by Dacre Stoker
“Matilda thinks she spied Nanna Ellen in Paris,” Bram blurted out. “And Patrick O’Cuiv has suddenly risen from the dead only to die again. What else could there possibly be?”
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
10 August 1868, 8:15 p.m.—My brother’s face was long and tired, and I instantly regretted intruding unannounced into his home. Even more, I regretted my outburst regarding Nanna Ellen and O’Cuiv, for the moment I said my piece, the color left his cheeks and I thought he might pass out. I quickly crossed the room and looped his arm over my shoulder. “Help me get him to the sofa,” I told Matilda.
She, too, noticed his reaction, and I caught a sideways glance from her before she braced our brother from his opposite side and aided me in shuffling him across the room.
Thornley fell into the cushions like a drunk hitting the sidewalk and stared up at the two of us, his mouth slightly ajar but saying nothing for perhaps a minute. When he finally did speak, his next word was not a denial, as I expected, but—
“When?”
I frowned. “When what?”
“When to both,” he said quietly. His voice had taken on a raspiness, more like Pa’s brogue with every passing day. “When did you see Nanna Ellen last? And when did O’Cuiv die again?”
Matilda sat beside him on the sofa. “I saw Ellen in Paris only last week, from across the street. I believe she saw me as well, but I lost her in the crowd as I approached. I am certain it was her, though, as I’ve explained to Bram.” She made this last revelation with slight trepidation; a part of her was prepared to argue the point, as she had with me, so she became confused when Thornley did not press her on the topic.
“And O’Cuiv?”
Matilda glanced up at me; I could offer nothing but a shrug of my shoulders. Reaching into her bag, she withdrew a copy of yesterday’s newspaper. For a moment, I thought she had stolen copies of the Saunders’s News-Letter from Marsh’s Library and was relieved to see her bag held nothing else. She placed the paper on the table before Thornley and pointed to the story.
Thornley retrieved a pair of spectacles from his pocket, perched them on his nose, and leaned over the newspaper. He perused the story for a long while, long enough to read the article twice over. He leaned back in his seat and removed the spectacles, cleaning them with his shirttail before returning them to his pocket. “Bram, could you please pass me that glass of wine next to you?”
A full glass of claret stood beside an empty crystal decanter—I handed it to my brother and watched him drink the wine down without a single breath between gulps.
Thornley then placed the empty glass beside the newspaper on the table, studied us both, and sighed deeply. “He has been in my dreams of late, Patrick O’Cuiv. I suppose the stories of what he did, as horrific as they were, stuck with me over the years. Perhaps he is the reason I have not become a father as yet. The idea of murdering your entire family, your wife and children, for no reason other than an inability to put food in their mouths, this terrifies me.”
“Only in your dreams? Did you see him?” Matilda asked.
Thornley fiddled with his empty wineglass. “Not him, no. Not at first anyway.”
My heart thudded. “Not at first? But you saw . . .”
The theater performance I planned to attend now forgotten, I watched as my brother stood from the sofa and made his way across the room to the sideboard. He retrieved a bottle of whiskey and held it out to me. I shook my head. He shrugged and filled the wineglass about halfway, then resealed the bottle and gave the glass a wobbly shake, watching the amber liquid coat the sides, then run back down. Thornley returned to the sofa, took a sip, and let out another sigh.
“The first time I encountered her,” he said, “a couple years had passed since she left us. I was walking down Castle Avenue after purchasing some cod for Ma down at the pier. The day was young; the sun’s rays had yet to burn away the dew, and I remember how it made the toes of my shoes damp. But it felt good, too, to be away from the house, away from my chores, entrusted with the task at hand. Ma gave me two shillings for the cod and said I could keep any change for myself, so I was careful to find a fish that weighed just enough to meet her dinner needs while still depositing a few pence in my pocket.
“I stopped in Roderick’s Confections and ordered a quarter bag of saltwater taffy, cherry-flavored, my favorite. I can still taste that taffy to this day. As I counted out six pence, I happened to glance out the window at the street and there she was, Nanna Ellen, standing on the other side of the glass, watching me as I watched her. She was standing very still, as if I might see past her. And I almost did, for something in my mind did not believe this was her. How could it be? But when I realized it was her on the other side of the glass, I dropped my change on the counter, forgot my taffy, and rushed out the door to greet her, the fish in Ma’s canvas bag swinging from my arm. I expected to find Nanna Ellen standing there, waiting for me, arms wide and a smile across her lips. But when I found myself outside, she was nowhere to be seen. Only a second or so had passed, you understand, but she was gone, vanished. I searched up and down the street; I had a clear view in both directions, but there was no sign of her. She had no time to enter another store—frankly, she didn’t have time to go anywhere—yet she’d gone somewhere. I told myself I imagined it, it was a trick of the light reflecting on the window glass of the storefront, nothing more. I repeated this explanation to myself over and over again as I walked home. Eventually, I realized I left my change and the taffy on the counter, but I didn’t care. Seeing Ellen woke something inside me.”
“Why did you say nothing of this before?” Matilda asked.
