Elena spoke to me again last night, and this morning as we took a last stroll around the farm. She was nervous of her father seeing her with me. He is a brusque, capricious man, and I can hardly blame her for desiring to keep his temper sweet.
Again she expressed to me her deep wish to travel and be educated. Poor girl, I wish there were something I could do to aid her! On reflection it does seem a waste that such a bright mind should be condemned to a life that she does not want. Is it a sin to be discontented with one’s lot? I did not put this question to her, however, for I wished her to feel that I empathised, not that I condemned her.
I said, trying to cheer her, “At least you have summer to look forward to in this beautiful place, which will give you time to make up your mind about Miklos. I would love to paint! You must find great satisfaction in your art, and companionship with your father through it.”
She lowered her head. “Oh, Madam Harker, I do not paint.”
“But I thought–”
“My father is the artist,” she said, with a strange mix of humility and bitterness. “I carry his paints and brushes and easel, I find him the most comfortable place to sit, I provide him with refreshment and praise – but I do not paint! He would never tolerate me aping his skill. He wouldn’t abide it.”
While I am no supporter of the “New Woman”, I felt her sense of injustice very keenly. “You mind very much, don’t you? This is too bad! There is nothing unfeminine in sketching or painting in watercolours. Do you want me to speak to him?”
“No!” she cried, looking horrified. “No, Madam Harker, it is so kind of you, but please do not. He would smile and nod at your suggestion, but when you are gone he would be furious with me! Anyway, it is not painting I care about. It is – what is the phrase? The principle. To travel, to write, to be free – they are what I crave. But all is impossible.”
When I wrote that Elena has little spirit, I was very wrong. She strikes me as being a creature of passionate ideals that have budded on a strange, dark vine.
“Well, the least I can do is help you to write,” I said.
Back in the farmhouse I gave her my English-Hungarian dictionary, a fresh notepad, pens and ink. They were all I had to offer. Elena was so overcome I thought she would fall down and kiss my feet. “Oh, Madam Harker!” she said tears rolling down her dimpled cheeks. “I shall keep a journal, in–” she looked quickly through the dictionary – “in emulation of you!”
I am glad I was able to make her so happy, with so small a gesture. But she remains uneasily in my thoughts. Was there truly nothing more I could have done for her? I suppose not. She was so unusual and charming that I cannot forget her. I have good friends, but none as close as dear Lucy was... and I shall never have a daughter. But with such a good husband and son as I have, I should be more than content with my lot.
30 July, Exeter
Home, to find that Quincey has had bronchitis! He is over the worst of it but very pale and wheezy. Alice Seward – Dr Seward could not have married a kinder, more sensible woman – has looked after him admirably, but still I was distressed and thought she should have called me home. Jonathan pointed out that even if she had, we could hardly have been home much sooner than we were.
I wish I were not so anxious a mother – but since I am, I shall keep my worries between myself and my journal, and not trouble Quincey or Jonathan with them. Both Dr Seward and Dr Van Helsing have examined the boy and say he will be well, and I am not to worry. Indeed, he had recovered enough to be bounced on Dr Van Helsing’s knee!
We took out all the old papers, diaries and cuttings we had assembled to record our encounter with Dracula. It was strange to read through them again. Far away, like a dream, yet painfully fresh as if it all happened yesterday. It did us all good to talk it through. Jonathan says he will make a note of our recent pilgrimage (as Dr Van Helsing will insist on calling it) in order to round off the notes. Then we will feel that all is truly laid to rest.
Van Helsing made a confession afterwards. “While we were in Buda-Pesth, I tell my good friend André Kovacs all about our experience. We talked long into the night. I need to talk of it and he – not like the sceptical fools who call themselves ‘scientist’ – I knew would believe our story in every particular. Forgive my indiscretion, but the mingling of history and folklore is his interest also. He was disturbed and intrigued; he hears also many rumours over the years that come from the Carpathians and Castle Dracula. A place of which no mortal knows the truth, because no mortal dares to go there! But to hear the rumours are truth and not peasant imaginings – of this he is most happy and excited to learn!”
