Dracula in Love by Karen Essex (13)

With trembling fingers, I placed the cylinder back on the shelf. A few months ago, I could have blithely written Von Helsinger off as an eccentric, a mad scientist in a horror story, a Frankenstein who wished to compete with God as a creator. But too many strange things had happened in recent times. Any rules by which I could deem someone either mad or sane no longer applied.

Jonathan’s experience with the women in Styria reminded me of some of the things that Vivienne had described. Yet Von Helsinger had not leapt to the conclusion that Jonathan was mad. Suddenly, I wanted to see her, to see if her stories held any further clues to these mysteries. But I had no idea if I could convince Mrs. Snead to give me access to a patient at this late hour.

I neatly packed up the volume I had opened and went to put it back on the shelf, but out of nowhere, thunder exploded in the sky, and I dropped the book on the floor. It fell upon the broad plank with an echoing thud. I stooped to pick it up, but the clock chimed half past the hour, and the noise made me drop it again. Frustrated, I fell to the floor and clutched the leather volume to my chest, which was how Mrs. Snead found me.

“Madam?” She came toward me, leaning over me. “Are you well?”

“I dropped a book, that is all. Mrs. Snead, I would like to see the patient Vivienne, the older woman with the long white hair,” I said.

Mrs. Snead took a step away from me as if I had frightened her.

“I realize that the hour is late, but didn’t Dr. Seward tell you to afford me access to what-”

“Madam, I am afraid you don’t understand. It will always be too late to speak to that poor soul now. Vivienne is dead. She died earlier today.”

“That is not possible!” I knew that by my reaction, I must have sounded mad, but the news stunned me. I had just visited with Vivienne, and though she was crazy, she was not physically ill.

Mrs. Snead stared just to the left of my cheek, as if she were addressing an invisible sprite on my shoulder. “She’s dead, all right, poor old soul. She went into paroxysms this afternoon, shivering with fevers and chills and the like. I called the doctor out of his meeting with the older doctor and Lord Godalming and Mr. Harker. It was after you left the room, madam. By the time Dr. Seward arrived, she were gone. I believe he said it were a stroke, madam. ‘She’s out of her misery now, isn’t she, Mrs. Snead?’ That is what the doctor said. He was very sad.”

This unexpected culmination to the day’s bizarre events shattered my already fragile state of mind, and I started to cry. “Please tell me that you are lying, Mrs. Snead.”

“Madam, I ain’t lying. You can see the body if you like.” She offered this with the ease with which she would offer a cup of tea. “’Twon’t be carted off till morning. We use the cellar as the morgue.”

I followed Mrs. Snead downstairs and outside to the rear of the house. A slanted rain struck us as I waited for her to disentangle the cellar key from her bulky ring. She opened the door, and we stepped into the wet, moldering air of a low-ceilinged brick room. A single torch cast light on a cot, covered with an old, graying sheet. Vivienne’s long white hair fell over the side of the cot, hanging almost to the floor, like some lengthy dust ball that had gathered over the years.

We walked closer, and I noticed that the room was used as a wine cellar, walls lined with diamond-shaped wooden bins, many of which were filled with bottles-an odd juxtaposition to the lifeless body on the cot. Mrs. Snead approached the body, and I followed her, unsure why I had come. Without asking me, she pulled back the sheet, revealing Vivienne’s face and chest. She looked as if she were asleep. Her eyes were closed, and the torchlight cast a warm glow on her face, making her seem lifelike and not pale like the dead. She wore a loose, unbuttoned nightdress, and I noticed a tiny drop of blood marring the sleeve. I did not want to ask Mrs. Snead’s permission to lift the sleeve, nor did I think it proper to begin to undress the dead. Bracing myself, I took Vivienne’s cold, stiff hand. Closing my eyes, I began to pray. “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” I opened my eyes slightly. Mrs. Snead’s hands were in the prayer position at her chest and her eyes were shut tight. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…” I continued to pray, eyes open, sliding Vivienne’s sleeve higher up her arm until I saw what I suspected I’d see: a fresh wound at the inner elbow covered with a patch of blood-soaked gauze.

Jonathan returned to our room at midnight, his clothes and hair drenched, and carrying an indescribable scent-dirt, decay, and other odors I could not identify. He took off his coat and boots and dried his hair with a towel, rubbing furiously as if he was trying to scrub off his scalp. After a few moments of this, he dropped the towel, fell to his knees, and started pounding the floor.

“It’s wrong, all wrong!” he cried. When he lifted his face, his cheeks were wet and his eyes wild. He started tearing off his clothes. “I have to get rid of these things,” he said. “They carry the scent of death, Mina. I have seen it and smelled it.”

He ripped off his shirt, tearing off a few of the buttons, which flew through the air and landed on the floor. His suspenders slid from his broad shoulders, and he fumbled wildly with the inlay of buttons beneath the flap of his pants. When he finished, they shimmied to the ground and he stepped out of them. He started to take off his underclothes when I realized that I had yet to see my husband naked.

I went to the wardrobe and opened it. “Would you like your sleeping shirt or your night suit?” When he was ill, he had favored woolen men’s pajamas as advised by the doctors.

“Nightshirt,” he said quietly.

I heard him stripping off his flannels as I removed the nightshirt from the drawer. When I turned around, he was naked but for his socks and garters, and I saw for the first time his lean physique, the triangle of nut-brown hair on his chest, his slim pelvis, and his penis, which jutted straight out from a thicket of dark pubic hair. An unexpected surge of desire shot through my body, and I cast my eyes downward in embarrassment, but they rested on his long thighs, and I felt the thrill of arousal once more. I had been trying to ignore how much I longed for him to touch me, but my reaction to seeing his body left me unable to deny it. Quickly, without meeting his eyes, I went to him with the nightshirt open at the neck, my hands inside it, ready to slip it over his head. He leaned forward, allowing me to do that, and then tucked his arms into the sleeves.

