!Warning: M (16+)-rated themes: Violence.
- XVII -
Into A Rage
"Henry, no, this is wrong!" Throwing himself in his friend's way and clutching his raised hand, Victor Frankenstein desperately tried to prevent Dr Jekyll from committing an act of violence against a defenceless boy.
"Don't you dare tell me what's wrong or right!" the enraged chemist spat, effortlessly wrestling himself free from the shorter man's grip. "I will no longer bear that noxious ignorance! I will have answers now!"
With one vigorous step he was at the operating table again, seizing Fenton's throat, denying him of breath.
"Where are you bloodsuckers hiding?! Where are those loathsome creatures who erased my memory?! Speak!" Jekyll demanded, voice boiling with white-hot wrath. "Speak or I will choke the life Frankenstein has given you right out of your bony body again!"
"I don't know!" the boy rasped, blue eyes wide and tear-filled in fright. "Please! Please, Sir...!"
A scream of impotent rage escaped the furious scientist's contorted lips, echoing through the roof trusses like thunder. Failing to think on any other option, he clenched his fist again, readying himself to release all his boundless frustration on this little wretch beneath him, when suddenly a flash of silver caught his eye.
Victor had again positioned himself between Jekyll and his victim, this time pointing a large scalpel at his friend.
"I will not allow you to hurt this boy, Henry!" he stated in a determined tone.
Jekyll wordlessly stared at Frankenstein with burning black eyes, the veins on his neck and temples pulsating, pearls of sweat on his forehead shimmering in the lamplight.
"Calm down, go to the kitchen and have a drink, will you?" It was not a question and Victor did not lower his weapon until the unpredictable choleric eventually turned to leave and the precarious situation was defused.
Frankenstein waited for the sound of the door clunking shut, then put away the scalpel and approached the frightened creature, whose trembling limbs were still strapped to the operating table.
"Free me, please!" Fenton's voice was but a pleading whisper. "Free me before he comes back to kill me!"
"No one will kill you, Francis," Victor hurried to answer in a soothing tone. He did, however, not move a finger to grant the boy's request.
"Please, Dr Frankenstein, Sir!" Fenton did not cease from beseeching him, with lips quivering, sounding heart-rendingly pitiable now, just as the abused and abandoned child he was.
Hesitating for another moment, the physician took a deep look into his patient's huge blue eyes, overflowing with tears, then he started to unbuckle his restraints.
Sergeant Gainsborough threw his cigarette into the gutter and squinted, taking another glance at the Godalming mansion. Although Inspector Fleming had ordered him to focus on the hunt for John Clare, he still came by at Hampstead Heath from time to time, observing the white marble house, the inhabitants of which he found so odd. The young policeman just could not forget the Lord's and Lady's strange, opalescent eyes, their bizarre pallor, the blue veins shimmering through their translucent skin. Whether they were involved in the murderer Clare's crimes or just unwitting accomplices of that madman – something within him craved to find out more about this weird pair.
They did not seem to be very sociable, for during his observation, he had never seen anyone leave or enter the building. However, they must be at home, for with the sun gone down behind the treetops, he beheld how lamps were lit behind the large windows of the sitting room as well as a smaller chamber on an upper floor. As a cold flake touched his unshaven cheek, the Sergeant furrowed his brow at the apparently approaching snowfall. He would abide at his post for a little while longer, but surely not for the entire evening.
Arthur Holmwood's diary
28 October
After the dreadful night in the storm, my beloved Lucy's condition worsened day by day and I fear no blood transfusion can help her, not anymore. She barely speaks to anybody, not even me – not even her mother – and seems to constantly linger in a transitional state between waking and sleeping, between dream and reality. My heart breaks every time I look at her sweet features, gaunt and yet so beautiful, lovelier than ever despite her ashen paleness. Paradoxically it appears as if her lips have turned redder, her skin softer, her eyes bluer – a phenomenon no one can explain. Although she barely notices my presence, I remain by my darling's side.
31 October
Tonight, when I was preparing to lay down in the guest room, a strange suggestion came to my mind and for some reason I knew that Lucy wished to talk to me, so I hurried to her chamber, and knelt down next to her. It must have been a trick of the light for when she tiredly opened her eyes, I again noticed that eerie glow of her irises, and when she spoke, her teeth somehow appeared longer and sharper. "My beloved Arthur," she whispered to me. I could not prevent the tears welling up in my eyes at her sad tone that held so much anguish, and in this very moment I knew it would soon be over. "I am so sorry, for I fear I will be leaving you. I know you will deeply mourn for me, and maybe you will deem your grief unbearable, but do not despair, my darling. Rest assured that I have always loved you… and will always love you."
