by J. S. Barnes
I succeeded in a nod.
‘Later, maybe,’ she said. ‘If you are being the best of all possible boys.’
In an instant she was gone. She slid back into the shadows and became as one with the darkness.
At the Yard they must be missing me. I shall rise in a moment and dress and do what I have been ordered to do. But I have yet to move. After Ileana left, I lay here in my bed. I wept as I wrote.
And a very few moments ago I heard, like the sound of distant thunder, the first of the explosions.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM
11 January. My life has not been one which any honest man could describe as having been free of vice or sin, yet surely I can have done nothing so monumental as to deserve those rich and vivid punishments which are visited now upon me. The gods, it seems, are fickle to those who love them best: every good deed is punished as much as every trespass.
I believe, yet cannot be certain, that four days have passed since I summoned sufficient strength to hold a pen and inscribe my thoughts. In the hours which have slipped by since last I offered my testimony, my apparent illness has only intensified. I languish in this fine hotel. I hear many voices and much laughter and I am aware, but vaguely, of all the apparatus of business being done in that chamber which is adjacent to my own.
Pleasure? I have known it not at all. Joy has been a stranger to me. The only fragment of goodness has been my nightly visitation from Mr Shone, when he has sat beside me and coaxed me to sup from his chalice. That medicine is as thick and as vile as ever, yet still do I drink of it. Gabriel assures me that it is for my own good and that it will, given time, bring about my healing.
To ask whether or not I believe him in this is surely, by now, unnecessary. For his words, though honeyed and sweet, disguise, as I have always known, darker things.
This has been the pattern of my days: to sleep and to dream, and to hear the distant words of serious men, and to be visited in the night by Gabriel, and to be made to drink. Given sufficient time, even strangeness can become ordinary and the outré grow routine. Nothing has changed since we first came to Charlotte Street – until, that is, this morning.
It was shortly before eleven when I woke. Although the drapes are heavy, thick and expensive, a little of that clear, bright, cold sunlight which is unique to the English winter succeeded in creeping in to illuminate the room. A single shaft of sunshine lay directly upon my closed lids, enjoining me to wakefulness.
When I opened my eyes I saw that I was not alone. My visitor was not known to me. She was a slight, young, blonde woman, no doubt pretty but also, it seemed to me, the victim of some recent assault, for her face was begrimed and dirty and her hair in disarray. Upon her soiled dress were stains which I took to be sanguinary. Her eyes had a hunted, harried look.
She was pacing up and down at the foot of my bed, looking with anxiety towards the door which led to the adjoining suite.
‘Are you awake?’ she asked.
I tried and failed to form the necessary words in response.
‘I’m Sarah-Ann,’ she said, in answer to a question that I would have asked had I been able, ‘and I’m here to save you if I can.’
I managed to reply only with an inarticulate gurgle.
Then this young woman, this Sarah-Ann, was by my side. She lifted me out of my bed and helped me to stand, for all that my legs trembled at the exertion. She urged me towards the door.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Mr Shone is away. At the memorial service. They’re all distracted. Today is the day of the double-event.’
I must have seemed to her to be bewildered, for she sounded surprised and even frustrated at my failure to understand.
‘I know what they’re planning,’ she said. ‘I did what they asked. And I know what they mean to do to you. When I escaped I knew I had to rescue you.’
We were now by the door of my room. She opened it and we stepped out into the corridor beyond. It was quiet and deserted. Miss Sarah-Ann held tight my hand and pulled me onwards. From far away I felt the whisper of a breeze. I sensed it then – like a caged animal upon the hour that its keeper makes his first and only error – the distant prospect of my liberation.
I croaked out two words: ‘Thank you.’
At this, the woman gave me a brief, broad smile and I saw how she must seem to men who are not of my persuasion.
‘This way now. We should take the staircase. I do not trust the elevators here.’