“I am going to put these clothes in the hall so that the laundress will pick them up at dawn,” I said, bundling up the wet mass and holding my breath against the rank odor. I put the clothes outside the door and closed it behind me. When I turned around, Jonathan grabbed me into his arms. “I love you, Mina,” he said.

Before I could respond, his lips were on mine and his tongue was inside my mouth, searing it with heat, probing, searching for something, some answer that I was not sure I could provide. He backed off a little but held me tight against him. “How sweet you taste, and how pure you are.” He picked me up and carried me to the bed, laying me on the velvet duvet. He gathered my hair in his hand. “The first time I saw you, I knew that if my hand ever got hold of this thick black hair I would lose all control.”

I was titillated by his words, but I had no experience with men’s loss of control. The stranger who made love to me in my dreams was the one in control.

“You don’t know how much I want to make love to you, Mina. Do you want me?”

“I do, Jonathan,” I said. “I have longed for this.”

“Let me see you. Let me see what you look like.”

I pulled my nightdress up slowly, revealing my legs. “Go on,” he said. His face was expressionless. I squirmed a little so that I could raise the gown even more, pulling it up to my neck, exposing everything. I could not tell by the look on his face whether he was pleased with me or not. His eyes scanned me as if he were taking inventory. “Beautiful,” he said. “I knew that your skin would be finer than silk.” He saw the heart with the key that he had given me before he had left for Styria and he touched it gently with his finger. “You still wear it? Even after what I did?”

“I have never taken if off,” I said.

His finger snaked its way down my body to graze the wine-stained birthmark on my thigh. “But what is this?”

“It has always been there,” I said.

“It has wings, like a butterfly,” he said, tracing its outline. His trembling finger scoped the entire perimeter and then slid across my thigh. He put his hand over my sex and caressed it very gently, stirring me inside. He closed his eyes and slipped a finger into me. I felt him shiver. “Warm, so warm,” he said. “Living flesh.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me. “You have no idea what to do, do you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I assumed that my husband should kiss me and touch me. That his lips would linger on my neck and other tender places, and that he would put an erect organ inside me. I expected it to hurt. Was I supposed to be more knowledgeable than that?

“Nothing, dear Mina. You are innocent. Thank God you are innocent.” He gave me a weird little grin, and then he lay on top of me. He pulled up his nightshirt so that our skin connected and he kissed me again, slower and deeper and with less urgency than before. I started to melt into his kisses, pressing against his long, muscled frame, and spreading my legs. He took his hard penis in his hand and rubbed it against my opening a few times before slowly sliding it in. Unlike his finger, his organ felt as if it were scorching my flesh. I cried out, but he did not stop.

“Does it hurt, Mina?” he asked. “Tell me the truth.”

“Yes, yes, it hurts,” I said.

“If you are the right sort of woman, it is supposed to hurt,” he said. “I’m sorry. I hate that I have to hurt you, but it makes me love you even more.”

It does not hurt in my dreams, I wanted to say, but this was not a dream, and I knew from common gossip that the first time always hurt.

“I’m going to do it now, Mina,” he whispered into my ear. “Try to relax.” He thrust himself deeper into me, making the pain worse, so much that I thought we were doing something wrong. I found myself appalled at having to endure it. I pushed him away from me.

“Don’t push me away. Prove that you love me. I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to, at least at first,” he said. He looked more desperate than aroused, his sorrow at causing me pain obliterating any excitement on his face. “The pain is a blessing, you’ll see. You have to get past the pain so that we can have our babies. And we must have them. We must create life to counter all the death around us.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant, but with his desperation, I did not think I would get a lucid answer. I took a deep breath and tried to let my body go limp. “Good, Mina. Do not resist me.” He started moving again, and I could feel him get longer and harder inside me. He lifted himself slightly to one side and looked down so that he could watch the thing go in and out of me, as if he had to see it to guide it. He slowed for a few merciful moments, sliding it in and out with great care and fascination.

Suddenly, it began to feel different, better, less hurtful, and almost like pleasure. I stopped panting and let my thighs relax, allowing him deeper access into me. I recognized the same pleasure I had experienced in my dreams, and I caught a glimpse of what lovemaking could be between us after I grew accustomed to having him inside me. But soon, he started moving faster again, and the pain returned. Then he cried out with a force that would have indicated that he was in greater pain than I. With one great propelling thrust, he finished, and I realized that it was over. He let out a deep sigh, buried his face in my hair that was strewn across the pillow.

He rolled off me and onto his back. He would not look at me. He stared up at the canopy. I could see his face because we had not turned out the lamps. I pulled my nightdress down around me.

“Am I so inadequate compared to your previous experiences?” I asked. I was angry and humiliated but still afraid that I had spoken a truth and that he would confirm it.

“Dear God, no. Is that what you think? No, Mina, it is something far more sinister.” His brows twitched and then tightened in an anguished grimace. “We went to Lucy’s crypt.” He closed his eyes again. “Godalming did not believe that Lucy was dead.”

My stomach turned, and I thought I was going to be sick. I sat up, drawing my knees up to my chest and covering myself with the velvet duvet.

Jonathan turned his desperate eyes on me again. “It was Von Helsinger’s idea. He is very persuasive. He is a follower of Mesmer. He will tell you so himself. He can hypnotize a person to do his will!”

“What did he say to you and the others to make you do this thing?”

“After you left the room, Von Helsinger suggested all the blood that Lucy had received in transfusions may be bringing her back to life.”

I went back to that awful moment when the men ejected me from their cabal. “Why did you demand that I leave the room? Was this gruesome scheme in its planning stage before I came in?”

“No. But when I heard Godalming describe Lucy standing over his bed, I-” He stopped talking and tried to collect himself. He spoke slowly, his mouth forming the words carefully. “Mina, for many weeks now, I have felt haunted by the women I-encountered-in Styria. I did not want to speak of it in front of you. At times, I suspected that you were one of them. Von Helsinger calls it paranoia. Forgive me. Now that we are truly man and wife and I have seen your innocence, I realize that I have been suffering from madness.”

