Blood of the Impaler (15 page)

So I return to this journal and write, for if I do not somehow occupy myself, I fear that I shall sleep, and I fear sleep as I fear the very fires of hell.

We returned to Whitby by the morning train, and though both Jack and I pressed the Professor to reveal his thoughts to us, he kept his counsel and remained sunk in deep, silent thought.

When at last we were back in the warmth and security of our home, and Jack had fetched a strait-waistcoat with which to restrain the child, and Jonathan (against all medical advice) had braced himself with a snifter of brandy, the Professor seated us all in the drawing room and said, "My dearest friends, I must share with you what I am thinking, what I am fearing."

"A part of that I can surmise," my Jonathan said. He coughed terribly and then continued, "When the Count forced our dear Mina to drink from his foul stream, he placed into her body a plague which did not lose its unnatural power with his own destruction; and she"—he paused, reaching out to grasp my hand and squeeze it so as to show me that he loved me and held me in no way accountable for what had happened—"and she passed it on to our son."

"Yes," Professor Van Helsing said softly, "and the blood of the Count strive even now to control the boy, to impel him onward to acts so unnatural that we cannot begin to understand them. The blood is powerful, more powerful than we ever imagine. It may even now have the power to create beings like the Count, it may even now have the power to restore the dead to undeath."

"And so," I said, weeping afresh, my body shaking with sorrow and dread, "and so, I am damned and my innocent little boy is damned, and we have not defeated the Count. He reaches out, not only from beyond his grave, but even from beyond the end of his own undeath, to destroy us."

"But no, Madam Mina!" the Professor said adamantly. "I do not believe that the power of the Devil is greater than the power of God. I cannot accept so blasphemous a proposition!"

"And so . . . ?" Jack asked. "What can be done? Our lives have been ruined by this creature, Professor. Our Lucy dead, Quincey Morris dead, our friend Arthur desolate and alone, I desolate and alone, Mina carrying this curse within her very body, and now this poor child cursed!"

"It is the blood of Count Dracula which carry this plague," Professor Van Helsing said firmly. "And what is the antidote to any poison? It is the substance which destroy its power. The antidote to the blood of the Count is the blood of the Lord."

I was so greatly distressed that I could not understand his meaning. "Professor," I said, "you must speak to me in simple terms, for I am weak with sorrow and ill with grief."

"The sacrament," he said simply. "The consecrated wine, the blood of Christ. It must overcome the evil blood." The Professor took my hands in his and spoke to me and Jonathan in a voice serious but strong. "My dear friends, I am a son of the Church of Rome, which I believe to be the church of the apostles, and you know as well as I that the centuries have not seen our two churches friends. But the teaching of my church is that the signature of the true church rest in the apostolic succession, in the handing down of authority and power from the apostles to their successors, down through the ages. My church tell me that you of the Church of England are heretics; and yet your bishops and priests stand in the apostolic succession, from Augustine in the seventh century to your Archbishop of Canterbury today. And so when your priests are ordained, it is a valid ordination; and when your priests consecrate the bread and wine, it is a valid consecration; and so we must obtain consecrated wine from one of your priests, and we must force little Quincey to drink it. For only the blood of Christ can counteract the blood of the vampire."

I hear a coach on the stones before the house . . .

It is time! It is time! Father Gordon has returned! I must pause in my narrative. I pray God that when I resume my writing, I shall be weeping with joy and not with sorrow.

21 December. -
Praise be to the Lord God of heaven and earth, Who in His infinite mercy has smiled upon His poor, miserable children.

I must bring this record to a close, for I am liquid with weariness and believe that I can sleep at last.

I have told of the events of the past fifteen days, and the horrible theory that Professor Van Helsing proposed to us. Neither I nor Jonathan wished to believe him, and Jack seemed to grow angry at the thought of the Count's continuing vengeance, but we all knew that the Professor spoke the truth.

And so we waited as the message was sent to Father Gordon at St. Cuthbert's, and so I sat and wrote this record as we awaited his arrival, and so Father Gordon listened with a skepticism that turned to anger and at last to horror as I pleaded and Jonathan begged and Jack demanded and the Professor argued, and in the end he believed our strange tale and returned to his parish church to fetch consecrated wine. It was in the small hours of the morning that Father Gordon returned, bearing with him the silver cruet that contained the ineffable sanctity.

I cannot bring myself to detail the misery of my little darling as Jack and Professor Van Helsing struggled to hold him still and Father Gordon poured the sacred liquid down his throat; I cannot describe in detail the agonized shrieks and the terrified screams that burst from those tiny lips, for I had placed my hands over my ears so as to block out the sounds and at last fled the room, for I could not bear it, I could not bear it. The attempt at purification went on and on, and as I knelt in prayer in the drawing room, I shuddered each time my boy's screams lapsed into silence, for I knew that this rest they were giving him was but a brief hiatus, a time allowed for the holy blood to do battle with the satanic blood; and then, after a time, the screaming would begin again, and my heart would break.

I made no note of the time, but the sun was rising when I heard my boy laugh. I rose from my stiff, aching knees and rushed to the bedroom, and the sight that greeted me filled my heart with such thankful joy that I felt for a moment as if the relief which was flooding me would cause me to swoon. Little Quincey was sitting upon his father's lap, looking very tired and ill, but very happy. Father Gordon, Jack, and the Professor were standing in watchful silence, smiling down at them, and at last the Professor turned to me and said, "The child is ours again, Madam Mina. The consecrated wine has overcome the power of darkness, and the child is again the pure innocent whom we all love so dearly."

