My tongue loosened; by now I must have sounded as mad as one of Seward"s own patients. "But I saw - in the graveyard - I saw another one. Not Dracula. Another vampire!"
"You must have been mistaken!" Van Helsing said sharply.
G.o.dalming said nothing, but I felt the bream go out of him in a slow exhalation of dismay more vivid than words. No more. No more.
How empty the house seems without my wife and son! Like a deserted, haunted old pile. Van Helsing and I rested in the parlour as we talked, a sorry pair. G.o.dalming sat in an armchair, his head on his hands. Seward paced about in barely contained fury. He is a good man, made cynical by witnessing too much of life"s ugliness. "What have we done, that this curse should afflict us again? What proof have we that Dracula will even take Mina to Quincey? He is a liar, a cunning devil!"
"Don"t talk in that way, I can"t bear it," I said. "I must believe that at least Mina and Quincey are together, or I shall go mad. If I am not mad already!"
Mary brought us supper, concerned but accepting my request that she ask no questions, all would be explained later; though I doubt that I shall ever be able to explain to her. Then Seward told us what had occured in the churchyard. All through this, I had the creeping feeling that something was watching us, a presence walking round and round the house, staring through the windows and scratching at the gla.s.s, at once hideous and pitiful.
"We explored, looking for the tomb that matched Elena"s description. The place is a maze. We found it eventually, a ramshackle sepulchre along an overgrown path; overshadowed by yew trees and the door rusting away. But as we entered we saw a tall man in black, leaning over a central tomb. It was Dracula. Our lamp sent a huge shadow against the far wall; the strangest shadow, like a kind of dull blue fire, full of sparks. We saw his face clearly; I"ll never forget the expression of sneering, frustrated malevolence as he glanced up and saw us! His eyes were red as h.e.l.l-fire. We had surprised him in the act of removing his native soil from the tomb, apparently, and scooping it into a big leather bag. I saw a human skeleton heaped in one corner - so it was true, he and Elena had desecrated this tomb and usurped the rightful occupant!"
Van Helsing added, "And the whole place stinks of the odour that we know, the odour on the shawl in Elena"s closet, and that which lingers on the Count himself, that smell of earth and death. I am too late to scatter in the pieces of Holy Wafer; Dracula is on his way to another hiding-place."
Seward continued, "We stood off for a moment; Dracula said something along the lines of, "You will die as you were born, Van Helsing; an interfering fool. Are you G.o.d? Then, until you see with my eyes, do not judge me! Again you think to thwart me, like sheep against a wolf, but again you are too late." First he flung the bag past us; we dodged aside as it landed in the doorway and skidded a little on the leaf-mould there. The next we knew, the Count jumped clean over the bier and came for us. I tried to protect Van Helsing; Dracula caught me around the throat with one of his broad hands and flung me against the back wall. His palm was ice-cold. I slid down and lay winded, but I could see his face blazing with demoniac fury as he seized Van Helsing. I saw G.o.dalming thrusting a crucifix between diem. Dracula gave a roar of anger and threw aside Van Helsing, who hit his head on the corner of the tomb. Then the Count seized G.o.dalming"s fist instead, and the metal crucifix that he was clutching in it began to glow red. G.o.dalming refused to let go. Dracula s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand away; the look of rage on his face was so terrible dial I thought he would kill us all. You could see him struggling to resist the power of the cross. Then Van Helsing and I picked ourselves up off the ground and we each held up our own crosses against him. At that Dracula fled, seizing the bag of earth as he went.
"We had to rest until Van Helsing had recovered enough to go on. Then we searched the graveyard for a time - close to leaping out of our skins - in the suspicion that Dracula might still be lurking there. Now it"s obvious he came straight here, of course. Then we heard you shouting, Jonathan. The rest you know."
I asked, "Did Dracula mean to kill you?"
"I think he means to," Van Helsing said thoughtfully, "but not so quickly. He makes great sport with us first."
G.o.dalming gave a faint groan. So far he had not said a word.
Seward asked, "But what about this other vampire you mentioned, Harker?"