“To whom? Ma and Pa would not have believed me, and the three of us rarely spoke back then. I had no one to tell. By the time I arrived on our doorstep, I convinced myself it had all been in my imagination anyway,” Thornley said.
I changed my mind about the whiskey and poured two fingers into a glass, held the bottle out to Matilda, who vehemently shook her head, then carried it back to the sofa and set it on the small table. “You said ‘the first time’ you saw her. It happened again?”
Thornley retrieved the bottle and refilled his own glass. “I was nineteen years old the second time I saw Nanna Ellen; I recall the event vividly as if only a week ago. It was a Saturday. I was in the Trinity Library at one of the small tables towards the back, with windows looking out on the Fellows’ Garden. I had been awake for nearly two full days, preparing for an anatomy exam scheduled at Queen’s that Monday. A thick rain fell for most of the day, and I remember thinking the square would surely flood unless there was a break in the weather. I overheard two instructors discussing the rain over lunch; this had been one of our dampest autumns, and they fully expected the dismal conditions to carry over into an equally harsh winter. Personally, I thought the rain could not have come at a better time because the bad weather kept me off the rugby field and firmly planted in my studies, exactly where I should have been. After I had devoted so many hours staring at texts, the lack of sleep began to take a toll on me—I needed to stand up and walk around in order to stay wake. I found myself drawn to one of the large windows, and I stood there for a good long while, my eyes transfixed on the heavy raindrops as they riddled the deep puddles. The entire ground danced with all this activity. Nobody was afoot, mind you, not in these conditions, the student body and faculty walled away behind closed classroom doors. When I spied a girl in the rain across the square, it gave me pause. She didn’t rush through the storm from one door to the next, as one would expect; instead, she stood perfectly still, facing me, with her arms hanging slack at her sides. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she was observing me as I looked out. And I found something vaguely familiar about her stance. And while she was too far away for me to clearly see her face, I believed I knew her.
“We both remained still for a long while, me peering out into the storm at her an
d her peering back at me, neither of us moving, just staring at each other from a great distance. I am not sure how I knew it was Nanna Ellen, but when the thought dawned on me, there was no shaking it—I was certain, as certain as I am now that I am talking to the two of you. When I embraced this realization, I stepped closer to the window and placed my open palms against the glass. The harsh iciness of the storm bit at my skin, and at that moment the glass seemed extraordinarily thin. Then she was right there—one moment she was across the square, the next she was inches from me, separated only by the window.”
“And it was Ellen?” Matilda asked.
Thornley nodded. “There was no mistaking her; she stood as close as you and I, maybe closer. Her eyes were the deepest blue, and her skin appeared flawless. I think I noticed that first of all, watching the rain trickle down her perfect cheeks. I caught my own reflection in the glass and suddenly thought of myself as old, at least older than she. I think my mind grappled with this calculation simply because the last time I saw Nanna Ellen, I was but a boy; now I was on the edge of manhood, and I could see every one of those years between us upon my face. Not hers, though; she appeared as young as the day she left, as if not a single day had passed.
“She raised her own hand and pressed it to the glass opposite mine, and I swore the window grew colder. Her large blue eyes screamed with a sadness so profound I found myself bordering on tears, unable to turn away from her. Then she was gone. As simple as that. Perhaps I blinked, perhaps I did not, but, either way, she disappeared in that instant. I had full view of the square; as with the candy store all those years earlier, there was simply no place to go, yet somehow she had, leaving not a trace behind.”
Thornley finished and studied his empty glass. I reached for the bottle of whiskey and poured another round for my brother.
I asked, “Was this the last time you saw her?”
Thornley shook his head. “The last time was no more than three days ago, but this final experience was more akin to the first. Emily and I attended the theater for the Friday-evening performance of Caste, and I thought I saw Ellen exit the mezzanine; only a glimpse, mind you, for we were in the balcony, but I am certain this was her. She wore a gorgeous flowing red gown and appeared to be in the company of a gentleman. I considered going to her, but I had no idea how I would explain such a thing to Emily, and I quickly realized how pointless it would be—she would no doubt vanish as I neared, as she had on the other occasions.” Thornley took a long drink, then added, “I think the man who accompanied her may have been O’Cuiv. I recall thinking just that when I first saw him; but believing him to be dead, I dismissed the thought as preposterous. But, now . . .”
“How certain are you?” I asked of him.
“I cannot be sure; the light was dim, and we were far apart, but the man had a similar form and dressed his hair in the same way.” He paused for a moment, then: “There was a child, too.”
“A child?”
Thornley nodded. “Dressed in a beautiful little gown; she looked like a doll. She made me think of O’Cuiv’s daughter, the one who lived.”
“Maggie?” Matilda said.
“Ah yes, Maggie. That was it.” He took another drink. “Of course, it could not have been her; she would be in her twenties by now. From what I recall, she was around six or seven at the time of the murders.”
All of this information puzzled me. “Did Ellen know the O’Cuivs? I don’t recall her ever mentioning them when we were children. Even on that one instance when the O’Cuiv family supped with us, they did not appear to be anything but newly acquainted.”
Matilda said, “We were children. Would we have realized if they were familiar?”
“Ma would know,” Thornley pointed out.
