by Dacre Stoker
“Yet, here we are,” she said, gesturing at the newspapers and paperwork littering the table. “And I’m certain that was Nanna Ellen I spied in Paris.”
I took her hand in mine and lowered my voice. “Matilda, you are an intelligent, beautiful, talented woman. You should not waste your thoughts or your time on matters such as these. These are the fantasies of children. Things of fairy tales.”
She squeezed my hand. “When we were children and you told me what you saw, I did not believe you. Even after witnessing Nanna Ellen walk into that bog and not come out, I did not believe you. When we found that disgusting dirt under her bed and it vanished a day later, I told myself we imagined it. When we climbed the steps of the castle tower and found the crate with . . . you know . . . and you told me Nanna Ellen had been in that room a short time earlier, I spent years convincing myself none of these things actually happened. But I cannot lie anymore, not to myself anyway. I cannot go to my grave without knowing what she did to you, what became of her. There is this burning need in me to find answers to all these things, and I fear I cannot move forward with my life until I do. I’m sure you feel the same as me.”
I shook my head. “I rid myself of all this uncertainty as a child.”
Matilda tilted her head. “Did you now?”
“I did.”
“Then why don’t you tell me what became of the ring? Just explain that, to my satisfaction, and we will pretend we did not meet today. Remember the ring, sweet brother? The one we found clenched in the dead hand?”
My chest tightened as my breath caught.
“This man, O’Cuiv, and Nanna Ellen are somehow connected. Of this I am sure, but if you tell me you do not know where the ring is, all of this goes away. I’ll pretend I didn’t see you take it that night. You can go back to your life, and I’ll return to mine, neither of us the wiser,” Matilda said. “Come now, Bram. End this.”
I let out a deep sigh and reached for the silver chain around my neck. I tugged it out from beneath my shirt. The ring dangled from it. It had not left my neck in almost fourteen years.
Matilda flicked the ring with her finger. “Sometimes our deepest fears are the ones we keep closest to our hearts. You’ve never stopped believing, you only stopped admitting you believe.”
I tucked the ring back under my shirt and fell silent for a long while. Finally, I gestured at the papers on the table. “I do not know what to make of all this, but I am willing to admit I am intrigued. If this truly is Patrick O’Cuiv, if you somehow saw Ellen, if there is a chance we can find her and ask her how she healed me, ask her what she did to me, I need to . . . I want to understand.”
Matilda smiled and began stacking all the papers neatly. “That is the inquisitive brother I know and love.”
She reached for her sketchbook and turned to a page near the center. “Do you remember these?”
I pulled the pad closer, my heart thudding. “The maps . . .”
“Yes, the maps.” She flipped the page, one after the other. “All seven of them.”
“I had forgotten these.”
She tilted her head. “Did you? Somehow, I doubt that.”
“The detail is astounding, how you drew so well as a child . . . such a talent will always amaze me.”
She turned the sketchbook back around and tapped at the map, the one of Austria. “You know what amazes me? These marks. The marks that appear on each of these maps. I know exactly what they are, what they represent.”
“What?”
“Cemeteries. Every one of them. And not just any cemetery, but the oldest of cemeteries. Each older than the last.” She looked back down the map. “This is the Zentralfriedhof Simmering in Vienna. I was confused at first because most publications state the cemetery was founded only a few years ago, in 1863, but that isn’t true. It officially became a cemetery that year, but the deceased have been buried at that location for nearly two hundred years prior.” She turned the page. Highgate—London was written at the bottom. “This one here, Highgate. It, too, was officially founded recently. In 1839, the Church of England consecrated fifteen acres as burial grounds. They also set aside two acres for dissenters. Those grounds are the ones I found most interesting, because, like the cemetery in Vienna, the earliest records for this plot date back to the sixteen hundreds. Bodies buried, but not in consecrated ground.”
I watched as Matilda turned the page again, the excitement mounting in her voice.
“The Cimitero Acattolico in Rome—officially founded in 1716 but built adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius, a tomb that dates back to somewhere between 18 and 12 B.C. Bodies were routinely buried there for over a thousand years, long before the grounds were consecrated,” she told me.
Her eyes met mine, and her voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “I must admit, brother, I did not visit Paris only to view art, I also walked the grounds of the Cimetière du Père Lachaise. Like the others, it was founded as a cemetery and officially consecrated in 1804, but the original site was that of a small chapel with burials dating back as early as 1682. The original thirteen graves were never blessed. The Church refused, not knowing who was buried there.”
“Saint John the Baptist in Clontarf,” I said softly. “The suicide graves we talked about as children, that ground is unconsecrated to this day.”
Matilda nodded. “Every cemetery amongst her maps has such graves; burial plots never blessed by the Church.”
“But why would this interest her?”
Matilda leaned back in her chair. “I remember the marks upon the maps distinctly. Each had a circle around the cemetery, and all but the location at Whitby had an X. I think she has visited each of these locations.”
“For what reason?”
“Either in search of something or to place something, that would be my guess.”
I thought about this for a moment. “How does this pertain to the information you found on O’Cuiv?”
