“Nonsense,” I said. “Now we will sit and rest awhile, then conduct a very thorough scientific exploration. My friend, we are on the threshold of a discovery to rival that of the Egyptian tombs!”
Refreshed by a rest and a bite to eat, we set out to investigate the chamber... and now I know every inch of it. Oh Abraham, is there any point in recording this? Yes, be calm. We worked our way round, sweeping dust off the walls to reveal strange mosaics in intense deep colours. These represented stylized scenes of battles, hunts, saint-like figures preaching to mingled groups of humans and animals, all presented against a background of sigils so densely interwoven they confuse the eye and seem to move. These deserve scholarly interpretation, but at a primitive level they filled me with revulsion – as if they are a hellish inversion of Biblical stories. I think it is the colours that give this effect. Somehow the shades conspire to produce a feeling of revulsion; deep coppery reds, dark purple streaked with bronze, thick greens slimed with silver, bluish-crimson – all give the impression of congealed blood...
But I wander from the point, which is that when we had worked our way all around, we could not find the archway by which we had entered. The ten sides of the chamber were seamless, as if the ingress had never existed. At first we couldn’t believe it. We went round again and again. We argued about the position of the archway. (Our footprints had become so muddled as to tell us nothing). Whichever of us was right, it is no longer there.
Now we sit on our bench, and once I finish writing all I have to say, madness will surely close in. Miklos is speechless, shaking with dread. He does not answer my attempts to comfort him.
We have twelve candles, which will last a few days at most. I should snuff out this one to conserve the supply, but I cannot bear to. The flame dances, so there is a draught from somewhere, but I cannot find its source. We will not suffocate, then – though that would be swifter and more merciful than starvation. In its dim glow, my eyes are constantly drawn to the base of the ten-sided marble block in the centre of the chamber. Its carved surface is draped in thick webs. Sometimes this grey mass moves and bulges, as if huge spiders are moving underneath. At the base of the block, to the right from where we are sitting, these webs form a mass so thick and dense it seems to be a huge cocoon, the size of a man. My stomach recoils in disgust to think of what might be inside.
Later
I fell asleep with the pen in my hand! I recall some vague, uneasy dream that by throwing the stone into the lake, we woke the dragon, caused the storm, opened the gate to the Scholomance... that we summoned the Devil himself.
Waking to darkness, I lit a fresh candle in a shameful panic that has now abated a little. Miklos sleeps beside me, I will not wake him. My pocket watch works for a few minutes if I wind it, but is useless. Is it morning or night? I have searched again for a way out, but all is as before. By what freak of nature is this possible? In the circle of candlelight it seems we have stepped into the antechamber of Hell. The Scholomance, the Devil’s own school!
Oh God, the great cocoon
Later
Must complete this, though my hand is crabbed by cold and the shuddering of my nerves. I am racked with grief and terror. This is my only hold on life.
I thought I imagined it, when first I saw the cocoon stirring. But I did not; I heard its fibres softly cracking. Something was rising out, some hideous grey thing with gaunt limbs. I dropped my pen in horror, rose to protect my companion and myself, only to fall dizzily onto the floor. The next that happened, I know not whether I saw or dreamt it. The thing that came out of the webs was a man, so ancient, grotesque and skeletal that he resembled a spider. Through a reddish veil of candle-light he came skittering towards us on all fours, papery and mummified. I tried to scream but could not. I saw the creature bending over Miklos. Then I lost consciousness.
When I came to myself – I know not how much later – several candles were burning. Who lit them, I dread to think. I looked around and saw that the cocoon was empty, a thin shell of dusty silk fibres, ripped open along its length. My next thought was for Miklos. He was sitting on the bench where I’d left him, his eyes open. I picked myself up off the floor and touched his arm. “Miklos!” I said.
At my touch his body slid sideways and slumped along the bench. I searched feverishly for some sign of life but there was none.
My dear friend and companion is dead. He has been like a son to me. I would rather have given my own life ten times over than have dragged this dear, good man to his death! How am I to tell his parents – and Elena? How am I to bear it? I still cannot believe it. But there he lies.
