Dracula in Love

Chapter Eleven

16 October 1890

We drove toward Lindenwood as the sun was setting. The desolation along the Thames at Purfleet, downriver from London, was broken up by industrial buildings-bone mills, gristmills, soap factories, tanneries-whose chimneys shot great clouds of smoke into the sky. The rays of the setting sun infiltrated the black atmosphere, burnishing the sky. As we drove along the road that followed the river, I saw pockets of scum and debris floating on its surface. The water, an unsavory grayish brown, rushed past as if in a hurry to leave this grim landscape.

Lindenwood itself was protected from these views. The grounds were secluded by thick stone walls made black with soot and age, and by the growth of ancient trees twisting together, locking out the modern world of manufacturing and machinery that had sprung up along the river. The old mansion, with its grand façade of limestone bricks, narrow lancets, and four colossal turrets at its corners, sat at the end of a long drive. Dr. Seward had told me that the eccentric aristocrat who had built it in the latter part of the last century had donated it to serve as an asylum at the time of his death. It looked more castle than manor house, what with its feudal architecture. Over the clatter of the carriage wheels, I heard the tall, wrought-iron gates creak as they closed behind us, and I looked back to see two men fastening them shut with thick chains. I did not like the idea of being locked inside, but I calmed myself by remembering that within this walled environment, I would find help for my husband; the truth of what happened to my best friend; and, if I was lucky, relief from the strange things that had been happening to me. Little did I suspect that I would soon discover so much more.

Jonathan had been more than amenable to the visit, even excited at the prospect. “You deserve a strong husband, Mina,” he had said. “I am determined to be that man for you. Besides, I am fascinated by the new theories on the complexities of the unconscious. I welcome an opportunity to become acquainted with experts who will discuss the subject with me.”

A hospitable woman in a bright blue apron and cap greeted us at Lindenwood’s massive and foreboding door, introducing herself as Mrs. Snead. She appeared to be somewhere in her forties with a crooked smile and a strange way of looking just to the side of whomever she was speaking to. Thick, dark-stained paneling covered the walls of the reception hall that was hung with portraits of old gentlemen, each seeming to follow us with his sober gaze. The atmosphere was elegant but heavy-with what, I did not know.

“Dinner will be served at seven,” Mrs. Snead said. “Would you like to have tea in the parlor, or would you like to be escorted to your quarters?”

We opted for tea in the parlor, sitting in chairs with serpentine legs and tall backs that reflected the shape of the pointed-arched windows. A young woman wearing the same blue uniform rolled in a tea cart and served us piping-hot tea with fresh cream and slices of ginger cake. Another member of the staff stacked logs in the great stone fireplace and lit lamps, illuminating the opulent surroundings.

But as the light infiltrated the room, I saw that the upholstery was frayed and the stuffing of the divan opposite us sagged almost to the floor.

“This is not what I expected,” Jonathan said, relaxing in his chair. “One feels more guest than patient.”

“I agree,” I said. But unlike him, I found the discrepancy disquieting.

The bedroom was no less ornate. Carved hooded medieval monks supported the heavy wooden ceiling, again giving me the feeling that I was being watched. The bed’s canopy of sharp spires reached almost to the ceiling. Panels of blood-scarlet brocade threaded with gold curtained the thick velour-covered mattress. I sat on it to test its comfort, wondering if Jonathan would at last consummate our marriage on its soft, inviting plane. He gave no indication that he was thinking any such thoughts. He took off his coat, splashed water on his face, and sank into an armchair, instantly engrossed in an old book he had picked up on the side table.

At six forty-five in the evening, Mrs. Snead fetched us for dinner and escorted us to the candlelit dining room, where we sat like children dwarfed by the high ceiling. John Seward arrived a few minutes later with a stout older man whose wild gray beard eventually came to a point at chest level. Grizzly eyebrows sat like mats of twisted yarn above his dark eyes. He wore a rumpled suit that was probably expensive when it was purchased in some other decade. He bowed to me in the old-fashioned way and kissed my hand. He gripped Jonathan’s hand and did not let it go as he said his name. “Herr Harker. Yes, Herr Harker. Yes, I see. I do see.” He studied Jonathan as if he were a specimen under a microscope until Seward said, “Dr. Von Helsinger, you have met our other guests?”

So this was the famous doctor. I had thought that we might have had our first glimpse of a patient, what with his disheveled clothes and hawkish stare. He wore a monocle on a tarnished, diamond-cut silver chain around his neck. His protruding eye sockets wrapped so far around his face that they looked as if they might slide right off.

The dining table seated fifteen, and some nearby residents of Essex had joined us. “An institution such as this must keep good relations with its neighbors,” Seward whispered in my ear as everyone was seated. Two serving girls poured wine as the doctor and his neighbors made polite conversation about local politics. Jonathan sipped the wine and proclaimed it to be as fine a claret as he had ever tasted. When the first course, turtle soup, was served, I noticed that Von Helsinger examined it with his monocle before he tasted it, but I found it to be sublime. I said as much to Dr. Seward.

“The recipe was brought to us by a former patient. She was a friend of the lord mayor, and this is from his very kitchen. It takes the cooks two days to prepare and it is made, I assure you, from real turtle meat.”

Seward, away from the more illustrious shadow of Arthur Holmwood, was a changed man. The lids over his gray eyes did not seem so heavy, and his fraught look was gone. This was clearly his kingdom, and it seemed that he ruled it well.

“Is it common for a patient to bring recipes to your kitchen, Dr. Seward?” I asked.

“This was a very special case, Mrs. Harker,” he said, addressing me by my married name for the first time. “The patient in question came to us after months of neglecting all domestic duties. She had a kitchen staff, but she refused to plan menus or to attend to any household concerns whatsoever. She left her children in the care of a governess, while she shut herself in her study, reading books and writing letters to politicians in the Liberal party with whom she was obsessed.”

Dr. Von Helsinger picked up his bowl, drained the last of the turtle soup, and released a heavy sigh of contentment. “It stands to reason that in these times of ladies infiltrating the masculine domains of thought and intellectual inquiry, they become victims of brain strain. If left untreated, the result is melancholia or, in worse cases, hysteria. This lady was fortunate. She came to us in time for us to help her.”

“I hypothesized that if she were made to do domestic labor as treatment, she would recover her natural propensity toward it,” Seward said. “She worked in the kitchen, preparing food and serving it. At first, she was rebellious, but gradually she came to enjoy it, even introducing her favorite recipes to our humble kitchen.”

