The Elixir

by George Willson

  Following the train ride and subsequent cab to the Westenra residence, he was greeted by Mrs. Westenra who showed him in to see Lucy. She looked better than she had in recent days. Color was in her cheeks again. When she smiled, it looked genuine instead of a show for her mother to not worry. They shared a pleasant afternoon tea before he bid them farewell, though he promised he would return to check on her the following day.

  Mrs. Westenra showed him to the door, but did not let him go with a simple goodbye. “Be honest with me, John,” she said. Her face showed considerable concern. “Is Lucy going to be all right?”

  “Of course she is, Mrs. Westenra,” Seward quite falsely assured her. He did not know what was wrong, despite being encouraged by her progress. “But I will promise you that Lucy is currently a priority of mine to care for as a doctor. I will be checking on her every day to make sure the improvements she has made continue.”

  “I don’t want anything to be wrong with her,” she said.

  “I understand,” he replied. “I will do everything in my power to make sure she recovers from whatever has been ailing her. I told you I would be back tomorrow, and I will hold to that.”

  Mrs. Westenra nodded and bid him farewell.

  Another long train ride to London, and he arrived back at Purfleet to see how Renfield was getting along. He found the man sitting calmly in the middle of his cell once again with his back to the door patiently awaiting his privilege of returning to his original ground floor cell.

  “How are you feeling, Richard?” Seward asked. Renfield turned his head halfway to the door, and Seward could see a little blood around the corners of Renfield’s mouth. He looked around what he could see of the room with the door closed and noted the remains of a rat not far from Renfield’s reach. He shuddered at the thought.

  “Richard, are we not giving you food?” Seward asked.

  “Food I have, yes,” Renfield said. “Food, yes, but not sustenance. Man does not live on bread alone, but on the glorious nourishment that flows from the veins of the living.”

  Seward turned away from the door. He felt the need to prevent Renfield from feeding on rats, but as he could not control the critters from invading the cells, he could not stop Renfield from doing what he did. He wondered if it might help to put him back on the main floor, but he put that thought aside immediately. He needed to maintain the rules.

  Seward sent a telegram to Van Helsing indicating that Lucy was much improved from when they had last seen her. The following day went much as the previous. Seward secured the asylum with his staff, checked on Lucy who was still doing well, and then returned to the asylum. A second telegram to Van Helsing told of her further improvement.

  On the third day, however, his arrival at Whitby was met by a desperate Mrs. Westenra who took him straight to Lucy’s room where she had taken a serious turn for the worse. Whatever improvements she had made seemed to have disappeared completely.

  “What are we going to do, John?” Mrs. Westenra asked desperately.

  “I have a colleague, Mrs. Westenra, with whom I’ve been consulting on this matter. He’s a wise and learned man whom I have known since my university days. He is an expert on strange ailments such as this. I will write to him at once and ask him to come around as quickly as he can.”

  “Thank you, John. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “I am happy to be of help. I would also like to send a letter to Arthur to let him know what is going on at once.”

  Mrs. Westenra provided everything he needed both to send the telegram to Van Helsing as well as a letter to Arthur to let them both know of Lucy’s condition. Seward remained at Whitby that evening as Van Helsing wired back stating he would meet Seward there as early as he could arrive, which turned out to be first thing in the morning.

  “How bad is she, John?” Van Helsing asked as he met Seward at the house.

  “I can’t explain it,” Seward said. “Two days ago, she looked fine, but yesterday, she was as bad, if not worse, than ever. This morning is no better.”

  They entered Lucy’s bedroom and found her mother sitting with her.

  “Madame, hello, I am Dr. Abraham Van Helsing,” Van Helsing said, greeting Lucy’s mother. “Now, if you would, please wait in the living room so the good Dr. Seward and I can examine your daughter.”

  Mrs. Westenra agreed and Seward closed the door behind her. Van Helsing went over Lucy checking every vital sign in great detail. At this point, her skin was pale, and she was so weak that she could hardly move even though John had made sure she was eating.

  “She appears to be in a state of total blood loss,” Van Helsing finally said.

  “How is that possible?” Seward asked. “She isn’t bleeding out anywhere, and if she had some kind of internal injury, it would have manifested itself externally somewhere by now, I’m certain.”

  “Sometimes, you have to trust your eyes with the evidence even if it doesn’t make any sense,” Van Helsing said. “I agree that there is no apparent reason for her to be suffering from blood loss, but you cannot deny that this appears to be the case.”

  Seward examined her from that perspective, and could not help but agree. Her appearance resembled that of people who had been injured so badly that they had lost a good deal of blood. But even so, the body would eventually replenish itself if the wound would be repaired soon enough.

  “If she is losing blood somehow,” Seward said. “How are we to staunch such a thing?”

  “For the moment, we have to replace the blood she has lost,” Van Helsing said. “She needs a transfusion.”

  With that declaration, Van Helsing pulled a blood transfusion device from his bag and set it up as he spoke. “You will have nothing to worry about, my friend. I’ve confirmed that this device allows no intermixing of your blood with hers. The flow will only be of one direction: from you to her.”