He hung his head, and I noticed that the white streak in his hair had grown wider. “Von Helsinger said that visiting the crypt might enable me to leave my fantasies, if indeed they were fantasies, behind me. ‘Who knows, Harker?’ he said. ‘Perhaps an entire world previously relegated to fantasia is opening up to us few explorers. We must investigate. You may be a modern-day Perseus who will find and slay the Medusa!’ He was wrong. I am no hero but a prisoner of fresh terrors.”

I was furious that Von Helsinger had drafted my husband, a man with a tenuous hold on health and sanity, into this grim exploration to appease the doctor’s own fascination with the bizarre. “Tell me what happened.”

“I cannot,” he said. “You are too good.”

“Unburden yourself, Jonathan. Speak of it, and then we will learn day by day to forget it.”

Encouraged by my words, he began to spill out the horrific details of the evening. Godalming’s coachman had taken them to a street near Highgate Cemetery that was known for houses of ill repute. They intimated that they would be spending the evening in one of them, and agreed to meet him at midnight. Lit only by the soft radiance of the moon, they entered the cemetery, making their way straight to the Circle of Lebanon. “As we walked down the path to the vaults, I heard birds screeching from that mighty tree that sits atop the circle of tombs. I knew that it was a bad omen, that we were violating something sacred. I asked them to reconsider before disturbing a consecrated tomb. Seward would have turned around with me, but the others’ wills were too strong. I suppose that I wanted to prove to myself too that Lucy was dead and that Godalming had been hallucinating. I thought if a man like him was letting madness get inside his head, then it would not be so shameful for me to have succumbed to it too.”

With a hammer and chisel borrowed from Lindenwood’s toolshed, they opened the marble door to the crypt. “Godalming took it upon himself to open the coffin. Von Helsinger stood over him, encouraging him like an avid instructor. Removing the screws took an interminable amount of time. I was cold and sweating at the same time, which reminded me of having brain fever, and I feared that I might collapse. Finally, Godalming removed the last of the screws and lifted the lid.” He paused, and I waited for him to continue.

“It grieves me to have to describe it, but this is the condition we shall all find ourselves in after we are shut away in our coffins. Nature is cruel.” His eyes gleamed with a mixture of wonder and revulsion. “Her skin was pale, the color of ice when it is so cold it turns blue. Her lips were an unnatural scarlet, a stain by the embalmer’s hand. Patches of skin had burst open, as if the body were attempting to turn itself inside out.”

Jonathan recoiled at the memory. “I could have sworn that Von Helsinger was disappointed that Lucy was there in the coffin. I think he truly believed-wanted to believe-that the blood had brought her back to life. I could hold back no longer and I said to Godalming, ‘Are you satisfied, sir?’”

He stopped again, recalling the moment. His face flushed with anger. “Godalming looked me dead in the eye and he said, ‘No, Harker, I am not satisfied.’ He took a leather sheath from his sack and retracted from it a knife. The blade must have been nine inches long and sharp enough to slay a large animal. Instinctively, I put my hands up. I thought it was me he was going to stab with it. But Seward stepped in front of me. He said in that calm, dispassionate voice of his, ‘Arthur, I have seen you use that knife to cut a fish from a line. What are you going to do with it now?’

“Godalming laughed at him and said, ‘What’s the matter, John? Don’t you want me to rid you of Harker? Isn’t he the obstacle to your fondest desire?’”

Jonathan waited for me to respond. “Yes, Jonathan, I am aware that Dr. Seward has some feeling for me. I assure you that it is neither welcomed nor returned.”

“Has he made overtures to you?”

“No, nothing like that,” I lied. “When we met in Whitby, he needed someone in whom to invest his disappointed passion for Lucy. Arthur teased him about it one evening at dinner.”

“There was no sense of jesting in the crypt. Godalming ignored Seward and turned to the coffin. He lifted the knife high above his head, and with something like a cry to battle, he thrust it into the chest of the corpse. ‘Now I defy you to come ask for your money, little bitch!’ That is what he said, Mina.”

Life has its moments of great clarity. They usually come retrospectively and rarely at a convenient time. At that moment, I knew to the core of my being that Arthur had married Lucy for her money and had had her committed, and perhaps even killed, so that he might keep it. Dazzled by his title and his charms, Mrs. Westenra had played straight into his hands.

“We must pack our things and leave this place in the morning,” Jonathan said. “I am sorry for what happened to Lucy, but we cannot help her now. That is up to God and God alone.”

At that moment, I put aside all thoughts of vindicating Lucy, of pleasing Kate with my discoveries, of saving any more women like Vivienne from Von Helsinger’s treatments-of anything at all but Jonathan and me saving ourselves. We threw our belongings into a valise, leaving behind the odorous clothing he had worn that night. We planned to announce our departure first thing in the morning and we agreed to brook no arguments for our continued stay. Jonathan and I slept that night holding each other, our arms encircled. We were, at last, a family.

When I woke up the next morning, Jonathan was not in the room. I supposed that he had gone to Von Helsinger to announce our imminent departure. I dressed in the clothing I had laid out the night before. At eight o’clock, Mrs. Snead came to the door with the announcement that my husband would like to see me in Dr. Von Helsinger’s study. I asked her to send someone up for our luggage. “I have not been informed of your departure, madam,” she said.

I assured her that we were leaving immediately.

When I entered Von Helsinger’s office, Jonathan and the two doctors were standing over the desk, staring at a newspaper. Jonathan glared at me with hostility. “You almost had me in your thrall,” he said.

Seward put his hand on Jonathan’s arm. “Let me handle this.” He turned to me. “Mrs. Harker, were you actually planning to leave the asylum this morning?” His eyes completed his thought: So you do not love me after all.

