by J. S. Barnes
MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
1 January. A multitude of sadnesses continue to afflict us. No sooner has the Professor slipped away than we have lost Miss Dowell also, and in the oddest of circumstances: gone in the middle of the night, without leaving even the tiniest courtesy of a letter of explanation or a note of apology.
Quincey has taken badly this apparent dereliction, being pale, anxious and prone to bad temper. We broke the news to him at breakfast. He heard us out with the most profound ill grace. At luncheon he remained sullen and resentful. To my frank irritation, if not, I fear, altogether to my surprise, Jonathan seems almost as downcast by the absence of our guest as does our son. For my husband has turned taciturn and withdrawn, behaving as though something precious has been taken unexpectedly from him. I suppose, in a fashion, that it has.
He took a drink today at luncheon and then another once we were done.
In truth, I suspect that Miss Dowell’s departure has to do chiefly with her mysterious beau in London. Besides, there is so much else at present to occupy and concern us – the wellbeing of Caroline, the whereabouts of Jack and the preparations for our last farewell to Van Helsing. This will take the form of two separate functions: a small, private funeral, to take place on the sixth of January here in Shore Green, and a public memorial service in the church of St Sebastian in the West, in London, on the eleventh. I have shouldered responsibility for making arrangements for both.
There is also a theory emerging in my mind. As much as I try to concentrate upon it – the connections between certain recent events – I find that the details slip away, as if greasy and impossible to hold. Is it possible that something from the outside might be keeping me from resolving these thoughts and from full understanding? Once I would have spoken of these things to Jonathan. Now, after Christmas, I know what he will say. Oh, why will he not listen?
* * *
Later. A difficult scene with Quincey, one in which he seemed all of a sudden more like the boy he used to be. He went early to bed but we discovered him (Jonathan by that time half-inebriated) in the dining room, shortly before we ourselves intended to retire, standing in sorrowful silence. For an instant he seemed not to be in the least aware of our presence. Then he blinked, startled and owlish.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I was dreaming. At least, Mother, at least I think it was a dream.’
‘Of what,’ I said, more gentle in my manner than I fear that I have been all day, ‘did you dream?’
‘Of fire, Mother. Of death brought into the heart of the city.’
He fell silent after that and we saw him back to bed, where he seemed to descend almost at once back into the relative comfort of sleep.
When I left the room I thought that I heard something from far away, from the fields which lie beyond the house. It was like a bark, yet also somehow most unlike…
FROM THE PALL MALL GAZETTE
2 January
SALTER SAYS: THE EAST END TRAGEDY WAS NOT INEVITABLE BUT AVERTIBLE
The beginning of a new year ought by rights to be a time of hope and optimism. It should be an occasion for reflection on the year that has passed and an opportunity to consider ways in which we might start afresh. It should be the moment at which we all look happily towards the future.
How sad it is, then, how very sad, that we should instead find ourselves today in a state of mourning. We mourn the lives of innocents who were caught up in the East End conflagration of New Year’s Eve. We urge the highest possible penalties to be applied to those who carried out this vile act. We bow our heads and we pray.
Yet should this be sufficient? Should not more difficult questions be asked? How is it possible that so flagrant an outrage could be committed on British soil in the twentieth century? How is it possible that the police forces of London should, through their rank incompetence, permit this terrible thing to happen? There are very grave enquiries which ought to be made into the regime of Mr Ambrose Quire, who stands responsible for so much of the so-called detective work which takes place in our metropolis.
Whatever happened to the accepted notion of an official class which keeps us all safe? Why can honest citizens no longer go about their business without doing so in fear of being caught up in a brutal clash between criminals?
We here at the Gazette would contend that the answer to many of these questions runs very much deeper than merely the internal workings of the police force. Are such failings not indicative of wider problems in our society? Have we not become too timid as a people? Such soft-bellied lives as many now lead leave us open to attack from those who have not the vague and expensive scruples of men like Quire.
So I put it to you now, my friends, that the incident of New Year’s Eve was an avertible catastrophe. Had the police done their jobs to a higher degree, had Londoners been stronger in their opposition to crime and had the underworld itself not been allowed such outrageous licence, then the disaster would never have occurred.
Is it not time, then, that we stiffen our sinews? Is it not time that we turn aside from easy moderation in order to establish our security? And is it not time that we consider a radical change of course in how we arrange the affairs of this nation?
FROM THE PRIVATE DIARY OF AMBROSE QUIRE,
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis
2 January. I have always been a practical, rational fellow. I have stood forever flat-footed on the ground. My watchwords are honesty and probity, and the names of those lamps which have lit my way are Logic and Reason. Yet all these things in recent days and hours have been swept aside. I have been shown the reality which hides behind the surface of the world. I have seen the dazzling horror of how things truly are. I have seen sights which render the tools of the logician and the reasonable man as so much useless scrap.
Another sort of person, upon casting his eyes over the paragraph above, might ask himself whether he were not, in some sense or another, going quite mad. Not I! No!
I have no doubt at all that I remain entirely sane, if hardly without some degree of corruption. This is Ileana’s doing – that marvellous creature who has given me such joy by choosing me as her chief source of sustenance.