  “Doctor, why should an intermingling of blood matter in this case?” Seward asked, and after a brief moment added, “And the transfusion is to come from me?”

  “Yes, for reasons I cannot yet explain, it must be you,” Van Helsing said, but before any more could be said, the doorbell sounded. “You should prepare.”

  As Seward removed his jacket and unbuttoned his sleeves, Arthur Holmwood appeared in the doorway and looked down at Lucy’s pale face.

  “My God, what is wrong with her?” Arthur asked in a panic.

  “Ah, you must be her fiancée,” Van Helsing said, greeting Arthur.

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” Arthur said, shaking Van Helsing’s hand. “Arthur Holmwood. You must be Dr. Van Helsing. John has mentioned you. Thank you for being here.”

  “It is my pleasure, though I wish the circumstances were more pleasant.”

  “What is going on here?” Arthur asked.

  “She needs a transfusion of blood,” Seward explained. “She is experiencing a massive loss of blood for some reason, and the transfusion will give us time to find out the problem.”

  “She’ll die without it?” Arthur asked.

  “Probably,” Van Helsing said.

  “Then take mine,” Arthur said, removing his jacket. “It is my duty and my right. I would give every drop I have if it would help to keep her alive.”

  “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Van Helsing said. “You appear quite strong, and you are young, so I am sure you can handle quite a bit. John, would you help him prepare?”

  Seward moved a couch closer to Lucy’s bed and Arthur lay down with him arm out as Van Helsing put together a solution to knock Lucy out. A few moments later, Van Helsing was pumping blood out of Arthur, through a series of tubes, and into Lucy. Before long, Arthur began to look pale and Seward let Van Helsing know that it was time to stop. They unhooked Arthur and Seward dressed the wound on his arm.

  He looked back to Van Helsing who, once again, was looking at the marks on Lucy’s neck. His face was still indecipherable as he reached out to touch the marks gently.

  “Dr. Van Helsing
?” Seward began, and then, “Abraham.”

  Van Helsing turned to him, his expression haunted. Seward tried to move past it to speak. “You know something. I can see it in your face. Something you aren’t telling me. Some theory over what this is.”

  “An idea I have, yes,” Van Helsing confessed, “but I need more information to confirm it.”

  “Then share it,” Seward urged. “Perhaps I can help.”

  “I wish you could, John. I really wish you could.” Van Helsing rose from the bed and walked to the door of the room. “She is our responsibility to care for the best that we can. No nurses. No one else other than those of us in this house can know the details of what is going on here, if possible. We will let her rest for now, and return in a couple of days. Stay with her and Mr. Holmwood for awhile tonight. I’ll telegram when we should return.”

  “What can you not tell me?” Seward asked.

  “Something you are honestly better off not knowing, though if this goes the way I fear it may, you will know before long. Yet, once you do know, you will discover that the life and world you thought you knew is so much larger and so much more dangerous than you ever imagined, and some part of you, though you may not believe it now, will wish that you could go back to yesterday and unlearn all of it so that your world can remain simple. It is not unlike the progression from child to adult. One day, you are carefree in the home of your parents, living each day ignorant of what they do for you. The next, you find yourself alone in the world caring for yourself and wondering at what point you were forced to grow up. Who of us, at some point in his life, doesn’t wish to return to that utopian period in our lives when our only cares were what games to play and wishing that bed time did not come so soon?

  “Enjoy these last days of this utopian world, John. I fear that too soon, it will change for you.”

  * * * * * * * * * *

  Van Helsing left the Westenra residence and took the waiting cab to the station. As he rode along the roads of Whitby, his mind whirled with the situation regarding this poor girl, Lucy. The marks on her neck were all too familiar to him, and he knew her apparent condition well.

  She appeared to be changing into a Fempiror Mutation, and yet, what did not make sense to him was the time frame that John and his friend, Arthur, had given him for the condition. The first phase of the transmutation process took about ten days, but according to them, she has been weak like this for nearly a month. Seeing her again tonight with the clear sign of blood loss, he knew she was changing, but then, she had known mysterious improvement after their initial meeting.

  When one underwent a Mutation transmutation, it never turned back on itself without some kind of external influence. He knew that if one attempted to offset the initial blood loss that accompanied the first phase with a transfusion, one could buy some time, but a cure for the change was always out of his reach. Of course, he had not seen a Mutation for many, many years, and he had actually hoped that none still existed. Witnessing the process again broke his heart.

  Yet, the slowness of the change still bothered him. When a Mutation attacks a human, they generally either drained them or changed them, though the change was often accidental. The implication of Lucy’s condition and the time frame surrounding it implied that the Mutation, or someone around Lucy, remained close to either feed from her multiple times or care for her during the change including giving her blood to counteract the change for a time. This was counterintuitive to the way the Mutation mind worked.

  He paused as he considered this last thought though. Caring for a newly changed Mutation was counterintuitive to almost all Mutation minds. He recalled one specific Mutation that cared for the newly changed, and Van Helsing shuddered to consider that he might not only still be alive after so many years, but actually be in England.

