“Really, we must get the others,” I said. “And not trample over the trail!”
“Yes, I expect you are right, Stoker,” he said, fanning himself. “I lost my head there for a moment.”
It was then that my spell began. The woods took on an eerie, green glow as if lit by fireflies. My head began to throb and my heart to race. I must have looked a fright because Oscar noticed.
“Stoker, are you all right? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I just need to sit down and rest a moment.”
I sat on a nearby log, hoping it would all go away quickly like it has before. However, this time it was different. Despite the green tint to my vision, I seemed to be seeing more clearly than ever. My hearing was sharp. I swear I could hear Oscar’s heartbeat and the heartbeats of small animals in the brush.
Upon looking at the ground, I saw as plain as day the footprints of a wolf; they shone a bright, unearthly green as if they had been burned into the ground.
“Do you see those footprints?” I asked.
“Where?” He looked down and I could tell he saw nothing.
“This way,” I ordered. I leapt to my feet and dashed down the trail, compelled to follow the prints into the dark heart of the forest. As I ran, I felt invigorated. A scent of blood overwhelmed me and made my mouth water. I ran faster and faster down the trail, leaving Oscar behind. I felt as though I too were a wolf and my prey was only a claw’s length in front of me!
I entered a clearing and saw a vision. A dream – no, a nightmare – being replayed in front of me, through me! It was suddenly a moonlit night and a pretty young woman with ginger curls was cowering in fear at my feet. I was the beast and she my prey, and, oh, how powerful I felt! I was consumed with lust like I had never felt before. I lunged at her and a scream pierced the night and I had one delicious taste before Oscar burst into the clearing.
“My God, Stoker,” he yelled. “Have you gone mad?”
I awoke from my trance and the daylight returned. I was hunched on all fours over a patch of grass that was matted and covered in blood. I had found the spot where she had been killed!
“You were growling like a dog and clawing at the ground,” Oscar said with more than a bit of concern in his voice. “What has got into you?”
“What, indeed,” I said, getting back up on my unsteady legs. My mind groped for a plausible explanation, but Oscar had seen too much. There was nothing for it but to tell him the truth. “I’m afraid you have witnessed some sort of spell, the nature of which I cannot explain.”
“Has this happened to you before?” he asked.
“A few times when I was a child, first when I was eight years old. I saw what I thought was….”
“What?”
“You will laugh,” I said, regretting saying anything in the first place.
“I will not. I promise.”
“I saw a leprechaun,” I confessed. “I was on a school picnic and there he was, plain as day, sitting under a toadstool. When he realised I could see him, he put his fingers to his lips as if to say shhh. And then he scurried off into the woods.”
“How wonderful!” Oscar exclaimed. “Mother always told me leprechauns are real, and I believe most of what she says when she is sober.”
“I have always chalked it up to a childhood fantasy,” I said. “But then once, when I was much too old to believe in these things, I was deep in the woods and came across a beautiful pond. I sat down to read a book on its bank and looked up to see a ring of fairies circling my head.”
This time he did laugh.
“Sorry, but I just pictured it. You with a halo of fairies! But I do believe you. After all, I just witnessed it myself – you were channelling the creature!” he exclaimed with glee. “I have seen this sort of thing at Mother’s séances. You must have the gift of second sight!”
“It is a curse, not a gift,” I said. I looked at the trampled ground in front of me, spattered with blood and gore. “This is where he attacked and killed her. I could see it as if it were happening at this very moment.” I did not tell him that I felt him killing her, or that I, shamefully, enjoyed it while in the throes of the vision.
“Did you see anything else?”
“I did not. You broke the spell. Thank God.”
“Try and visualise it again,” he said.
“I have no control over it, and if I did I would not willingly bring it on!”
“Bram, you must try. Lives are at stake!”
Knowing he was right, I stared at the unholy ground and tried to let the surroundings envelop me.
“Is it working?” Oscar asked, peering into my face.
Through clenched teeth, I said, “Perhaps it would if you could manage to go a few minutes without hearing the sound of your own voice.”
“Right, sorry,” Oscar said, and backed off a few paces. I tried again to calm my mind and go where the infernal curse would take me.
Then I was in the vision once more. This time I was able to keep my wits about me and back away from the creature’s feelings. This made the vision blurry around the edges, but I dared not fall into his depravity further. I – or rather, he – heard a noise and turned to see a man looking on with horror. The man turned and ran. The creature turned back to his prey, picking her up in limbs that were an amalgam of human arms and the hairy forelegs of a wolf, and loped off into the forest with her. Then I felt a shudder and saw that the arms holding the unconscious woman were fully human and the vision vanished once again. Perhaps I can only have a vision of the creature when it’s a wolf. I nearly fainted and Oscar helped steady me.
“He was interrupted,” I said. “By a man. But I didn’t get a good look at his face.” I did not mention to Oscar that I could, in fact, smell the man as the creature could. The memory of the man’s scent burned into my brain as if the creature were storing it away for later recall.
“That man must have been Mrs. Goode’s brother,” Oscar said.
“Or the brother is the werewolf and he scared away another man,” I countered.