“My husband decided it was time to go home,” I said, deferring the blame.

He picked up the newspaper and handed it to me. There, on the front page, was my own image, staring back at me. The photograph of Kate in mourning attire holding the ghostly baby was side by side with the photograph of me with the mysterious stranger hovering next to me. The headline read: CLAIRVOYANTS EXPOSED IN FRAUD SCHEME by Jacob Henry and Kate Reed.

“Now deny that you are one of them.” Jonathan seethed.

I tossed the paper aside dismissively. “Did you gentlemen not read the article? I accompanied my friends on their mission to expose these frauds. This is but a photographic trick, Jonathan. I don’t know what you are upset about.” The room was thick with tension and with the smoke that churned from Von Helsinger’s pipe, which was turning my empty stomach acrid. I waited for someone to break the cold silence and to draw away the attention of the three men who were eyeing me suspiciously.

“Are you going to deny that you know this man?” Jonathan yelled at me, and I cowered at the ferocity of his voice. I could not speak because the truth was elusive. No I did not know the man. But at the same time he was no stranger to me.

“Mrs. Harker, I think it is in your best interest to tell the truth,” Seward said. “Have you had secret relations with the Count? Do you have some secret history with him that you hid from your husband?”

“With the Count?” I asked. “Who is the Count?”

Jonathan threw his hands up in frustration and then reached them out to me, forming a noose around which I knew he would like to put my neck. “Stop pretending that you are innocent. What an actress you are, Mina! What a performance of guileless virginity you put on last night! When the truth is that you are one of his she devils, undoubtedly practiced in every sordid act.”

My face was on fire with mortification, blood burning over it like an army marauding across a continent. I put my cold hands to my hot cheeks, hiding my face, hoping to make sense of what he was saying.

“Mrs. Harker, do you deny that you know the Styrian count?” Seward’s voice was cool and steady.

Jonathan picked up the paper, pointing to the ghostly figure beside me. “You were in conspiracy with him all along! That is how he found me. You sent me to my ruin! Why, Mina? Was it all in the name of evil?”

“The man in the photograph is the Austrian count?” I felt as if someone had just scrambled a puzzle that I had been working on for a long time, sending its pieces scattering to the wind.

“Enough of this pretense!” The vein slashing the length of Jonathan’s forehead was a vivid purple. Tense muscles ran along the sides of his neck like two columns. He smashed his fist on the desk so hard that I jumped. I believe that if the two doctors had not been in the room, he would have attacked and killed me. “Admit what you have done, Mina. Admit once and for all who and what you really are.”

Von Helsinger spoke for the first time. “Mrs. Harker, do you deny that you have ever seen this man before?”

What could I say? “I have seen him, but I do not know him,” I said. I was too baffled and far too afraid to try to be clever. How could this be the man Jonathan had gone to see in Styria? “I have no idea how he inserted himself into the photograph. He was not in the room. Ask Kate Reed.”

“Who is this Kate Reed?” Von Helsinger asked.

Jonathan spoke before I could answer. “Kate Reed is a brazen creature who has been trying to corrupt Mina for years.”

I could not contain my tears anymore. I broke down, sobbing, and for a while, they let me cry. No one spoke, but the tension in the air was palpable. I made a decision. I thought that if I confessed everything I had been trying to hide-the inexplicable mysteries I had been trying to solve on my own-that someone, anyone, would help me to clarify them. “I do not know this man, but he follows me,” I began.

“That’s better Mrs. Harker. You are among friends here. Tell us everything,” Seward said. The velvety words flowing from his mouth caressed my nerves. “We are doctors. We can help you.” He addressed Jonathan. “Are you willing to listen to your wife’s side of this story?” Jonathan nodded. The men took seats, and I asked for a cup of tea from a pot sitting on a tea cart by the small stove. Omitting details too graphic or sexual in nature, I told them of the night I found myself on the riverbank after sleepwalking. I told them of the rude man’s attack and of the way that the mysterious stranger rescued me.

“This is the first I have heard of any of this,” Jonathan said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid to upset you. I thought I had done something wrong, but I had no control over what happened. I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”

He did not answer, so I continued, relating my experiences in Whitby, about the storm and shipwreck, and how I saw the Count, or thought I saw him, at the abbey. I even admitted that I had received a note from that same person giving me Jonathan’s whereabouts. “If you are his victim, then so am I,” I said to Jonathan. “I have invited none of this.”

Von Helsinger put down his pipe. “Mrs. Harker, the female always feigns innocence when seducing the male. It would be better for you if you would admit your weakness for this man. Then we might be able to help you.”

I started to protest, but Jonathan stopped me. “You told me that you found out from my uncle that I was in the hospital.”

“I did not know how to explain it to you otherwise. I am sorry. You were in no condition to hear another’s bizarre tale.” I started to cry, and Seward handed me a handkerchief. “I had no rational explanation for how he knew where you were, but if he is, in fact, the Count, then of course he knew where you were. But how he knows me, I do not know.”

Seward had been taking notes as I spoke. He continued writing, while the other two men looked at me dubiously. Finally, Seward spoke. “Mrs. Harker, I have listened carefully to your story. I must say, it appears to me that you are obsessed with this man, or the idea of this man, who you say follows you around, saving you and giving you information, entering your dreams, and appearing out of thin air in Whitby to seduce you. You have given this phantom of your own creation extraordinary powers.”

“I did not create him!” I said. “He is there-there in the picture!”

Seward put his hand up to stop me from continuing. “But moments ago you claimed it was a photographic trick. Can you not make up your mind?” He turned to my husband. “Mr. Harker-Jon-let us be sensible. It is very easy for one person to resemble another in a photograph. May I submit to you that the gentleman in the newspaper photograph merely looks like the Count? Might you at least entertain that possibility?”

Jonathan nodded slowly, dubiously. “Yes, that is possible, though the resemblance is remarkable.”

