by Dacre Stoker
There is no moon out tonight, and Bram knows it is Ellen’s blood in his veins that allows him to see at all, the life she has bestowed on him, this gift of time.
All around them, the undead stand. Unmoving save for their eyes, which serve as witnesses to what is about to come.
They cross over the hill, and the cemetery comes into view, the large white mausoleum and a hundred crooked tombstones. Ellen squeezes his hand, his arm itches, itching more than it ever has before.
If Bram is now marching to his death, so be it. He has been granted years that did not otherwise belong to him. Ellen has seen to that gift, regardless of her motives. Without her, that seven-year-old boy would have died in his little attic room, the world beyond his window remaining unknown to him.
At the foot of the cemetery, Dracul waves his arm and blue flames burst forth all around, flickering just above the ground. There is no evidence of anything actually burning to produce the flames, only the flames themselves hovering over the soaked soil. Bram is reminded of the strange candles that lit their way as they climbed the stairs of Artane Tower all those years ago.
They walk through the headstones, around the graves, and come to the entrance of the mausoleum. Dracul places a hand against the heavy bronze door. “Deschis!” he commands.
The door swings open, revealing an empty tomb within. A bier stands at the center, but there is no casket resting on it as there should be, only a flat stone surface awaiting its prize. A long iron stake rises from above the bier, jutting out through the roof.
At that sight, Bram’s eyes flash back to the inscription carved above the entrance:
COUNTESS DOLINGEN VON GRATZ
IN STYRIA
SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH
1801
And he understands. “This is to be your tomb.”
“It is.”
“But why?”
Ellen turns to him then. She wants to appear strong, but there is no hiding the tears in her eyes, the red-stained trails they leave on her cheeks and dress. “To keep your family safe, to keep the O’Cuivs safe, to free my beloved Deaglan, this was the only way. Dracul knows he will never fully possess me, not in his heart, not the way he truly desires. At best, he can only possess my physical body. I will allow that much if it means the rest of you remain untouched.”
Dracul scoffs. “Why you care about these people, I will never know. They do nothing but devote each day to rehearsing for their deaths.”
“They are the only family I have left, the only true family I have ever known,” she tells him. “Now leave us for a moment so we may speak in private.”
Bram fully expects Dracul to deny this request, but he nonetheless crosses the cemetery with Emily in tow. The other undead had not entered the grounds; instead, they stand in witness along its perimeter.
Ellen speaks quietly, words only Bram can hear. “I have told you that my blood within your veins will not last. How long you have before your illness returns, I do not know, but be certain that sickness will come back to claim you. I only hope you get the opportunity to live out much of a life before that day comes.”
“We’ll come back for you and free you. We’ll come in broad daylight, when there is nothing he can do.”
She is already shaking her head. “You will never be able to find this place again. Even if by some miracle you do, freeing me will bring an end to the agreement that I struck with him. It will mean death, not only for you and your family but for Deaglan and Maggie O’Cuiv as well, both of whom deserve the opportunity to be free. Do not let Patrick’s sacrifice be for naught. You must promise me you will not try to find me. You will leave me here; this is what I want. As long as Dracul walks the earth, there can be no other way.”
At this sorry truth, Bram can only nod in resignation.
She takes his other hand in hers, and Bram feels something press against his palm; she has slipped him a piece of paper. He shoves it deep within his pocket.
“You must never try to come for me as long as he lives,” she says, her eyes locked on his. “Do you understand?”
Again, he nods.
Thunderclaps above, and Dracul is beside them again. “It is time for you to take your place, my countess.”
Ellen releases Bram’s hands, and he knows this moment is the last he shall ever feel her touch.
Soundlessly, she enters the mausoleum, climbing onto the cold stone bier and lying flat. Emily draws up alongside Bram but says nothing. A number of the undead come up behind them.
Dracul steps into the tomb and runs his hand through Ellen’s long blond hair, rolling it between his fingers. “You will learn to love me,” he tells her. “We have all the time.”
With that, his other hand wraps around the iron stake, and he pulls it down with such force it pierces her breast, her heart, and embeds in the stone beneath her.
Ellen lets out a loud cry, a cry so reverberant it hurts Bram’s ears. Her voice echoes through the valley and pierces the night, slicing through the storm. She ceases to move, and Bram thinks her pain is finally over; he thinks she has finally found rest, but he is terribly wrong. There is a blinding flash as lightning finds the iron stake and rides the metal from the top of the mausoleum to its very foundation in the earth. Ellen’s body snaps up in a moment of agony, her screams lost behind an immense thunderclap; then she slams back down against the bier, sobbing uncontrollably.
Another bolt of lightning follows.
Dracul closes the large brass door, sealing her inside, muffling her wails.
“How could you?” Bram shouts at him. “You claim to love her, then subject her to this?”