Down the corridor we went, until at the end of it, Sarah-Ann pushed open two glass doors and we reached a tall, winding flight of stairs.
‘We are on the third floor. But we must hurry if we’re going to have the slightest chance.’
Down those stairs we went. I was breathless and weak. Something surged and roiled in my stomach. Yet Sarah-Ann hurried on and drove me forward. I sensed at the sight of her that she was a woman who had but lately learned of those reserves of courage and resilience which lay within her. Still we passed no resident or official, a fact which, I see now with all the unbearable knowledge of hindsight, ought to have appeared significant.
As we went, Sarah-Ann did her utmost to explain. Some of her words I believe that I understood. Many others were to me without meaning.
‘They kept me underground. But they did not make me like them. Not yet. They need humans. Folk who’ll help them in the mortal world. And I did it. I did what they asked. They gave me no choice, sir, for I escaped once before and they dragged me back. I did what they asked and I seduced the priest and I made sure a bomb was planted inside, hidden in a suitcase. The service today, sir. They’ll all be killed. Except for the boy. He’ll survive the flames. They’ve timed it, sir, timed it till they’re all inside and they’ll blow them to kingdom come.’
Now we had reached the head of the second staircase. I had to stop. With awful desperation, I sucked in air. I shook. My guts roiled in distress. By some miracle I forced from my parched and wretched lips a single, fractured sentence.
‘You said… madam… something about me…’
There was in her expression both pity and distress.
‘Don’t you know, sir? Haven’t you understood?’
I groaned my response.
‘You were chosen, sir. Long ago, right back in Brasov.’
‘Chosen,’ I wheezed, ‘for what?’
‘Sir, you were chosen as the womb.’
She might have said more, but then there came from somewhere in the building overhead a great, shrill cry, terrible to hear, as of that of some monstrous bird, fierce and maddened.
‘They’ve seen that you’ve gone! Run now, sir. Run for our lives.’
On we went without speaking, fleeing desperately down the stairs.
Behind us, and closer than before, we heard again that hideous shriek.
At the very moment when I had begun to believe that I might bear the ordeal no longer, we reached the last of the steps and Sarah-Ann flung open another set of double doors. We emerged into the reception area (oddly darkened) of this grand hotel. Here at last were people to be seen, those employed by the establishment itself and those who were entering it as temporary residents. There were perhaps as many as thirty of them and, upon our entrance, they turned to stare in our direction.
We must have made for the oddest of sights – a foolish old man in his night-shirt clasping hands with a blood-stained young woman. The distinguished men and elegant women in that vast lobby gaped at us with what I took to be understandable surprise.
Only too late did I realise the truth of it: that these were not ordinary people and that it was not so much surprise I saw in their wide eyes and open mouths but something very like amusement. Worse still, hunger.
The group of them turned as one and, like mechanical things, moved in a tide towards us.
At the sight of their approach, my stomach roared and convulsed in exquisite agony. Poor Sarah-Ann let out a scream filled, I thought, with absolute despair. She has escaped th
em twice. I feel certain that there will be no third occasion.
I held her hand as tight as I could while the creatures approached us. For creatures they assuredly are, and not humans any longer.
I need not name them. I have long suspected their existence. All those European tales – every one – was formed from truth.
‘Forgive me, sir! I’m so sorry!’ called out the young woman as she was ripped from me by the crowd, their eyes glimmering, their sharp teeth glinting in the gloom. I found in that moment of absolute horror an unexpected dignity.
‘Forgiveness is not needed,’ I said quietly. ‘I understand how it has to be.’
Then the girl was torn away, screaming again, and was subsumed by the voracious mob.
What will become of her I cannot say. When last I saw her she was still alive, yet it is my suspicion that she will not long remain so. Surely, when we see her again she will be not living but rather un-dead?
As for me, I was held fast by several of the creatures. Their leader appeared to be a sommelier. He was a young man, prematurely fat, his eyes dark and selfish.
