by Stoker, Bram
When this was done, he lifted the child and said, “Come now, my friends. We can do no more till tomorrow. There is a funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that. The friends of the dead will all be gone by two, and when the sexton locks the gate we shall remain. Then there is more to do, but not like this of tonight. As for this little one, he is not much harmed, and by tomorrow night he shall be well. We shall leave him where the police will find him, as on the other night, and then to home.”
Coming close to Arthur, he said, “My friend Arthur, you have had a sore trial, but after, when you look back, you will see how it was necessary. You are now in the bitter waters, my child. By this time tomorrow you will, please God, have passed them, and have drunk of the sweet waters. So do not mourn over-much. Till then I shall not ask you to forgive me.”
Arthur and Quincey came home with me, and we tried to cheer each other on the way. We had left behind the child in safety, and were tired, so we all slept with more or less reality of sleep.
29 SEPTEMBER, NIGHT.—A little before twelve o’clock we three, Arthur, Quincey Morris, and myself, called for the Professor. It was odd to notice that by common consent we had all put on black clothes. Of course, Arthur wore black, for he was in deep mourning, but the rest of us wore it by instinct. We got to the graveyard by half-past one, and strolled about, keeping out of official observation, so that when the gravediggers had completed their task and the sexton, under the belief that every one had gone, had locked the gate, we had the place all to ourselves. Van Helsing, instead of his little black bag, had with him a long leather one, something like a cricketing bag. It was manifestly of fair weight.
When we were alone and had heard the last of the footsteps die out up the road, we silently, and as if by ordered intention, followed the Professor to the tomb. He unlocked the door, and we entered, closing it behind us. Then he took from his bag the lantern, which he lit, and also two wax candles, which, when lighted, he stuck by melting their own ends, on other coffins, so that they might give light sufficient to work by. When he again lifted the lid off Lucy’s coffin we all looked, Arthur trembling like an aspen, and saw that the corpse lay there in all its death beauty. But there was no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy’s shape without her soul. I could see even Arthur’s face grow hard as he looked. Presently he said to Van Helsing, “Is this really Lucy’s body, or only a demon in her shape?”
“It is her body, and yet not it. But wait a while, and you shall see her as she was, and is.”
She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there, the pointed teeth, the blood stained, voluptuous mouth, which made one shudder to see, the whole carnal and unspirited appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy’s sweet purity. Van Helsing, with his usual methodicalness, began taking the various contents from his bag and placing them ready for use. First he took out a soldering iron and some plumbing solder, and then small oil lamp, which gave out, when lit in a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at a fierce heat with a blue flame, then his operating knives, which he placed to hand, and last a round wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick and about three feet long. One end of it was hardened by charring in the fire, and was sharpened to a fine point. With this stake came a heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the coal cellar for breaking the lumps. To me, a doctor’s preparations for work of any kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect of these things on both Arthur and Quincey was to cause them a sort of consternation. They both, however, kept their courage, and remained silent and quiet.
When all was ready, Van Helsing said, “Before we do anything, let me tell you this. It is out of the lore and experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the UnDead. When they become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality. They cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world. For all that die from the preying of the Undead become themselves Undead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water. Friend Arthur, if you had met that kiss which you know of before poor Lucy die, or again, last night when you open your arms to her, you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would for all time make more of those Un-Deads that so have filled us with horror. The career of this so unhappy dear lady is but just begun. Those children whose blood she sucked are not as yet so much the worse, but if she lives on, UnDead, more and more they lose their blood and by her power over them they come to her, and so she draw their blood with that so wicked mouth. But if she die in truth, then all cease. The tiny wounds of the throats disappear, and they go back to their play unknowing ever of what has been. But of the most blessed of all, when this now UnDead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free. Instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day, she shall take her place with the other Angels. So that, my friend, it will be a blessed hand for her that shall strike the blow that sets her free. To this I am willing, but is there none amongst us who has a better right? Will it be no joy to think of hereafter in the silence of the night when sleep is not, ‘It was my hand that sent her to the stars. It was the hand of him that loved her best, the hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose?’ Tell me if there be such a one amongst us?”
