Dracula, My Love: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker

by Syrie James

  We could not help but laugh.

  WE LEFT CHARING CROSS SIX DAYS AFTER DRACULA’S DEPARTURE, on the morning of 12th October. We brought only one change of clothes with us; and as we crossed the Channel on the steamer, I was grateful for the beautiful, white wool cloak Jonathan had given me, which protected me from the brisk sea air. We arrived in Paris that same night, and took the places secured for us on the Orient Express. Travelling by train night and day, we arrived on the evening of the 15th at Varna, a port city in eastern Bulgaria on the Black Sea, and checked into the Odessus Hotel.

  I encouraged Dr. Van Helsing to hypnotise me every day just before sunrise or sunset, times which he seemed to think were crucial to the telepathic process. Each occasion was a repetition of a similar theme:

  “What do you see and hear?” he would ask me, after passing his hands before my eyes as if casting a spell.

  I now yielded at once, giving him the impression that he could simply will me into speaking and that my thoughts would obey him. “All is dark,” I replied on the first occasion. “I can hear waves lapping against the ship, and the water rushing by.” The next day, I added: “Canvas and cordage strain and masts and yards creak. The wind is high—I can hear it in the shrouds, and the bow throws back the foam.”

  My performance seemed to satisfy everyone. “It is evident that the Czarina Catherine is still at sea, hastening her way to Varna,” Jonathan said.

  Lord Godalming had arranged before leaving London that his agent should send him a daily telegram saying if the ship had been sighted. The Czarina Catherine had to pass by the Dardanelles, the strait between European and Asian Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and which was only a day’s sail away from Varna. So far, there had been no sign of her. When we arrived in Varna, Dr. Van Helsing met with the vice-consul to get permission to board the ship as soon as she arrived. Lord Godalming told the shippers that the box contained goods stolen from a friend of his and received consent to open it at his own risk.

  “The Count, even if he takes the form of a bat, cannot cross the running water of his own volition,” the professor said as we sat over dinner in the hotel’s dining-room that first night, “so he cannot leave the ship. If we come on board after sunrise, he is at our mercy.”

  I alone knew that this plan would come to naught. Nicolae had told me that the professor’s theory about vampires crossing running water was entirely untrue; and more to the point, he was not aboard that ship at all.

  “I will rip open the box and destroy the monster before he wakes!” Jonathan cried.

  “Will we not be suspected of murder if we take such an action?” Dr. Seward worried.

  “No,” Dr. Van Helsing replied, “for if we cut off his head and drive a stake through his heart, his body should fall into dust, leaving no evidence against us.”

  “Why dust?” Mr. Morris asked. “Miss Lucy’s body did not turn to dust when we did the same to her.”

  “She was a brand-new vampire, so her body had not yet decayed. Count Dracula is centuries old. To dust he must now return.”

  Nicolae had been in daily mental contact with me ever since he left England. He had taken the identical route to ours six days earlier, also riding the Orient Express, secretly taking his rest by day in the freight car, in a box of earth disguised as cargo. At this moment, he informed me, he was already at Castle Dracula, making certain necessary arrangements for the action to follow.

  What about the Czarina Catherine? I asked him in my mind. What happens when the ship docks at Varna?

  Wait and see, he replied.

  A WEEK PASSED IN VARNA, WHILE WE AWAITED WORD OF ANY sighting of the Czarina Catherine. During this time, I began to feel very tired and slept a great deal, often well into the afternoon. My appetite diminished, I was often chilled, and I noticed that I looked a bit more pale than usual, which made the red scar on my forehead stand out even more prominently.

  I could see that the men noticed these changes and worried about them privately, even if they did not remark upon them openly to me. They all still believed that I had been tainted on the night that I drank Dracula’s blood. I reassured myself that these symptoms were merely due to the stress of my sleep-deprived nights and days of travel.

