Dracula's Child
Page 18
‘All over Europe,’ she said, ‘the shadow is falling now. We must prepare for the hour of His return. Will you play your part?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Anything. If only you will do to me again what you did to me just then.’
She laughed with splendid cruelty. ‘All in good time. For now, Ambrose Quire, this is what we wish of you. There will soon come a sequence of explosions at the heart of the city. It will be seen as a symptom of your criminal gangs at war. Your task will be to stop all investigation. To stoke the flames of suspicion and mistrust. To be hastening the war that is coming.’
I began, feebly, to protest. ‘Ileana, I am a policeman. I am the policeman. My responsibilities… my duties to the city…’
She placed a slender finger to my mouth. ‘Are as nothing,’ she said, ‘to what we have shared. And to what we will be sharing again.’
I let out a rattling, pitiful sigh. ‘Yes.’
‘Good boy.’ She smiled again. ‘You are being my very special, my very good boy.’
She held me in her gaze then as she took me wholly into her power. As I watched, she licked the crimson from her lips and shivered in triumph and delight.
MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
29 December. At last, the inevitable has occurred. A great light in all our lives has been extinguished. We have lost Professor Abraham Van Helsing.
There had been some small improvement while Quincey was away, but upon his return from school matters seemed again to decline at speed.
It happened, in the end, very quietly. Both Sarah-Ann and our son were with him.
The death of the Dutchman is, I hope, a mercy, so diminished had he become. Quincey and Miss Dowell came down together shortly after twilight to tell us the news. I bowed my head in expected sorrow, but Jonathan – thinking, no doubt, of all the horrors that he had shared with the deceased – loosed a kind of cry of anguish which he at once made efforts to stifle and subdue.
In an action designed, I suspect, to seem casual, he reached for the decanter and the wine glass. For so many weeks has this sad situation endured that there were few tears from Quincey or from me, but only a grim acceptance of the ways of life and death.
We four went upstairs and, standing together around the bed of the departed, spoke aloud a prayer to safeguard the old physician’s soul. And, if only for a moment, I felt the presence, for the final time, of that noble and courageous spirit, quite separate from the shell of his body which lay before us.
There is a very great deal now to plan. A funeral and a memorial service also. I must inform the Godalmings, and I shall send a telegram to them forthwith. We must also take urgent steps to locate Dr Seward. Perhaps Mr Amory can help. I shall suggest offering some manner of reward.
With the passing of Van Helsing, it is as though a grand era has come at last to a conclusion. Why then does it feel to me now rather as if it marks not an ending but a beginning?
Of those darker – and surely half-imagined – fears I have not dared to speak to Jonathan again since Christmas Day.
* * *
Later. An odd thing. Quincey has just come to us, shortly before sleep. He says that he is torn into two and that there is something within him driving him to distraction.
I allowed Jonathan to speak to the boy and to take him to bed. It is a father’s place to intervene. I wonder whether, in the past, I have not been rather too lenient with Quincey. He is only undergoing, after all, a necessary transformation into a man. I hope that he is sufficiently prepared for that state and that Jonathan will yet prove to be a capable guide. Besides, the business was no doubt evoked by delayed grief concerning the Professor. Surely it must be so?
There are other concerns that I have about my boy. Though I cannot set them down on paper yet.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM
29 December. And so the young lecher of the gendarmerie has been abandoned and we have moved on. Yesterday saw our arrival in Calais, a port that is bustling and seedy in equal measure. Its close-penned streets are thick with the scents of fish and brine, and with the rank odours of too large a population. To board a ship to England would be the work of a moment but Gabriel, in brusque and taciturn temper ever since our departure from Paris, seems somehow to be waiting for something. He idles his hours away while exhibiting signs of a growing and contradictory impatience. I am happy, as ever I have been, to wait and to obey. I am also relieved to note that there has to date been no recurrence of that horrible pain which felled me in the capital.
There is but a single curious incident to record. It was just beginning to grow dark and we were sitting together inside a miserable wharf-side bar, engrossed in silence, when, without the slightest provocation, Mr Shone threw back his head and began uproariously (though not, it must be said, at all pleasantly) to laugh.
‘Gabriel?’ I said. ‘Whatever is it?’
‘The old man is dead. At last!’
‘Who?’
‘The old man is dead,’ he repeated as if oblivious to my question. ‘And so the gateway is open. England lies unprotected and unawares, all but begging us – begging us, Maurice! – to ravish her.’ This baffling soliloquy done, he laughed once more.
I thought, not for the first time, how very white and sharp his teeth have become.
TELEGRAM FROM LORD ARTHUR GODALMING TO MR JONATHAN HARKER
30 December
News of Van Helsing received with sorrow. Do allow us to help and pay for funeral. We shall be together soon. If only Jack were with us! Carrie still unwell. Often delirious. She woke this morning with a scream and the words: ‘He is coming. He is coming home! The one-eyed man is almost here!’