“I love her more than you could ever know. But she must pay for her sins if she is ever to be forgiven. I am a patient man. I can wait for her, just as I will wait for you.” Dracul runs one of his long nails under Bram’s chin, over his neck, to his ear, scratching a thin red line in his skin. “Her blood flows through you, granting a life that was not meant to be. Like sin, such borrowed time must also be repaid. Upon your death, I will come for you; I promised to wait until only then. Your soul will be mine to possess for the rest of eternity. You will join all of my other children of the night,” he says, gesturing across the cemetery at the undead surrounding them. “With the final beat of your heart, you will take your place at my side.”
Bram opens his mouth to object, but before he can utter a word, Dracul glares at him with haunted red eyes. “Codail, mo mhac.”
And all goes dark.
LETTER FROM MATILDA to ELLEN CRONE, DATED 22 AUGUST 1868
My dearest Ellen,
I do not know what to make of the past days. Most of this time was spent in a sleepless haze while the rest felt like a waking nightmare. The kind of nightmare where you are being chased and can only run slower and slower as the predator gains ground at your back, grasping for your neck.
I woke this morning in a bed not my own.
I woke this morning in the same clothing I wore yesterday, covered in dirt and grime and soaked to the bone in an unfamiliar bed in a room I vaguely recognized but could not place upon first opening my eyes.
Then I recalled our trip to Munich, I recalled our travels to date, and I sat up with a start.
How I got here, in my room at the Hotel Quatre Saisons, I do not know, for the last thing I remember is being in that small house at the edge of a forgotten village surrounded by nothing but death.
I remembered you, my brother, and my dear sister-in-law walking off into the night on a death march that did not include a single look backwards, not one. If you had looked, you would have seen Thornley trying to rush out after you; you would have seen Vambéry bringing him back; you would have seen the swarm of undead standing all around, unwilling to let us go farther no matter how many bullets I fired into them.
Is there something to be said for ignorance? My brother believes it ha
s its merits.
When I found Bram this morning, also asleep in the hotel room next door to mine, he was in a state more disheveled than mine. If not for his screams, I am not sure I would have found him at all, even so close by, but scream he did, and he did not stop until I had my arms around him and soothed him with words of love, family, and the safety of knowing all of this was close. He did not speak for the longest time, and when he did, I want you to know the first word he uttered was your name. He said it in a single breath, and it pained him so, for whatever thought passed through his head at that very moment caused him to burst into tears. I asked about the disposition of your fate, but he would not tell me, saying only it was something so terrible he could not imagine sharing it with anyone. Perhaps in time this attitude of his will change, but for now I decided not to push him. He has experienced enough already.
In truth, we have all been through enough already.
When his tears finally dried and his wits returned, he said he remembered something of grave importance and began rooting through his pockets. He retrieved a small folded sheet of paper with his name written at the top in your hand. He refused to let me read the contents, however. All in good time, I suppose.
Vambéry is tending to him now. That man—how I so wish to rid our lives of him.
It was Thornley I found most peculiar of all. As with Bram, Vambéry, and me, he awoke alone in an unfamiliar hotel in an unfamiliar room lying upon an unfamiliar bed two doors down from Bram, only he was not alone. Lying in the bed next to him was his wife, my dear sister-in-law, Emily. She did not awaken with the rest of us and, to the best of my knowledge, she still sleeps even as I write this letter. She is not well, of this we are all certain—her skin so pale and icy—but she is back, and she is with Thornley, and that is what matters most. Did you orchestrate her return from Dracul? I suspect as much.
How we arrived at the hotel, nobody is certain. Vambéry inquired at the front desk, and none of the staff recall us returning from our trip yesterday. There is no sign of the wagon we hired or the team of horses. The night manager swears he had not left his post at any time, yet we would have had to walk right past him upon our return. Our rooms are on the third floor, lacking balconies or any other form of exterior access. Unless, of course, you consider the large windows overlooking the square. I do not know about the others, but mine were open when I roused this morning, and my room retained the chill of the night; they had been open for some time—take from that what you will.
We leave for Dublin in three hours, then all of this will be behind us. I have four days’ travel time to decide what I am going to tell Ma and Pa, if anything at all. Perhaps they will be satisfied just knowing I journeyed with my brothers. Perhaps that is all they need to know. In the end, all that really matters is family. Is that not so?
With that final thought, I must prepare to take my leave. Much has transpired, and I need time to absorb it all, to process it all, to understand what I have seen, for every thought becomes stranger as I attempt to unravel and interpret my memories. I will leave you, though, with one silly little question, one that just popped into my head. Although it may seem like a lifetime ago, only ten days have passed since I wrote you my first letter, and I find myself asking the same question I did then—
Where are you?
I feel like I should be closer to knowing the answer, but instead the truth feels further away than ever before.
Affectionately yours,
Matilda
TWENTY-TWO YEARS LATER
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
2 August 1890, 7:23 p.m.—I placed Matilda’s letter atop the walnut box in which it had rested for the past twenty-two years and settled back into my squeaky chair to take in the whole of it. When I first stuffed that box full of our various letters, journals, and diaries, I arranged all of it in chronological order, as best I could, along with the maps from Matilda’s sketchbook. At the time, I believed I had everything, but who was to say? Even Vambéry surrendered his notes, although with much reluctance and much coaxing on my sister’s part. By the time we emerged from Munich and returned to the familiarity of Dublin, none of it seemed real anymore; it was more like a horrible nightmare shared by our small group, and although we had all documented our thoughts, none of us were particularly comfortable with sharing them, not even with one another.