Dr. Seward rang a bell, and the serving girls brought in platters of beefsteak and winter vegetables, which they held for each guest to take a portion. Jonathan complimented Seward on the politeness and efficiency of his staff. My husband’s handsome features, softened by the candlelight, had returned, and he looked like the affable man I had wanted to marry. He was enough changed that I worried that the doctors were wondering why I had brought him to the asylum.

One of the lady guests agreed with Jonathan’s assessment of the staff. “I declare, Dr. Seward, I must have you interview servants for me.”

“My wife’s taste in servants tends toward the lazy and the dishonest,” said her husband, and everyone laughed.

“Thank you for the compliments,” said Dr. Seward. “Most everyone on our staff is also a patient, or a former patient.”

This news stunned me. I wanted to turn around and look at the girls who had served the food to see if I could detect any traces of mental illness on their faces.

“Work has been the cure for so many of our patients,” Seward said. “And it is good economy too. We provide the most advanced modern treatments, but they take time and are administered at great cost, especially the labor.”

I saw a way into my purpose and spoke up. “Dr. Seward, before my husband and I married, we agreed that I would devote a goodly amount of my time to charitable works. While Jonathan and I are your guests, I would very much like to volunteer my time to help you in any way that I can.”

The doctor did not seem receptive to my idea. “That is a very noble wish, Mrs. Harker. Ladies often have the best intentions, but patients do not exactly mind their social graces. I would not want you to suffer any insults at their hands.”

I wondered if he had something to hide and I became more determined.

“I doubt that your patients could be any worse than some of the little girls I have taught.” Everyone laughed at that.

“What do you think, Dr. Von Helsinger?” I asked.

The gentleman turned his wide, insect stare on me. His mouth was set in a smile, but the rest of his face remained sober. “If Herr Harker would postpone our meeting tomorrow, I would be happy to spend the day escorting the beautiful lady through the asylum. It would be a pleasure greater than any I expect at my age.”

Something about the way he looked at me made me shrink back in my chair, though I tried to maintain my smile. Jonathan must have seen it too.

“I cannot postpone our business together, sir. I have important matters in both London and Exeter that must be attended to,” he said sternly, which gave me a little thrill. I had not seen him play the protector since before he left for Styria.

“Then it is up to me to satisfy you, Mrs. Harker,” said Dr. Seward, smiling.

All night long, I heard moaning sounds. I slept fitfully, awaking several times and sitting up in bed. But then, the noise would stop. I must have been having nightmares, but I could not recall their substance. I woke with a headache.

At an early hour, an attendant delivered a breakfast tray to our room, and then, at eight o’clock, as no one was allowed to wander the asylum unescorted, a man came to take Jonathan to see Dr. Von Helsinger. Fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Snead came for me. I wondered if she too had once been a patient. She spoke clearly, but her face twitched almost imperceptibly, as if she intended to wink but could not complete the action. We walked down the wide staircase together, and as we reached the set of stairs nearest the ground floor, I heard the same voices I had heard in my sleep. I stopped to listen. It sounded as if the very walls were moaning.

The sounds escalated as we walked across the reception hall. Mrs. Snead took a ring of keys out of her apron pocket and opened a pair of tall double doors. The groaning assaulted my ears-grunts, whimpers, cries, moans-and came together in a cacophonous song of collective misery. Some sounded guttural, others were high-pitched. All sounded female, and I inquired as to why this might be so. “This is the women’s ward,” Mrs. Snead explained. “The men’s ward is separate.”

Mrs. Snead paid no mind to the din and walked ahead of me down a corridor with many doors, some with peepholes and some with bars. Whereas the private part of the mansion where we were quartered had a faint scent of dry wood and dust common to old houses, this wing smelled of iron and rust, and the air itself was damp. We climbed another stairwell, narrower and darker than the one that served the main house, and arrived at the door of Dr. Seward’s attic office.

He was sitting at a desk in a room with a pitched ceiling and tiny windows, speaking into a phonograph in an oak box on a little wrought-iron stand. He heard us enter and turned around. “Good morning, Mrs. Harker,” he said. “I was just recording my physician’s notes into the phonograph. Such a convenient contraption. You are familiar with them?”

“Why, no,” I said. I remembered Kate’s admonition to feign ignorance. “Do you record everything that happens here in the asylum?”

“Everything important,” he replied. “It is a superb record-keeping tool.” He tried to interest me in a cup of tea, but I assured him that I was all too eager to begin our tour of the facility.

“Very well, then.” He picked up a stack of charts and led me back down the stairs and into the hall, where we passed two women in blue aprons who nodded politely. “A moment, please,” he said. “This is Mrs. Harker, who is visiting us and will be volunteering her time.” He introduced the two severe-looking women as Mrs. Kranz and Mrs. Vogt, hall supervisors. “Most of our patients are quite peaceful, but these ladies are on duty in case of an incident,” he said before dismissing them.

“I wish you would dispense with these formalities,” I said, smiling at him. “I would be delighted if you would simply call me Mina.”

“Then you must call me John,” he said. “But we mustn’t let the patients-and others-know of this little intimacy.”

“Of course not, Doctor Seward,” I said. I knew that it was wrong to flirt with him, but I sensed great longing in him, and I was not above exploiting that to gather information.

He opened double doors to a small library with a tall paneled ceiling and a lazy fire in the fireplace. Two elderly women playing cards occupied a game table, while a young girl lay on the divan, mumbling to herself and rubbing her breasts. The two old women paid her no attention but wordlessly flipped cards onto the table.

The doctor and I stood in the doorway. No one looked up. “That is Mary,” he said, gesturing to the girl. “I admitted her three months ago. She is fifteen. Her parents brought her to us when the commencement of puberty incited a mental illness. Would you like to see her chart?” He handed it to me.

Written in thick blue ink and a scratchy penmanship, I read it with some difficulty:

Facts Indicating Insanity: Causeless laughter alternating with obstinate silence. She is wicked and excitable in the company of gentlemen. Her parents were alerted to the disturbance when she turned cartwheels on the lawn in full view of observers of both sexes. The family doctor was brought in to examine her, but she refused to comply with him and would not stick out her tongue for the examination.

I scanned the page to read what Seward had written after his last visit with her a few days prior:

She takes but little food and sits for hours with her eyes closed, patting her breasts. Water cure, isolation, etc. completely ineffective. Vaginal lavage with potassium bromide to calm the excited tissue give only temporary relief. She is particularly excitable in the menstrual state, but at other times can be made docile with medication.