He touched the side of my face and hissed, a lisp discernible in each of his words. ‘There wath nether any needth to run away, Mr Hallam. We will bring anything you needth to thor room.’ His skin was cold. He caressed my forehead, and what ensued was a merciful sort of darkness.
* * *
When I awoke I was back once more in my bed, as though no disturbance had ever occurred. Horrible and vivid was my failed escape, yet as I lie upon this rich, exalted pallet it has the qualities only of a dream.
I know now what I have long only suspected: that I am a prisoner here in this place and that I am in some fashion being prepared. As a sacrifice, perhaps?
I remember the words of poor, doomed Sarah-Ann and I begin to sense, I think, something of the whole truth.
There is an awful kind of happiness to understanding that one’s path is set and that one’s destiny has been written. I feel rather as must a victim in the days of the Aztec and the Inca have done as they were shepherded by high priests to the stones where they would be slaughtered to propitiate their thirsty deities. There is to it all an unanticipated peace.
So I lie in my bed, and I wait for Gabriel to return and raise the chalice to my lips and enjoin me to drink the serum within. Too weak to move, I mean to play my part before the end. And I am conscious also, all around, of a process of acceleration. Every element of the design is moving into its allotted place, in readiness.
It is shortly after dark. Shadows are lengthening. Hours ago, I believed that I heard the sound of distant explosions. There were screams also. The air is thick with fear. Fires of every sort are rising here. London, she is aflame. She is being scoured clean in preparation for that which is coming.
MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
11 January. For many years, the events of a certain terrible time in my life have seemed very hazy and far away. I have thrust aside all thoughts of our ordeals, pushed them to the very back of my mind, until every awesome and impossible sight I had witnessed – from the ruination of poor Lucy and the horrid interventions of the Transylvanian to the nosferatu women who surrounded me as I stood in the ring of fire – became faded memories, as if from a book which had been left for days out in the sun. Such a wilful act of neglect on my part, urging those violent recollections to sink into abeyance, has allowed me both to retain my sanity and to have grasped at a little real happiness.
Jonathan, I believe, who saw in that castle worse things even than the rest of us, has in his own way tried to carry out a similar process. Yet lately – and more than ever after the dreadful events of today – those old memories have been returning to me more colourfully and more vividly than they have for more than a decade.
I believe that I know the reason for this resurgence. Indeed, I think that I have known in my head since my journey from the Godalmings – since poor dear Lucy warned me as I slept.
The past few days have been trials indeed. Quincey suffered another of his fits. Although he recovered swiftly enough we took him to the hospital in Oxford. I do not think that the doctor there believed us. Our son has been quieter than ever since. He is afraid and in mourning, yet he also has about him (and this I do not care to examine too closely at present) an odd, disquieting air of expectancy.
Dear Mr Amory left us yesterday, to go to Norfolk and to Wildfold so that he might carry out his mission concerning Jack Seward. My husband drinks too often and I have myself been subject to bad dreams. Nonetheless, and in spite of all of these difficulties, I had hoped that today, the day of the memorial service for Van Helsing, would serve to bring us together and to purge some of the worst of the feeling that lies between us. I had hoped that it would be an occasion of healing as we gathered to celebrate a beneficial life. How wrong – how very wrong I was.
We caught an early train to the city this morning, down to Paddington station. The journey went by mostly in silence. I attended to some outstanding correspondence. Quincey either gazed from the window or else drew with a pencil in a notebook he had brought with him for the trip.
Twice I asked him to show me what it was that he was sketching. Twice he snatched the book away before I was able to see so much as the outline of his illustration.
‘I’ll show you,’ he said, ‘only when it is ready, Mother.’
After these rebuttals, I did not ask again.
Jonathan sat largely in silence, though his eyes were bloodshot and he was often to be seen perspiring in a most unhealthy manner. I knew the cause and chose to say nothing, but only waited for the liquor to leave his system. A fine party we must have seemed in our carriage, a family all dressed in black, not speaking one to the other, the air between us thick with resentment.