Ileana, so fair and wise and beautiful. The glory of her hair, the sapphire of her eyes, the wondrous peaks and valleys of her form – these things are what I live for now.
Yesterday she woke me in the hour before dawn. She was sitting on the bed in my chamber, rather as I imagine a wife might or an intimate friend, and she was stroking my face, with a gentleness of which many would doubtless have thought her incapable. I came to only gradually, moving up through layers of dreams like a deep-sea diver swimming to the surface from fabulous depths. As I did so I became aware of my dim surroundings, of the fact that this remarkable woman was again wholly unclothed, due, I speculated, to her having but lately been transformed from one state of being into another.
Her hand was soft to the touch but so very cold. I understand, or at least I think I understand, why this is so yet I am not yet ready to record the truth.
‘Ambrose,’ she breathed, once full consciousness had been returned to me. ‘Ambrose Quire.’
My lips were parched and cracked. I dampened them with my tongue. My voice, when it came, sounded far away.
‘No need… my dear, for such formality…’
The darkness covered much of her face. I dare say I was mistaken, though it seemed somehow that at my words an expression of something like distaste crossed her features.
‘Just Ambrose,’ I said, ‘my darling…’
Her expression changed again and she looked upon me with an inexplicable smile. Her teeth flashed in the last of the moonlight. With a wonderful shudder, I glimpsed her sharp incisors.
She leaned down, across my body, close enough to my face that we might easily have kissed.
‘The first attack upon your city has already taken place,’ said she, and although the import of her words was quite clear, they sounded in that moment, given her magnificent proxim
ity, oddly shorn of consequence. ‘A bomb has been exploded in the heart of your underworld. Those bad men will soon become still more brutal and more…’ She paused, searching for the right word. ‘Rivalrous,’ she said at last, rather improbably, it seemed to me.
‘Then that,’ I said, ‘will only escalate matters. It will make this simmering war of theirs far worse.’
She leaned a little closer still and I could feel upon me the weight of her, a solidity at once soft and hard. ‘All is as our master desires,’ she said. ‘Everything is happening that must be happening in order to ensure his return. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I said, although, in truth, I do not yet fully comprehend, or even, perhaps, wish to.
‘You must retard the course,’ she said, almost whispering, ‘of the official investigation. You must be holding off the law lest they seek to douse the flames.’
‘But…’ I protested, ‘they will suspect me. Until… until you came, my career has been marked solely by competence and skill.’
At this, a single, grave-cold finger was pressed against my lips. ‘We need you to stand firm, Ambrose Quire. Matters in your city need to grow far worse if conditions are to be ripe for our master. As it was, long ago, in a realm encircled by the Ottoman Lords, so shall it be again, in this degenerate metropolis.’
‘How long…’ I murmured as her finger trailed down my face, to my throat, to my Adam’s apple and beyond. ‘How long will you need?’
‘Nine days,’ she said. ‘That seems meet. Give us nine more days, Ambrose Quire, and after that… nothing at all will be mattering any more.’
I breathed out – a long, rattling, almost painful sigh. ‘Nine days,’ I said, and even to my own ears my voice sounded rather hollow. ‘If I do all that is within my power, then will you… will you, Ileana… please…’ My words dried in my mouth and I felt rush over me, like the arrival of the tide, a lassitude and a powerlessness.
‘Yes,’ said Ileana simply. ‘Yes, I shall be feeding upon you.’
I gurgled out my gratitude.
‘Yet I shall not return to your neck. Such a wound may be attracting attention. Instead, I shall find a fresh vein elsewhere.’ And she moved down then, down and down my body until, pulling aside the sheets, she found virgin territory, a new vein, and leaned towards it.
There was the glory of her fangs unsheathed, the dreadful expectation, the moment of puncture and then, long dreamed of, a flowing crimson gush.
My lassitude intensified. I could not move. I lay still, my senses surging with delight until a fainting came over me.
The next event of which I was aware was a fierce hammering upon my door not long after dawn. Even then the sound of it seemed to me to be very far away. When I bade the caller enter, I saw that it was my servant come to tell me, with piteous and imploring eyes, that I was needed immediately. There had been, he said, some rank atrocity, a blow delivered to the city.
Of Ileana, my Ileana, there was, quite naturally, no sign. The only evidence that she was not simply the product of some phantastical quirk of my imagination were two neat puncture marks – and, in my heart, a lingering, delectable ache.
* * *
Later. When one is given an experience so richly vivid as that which Ileana has granted to me it lends other, more ordinary occurrences a dull and distant quality. I have spent the day numbed, gazing at life as though through a thick pane of glass.
There was much uproar about the explosion in the east. I suggested a calm reaction to the outrage and would take no precipitate action. I sensed disgruntlement at my decision amongst the lower ranks, a suspicion which became a certainty when, in the midst of the afternoon, I heard a brusque rap upon my door, followed, without invitation, by the entrance of that burly American, Sub-Divisional Inspector George Dickerson.
‘Sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘It was not my intention to intrude.’
His words were courteous, studiedly so, yet his manner betrayed what I suspect now to lie behind his professional exterior, that of a roughneck well used to getting his own way.
