Dracula's Child

by J. S. Barnes

  ‘Professor!’ I cried, and the others followed suit.

  For reasons which I am not entirely sure that I care to examine too closely, I always feel profoundly secure in the company of Professor Abraham Van Helsing. I flung myself girlishly into his bearlike arms, caring nothing for decorum but only breathing in the comforting scent of him.

  Jonathan too held him briefly in a manly embrace, as did Arthur. Even Jack was grinning broadly as they shook hands, and Quincey ran with feverish pleasure over to the old Dutchman just as though he was again an infant and not on the cusp of a new maturity.

  The Professor beamed. ‘What a wonderful welcome! How splendid it is to see you all again, on this most auspicious, this most notable of dates, this singular and remarkable anniversary!’

  He breathed in before continuing and in the lull I saw, as if in a cinematograph reel, a flurry of images from this very day thirteen years ago: the ranks of dark trees in a Transylvanian forest, the road to the castle, the mad chase to its gates, the band of gypsies and their deathly cargo, the final confrontation with the —,** and the sacrifice of our American companion as the light in the eyes of that monster was finally expunged.

  I fancy that the Professor must also have been thinking at least some of these thoughts. He stayed silent a moment too long for comfort. ‘The anniversary in question,’ he went on, ‘being, of course, the birthday of our young friend, Master Quincey Harker.’

  There was applause at this, I thought, of a somewhat relieved variety. I do not know how much of his past Arthur has disclosed to Carrie, though I suspect there is a good deal of which he has not seen fit to inform her – wisely, given her own history.

  Quincey as yet knows nothing of it. We have chosen to delay telling him anything of those circumstances in which his parents and their friends – our little crew of light – were first brought together. Tonight, at the conclusion of the Professor’s soliloquy I saw my son look at me with something like doubt, even suspicion, in his eyes. The moment passed, however, and the air of general celebration resumed.

  At dinner, more fuss was made of Quincey, this being the first occasion on which he has been allowed to sit up so late with his seniors. Despite attempts to separate them, his new kitten crept in beside him and gambolled a while longer. Then, having exhausted his tiny body, he fell into a deep slumber upon the lap of our son.

  Many families would doubtless forbid such a thing, but it was the boy’s birthday and I saw no real harm in it. Had I the chance again, I would, of course, make a different judgement.

  The food was bountiful and rich, the wine of excellent quality, and as I looked about me, I considered how fortunate I have been for the great majority of my life and how various and diverse are all my many blessings. Tonight everyone spoke, everyone had their moment in the sun and, for a time, our circle seemed to exist in something like perfect equilibrium.

  ‘So, Arthur,’ said Jack once the food was set before us, ‘I read often of your doings in the House. How fares your battle to propel the place into the twentieth century?’

  Lord Godalming smiled generously. ‘I’m not altogether certain what it is that you’re reading in the press, Jack, but to say that the House of Lords is institutionally indisposed to the process of modernisation would be to singularly understate the case.’

  There were some wry expressions of agreement at this, together with a single snort of solidarity from the Professor.

  ‘Let it suffice to say,’ Arthur continued, ‘that the challenge is in the nature of a life-long task.’

  ‘You are, my lord,’ said the Professor in his tone of old-fashioned deference, ‘doing so much good work. Why, only last week I heard your name in connection with this rum “emergency law”. You are said, sir, to be its most determined opponent.’

  Jonathan gulped, rather greedily, at his wine. ‘What law is this?’

  ‘Have you not heard?’

  ‘Oh, as a mere country practitioner I am afraid that such legal developments lie far beyond me.’

  Lord Godalming waved his hand. ‘It’s rather a grubby and disreputable business.’

  ‘Go on,’ said my husband. ‘Please.’

  ‘I am not even altogether certain of the origin of the thing. But there is at present a growing impetus to restore an ancient law: that, in the event of a crisis, municipal power might be taken from the authorities and handed to a cabal known as the Council of Athelstan. As it happens, I am by birth a member of that committee. Though I stand against the very notion of it.’