“I am not going to interrupt her,” he said, taking the chart from me and making a note on it. “She appears to be calm enough.”

One of the older ladies slapped the last card in her hand on the table. Her shock of long hair was like marble, stiff and white with caramel streaks. She might have been sixty or eighty-I could not tell. She caught me looking at her, and I was struck by the color and vivacity of her eyes-vivid green and as bright as a baby’s. Her eyes looked as if they belonged on another face, a face that still had many years left in this lifetime. Her body, however, looked brittle with age.

“That woman is staring at me,” I whispered to Seward.

“Vivienne has been here for many years. I cannot introduce you to her in front of her card partner, Lady Grayson. She thinks that Vivienne is the queen, and it upsets her terribly to hear otherwise.”

We walked down the hall, with him at a faster pace and me trying to keep up, to a door with a small opening slashed by two iron bars. I could not see inside because the doctor blocked my view. The asylum’s ambient moaning filled the hall, but none seemed to be coming from inside this particular room. He put a large key in the lock and left it there as he spoke.

“Jemima, who you are about to meet, suffers from an emotional insanity.” He opened Jemima’s chart and read: “‘She is lively, cheerful, and very talkative, but at times becomes insensible and will take no nourishment. At these times, force-feeding is recommended.’”

“Force-feeding?” Lucy said she had been force-fed.

“Yes, the tube is put down the throat and a healthful concoction of milk, eggs, and cod-liver oil goes through the tube to nourish the patient.”

“I see.” I tried to imagine a tube being pushed down my throat.

“I know what you are thinking, Mina, but when a patient tries to destroy herself by not taking in food, what else can we do to save her? And it is so common with young women to refuse to eat.” He continued to read from the chart. “‘She has irregular menstrual periods and a peculiar nervous system, but her flow of animal spirits is abundant. If the menstrual cycle could be regulated, she would be able to be sent home.’ I do apologize for the indelicate nature of these details.”

A perfunctory apology, if I have ever heard one. I believe he was enjoying subjecting me to topics that in a social situation would have been strictly forbidden.

“Please don’t apologize, John,” I replied. “If I am to volunteer here, I want a complete picture of the patients. It will help me to interact with them.”

“Jemima came to us with fluttering, nervous hands, which aggravate the confused mind even more. The first step was to settle the hands.” He turned the key and opened the door, leading us into a long room, where about a dozen women of different ages sat at tables doing embroidery, needlepoint, knitting, and sewing at machines. All hands were busy making scarves, draperies, pillow slips, doilies, caps, and mittens. The colors of the fabrics and yarns were a jumble of brightness against the plain white walls and the gray asylum uniform worn by the patients.

A woman in the blue apron indicating that she was on the staff sat in the corner. Seward nodded to her. No one else looked up.

“The patients come to us distracted, their minds dizzy with all sorts of worries, phobias, and concerns, and we settle them by having them work with their hands,” the doctor said. “In turn, we sell the goods they make to raise funds for the asylum. We even fulfill personal orders from our neighbors. And the uniforms of the staff and the patients are all made in this room from donated cloth.”

“Impressive,” I said. “Very efficient.”

“Jemima?”

A young raven-haired woman looked up. When she saw Seward, she put down her embroidery frame and ran to him. Her creamy skin and bright eyes distracted from the drab gray dress hanging loosely around her frame and the fact that her nails were bitten to nothing, the surrounding cuticles and skin gnawed red. She tried to put her arms around the doctor for an embrace, but he held her at a distance. “There now, that will do,” he said, embarrassed, taking her by the wrist and placing her arm by her side. “Jemima, how are you feeling today? Well, from the looks of it.”

“Yes, Doctor, I am well. Very, very well.”

“Your chart says that you have been eating your meals. This is Mrs. Harker,” he said. “She might be bringing you your lunch tomorrow.”

The girl gave a little curtsy, though she was just a few years younger than I.

“If you continue to take your food and work steadily, you will be able to go home soon,” he said.

The girl took two steps back, firmly planting her feet in a show of protest. “No! I don’t want to go home,” she shrieked. “I’m not well at all. Not well, I tell you!”

The outburst was so sudden that I took a few steps back, in case she tried to attack us. The attendant rose from her seat, but the doctor motioned for her to sit back down. “There, there, Jemima. I did not mean to upset you. Of course, you won’t be sent home until you are ready.”

That seemed to settle her down. “Be a good girl and go back to your sewing.” She thrust her shoulder forward and rolled her head back in a sort of dance hall girl pose, and Seward escorted me out of the room.

“Do you see how changeable they are, Mina?” His eyes drooped at the corners. I knew that he wanted me to feel pity for him, but it occurred to me that the girl Jemima was probably in love with him, and that is why she wanted to remain in the institution. I even wondered if something might be going on between them.

“She has been with us for six months.” He fumbled through the charts and produced one with her name. He put the others in my hand while he read from hers.

“‘Facts Indicating Insanity: The patient left the family house for three days and nights during which time she claims that she married a railway policeman, though she cannot say where it was or recall his name. She ran away repeatedly to try to return to the policeman, whom the family says does not exist. At home, she displays herself in a window wearing a dressing gown without modesty.’

“The family physician committing her wrote: ‘She has lost all mental control in consequence of morbid sensual desires.’ She has attempted to escape Lindenwood by shattering windows and has subsequently been restrained.”

“Restrained?” I asked, smiling pleasantly, remembering Lucy’s letter and Kate’s instructions.

“In the most humane manner, I assure you,” Seward said. “Would you like to see the restraining instruments?”

“Oh yes!” I said with the enthusiasm of a child who had been offered candy.

Seward led me further down the hall to a mezzanine area, where we turned a corner. With a key, he opened a door, and we entered a room. Light streamed in through the single source of a small arched window. The room smelled of chemicals. He must have heard my little sniff. “It’s the ammonia used to clean the leathers. We sterilize them after every use. We are very modern here.”

Leather cuffs and straps of many sizes hung in bundles on hooks on the wall. He opened a closet, taking out a heavy linen garment with long sleeves that ended in mitts and a complex system of tie strings that dangled chaotically.

“Whatever is that used for?” I asked.

“We use the jackets in the more difficult cases to prevent the patients from harming themselves and others. In less severe cases, we use them to pacify.”

