Dracula's Child

by J. S. Barnes

  I sleep often and I dream much. My hours of consciousness decline daily. Yet still news reaches me of what is happening in London and beyond. I believe that from those scraps of intelligence I see something of the pattern, the shape of the thing which is coming.

  Every night I am visited and every night I am made to drink from the chalice. The fluid that it contains (I dare not speculate as to its foul ingredients) is dark and oily. I swallow it down.

  Some nights it is Ileana who brings the chalice, her manner cold and curt, as though I am the child of a woman whom she despises. At other times it is either one of the creatures who turned to gaze at me and Miss Dowell as we stood in that infected lobby or else it is one of the human servants, one of those dark-clad persons who dress so finely and well. Tonight, however, it was Gabriel who came and bade me drink. After I had done so he sat with me awhile.

  ‘Is it important to you,’ he asked, ‘that you understand the reasons for all of this? Why it is so imperative that we bring him back? Why so much sacrifice is needed?’

  I said that none of this I needed to know and also that no explanation could possibly be sufficient.

  He sighed. There was in him an odd dreaminess which I had not spied for many weeks. ‘When you first met me,’ he began, ‘I had no purpose. I had no goal save for the receiving of pleasure. I loved only beauty. But mine was an ideal love. It lacked discrimination. I was looking, as I believe you knew, for a mission. He has given that to me. He has given me that purpose.’

  I heard my voice, speaking as politely as though I were back at some grand soirée of the ’90s, how happy I was that he had found for his existence so meaningful a trajectory. Of the bitter and sardonic tone with which one might imagine such words to have been infused I heard none, but only a kind of wistful resignation.

  ‘When he comes back,’ Gabriel continued, ‘everything will be better. I see that now. I understand. The corruptions of modernity. We have made ourselves so plump and soft and weak. Do you not see, Maurice?’

  He touched me upon my forehead, his fingers lean and too cool. ‘Soon now. There are but a few more steps to be taken and then… Well…’ He gurgled in oddly infantile happiness. ‘The White Tower… Strigoi… The dawn of a new dark age.’

  FROM THE PALL MALL GAZETTE

  17 January

  SALTER SAYS: WE DEMAND ACTION OF HIS MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT

  On too many a recent occasion I have found myself wondering what our forefathers might have made of the conduct of our government during the present crisis, only to conclude that their view would be one of profound disappointment. Four outrages have we seen in the capital since the turn of this year, and our gored police force stands now leaderless and in disarray. The underworld is said to be at war with itself and the ugly effects of that conflict have been felt often, and to their great cost, by the ordinary populace.

  A sense of terror and of lawlessness is to be found everywhere upon our city streets. It is plain to all that the situation cannot be permitted to deteriorate any further. We have long since passed the point in this intolerable situation at which conventional solutions and modern thinking might still provide a helpful point of reference. To that end, I cordially invite the government to institute at the earliest opportunity a state of emergency, resulting in a temporary transfer of power to that noble, incorruptible and famously decisive body the Council of Athelstan.

  We hope and pray that our political seniors will see sense and make this vital decision. To do otherwise would be to risk further chaos and disarray, as well as the fury of the people. Should they flinch now from this necessary choice, then posterity – as well as those aforementioned forefathers of antiquity – will be bound to judge them with severity.

  JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

  19 January. Something happened to me. Did it not? In that low alleyway in the territory of the Giddis Boys on the night of the eleventh? Surely I saw Miss Dowell, and surely I was confronted by something else in that place? But what was it? What was its purpose with me? And why can I not now remember? Why is there in that portion of my memory only blackness and oblivion? What am I not being permitted to recall? And why can I not face the truth?

  Mina has asked often to speak with me alone but always I find a reason not to do so. Always I evade her. When I am near her, she sleeps to a degree which seems all but unnatural.

  I drink too often. Dear God. How much longer can this go on? Without the storm breaking?

  LETTER FROM LORD ARTHUR GODALMING TO JONATHAN AND MINA HARKER

  20 January

  Dear Mr and Mrs Harker,

  I write, with something of a heavy heart, to inform you of my future plans. Following the laying to rest in the grounds of my estate of my dear wife, Caroline, and in the wake of those events which have beset us in recent times, I have reached a decision which may well strike you as disagreeable. In light of our long and complicated association, I ask only that you try to think the best of me.

  Within the next few days, I mean to leave the country. Your own family aside, England has nothing for me now. I am surrounded by death and decay. Even this fine old house, once the locus of considerable joy, seems to me to be a dreary place. I have prayed often and with considerable fervour in the hope of discovering some cause for those disasters which have dogged us. I have received no answer or guidance save for the odd, persistent sensation that enlightenment shall be granted to me only if I leave our realm and strike out for fresh territory.

  So I intend to wander awhile, throughout Europe and perhaps beyond it. I shall take only one companion – my excellent young servant, Ernest Strickland. My remaining domestic staff will ensure the upkeep of the estate during my absence. My hereditary responsibility to the Council of Athelstan I mean now to lie fallow. You may understand this more clearly when I say that I do not care at all for the direction in which this country is being steered by His Majesty’s Government, and by what the press are calling ‘the Tanglemere Faction’. The King’s continued silence on these things strikes one also as ominous.