“May I suggest to you that because you were so disturbed to see your wife’s picture in the newspaper with another man, and because you associate all recent bad experiences with the Austrian count, that you are imagining that it is he? I can see how this figure in the photograph might resemble many people. The image is rather blurred, is it not?”

“That is possible,” Jonathan said carefully, considering the idea. He examined the photograph again. “Yes, it is a blurry image, especially the face.” I saw that Jonathan was capable of making peace with an explanation that posited that I was insane.

“Now everyone, please try to follow my analysis, especially you, Jon. I have seen hundreds of women suffering from various forms of sexual hysteria, and I know the symptoms and patterns all too well. Could it be that when Mrs. Harker saw the image of the handsome gentleman in the photograph, which this article proves was achieved with a photographic trick, she fell in love with that image? Already she was prone to sleepwalking and hallucinatory dreams. You were away on business, and so she began to transfer her feelings for you onto this phantom, which she associates with the gentleman who interrupted the attack on her at the riverbank. In Whitby, caught up in Lucy’s obsession with Morris Quince, she felt deprived of romance herself and so escalated her fantasy about this man. She began to have dreams about him, dreams of an erotic and fantastic nature.”

Seward looked at me with accusing eyes, but I was paralyzed by the direction of his analysis.

“As the obsession escalated, Mrs. Harker began to imagine that the man was following her, in love with her, appearing wherever and whenever she required him to take part in her fantasy. She even imagined that he sent her a letter about your whereabouts in Austria. And now, Mr. Hawkins, the true sender of that note, is most inconveniently deceased, so that we cannot ask him about the matter.” Seward shook his head sadly.

I wanted to argue with him that the Count was in fact doing the things I claimed, but how could I be certain? The more I insisted, the more I would sound insane, or that was my reasoning at the time.

“Mrs. Harker, you know what I am about to say, do you not?”

I shook my head.

“Yours is a typical case of erotomania.” Seward turned to Jonathan. “If not treated, the patient progresses into nymphomaniacal behavior. Mrs. Harker knows this is true because she is familiar with certain cases in this very institution.”

“And what is nymphomaniacal behavior?” Jonathan asked.

“The indiscriminate seduction of men, which would prove to be humiliating to both of you. Fortunately, there is treatment available.”

My body went cold. “No, I do not need treatment. I am not ill! I am not the patient here!” I remembered how Lucy’s emotional response to the suggestion of treatment in Whitby gave Seward the confirmation of hysteria he sought, so I tried to calm myself. “Can we not discuss this rationally? I am in perfect health. I have had bad dreams, that is all. Dr. Seward, you, yourself, confirmed this just days ago. Why do you now think I am ill?”

“I did not know the extent of your condition, Mrs. Harker. You were not honest with me,” he said, and then he added, “not honest about many things.” He crossed his arms in recrimination. “You remember what I said about lying and cunning being symptoms of the sexual hysteric? I held you above that, but I now see that I was wrong. You came to me for help. You advised me of your imaginings, but you did not give me the whole truth, and I misdiagnosed you. I am the physician, and I should have seen through your carefully constructed version of reality, but you must let me make it up to you by treating you.”

He turned to Jonathan. “You see, of all animals, woman has the most acute faculties, which are exalted by the influence of their reproductive organs. They are most sensitive creatures, easily susceptible to hysteria. The female body conspires with the female mind. We must be compassionate toward them and try to help them, or the spinning of fantastical tales and hallucinations escalate out of control.”

“Mina, you must submit to treatment,” Jonathan said. “You asked me to come here for evaluation, and I did as you asked. Now it is your turn to accommodate my wishes.”

“Do you want this phantom lover of your imagination to haunt you for the rest of your days, Mrs. Harker?” Seward asked.

My only hope lay with my husband. “Jonathan, please do not let them treat me. Their treatments killed Lucy. They force-fed her and gave her fatal blood transfusions and she died!” I tried not to sound desperate. My mind raced for something to say to get out of the situation-anything to free me from being entrapped in this place-but I was too frightened to think. I was, in fact, the antithesis of the cunning liar of Seward’s description. I felt utterly hopeless to affect my situation. Even Lucy, the great liar who had been manipulating people since her childhood, had not been able to escape Seward’s diagnosis and treatment. What hope had I?

Seward easily rebuked me. “Lady Godalming refused food, made herself weak, and contracted a fever. You know all this, or rather, your rational mind knows this, but your disorder is causing your mind to distort the facts.” He turned to Von Helsinger. “Is that not correct?”

Von Helsinger turned his palm up and shrugged as if to say of course. “The manifestations of Lady Godalming’s disease were the same as Mrs. Harker’s. Obsession, imagining the object of desire is in love with her, insisting that she is love’s victim, et cetera. It is a common female illness, born of the weakness of the female mind, which I believe has a strong genetic component. I have devoted my life’s work to finding a solution.”

“Jon, do we have your permission to treat Mrs. Harker?” Seward maintained treacherous calm.

Jonathan picked up the newspaper again and stared at the photograph. “Now that I reexamine it, I see that could be a ghostly image that resembles the Count. I am sorry that I caused a sensation this morning, but I had such a fright when I saw him, or what I thought was him, with my wife. But it is all for the best. God has been at work here, using this situation to expose Mina’s problem.”

“Very well said, sir.” Seward opened his black bag, extracting a hypodermic kit, similar to the one Mr. Hawkins’s doctor had used.

“No!” I protested. “I do not need medication!” The more I talked, the more I sounded like Lucy. I forced myself to be quiet, but when I saw Seward come toward me with the needle, I started to scream.

Dr. Von Helsinger rang the bell beneath his desk, while Jonathan came to me, wrapping his arms around me. “Just let them help you, Mina. Soon, it will all be better,” he said. Seward stood in front of me holding the long, loaded syringe in his hand, needle pointing to the sky. Mrs. Kranz and Mrs. Vogt came through the door.