LETTER FROM SARAH-ANN DOWELL TO THOM CAWLEY
30 December
Dearest Thom,
I thought by now that I would not write to you again till you replied to me for I am awful afraid you have fallen into old habits and bad ways. Weeks without word from you and the press full of strife between the gangs, and your Giddis mob at the heart of it! I fear for you, Thom, really I do.
But I thought I owed it to you, for the love we used to share, to tell you I am coming home to London. Coming home, if truth be told, in something of a flight for I have packed my suitcase and fled from the Harkers’ house as soon as I glimpsed the dawn.
My job here is done and the old man has passed over but these are not the reasons why I ran. Oh Thom, you will hardly believe it! I woke in the deep of the night, to find in my room, standing at the foot of my bed, the boy, Quincey. He said nothing but just stared at me. And this is the worst of it – he had eyes of the purest red.
When he saw that I had woken he turned and left. I found I could not scream but only lie where I was, not daring to move, trying to pray but thinking ever of those terrible red eyes.
Oh, Thom, they cut through the darkness. The eyes of some night-time animal. Of some beast.
Even now, as I flee towards the city, I feel them on me still – his hungry, devil’s gaze.
Yours, in fear and trembling,
Sarah-Ann
FROM THE PERSONAL COLUMNS OF THE TIMES
31 December
MISSING PERSON: JOHN SEWARD, NOTED ALIENIST, PHILOSOPHICAL THINKER, WIDOWER.
Last seen by his domestic staff on the morning of December the sixteenth in a state of some dishevelment and distress. Seward is almost six feet tall, rather stooped in the shoulders and has dark hair, greying and receding.
His manner is scholarly. He answers to ‘Jack’.
A SUBSTANTIAL REWARD is to be made available to anyone who can provide useful information as to his current whereabouts.
Dr Seward has many concerned friends who are prepared to be MOST GENEROUS in the event of his prompt discovery. Those who have information that they are willing to share should contact Mr R.V. Amory of the Holmwood Estate, Sussex.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM
31 December. And so at last is my long pilgrimage ended, my exile done, an
d I am come home again to England.
We left France under cover of darkness, at high tide. At night, Gabriel was still in the same curiously good spirits that he had displayed in that low bar. Once we were out at sea, his mood seemed to sink and he exhibited some hitherto undisplayed signs of unease at the expanse of water by which we were surrounded. At length, once the worst of the distance was done, we stood together on deck and gazed down at the churning blackness of the ocean. He turned to me and softly (almost sighing) said: ‘There will be change, you know, in our homeland. Great and irrevocable change.’
‘Oh?’ I asked. ‘How and when will this come to pass?’
‘Why, when I stand at the forefront of the governing power – at the head of the Council.’
‘You still have that ambition, then?’ I asked. His reply brought no answer, but rather only awoke in my breast further questions.
Suddenly, he seemed to turn quite pale. I felt a firm hand upon my left arm.
‘You’ll stay with me, won’t you, Maurice? Stay with me come hell or high water until the promised end?’
‘Of course I shall. Our path is set, dear boy, and I shall follow you wheresoever it may lead. You know that I am pledged to you.’
He gave no reply to this, nor was one needed. We simply stood together as the ship surged on.
After a time, we saw, at first very faint and far away, almost wispy and insubstantial, but then increasing in proximity and heft, those old guardians of our island nation, the chalk cliffs of Dover. At the sight, I felt an odd sense that some circle was within me being ineluctably completed.
The sensation was far from pleasant and seemed to awaken an echo of the pain by which I had been assailed in Paris. Yet time passed, the cliffs drew nearer and before long we were stepping with something of the confidence of returning buccaneers onto the quayside at Dover, back once again on terra firma.
We made the decision to search for accommodation on foot, and had barely begun to find our way free of the maze of the docklands when I became aware that we were being followed – first by one mangy-looking dog, then by another and another until, like some modern-day Pied Piper, we were pursued by a dozen or more slouching hounds.
Although their appearance was bizarre and disquieting, I did my best not to panic. Rather, I merely swore beneath my breath and wondered aloud if the beasts were looking for food. To my surprise, Gabriel stopped short and held up a hand; almost, I thought, like a conductor with his baton. I halted with him. By now, free of the departing throng, we were alone upon a dingy thoroughfare – alone, that is, but for the dogs.
‘Gabriel?’ I asked. ‘What do we do?’
He merely smiled his white, clean smile.
Then more came, slinking out of the shadows, more dogs, and more and more of them.
With a start of horror and revulsion, I saw that there were other creatures amongst the tide which moved now to encircle us. Rats, snakes, spiders, insects, all the crawling vermin of the earth!
Almost without warning the day had taken on a nightmarish aspect, a quality of Fuseli in this seaside town, an intrusion of the Blakean into daylight hours. I gasped in disgust and felt inside me again the pain that I had known in France. I sank to my knees. In spite of my best efforts, for an instant, instinctively, I squeezed shut my eyes. And in the darkness I saw (or thought I saw) several strange things.
They hurried forward, that ramshackle pack, and seemed set to overwhelm us. But then, with a single clap of his hands, Gabriel bade them disperse. They obeyed without demur. All fled back to the shadows. The manner of my friend was now coolly indulgent.