We all looked at Arthur. He saw too, what we all did, the infinite kindness which suggested that his should be the hand which would restore Lucy to us as a holy, and not an unholy, memory. He stepped forward and said bravely, though his hand trembled, and his face was as pale as snow, “My true friend, from the bottom of my broken heart I thank you. Tell me what I am to do, and I shall not falter!” Van Helsing laid a hand on his shoulder, and said:—
“Brave lad! A moment’s courage, and it is done. This stake must be driven through her. It well be a fearful ordeal, be not deceived in that, but it will be only a short time, and you will then rejoice more than your pain was great. From this grim tomb you will emerge as though you tread on air. But you must not falter when once you have begun. Only think that we, your true friends, are round you, and that we pray for you all the time.”
“Go on,” said Arthur hoarsely. “Tell me what I am to do.”
“Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place to the point over the heart, and the hammer in your right. Then when we begin our prayer for the dead, I shall read him, I have here the book, and the others shall follow, strike in God’s name, that so all may be well with the dead that we love and that the UnDead pass away.”
Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing opened his missal and began to read, and Quincey and I followed as well as we could. Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with all his might.
The thing in the coffin writhed, and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions. The sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it. The sight of it gave us courage so that our voices seemed to ring through the little vault.
And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The terrible task was over.
The hammer fell from Arthur’s hand. He reeled and would have fallen had we not caught him. The great drops of sweat sprang from his forehead, and his breath came in broken gasps. It had inde
ed been an awful strain on him, and had he not been forced to his task by more than human considerations he could never have gone through with it. For a few minutes we were so taken up with him that we did not look towards the coffin. When we did, however, a murmur of startled surprise ran from one to the other of us. We gazed so eagerly that Arthur rose, for he had been seated on the ground, and came and looked too, and then a glad strange light broke over his face and dispelled altogether the gloom of horror that lay upon it.
There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity. True that there were there, as we had seen them in life, the traces of care and pain and waste. But these were all dear to us, for they marked her truth to what we knew. One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever.
Van Helsing came and laid his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and said to him, “And now, Arthur my friend, dear lad, am I not forgiven?”
The reaction of the terrible strain came as he took the old man’s hand in his, and raising it to his lips, pressed it, and said, “Forgiven! God bless you that you have given my dear one her soul again, and me peace.” He put his hands on the Professor’s shoulder, and laying his head on his breast, cried for a while silently, whilst we stood unmoving.
When he raised his head Van Helsing said to him, “And now, my child, you may kiss her. Kiss her dead lips if you will, as she would have you to, if for her to choose. For she is not a grinning devil now, not any more a foul Thing for all eternity. No longer she is the devil’s UnDead. She is God’s true dead, whose soul is with Him!”
Arthur bent and kissed her, and then we sent him and Quincey out of the tomb. The Professor and I sawed the top off the stake, leaving the point of it in the body. Then we cut off the head and filled the mouth with garlic. We soldered up the leaden coffin, screwed on the coffin lid, and gathering up our belongings, came away. When the Professor locked the door he gave the key to Arthur.
Outside the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the birds sang, and it seemed as if all nature were tuned to a different pitch. There was gladness and mirth and peace everywhere, for we were at rest ourselves on one account, and we were glad, though it was with a tempered joy.
Before we moved away Van Helsing said:—
“Now, my friends, one step of our work is done, one the most harrowing to ourselves. But there remains a greater task: to find out the author of all this our sorrow and to stamp him out. I have clues which we can follow, but it is a long task, and a difficult one, and there is danger in it, and pain. Shall you not all help me? We have learned to believe, all of us, is it not so? And since so, do we not see our duty? Yes! And do we not promise to go on to the bitter end?”
Each in turn, we took his hand, and the promise was made. Then said the Professor as we moved off, “Two nights hence you shall meet with me and dine together at seven of the clock with friend John. I shall entreat two others, two that you know not as yet, and I shall be ready to all our work show and our plans unfold. Friend John, you come with me home, for I have much to consult you about, and you can help me. Tonight I leave for Amsterdam, but shall return tomorrow night. And then begins our great quest. But first I shall have much to say, so that you may know what to do and to dread. Then our promise shall be made to each other anew. For there is a terrible task before us, and once our feet are on the ploughshare we must not draw back.”
Superb building of tension in a quiet way. The excellent contemporary horror writer Gary Braunbeck has written, “Before there can be fear, before there can be terror, there first must be a held breath of sadness and longing.”
With the mood and tone and the deliberate pacing, Stoker gives us our moment of “held breath.”
And then this simple statement of fact—which because of the lengthened moments that precede it has the impact of a punch in the face!
