CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
If you stand on the pavement outside the Royal Hotel on Whitby’s West Cliff and look out across the harbour town as the sun goes down, you can pretty much see, in their entirety, the early chapters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Across the bay, in the shadow of the half-ruined abbey, sits St. Mary’s Churchyard, where Lucy Westenra was attacked by the vampiric count. Below is Tate Hill Sands, where the ship carrying Dracula ran aground, its crew missing, its dead skipper lashed to the wheel. The 199 steps, known locally as the Church Stairs, rise to the East Cliff, up which Dracula, in the guise of a black hound, ran after arriving in Whitby.
—The Guardian
Whitby, England, the Southern Coast
July 1890
The sea looked glorious and smooth as glass. The storm had passed, and the air felt light, as if anything was possible.
He sat on the bench and relaxed. He deserved this holiday, needed to rest and rejuvenate before his family arrived in a fortnight. He’d been exhausted by the work on his latest play.
After he’d moved into his rooms at Mrs. Veazey’s guesthouse at 6 Royal Crescent, he’d gone out to ramble through the town, climbed the 199 steps to the ancient, crumbling abbey. He even wandered through the boneyard, touched by the graves—some of which had no occupants, the stones markers for those lost at sea—writing names in the notebook he always carried in his breast pocket. Finally, pleased, he took a seat on a bench and watched the ships at sail.
Something about this place intoxicated him. Perhaps he felt a certain oppression, a Gothic sort of darkness despite the cheery red roofs and the calls of the gulls over the water. It spoke to his creative mind, his heart. A fog bank rolled in, and he delighted in the sudden coolness, the droplets of moisture gathering on his mustache. He closed his eyes, content.
“Hello. May I?” He opened his eyes to see a stranger standing before him, a great white-and-gray falcon on the man’s fist. Would she get lost in the thick fog if her jesses were removed? “Certainly,” he said, and made room. “What a magnificent falcon.”
“Her name is Mina. She is a peregrine.”
He saw the stranger wore a leather gauntlet, and when he said the bird’s name, he put a chunk of raw meat on the glove. The bird gobbled it down. He asked, “Have you toured Whitby before?”
“Oh, I live here. Over there.” The stranger waved a negligent hand toward the cliffs. “I am called Reuben Stow.”
“I am Bram Stoker. It’s a pleasure.”
Stow asked, “You’re up from London?”
“I am. I’m a writer. Well, and a producer, a financier.”
Stow’s eyes seemed to glow. He leaned toward Stoker. “You are?”
“I am. I wanted to spend some time alone, to relax, to let errant ideas slip into my brain, until my family arrives.” He grinned at what he’d said, shrugged. “A writer is always on the lookout for ideas, for inspiration, I suppose.”
Stow threw his arm forward, and the bird launched into the sky. She pirouetted in the air above them, the long stokes of her wings taking her out of the sea. They watched her dance in and out of the clouds.
Stow said, “Mr. Bram Stoker, writer, for your inspiration, I suggest you look in the Whitby library, at the end of the street below. There you will find a book written by a fellow countryman of yours, Wilkerson, and his travels will give you what you seek. It will spark your imagination, and the rest of the story will come to you then.”
“What I seek? No, you misunderstand me. I’m not looking for anything.”
“Yes, you are. A writer is always seeking. My beautiful Mina is a wonderful example. She seeks the hunt, fresh meat, the ability to fly and to sleep safely. I provide her with all of these, and so she stays with me. You, my new friend, are very much like the falcon. You seek a story, a story to make you famous. A story to both delight and terrorize. A story to make your friend Irving happy, yes?”
Stoker was unnerved. How did this stranger know this? He felt vaguely alarmed, not a little afraid.
“I suppose I am always looking for a good story,” he said stiffly, and he rose. “Perhaps it’s time for me to be off.”
“I know a good story.”
Stoker stopped, couldn’t help himself. “You do?”
“Oh, yes. It is the story of brothers bound by blood. They walk the earth together, never at rest.”
“Oh, I see. They’re ghosts.”
“No, no, not ghosts. They are something very different indeed. Something very old. It is the blood, you see. They have pages from a long-lost book that gave them the knowledge they needed to use blood as food. It’s quite a gruesome tale. I can tell it to you if you like.”
Stoker relaxed. He knew this sort of fellow. He would wait for his prey in the boneyard of the abbey, scare the tourists with a ridiculous tale, then demand coin. He was a modern-day bard.
Still, there was something about this man that made him uneasy, ran little skitters of alarm up his arms. Stoker stood. “I imagine it is quite a story. Sadly, it’s getting late, and I must be off.”
Stow looked away from him, out to the sea. He whistled once, sharp and low, held out his arm. “Good day to you, Mr. Stoker. Do not forget to visit the library. It is really critical to you and your career.”
The bird landed hard on the man’s fist. He gave her a treat and bowed his head toward Stoker, then stood and turned away.
Stoker shook his head, rubbed his eyes. Impossible. Impossible. It seemed from one moment to the next, the man and falcon were simply gone, disappeared.
He was tired from the journey, exhausted from managing Irving. He was hungry and thirsty, and now he was seeing things.
Yes, he needed a rest.
He took a last look around the abbey and started toward the stairs. Supper and sleep, and he’d explore the rest of the town in the morning.
He felt eyes on him, and he whirled back to look at the bench, at the grounds of the abbey, at the cliff, but no one was there. He saw a mist move through the boneyard, obscuring the gravestones. It moved toward him, closer and closer. He was frozen until the mist began to curl around his feet. As if released from a trance, he ran down the stairs, not looking back.
Later that evening, as he made plans to visit the town’s library, he was compelled to record a name in his notebook—why, he didn’t know.
Mina. And I will name my heroine Mina.