Dracula in London

An Essay on Containment

Gene DeWeese

(From the Secret Journal of Radoslav Coulson)

London

August 7, 1893.

I greatly fear there will soon be trouble for us all. The so-called Count has made landfall, I know not where.

For days I have sensed his approach, so powerful is his aura. But it is not his power that is the source of our peril, it is his damnable ego, his utter lack of discipline.

We have known of his existence for more than a century, so perhaps the current dilemma is as much of our own making as it is of his. We should have acted decisively decades ago and not continued to place naive confidence in his obvious intellect and the instinct for survival that we all share. It is apparent that our quiet counsel, even our more pointed warnings, have gone unheeded. Had he paid the slightest attention to our words, he would at least have contacted one of us to help prepare the way for his journey, not one of them, with whom he must always be on guard, ready with justifications for behaviors that to them are bizarre but to us are only what our nature demands.

But perhaps I am being unduly alarmist. Perhaps those very contacts will cause him to apprehend the danger more clearly, to begin at last to act with the discretion that is essential in dealing with the ever-increasing perils of the modern world. Such, at least, is my hope.

Nonetheless, we shall begin our preparations immediately. I only hope that our skills have not atrophied in the decades since we were last called upon to make extensive use of them.

August 9, 1893.

Once it was determined by consensus which of our unwitting accomplices to employ in this matter, it required only a single night to verify that our choice was viable. The extensive conditioning he was given nearly half a century ago in his youth still holds sway. He has become precisely the person we intended, precisely the person we knew we would someday need. Now preparations for our little drama can begin in earnest.

August 12, 1893.

As I had hoped and expected, the initial phase went remarkably well.

Indeed, it is at times like this that I can understand what drives the Count to engage in his reckless behavior. There is undeniably an incomparable satisfaction to be taken in exercising one’s mental powers, causing memories to shift and alter by mere whispered suggestions in the night. As I observe the intricate patterns of change we weave within the minds of our oblivious subjects, I can imagine that the feeling we experience is not unlike that which their master musicians achieve when giving a virtuoso performance for an appreciative audience.

My only regret is that for our virtuoso performances there can be no audience save ourselves unless it becomes necessary for the subjects to act out the scenario dictated by those deceitful memories. Contrariwise, my dearest hope is that, for the sake of us all, such actions are never required and that the memories themselves, untended, will gradually retrogress, unnoticed, until the minds that housed them are left only with dull reality.

We shall see.

August 17, 1893.

Carfax!

The fool has actually moved into Carfax, bringing with him not one but fifty boxes of his precious native soil, a needless luxury at best! If he persists in such recklessness, he might as well shout his nature from the rooftops!

I should not have delayed even these few days. I should not have allowed myself to entertain for even a moment those same false hopes that had already kept us from acting for nearly a century. I should have paid stricter heed not only to the power and the undisciplined nature of his aura but also to his shameful record of almost mindless self-indulgence. I should have seen that, like anyone, he is shaped by his past experience, and that his past experience consists of centuries of indulging his every whim without concern for the effects. For centuries he “lived” alone in a backward and isolated area where superstitions of all kinds were so deeply ingrained in the mortal populace that no one would even think of defying even the most ludicrously unlikely creatures who claimed, let alone openly demonstrated, supernatural powers. Drink a little of their blood while they slumber unaware, steal one of their daughters and bend her to your will, causing her to rise in the night in answer to your silent summons, and they cower in their hovels, scrupulously avoiding any show of defiance or even of discontent for fear that anything short of servile obedience would only worsen their situation.

The civilized world which he has invaded—our world—is far less deferential, as he is already discovering. If he alone were involved, we would not devote a moment of time to his plight. If he wished to draw attention to himself and himself alone, I would wish him well and quietly await his demise, which would surely soon be upon him. But his antics, his foolish attempts to “live” as he had “lived” in that welter of mindless superstition that is Transylvania, will call attention to us all. Here in the civilized world our strength—and our safety!—lies not in our modestly superhuman powers but in our anonymity, in the fact that our kind is rarely believed to be more than the fevered imaginings of superstitious fools and that when one of us is found to exist, he is easily destroyed if only you follow certain arcane and nonsensical rituals. If ever we lose that advantage, our already meager numbers will quickly dwindle to nothing.

Tonight it begins.

Sept. 1, 1893.

It is with considerable relief that I record the fact that our elaborate preparations have not been in vain. Dr. Seward, one of many who benefited from our recent ministrations, questioned none of his recently acquired memories when he was called in to examine the unfortunate young woman the Count has become enamored of. Nor did he hesitate to immediately contact our chosen accomplice, ostensibly his “old friend and master” from school days and, fortuitously, an expert in the very maladies of the blood from which the young woman is suffering.

Dr. Van Helsing arrives tomorrow, and I am confident that, with our clandestine assistance, he will meet with spectacular success in ridding the land of this creature that menaces us all.