  ‘Quite right, my lord,’ said the Professor.

  Arthur would have said more but Carrie touched her husband’s wrist very lightly. ‘Let us now speak of happier matters,’ she said. ‘Mina? Jonathan? Are you still enjoying country life as much as ever you did?’

  Amid such significant issues as Arthur had described, our own lives seemed rather stately and free of incident, but our friends listened as we spoke of our rustic happiness here, of Jonathan’s practice, of Quincey’s success in the schoolroom and of my own carefully guarded existence as a wife and a mother.

  Afterwards, emboldened by supper, Jack Seward spoke up and amused us for a time with several anecdotes concerning his clientele, including one about a duchess who had convinced herself that she would be happier living as a Pekingese which bordered on gossip of the most mischievous sort. Then the Professor spoke of his partial retirement and travels. On the exact nature of his continuing research and the purpose of his many journeys, he did not, out of respect for us and tact towards Quincey, choose to elaborate.

  We had finished the main course and were waiting for its successor when, at the end of a story concerning Van Helsing’s surprisingly wayward youth in Amsterdam, Carrie, doll-like and nervous, cleared her throat and said: ‘Everybody.’

  We turned to look.

  ‘Thank you all for tonight. To the Harkers for being such wonderful hosts. To Quincey on his special day. To Jack for being so steadfast a friend. We are so very glad to be amongst you.’

  ‘Hear hear,’ Jonathan said, too noisily, and tapped the side of his glass in a way which made me wince.

  Caroline continued. ‘Now my beloved Arthur and I have something in the way of an announcement. A happy and somewhat overdue announcement.’

  ‘My dear?’ I asked, recognising at once in Caroline’s voice that familiar tone of elation which I well recall from when first we understood that I was carrying our child. ‘Can it be?’

  She nodded and Arthur beamed, as boyish an expression as I have ever seen upon that nobleman’s face. ‘There’s no doubt,’ she said. ‘He is due in six months.’

  Arthur chided her affectionately. ‘He or she.’

  ‘No, no!’ A single line appeared on Carrie’s features as she furrowed her brow with certainty. ‘It will be a boy. An heir at last for the Godalming estate.’

  At this, unbidden, a great roar of approval went up from our assembled company and there followed a cavalcade of good wishes, praise and congratulation.

  The Professor was on his feet and, in his eccentric way, applauding uproariously as if giving an ovation at the opera. Jack was pumping Arthur’s hand with unfeigned delight. Jonathan was filling glasses and making toasts and promising the menfolk cigars after supper. Quincey was grinning and offering Arthur his felicitations. I took Caroline in a tight embrace, holding her slender form firm against my body. I could feel her warm breath against my cheek as I dare say she could feel mine on hers.

  ‘I’m so very happy for you both,’ I said. ‘I’m delighted beyond measure.’

  ‘Thank you. But, Mina?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Will I be…? That is, do you think it is within me to be a good and proper mother?’

  ‘Oh Carrie. You will be wonderful. Just wonderful. I promise you.’

  She seemed relieved. ‘Thank you. You are such an inspiration, you know.’

  I squeezed once, then let her go as all around us that happy uproar continued. Even the kitte
n, woken by the ruckus, seemed to dance and caper on the floor as if paying homage to these gladdest of tidings. I dare say that any stranger seeing us at that moment would think the entire party quite mad.

  If only one could elongate that happy instant. If only one might luxuriate in those moments of joy. For an instant later, everything changed.

  We heard, amid the clamour of celebration, a horrid, strangulated cry from Van Helsing.

  All other sound ceased, save for a single perplexed mewl from the animal. We turned to the Dutchman to see that his face had gone quite puce, that his hands were shaking and that his whole body trembled violently.

  ‘Professor?’ asked Jonathan, his own face now quite white.

