstorm of ivory lace.
"Mistress!" Renfield exclaimed, his voice now wavering in disbelief. "What do you mean? What is all this about?!"
Lady Godalming stopped at the bottom of the stairs, her arms crossed, her bitter cerulean gaze fixated on him.
"You have crossed the line again," she blamed him in an equally bitter tone. "You have disobeyed me again."
"But..." he started an attempt at his defence.
"Not a word!" she shushed him. "Your stained clothes are proof enough of your misdeeds!"
Richard looked down at himself, only now noticing the blood on his shirt – a traitorous red mark not even the downpour had been able to rinse away. John Clare made use of this moment of abstraction and snatched the keys from his hand in a fluid motion. Flinching, Renfield raised his head again, his former confidence dissolving into black despair.
"No, Mistress, please, no!" he stammered. "I did not want this! I did not intend anything of this! It was the Master, who..."
"Lies!" The accusatory word echoed in the vast, vaulted hall like a clap of thunder from a steep mountainside. "You enjoyed it, you savoured every moment, every drop, you were thrilled by it. Remember, I can read your very feelings, boy!"
Her relentless gaze wandered to John.
"Mr Clare, if you please..."
This felt all so unreal, it could not be, she could not do this to him! Renfield could not believe what was happening, not until he felt the poet's iron grip seizing his shoulder, then roughly shoving him backwards, whereupon he stumbled and fell down the steps. A sting of pain shot through his spine when he hit the grassy ground of the front garden hard, but he picked himself up quickly, trying to reach the door again. Too late! Aghast, he beheld the heavy oaken portal clunk shut against him.
The icy rain hit his face as relentlessly as his Mistress's words had, while Richard Renfield knelt before the front door of the Godalming mansion for countless moments, maybe hours, his mind blank with consternation. He had deemed himself so confident, so self-assured, so powerful! How could all this be gone again in the blink of an eye? How could he be left here cowering on the ground, rain drenched and shivering, cast out from the only place he had ever considered home? Abandoned by the only person he had ever loved.
Tears welled up in his pale blue eyes and streamed down his cheeks, soon mixing with the large, half frozen drops of sleet.
I have never been in love, and now I probably never will be... The words he had uttered in delirium in his Bethlem cell came to his mind. How wrong he had been. Oh, he knew now what love was! He loved Lucy Holmwood, Lady Godalming with all his heart, from the deepest depths of his soul! And it hurt! It hurt so much, so much! Like his whole body was shattering to pieces, like... nay! No words, no cry, no scream could describe the pain in his chest! He wanted to be close to her, touch her, hold her, kiss her, the unfulfilled desire, the desperate yearning tearing him apart. But she was unreachable now more than ever before.
This was the cruellest punishment he had ever suffered, a purgatory-like sentence not even Dracula could have imposed on him. Dracula. How much he hated him! He hated him for making him do all those dreadful things, for seducing him to such sins, for manipulating him and toying with his mind, playing him like an infernal violinist his favourite instrument. And he hated himself for not being strong enough to withstand him, constantly unable to resist his whisper, unable to overcome the temptations he offered. Why, why was he so weak?
Only when his head hit the grass, he noticed he had collapsed on the garden ground. Digging his nails into the half frozen mud, he laboriously dragged his body along, inch for inch crawling to a nearby hedge and under the low branches of bushes and trees. Coiled up like a wounded, dying animal he lay there as the frost crept into his bones, numbing his aching fingers and feet, his arms and legs, but never the agony in his heart.
Dr Jekyll was greeted by the clamour and wailing of madmen as always when entering his workplace. Today, however, the unrestrained vocalisations bothered him much more than they usually did. If because of his already stressed state of mind or because they were actually louder and bawdier he could not tell, but nevertheless he hurried to reach his underground laboratory.
For hours he sat at his workbench developing chemical formulas and discarding them again, thumbing through all the literature on psychoactive substances he owned, but came to no conclusion. In another fit of rage, he was already about to rip one of the tomes into pieces, when a forgotten vial full of blueish liquid caught his eye.
His serum. Of course! The serum he had created to cure violent behaviour had the adverse effect of erasing the proband's memory. He just had to synthesise a counteragent to achieve a converse reaction! Henry flipped to a blank page of his notebook at once, frantically scribbling down new calculations.
And a magic voice and verse
Hath baptized thee with a curse;
And a spirit of the air
Hath begirt thee with a snare;
In the wind there is a voice
Shall forbid thee to rejoice;
And to thee shall Night deny
All the quiet of her sky;
And the day shall have a sun,
Which shall make thee wish it done.
– Lord Byron
Renfield found himself standing in the busy London streets, lit by the evening light, streams of passersby flowing to his left and right in awkwardly jerky movements, just like in one of those new motion pictures. There was only one person standing still at the opposite side of the boulevard, her snow-white form attracting his attention, the glow of her ginger hair not only rivalling, but outplaying the setting sun.