  Please, my friends, do not attempt to dissuade me from this action. I am certain that mine is, for now, the best and wisest course. We shall all see one another again – of that I have no doubt – though I am at present far from certain as to quite when and where that reunion will take place. I shall think of you and pray for you often. You must not do the same for me, unless, of course, you wish it, but I beg this of you: please do not consider me a coward.

  Your friend,

  Art

  LETTER FROM LORD GODALMING TO LORD TANGLEMERE OF THE COUNCIL OF ATHELSTAN

  20 January

  My lord,

  I take no pleasure in the necessity of this missive. Nonetheless, I must be plain: please accept this letter as representing my irrevocable wish to offer my immediate and permanent resignation.

  My motives for this abdication are two-fold. The first concerns the tragic death of my wife, at the hands of one of those devices which have of late struck at the heart of our capital. The second has more immediate relevance. I do not care for the course which this Council has in recent months appeared to have charted for itself. Although founded in antiquity, I had thought it long understood – as did my father, from whom I inherited my place – that it was in the modern age to be thought of as a ceremonial committee only and not as a body which should ever again possess any real constitutional power. Recent efforts at the highest levels of the body politic to place true power in our hands in the event of some unspecified emergency strike me as perilous and profoundly undemocratic. I wish to take no part in an organisation which can countenance such medievalism.

  I trust that you will accept this resignation as final. I mean to leave the country at once and I shall take steps to ensure that I cannot, for some time, be contacted. It has been my utmost pleasure to serve with many of you and I wish you well.

  Nonetheless, if I may, I should like to leave you with the following exhortation. Please resist all effort
s to alter the present nature of our Council. To accept the temptation of a reversion to older times would be to risk overturning much that is good in our present system, as well as the righteous wrath of the people. I only wish that I could find still within me the strength to fight upon their behalf.

  Yours in sorrow,

  Lord Arthur Godalming

  MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL

  21 January. I am troubled not by Lord Godalming’s actions – for they are, in their way, perfectly explicable – but rather by their apparent urgency. It is as though his processes of thought have become subject to some unnatural process of acceleration. Indeed, it is as though we have all been pushed in our lives at great and unsolicited speed down the worst of all possible roads, from the death of Van Helsing to the disappearance of Jack Seward to the behaviour of my husband to Quincey’s fits and queer behaviour. The same procedure also seems to be well under way beyond the circumference of our circle.

  Why, after all, have the gangs of London, for so long capable of a form of wary coexistence, fallen to fighting amongst themselves? Why have the explosions in the metropolis grown at such speed and with such ferocity? And why have the press taken to arguing with such insistent urgency for power to be transferred into the hands of this Council, which has for years been little more than a decorative archaism?

  The possible answers to all of these questions are becoming clear. If Jonathan will not help me, then I shall act alone.

  For were we not warned? Did he not make the promise, long ago? That he would spread his revenge over centuries?

  DR SEWARD’S DIARY

  (kept by hand)

  21 January. Much has been returned to me these past few days: memories and fragments of the journey which brought me to Wildfold, and of the diary which began my mental descent. I begin to sense the outline of a larger design. I can see the ways in which all of us have been hamstrung and distracted – me by obsession, Arthur by poor Caroline, the Harkers with their own domesticity and the Professor by mortality. And what is emerging once more from the darkness, onto centre stage, while we five are all so ruinously debilitated? We know his name, of course. We know it of old.

  He is not yet, I think, quite returned to us, though his spirit grows hourly in strength. Evidence of his imminence is all around us. For Wildfold is infested.

  Today I caught and killed one, down by the edge of the sea. It was a profound cruelty ever to have changed him, for he was old and in possession only of one leg. His sticks had been taken from him and I came across him at twilight wriggling along the sand. His face was contorted into an expression of painful, hopeless hunger. His lips were pulled back to reveal sharp teeth and a froth of crimson saliva. He wheezed helplessly and gasped pathetically for breath (although, of course, he has no longer any need for air or lungs, or for internal organs of any kind).

  I approached this benighted creature, saw him for what he was and gazed down at him. His arms flailed and reached for me. He gurgled and whinnied and sighed. I had with me a long wooden stick (for I have taken to having about me at all times now such an object), its tip whittled to a sharp point.

  How wonderful it was to feel again the old sense of certainty and passion, as I drove the stake into the heart of the creature! After all these long weeks of befogged confusion, I thrilled again to the old dark passion. The vampire on the beach let out a single, short, anaemic shriek, then began at once to turn to ash. The ease of the execution was almost disappointing to behold.

  I left the remains of the blood-sucker where they lay, knowing that the waters would cover them soon enough, and walked back to the makeshift hide amongst the trees which is, for now, my home. As I went, I became almost at once aware that I was being followed. Swiftly, I seized a fresh stick from the ground and snapped it smartly in twain.