I explained what I thought I had seen. "My mind was so full of imaginings. Perhaps I imagined that too. It seemed so real!" Even as I spoke, I still felt those desperate eyes upon me ... I shuddered, but could not admit to such neurosis.
We poured ourselves some brandy, and were silent a few moments. Then G.o.dalming began to stir, clenching and unclenching his hands upon his knees. I noticed a red mark on one palm, where the cross had burned him. "It"s no good," he said suddenly, with a kind of dignified anguish that was very affecting. "I can"t go on, I can"t stay. Forgive me; I never meant to let you down. It grieves me more than I can say to break my vow, to break up our brotherhood, but I must!"
Van Helsing stared at him; Seward looked angry. "What are you saying?"
"That I cannot fight Dracula any more. It cost me too dear, losing Lucy, having to drive the stake through her heart with my own bare hands! I could never do it again. But that"s what it would come to. For if I go after Dracula, make no mistake; he would come after my wife! And I cannot, will not place her and our child in such danger. I am going home to them now. I am going to take them abroad, as swiftly as possible, and out of danger."
He was weeping now; I was close to it myself.
"Forgive me," G.o.dalming said again, "for putting my own family before yours, Jonathan, but I must. I am not betraying you, but protecting them."
"Of course I forgive you. You have no cause to ask."
I had no hesitation in releasing him from his vows. Seward and Van Helsing looked stricken, even betrayed; but after a few minutes they, too, reluctantly took G.o.dalming"s hand. "I understand," the Professor said gruffly. "Go then, and may G.o.d go with you."
G.o.dalming left swiftly, and with few words; there was no more to say. After he had gone we were more disconsolate than ever.
I felt that our little band, which had once been so strong and vigorous, was now disintegrating - with age, tiredness, disillusion - while our enemy sprang renewed from the grave, ever reborn.
"You should both go to bed now," said Seward. "We can talk again tomorrow."
I protested that I couldn"t sleep, that I must go out in search of Mina at once, but Van Helsing said, John is right, there is nothing more we can do tonight. In this state our brains and bodies are of no use to Madam Mina. Nothing will help her better than our sleeping, and waking refreshed and alert."
My sleep was poor, and fraught with nightmares. Nevertheless I feel refreshed, capable of setting pen to paper and even, to my surprise, in need of a good breakfast.
15 November, evening A fruitless day.
We were up early, our spirits quite vigorous; our vigour springing from necessity rather than physical strength. I could see, however, that Van Helsing was pale and having to make an effort. Over breakfast. Van Helsing, Seward and I again went through Elena"s treacherous diary.
"How could she have taken us in?" I cried. To my shame, I wept - but I could not help it. To think of Mina and my son with that fiend is unbearable.
Van Helsing said, "Elena is intelligent; she has a man"s brain in that demure form. She says to herself, "Evil, be thou my good!"
Well, she is unmasked, too late. All along she has fooled us. She came to us at Dracula"s direction but how much at his direction, how much of her free will, I am not certain. Could she be again, in her heart, as sweet, good and pure as Mina, if she were only out of his power - or is she a demon from the pit of h.e.l.l?"
We talked of calling the police, but decided against it. They would not believe us, nor take us seriously; their questions might become awkward, and were more likely to hinder than help us. We must make enquiries of our own.
"It is tempting to rush into action, to expend our energy in useless ways only to satisfy ourselves that we sit not idle, but that is not the way," said Van Helsing. "We go slowly. First let us take stock of what we know of this monster." The Professor began to seem his old, energetic self as he warmed to his subject. "The vampire needs not blood to live, for he cannot die ... but without it he becomes old and torpid. Blood gives him vigour; it makes him young, as we have seen. He must have it. He steals life at the expense of his victim -but it is more than energy he needs. He craves the warmth of the living, for he is jealous of them; he hates their freedom, their devotion to G.o.d. He must have power over them, to make them serve him instead; to be his jackals, as once he said to us. So strong is Dracula"s desire to live that he even cheats death; cheats it twice, that we know of. But think; what did we do wrong in dispatching him? He says that he can come back, but Lucy and the three women we dispatched cannot. Why?"