I cocked my head. “Pacify?”

“With male patients, we use them to control violent behavior. But with female patients, we have found that confinement of the arms and hands soothes the nerves. So many things cause ladies to become overexcited. You are such sensitive creatures. Prayer, which settles the male conscience and soothes his soul, has the opposite effect on ladies. We do not know why this is. Reading novels can have the same effect. We call these jackets camisoles because they calm a lady’s nerves in the same way that putting on a lovely garment might.”

“How does it accomplish that?” I asked, assuming a guileless face. I wished that Kate could be there to see me.

“I will show you,” he said. He walked behind me, reaching around and holding the jacket in front of me. I could feel his body, or some kind of kinetic energy, coming from it, though inches separated us. “Hold out your arms.”

I reached forward, and he slipped the sleeves over my arms. “It’s a bit too large for you,” he said. He tugged on the sleeves, pulling me backward so that I rested my back on his chest. He took a deep breath, and I felt his chest expanding against my shoulders. He worked the sleeves all the way up my arms, first one and then the other, until my hands were in the mitts. “There we are,” he said. “All snug.” He crossed my arms over my chest turning me into a mummy, and for a moment-just a moment-he stopped, wrapping me into his embrace. I shivered. If the garment was meant to settle nerves, it was having the opposite effect on me. I felt a stretch across my shoulders and forearms as he laced the strings hanging from the mitts of the garment behind my back, imprisoning my hands and arms and making me immobile. I thought I might panic, but I fought the urge. He rubbed his hands on my upper arms. “How does that feel?”

Though I was ashamed of the thought, I did not want him to stop touching me through the coarse linen. I was afraid, and yet I did not want the moment to end. I wanted to feel him, but not see him.

“Mina.” He said my name softly, letting the sound float past my ear and into the dark, damp room. I faced the wall of restraints, a jungle of buckles and straps.

“I feel helpless,” I said. “The more that I know I cannot move, the more I want to move. It’s a little frightening.”

“There is nothing to be frightened of,” he whispered in my ear. “Would I ever let anything happen to you?”

He guided me to a straight-backed chair and sat me down, kneeling in front of me. “Doesn’t that make you feel at peace?” he asked, his gray eyes looking up into mine, questioning me. To have said no would have shattered him.

“The goal is to make the patient feel secure,” he said. He reached around and tugged at something on the back of the jacket. “Feel these loops?”

His cheek was so close to mine. I had not taken a breath in some time. My throat and lungs seemed to have shut down. Unable to make myself speak, I nodded. He stood, walking over to the wall and returned with a long leather strap.

“If the patient continues to struggle, we attach the strap to the jacket and hook it to the wall. That way we may calm the patient without confining her to a bed. I want you to know how humane our treatments are. No one is hurt in our care.”

He took another leather strap off the wall, and then came behind me, and I felt two little tugs at my shoulders as he clipped the straps to the jacket. My arms were going numb inside the garment, but the beating of my heart overrode the feeling. He yanked the straps tight, pulling my back straight against the chair, correcting my already impeccable posture. I had the image of using this contraption on my pupils; they would never complain about the backboards again. He hooked the straps to the wall and came round to look at me and admire his work. I was rigid and completely imprisoned.

“Now that doesn’t hurt a bit, does it?” he asked, his voice as smooth as warm butter. “It can’t be any worse than a corset. In fact, my theory is that women are accustomed to submitting to the corset, so it predisposes them to the straitjacket.”

Still struggling to take more than the shallowest of breaths, I could not quite speak. Nothing was smothering me, or physically hindering my breathing, but the feeling of being helpless overwhelmed me. He could do anything he liked to me, and I would be powerless to stop him.

Seward knelt in front of me again. “You are struggling, Mina, but in reality, you are swaddled like a baby in the safety of its cradle. Struggle heightens the very hysteria we try to cure. Don’t struggle, Mina. Submit.”

Submit. Where had I heard that command before?

“I-I want to submit, John, but my body wants to struggle.”

“It’s not the body that is struggling but the mind.” He put his finger under my chin. “Relax, Mina. Relax. Let the sound of my voice relax you.”

He went back to the wall, returning with two black leather cuffs. “When the jacket is not enough-which is rare-we confine the feet. It helps, as you will see.” He knelt, buckling a cuff around each of my ankles, and then hooked them together. He scooped a chain from under the chair and attached it to the buckle that united the cuffs. I could barely move my feet at all.

Seward was on his knees now, staring up at me like a suppliant praying to a saint. He looked at me with the sort of adoration and excitement that he claimed prayer aroused in women. I was afraid, desperate at being denied the use of my hands, arms, feet, legs, but at the same time, I suddenly felt powerful, as if I could demand anything and not be refused.

“How beautiful you are, Mina,” he said, his eyes grazing every inch of my face. “How your skin glows. And your eyes, well, they are devastating.” He let out a loud sigh and moved closer to me. His eyes were focused on my lips, and I was sure he was about to kiss me. I was afraid of what he would do if I tried to stop him, but I knew that I must.

“Was Lucy confined this way?” I blurted it out on hot, fast breath, and he jumped back as if he had been kicked in the stomach, bending over so that I saw the top of his head, and the funny way that his hair was parted on a diagonal, like an incision across the scalp.

“Lucy.” He said her name, looking at me with emotions I could not identify-pride? loss? humiliation? weariness? anger? “No, not like this.”

He did not meet my eye but began to unfasten the buckles and ties that bound me. Once loosened, I slipped the jacket off and handed it to him. “Rub your arms to bring back the circulation,” he said.

I did as he instructed, and the blood flowed back into my arms.

“I do not think it wise to speak on a subject that will undoubtedly cause pain,” he said.

I did not know if he meant to me or to himself.

“She was my dearest friend. I thought that knowing about her final days would help. I need some satisfaction, John, or my grief will go on and on.” My eyes began to well up with tears.

He handed me a monogrammed handkerchief, but he did not look at me. “I must finish my morning rounds with the patients. I think it best if you rest before lunch.”

Sniffling, I followed him out of the room, where he handed me over to a hall supervisor, who escorted me back to my quarters, where Jonathan was in good spirits after his first examination by Dr. Von Helsinger. “I believe he can help, Mina. I believe he can get to the bottom of what happened to me, and why the experience has left me in this weakened and melancholic condition. He uses the method called hypnosis to lull the patient into a relaxed condition where memories return and are easily related.”