  ‘Come out!’ I called. ‘I know you’re there.’

  There was now no sound or movement of any kind. I hesitated, only for a moment.

  ‘Show yourself!’ I called again, gripping the stake hard in my hand.

  Without warning, I heard a soft voice close by.

  ‘Don’t shout. Don’t call attention to yourself. Their hearing is far better than ours.’

  I whirled about to confront the stranger, only to stumble on the woodland floor and stagger to the ground. Panting and afraid, I looked up.

  There was a woman standing over me – human, much to my relief. She was dressed in mannish clothes, of green and brown, and held in her left hand a long curved knife which showed signs of recent use.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘You’re not nosferatu.’

  ‘My name is Dr John Seward.’

  ‘Seward?’ She seemed to recognise the word. ‘Seward the London alienist?’

  ‘The same. You know me?’

  ‘I’ve been expecting you, yes. Or rather one of you.’

  ‘Who exactly are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m Ruby Parlow,’ she said. ‘And we have much work to do.’

  JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

  22 January. We have retreated home to Shore Green. I have not been diligent in the keeping of this journal, as I know that I have not been diligent of late in too many matters. Since the horror in the city, Quincey has grown still worse. His fits are daily now and wholly uncontrollable. It seems almost as if he is lost to us – engaged in some private internal battle between order and chaos, hope and despair. We simply have to make the boy comfortable and wait for each attack to pass. We have not sent him back to school, but have kept him here with us until this dreadful season in our lives has passed.

  What happened in London has, of course, affected us all. Poor Arthur. Poor Caroline. I understand that there was a small private ceremony which laid that troubled lady to rest only yesterday. We did not attend, nor were we expected. Arthur knows our troubles.

  When well, Quincey seems to find solace only in his drawing. He is forever in that sketchbook, though he has yet to show us so much as a glimpse of any fruit of his labours. That secretive side of his nature he gets, I fear, from me.

  Matters came to a head this evening, before supper, when Mina visited me in the drawing room. Here I sat alone, and I dare say my wife had some notion that I had already taken recourse in the bottle. I cannot blame her for such suspicions, given my recent conduct, and I think that I was pleased and even a little proud to see her note that I was still quite sober and engaged merely in reading today’s Times, which brought bad news from London, with all its talk of emergency powers and martial law, of the Tanglemere Faction and the Council.

  At Mina’s entrance, however, and upon observing her resolute expression, I set the paper down.

  ‘My dear?’

  ‘Jonathan,’ she began, ‘there is a conversation which we must have tonight.’

  ‘Concerning Quincey?’

  ‘No. At least, not exclusively so.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘You know,’ she said. ‘You know of what I speak. And this is your last chance, Jonathan Harker, to listen and believe.’

  I cannot bring myself to set down every detail of what she said. Her argument was overwhelming, detailed and precise. Only certain leaps of logic were made – enough to permit a reasonable rejection of her claims though not so many, perhaps, as to make that position inevitable. Some of this must have shown upon my countenance.

  ‘You still do not believe? Even now? After everything?’

  ‘Mina…’ My tone was quietly imploring. ‘We watched him die. We made certain of it. We were unstinting. There can be not the slightest doubt.’

  It was as though she had not heard me. ‘He would want to take his revenge,’ she said, with a horrible sort of mildness, ‘don’t you think? If he ever came back. He would want his revenge upon us and – yes – upon England too.’

  ‘Mina,’ I said, reaching for an acceptable means of unstitching her contentions, ‘did we not watch as he turned before us into dust?’

  ‘But how do we know?’ she asked, h
er eyes burning with self-belief. ‘How do we know what truly constitutes death for one who is un-dead?’

  Her words hung heavily in the air.

  Then something like bitterness stole into her eyes. ‘Oh, but you are too frightened to accept the truth. You must find your courage, Jonathan – the courage of the man I used to know – before it is too late.’

  I rose to my feet. ‘Give me time, Mina. You have to give me more time.’

  ‘There is no more time!’ she said, all but in a fury. ‘We have already delayed too long. We have to face the truth of what is happening and we have to face it now!’

  ‘Please excuse me,’ I said. ‘I do believe that I shall take some air.’ My tone was cooler than I had intended. I had no wish for her to notice how much I trembled at her words, or how damp was my collar with perspiration.

  I turned and walked away. Indeed, I left our house and stalked out into the gloom of the evening, little caring where my feet took me, to the edge of the village of Shore Green.

  Exhausted and in distress, I sit alone on a patch of common land. Here I write and I think and I try my utmost to remember.

  MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL

  22 January. The Count is returning.

  My husband knows this too, yet he cannot bring himself to accept the truth of it. A part of me has always understood that, while he is not a bad man, Jonathan is certainly a weak one. He thinks too well of people. He looks for goodness and hopes for the best. He does not care to examine what lies in darkness. This makes him easy prey for malefactors of every kind.

  I only pray that he finds the necessary strength within him. We shall all need much courage in the terrible days to come.