The Elixir

by George Willson

  She glanced at Van Helsing’s face wondering what he would say to this. After all, he had come on his own errand, and she was proposing that he go out of his way to help her with her problems. She was not sure what emotion lay behind his eyes as he looked at the pages she held. Fear? Anxiety? She was not certain, but he looked as if he did not wish to take the pages not out of any level of annoyance with her, but because he dreaded what the pages might contain. He reached out and took them from her.

  “Is your husband well?” he seemed to hesitate to ask.

  “His hair greyed during his journey, so he is not the young man I saw depart, but he is coming back to himself.”

  “That’s good,” he replied. “So he is physically healthy then?”

  “To the best of my knowledge.”

  “And you’ll forgive my intrusiveness, I ask purely as a physician, were you able to consummate your union?”

  “Yes,” she answered quickly as a rush of blood flooded her face.

  “I am sorry for the question,” he said.

  “No, I understand,” she cut him off.

  “I will read these through tonight, and I promise to help you both as much as I am able,” he said. “Thank you once again, Mrs. Harker. I will be in touch.”

  With the documents in tow, she showed him out and he thanked her once again before getting into a cab and driving away. She wondered if she was right to confide in him so indiscreetly over Jonathan, but she had to know what happened to him before she could do anything to help him. At best, this Dr. Van Helsing would serve as a disinterested third party, and if he read at least some of it, perhaps he could tell her something that might help Jonathan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Van Helsing had been given a lot to consider following his meeting with Mina Harker. He had listened to her story, and took the diaries she had offered to more clearly explain what she had experienced. More than that, however, her husband had experienced something in Transylvania as well. To Van Helsing, Transylvania was a distant memory – a place he had escaped once and hoped never to hear of again.

  Then there was Mina herself. He felt as if the past he had worked so hard to escape was rapidly catching back up to him in the cruelest way possible, and there was nothing he could do about it. As he rode in the cab, holding the records that Mina had provided, he struggled to keep himself together and not fling everything aside and just escape back to Amsterdam where he was safe. At home, there were no Mutations, no reminders of Transylvania, and no old memories to stab him through the heart and make him remember everything he had gone through in his life. With every clip-clop of the horse’s hooves on the roadway, he fought back the urge to tell the driver to take him straight to the station so he could get out of England.

  Then he looked at the papers he carried, and he knew he could not do that to this poor woman who was not responsible for any of this. He could not do this to John Seward, who had requested he come knowing that his specialty was strange and rare diseases, though no one really knew why he held this as an interest. He also could not do this to the good people of England who had no idea what kind of a creature had invaded their country. They would only be victims if he did not try to do something, and he knew that he would be the only one who could. He may not have been responsible for bringing the monster to England, but if he left, he would be responsible for what followed.

  He arrived back at his hotel, purchasing a newspaper on his way partly hoping to distract himself with local events, and placed Mina’s diary and the manuscript she had so faithfully typed on a table in his room. He had promised to read it before tomorrow, and he had plenty of time. Yet, he dreaded what it might contain because as soon as he read the material, he would be committed to its end. He looked at the newspaper, but he did not feel the desire to read it either. He tossed it on the bed. He steeled himself and sat at the table. He looked at the date at the beginning of Mina’s diary and found it to be the middle of June, and checking the date on her husband’s, it was June 3rd. He decided to read Jonathan’s first.

  Dr. Van Helsing did nothing else all day. He read the entirety of Mr. Harker’s diary, and then he read Mina’s. From these two, he was able to get a more complete picture than Mina could ever give, and it fit together like a glove.

  He knew the name Voivode Draculya as the man who had originally created the Fempiror serum centuries ago, and he was surprised the man was still alive. Add to this that he had purchased a property in London right next door to his friend, John Seward’s, asylum, meaning that Voivode was the new neighbor that Seward’s patient was disturbing in the telegram he received the night Lucy died. Voivode, himself, would be no threat, but based on Harker’s narrative, the old man had a second Fempiror with him as a protector that Jonathan had confused periodically for Draculya himself.

  Other points of the diary described attackers and the “count” climbing walls. He knew these would be Mutations. When Van Helsing was in Transylvania last, there were Mutations living there, and it was entirely possible that they had found their way to the castle where Voivode lived, which he knew was rumored to be in that area somewhere. He was drawn particularly to Jonathan’s account of the three women who attacked him, but they were drawn away from him by the “count.” Since he survived the encounter, Van Helsing once again presumed this “count” was the other Fempiror that stood by Voivode, protecting him.

  He sent Mina a telegram thanking her for the information she provided. He commended her husband for his bravery in the events he experienced in Transylvania and stated that the majority of the events described were quite true, though he wished to speak further with them on it. He assured her that Harker’s mind would recover in time, and he would be fine. After all, most of his unpleasant experience was mentally traumatic more than it was physical, and it certainly was not supernatural. If anything, it appeared that Voivode and his protector made every attempt to shield Harker from everything going on in that area, but in doing so, they had inadvertently driven the man to madness. He finished the telegram indicating that he looked forward to speaking with her again the following day.