“Has he given you any medication?” I asked. “Or any treatments?”

“Nothing of the sort,” he replied. “We talk, that is all. Unburdening myself to him leaves me feeling uplifted and more hopeful, though when it is all over, I barely recall what I have said.”

I satisfied myself with this offer of hope, remaining confident that I had done the right thing in bringing him to the asylum. At least Von Helsinger did not seem to be harming him.

I sent a note to John Seward asking him again to allow me to volunteer in some way, and he sent a note back suggesting that I might read to the more lucid, calm patients. I was happy with this idea; I thought that if I could be alone with some of the patients, I could question them about Lucy.

The following morning, Mrs. Snead came to fetch me, and I accompanied her on her rounds to deliver breakfast trays to the patients. The wealthier patients, I had learned, had private rooms, while the others slept in dormitories, “where they fight like dogs, madam, sometimes tearing the hair out of each other’s heads. The medicines calm them, though, so most sleep like babes.”

I tried to inure myself to the pervasive moans, screams, and shrieks filling the atmosphere, but each loud cry released a fresh burst of pain or anger into the air, rattling my nerves. “Why are they screaming?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I were the crazy one. “Because they are out of their heads, madam. The worst ones are shackled to the beds and they do not like it.” Yet Seward declared that he calmed patients without strapping them to their beds. What else was he lying about?

“Do you remember the patient Lucy Westenra?” I asked.

“I do, indeed. The poor thing was as thin as a rail and refused to eat. They did what they could for her, madam. Tended to her day and night. The doctors did it all themselves. No, none of us was good enough to touch Miss Lucy. Broke the young doctor’s heart when she passed. The old doctor’s too. And the young gentleman who was her husband, all of them sat up with her for so long. Didn’t want to give up the body. ’Twere all so sad.”

I wanted to ask her more questions, but she was fumbling with her great ring of keys. She found the right one and opened a door, gesturing for me to go into the room where a lone woman sat, face upturned and lips moving, talking into the air. I had seen this lady, Vivienne, playing cards the day before, and something about the way that she had held my gaze with her deep green eyes had intrigued me.

“Mrs. Harker is going to visit you and read to you, Vivienne,” Mrs. Snead said. “Be a good girl, now.”

“You finished your porridge, I see,” I said, looking at the empty bowl on her tray as Mrs. Snead whisked it away. She shut the door, locking it behind us. The openings with bars on them ensured that a cry for help would be heard immediately. Nonetheless, I did not like the sound of the key twisting in the lock. But looking at the elderly lady wrapped in an old shawl with moth holes, I could not see a reason to be afraid.

Vivienne waited until she heard Mrs. Snead’s footsteps recede. “I always take every scrap of my meal,” she replied. “I must be strong when he comes for me. He is going to take me away.” She smiled like a little girl with a secret.

Seward had said that Vivienne had been in the asylum for many years. Was she actually being released? “Who is coming for you?”

She motioned for me to come closer. She whispered. “I am Vivienne.”

“Yes, I know. Vivienne is a beautiful name,” I said. Something in her voice triggered a memory in me. “You’re Irish!” I said. “I am Irish too, but I have lived in England for a long time.”

“Irish, you say? Well then, kinswoman, you are familiar with their ways.” She sat back, assessing me, a brick of silence.

“Whose ‘ways’ are you talking about?” I asked.

She retreated from me even more. “Oh no. I know your tricks. They sent you to run him off when he comes.”

“No one sent me, Vivienne. I came here to help the patients. I had a friend who was here for a little while. Her name was Lucy. She was very pretty with long golden hair. Did you see her?”

She sat up a little straighter. “Maybe I did,” she said. She looked as if she was reaching back in her memory, and my heart began to race, thinking that I might have another witness to Lucy’s last days. I patiently told Vivienne a little more about Lucy.

“Was she one of them?”

“Who are they?” I asked very quietly, trying to look profoundly curious. I thought that if I imitated her secretive tone, she would be more receptive to me.

“Who are they? They are listening to us right now, so we best be careful what we say and do not insult them. They are the Sidhe.” She pronounced it shee. “They are also called the Gentry. They go by many names when they walk among us.”

“I have heard of the Sidhe,” I said. It must have existed somewhere latent in my memory because it did sound familiar. “They are the fairies. Is that right?”

She looked at me with disdain. “Yes, the fairies, but not the little sprites and sylphs that live in the forest. The Sidhe are royalty. They are the windborne spirits who can make their bodies as solid as yours or mine if they want to have truck with us. I have been among them. I have seen their queen,” she said, her voice and body animating with a new energy. “She sits on a throne, surrounded by a fire of shining light, the light from which they all emerge and to which they return to rejuvenate themselves!”

I sat back discouraged. I was not going to get any information about Lucy; I was going to once again be the captive of an elderly person’s fanciful stories.

“I think I may have heard these legends when I was a child,” I said.

“It is no legend. They are the elder race, child, the original people, the dreamers who dreamt up the world. They formed themselves out of the swirl of life that flows through all things.”

With her remarkable eyes that locked tight on mine as she spoke, her long still-beautiful hands that gesticulated with her words, and her singsong Celtic voice, she began to captivate me. Perhaps it was my destiny to be a companion to half-mad elders. “How do you know these things?” I asked.

“It started on midsummer’s eve, when I was just a girl of seventeen. I had joined the followers of Áine, the fairy goddess who still walks among us in disguise.”

I knew that superstitious women in Ireland still called upon the old goddesses.

“I heard others tell the stories of her power and her magic. Áine can turn herself into whatever form she would like to take-a mare, a dog, a wolf, or a bird. She can help a woman to get with child or make a bad crop grow strong. She is irresistible to men, and has her way with kings and gods alike. If she desires a man, she will turn herself into an animal of prey to make him chase after her, and the hunter soon finds himself in her lair. She mates and bears children, but she tires of men and she abandons them. She once bit off the ear of a king when he tried to overpower her and left him lying in his blood. You can hear her discarded lovers howling in the woods after she has had them and disappeared.”

At this, Vivienne cackled, and I thought of Jonathan, wandering the fields of Styria after his affair. I supposed that these old tales were metaphors for what happened when men succumbed to lust.