  A single gout of blood trickled from the left-hand corner of Van Helsing’s mouth. He took in a wheezing breath and murmured the following words, quite meaningless and indicative of whatever mental contortions were at that moment tormenting him. ‘Beware… Strigoi… the White Tower… the one-eyed man…’

  He staggered forward as Dr Seward told us all to stay back, not to crowd the Professor and to give him some air. But Van Helsing stumbled again and fell with hideous violence on his back. His eyelids fluttered and he moaned. Now his gaze was turned solely upon poor Quincey. ‘You,’ he said. ‘You are to be the vessel, my boy. But you must fight. You must… do battle for your soul.’

  This weird message delivered, he shuddered once and lay still. Seward was already by his side, reassuring us that the Professor still breathed, that he had suffered some manner of terrible seizure and that he should be laid down at once in a quiet place and a medical doctor summoned immediately, regardless of inconvenience and cost.

  And so our merry party ended in the utmost misery. The Professor lies now in the best of our rooms on the first floor. He has yet to regain consciousness. The local physician, Dr Scott, has visited and done what he can. We must leave Van Helsing to sleep and hope that nature may heal him yet. Scott did not attempt to hide from us the gravity of the situation.

  The Godalmings have, at my insistence, left for the night. I feared for the effect of such sights upon Carrie. Jack is still here, at his most coolly professional, doing his utmost to calm us. Jonathan busied himself with the physician, taking notes and thanking the fellow with unnecessary effusiveness for his time and trouble. My husband sleeps now too, a state no doubt abetted by that wine which he continued to consume even after the Professor’s collapse. I have sat and written these words in large part as a distraction. I find slumber to be impossible while that heroic old man lies above us, hovering between death and life.

  As for Quincey, that poor child for whom this ought to have been the happiest of days, he concerns me the most of all. He has not cried, nor has he shown any outward sign of grief. Rather he has taken to his room alone, his face pale and drained. Not only has he seen a man – the closest that he has known to a grandfather – laid low before him in the most upsetting of circumstances, but that horrible collapse had its own sickening sequel. For it was only when we lifted the prone body of the Professor from the ground that we realised that the kitten, Auguste, had been beneath him when the Dutchman fell, and that its little life had been at once snuffed out, its skull crushed, its contents spread upon our dining room floor in a pitiful smear of crimson.

  * Shore Green, Oxfordshire

  ** There is one word here, crossed out so intently that the paper is torn and blistered.

  PART ONE

  THE SHADOW FALLS

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM

  6 November. Tonight is to be my last in the ancient, charming, thoroughly wicked city of Bucharest. These past three weeks I have drunk deep of its pleasures; like some new Epicurean, I have descended into its fantastic depths. This sybaritism has been frank, absolute and altogether without apology. As a result of such conduct, I shall tomorrow continue my wanderings at the rim of this great continent and head still further east, towards Brasov and beyond. Until then, in the next few hours, I shall endeavour to make my farewell a memorable one.

  As to the precise reason for my departure, I yawn to admit the truth of it. Until now, this hotel has been largely accommodating but, following an interview with its bourgeois manager this afternoon, it has been made plain to me that my behaviour during my stay (together with a certain languidness upon my part when it came to the prompt settling of their innumerable tariffs) has made me decidedly unpopular. And so I shall go on, just as I have these past years, journeying deeper into the recesses of the world.

  As I write it grows dark outside and so I am called to the evening, to take my final bow in this place of murky pleasures. I shall go to the oldest part of town to walk amongst those narrow, cobbled boulevards which speak of dreadful cycles of invasion and resistance, but where today the music is loud, the hashish plentiful and cheap, and where the boys are cheaper still. There do rare blooms flourish amongst the scrubland of poverty, there all things are possible, there a man might for a time cast off the robes of middle age and failure. Divested temporarily of the mask of ordinary life, he may be as he was meant to be, unruly and unfettered.

  * * *

  Later. The evening was a wonderful one. In the candour of its dissipation, it showed me once again, as though through a polished looking-glass, my own soul. These few lines I scribble just before dawn, in the pleasantly heightened condition of one who has feasted upon all those many vices which are here manufactured with such industry and verve.