  Before going to see her, however, he decided he needed to go to Carfax Abbey and hope that Voivode would be there to speak to him. He went that evening, but though he knocked resiliently on the door to the Abbey, no one answered. This came as no surprise, since it was all too likely that any Fempiror who had come here from the circumstances he could gather from the diary would not wish to be disturbed, and they most certainly would not associate with any humans. He walked around the house to see if he could decipher anyone living there from lights in the windows, but the place was quite dark. He had little choice but to give up on this night, and hope for more luck on another.

  Upon returning to his hotel, he found a telegram from Mina asking if he might meet them for breakfast rather than lunch and that he come to their home in Exeter again so that he could meet and speak with Jonathan. She indicated that if the events in the diary were true, then the monster described therein may well be in London. He felt it would be easiest to get to the bottom of all of this by speaking to them, and so he replied to her saying that he would see them in the morning.

  The next morning, Van Helsing was greeted at the door by Mr. Harker himself who showed him into the sitting room where Van Helsing took the same chair he had when he had visited with Mina.

  “You’re looking very well, Mr. Harker,” Van Helsing said. “By your wife’s description, I was concerned.”

  “I was much worse prior to Mina showing me your letter,” he replied. “That anything in my diary would be anything other than the ramblings of a depraved mind is both comforting and disturbing for me. I confess I was in a fog before, disbelieving whether what I thought I had seen and experienced had really happened. Now, with your assurances that I have not lost my mind, I am in a far better place.”

  “I would like to examine as much information about this trip that you have available,” Van Helsing said. “What ca
me before? What came out of it? Anything at all would be helpful.”

  “Well, it may be worth mentioning that I was not the first solicitor to go to Transylvania,” Jonathan said.

  “What happened to the other one?”

  “He came back dreadfully ill, and then, not in his right mind,” Jonathan explained. “Mr. Renfield was always an effective solicitor, but when he returned, he has had outbursts and fits of violence in between episodes of almost perfect sanity, so I hear.”

  “And where is this Mr. Renfield now?” Van Helsing asked with a sinking feeling as to what might have happened to this man in Transylvania to cause such a condition.

  “He is presently interred in an institution in Purfleet,” Jonathan said. “It is actually next door to the property we sold to Draculya.”

  Van Helsing just stared in surprise for a moment as all of these pieces came together of their own accord. Dr. Seward had mentioned a patient to him that was baffling his diagnoses, and now, it seemed entirely likely that this baffling patient was Harker’s former associate, Mr. Renfield, who had returned from Transylvania in this state. Yet, Harker had said the man did not behave like an animal, but had alternating episodes of violence and sanity. It was something out of character for a Mutation, so what did that make Renfield? And knowing the danger, why would Draculya or his Fempiror protector have a human come into the middle of it? Each interview left him with more questions, though it became clearer that he was dealing with a Fempiror/Mutation situation, and it would be probable that continuing down this path would lead him into contact with all of them.

  “Mr. Harker, I would be interested in any papers that you can give me that would further illustrate both your purpose in Transylvania and anything that you believe might be remotely associated with it,” Van Helsing said.

  As Jonathan left him to gather these things together, Van Helsing was offered the day’s paper from London to read as he waited. The daily news rarely held anything of interest for him, and he only half read the articles as his mind wandered through the information he had learned so far. Everything left his mind, however, when his eyes hit an article about someone called a “bloofer lady.”

  He struggled to hold back any reaction to this as Mr. Harker returned with the papers he requested. He quickly thanked the man for his help and promised to return the papers promptly before hastily leaving them with their paper and purchasing one of his own. He left the papers from Harker in his hotel room and rapidly made his way to Seward’s asylum. All thought of Renfield had left his mind for the moment as this “bloofer lady” was his present priority.

  Seward welcomed him into his study and Van Helsing opened the paper to the page with the bloofer lady story.

  “John, you trust me, yes?” Van Helsing asked, and Seward nodded. Van Helsing pointed to the article in the paper. “I want you to read this with an open mind. As you look at it, think back to everything that has happened to us so far, and be willing to believe the unbelievable or even the impossible, as far as you see the world.”

  Seward read through the story which spoke of children being found or coming home with holes in their necks after dark. The children appear to be weak for what appears to be blood loss, but otherwise unharmed.

  “What do you think?” Van Helsing asked.

  “It is unfortunate that not even little children are spared the evil that runs rampant in our world,” Seward said with a shrug.

  “I mean about the bites,” Van Helsing said, and Seward sighed, clearly understanding this was what he meant when he asked.

  “The bites in the neck could be made by the same creature that attacked dear Lucy,” Seward suggested.

  “What if I were to go one step further and suggest that it was not the same creature, but that Lucy, herself, was the creature that did it?” Van Helsing said.

  “How dare you,” Seward said, rising in anger. “That poor girl endured a horrible death that she knew was coming at the end. It is one thing to die so young, but another entirely to know it is coming. And now you torment her memory within me by suggesting that she lives on, but to torture children?”