Oscar looked troubled at this. Clearly, he had grown somewhat fond of Mrs. Goode and didn’t relish the thought of the pain this would cause her. “What else did you see?” he asked.
“The monster took her deeper into the woods to…finish her off undisturbed. That is all I can recall.”
“This is the start of our trail,” Oscar said, looking down the path where the creature had crashed through the underbrush. “We must get the others and start the hunt from here.”
As he turned to go, I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Please, Oscar, do not tell anyone else about my visions.”
He looked at me curiously. “But why ever not? You should be proud….”
“I do not wish to be seen as a mental defective,” I said, more hotly than I intended. I took a deep breath. “My headmaster took the strap to me for lying when I told him of seeing the leprechaun, and my schoolmates laughed at me for weeks. I do not know why these visions have plagued me so, but I do not wish to give them more credence. Promise me you will tell no one.”
“All right, I promise. It will just be our little secret. I do so love keeping secrets.” Oscar smiled, but I could see the concern on his face and turned away from it. As my eyes lingered for a moment on the spot where the beast had seen the horrified man, it suddenly struck me why the creature was storing the man’s scent.
“Quickly, Oscar, we must find Mrs. Goode’s brother. If he was the man witnessing the attack, I fear his life may be in danger!”
We returned to the pie shop where Mrs. Goode informed us that her brother, Danny Sharpe, lived on the family farm, not far from town. She was adamant about coming with us, but Oscar talked her out of it, saying that there were some things best discussed among men and assuring her that we hoped to help her bro
ther.
Captain Burton had been kind enough to leave a pair of pistols for us at the inn, which we took with us for protection. However, as much as I would have liked to deny it, we now were surely dealing with some supernatural beast that ordinary bullets might not kill. What we would do when we found it, I did not know.
All was strangely quiet when we arrived at the farm. Not even the squawk of a chicken or lowing of a cow broke the unnatural silence. The tingle I feel before the onset of a vision was prickling my skin as we approached the house.
“Mr. Sharpe!” I yelled. “Do you have a moment? Your sister sent us to speak with you.”
There was nothing but silence and we both looked about us uneasily.
“Are you sensing anything, Stoker?” Oscar whispered.
“No, but as it is broad daylight and not a full moon, the creature would be in human form, and I suspect that would make him harder to detect.”
I did smell blood but was not sure if it was a clue, my imagination or just one of the smells normal to a farm.
I drew my pistol and Oscar fumbled through his pockets for his. For a moment, I suspected he had forgotten it, but he soon produced it from beneath his coat, almost dropping it in the process. He looked at me sheepishly, then gestured towards the house.
When we entered into the kitchen we saw Mr. Sharpe seated at the table. He was dead, his head thrown back with a large wound in it. On the table in front of him was a letter. A pistol lay on the floor under his right hand.
“Dear Lord!” Oscar exclaimed. He turned away and looked as though he might be sick.
I picked up the letter and read it aloud. “I am sorry for what I have done to that poor girl. May God have mercy on my soul.”
“Well, there you have it,” Oscar said, leaning against a wall. “Neatly wrapped up in a confession. Too neatly, I suspect.” He pulled a silver flask from his waistcoat pocket and took a swig to steady himself before offering it to me.
I accepted and took a small swallow of gin. It went down smoothly but did nothing to ease the aching in my head. “Perhaps,” I said, handing the flask back to Oscar. “But I am still not sure he wasn’t the werewolf.”
“Use your voodoo, Stoker. Can you see anything in this room?”
I stared at the dead man, trying to let the feeling come over me, but my head ached and I was weak still from the last vision. I breathed deeply, calming myself, and after a moment my external senses stilled and my inner sense – my demon sense? For that is what I begin to fear it is – awakened. The smell of the man filled my nostrils as it had done before. “I see nothing. But I am now certain this was the man I saw fleeing from the creature.”
“How do you know? You said you didn’t see his face. And even if you had,” he said, gesturing to Mr. Sharpe’s ruined features, “you would be hard-pressed to identify it here.”
My eyes met Wilde’s. “I am certain. You must take my word for it.”
He nodded slowly. “I do. So, that means the werewolf, in human form, killed this man and falsified the confession.”
“It would appear so. But can we convince the others? I do not want to tell them about my visions, and even if I did I doubt they would take them as true.”
Oscar smiled slightly. “Have you learned nothing of my family?” he said. “But as you wish. Let us go. We need to tell Mrs. Goode of this tragic turn.”
There you have it. I finish this entry in the hotel, waiting for the return of the others with a foreboding of what is yet to come. Should I not survive the hunt for this terrible beast and these be my final words, tell my family I love them. Dia idir sinn agus an t-olc. (God between us and the evil.)
Letter from Oscar Wilde to Florence Balcombe, 2nd of November 1876
Archivist’s note: Only text not covered in Stoker’s journal entry is recorded here; unnecessary paragraphs have been eliminated.
My dearest Florrie,
As promised, this is the second letter relating the tale of the frightful mystery in which yours truly played an integral part. The most important part, really.
When we last left our story, Richard Burton, my brother Willie, Bram Stoker and I had just questioned the barman of an unsavoury pub in the fishing village of Greystones.