I am exhausted from searching for the way out. I have hunted for hidden levers, secret doors, everything. Hopeless. But then, if the Devil exists, it is surely no great task for him to change the very structure of matter? Or at least to inflict the illusion of such a change upon us?
Whatever emerged from the webs and killed Miklos is in here with me somewhere. There is nowhere for it to have gone. Somewhere beyond my small circle of light, it waits.
Never in the world did I dream that a scientific expedition could come to this unthinkable end. Dear Abraham, if ever by a miracle this reaches you, beware the trap into which I have fallen – the arrogance of imagining we could toy with the Devil!
Chapter Four
ELENA KOVACS’S JOURNAL
23 August
I am leaving the farm, but not as my father thinks. My decision is made and my heart beats so hard I turn faint. In secret I have packed a very few belongings in a small bag – to which I shall add my journal, when the time comes – and I wait.
I was meant to leave tomorrow with my father. We could not arrange a conveyance to Bistritz until then, and there have been bad scenes today. When I came out of my room, the family made the mano pantea at me, a hand-sign against the evil eye, and my father grew furious with them and called them superstitious fools. The farmer, who can be very fearsome with his long black moustache, grew even angrier. They would have come to blows, had the farmer’s wife and daughters not intervened. They want us gone and the atmosphere is uneasy. I came back to my room but my father followed and questioned me for hours about where I had gone for two days in my nightclothes, why was I seen with the wolf, and so on. He made me weep with fear, but I would not answer. Pride will not let me tell him even the little I know.
“Has some man dishonoured you? Some greasy shepherd, some gypsy?” he shouted at me. “You have brought disgrace upon me! I should have known better than to trust you! Even Miklos will not have you now! What am I to do with you? What have I done to deserve so wild and disobedient a daughter?”
I felt a little sorry for him, for I cannot be the perfect daughter that he believes I should be. The fault is mine. But it cannot be helped.
At last he struck me across the face and left, locking me in. I am still trembling, exhausted from his questions and the injustice of them. But strangely I feel distant from all of it. No longer afraid of him, no longer distraught or ashamed – because I am going away. Father has lost me. Perhaps he has always feared this moment, and that is why he is so angry.
The door is locked, but I wait by the window for night to come.
All is quiet. A great silence lies on the world, as if it waits also.
He is coming! A long white shape in the darkness, speeding towards me. His eyes are two red stars. His great head rises up behind the glass, his tongue lolls over his long fangs, a strange blue-white mist shimmers all around him... and I must open the window, and go wherever he leads.
26 August
I have come a long way since I last wrote.
When I left the farm, I took a bag containing only a few garments, a little food I stole from the kitchen, and my precious gifts from Madam Mina: my journal, dictionary, pens and ink. My companion led me again towards the forest. We had gone only a few hundred yards across the pastures when my father came running after me in his nightclothes, shouting so furiously at me he was almost scream
ing. I froze in horror. So enraged was he that his face was dark with blood even in the dim milky moonlight. He must have been spying on my window from his own room!
He catches my arm and orders me back to the house. I pull away and refuse to go. At that, he strikes me so hard that my head reels and I find myself lying on the grass, with the stars and forested steeps whirling around me. As I lie there, I see my pale friend growling at my father. My father begins shouting at the wolf, trying to frighten him away. But the wolf puts his head back and howls; and suddenly, from every direction, huge, woolly white sheep-dogs come running, fiercer than wolves, barking and snarling, their ears down and lips drawn back to reveal ferocious teeth.
I see my father’s expression turn to one of terror. These dogs are trained to kill. He turns and tries to run, but they leap at him, catching his arms and legs in their great jaws. One jumps at his face. He screams. I wish I could forget that sound, so raw, harsh and despairing! Part of me longs to help him but part of me wants only to watch, cold and passionless – and the cold part wins.
I see Father fall down among the long white backs of the dogs. They rip and tear at his flesh. I glimpse his face and throat, a mass of blood. He stops moving yet they go on worrying at him, tearing at his limbs.