“Well, I am glad someone got some entertainment out of it,” Jonathan said drily.
In a few days our guests will depart – the Sewards and Lord Godalming to London, Dr Van Helsing to Amsterdam – and Jonathan and I shall return to our happy, comfortable existence. Jonathan will go back to work, and I shall have time to spend with our boy. I’ll test his reading by asking him to read aloud the letters I sent, and then I shall tell him all about our trip.
Well, not all. One day, when he is of an age to understand, I will tell him the truth – but not yet. And by God’s grace he will live to see such an age.
* * *
JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
10 August
Last week, after our return from Transylvania, I wrote a note to round off the collection of documents that make up our account of Dracula. I was in good spirits when I wrote it. I felt that it marked a closure to that time, a fresh, unstained beginning.
Now that our friends are gone, however, and the house is quiet, I feel a strange lethargy of spirit creeping upon me. I try not to think of the vision I had as we stood on the cold hillside beneath Castle Dracula, but it will not let me alone.
I felt that a tall shape was watching us: a solid black shadow, simply watching yet exuding such an intense, brooding malevolence that it pushed all the breath and reason out of me! Whichever way I looked, it was always behind and to one side of me – yet if I turned, there was never anything there.
I will say nothing to the others. They were all satisfied that the journey was beneficial. But I cannot rid myself of a persistent suspicion, like the most horrible insidious anxiety, that we were dreadfully mistaken to go there again. That it was the worst thing we could possibly have done.
Chapter Two
LETTER, PROFESSOR KOVACS TO ABRAHAM VAN HELSING.
4 August, Buda-Pesth
My dear Abraham,
It was so good to see you. Since your visit and our conversation, I have thought of nothing but the matters which we discussed – that is, your strange and wild tale of Count Dracula!
All my life I have studied tales from the “horseshoe” of the Carpathians, that maelstrom of myth and superstition, tales of werewolves, vampires and the like. With my own eyes I have seen, in a Transylvanian village, the peasants rip the lid from a coffin buried a year and stake the corpse within – a corpse that looked fresh as life, and which screamed when it was pierced, issuing streams of fresh scarlet blood! Long have I tried to rationalise this as some natural phenomenon; unusual ground conditions that preserved the body, gas escaping, the blood a strange illusion created by my brain seeing what it feared to see, etc. – But now that you, a scientist as incredulous as myself, have found these matters to have a basis in fact, I find myself able, after all these years, to relax my cynicism. Suppose that such things – through some wild combination, as you say, of natural, supernatural and diabolical forces – can actually exist! And indeed, you and your friends have experienced it at first hand.
I had long heard rumours of a castle where the noble family had died out, yet perhaps not altogether died. Now you say that these rumours were nothing less than the truth, veiled in whispers because no one dared to voice them aloud. I rejoice to hear that the curse is gone. However...
I write to tell you that your visit has inspired me to a project. The most intriguing of t
he matters we discussed you merely glanced upon, yet I feel it to be central. I refer to another place of myth and rumour, that has nonetheless commanded my imagination. Friend Abraham, I have found mention of this place several times during my years of study, so to hear it mentioned again in connection with Dracula has fired my curiosity. I speak, of course, of the Scholomance.
Let me reiterate what we know of the Scholomance. First, that it was a “school” or academy reputedly run by the Devil himself. Here he taught in person the arts of magic, the secrets of nature and the language of animals. Second, that he took only ten scholars at one time. At the end of the course of learning, nine scholars were released to exploit their dark arts in the outside world, while the tenth was kept by the Devil in payment. Third, that some members of the great Dracula family were reputed to have attended the school and there learned occult powers from the Evil One. Fourth, that Count Dracula himself may have learned his dark arts there. Lastly, that the Scholomance was supposed to lie somewhere above Hermannstadt in the Carpathian mountains that divide Transylvania from Wallachia.