{Two pages already covered by Stoker’s journal omitted.}
Our discovery of the point of attack in the forest turned out to be not as useful as I had hoped. Captain Burton and Willie returned at dusk, having followed the trail to a dead end.
“We tracked the beast to the beginning of town,” Burton said. He sat down at a table in his room, and Isabel helped him pull off his boots. “But once the creature was on the cobblestone, there were no more tracks to follow. I spoke to the constable. He says he will let us use his dogs to continue the search tomorrow.” A clap of thunder dashed all our hopes as it was followed by a burst of rain that would surely wash away any scent.
“I was worried about you, dear husband,” Isabel said, giving him a heartfelt hug. “You’re not a young man anymore. Perhaps we should leave the hunting to the townspeople.”
This ruffled the captain’s feathers a bit. “I daresay I’m better equipped to handle this creature than a bunch of shopkeepers and fishermen,” he said.
Mother was looking out the window at the street below. “Perhaps he has fled town. That’s what I would do if I were a werewolf,” she said. “Wouldn’t be smart to hang about until the next full moon.” The rain continued to tap on the roof and we all listened to it quietly for a moment.
“I think we are going about this all wrong,” Stoker said. “We are hunting the animal, but we should be hunting the man.”
“The trail has gone cold there too,” Burton said.
“He might not even know he turns into the monster,” Willie pointed out. “Isn’t that true, Mother?”
“Yes, it was described to me by the Gipsies as such. We must keep in mind the man is as much a victim as that poor girl. He is cursed and cannot help what he is.”
Stoker’s face grew pallid. He appeared for a moment to be in a trance. “No, he remembers,” Stoker said.
“How can you be sure?” Burton asked.
Stoker seemed at a loss to explain.
“Surely he must suspect,” I said. “He just happens to be in the same place someone is killed every full moon? I’d wager he wakes up naked and covered with blood. He must know, even if he blacks out.”
“Ask yourself, what would you do if you suspected you were such a creature?” Stoker asked.
“I’d slit my own throat,” Willie said. (Self-sacrificing to the hypothetical last, my brother.)
“At the very least I would chain myself up on the full moon,” Isabel said.
“Exactly,” Stoker said. “As would any decent person. This man does not and, in fact, has committed cold-blooded murder as a man in the hope of covering up his own crime. No, we are looking for a man who enjoys what he becomes. And is good at hiding his true nature.”
“But just how does he do that?” I asked. “Wouldn’t other people start to see the connection? The townspeople are going to be watching each other the next full moon, and anyone not accounted for is going to be a suspect.”
“He must travel,” Stoker said.
“Or he has only recently been bitten,” Mother speculated.
Stoker smiled bitterly. “With all due respect, Lady Wilde,” he said, “our killer seems far too organised to be a newly turned werewolf.”
I suddenly had an epiphany. “He must be one of the sailors! If the other murder in Wexford is any indication, it must be someone who goes from port to port. A murder here, a murder there. Who would think to connect them?”
“Yes, by spreading the killings all over the world, there is less likely to be a pattern seen by the authorities,” Burton said.
“A good theory,” said Isabel. “But wouldn’t
there be deaths on the ship? How could a sailor be certain he wouldn’t be out at sea during a full moon?” Isabel has quite a keen mind, though I appreciate it more when it is not puncturing one of my theories.
“True,” I said. “There is no way a sailor has any control over where his captain….” At that moment, my brain caught up with my mouth, which it often never does. “Unless he were the captain!”
“The ship in the harbour wasn’t supposed to be in Ireland two full moons in a row,” Willie said. “Remember, the barkeep said the ship had to pull in here for repairs.”
So, it was decided we should try to track down the captain of the Demeter and put a few questions to him – or a few bullets in him, should his lupine nature emerge.
“At least there is no full moon tonight,” Mother said. “It will be easier to bring him in as a man than a wolf.”
Burton loaded two of the pistols with his meagre ration of silver bullets. He handed one of the guns to Willie.
“Here now,” I protested. “I happen to be an excellent marksman. Why would you give him the gun with the silver bullets?”
“Because you shot my dog,” Burton said.
“I was ten!” I exclaimed. “And, apparently, I’m good at hitting canines. The wolf won’t stand a chance.”
He ignored my request. “Just make sure you hit him in the heart,” Burton said to Willie, “as I am uncertain about the purity of the silver.”
“What?” Willie asked.
“I melted down some candlesticks, wedding presents from my cousin Cecil. I think they were pure silver, and probably have enough in any case.”
“Perfect,” Willie said. “I could be hunting a werewolf with pewter bullets.”
“They’re at least silver plate, surely,” Isabel protested.
“All Bram and I have are lead bullets!” I said. “So, you’d better not miss!”
And with that, we were off to where we thought we’d be most likely to find a sailor: the pub.
As you’ll remember, I thought the Blue Moon was a den of iniquity in the daytime. At night I cannot begin to describe the depravity! (Or rather, I expect I could describe it quite vividly, but would not in a letter to a lady. No, do not beg me so, your mother would never forgive me!)
Stoker's Wilde Page 3