I knew not what to answer at those words, I could only reach for her hand and hold it tight, and I wept by her side until there were no more tears to shed. Then, I fell into a deep sleep.
1 November
When I woke up this morning by the first light, I knew that my beloved Lucy had passed away. I could imagine her gaunt, white, bloodless face even before opening my eyes, I sensed the absence of warmth, the lack of a pulse even before I touched her. And though, when I eventually beheld her motionless form, the still so beautiful but empty shell of my dearest darling, I could not believe it. I cannot believe she is dead! Yesterday she was still talking to me, and I held her hand, and now I am to never see her smile again, never hear her bell-like giggle again?! How?! How can this be...?!
By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
By thy unfathom'd gulfs of guile,
By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul's hypocrisy;
By the perfection of thine art
Which pass'd for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others' pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee! and compel
Thyself to be thy proper Hell!
– Lord Byron
All the lights in the room were dying when Richard stepped inside, and all the flowers seemed to whither at the very draught of air he brought with him. His presence was upon her sleeping fiancé before he could wake up, putting a spell on him and beclouding his mind so he would not interfere.
One with the shadows, he glanced down at her sleeping form – fragile and delicate as a porcelain doll and just as committed, exposed, oh so sweetly subjected to him. However, his abundant well of nourishment was about to cease, and so tonight would be their last night. Tonight, he, the master of life and death, was to decide on her fate.
"Milady," he spoke, whereupon she wearily opened her eyes. "It is time."
"I know," she breathed in a melancholic tone, then untied the collar of her nightgown with her weak little hands.
"Let me help you," he offered as he sat down on the bed.
Deeply saddened but unfaltering, her gaze did not leave his while he brushed the silk from her frail shoulders with cold fingertips and when he snaked his arm around her waist to raise her limp body from the sheets. He did not have to peer into her mind to know her thoughts, for her eyes revealed that she was aware of the imminent last hour, of the lethality of his last kiss. And she accepted the inevitableness of her death.
He could have comforted her, promised her to be gentle, but no words would gild the final act of his dark, cruel play, and so he did speak no more. Eventually breaking their eye contact, he slowly lowered his head and opened his mouth wide. She did not moan or sigh when he buried his fangs in her flesh, the only sounds in the room were her stertorous breathing and faint heartbeat, both decelerating, fading with every drop he drained from her veins.
And as his lips had taken everything from her, the last sparklet of life she could give him, her breast ceased heaving in his arms and her heart stopped in his grasp.
It was done.
Carefully, he laid her motionless body back down onto the pillows, as if sinking her into her grave, forever to rest.
"Farewell, my beautiful Lady," he bid her goodbye for the very last time, before he rose and vanished in the cold, white mist that had leaked in through the open window.
Hot tears streamed down Richard's hollow cheeks in rivulets as he woke from this vision – the second one he had experienced from Dracula's point of view, as intense as if he himself had been the devil's brother.
While the first had afflicted him deeply, this one was now unhinging his entire emotional world. He felt the saddest grief and the deepest anguish and the gravest guilt, numbing helplessness, excruciating agony, infinite dolour – all at once, crushing down onto his defenceless mind, devouring him like the breaking sea, lashed into fury by gale-force winds, would swallow a rowing boat.
Gasping for air, heart hammering against his ribs, he struggled to stand up from his bed, only to stumble and fall to the floor. Renfield did not recognise his surroundings, nor could he distinguish nightmare from reality, his brain caught in a raging maelstrom of blinding and deafening chimaeras.
The only image constantly returning to him, searing into his inner eye, was the image of his beloved's corpse – her dead, white face! And the only thing he could taste, burning in his mouth and his throat, was Lucy's blood.
He was sure he had killed her.
Dr Frankenstein's hands were shaking almost as heavily as his patient's limbs while he unfastened the last leather strap on Fenton's ankle. Was he making a mistake by freeing the vampire? But he could not leave the boy restrained, defenceless and exposed to Henry's blind wrath, could he?
When he eventually was released from his bonds, the frightened vampire scrambled away from Victor in a supernaturally swift motion, disappearing backwards into the shadows of the dimly lit room like a pale spider, until the faint glow of his eerie irises was the only visible sign of his presence. Then, the blue shine faded as well.