Matilda let out a frustrated sigh. “That, I do not know, but I imagine it does; it feels like it does. All of this feels like the pieces of a puzzle fitting together, but the complete image is still unknown.”
My sister turned the pages of her sketchbook, flipping past the many drawings she had made of Nanna Ellen when we were children, not one looking like the last. The same woman but different. She stopped when she reached a new drawing, one of Patrick O’Cuiv, the scars on his arms highlighted in a harsh red. “Ellen, O’Cuiv, these maps,” she said. “It’s all connected somehow.”
She closed the sketchbook then, her eyes meeting mine. “There is one person who probably knows something of all this.”
I could only nod.
“You and I must speak to Thornley,” I heard myself say.
THE DIARY of THORNLEY STOKER
(RECORDED IN SHORTHAND AND TRANSCRIBED HEREWITH.)
10 August 1868, 8:00 p.m.—Emily finally found sleep, and for this mercy I was grateful. It took a substantial dose of laudanum in her evening’s wine to make her do so. I found myself staring at my beautiful wife’s face, so peaceful and content. Her skin glowed in the lamplight with the luster of fine china, her bosom rising and falling in a steady rhythm beneath the soft cotton sheets. I couldn’t help but watch.
Who could turn away?
This state of being was such a far cry from only two hours earlier; I cringed at the memory of it. Her shouting at me from across the library as she hurled volume after volume into the consuming flames of the fireplace, loudly proclaiming, “The Devil breathes within these pages! The voice of Satan himself!” I tried to tell her she was wrong, for the book she held in her hand was nothing more than a medical journal, but when she opened it and read from the pages with eyes as wide as saucers, I knew there was no reaching her. “Bartholomew pressed his lips against Amelia’s bosom and inhaled the stench of death as blood poured from her open mouth and ears!” Even as she re
ad these words, her eyes flickering across some random page, I knew they were a fabrication of her own mind.
Again, this was a medical journal; I caught the page beneath her thumb, and the headline read OBSERVATIONS ON THE TREATMENT OF ZYMOTIC DISEASES BY THE ADMINISTRATION OF SULPHATE. Yet, she continued to read imaginary words in a voice so loud I covered my ears. “It was her life he desired most, the very essence of her soul, and he held her until it was fully his before dropping her body in a heap at his feet, his eyes searching the night for another!”
As if to punctuate this last sentence, she slammed the cover of the book shut and heaved the text into the awaiting flames.
I raced over, tried to hold her, but she fought me. Oh, how she fought me! The strength possessed by her will was that of ten grown men! Of this I do not lie. She shook me off with a start and sent me falling backwards against the chaise. I was grateful for its soft cushions; another two feet to the left, and I would have crashed into the end table. With its surface populated with small china figurines, I might have been injured, and Emily’s nurse, Florence Dugdale, had long been sent home for the night.
When I recovered, I found Emily staring at me, her mouth agape. A moment later, she turned away and seemed to forget all about me as she plucked another volume from the shelf. She had tossed so many books on the fire that she smothered the flames, and the room began to fill with thick gray smoke and the reek of smoldering leather. It was then that I grabbed the pitcher of water from the table and tossed it in her face. She gasped, and her body twitched at the cold shock of it. Her glazed stare focused in a blink of the eye, and her head pivoted this way and that in confusion. I recognized this look and went to her, quickly wrapping my arms around her. “There, there, my Emily. Everything is okay. I’ve got you now. Everything will be all right.”
Her voice at my ear sounded like that of a frightened child, her words nearly lost behind thin breaths. “His red eyes again; they are just the same.”
“Who, my dear? Of whom do you speak?”
“He will come for you, you know. If you injure me, he will come and inflict such wrath on the likes of you,” she said.
“Emily, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re rambling.” I pulled her closer, feeling her heart pounding fiercely against my chest. “I would never hurt you, my love.”
She let out a soft laugh, a tainted giggle. “He’s watching you. Right this very instant, his eyes are upon you, and he is not happy.”
I knew when she entered this state it was only a matter of time before she became violent once again. This momentary lapse was nothing but a respite, so I guided her gently to the chaise. “Wait here, my love. I will be right back.”
I ran to the kitchen and quickly poured two glasses of wine, then retrieved the small bottle of laudanum from the pantry and added nearly double Emily’s usual dose to hers. I stirred the drug into her wine and returned to the library only to find Emily sitting on the floor, the skirt of her dress bunched around her waist like a little girl at play. She glanced up at me with tear-filled eyes, red and puffy now. “Please make me better, Thornley. I don’t want to feel this way any longer.”
Clarity had returned to her, but for how long I did not know. I handed her the glass of wine and sat upon the floor beside her. “I will do everything within my power, my dear Emily. We will beat this illness and send it back to whatever hell from which it came. I promise you my word.”
At this, she forced a weak smile.
I watched as she took a sip of the wine, followed by another after that. The anger and confusion that had lined her face began to fade, and soon her body began to swoon. When at last her eyelids drooped, I ran my hand through her flowing dark hair. “Finish the last of your wine, and I’ll help you upstairs. You need your rest. It has been a very long night.”