Dr Seward gave a cry. "Professor, did you not prescribe a specific method of dispatching the vampire? A wooden stake through the heart. But we didn"t kill Dracula that way, we killed him with steel! We broke our own rules."
Van Helsing nodded. "Yes, John. I have thought upon this. It seemed to suffice at the time - but we cannot break the rules of the Undead, any more than they can. But there is more. Dracula made Madam Mina drink some of his blood, so that he would always have power over her, and his mind would command hers. That blood in her was some part of him still warm and living. Remember what we read in Elena"s diary - how she stole Madam Mina"s blood to bring Dracula back to life!"
Being reminded of this was horribly distressing. I tried to hide my pain, but felt Dr Seward"s hand on my shoulder. Sometimes I think Van Helsing does not realize, in his eagerness to hunt down the truth, how blunt he is being.
"But I think this is not yet enough for him. When first he became Undead, he lost some mental agility; he is in many ways a child, learning by experiment. Now with his second rebirth it is the same. He is weak - strong against ordinary mortals, but still weak by his own standards. To regain his old strength, he must drink from Madam Mina"s veins. That is why he has taken her."
This brought me to the edge of collapse. Van Helsing patted my back. "Friend Jonathan, be not too distressed. There is good news."
"How so?" I cried.
"When the vampire was in the form of a spirit, he entered other bodies; Elena, the cat, you, myself. He tormented us, bringing dreams, imaginings, madness, even physical harm. But think; since he regained his corporeal form, he haunts us no more! His will is now trapped within his own body. He has greater strength, but less freedom. He cannot have both! It may be, in spirit, he could have driven us all mad - but his greed to take flesh again was too strong. So, physical, we can fight him."
"We have to find him first," I said.
"And who knows what new lessons he may have learned?" said Seward. "Last time he brought fifty boxes of his native earth; this time, a mere shawl-full."
"He learns to travel light," said Van Helsing, chuckling. "He must go at dawn to his place of rest; but what happens to him then if he go not? For we have seen him abroad in daylight. Say he sleeps from dawn until noon, then is able to wander about until dusk, but without his unnatural power to change shape?"
"But I have seen him in the morning, too," I pointed out.
"Yet still I say, he must lie in his native earth, once each day, for a time, however brief. . ."
"Even if he didn"t - say he could not reach it for some reason -1 can"t see that it would kill him," I said.
"Not kill him . .. but cause him great distress, for that instinct of the Undead to lie in the grave is greater than ours to sleep and eat. It is sovereign. Therefore deprived of it he is lost, exposed, in a great storm of rage, of frustration . . ."
"A good deal more dangerous," Seward said sourly.
"But more vulnerable! More apt to rash actions that may undo him."
"Well, he seems to have taken the earth with him, so he must be going to make a new hiding-place somewhere. Wherever he has taken Mina and Quincey."
"And we will take steps to find it. Jonathan, I do not think harm will come to Mina and Quincey at once. He uses them to control us. Dead, they would be useful as hostages no more."
I must be grateful for this blunt but honest nugget of hope.
By the end of breakfast, Van Helsing was pale again, and I was very concerned for him. At last we forced him to admit that he had a bad headache; the result of last night"s blow to the head. Seward examined him, and sent him back to bed for the rest of the day. No use endangering his health when he needs time to recover. He would have been good for nothing today.
Seward and I spent the day making enquiries; I in Exeter, Seward further afield. So far, we have discovered the firm who hired a black caleche and pair to the Count, but no one who has seen or heard anything of it since.
13 November Last night I experienced again the dreadful feeling that something was prowling, watching. This time Seward and Van Helsing felt it too; the Professor had risen from his sick bed in the evening, against Seward"s advice, and was sitting with us in the parlour.
I hardly know how to describe the sensation. It was like wave upon wave of fear striking me. It was past midnight; we were all exhausted from searching, worrying, endlessly talking. It was too late and too dark to make any further progress, but the impossibility of acting only made us restless. Van Helsing loathes being ill. I fear we put too much unspoken pressure on him to recover, we are in such dire need of his wisdom.