“Áine’s followers imitated her ways, and it was whispered that she gifted some of them with her powers, so I sought to join their circle. Midsummer’s eve is her holiest day, the day of the year when the veil that separates the two worlds is thinnest. I slipped out of my bedroom window at the eleventh hour and met my sisters in the woods. They had already lit a fire, and we decorated our hair with roses and began to chant her name, Áine, Áine, Áine. The moon was as pregnant a one as I had ever seen, and the light of it illuminated our young faces. Our skin was shimmering like we were creatures of heaven as we danced around the fire, and our voices sounded like a choir of angels. It is no small wonder we attracted them to us.”

Vivienne’s eyes radiated with a peculiar light as she spoke. I did not want to interrupt this reverie, which, as with the old whaler, brought the poor aged thing so much pleasure in the telling. “Now remember, the Sidhe can take whatever form suits them, and if they fancy you, they will turn themselves into whatever will seduce you. On that eve, they came to us as men. It was the most remarkable thing. We heard winds rupture upon winds as they broke through the veil. The atmosphere cracked open, letting through beams of light, brighter than the sun. The thunderous noise died down, and we heard their music, tinkling silver bells and celestial harps. Then we saw them riding out of the light, skin shining with the electrical fires of the Great Cosmos.

“So here they were, a small army of them, some marching, some on horse, straight from heaven-tall, stately, magical creatures with luminous hair of gold. They bore the features of mortal men, only more beautiful, more radiant. Some of the sisters passed out cold on the ground, while others screamed as the Sidhe warriors swept alongside them and carried them off on their horses. In spite of all the chaos around us, he and I locked eyes as he rode toward me on his steed, with his flowing hair and red cape and his enormous dog bigger than a wolf at his side.”

“What color was his dog?” I asked, ever more drawn into her tale.

“Silver!” she said. “And feral!”

I had to wonder if I had been in the company of one of these creatures at Whitby Abbey.

“Soon he whisked me upon the back of his horse, and he took me to his kingdom. It was just a leap to the other side of the veil, child. I am telling you, no sooner had the horse jumped a fence than we were in a place not of this earth.”

“You were in the fairy kingdom?” I asked. “But where is it?”

“It is right here,” Vivienne replied, opening her arms out to encompass the space around us. “It exists alongside us, though we cannot see it. If you are ever lying in your bed late at night when all the lights are extinguished, just reach up into the darkness, and a creature from the other side of the veil will take your hand. The Sidhe can break the veil wherever they desire. For mortals, there are access points everywhere. I have seen them, hidden at the bottom of lakes, where so many have drowned trying to find them, or buried deep inside mountain caves.”

“Tell me about your captor, Vivienne,” I said. As she told her story, it became as vivid in my mind as if I had lived it myself.

“Oh, he was tall and grand, a warrior from an ancient military aristocracy. His mother was a fairy who had mated with a human warrior centuries ago. I loved him and wanted to stay with him forever.”

“Even after he kidnapped you and took you away from your home?”

“I had called him forth by the ritual. I went to him willingly, and, even if I had not, he was not to be resisted. Even if it had cost me my life, I would have been happy to sacrifice it.”

I wondered what it was that had actually cost Vivienne her sanity. Had she gone mad and then began to fabricate that the fairy prince had kidnapped her? Or had she invented the story, and her growing belief in it had turned her mad?

“What was it that enthralled you so?” I asked.

“They drive mortals mad with pleasure, out of our minds with ecstasy,” she said with an asp hiss. “Sometimes, they kill us! Not because they wish to, but because their bodies are fire and electricity, and mortals cannot tolerate it! The Sidhe love all that we love-feasting, fighting, warring, making love, music, and they love to seduce us into these pursuits. Humans go among them and return with their toes danced off, with their bodies drained of their very blood, with their minds a blank. The fairies do love us, but too often we cannot survive their intensity. When we die, they send their banshees to mourn our passing. Their cries fill the vault of heaven and shake the earth!”

“But you did survive,” I said.

Leaning ever closer to me and looking around the room, Vivienne whispered, “I had a baby by him, a girl, I think, but I do not know what became of her.”

I waited for her to elaborate, wondering if the insane were subject to Kate’s method of letting information flow from the discomfort of silence. Vivienne went blank, as if something had wiped clean her mind. Her eyes rolled to the corners like lazy green marbles.

“Vivienne!” The sound of my voice snapped back her attention. “Please finish your story. Why did they take your baby?”

She began to play with her long hair, gathering it to one side and twisting it into a white swirl that hung down her shoulder. She looked like an elderly mermaid, if ever there was such a creature. “I offended the goddess. I was beautiful, and she was jealous. She told my lover to forsake me and she stole my baby away!”

She was quiet for a moment, but something begin to seethe inside her. She raised her arms and began scratching at the air in front of her. “He is right here, right here with me but he won’t show himself. His world is all around us, I tell you. It is invisible to our eyes and silent to our ears, but it is right here!”

She looked at me with great desperation, and then grabbed my arms. “You can bring him to me! You must call to him and tell him where I am!” She let me go and paddled at the air, each stroke of her old arms more violent. I stood up, moving away from her. I did not think she could hurt me, but the sight of her was so pitiful. “I know you are here!” She screamed loudly, beating at the thin air with her hands.

Hurried footsteps came toward us. The two hall supervisors rushed in, each taking one of Vivienne’s arms. She flailed, trying to get out of their grip. “I want my baby!” she yelled. “What have they done with my baby?”

“You had better leave now, madam,” Mrs. Kranz said to me. Her voice was firm. “Shut the door and wait outside.”

Vivienne’s shawl had fallen off and I could see the old spotted flesh of her arms hanging off the bone. Her head was thrown back and she stared at the ceiling, limp in the arms of the two women, a trickle of tears sliding from the corner of each eye. “Good-bye Vivienne,” I said timidly.

Her head snapped forward and she looked straight at me, fixing her eerie green stare upon me. “They will come for you and they will know you by your eyes.”

Chapter Twelve

19 October 1890

The next day, afraid that my encounter with Vivienne had upset me, John Seward called me to his office. I did not want to see him, but I did not know how I could refuse.

When I walked into the room, his eyes swiftly grazed my body, nibbling at every little detail, and then met mine with his signature look of concern. I told him everything that had happened with Vivienne, which he listened to with great focus and patience. “What I do not understand, Mina, is why the experience was so upsetting to you.”

I had not said that it was upsetting, but apparently it was obvious in my demeanor and my voice. “I am a doctor, Mina, a doctor and a friend. Surely you know that you can tell me anything.”

Seduced by the care in his voice, I found myself telling him bits of my own history-that when I was a child, I spoke to invisible people, to animals, and sometimes heard voices, and that my behavior had upset my parents.