“It has indeed,” she said. The words, no louder than a whisper, were garbled.
I helped her lift the glass to her lips and drink, then took it from her weak hand and set it on the table at my side. “Let us get you to your feet and upstairs, my love.”
She nodded and said something I could not make out. I helped her stand, bearing most of her weight. At only five feet tall, she weighed next to nothing, even in this limp state. When we reached the door to the library, I scooped her up and cradled her in my arms, her head resting on my shoulder, then carried her up the stairs to the bed in which she now lay.
Her breathing was heavy, and her chest rose and fell in rhythm. I reached over to her nightstand and wound the small metronome, then released the pendulum, sending it swinging back and forth in a steady tick and tock, a sound she had always found soothing.
A sound that reminded me of a happier time.
It had been nearly a year since she had played the piano in the parlor; the keys were now out of tune and dusty, the candelabra resting atop the grand instrument gone months without being lit. The room seemed deserted and stale, and I rarely entered it anymore.
* * *
• • •
OH, HOW I LONG for my Emily back!
Where is the woman with whom I fell so deeply and completely in love? And who is this being creeping into her body day after day?
The night before last, I found her standing over me in the dark. Her hands, taut, were stretched out before her, fingers quivering as they bent back at a painful angle. She stood looking down at me with one palm held over my forehead and the other over my belly, and from her lips came words I did not recognize. They were, in fact, words, though, of this I was sure, strung together in incoherent sentences. I saw only the whites of her eyes, the irises rolled up and hidden inside.
When she realized I had awoken, the entire episode ended in an instant. She simply dropped her arms, walked back to her side of the bed, and climbed beneath the sheets with her back to me. I could not help but wonder if I had imagined the entire episode, some sort of waking dream, but it felt too real to be a fictitious construct of the mind. The terror I experienced upon waking and discovering her looming over me did not fade, as most fearfulness incited by dreams did moments after waking; instead, it grew, and in that moment I realized I feared my wife. My dear, sweet, lovely Emily—I was afraid of her. For the remainder of that night, and each night passing hence, I slept with a scalpel beneath my pillow, my mind filled with dread of the hour I would be forced to employ it.
I pulled the note from my pocket, the paper now thin and cracking at the folds, dear Emily’s beautiful handwriting worn by my fingers, tonight’s tears rendering it barely legible:
My love, my first and only true love, my heart will be with you today and always. My hand in yours as you begin this adventure.
—Em
She had slipped the note in my shoe for me to find on my first day of teaching at Queen’s College in Galway. Not a day passed without my reading it, the woman who wrote it slowly slipping from my grasp.
* * *
• • •
A LOUD KNOCK at the front door startled me out of my rumination, and I cursed whoever it was calling at such a late hour.
I quickly replaced the note, pulled the quilt from the foot of the bed up to my wife’s chin, and tucked it in around her before hastening downstairs, closing the bedroom door at my back.
I found my brother and sister standing on my stoop when I opened the front door, both soaked to the bone by an icy night rain that must have started while I was upstairs.
“Do you have any idea of the time?” I asked them. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Paris? When did you return?”
Matilda ignored my questions, pushed past me, and stood in the foyer, a puddle of water forming around her on the marble floor. “We need to talk” was all she said, and she shrugged off her coat and hung it on the rack.
Bram remained in the rain until I nodded at him and tilted my head towards the foyer; then he followed after his sister, stomping his
wet boots on the flagstone outside before entering.
Beyond the door, the wind howled something fierce; the rain danced sideways for a moment before falling to earth. I closed the door and engaged the lock.
“Why is it so smoky in here?” Bram asked, starting for the library. “Is your flue closed?”
“Wait!” I shouted, my voice much louder than I hoped.
Bram stopped and looked back at me.
I did not wish for either of them to find whatever remained of the books in the fireplace, or the state of the library in general, for fear of having to explain.
Matilda saw through this immediately and stomped off into the library, Bram on her heels. We found her kneeling at the hearth, peering into the firebox. “I see my disdain for higher learning has found its way to you, brother. Burning your texts . . . I would not have suspected this is how you spent your free time. I am going to stop by unannounced more often, I think. You just became far more interesting.”
“Emily and I had a fight—well, a disagreement. She felt the need to emphasize her point by destroying some of my books.”
Bram snickered. “Can’t she throw a plate or two, like a normal woman?”
I reached into the firebox and pulled three of the four volumes from the smoking tinders and placed them on the hearth. The fourth could not be saved, but there was hope for these three. “She is finally sleeping now, so please keep your voices low so as not to awaken her. She needs her rest.”
I had not shared our troubles with anyone; I had forbidden staff to speak of such affairs beyond the confines of our home. I did not wish to burden anyone with our problems, particularly my family. I would find an antidote to what ailed her and I would do so without garnering attention. The last thing I needed was for the town gossips to learn of Emily’s illness. Should word get out, my medical practice would be ended before it began.
I forced these thoughts from my mind, placed a fake smile on my face, and turned to my siblings. “What brings you to my home on this glorious evening?”