Then my companion goes quietly between the marauding dogs. I am afraid they will attack him, too, for wolves are their great enemy. Instead they step aside to let him through, as if he were their pack leader. His tongue lolls out to lap blood from my father’s throat.
I cover my eyes.
The next I know, my wolf is beside me again, urging me away with him into the trees. I see motes of light moving by the farm gate, lamps and torches. We hurry away, leaving the dogs to gnaw at my father’s body... and although I am shocked, I feel only the faintest ache of grief, as if this had been meant to happen.
My friend leads me once more across the wild terrain towards the castle. The journey seems longer than before, if possible. I stumble after his wraith-like form along deer-tracks and gorges, as if in a horrible dream. He must be a werewolf, I think, a man trapped in wolf’s form... nothing is impossible.
Some hours into the next day, we reach the castle. In the courtyard, with the stone walls and towers frowning down upon us, we recover the bundle of ash, collected on our first journey, from its hiding place. I carry it as he leads me along a narrow, arched passage to a ancient door of iron-clad wood. He indicates, with muzzle and paws, that I should open this door. A small wooden cross has been roughly nailed to it, and a whitish substance used to seal the crack between door and wall; the wolf growls with his head lowered and ears back to tell me most eloquently that this must be removed. The door is unlocked. I open it and pick the stuff away; it is a kind of putty, with other, papery matter mixed in. I find a piece of fallen slate to scrape the substance away and to prise the cross from the door.
The putty has a smell of old, stale garlic. Someone has tried to seal the castle with wards against evil... to stop something going in, or coming out?
I discard the scraps and the cross at the far end of the passage, in a dank, mossy crevice where wall and flagstones meet. As soon as the door is clear, the wolf bounds over the threshold and into a low corridor. I feel intense tiredness creeping over me, and with it coldness and unease. I trust my friend, but this place feels bad. Ancient, full of loss and dark memories.
He leads me down into a deep, ruined chapel, where faint rays of daylight fall through the broken roof. The air is thick with the odours of mouldering earth, mixed with the charnel odour of decay, as if a thousand rats have died here. And I see rows of graves and great tombs. A crypt! All is still and heavy with dust, as if nothing has been disturbed for centuries. So desolate. My companion leaves me and slips between the tombs, jumping up to look inside some. He looks less like a living animal than ever; he is spectral, skeletal. A thin high whine issues from his throat, hurting my ears. I move like a sleepwalker through this death, this horror, until all of it overwhelms me and I sink down on the earth floor. All I want is to sleep. But the wolf takes my skirts between his front teeth and pulls at me. As I look up, I find myself beneath a great tomb with one word engraved upon it.
DRACULA
I cannot encompass how I feel. The name means nothing and yet is familiar; it produces in me a sense of breathtaking awe and terror, and this feeling is so vast it seems to pass outside me to take in all the ancient chapel, the steep walls of the castle, the precipice and beyond, all the dark wolf-infested forest...
My companion will not let me rest. He snaps and snarls at me, until I get up, alarmed. In his jaws he brings an ugly brass urn from somewhere, a squat bowl with a lid, and directs me to put the ash from the shawl into this receptacle and keep it safe. Then he digs frantically at the earth, and instructs me to fill my shawl instead with loose soil. None of this makes sense. It only seems imperative that I obey. My hands are black with the malodorous stuff, and the bundle is so heavy that I can barely lift it. At last I collapse, weeping with exhaustion.
Then the wolf leads me, dragging my burdens, up a spiral stair into the body of the castle. I don’t think I could remember the way back. He brings me to a room and leaves me, and here I remain. Where has he gone? Will he return? Now I am lying on a couch in a large apartment that I imagine was once light and pleasant with tapestries and rich furnishings; but now all is moth-eaten and draped with dusty webs. It is growing dark again. The waning moon rises. I ate all my food on the journey, so the only nourishment I have had is a bottle of wine I found, fifty years old and as dark as blackberries. It was good, but has made me heavy-headed.