“I still have strange dreams, John, dreams that I am an animal of sorts, and these dreams make me get out of bed and wander in my sleep. After these episodes, I sometimes imagine things, lingering images from my dreams. Sometimes I think I am being followed. It worries me. After Vivienne’s outburst, I started to wonder if I was glimpsing myself at her age.”

He listened very carefully to what I had to say. Then he smiled at me as if I were a child confessing some petty crime that her father found endearing. “Dear, impressionable Mina, I did warn you that visiting the patients would be upsetting.”

“I only wanted to help,” I lied. I could not confess that my true motive had been to discover more about Lucy’s death.

“The very idea that you might have anything in common with Vivienne! Let me set your mind at ease. Vivienne is what is known as an erotopath, a sexually preoccupied woman who becomes obsessed with one man, in this case, the lover who she recast in her imagination as the fairy prince.” He grinned at me, waiting for me to smile back. “The erotopath generally becomes an annoying menace to the man, and he rejects her. The rejection drives the woman to nymphomania, which is a disorder in women who have abnormal sexual desires. It is a serious type of uterine hysteria. Do you see how drastically different that is from your innocent childhood fantasies and your dreams?”

I nodded, unable to admit that some of my dreams were not so innocent.

“Vivienne’s family committed her because she had been randomly seducing men, causing them no end of shame, and eventually she had a child out of wedlock. To exonerate herself, she insisted that the father was a supernatural being.”

“You must admit, she spins a good yarn,” I said.

“The typical hysteric develops elaborate, far-fetched romantic histories for herself. Vivienne is not even her real name. Her name is Winifred,” he said. He opened a tall cabinet, lifting a file and glancing at it. “Winifred Collins. Born 1818.” He showed me the name and date before returning the file to the cabinet. “She identifies herself with Vivienne, the mythical sorceress who enchanted the sorcerer Merlin.” Seward smiled wistfully. “A tale to interest a boy once enthralled by Arthurian legend but not much for a head doctor to go on.”

“Poor old dear,” I said.

“Vivienne is fortunate. Her family set up a trust for her care. Many girls like her are thrown out with their babies and have to earn a living on the streets.”

“I am sorry to have disturbed a patient,” I said. “That was not my intent.”

“It was not your fault. The nymphomaniac loves to give vent to passion. I once saw a girl let rats eat her fingers, thinking that her lover was covering them with kisses. Some girls hurt themselves, lacerating their bodies and claiming they don’t feel a thing. It’s a sort of penance for what they have done.”

“Penance?”

“Why, yes, they feel tremendous guilt over their promiscuity. Not all women are as noble and as good as you, Mina.”

Crimson color spread across his cheeks. His eyes softened and his brisk professionalism disappeared, wiped away by something else, something tender. I knew that in that moment of vulnerability, I could extract the information I sought.

“John.” I said his name softly, as if it were itself a question that must be answered. “We must talk about Lucy.”

For what seemed an interminable amount of time, Seward said nothing, but studied my face. Though I remembered Kate’s advice, I still felt compelled to explain myself. “I received a letter from her, written after I had left Whitby. She was excited about her engagement. Not six weeks later she was dead.”

He sat in his chair and cupped his forehead in his hands, shaking his head back and forth as if the memory anguished him. This time, I let silence reign. Finally, he spoke. “There is no polite way to phrase it. Lucy suffered from erotomania-her obsession with Morris Quince. Quince’s rejection drove her to hysteria, after which she could not be convinced of Arthur’s love for her. Once she got it into her head that he had married her for her fortune, she had a complete breakdown. At the very the end, she was not so different from poor Vivienne.”

“It’s hard to believe that of our Lucy,” I said. Yet I had seen the tendencies when I was in Whitby. Loving Morris Quince had made her seem mad and act as a madwoman acts; I had told her so myself.

“Lucy had all the causes that make females prone to hysteria: preoccupation with romance, high spirits, irregular menstruation, a delicate mother. She was also capricious and had abnormally strong sexual desires.” He gestured toward his bookcases. “The symptoms are well documented.”

“But hysteria is surely not fatal,” I said. “Vivienne must be upward of seventy years of age.”

“Lucy starved herself to death,” he said. “Believe me, we tried every treatment. We tried to feed her through the tubes, but she regurgitated. We tried the water cure, which generally settles even the most extreme hysteric, but it only made Lucy worse. When she was on the brink of death, Dr. Von Helsinger even tried to give her blood transfusions to strengthen her.”

“I must admit that when I apply your explanation of the disease to some of her behavior, she did fit the pattern.” I was trying to make sense of it all and I wanted him to keep talking.

“Mina, I do believe you have the mind of a doctor.” He beamed at me, and I hated myself for always needing to be the teacher’s pet. Encouraged by my assimilation of his subject, he continued: “Consider how snugly Lucy fit the mold of the hysteric. Do you know what is their most ubiquitous symptom? They are cunning, the shrewdest liars known to man. Lucy carried on her affair with Morris by lying profusely to everyone, even you, her dearest friend.”

“It is all true,” I said. Hadn’t she always been that way? The little girl who could fib her way out of every situation?

“I thought that the transfusions would regulate the menstrual cycle, which might have cured her. I am so sorry I couldn’t save her.” Seward’s eyes welled with tears. His face turned red, and he blinked, releasing a huge teardrop. “This is very unprofessional, Mina. I do apologize.”

“Nonsense, John. We all loved her.”

We sat for a long time in silence. Obedient to Kate’s instruction, I did not speak, though the indescribable look of longing on his face disturbed me. “I thought I loved Lucy,” he said. He walked around the desk and pulled a chair up next to me. “I thought that the fleeting attraction I had for Lucy might be love until I met a woman of such depth and beauty as to overwhelm me, mind and senses.”

I waited, hoping against hope that he would reveal the name of someone with whom I was not acquainted.

“Have you not heard the deafening pounding of my heart when you are near? Please come to me, Mina, be with me. Your husband is an adulterer. The marriage remains unconsummated and is therefore not yet a legitimate marriage.” He spoke quietly but firmly in contrast to his ardor of moments ago. “Moreover, you married him under duress.”

“Did Jonathan tell you all this?”

“No, but Dr. Von Helsinger and I consult with each other about our patients.”