It is peculiar, I suppose, how a group such as ours can come together over an event, then come so completely apart upon its conclusion. That is precisely what happened, though. Thornley immersed himself in his research and work, teaching and practicing medicine. He is held in high regard throughout the United Kingdom—quite renowned not only for medical and social work but also as a patron of the arts. Matilda was married last spring to a French diplomat; I do not know how much he knows of all this. Her devotion to art has been rewarded, her work now hanging in galleries of note, and her Celtic illustrations and essays have been featured in English Illustrated Magazine and other periodicals. For better or worse, Arminius Vambéry has been a constant in our lives, albeit intermittently so. I have gone years without contact with him, and, I must confess, I have been most grateful for those reprieves; then he will make an appearance for a handful of days, as if no time has elapsed at all. He will only tell me he works for the government—I have yet to pin him down as to which government—secretive work best left unmentioned, that is all that is clear. One night after many pints, he let slip that he spent more than a year in pursuit of Maggie and Deaglan O’Cuiv but turned up nothing. Wherever they wandered off to that particular night, they lost themselves to the world. He told me he gave up the search, but he was not convincing, not in the slightest.
I hope they travel fast. I fervently hope they remain out of his reach.
Me? I have made three trips to Munich over the past decades and have been unable to locate that small village, Ellen’s resting place eluding me as well, as she said it would. What was found so easily at the time now able to hide with purpose.
In my professional life, I have muddled on through.
I published a few stories, in addition to my theater reviews, nothing particularly memorable, but the added income has allowed my wife, Florence, and me a few niceties that would otherwise have been hard to come by. We have a son, Noel, who is now eleven years of age.
I devote most of my time here at the Lyceum Theater tending to my good friend Henry Irving. We are coming off a strong run of Macbeth, and we’ve discussed an adaptation of Henry VIII as a next project.
I developed a life here in London, although I am able to return to Ireland quite often. I am happy, content.
I am rambling, of course. Easier to do that than to write about the true reason I put pen to paper this day. The reason that prompted me to pull this walnut box down off the shelf and examine the contents after twenty-plus years.
* * *
• • •
I RECEIVED a visitor today.
A woman.
A woman I never met before, yet one who, in just fifteen minutes, has somehow managed to turn my life upside down and shake it.
I was at my desk, tending the receipts from last night’s performance, when her steady knock at my door broke my focus.
“Mr. Stoker?”
I glanced up to find a slight woman of no more than five feet tall, with shoulder-length brown hair, and fashionable dress consisting of a pleated bodice with a high collar and a comfortable skirt, not unlike something Matilda might wear. The latest fashion, I suppose, not prone to the frivolous tendencies of older generations but styled with comfort in mind. I placed her in her mid-twenties, but her age was difficult to ascertain; she possessed, shall we say, a timeless beauty. A tiny wild white rose was pinned to her lapel.
I set down my pen and smiled up at her. “Yes?”
“Might I have a word with you? My name is Mina Harker.”
I stood up and cleared a chair for her, then too
k my place back at my desk. “What can I do for you, Miss Harker?”
“Mrs. Harker—I have recently wed.”
“Well, congratulations.” I smiled again. “Well then, Mrs. Harker, how may I help you?”
She smiled back, but it was forced, and I could easily see she had much on her mind. This was a woman of deep thought, and I could tell she had carefully planned this visit, mentally organizing that which she planned to say, unwilling to be distracted or derailed.
Mrs. Harker reached into her bag and extracted a sheaf of papers, neatly typed and bound. She placed the manuscript on my desk and pushed it across to me. “I believe we have a common enemy. Arminius Vambéry said you are one to be trusted.”
She did not wait as I read these pages, only said she would return at the same time tomorrow. Then she was gone.
At the mention of Vambéry’s name, I think I knew what this was about, but I did not want to believe it. Even as I began to read, as I flipped through each and every page and took in her words, I did not want to believe. After all, it has been so long.
On the final page, she had scribbled two sentences in hasty script:
Vambéry said you know where this beast hides? Where he goes to lick his wounds?
I considered these sentences for a moment, then turned the manuscript over and found myself staring at the first page, at the two words written dead center:
COUNT WAMPYR
I picked up a pen and drew a line through WAMPYR, and replaced it with DRACUL, then added the letter A at the end, for I had learned that and much more before locking everything away in the back of my mind all those years ago.
The papers then went into my leather satchel. I would not be here when Mrs. Harker made her return tomorrow, perhaps for the best. I was bound for Whitby in the morning and I would read her words again in more detail during the journey. Some would say it was chance she found me now, as I am about to take my leave and begin work on a new novel, a new novel about something very old—an evil amongst us, a truth of the most incomprehensible sort. Coincidence, others would say.