“We will be admitting Mrs. Harker this morning as a patient,” Seward said. “Make all the preparations to begin the water cure immediately.”

“What is the water cure?” My heart was racing as Jonathan gave way to the two women, who each took one of my arms. I was astonished at how strong they were, how able they were to subdue my efforts to resist.

“It will relax you. It will expunge all the bad humors from your blood that cause nervous debility, and it will give you peace,” Seward said as I squirmed beneath the grip of the two women. “Mrs. Harker, please do not resist. You don’t want me to hurt you.”

The room went silent but for the sound of Von Helsinger sucking on his pipe, and my silken sleeve being pushed above my elbow.

The drug swept through the current of my veins, carrying with it some numbing agent that caused the tension in my muscles to vanish, rapidly giving way to a loss of interest in rebellion. My arguments and logic for self-preservation dissipated like so much smoke, disintegrating into the air like the fumes from Von Helsinger’s pipe. Waves of apathy rolled through my torso, limbs, and loins, and I was vaguely aware of being carried, of being undressed, of lying alone on a soft bed, of caresses, and of murmurs of comfort breathed into my ear. And then, of nothingness-the sheer relief of nonexistence.

My next awareness was of cold-bitter freezing, arctic cold-enveloping me, as if I had been buried in a tomb of ice. At first, I thought I was a child again. I remembered being sick with chills and thinking that I would die from it. Horrible feelings and images came to me-of being baptized, submerged, and drowned; hands holding me under cold water as I struggled to rise. But as I opened my eyes, I saw two women I did not recognize standing above me. My arms were pinned against my body, which was swaddled tight in a freezing-cold sheet. “Where am I?” I asked through trembling lips. I thought that I had died and gone-where? To the antithesis of hell?

“You are in the water treatment room, dearie,” said one of the women.

I could take in only minuscule amounts of dank air with each breath, but enough to recognize the acrid odor of chemicals. I could not move my head enough to see what was being done to my body, but I felt the scratch of stiff, cold muslin against my skin.

“Help me,” I managed to get out. “I am so cold.”

“We are helping you, dearie. You are taking the water cure. It will do you a world of good.” The woman who spoke did not look at me, but I could see the saggy wattle beneath her grizzled chin move as she talked in a singsong voice that was not at all personal or friendly. “Now be a good girl. You needn’t do a thing but lie there. We have to do all the work.”

I could not believe that they were going to leave me to freeze to death, but both walked away. I heard their bottoms hit chairs, each woman sighing as if she had just exhausted herself by troubling with me. I murmured over and over, moaning, crying for help through my chattering teeth. A few times I bit my tongue, which made me cry. A warm tear fell down my face, one drop of hot liquid in this frigid sea of cold. But no matter how many sounds I made, or how much I pleaded, they ignored me, even once or twice shushing me.

I heard one of the women rise and leave the room, and before long, I heard what I thought was the clattering of knitting needles. I lay shivering, trying to warm my lips with my tongue, which had gone cold too. I was lying on some sort of hard metal slab. The room had a low ceiling of white tile with black grout. I do not know how much time had passed, maybe an hour or more, when my natural body temperature began to rise enough to take a slight bit of chill out of the muslin wrap. I thought that this would signal that the treatment was over. I heard the woman stand up and walk not toward me, to free me, as I had hoped, but to the other side of the room, where I heard the cranking of a pump and of water flowing from a tap.

The next thing I knew, she was standing over me, pouring freezing water over my body. I could not move at all, but my body tried on instinct to escape, bouncing and flailing inside the sheet. This time I screamed and then screamed again, the sound of my shrieks echoing in the room. I thought that surely the sheer loudness would bring someone to my rescue, but my pitiful cries were lost in the pervasive moans that filled the rooms and halls of the asylum. Mine was nothing special, just another anonymous cry of suffering.

Another hour or so passed the same way. The woman had a psychic instinct for the very moment when my body had begun to warm, and at those moments, she dumped more cold water on my already frigid form. I shivered so hard that sometimes I lost consciousness but not for any decent length of time during which I might escape my misery. Finally, I heard the other woman come back into the room, and the two of them began to unwrap the horrible cloth from my body. If I had had the strength, I would have thanked them. My body was rigid and cramped, and I anticipated being wrapped in a warm robe or blanket and told that my treatment was complete. Instead the two women lifted me, one by the shoulders and the other by the hips, and without warning plunged me into a tub of ice water, colder even than the sheet that had bound me. The shock took my breath away. Blackness rose up before me, but I did not faint. The full force of the cold hit every part of me at once, and I began to fight the hands that held me down.

“Oh, dearie, why do you act this way?” The one who spoke pushed my head under the water, and it filled my nose and mouth. I felt myself choking, gulping and drowning with every swallow, the big hands on my neck keeping me down in what would surely be my watery grave. I have done this before, I thought. I knew all too well this feeling of insidious cold water taking me over.

They pulled me out of the water and into the chilly air of the room, which made gooseflesh over every inch of my body. I was shivering hard again and weak in the knees. One of them held me up while the other wrapped me in a blanket. Together, they carried me to a chair, holding me beneath my armpits, while my numb feet dragged on the wet, tiled floor. They sat me down, and I keeled over to one side. One of the women caught me before I slid off the seat and onto the floor, while the other brought a tray with a huge pitcher of water and a glass.

“Water on the inside is as important as the water on the outside,” she said. She poured a glass of water and tried to hand it to me, but I could not lift my arm to take it. She held it to my lips, pouring the cold, unwanted liquid into my mouth. I tried to swallow, but I did not have the strength, and it dribbled out the sides of my mouth and down my neck. “Come now, you must drink the pitcher,” she said.