We grew more and more uneasy. A strange sound began, first a ticking, then the beating of a far-off drum rising to a terrifying crescendo - the sound of someone beating violently at the front door! Then silence. As one we leapt up and went into the hall.
I took a walking-stick from the stand as a weapon. "Slowly, now . . ." said Van Helsing. The door felt ice-cold as I touched it; I was certain, I know not how, that it was not Dracula there, but something worse - worse because it was unknown.
I opened the door. There on the threshold stood a gaunt man in a travel-worn suit that was plastered with loose soil, gra.s.s, even with dew and cobwebs. His face was salt-white, his hair a wild grey squall. It was the vampire I saw last night in the graveyard!
I recoiled. Seward"s arm moved past my shoulder, rigidly presenting a large crucifix. The vampire drew back, and some quality of the gesture made me pity it. Yet it did not retreat. Instead it held out a leather-bound book and said, in a cracked voice, "Abraham. Abraham."
Van Helsing let out a gasp, terrible to hear. "Oh, dear G.o.d and all the saints! Andre Kovacs?"
Yes, I recognized him then. Professor Kovacs, who had shown us such hospitality in Buda-Pesth, Elena"s uncle. I still can"t believe it - nor comprehend this tragedy!
"Invite me in, Abraham. I cannot come in without invitation, I have tried for days."
"No."
The apparition shook the book. His eyes were red-rimmed and staring. "Then take my journal. I wrote it for you. It tells everything. I will wait here while you read it!"
Kovacs seemed rooted there. The scent of death and grief rose from him like an ice-vapour. At last, frowning and hesitant, Van Helsing reached out and took the book. Then he shut the door in the vampire"s face.
We returned to the parlour, for it had turned so cold in the hall. We were all terribly aware of the creature outside the house as Van Helsing opened the journal and began to read it out loud. Seward and I attended in tense silence. The Professor began to shake his head, his high forehead creasing into deeper and deeper lines. "He found the Scholomance.. .Ah, mijn G.o.d, poor Miklos dead!" And at the last, with feverish agitation, he flung the book down and pressed his hands to his temples in an expression of agony. "Oh, my poor dear friend! Oh G.o.d, no! What more can we be asked to endure?"
Seward took the journal from him and we glanced through the entries. The change both in Kovacs"s style and his handwriting was telling in itself; from bold and cheerful to frantic and demented.
Seward said, "This demon, Beherit, is using him as some kind of... agent, spy against Dracula?"
"So it would seem," Van Helsing said grimly.
"Then might we not also use him against Dracula?"
"What are you suggesting?" I cried. "That creature, that piteous thing, is no longer our friend! It"s not human! It should be destroyed, put out of its misery!"
"But John is right." Van Helsing sighed. "I cannot forget so easily that Kovacs was my friend, and must therefore give him the benefit of the doubt; that his love, also, has survived the grave. Would we not all do as much for each other? Come, then. Let us invite him over the threshold."
It was an hour or more since we had shut the door upon the vampire. When we opened it again, Kovacs stood there as if he had not moved a muscle. When I, trembling and with constricted throat, extended a hand and said, "Come in," the vampire came to life and stepped quite graciously into the hall. There was no violence about him; only the cold radiance of death, and a sort of desperation.
He stood in the centre of the parlour, addressing Van Helsing as if Seward and I were not there. "My dear friend, Abraham, when I wrote dial last entry - when I sat at the very fissure of h.e.l.l with Beherit, and felt myself dying, I thought that I would never see the outside world again. All has changed since then. I look out from within the darkness, and understand. Can you forgive me, for what I have become?"
"As I am in no position to judge you - I must," said Van Helsing. "You wrote the last entry as you sat dying; now you are Undead. What became of you in between?"