It has to be Quincey and not Arthur who asks this question. Quincey is the practical man of action, the sometimes-blunt American who might be dubbed the “group’s empiricist.” Arthur is reeling and grief-stricken and in no way capable of asking this question.
Stoker’s characters are true to themselves. To state it in modern parlance: They are who they are. And this consistency of character leads readers to total engagement with the narrative.
We are seeing convincing evidence that Van Helsing is a knowledgeable vampire hunter. Moreover he is suited to be the leader of the group. This “time at the tomb” forges Seward, Quincey, and Arthur into the “vampire hunting team”: that is, the nucleus of the team.
There is one more yet to join them.
It’s been a while since I spoke of literary devices. This one is so simple, it’s often not even counted amongst the canon of literary devices. This one can give even a passage of mundane prose a Biblical-like cadence and power. This one is frequently employed in political speeches because of its power.
This one, of course, is repetition.
Here Mr. Stoker gives us: “Never did tombs … Never did cypress, or yew, or juniper … Never did tree or grass … Never did bough … never did the far-away howling of dogs ….”
You can feel the weight of this gloomy dread and dreadful gloom.
Note how Van Helsing has claimed the undisputed leadership of the group. It doesn’t need to be said, but is expressed in gestures, actions, and choices much like the one noted here.
And here’s another gesture, so perhaps it is time to speak of … gesture.
Gesture is physical movement of a character and can be used to reveal personality. Gestures include facial expressions, tics, mannerisms, etc. Gesture is a much-needed component of a work of fiction: It has to be if we are to follow the “show, don’t tell” rule.
But giving gesture to characters has its own set of risks. The first is overdescribing a gesture: He put his hand on the gun, the thumb resting on the hammer, the index finger slipping inside the trigger guard resting on the trigger, the pinky and its two companionate digits fully encircling the grip. He raised the gun, his wrist turning so that the barrel was rotated a full 90 degrees.
Or, instead: He picked up the gun and pointed it.
Of course, clichés are not limited to plot concepts, diction, characterization, etc. We can cliché the heck out of gesture, too, such as the villain who twirls his mustache ends while sneering or the hero who squares his shoulders before marching toward that confrontation with Pure Evil.
But real-life people do all sorts of gesturing, and we want to imitate real life. No, we want to give the impression of real life. We carefully select details, incidents, people, moments—and gestures.
Once more, Stoker acts as the psychologist. Van Helsing and company could never do what “they must” to Lucy, not if they are still perceiving her as Lucy!
Soldiers must dehumanize and demonize “the enemy” if they are to kill the enemy. They are psychologically conditioned in that dehumanization and demonizing process.
Seward, the spurned lover, is no longer seeing Lucy as a person, or even as a dead person. She is a … thing! The members of the group can deal with a nonhuman thing.
Children don’t fare too well in Dracula. Of course, the “child in peril” motif has long been part of the horror lexicon. (You’ll find it in Dan Simmons’s Song of Kali, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, and my own Cursed Be the Child.)
Remember Stoker’s theatrical experience. Can you see how this scene would play on a stage? It works the same way in the reader’s mind.
Here’s Van Helsing as the determined man of action. He’s left behind the occasionally dithering, sometimes calculating sneaky character he had been. He’s been called and he feels chosen, and he is acting well the part!
The man of determined action (Van
Helsing) tells Arthur: “Here’s the evidence!” Then he demands that Arthur, the one with the “most skin in the game,” be the one to make the decision.
The supernatural moment is presented in low-key, not hyperbolic, prose. Stoker lets the reader perceive and acknowledge the weirdness of the act.
Not Lucy, not dead Lucy … a foul thing and not human.
How many budding novelists have begun their narrative with lengthy chapters that do nothing to advance—or even begin!—the plot but instead provide, “Before we can start this story, here’s all the info you need to know, Reader.”?
And how many budding novelists would have begun Dracula with “Before we can start this story, here’s everything known, whispered about, or imagined regarding vampires, their history, their powers, their resting habits, their shoe sizes and inclination to play harmonica …”?
Stoker wisely waits until the sixteenth chapter of his twenty-seven-chapter book to give us this major vampire info session! By now we’re hooked and willing to listen to this monologue.
Stoker does not scrimp on his description of the “terrible task.” There is a time for understatement, but now is not the time. In order to make sure the reader sees the scene in all its horror, precise description is needed.
The writer is always dealing with the question: How much description? The writer provides all the description a reader needs to see a scene on the mental movie screen—all the description and not more than that.