At the London terminus we ate a late breakfast and hailed a hansom to take us to the church. I began to think of old times as we clattered through the streets. I thought of London as she had been when we had known her well, back in another century. I saw, as any visitor to the metropolis surely must, how much the city had changed and, in certain places, how she had stayed the same.
There was to these observations of mine what might be called an ordinary poignancy, as might any woman think when her youth has long been parcelled up and put away. Still, there was something else I felt as I watched the avenues, alleyways and boulevards roll by, as my husband’s eyelids drooped and as my son attended only to his notebook – a sense that the whole of London was ill at ease and afflicted by anxiety.
It was as though the place were waiting for something.
We reached the church of St Sebastian in the West, at the apex of Warren Street, a squat building with a touch about it more of fortress than of temple. Before it was the road, beyond it a patch of grizzled public land, a small urban wilderness beloved by the disreputable and the transient.
Still, this had been stipulated in the Professor’s will and so I had seen that his wishes were fulfilled. Other people were already there, gathering outside like crows. There were former students and colleagues of Van Helsing’s. There were old friends and acquaintances and those to whom that wise old Dutchman had offered aid. Some I recognised, though most I did not. A few I knew only from newspapers – the detective Moon was present, mingling with a group of university men, as was the philosopher, Judd.
The priest came out to greet us. He was a younger man than I had expected, and would have been a handsome one had he not allowed corpulence to take root.
‘You must be Mr and Mrs Harker,’ he said, ‘and Quincey also. Welcome. Welcome to you all.’
His eyes seemed rather glazed and he appeared, for a priest for whom such occasions were surely as regular as rain, oddly distracted and vague in his manner. I wondered if the man had been drinking, though none of those other indications were present with which I am now more familiar than I should prefer. There was a wild instant when I felt a distinct urge to turn around and leave that church, to climb aboard the cab again and t
ake my family out of the city and back towards safety.
I believe that my instinct was a true one and, for all that it might at the time have caused surprise or offence or distress, I wish now with all my heart that I had found the courage to act upon it. Yet the moment passed and I shook away that strange presentiment, for what appeared to be the happiest of reasons.
The little knot of mourners parted to reveal two guests whom I had not spied upon alighting: Lord and Lady Godalming. They smiled and made their way towards us.
Arthur looked so very tired. He seemed lined and older than he has ever appeared before. There was a stoop in his gait which, pitiable in a man of such former athleticism, only added to the impression of age and fatigue.
Carrie, although the strain was not so marked in her appearance, appeared somehow far worse than her husband. She had been cleaned and bathed for the occasion and was dressed with her usual expensive finesse, but her movements were slow and exaggerated, as though she were a woman walking underwater. Her eyes were very big and wide but they seemed devoid of curiosity.
She walked through the world as though she were barely cognisant, her every word and action those of one who follows directions in a script.
‘The Harkers!’ she said as they drew near to us. ‘How wonderful to see you all again.’
Her speech seemed almost slurred. I wondered, with an idleness that might look almost callous set down on paper, what drug had been used to calm and sedate her, and how she might behave were the influence of the dose to wear off.
Arthur and my husband shook hands. Quincey gazed at us all, his sketchbook underneath his arm, and murmured a bashful ‘Hello’. Arthur took his wife’s hand and held it tightly.
‘Shall we go inside?’ he asked. ‘There are places set aside for us in the first pews. And we have much to discuss.’
At this we stepped into the church, little realising that, within the hour, we would be reduced in number by the worst of events.
* * *
We took our seats at the front of the congregation. I have never before today found any Christian church to feel narrow or oppressive, thinking them instead to be places of sanctuary and calm, yet I fancy that St Sebastian’s will forever remain in my memory as the exception. We sat quietly as the pews filled up behind us.