I waved him in, assuring him as I did so that I stood forever ready to listen to the suggestions and concerns of my subordinates. I hope and trust that my reminding the Yankee of our relative standing in the hierarchy of this place did not pass unnoticed.
Once he was seated, I asked what it was that had brought him to me.
He seemed surprised that I should even ask. ‘Why, the bomb, sir,’ he said, unable to keep a note of impatience from his voice, ‘the dynamite at the heart of the city.’
I pressed my fingers against my temples in order to ward off the approach of that headache which I sensed as, it is said, country folk sense the coming of rain, even when the horizon is unblemished. I said: ‘Yes, I thought it would be that.’
The American pressed his advantage. ‘I have to say, sir,’ he began, ‘we have ignored the problem too long. And what is at the moment simply a set of bloody skirmishes will, if we do not take harsh steps to quell it, spiral into crisis. That process, sir, that escalation is already under way.’
‘Thank you, Inspector, for your rugged honesty. While I would not go so far as to suggest, or even to imply, that your words expose a certain strain of alarmism…’
Dickerson frowned.
‘… I would, however, suggest that for now by far our wisest course of action would be merely to observe the situation and not to intervene.’
‘Forgive me, sir, but that is not action. That is inaction. To do nothing will make everything worse.’
‘As might our interference in what is purely a conflict between magsmen. So far I have seen no satisfactory proof that there is any real danger whatever to law-abiding civilians to be found here.’
‘We cannot ignore this, sir. We must not look away.’
‘There are many demands upon our time and attention, Inspector. In our position we always have difficult choices to make. And questions of priority to answer.’
As the American looked at me I saw real anger pass across his face. Then he mastered himself, adopting an expression that would not have disgraced the most dedicated of the Stoics. ‘I appreciate that, sir. But—’
‘Yes?’
‘Should there be a further incident… Should this get any worse. Will you reconsider your position?’
I rubbed my temples again. ‘You have my word,’ I said carefully, ‘that I will most certainly think about doing so.’
He nodded in apparent acceptance before, almost discourteously, turning on his heels. The Lord only knows what he will say to our brothers in the Force. Yet I have a suspicion that events will soon outstrip us and that we shall need only days before all Dickerson’s concerns and pious fretting will be as efficacious as is a candle flame at the approach of the glacier.
JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
3 January. Poor Mina. She is at present so very tired and anxious.
In many ways, she is as impressive and indefatigable as ever. In her preparations for the funeral and memorial service for the Professor she is diligent, ordered and calm. In the past few days she has consulted with undertakers, priests and with a chapel in London where we shall soon gather to remember the old man. She has in addition written for him an obituary that is set to appear in today’s Times. She has also spent much time in the soothing of Quincey, who seems to be suffering from a sequence of vivid night terrors.
In all these things she is quite wonderful. Yet she appears also to be nursing some wild theory. We have not spoken of it since Christmas Day, yet I do not believe that she has entirely abandoned the notion. It scarcely seems to be in her character – such dreadful, morbid fancies. I hope before long that she sets it aside. It worries me, her state of mind. It concerns me deeply. For it cannot be true what she suggests. It cannot be possible.
Besides, my own thoughts are taken up more often than ought to be the case by the fate of poor Sarah-Ann. I have woken in the night, more than once, frightened for her soul.
FROM
THE TIMES, OBITUARIES
3 January
VAN HELSING, ABRAHAM
Professor Abraham Van Helsing passed away peacefully upon the twenty-ninth of last month, following a long period of illness. Such an ending seems scarcely just or fair when set against the rare vigour and energy of his life. Indeed, he would not have approved of the manner of his passing and he often expressed the hope that he would perish in the service of some greater cause. Nonetheless, he died surrounded by friends and leaves a substantial legacy, in scholarly and academic terms, as well as in the hearts and memories of those who, like the present author, owe him thanks for years of friendship, guidance and protection.
Born in Amsterdam in 1830, the son of a shipbuilder, Abraham Van Helsing proved himself from his youth to possess a mind of rare clarity and an imagination of striking fecundity, the ideal combination for a scientist. Excelling at school, he hurried to the university in Delft, where he was swiftly established as something of a prodigy.
It was around this time that certain darker rumours began to swirl about him. His closest friends, however, only ever considered such gossip – which was to prove remarkably persistent – as the product merely of envious rivals. Leaving the university in 1851, Van Helsing established himself as a physician, although his areas of research and study already extended into fields considerably wider than those of ailment and disease.
In the third year of his practice, Van Helsing took a wife, Maria Houren, the sister of one of his patients, who was, over the next three years, to bear him two sons, David and Silas.
In 1859, however, when Van Helsing’s academic monograph on the correlation between taint in the blood and nervous diseases was attracting attention of an intercontinental nature, a tragedy occurred which was to cast a shadow over the rest of his life. Maria and the children drowned on the afternoon of May the eleventh, 1864, in an accident of the most horrible sort. Bereft, Van Helsing left the Netherlands and took to wandering through Europe, in the course of which he acquired much curious and ancient folk belief. This was when his interest began in the monstrous possibilities of the extension of life by sanguinary means and*