Whatever truth may lie behind the myth, it is my intention to discover it.
The initial expedition, I estimate, will take a month; two weeks to explore the mountains, a few days on either side for travel, preparation and rest. Miklos – my student and good friend, the nearest I will ever have to a son – is coming with me. If we find anything of note, a more thorough expedition can then be mounted. I shall be back long before my brother and niece return from Transylvania, so there is no point in informing them of my plans.
I intend to keep a detailed journal in English for your benefit, so that when we meet again, you may read immediately of my adventure – if indeed I have anything to report. Wish me luck!
Your friend,
André Kovacs.
P.S. Miklos wishes to marry Elena, but this will take place “over my dead body,” as the English say. She does not really want him; she blows hot and cold, according to my brother Emil’s whims, while he wishes some miracle would take place whereby she could give him grandsons without the intervention of a husband! I have to protect my dear Miklos from their machinations. Between them they would crush him. – A.K.
* * *
ELENA KOVACS’S JOURNAL
25 July
I mean to keep a journal in imitation of our gracious English visitor, Madam Harker. She gave me the book, pens and ink. I will write very small, so that paper and ink shall last a long time – I could get none from Father without explaining why I need it. And I shall practise my poor English, to improve – and so that my father may understand my words less readily, should he ever find this.
I wish I need not write in secret, but I must. Father must never see this precious book. I know it would make him angry. And what might I record that must be concealed from his eyes? Simply the thoughts in my head, since I am not supposed to have any. Secrecy is sinful, but I will not dwell on that or I will never set down a word.
I have a little downstairs room to myself, which overlooks the rear farmyard. I can see the well, the side of the great barn and the orchards, pigs and poultry running about. Beyond the fruit trees, the forested ridge rises up as a great misty wall. It makes me feel lonely; I imagine jumping over the window sill, running away and being lost on that ridge...
The farmer’s daughters are as dear as sisters to me, but I am glad I do not have to share their room or I should never have a moment to myself. They are good girls but so simple, wanting nothing but to marry shepherds and breed more little shepherds. We have nothing in common. They could never understand me – why should they, when I do not understand myself?
I don’t know what I shall write, in any case. I have spent so much time on this farm that nothing is new any more. Shall I write of turkeys and geese, the daily coming and goings of peasants, the long hours spent sitting at my father’s feet while he paints on the slope of some pasture? Well, I may write about the visit of our English guests, at least.
I feel a strange yearning. Madam Harker did not create it, but she enflamed it. If she had not visited us, if she had not taken so kind an interest in me, surely this ache in my breast would not have stirred so fiercely! She brought the soul of England with her, with her beautiful sombre clothes and her lovely manners and fair complexion. She will never know what excitement she brought to my life... but now she is gone, how small my world seems. Not the physical world but the world with my father. I can see how vast and beautiful the world is, but he puts me in a little glass box.
Why do I feel this urge to defy him? Am I a changeling? If I were the dutiful daughter he wanted, I would not feel so afraid – so trapped!
God forgive me for such sentiments! There, that is why these words must be hidden from his eyes. I want so much from life and here there seems so little.
I wish I knew where they went on their mysterious carriage journey. It made a change in all our guests, but most of all I noticed it in Madam Harker. Before she went to the Borgo Pass she was troubled, as if they brought some dark secret on their “holiday.” Perhaps I imagine too much. But when they came back they were different, all light of heart and laughing, as if they had found out something that pleased them. I don’t mean they were (I must consult my dictionary...) frivolous. Madam Harker could never be frivolous or silly, as my father says women of foreign cities are. She was serene, glowing and happier than before she left. Perhaps it was only that she is returning to her son.
The change in her mood made me feel strange. It made me... frightened. Why? I did not realize until I wrote it. Oh, now I scare myself for no reason. How I hate the superstitions of this land! I hate them the more because I cannot dismiss them. They creep into the blood and become real. I wish I was like Madam Harker, brought up in a land free from beliefs that men change into wolves or that the dead can – no, no more. I wish that I lived in a land of reason!