“We mustn’t involve Ma in this,” I said. “Pa, either.”
Thornley finished his whiskey. “Involve them in what? I don’t know what any of this means.”
“It means Nanna Ellen never really left us. All of this means she has been nearby all these years,” Matilda said. “Who or whatever she may be.”
Thornley laughed gruffly. “And what do you mean by that? ‘Whatever she may be’?”
Matilda looked to me, and I immediately understood what she contemplated. We never told Thornley what we discovered in the castle tower the night before Nanna Ellen left us. Nor had we told him what we found in her room, under her bed. We told only Ma and Pa and they both dismissed our story readily. When nothing was found there the following day, these mysteries were never spoken of again.
I gave Matilda a nod. “Tell him.”
And so she did. Nearly an hour passed, and between Thornley and me the whiskey was almost depleted. When she finished, the three of us stared at the embers of the fire; I rebuilt it as Matilda recapped the events.
Thornley turned to me. “You have never seen her? You were always her favorite.”
“No, not once.”
Matilda shot me a glance, then looked back to our brother. “Bram may have been her favorite, but you had some kind of relationship with her, didn’t you?”
He frowned at her. “What on earth do you mean?”
“I once saw you enter her room with a bag; something inside that bag was moving.”
Thornley lifted his glass and took yet another hearty swig. He searched the amber liquid for an answer. When he found none, he finally spoke again. “Ellen sometimes asked me to bring chickens to her room. I didn’t ask her why. I didn’t want to know why. I went to the coop and got them for her and said no more of it.”
A question burned in me then, and I asked it before the will abandoned me. “That day you showed me the chicken coop, all the dead fowl. Was it a fox that killed them? Or did they die at your hand?”
Thornley huffed. “I am not capable of such an act. I assumed it was a fox; I found the chickens that way, just as I showed them to you.” His eyes were glossy with drink, but his speech was still sound. “I think I know why she came to me, why she still comes to me,” he said. He dug deep into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief folded over something. Setting the bundle on the table, he carefully unfolded the cloth. At the center sat a lock of blond hair tied together neatly with a leather band.
My eyes went wide. “Is that hers?”
Thornley nodded. “She gave this to me when I was a lad of no more than three, a year or so after you were born, Bram. I got lost in the forest the day prior—Pa had half the town out searching. They found me near one of the bogs with a makeshift fishing pole in hand, nothing more than a branch with string, and no bait. I told them I planned to catch supper. Ma had quite the fright; she cried for days at the sight of me and threatened to tie me to her leg if I wandered off again. As Ellen tucked me in bed that night, she gave me the lock of hair and told me to always keep it in my pocket; as long as I held it near, she would be able to find me and keep me safe. I know it’s silly, but I kept this in my pocket for every day that has passed since.”
“That may explain why she came to you, but why me?” Matilda asked. “Why would she be in Paris?”
“The maps,” I replied. “The Cimetière du Père Lachaise.”
“The cemetery?” Thornley asked. “What maps?”
I gave Matilda a nod, and she showed Thornley the maps she had sketched as a child, then explained how we came upon them.
“O’Cuiv may be the key,” Thornley pondered aloud after all this discussion, tapping the newspaper with his empty glass. “Ellen hasn’t been found in all these years simply because she doesn’t want to be, but we know where to find O’Cuiv.”
“Where?” I asked.
“His body would have been taken to the nearest hospital for autopsy, for verification as to cause of death.”
“Swift’s is closest,” Matilda said. “Where you work.”
Thornley shook his head. “Steevens’ Hospital next door to Swift’s is mo
re likely. We work in tandem. The morgue is there.”
A burning log crackled, causing the three of us to startle. I set my empty glass on the table; no more for me tonight. “What can we hope to find by viewing his body?”
Thornley waved his finger through the air. “Not ‘we,’ my little brother. If someone is to concoct a plan for a clandestine trip to the morgue, it will be me going it alone.”
Matilda appeared ready to boil over. “We must do this together!”
“She’s right, Thornley. We should all go.”
“Under what guise? As a doctor on staff at the hospital, at least I have reason to be in the morgue. What calling would the two of you have to be there?”
Matilda frowned. “Do not fool yourself, brother. You work with the lunatics, not the corpses. You have no business down there, either. None of us can make an appearance there without drawing suspicion.”
“And now you know the inner workings of the hospital?” Thornley shot back.
“Enough,” I said. “All three of us go tonight. Staff will be scarce. Thornley can gain us admittance, and should anyone inquire, we’ll say Matilda thought she recognized the man from his picture in the newspaper, and we thought it better to bring her in under the cloak of darkness to identify the body rather than go directly to the police and chance a scandal of a very public sort. We will say we didn’t want our sister embroiled in a police matter unless we were absolutely certain she knew him. Any one of your coworkers would do the same for a sister, if access were granted.”
Thornley mulled this argument over, then finally nodded. “I suppose if that doesn’t work, we can blame whiskey for our lapse in judgment.”
“You do reek of it.” Matilda snickered.
Just then, a bell’s ringing cut through the house, a silvery sound I had not heard since I was a child, when I rang such a bell to summon aid from the confines of my sickbed.