I was still shaking from the cold bath and did not see how I could down all that water. The small bit that was traveling to my stomach was making me sick. I had eaten nothing since early the night before, but my empty insides were churning. I shook my head: I could not drink any more. The woman holding the glass let out an aggravated sigh. “It’s no use to disobey, miss. We cannot let you out of the room until you drink it.”

“If I drink it, I can go?” I managed to choke out the words. I was still chilled through to the marrow and would have agreed to do anything to get out of the room and back into warmth of some kind.

“Yes, so be a good girlie.” The full glass came toward me, and together, she and I held it to my lips as I drank down the water. I am not sure how I got through the next six glasses, but I did, fighting nausea and remembering that with every sip, I was closer to getting out of that room. It must have taken me the better part of an hour to gag all of it down, but I did it, and when I finished, I waited for release. They pulled me up out of the chair and took the blanket off me, leaving me naked and cold. Rather than head for the door, they directed me deeper into the room, where they opened a metal door and pushed me inside. I heard a cranking noise, and then water rushing through pipes. Suddenly, it came out of a spigot over my head and poured all over me, icy cold again, scaring me so that I threw myself against the side of the stall. But I could not escape.

One of the women yelled out, “Be a good girlie, now, it’s just ten minutes.”

I screamed and beat the walls of the stall for the duration of the shower. I could not believe that any person had survived this treatment. When I could take it no longer, I started to count out loud, sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight, and so on, but nothing seemed to make the time pass fast enough. I was well beyond the point of anything I thought I could endure, and yet I was still alive. Finally, I fell to the cold floor of the stall, letting the frigid water pour over me.

After they released me from the cold shower, they did not bring me back into a warm room but sat me down and forced another pitcher of water into me. I do not know how long it took. I was utterly delirious and convinced that I would never again be dry, never be able to leave that torture chamber, never again wear warm clothes and sit in front of a fireplace with a cup of tea. Just as I was drinking the final glass, I started to remember people I knew who were outside this establishment, people who might help me-Kate, Jacob, Headmistress, even the mysterious stranger. Had I been hallucinating on the banks of the river when he pulled the attacker off me? I had one moment of hopefulness, remembering that rescue.

On the heels of that fleeting moment of hope, the blanket was ripped away, and I discovered that the finale was yet to come. The two women hoisted up my limp, naked body, and plunged me once again into a fresh tub of icy water.

When I regained consciousness, I was lying in a bed. Intoxicated by the small and fragile pleasure of being warm, my first thought was that I was safe. The warmth of the bed lulled me. My body felt weak, as if the substance that willed my muscles to move had been drained from it. As soon as I remembered where I was and what had been done to me, my thoughts turned to methods of escape. I opened my eyes. The single window in the room had two heavy iron bars. The halls were never without attendants, and guards manned the gates. A further and more insurmountable deterrent was that I did not have the strength to move.

I dozed for a while and awoke to the smooth hush of Seward’s voice. “See? She is as peaceful as a lamb, like a sleeping angel.” His words came slowly, like thick syrup from a bottle.

“The water cure purifies the blood of some of its undesirable elements.” Von Helsinger’s guttural notes chimed in. “It is the perfect treatment in preparation for the transfusion; otherwise, the fresh blood has too much to fight against.”

Hoping that my reaction did not show on my face, I fought the urge to open my eyes. I wanted to hear what they would say next.

“I must say, the water treatment brings more peace and tranquility to the female than any narcotic I have ever used,” Seward said.

The men spoke in shaded tones, trying not to wake me.

“She is very still,” Jonathan whispered. “I do not like that she is so pale.”

“Harker, I want you to go to your room and rest. We are going to need your blood for the second transfusion,” Von Helsinger said.

I raced, mouselike, through the tunnels of my mind for something that I could say, an argument that would convince them to let me walk, unscathed, out of the room, and out of the institution. I tried to peek through the tiny slits between my eyelids without alerting them that I was awake. I saw Von Helsinger nod to Seward, who held a syringe in his hand. I shut my eyes tight but heard his footsteps approach the bed. He took my arm in his hand, turning it palm up. My eyes darted open.

“No!” I was so weak that the word came out as a whimper. I tried again, but it was as if I were in a dream where I was trying to run but could not move.

“Don’t hurt her!” Jonathan said, pulling Seward’s arm away. His face, along with the rest of the room, was hazy to me, but I could tell he was concerned and perhaps would forbid them to proceed.

“Do not worry, young Harker,” Von Helsinger said. “We are going to pump her full of brave men’s blood. That is the best thing on earth when a woman is in trouble. Your wife will be cured of her ills and, with the superior blood, will bear you strong children. That is what you want, is it not?”

“Even the most benign medical procedures can be disturbing to the layman,” Seward said. “We will send for you when we’re ready.”

Jonathan came to the bed and kissed my forehead. “You are going to get better, Mina. The doctors are going to make you well again.”

I reached up with whatever strength I had and clutched at his shirt, but I did not have the strength to hold it. “Do not let them,” I whispered, my words slurred.

Jonathan’s brown eyes, soft with concern, were searching mine. “What did you say?”

“Lucy.” I whispered her name as best I could. The syllables dripped slowly from my numb lips.

“I believe that she is calling for Lucy,” Jonathan said to Seward.

Seward tried to move Jonathan aside. “She is hallucinating. Best to let her stay drowsy.”

Jonathan gripped the doctor’s arm. “Lucy died here. You must promise me that you won’t let that happen to Mina. I must have your guarantee.”

Oh steadfast reader, how many times do we revisit the past and wish that we had made differentt choices? Even at that moment, when I was virtually unconscious, I rued my decision to spare Jonathan the worst details of what the doctors had done to Lucy because I had feared that their gruesome aspects might impede his recovery. Why had I not given him her letters to read for himself? I believed that in protecting him, I was acting in his higher interest; little did I know that I was possibly signing my own death warrant.