"You do not have to hide, Francis," Frankenstein tried to calm him again.
No answer. The physician strained his eyes, but in the darkness could not make out anything besides his decrepit laboratory equipment. He had to swallow the lump in his throat.
"Please come out, boy! I promise no one will hurt you," he addressed him again, but his tone lost its confidence with every syllable he spoke.
Still complete silence.
His nerves tensed up to the verge of bursting, Victor almost flinched as the sound of footsteps reached his ears, announcing Henry's return. The chemist was sipping the last mouthful of cheap whisky he had poured himself from a bottle in Frankenstein's kitchen. When the glass left his lips, however, he outright dropped it to the floor, where it shattered into a thousand pieces.
Jekyll's eyes went wide with shock as he stared at the empty operating table, then at his friend.
"Where is he?!" he uttered, aghast.
"I untied him to protect him from you," Frankenstein growled, then let his gaze wander through the high-ceilinged room again. "Scared as he is, he must be hiding somewhere in a corner."
"Have you lost your mind?!" Jekyll spat, enraged again. "You let a vampire roam freely in your laboratory?!"
"Francis is but a frightened boy," Victor countered, gritting his teeth, then added: "Frightened of a volatile choleric's outbursts!"
The chemist's dark eyes lit up with violent fury and he took a threatening step towards the shorter man. "You are taking sides with this unworthy abomination?!" he hissed. "With some dead thing we have dug up from the mud, and against me – your friend?!"
"Would you listen to yourself, Henry!" Frankenstein replied, deeply hurt now, not recognising his friend anymore. "Are these not the same words that kept coming out of your tormentors' mouths all your life? How can you, of all people, talk of anyone as an unworthy abomination?!"
Jekyll's features contorted into a mask of disbelieving furore at these words and the veins on his temples protruded again, throbbing angrily.
"Have you just compared me to racist criminals or to ungodly ghouls?!"
Before Victor could word an answer, however, a blurred shadow, fast as lightning, shot out of the darkness and lunged at them with the full force of an attacking beast of prey.
Heavy clouds were covering the night sky and large snowflakes silently piled up on the branches and garden fences, on the rooftops and pavements, dampening the city's noises, bit by bit changing the ugly greyness into a world of white.
Standing beneath a tree in Hampstead Heath and throwing a glance at the marble mansion, John Clare experienced a déjà-vu. It was the same spot he had watched the Godalming house from before he had dared to approach the lady in white. Here he had written his very first poem, which he then had clandestinely and anonymously posted. And now he would accord her his last work, just as secretly as back then.
He withdrew the sheet from his pocket again and smoothed it out as best as he could. For a brief moment he thought about signing the verses this time, but decided against it, for she would surely know whom they came from. Then, John emerged from the shadows and crossed the street, leaving footprints in the fresh layer of snow, not noticing the tall, vigilant figure at the quoin, whose prying eyes followed his every step.
Lady Godalming had been reading in the mansion's library, when a pang of black despair ran through her sensitive mind like lightning. Clutching the fabric of her skirts, she had to take a deep breath before she could sort her thoughts and try to deduce what she was experiencing. It took her several moments to realise that those intense, agonising feelings she perceived – those embodiments of mental torture – were those of her servant.
Without hesitation she rose from her seat and flew up the stairs to his chamber, her flowing white dress mimicking the flurries of snow outside, with every step more afraid of what she would find had happened to him. Had Dracula contrived a way to overcome her spell and conquer his mind again? Reaching his room, she opened the door, immediately stepped inside – and froze.
Renfield lay on the floor next to his bed, trembling heavily, his face white as chalk, eyes wide open and rolled back into his head, cheeks wet with tears, bloody drivel escaping his lips from where he had bitten his tongue.
"Oh my God, Richard!" Lucy exclaimed in shock, hurrying to his side, and seizing his shoulders.
Pulse fluttering and breathing shallow, completely apathetic, he did not respond to her addressing him, nor to her touch. It was worse than back then when he had collapsed on the stairs, much worse! Soothing words and a deep glance into his eyes would not help this time.
With hands shaking in fear and worry, she turned him towards her and bedded his head on her lap, whereupon he seemed to inhale the stale air more deeply again. Lucy then took a deep breath herself, removed her gloves and placed her hands on his temples, closing her eyes.
It had been a long time since she had done this, and it was a difficult task to master – the fine art of invading someone's mind...