What will become of me? I will die of cold and hunger, but nothing seems to matter as I rest here in this dream-like haze.
I look across an expanse of flagstones shining in the moonlight. In front and to the side are vast latticed windows, the stone mullions as delicate as lace, the night sky and the forests below the precipice all silvered by this mystical light. The whole window expands in my vision, a great lacy veil of white and silver against which motes of dust glitter and dance. I feel hands stroking me. Soft voices laugh and sigh like glass bells.
“Sister,” they say. “Sister, sweet sister.”
I am cold. So very cold.
Morning
I must make this record quickly. My hands tremble and tears blur my eyes, but grief will pass and I must move on.
I fell asleep as I wrote, I think. Or as the waking dream took over, pen and journal fell to the floor. I remember shaking violently with coldness. The chill of the stones was seeping through my whole body. I wanted to touch the phantom hands of those women, to grasp them or to push them away, I know not which – but there was nothing there. I was alone with ghosts. I began to sob in fear.
Suddenly my friend was with me again! He climbed upon my couch and lay down beside me. His eyes were very bright, dazzling like the setting sun, and his tongue was warm as it rasped at my hands. (It always felt cold before). I was too tired to think or to be afraid. As I slipped into a doze, I felt that he was actually lying on me, to keep me warm. I felt his tongue and teeth scraping gently at my throat. My whole body seemed to tingle and tighten with a strange breathless feeling – not unpleasant – and although my eyes came open I could not move. Then it seemed to me that the spectral wolf was actually a man, a tall figure in black with long pallid hands.
Yet this human figure is not upon me but very far away, and although he reaches out to me he cannot touch me. I remember a feeling of desolation, rage, the urge of the dead to clasp vivid red-blooded life. I see long, muddled visions of battles, armies, mountains, a strange cavern where flames leap from an abyss and turn the very walls to red and bronze. And again the two steel knives flashing down towards me. Death, limbo, Mina Harker’s sweet presence passing me by, oblivious to my need. Longing, bitter anger, and then a thrust of will so firm and resolute it seems physically to pierce me. And all of this comes from the solitary pale figure in black. I am filled, as I was b
y the tomb, with dread and awe. At last, breathing heavily from the weight on my chest, I fall into deep, black sleep.
When I woke – half-an-hour ago – it was day again, I was once more shaking with cold and the wolf, my dear companion whom I have come to love, lay dead beside me.
I was grief-stricken to find him so. I wept bitterly, with my arms round his dear furry neck. But my tears stopped very suddenly as I heard a voice: heard it inside my head, not so much the words as the intent. Now I understand this much:-
The spirit that animated the wolf has passed, for a time at least, into me. Thus, it was never the wolf, the shell, that I loved, but the spirit inside. This is the soul – if soul is the right word; perhaps I mean will, or essence – of the tall man whom I do not yet know, but whom I will surely come to know. If I do not fail him!
He needs me. He tells me that it is all my responsibility now to help him be resurrected, reclothed in his own flesh. He had entrusted himself, body and soul, to me; so I am the only one now who can help him. I must not fail him. If I want to see him, to touch him in the flesh, I cannot fail him.
I feel that I have met the other half of myself, my shadow, my soul-mate. I will do anything for him.
My father, Miklos, and Uncle André are nothing to me now. I leave my family and follow a rockier path, like a saint. He will be my guide. My Dark Companion.
1 September
At last I am able to write my journal again. I am at home in Buda-Pesth. My journey was terrible. I must have seemed a madwoman to the peasants who found me – walking alone in the mountains with a bag in my hand (the urn inside) and a shawl bundled heavily on my shoulder! I am certain I appeared a fright. I told them that I had been travelling with my father, but our carriage had an accident, and the rest of the party were killed by wolves, and I must reach Buda-Pesth urgently. They questioned me only a little, but helped me a great deal; fed me, cleaned me, gave me a suitcase of cracked leather in which to carry my burdens, and conveyed me to the nearest railway station.
Dracula the Undead: A Chilling Sequel to Dracula Page 6