  “What interests me is that they survive,” Van Helsing said. “I in no way wish to dishonor Lucy, but if this is her, then she is no longer the woman that you or Mr. Arthur Holmwood fell in love with. I know this will be hard for you to accept, but if you allow me to show you later, we will go to her tomb, and you will see for yourself.”

  Seward sighed and dropped back into his chair. He rested his head in his hand for a moment before looking back to Van Helsing. “All right,” he said. “I will trust you to an extent on this because you have been accurate on everything so far. But I will reiterate that I will do nothing to her corpse.”

  “Agreed,” Van Helsing said. “But before we do that, we will visit the hospital where one of the children was taken in order to examine this for ourselves. Then, after a supper, we shall find our way to Hampstead Heath and the cemetery where the Westenra family mausoleum stands.”

  It was not long before Van Helsing and Seward walked through the halls of the hospital where one of the children was taken after his encounter with the bloofer lady, and they found the physician was a Dr. Vincent, who was a former student of Van Helsing as well as a classmate of Seward. Pleasantries were exchanged all around before Van Helsing asked about the child, and Vincent brought them to the ward where the child was being kept.

  “I thought it was a bite as soon as I saw it, but I can’t fathom what sort of animal might have made it,” Vincent explained. “Besides the wound, the child was a bit weak, but otherwise fine. He is actually the second one we’ve seen like this. We checked over the other and released him, but this one was a bit weaker, so I’m holding him for a week until I can verify that the wound heals.”

  “Very wise, doctor,” Van Helsing said as he looked at the wound on the boy’s neck. “And other than treat the wound, have you done anything else?”

  “Didn’t really see a need,” Vincent replied. “He appeared to have lost some blood, but the body will replenish it in time. I’m primarily making sure he stays all right and no diseases become apparent.”

  Van Helsing noted what he needed to see and stepped back for Seward to have a look. As Seward looked at the familiar wound, he had to ask, “What is it I’m looking for?”

  “Note the size of it,” Van Helsing said.

  “Professor, have you seen something like this before?” Vincent asked.

  “I will be honest with you,” Van Helsing said. “We are investigating the source of these bites at this very moment. It was the paper that led us here, and from here, we are continuing on our path to seek out its cause. I regret that I cannot discuss much of it with you, however. Be content in that you are doing the right thing with this boy.”

  “Part of me wishes to argue with you, but I know from my experiences at university that such a venture would be fruitless,” Vincent said. “I will trust your judgment on this matter, but likewise pray that a better explanation may come from you in time.”

  “Time will tell,” Van Helsing said, “but at present, we are left but to thank you for yours.”

  After they had left the hospital, Van Helsing turned to Seward, “Did you note the bites were smaller on the boy than we saw on Lucy?”

  “I know where you’re going with this, but I can hardly believe it,” Seward said. “You must understand that.”

  “I do understand,” Van Helsing said, “and I would think you a dullard if you were to simply take me at my word. No, John, I am going to continue to show you wonders that will challenge your knowledge of the world around you. I can promise that nothing will be the same once this quest of ours finds its conclusion, and I regret that you may not be entirely happy to be so knowledgeable.”

  “What am I to see from here?” Seward asked with a fair touch of concern.

  “We will be going to the cemetery after dinner,” Van Helsing said. “The only warning I would give is to be on your guard
, and to be prepared for anything. It’s all about to change for you.”

  After supper, Van Helsing led Seward through the cemetery where the Westenra mausoleum stood. It was an old, marble structure with ornate, heavy, wooden, double doors that locked from the outside, and in the fading sunset, it looked rather ominous. Once inside, the coffins housing the family including Lucy and her dear mother surrounded them on the walls.

  Van Helsing made his way across the room to Lucy’s coffin, and then paused to glance at Seward to see how he was reacting to this course of action. Seward appeared to be unhappy with this, but keeping his thoughts to himself. Van Helsing felt that it would be unnatural for Seward to feel any other way, and so without a word, he opened Lucy’s coffin.

  They both looked in together, and what Van Helsing feared would happen had happened. Lucy was gone.

  “Where is she?” Seward asked in a panic. “Did you do something with her?”

  “I assure you I did not,” Van Helsing said. “I have not laid so much as a hand upon her since she was with us in Whitby.”

  “Had you come out here previously?”

  “I will admit I have come by the tomb on earlier occasions, but at those times, her body was here. This is the first time it has been gone, but I fully expected it to be so eventually.”

  “Were you hoping it would be today then?”

  “I knew it was high time for her to rise from her sleep, yes.”

  “But she was dead.”

  “And I told you she was not.”

  “I checked her myself,” Seward stumbled over his words. “I confirmed her death. Her body was cold to the touch prior to burial. There is no way she could have had life in her.”

  “People are commonly buried alive, though, aren’t they?”

  “Admittedly so, yes, but in her case, there was no way she could have been alive,” Seward insisted. “She had no perceptible heartbeat, and what’s more, her body was growing colder to the touch. I tested her final body temperature myself, and it was well below that which could possibly sustain life.”