  A telegram arrived on the 24th of October, informing us that the Czarina Catherine had been sighted passing the Dardanelles—implying that it would dock in Varna within twenty-four hours. The men erupted in a sort of wild, happy excitement. To everyone’s disappointment, however, the Czarina Catherine did not dock at Varna the next day, or the day after. Four tense days passed without a word about the ship or any reason for its delay. All the men were in a fever of anxiety, except for Jonathan, who I found every morning sitting very calmly by himself in our hotel room, whetting the edge of the great Ghoorka knife which he now always carried with him. The sight of that razor-sharp kukri made my blood run cold as ice, for I could not help but imagine with horror what might occur if that blade ever touched Nicolae’s throat, driven by Jonathan’s stern and unflinching hand.

  Jonathan kept his pledge to keep me in his confidence, and soon convinced the others to do the same. I continued to allow Dr. Van Helsing to “hypnotise” me twice a day, on each occasion repeating the same information. One day at sunrise, whilst I was in my feigned trance, he did something which greatly dismayed me: he opened my mouth to inspect my teeth.

  “So far, no change,” the professor said.

  “What change are you looking for?” asked Mr. Morris.

  “Do you remember how Miss Lucy’s canine teeth grew longer and more sharp in the last days before she died?” Dr. Van Helsing said. The others nodded with quiet gravity. “There are other things too, which I look for. Did you not see? Already, Madam Mina loses her appetite. If she should start to crave blood—”

  “What then?” Lord Godalming asked in a worried tone.

  “We would be obliged to take…steps,” the professor replied regretfully.

  “What steps?” Jonathan cried, appalled.

  A silence fell. Dr. Seward answered quietly: “Euthanasia is an excellent and a comforting word.”

  “Are you out of your senses?” Jonathan cried. “You would put my Mina to death before her time? I will not hear of it!”

  “You do not understand, friend John, because you were not there,” Dr. Van Helsing said. “We all saw the horror of Miss Lucy’s resurrection.”

  “It was not like a flesh and blood woman at all,” Mr. Morris insisted, “but a Thing of wanton lust and terror. Believe me, Harker, you’d rather have your wife dead than roaming the fields in such a monstrous form.”

  My heart pounded in alarm. Dear God! If these men were to become convinced that I was irrevocably becoming a vampire, they meant to kill me! I tried not to think about the fact that it could happen; that Nicolae might have drunk from me one too many times, and that…

  Rest easy, his voice proclaimed in my mind. Whatever happens, those butchers will never harm you. I will be there, my love; I am watching over you even now.

  Where? I thought in reply. Where are you?

  Near-by. I am moving the ship forward. It is a tricky business, commanding the weather.

  I smiled inwardly. Such a casual remark, for such an incredible task. Quickly, I opened my eyes and produced the sweetest smile I could muster. “Oh, Professor! What have I said? I can remember nothing.”

  Jonathan and the others all looked away with guilty faces. “You only tell us what we already know, Madam Mina,” Dr. Van Helsing replied hastily. “The ship, she is still somewhere en route.”

  “She must be held up by the fog,” Lord Godalming observed. “Some of the steamers which came in last night reported patches of fog both to the north and south of port.”

  “We must continue waiting and watching,” the professor said. “The ship may appear at any moment.”

  That morning, a telegram came. We all gathered in the hotel’s sitting-room to read it:

  LONDON
28 OCTOBER, 1890

  LORD GODALMING

  CARE OF H.B.M. VICE-CONSUL, VARNA.

  CZARINA CATHERINE REPORTED ENTERING GALATZ AT ONE O’CLOCK TODAY.

  LLOYD’S LONDON

  “Galatz? No! This cannot be!” Dr. Van Helsing cried in shock, raising one hand over his head for a moment, as though in remonstrance with the Almighty.

  “Where is Galatz?” Lord Godalming asked, growing very pale.

  “In Moldavia,” Dr. Seward replied, shaking his head in stunned frustration. “It is their chief port of entry, about 150 miles north of us.”

  “I knew something strange would happen when that ship was so delayed,” Mr. Morris said tensely.