Kovacs"s face was so sad it seemed eerily beautiful. His words were horrific - yet I could say nothing to stop him, for they were also hypnotic. "I came from Transylvania to England on foot, sleeping in the graves of suicides as I came. How long it has taken, I have no idea; all is different in the world of night. You cannot know, no one but the Undead can know, how sweet it is to hunt in the darkness like the owl and the wolf, to feel the blood of an unspoiled young boy spilling into your mouth, his blood mingling with yours, his holy life feeding the unholy . . . nor how bitter, how lonely, how comfortless. For I have nowhere to go, no connection to this world, no living friend but would shun me with all the disgust the living pour upon my kind.
"I did die, there in the library with only a demon for company. A long time later -1 know not how long -1 opened my eyes again.
I was alone. All was different. I saw, I heard, I felt, and yet I knew I was dead. Different laws work upon me now. I serve a different master.
"Much of my memory was gone; much of my human feeling erased. The urges that bubbled in my heart were animal ones - l.u.s.t for blood - and deathly ones; jealousy of the living, cruelty, cold mirth at the futility of life. Beherit had left me. I chewed at my own hands in the need to pierce flesh and taste blood. Yes, picture it, my friend. Was I not pitiful? Would you not, had you been on hand, have dispatched me to true death without a single qualm?
"But when this activity yielded nothing, my journal caught my eye. I was like a child or a jackdaw, in my fascination. I picked it up and began to read.
"Oh, my friend, then knowledge came back to me! How much easier it would have been to remain child or animal in mind than to be given back the memories of who and what I was! How have I deserved this? I came into this through curiosity, not through deliberate evil. And yet, it was thus that mankind fell in the first place. Be warned, Van Helsing; our thirst for knowledge is against G.o.d"s plan, for we are trying to become like G.o.d. Then we are cast out of Heaven and into the pit, as was Lucifer.
"Knowledge is the Devil"s. There in the Scholomance he whispers, "I will teach you what G.o.d alone knows - but in punishment you will serve me for ever afterwards."
"I had not even the comfort of Miklos being with me in Undeath. How I wish Beherit had not struck off his head! What seemed a holy mercy at the time now seems a bereavement. But that is the selfishness of our condition - that I would rather he shared this ghastly existence than rested in holy peace!
"While I was alone I grew frantic, for the physical craving was intense, and I could find no way out. By the time Beherit returned, I was like a rabid wolf. I tried to attack him, but he only smiled and held me away. I railed at him, for letting me suffer this maddening thirst, for making me Undead.
" "Calm yourself," he said. "You shall be allowed to leave and satisfy your needs, if you only keep the bargain we made."
"I could not resist him. Repulsive though the idea must seem to you, he was so beautiful to me, despite the horror of what we are; so lusciously golden, with his shining hair and rosy flesh, that I loved him. That is the simple truth. Loathsome as Beherit is, I love him. He is d.a.m.ned, and so am I.
" "Find Dracula for me," he said. "I know he is not dead. Ensure that he never comes back to the Scholomance. If you succeed .
. . you will be allowed back here, and the keys of the library will be yours." "
Seward said, "It sounds a dubious enough bargain to me. How can you keep Dracula away, unless you shadow him for all eternity?"
"But I trust Beherit," said the vampire. "There must be a way. I do this to please Beherit, whom I love."
There was something at once so childlike and so repellent in these words that I winced. Van Helsing said, "Well, your Beherit is right. Dracula has returned. Jonathan saw you in the churchyard; you must have been only yards from the Count. Did you see or speak to him?"
"I watched him from a distance. He did not know I was there. If ever he sees me, confronts me ... I can only hope that Beherit"s instinct guides my actions."
"Before Dracula destroys you? And did you know that he has kidnapped my son and my wife?" I exclaimed angrily, unable to contain my frustration any longer.
Kovacs showed no reaction, but said in the same melancholic tone, "I will help you to find them, if I may."
"He has Elena, too," said Van Helsing. "She is still alive -for how long, I dare not guess."
"I know. I have seen her with him. I so wanted to speak to her, to ask how this happened ..." Now a tear ran down his mournful face. I couldn"t help remembering what a fine energetic man Kovacs had been, a bare few months ago!