“Lady Godalming was given the blood as a last resort to save her from acute anemia. Your wife is physically strong. With the blood, she will also gain strength of mind,” Von Helsinger said. “But the donor of blood must also be in a state of relaxation to achieve a beneficial result. Perhaps the blood of Lord Godalming failed to save his wife because he was in an excitable state at the time.”

“No wonder he is having nightmares,” Jonathan said thoughtfully. “He believes that he failed his wife. That will not happen here, sirs.”

“I will take good care of her,” Seward said. “You can trust me.”

“I do trust you,” Jonathan said. After all, who had stepped in front of Godalming as he wielded his fishing knife at Jonathan in Lucy’s crypt? Of course Jonathan would trust Seward.

Jonathan leaned over me and took my limp hand. “Good-bye, Mina, darling,” he said, with a little catch in his throat. He kissed my hand and then squeezed it tight before turning away. I tried to speak again, but he receded from me, and I heard his footsteps as he walked away.

Von Helsinger closed the door behind him and stood over the bed. “Now be a good little miss,” he said. Seward held my arm while Von Helsinger stroked it up and down. He put his monocle to his eye and examined me. “Such lovely skin, like a little baby’s.” He looked up and down my body, moving the neckline of my nightdress aside and slipping his hand inside, putting it over my chest. Then he cupped it under my left breast. “But she is not a little baby after all.” He left his hand on my breast for a long while, looking up to the ceiling. Finally he moved it away. “The heart rate is good,” he said. “You may give the injection now.”

Seward took my arm in his hand. I tried to jerk it away, but he said, “No one will hurt you if you do not resist.” With brawny fingers, Von Helsinger held my arm in place while Seward slowly traced the lines of my veins from shoulder to wrist and back with his finger. “What a fine and delicate network,” he said as his finger slid the length of my inner arm, making me squirm. “As if a master painter has been here with his brush.” He caressed the sensitive skin near the top of my underarm. “I think you like that,” he said, smiling.

“This is good!” Von Helsinger said enthusiastically. “She is getting more receptive to the blood.”

Seward retraced the line of my vein back down my arm, stopping at my inner elbow, gently teasing the crease. “Here, I think,” he said, and he brought the needle to that place and stuck it in my vein.

I felt the sting of the injection and the burn of the medicine as it flooded my arm. He rubbed the spot where the needle went in and then put his hand on my face, caressing my cheek. “Sweet Mina,” he said with a wry laugh. Von Helsinger said something to Seward in German, and the younger doctor laughed and answered him back in that language.

The room around me faded; I was rapidly losing consciousness. I wanted to stop the doctors, but I was completely incapacitated and the medication made it easier to give into my fate. Floating into that darkness, I felt less and less attached to the idea of escape. I thought that perhaps I should pray, but I could not summon the mental energy to do so. Strangely, the words of a hymn came to me, one I’d sung at the last service I had attended in Exeter. I recalled the resonant pipe organ filling the cathedral, vibrating the nave.

You, Christ, are the king of glory

The eternal Son of the Father

When you took our flesh to set us free

You humbly chose the Virgin’s womb.

You overcame the sting of death

And opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers

You are seated at God’s right hand in glory…

The image that the hymn brought to my mind was neither Christ nor heaven but my savior, standing on the banks of the river with his arms outstretched, inviting me to go to him. What a fool I had been. How I wish that I had known that the danger ahead lay not in his arms but in stubbornly clinging to the life of safety and security that I wanted with Jonathan. What exquisite gifts had my dream lover offered me that I would never know?

I saw his face in my mind’s eye, and I imagined staring into his feral blue eyes, dark as twilight. I wanted to sink into them, to melt into the escape that they promised. My mind was now like a stage where my dreams of the mysterious stranger were played again-his voice, his touch, his kisses, and his blood-draining bite. I was in a somnolent state, in which the line between reality and hallucination was easily blurred, my mind alternating between the sweet sensations of my imagination and the faint sounds in the room-the tinkling glass and metal as Seward and Von Helsinger prepared for the procedure, words muttered between them in German, and the low, ambient hum of the asylum’s inmates.

All of a sudden, I felt a shift in the room, as if someone had made a surprise entrance, but through hazy eyes, I saw that the door was still closed. Von Helsinger’s alarmed voice barked exclamatory words to Seward in German, and Seward responded with a strange cry. I wanted to slip back into my reverie, but then something crashed to the floor, as if one of the doctors had dropped a thing made of glass. I opened my eyes again and in my dreamy state, I thought I saw a thick mist seeping through the shuttered window. Confused, wondering if this was part of a dream, I blinked my eyes and looked again. The two doctors-eyes wide with astonishment-stood frozen, watching the vapor as it swirled before them, growing in luminescence and intensity. Before our eyes, the numinous particles began to sculpt into a form, and I thought that perhaps an angel had come to save me.

Slowly the thing took shape. It was not an angel but a shimmering coat of silver fur, which gradually molded itself over great muscled haunches, its outer ends elongating into a bestial tail and head. My dream world collided with my reality as I watched the wolf dog I had seen in Whitby growl at Von Helsinger, backing him against a wall and baring his teeth at the incredulous doctor. Von Helsinger pressed himself against the wall, yelling something in German, and the beast lunged at him, pinning him with its thick paws. The treacherous canines were not an inch from Von Helsinger’s face. Seward tried to get to the door, but the wolf dog turned around and, with preternatural speed, leapt on him from behind, sinking its teeth into the doctor’s back. Seward cried out in anguish as he pulled away, leaving some of his flesh in the animal’s mouth. Von Helsinger pushed Seward through the door, but before he could escape, the animal swiped at his face and neck, leaving sharp claw marks from cheek to throat. With a howl of agony, Von Helsinger grabbed his face and fell through the door after Seward, slamming it shut.

I lay in bed paralyzed. The wolf dog jumped on the bed, straddling me, staring at me with its vivid indigo eyes. The last thing I remember seeing in that room was his huge incisors above my face, red and dripping with Seward’s blood.