When Madam Harker first arrived, there was a shadow of sadness inside her. But when she and her party returned from their unexplained journey, the shadow had changed. It was still there, but outside her, so she was no longer aware of it. And it fell on me instead. By “shadow” I mean a feeling, a mood... some wisp of pain, fear and excitement mixed, but when I try to get hold of it, it vanishes between my hands. And then I forget, and it appears again. Like something watching. This makes me shiver, I need my shawl. I did not begin this journal to frighten myself... or was the fear inside all the time, and writing only brings it out? There, I have learned something, but not the knowledge I thought I was seeking.
Father is calling me. My precious book, I must hide you!
30 July
I have been wondering about my mother. I barely remember her. She died of fever when I was a baby, my father says. This morning I was looking at the farmer’s wife, her hands red-raw from endless washing, cooking, sewing, goat-milking, her face red-brown from the weather, and her daughters the same, and I wondered if my mother was like that! Or was she elegant like Madam Mina, intelligent and accomplished, with white hands and beautiful clothes? My father hates me to ask questions. I could ask Uncle André, when we meet again.
Father has been sketching the peasants at work in the fields. The pastures are lush but life is harsh here, especially in winter. The farmers see no beauty in the mountains, only that wolves may come down from the heights and kill sheep. My father is very taken up with this idea – the battle between man and nature – and pays me no attention, which gives me time to think. Shall I write poetry? I could become a great and famous Hungarian poetess!
I had a dream last night. It lingers with me, like a strange atmosphere that makes a silver mist over everything. Let me try to remember... I am in a dark place where all I can see is a thick white mist flowing very close to the ground. All is chill, with a smell of damp stone. A light shines inside this mist, throwing upwards a kind of radiance, against which stands a tall, thin, dark figure. This figure is all in black but it has no face. It is covered in a black
shroud. This figure does nothing, it simply is. And I am filled with terror.
I can’t say what so alarms me. Just to know that such a thing exists.
I frighten myself again, thinking of it! I could not wake up, I struggled for breath. I thought to cry out and wake someone, but could not make a sound. At last I woke suddenly with a great effort, and found myself sitting up in bed. I felt an overwhelming urge to get up and look out of the window.
Moonlight flooded the farmyard, the orchard and the steep forested ridge beyond. But nothing stirred. I wonder why I feel so strange?
Now I know the value of this journal. Not to record the details of my life, which is dull, but to record my dreams and thoughts.
Oh, if I were a man, I could be a poet. I could go to Paris or London! If I married Miklos, would we travel? Would marrying make me more free, or less so? My father will never let me do anything alone!
2 August
Something dreadful is happening.
Let me set it down. I must know if writing will make it worse, or better.
Last night I could not sleep. Rather, I went in and out of dreaming. Not pleasant dreams, these, but a distressing, heavy state in which I was too hot, and my head ached, and I could neither wake up nor fall fully asleep.
As I lay like this I heard a faint sound outside, the thin hard whine of some animal in distress. At first it seemed far away on the mountains, then as if it was right outside the window, then far away again. It was a horrible noise that pained my nerves. I prayed for it to cease, yet I wanted to go out to whatever made the sound – to silence or comfort it, I do not know. This keening went on and on, near and far away. When I tried to get up and look outside, I could not move. This alarmed me greatly. I saw unpleasant things in this half-dream. The heavy white mist again, with red wisps swirling into it, like blood in water. I am trying to climb a dark mountain wall but I am struggling and slipping back; it is too steep. I see some splintered timbers lying on a path, all rotten and glistening with rain. These images make no sense but each is terrifying and upsets me deeply. Even writing this down, I can make no more sense of it. And always that irritating bleat of pain!
Dracula the Undead: A Chilling Sequel to Dracula Page 3