  Jonathan’s hand went to the hilt of his great kukri knife, and his lips turned up in a dark and bitter smile. “The Count is toying with us. He used Mina’s mind; he knows we are waiting here, so he called in the fog so he could bypass us and outrun us.”

  “I wonder when the next train starts for Galatz?” the professor mused.

  “At six thirty to-morrow morning,” I answered, without thinking.

  Everyone stared at me. “How on earth do you know that?” asked Lord Godalming.

  I blushed. I knew because I had looked it up; because I knew that Dracula was not on that ship at all, and he had said we would be obliged to proceed beyond Varna. “I—I have always been something of a train fiend,” I said quickly. There was truth in the statement, thank goodness; Jonathan could vouch for it. “At home in Exeter, I used to make up the time-tables so as to be helpful to my husband. I have been studying the maps and time-tables all week. I knew that if anything went wrong and we were obliged to go on to Transylvania, we should probably go by Galatz. There is only one train, and it leaves to-morrow as I say.”

  “Wonderful woman!” murmured the professor.

  “What will we find in Galatz?” Dr. Seward asked. “No doubt the Count has already disembarked and is well on his way somewhere.”

  “Then we will follow him,” Jonathan asserted with new-found determination.

  DR. VAN HELSING SPURRED THE MEN INTO ACTION, DELEGATING the work that needed to be done. Train tickets were bought; letters were obtained; authority was granted from the proper channels to provide access to the ship in Galatz; and early the next morning, we all boarded the train which carried us onward on our journey.

  As I sat in my window-seat on the locomotive, gazing out at the passing pasture-lands which rose to distant hills and then green mountains, my anxiety and anticipation grew—for every movement of the train brought me closer to Nicolae.

  When we get to Galatz, what then? I asked him in my mind. His answer came sure and swift:

  You must get them to keep following the box. I will keep it moving ahead of them.

  Why?

  I need to control the time and place where they kill me.

  Then he told me what he wanted me to do.

  WE TOOK ROOMS IN GALATZ AT THE METROPOLE HOTEL. THE others immediately dispersed to see the vice-consul and to make enquiries at the docks and the shipping agent’s. When they returned that evening, we gathered in the professor’s sitting-room and they told me all that they had learned:

  “The Czarina Catherine is indeed in harbour,” Jonathan explained. “The box was taken off the ship by an agent with an order from a Mr. de Ville of London, who had paid him well to remove it before sunrise so as to avoid customs.”

  “De Ville!” Mr. Morris repeated with a shake of his head. “There’s that name again—the sly Devil.”

  Dr. Seward said: “The agent, following his instructions, delivered the box to a man who deals with the Slovaks who trade down the river to the port. But the trader was just found dead in a churchyard with his throat slashed, and the box is gone.”

  “The locals swear he was murdered by a Slovak,” Jonathan said bitterly, “but we know it was the Count who murdered him, to cover his tracks.”

  It was not I, Nicolae said in my mind. I am trying to leave a trail to follow! I have no wish to cover my tracks! That trader was a thief. He tried to swindle my good Szgany partners. But naturally, your men attribute this foul deed to me.

  “What do we do now?” Dr. Seward said.

  “We must think,” Dr. Van Helsing said, sinking into a chair, his brow furrowed in concentration. “We know, from what Madam Mina tell us in her hypnotic trance this morning, that the creature is still inside that box—which I feel certain is now on its way back to Dracula’s castle.”

  “Why does the Count remain in the box, now that he is on land again?” asked Lord Godalming. “Could he not travel apart from his box if he wished, retiring to its comforts only as needed?”

  “Perhaps he fears discovery,” Jonathan said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Seward agreed. “He needed to get away from the city unknown and unseen. And those Slovaks—the locals said they are murdering fools. Should they discover what the box truly contains, it might be the end of him.”

  Hardly. The Slovaks I employed are my friends. They have worked for me for generations.

  “Remember, he doesn’t like bright daylight,” Mr. Morris added, “and by all reports, the weather’s been fair recently.”