I walked forward unsteadily and embraced my child, weeping freely as his little arms wound around my neck and he said, "Mother!"

Enough. Enough. I must rest, I must sleep.

25 December.
- How joyous a Christmas, how good a Yule! My little child is himself again, my Jonathan seems almost stronger for the struggle of these past few weeks, Jack and the Professor are sharing our holidays, and all seems right with the world!

I know that I shall never forget the dire warning that Professor Van Helsing gave me two days ago. The blood of the Count still flows in my veins, and in my Quincey's veins, and shall flow in the veins of my grandchildren and their own children down through the centuries; but we are a religious family, and I have every trust that my descendants shall follow in our footsteps in this regard.

Is it an accident, a coincidence, that Jonathan's illness caused me to neglect the first communion of little Quincey, which should have come at his sixth birthday, and that as he approached his seventh year the power of the Count's blood began to assert itself? That was my error, my fault, my sin, and I shall never allow myself to forget it. I shall see to it that Quincey takes the sacrament weekly, and when he comes of age, when he is old enough to understand, I shall explain to him this entire horrible situation, and I know that he will understand and will guard against the unholy blood for the rest of his life, and he will raise his own children to do the same. And for all that, this burden is not so great, for should not all Christians partake of the sacrament?

And so my universe is brighter this morn. If only my dear Jonathan would heal, would grow stronger, then I would be content. I would be content.

18 February, 1897
. -
The romance has been published, and Mr. Stoker is quite excited about the sales thus far. We expect our first share of the royalties within the fortnight, and it will be greatly welcome, for our funds are almost depleted. Jonathan is frantic with worry as the debts pile up and the bank statement shrinks.

30 May
.
How can such sweetness mingle with such bitterness? How can relief and grief stand so close and embrace each other so? My beloved child faces life without a father. My dear Jonathan has succumbed to the disease. I know that we shall meet again when I too have shuffled off this mortal coil, but now, alone in this room, I am tormented by all my memories and by the absence of that kindest and most faithful of husbands.

I cannot remain here. I must leave, lest my sorrow drives me to madness. I shall leave England and go to America. Angelica, the sister of our late Texan friend Quincey Morris, has invited us to join her in the City of New York, where her husband owns a brokerage firm. She is eager to meet her brother’s namesake.

Adieu
, land of my birth, land of my ancestors.
Adieu
, my dearest love.
Adieu.

Graves at my command

Have waked their sleepers,

Op'd, and let 'em forth,

By my so potent art.

—The Tempest,

Act V, scene i

Chapter Six

H
olly Larsen and Jerry Herman were sitting at a table in the Strand with Malcolm, staring at him with blank, expressionless looks. Neither of them knew quite what to say in response to his unexpected and thoroughly bizarre discourse. He had spread numerous sheets of old, yellowed paper out on the table, and he was pointing excitedly from one to the other and to the book he held in his hand, a new paperback copy of
Dracula
by Bram Stoker.

"And it just explains so
much
!" he was saying. "I mean, take Van Helsing, for example. Lots of Germans are named van instead of von . . . look at Beethoven, Ludwig van Beethoven . . . so nobody ever thought that he was German, not Dutch. Think about it, think about it! If anybody ever tried to check this book out, look into its historicity, they'd have been thrown completely off the track by all the changed names and places."

"Mal . . ." Jerry tried to interrupt.

"So Stoker got the credit and my great-grandparents got fifty percent of the royalties. No wonder my family is well-off! Can you imagine what fifty percent of the royalties from
Dracula
must have amounted to over the life of the copyright? My God, it must have been millions over the years!"

"Malcolm . . ." Holly began.

"The only names he didn't change . . . other than Mina's and Jonathan's, that was part of the deal . . . were the names of people who died. And who would have known or cared about a lunatic like Renfield? When word reached Texas that Quincey Morris had been shot to death, who would have given it a second thought? Can you imagine how many Texans died of gunshot wounds in the 1880s?"

"Malcolm, hold on a minute," Jerry said.

"Lucy Westenra had no family, neither did John Hawkins, Jonathan Harker's employer, so using their names wouldn't have caused any stir." Malcolm paused and took a sip from his glass of burgundy. "But I'm getting off the subject. You see, the whole point here is that . . . well, as everybody knows, when you get bitten by a vampire you get infected somehow, and eventually, when you die, you become a vampire yourself."

"Yeah, everybody knows that," Jerry agreed, his sarcasm going unnoticed by Malcolm. Not so Holly, who poked him in the ribs with her elbow.

"But sometimes a vampire also makes his victim drink
his
blood, and that has a different kind of effect. That's what happened to my great-grandmother. She was forced to drink the vampire's blood, and that's a different kind of infection. She began to take on Dracula's characteristics for as long as he was still alive . . . well, not alive, but you know what I mean. As soon as he was done away with by Quincey Morris and my great-grandfather, the curse seemed to vanish from her. The burn scar on her forehead, made when Van Helsing touched her with the consecrated host, disappeared." Malcolm paused for dramatic effect. "But the point is that the polluted blood was still in her system, and it was passed on to my grandfather, my father, and Rachel and me. Van Helsing told my great-grandparents that it was a permanent element of evil in our systems and could only be counteracted by a constant infusion of sanctity, by a regular taking of the sacrament in church."

"Malcolm . . .
"
Holly began to say gently.

"That's why Grandfather was so worried about my not going to church anymore. He was afraid that the polluted blood would gain dominance. According to him and the diary, that's why I can't sleep at night, that's why sunlight hurts my eyes and I never have any appetite." He looked at Holly. "That's why you and I haven't been good together these last few times. Vampires' desires are not sexual."