  He shook his head. The notion was ridiculous. What was not ridiculous, however, was the facts that lay before him. Lucy was transmutating into a Mutation. He could see this for a fact. She was changing slowly which meant that either the process had slowed for some reason of its own accord, or someone out there also knew enough about Mutations to deliberately slow it. By extension, that person would not only be in England, but in Whitby and in close proximity to the Westenra house.

  “Driver, stop the carriage,” he called out, and the driver immediately complied. Knowing that a Mutation was so close to that house and the humans he cared for, could he leave them alone there? He needed to work on this problem in private, but he also needed to stay here. He had initially considered returning briefly to Amsterdam, but the idea that there was a Mutation here forced him to consider otherwise.

  “Sir?” the driver asked.

  “Take me to a hotel,” Van Helsing requested.

  “Certainly, sir,” the driver acknowledged and the cab changed its course.

  While he was short a few items that he would have liked to have on hand, he needed to investigate this matter more closely, and he did not wish to leave his young friends either. However, even though the danger was real, he felt that if he just returned to the house, they might feel him unconfident in their abilities, and while they were certainly not equipped to handle a Mutation, the fact that only Lucy appeared to be affected gave him a level of solace that they would not be attacked while there.

  He planned to work tonight, then speak with the locals tomorrow to see if anyone knew of anything else strange in town. From there, he would circle back to the Westenra house for a look around outside, and finally, he would make one last trip home to be prepared for what he knew had to come next when Lucy fully changed. Not only would he need to act quickly, but he also felt he would need to convince not only Seward, but the poor girl’s fiancée that his apparent insanity was truth.

  He knew Seward would be the easier of the two since he trusted Van Helsing as a colleague and to an extent, as a teacher, for although they had been at the college as students, Van Helsing’s aptitude went far beyond Seward’s, and he had helped the young Mr. Seward through the more difficult parts of his studies. He also knew Seward would be more than respectful with Lucy, and that the general public would not think ill of his remaining in her room since he is a doctor.

  As for the fiancée, that would be far more difficult. While Arthur Holmwood was friends with Seward, to convince him of the need to mutilate his lover’s corpse once she had apparently died during the second phase of the change would be no easy task. It would not take much to finish the job when it came down to the end. Mutations were no tougher or harder to kill that any other living thing, but their speed and instinct made them impossible to catch once they were up and moving again. If Holmwood’s grief kept him away from her body, then they would be up against something that humans were not made to fight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Seward remained with Lucy and Arthur throughout the night where they both slept like babies. In the morning, Arthur indicated he was well enough to travel, and Seward checked on Lucy once more before he also left for the day. He returned to Purfleet to check on his affairs at the asylum, including checking on Mr. Renfield.

  Renfield still sat calmly in the middle of his basement cell, with his eyes closed. Seward watched him through the small window in the door for a few minutes before he turned away.

  “Hello, Dr. Seward,” Renfield said without moving or opening his eyes.

  “Hello, Mr. Renfield,” Seward replied. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I hear you walk in the halls,” Renfield said. “Different people walk different ways. I’d never really noticed before. The light tapping of their shoes on the stone floor is unique to each person.”

  “That’s very true,” Seward said.

  “You also smell different,” Renfield continued.

  “I beg your pardon?” Seward said, taken aback by the comment.

  “Everyone has a scent, doctor,” Renfield said. “Surely you, as a medical practitioner would know this. The human animal can smell and be smelled like any other o
f God’s creatures on this earth. Animals can distinguish each other by scent, and it seems that we also all have unique smells to us – as unique as our walks and our faces. Some people try to cover the smells with perfumes and such, but they still remain there, under the surface. Funny that I’ve never noticed that before either. I suppose being down here has had its benefits. I see and hear and smell the world so much differently now. If you were to take away my eyes, I could still see.”

  “No one wants to take away your eyes,” Seward assured him.

  “Are you certain?” Renfield asked, opening his eyes and looking deep into Seward’s. “How well do you know what happens when you’re away? I realized you were gone when I could not smell you any longer. Then, when you arrived, I knew it even before you came to my door.”

  “So tell me about what happens when I’m away,” Seward said.

  “When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” Renfield said, “and play they have, I assure you. What do the mice do? What the cat prohibits, of course. Steal the cheese. Make other mice. Toy with the cat’s possessions. And speak of torture and destruction.”

  Seward glanced to the orderly standing beside him who only shrugged. He knew his staff well enough that he knew of some that might variously fit Renfield’s descriptions, but the word of a madman rarely held much weight.

  “No need to be coy, doctor,” Renfield said. “I know who I am and where I sit. I know the value of my words. I do not speak for them but for myself. You may feel free to think nothing of it.”

  Seward was not sure how to respond to Renfield, so he left the cell without a word. He walked to his office and considered whether Renfield might be telling the truth about his senses. To be so finely tuned would be ridiculous. People cannot distinguish smells so precisely, though his claim over the footfalls was certainly plausible. He hardly had any time to consider this further when a telegram arrived from Van Helsing asking Seward to check on Lucy by himself that evening to make sure she was doing all right. He promised to join him the following evening.