  Of course, in the aftermath of such indulgences, coming back alone to this temporary room, it would be unnatural indeed not to consider the choices of the past and of those opportunities – a wife; a cottage; a schoolteacher’s calling – which, as a much younger man, I spurned out of the noble desire to live a life devoid of hypocrisy. In this I have largely been successful, although many necessary sacrifices have been offered up. The compensations for my decision may best be represented by the diversions of the night, which included food and drink of a rough-hewn peasant kind, stimulants of a sort which, in more supposedly advanced climes, would be considered illicit, and the lightly-purchased company of an exquisite street Arab. Once the deed of darkness was done, I kissed him and recited a poem by Gide, concerning which he was good enough to feign enjoyment.

  Afterwards, when I thought that the evening could become no more pleasurable, just as I left the dosshouse into which the ragamuffin had taken me, I had the privilege to behold the most striking young man whom I have seen in the whole of this century.

  The stranger was tall, slender and possessed of rather Roman features, with sleek, glistening blond hair. He stood opposite the establishment which I had lately vacated with a boy on each arm. He was evidently English and educated, for I heard the crisp clear accent of our public school system rise up in that benighted alley. He must have seen that I was staring, for he caught my eye and smiled, revealing rows of perfect white teeth. In mock salute, he touched the fingers of his left hand to his temple. I was about to reply in kind – even to try to strike up some conversation, as one émigré to another – but he turned his back and, flanked by shameless boys, vanished into the shadows.

  I cannot say precisely why, but at the thought that I might never again see this beautiful creature I felt a profound heartsickness, as if some great and wonderful thing had been forever lost.

  * * *

  7 November. And so, in that atmosphere of infamy to which I have grown accustomed, I left Bucharest this morning, settling up and departing early to frosty goodbyes from the proprietors. My head was sore, my throat dry and my heart perhaps just a little tender – all states attributable directly to the delights of last night. By a rare stroke of good fortune, I was able to board a coach shortly after ten that was headed further east. With my little suitcase on my lap, I found myself sandwiched between an elderly matron (black-clad as though deep in sorrow) and a young girl who, in England, would be at school but who in this place of primitivism is doubtless already a mother of three. I drowse
d as we passed, with sublime unconcern for speed and punctuality, out of the city and into those wilder lands which lie beyond.

  When I woke, about an hour ago, the last vestiges of Bucharest were receding into the distance and the countryside was opening like a pearl before us. The road is very long and very straight and I dare say that in sunnier seasons the view might prove to be delightfully picturesque. Yet today, the lone and level fields which lay on either side of us were minatory and grey.

  After a time we passed from this blasted landscape into considerable stretches of forest. Tangled lines of tall trees, of immeasurable antiquity, towered over our little coach. I wished again that I might be seeing the kingdom in some more verdant season. Winter in this place serves to exacerbate the shadows, to darken every horizon, to lend even the most harmless piece of rustic frippery an air of profound ominousness.

  Typically, in such circumstances, I am able to slumber with aplomb. Now I find myself too awake and so I gaze, as if compelled to do so, at the scenery outside. In between such surveys, I have managed to pen these remarks. No doubt my handwriting is rather more unsteady than is usual.

  The young woman beside me has surprisingly good English and she has made it plain that we are to stop in several hours’ time in the town of Brasov.

  ‘A charming place,’ she assures me, in an accent which somehow contrives to be both jagged and lilting, ‘with much in it that is old.’

  Just a moment ago, we passed across the border from relative civilisation into the ancient province of Transylvania.

  * * *

  Later. I write now in Brasov – an unexpectedly delightful town. This place is full of quaint beauty and has in its atmosphere a pleasing kind of rural floridity.

  As soon as the coach stopped I knew that I must tarry here awhile. The town is small yet clean and well kept, its neat streets centred all about its picturesque square, from which the rest of the community emerges like spokes from a wheel. It is a carefully tended place and has something about it of the mittel-European stage set. I should say also that it nestles almost at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, colossi which loom towards the sky and dwarf this settlement, lending Brasov itself (as if it needed any further such lustre) the air of a sanctuary, a vulnerable camp amid a savage landscape.