  “That is true,” said Dr. Van Helsing.

  Tell them I need to be taken back to my own place by someone.

  “It seems to me,” I put in, “that if the Count is still inside that box, he must need to be taken back to his own place by someone. Otherwise, had he the power to move himself as he wished, he would have gone either as man, or wolf, or bat, or in some other way.”

  “I agree,” said Dr. Van Helsing. “Our problem is this: the box left that ship two days ago in the hands of the Slovak. There are many routes they could have taken. Where is it now?”

  “Why don’t we just go straight up to the castle and wait for it?” Jonathan said.

  The professor shook his head. “The Count may choose to emerge from that box under cover of cloud or darkness, the moment it reach Transylvanian soil. We cannot be certain when or where that will take place. No; we must intercept it en route. But where? How?”

  The men all fell silent, apparently too tired and dispirited to offer any further suggestions.

  Now.

  I said: “May I share my own theory?”

  “Please do, Madam Mina.”

  “We are all agreed, I think, that the box carrying the Count is on its way to his castle in Transylvania. The question is: how is he to be taken? I have given the matter some thought.”

  “Go on,” the professor said.

  “If he goes by road, there are endless difficulties: curious people might interfere, there are customs and tax collectors to satisfy, and there is the added danger that we, his pursuers, might easily follow. Alternatively, he might go by rail; but a train is a closed environment, offering little chance for escape. I think his safest and most secret bet is to go by water.”

  “By water?” Jonathan repeated, sitting up with eager interest. “Do you mean by river?”

  “Yes. Which also fits in with the theory that he needs to be ‘taken back’ by someone. You said that, in my trance this morning, I heard cows lowing and the creaking of wood. These sounds would be consistent if the Count’s box was on the river in an open boat. I have examined the map.” I opened up a map of the region and spread it out on the low table before them. “There are two rivers that lead from Galatz in the direction of Castle Dracula: the Pruth and the Sereth. The Sereth is, at the village of Fundu, joined by the Bistritza River, which runs up around the Borgo Pass. The loop it makes is as close to Dracula’s castle as can be reached by water.”

  These words had no sooner left my mouth than Jonathan leapt up, took me in his arms, and kissed me. “Marvellous!” he cried.

  “Our dear Madam Mina is once more our teacher,” the professor said, elated, as all the men shook me by the hand. “We are on the track again. Our enemy has a head-start, but we will catch him. If we can come on him by day, beneath the sun and on the w
ater, which he cannot cross unaided, our task will be over. And now, men, to our Council of War! We must plan what each and all will do.”

  Men? Dracula’s voice called out indignantly. What, are you not part of this Council of War? What imbeciles these creatures are.

  I struggled to hide my smile. At least they are well-intentioned imbeciles. It was interesting, I thought, that no one had made the connection that my mental link to the Count—which they found so helpful while I was under hypnosis—might also serve to work against them. It seemed a bit ludicrous to me that Count Dracula, whether it was day or night, should need or choose to remain inside a box all the way up-river to his castle; but no one else appeared to suspect a thing. They believed implicitly in the mission they were undertaking.

  A rapid conversation followed. Lord Godalming offered to hire a steam-launch and head up the Sereth River. Mr. Morris said he would buy some good horses and follow along the river-bank, lest by some chance the Count should disembark somewhere.

  No, Dracula’s voice said suddenly. Do not let them split up. The party must stay together, or it will be too difficult for me to control.

  “I think it far better if we all stay together,” I interjected quickly. “There is safety in numbers. The Slovak will no doubt be armed and ready to fight.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Van Helsing, “which is why neither man must go alone.”

  “But if we keep to one party—”

  “No, I think it a better plan to divide into factions,” the professor insisted.

  Damnation. I did not anticipate this.

  Dr. Seward immediately offered to go with Quincey. “We have been accustomed to hunt together, and we two, well-armed, will be a match for whatever may come along.”

  “I have brought some Winchesters,” said Mr. Morris. “They’re pretty handy in a crowd, and there may be wolves.”