"Mistress!" he called, but she did not seem to hear him, for she turned around and disappeared in the blackness of a nearby alley.
He hurried across the street, whereupon he bowled over a boy and almost got overrun by a cab. He did not bother and moved ahead, his only aim to follow Lady Lucy's tracks into the dark. When he had reached the alley, he could make out her faint shine illuminating a gloomy yard at the end, like a light at the end of a tunnel and he ran, ran to her as if his life depended on it.
His hand stretched out, he reached for the hem of her gown, eerily wavering in the air like a waft of mist. And like through a waft of mist he feared his fingers would go right through it, so afraid he would never catch her, never be able to touch her. To his great surprise, however, he could accomplish the unthinkable, he could seize her hand.
But what was this?! All of a sudden, a large cut appeared on her cold skin and the pale wrist in his grasp started bleeding. He trailed the crimson rivulet that run from it with disbelieving eyes. Had he done anything wrong? Anything to cause her harm? Guilt and regret for a misdeed unknown rose in his chest, and looking up he beheld a sad, dolorous expression on her lovely features.
"Don't you want to tend to my wound, my boy?" she reproachfully asked.
"Of course, Mistress!" he answered at once, his voice hoarse with both remorse and pleasant anticipation and he hurried to let his lips meet her bruised flesh.
Oh, her sweet flavour! So familiar and though so obscurely mysterious. How often had he tasted her? Or she him? Had it been dream? Had it been reality? He did not know, he did not care, he could not stop. Oh God, he could not stop! In one fluid motion he took a step towards her, pressing her against the wall in her back, trapping her in his arms.
He noticed the unease in her large cerulean eyes when he ran his fingers through her fiery locks, he took cognisance of her fearfully fluttering breath when he unbuttoned her dress. He observed all this, but he did not care, he could not let go of her. And so, he sank his fangs into the soft, juicy flesh of her porcelain neck.
How long had he been submerged in the ruby ocean of her lifeblood? How long had he been lost in the maze of her sweetness? He did not know. When he eventually emerged from those gentle waves and found his way out of the labyrinthine alleys, he knew only one thing: Her heart was no longer beating.
Aghast and panic-stricken he stared down at the limp, lifeless body in his arms.
Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, my favourite! I am so proud of you! Dracula whispered to him.
Renfield woke with a start, an undescribable emptiness spreading in his chest, an unmeasurable void, like his heart had stopped as well, nay, like it had vanished, leaving only blank vastness behind. Or had it never even been there? After this surreal feeling there followed the relieving awareness that it had all been a fantasy, all his pain and suffering, all his dreadful deeds only chimaeras from a nightmare. Then again, when he realised his surroundings to be the thicket of hedges instead of his comfortable room, he remembered that only the last, ghastliest crest of this storm flood of horror had been a dream. Everything else, every disastrous moment, every dire detail had been grim reality! It took him dozens of deep breaths to calm himself, to steady the wild hammering of his heart – oh, yes, it was still there! – until he eventually lay still under the thorny thicket, silent and motionless, broken and devastated.
Until now, last night's nutrient meal had kept him satisfied, but when the icy storm had finally subsided and wafts of white mist rose from the grass, covering the Godalming garden in a milky layer, the old adversary returned to him. His lips went dry first, then his mouth, and then the burning, ravenous thirst rose in his throat, reminding him that he was still alive, that he could not just perish by cold and pass away peacefully like a mortal being. And so, he had no other choice but to revert to the bad old habit of consuming every form of life he could find. Half dead spiders, a slow, languid toad, carefree songbirds, unwary rats – he bit off their heads, tore them in two or swallowed them whole, working his way up the food chain until he felt restored enough to emerge from his ignominious cranny.
Still drenched and in addition now covered in mud and the foul remains of butchered animals, he stumbled to the wide garden behind the house, where the large trees would protect him from any curious eyes.
Then suddenly, like a pestilent parasite, the Master's voice crept into his mind again.
What are you doing? Why don't you just leave? As I told you: She does not want you! So why are you still here?
Yes, Dracula was right, he could have left. He could have left Hampstead Heath and with the money in his pocket he could have bought some new clothes and rented a room for a few days. He could have carried on elsewhere. But he would not obey him, he would not follow his fiendish advice, nor listen to those sickening blandishments, not this time!
Between the labyrinth-like clipped hedges he lowered himself onto a cold stone bench and dared to raise his head, letting his gaze wander over the white facade and the dark windows with their curtains drawn. No, he would not leave. Might he have to feed off the smallest and filthiest lives, like the most sordid, ghoulish creature, he did not bother. He would stay right here, as close to his Lady as he could. If need be, forever.