‘Gabriel…’
‘Oh, but they wished merely,’ he murmured, ‘to pay tribute…’ He helped me to my feet. ‘Poor Maurice.’
I was shaking, gasping for breath.
‘Tell me,’ said Shone. ‘Did you see something then? In the instant that you closed your eyes? Some manner of vision or glimpse?’
Painfully, I nodded. ‘Yes, but how did you—’
He waved away the question. ‘That is not important now. But you must tell me what you saw.’
‘A woman,’ I said. ‘Dark-haired and exhausted. Her face dappled with blood. She suspects, I think. Even now, she suspects the truth of things, though she dare not bring herself to face it.’
Gabriel Shone tossed his head back and laughed. ‘Oh, that is good. That is very good indeed.’
‘Why, Gabriel? Why was I shown this thing? What does it mean?’
‘It means that the future is intersecting with the present and the past. It means that a great shadow has fallen. And, above all else, it means that He is close now; that His return is imminent; that our Lord is to be reborn.’
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Who do you mean by that?’
Gabriel spat once and with vigour upon the dusty ground. ‘You know his name.’
‘I do not.’
‘You’ve known since the forest. Since the castle. Since you were given the Black Grail to drink.’
‘No,’ I said, as calmly as I was able. ‘Truly, Gabriel, I do not.’
Shone smiled, more widely than I had ever seen him smile before. I glimpsed again those sharp incisors. ‘You know his name, Maurice. The dread name of our lord and master.’
‘I… do not.’ In my heart, I knew that I was lying.
‘Of course you do. And you shall say it. Here and now. For me. You shall say his name.’
‘Gabriel, no. Please.’
‘Say it! Damn you! Say it!’
Blood pounded in my temples. My vision spun wildly. My skin prickled with heat.
‘Say his name!’
I gasped. I staggered. Yet I could hold it back no longer, that admission, that acceptance, those three horrible, long-expected syllables.
‘Dracula.’
And as I fell again into a swoon, the very last thing that I heard before the darkness was the bleak and terrible laughter of the one-eyed man.
FROM THE PALL MALL GAZETTE
1 January (early edition)
LONDON ATTACKED! IDENTITY OF PERPETRATORS UNKNOWN
At the time of publication, the specific nature of these tragic circumstances has yet to emerge. Nonetheless, this paper has been assured on the very highest authority that in the early hours of this morning an incendiary device of considerable potency was exploded without warning in the eastern end of our metropolis.
The outrage was committed in a Temperance Hall which seems to have been filled to capacity at the time of the vicious assault. Police officials have yet to release details of the number of casualties, yet the toll is believed by our reporters to be substantial and to include (for all that the district contains many displaced persons, European émigrés and paupers) numerous English folk.
Make no mistake – this is an act of unwarranted terror against a peaceful nation, a blow delivered to the heart of our bountiful Empire. This newspaper will not rest or slacken in our determination both to uncover the facts in the case and to insist upon the highest possible penalties for its evil perpetrators. We will print fresh details as soon as possible.
MEMORANDUM FROM SUB-DIVISIONAL INSPECTOR GEORGE DICKERSON TO COMMISSIONER AMBROSE QUIRE
1 January
These are the facts, sir, at least so far as we have them.
Not long after midnight last night, when most of the city was still abroad, a meeting was held just about as far from our sight as it’s possible to be, in a Temperance Hall at the corner of Drake Street and Richardson Avenue, on the outer edge of the East End. None of the Force dares step there alone. My intelligence is still imperfect, but it seems as though the meeting was meant to be a peace conference of some kind between the three main criminal gangs – foolish as I know that sounds.
Near as I can tell, it was all in an effort to renew the old agreements and try to keep together what has been falling away between them. The cause of it all is still unknown. None will talk to me save to speak the same nonsense as the kid about bad dreams.
This should be cause now, sir, for serious concern. Members of all three gangs were killed but I doubt they will see any justice in that. Each will blame the other – the Sweetmen, the Giddis Boys and the Pigtails – and things from now on are going to escalate. It is my strong advice that we act fast to stop things getting worse. Decisive action, sir, is what we need.
I stand ready, Commissioner, to do my duty. In the meantime, the investigation – as well as our prayers – goes on.
G.D.
NOTE FROM CECIL CARNEHAN TO ARNOLD SALTER
1 January
Arnold,
I am sure that you have heard by now the thoroughly awful news concerning the devastation last night in the East End. Shocking tragedy, many feared dead, a nation mourns, et cetera, et cetera.
On reflection I think that the time may now be upon us when your opinions concerning this drama (and others like it) might be readily received by our readers. I’ve no desire to be a bore or to ask too much of you, conscious as I am of your advancing years, but might I have, say, five hundred words by nightfall?
Yours, most sincerely,
Carnehan*
* The original response to this missive has long since been mislaid or destroyed. Fleet Street legend, however, has it that the message consisted of but a single, capitalised word: YES.