Humiliation flushed and burned my face and neck. I wanted to contradict him, to prove him wrong, to produce some evidence of Jonathan’s love for me. “My husband has been ill since our wedding. I brought him here so that you could help him. Doctor, have you forgotten your purpose?”

“Yes!” He threw his hands in the air. He pushed his chair aside, falling to his knees and grabbing a fistful of my skirt. “Yes, I have forgotten it. My love for you has wiped everything else out of my mind.” He rested his head on my thigh, his hot cheek making its impression through my skirt. “I just want to stay here forever.”

“Well, you mustn’t,” I said. “Please control yourself!”

He sighed, lifting himself up and sitting on the desk so that he was looking down at me. He straightened his shirt. “I know that what I am doing is outrageous, but I cannot apologize. Jonathan will never be the sort of husband you deserve.”

“Is this what you and Dr. Von Helsinger have concluded?”

“No, but we have discussed the matter. Von Helsinger wants me to listen to his notes on the case, but I have not yet had the opportunity.” He gestured toward the cylinders on a shelf next to the phonograph, neatly lined up and labeled.

“No man is perfect. I am trying to forgive him. Jonathan was not in his right mind when he was seduced in Styria.”

“Do not be naïve. Men always like to imagine that they are helpless when in the thrall of a beautiful lover.”

I lowered my head.

“I have upset you, when my fondest wish is for your happiness,” he said. “No one will blame you for forsaking a man who has already forsaken you. I, on the other hand, would treasure you until one of us breathes the last.”

I was so shaken that I thought it better to be silent.

“You are not running from me in horror, which I regard as a hopeful sign,” he said. He took my hand again. “Come to me any time of day or night. I will inform the staff that we are working together, and that you are to have complete access to me. We will empty our minds to each other, and I will soon convince you that we are meant to be together.”

I knew that I should chastise him for insulting a married woman, but here were more questions to be answered, and I believed that those answers could be found inside Seward’s office. “You have stunned me, John,” I said. “I must go collect myself.” And I left the room.

That night I had a horrific dream. It began well enough, as they usually did. I was rolling on wet grass, letting it tickle me blade by blade, my limbs stretched out in ecstasy as I reached out into the night air-light, fresh, and skimming the surface of my body like gentle fingertips. Suddenly, I was jerked upward and imprisoned in arms that were foreign and mean. Angry arms. The lovely aromas on which I had been feasting disappeared, and I was thrown onto something hard, a floor perhaps. I was too frightened to open my eyes. I felt a lash across my back and I howled. Then came another slap, and I curled up like a snail to try to protect myself. A voice screamed at me: Devil’s imp, Satan’s girl. Tell me the truth! Who are you, and what have you done with my daughter? I started to suffocate, gasping for air, trying to reach out for help.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting up in bed, shivering and choking. I did not know where I was at first, but my eyes adjusted and I took in the environs of the room at the asylum with its canopy above and its dark panels of drapes enveloping the bed. I found that I could at last breathe and let out a heavy sigh. Jonathan lay beside me, holding a pillow against his body like a shield.

“You were screaming in your sleep,” he said.

“What was I saying?”

He pulled farther away from me, clutching the pillow even tighter. “You were denying that you were the devil’s child.”

“You look frightened of me, Jonathan!” I said. “I am the one who has had the bad dream and needs comfort.”

He tossed the pillow aside and put his arm around me. “Poor Mina. I am not frightened of you, but I am living with many fears. I have seen things and done things that must be expurgated from my psyche. That is what the doctor says. Then and only then will my soul be cleansed.”

The next day Jonathan informed me that Dr. Von Helsinger thought it best if he slept in a separate room. “Only for a little while, Mina,” he assured me. “I will soon be better.” I wondered if this was part of a scheme between Seward and Von Helsinger to separate me from my husband. Would Seward have confessed his affections to Von Helsinger? I decided that it was time to talk to him myself. I sent him a note and waited for a reply, but received none. I had a queasy feeling in my stomach and could not look at my breakfast. As the morning wore on, I felt more and more agitated.

Since Seward had told his staff that I was to be given free access in the asylum, I no longer needed permission to walk the halls. One of the staff directed me to Von Helsinger’s study, which hummed with the bass of male voices. I assumed that one of those was my husband’s and I rapped lightly on the door before opening it.

To my great surprise, Arthur Holmwood-Lord Godalming-was pacing the room while Seward, Von Helsinger, and Jonathan sat in big leather chairs. Von Helsinger’s pipe was clamped between his yellowing teeth, filling the air with a spicy aroma of nutmeg and cinnamon. Arthur’s overcoat sat in a rumpled heap on the floor where presumably he had thrown it. His hat lay atop it on its side so that I could see the label of the expensive London hatter. He was pale as sand, and his blond hair was stringy. The men were startled to see me and rose out of their seats.

“Lord Godalming,” I said, “what a surprise. What brings you here?” No one spoke, and I wondered if I my question had been a rude one. After all, Godalming was Seward’s dearest friend. Arthur started to speak, when Seward shot him a warning look. But Arthur was in no condition to be contained.

“It’s Lucy,” he said, looking at me with mad eyes. “She is not dead.”

“Now, Arthur,” Seward said, “you don’t want to upset Mrs. Harker.” To me he said, “Perhaps you should let us handle this.”

I was not about to leave. I walked further into the room and took a seat.

“What do you mean, Lucy is not dead?” I asked.

“She is not dead,” he insisted. “I have seen her with my own eyes!”

Those eyes at this moment were bloodshot. He looked as if he had not slept or changed his clothes in days. Von Helsinger’s pipe smoke was probably saving us from the smell of Arthur’s rank-looking shirt.

“At first, she only came to me in my dreams,” he said to me. The men were silent. “She was bloodied and horrible, in some unnatural state between life and death. She would not speak, but she stared at me as if she hated me, just as she did sometimes in the last days, when she was so ill. It got so that I was terrified to go to sleep at night, but I consoled myself with the fact that these were mere dreams. ‘Holmwood, get hold of yourself,’ I’d say. I restored my grip on reality, and for one night I did not see her, and I slept with ease. But for the past three nights, she has come to me again, staring at me in anger as blood drips from her eyes and her mouth, and gushes from her arms.

“Then, this morning, I awakened, safe in my bed. I rubbed my eyes, feeling relief that I had been dreaming. I took in a deep breath and sighed, but when I took my hands away from my eyes, she was standing at the foot of the bed, bloody, just as she was in the dream. She held her arms out to me. ‘I want your blood, Arthur,’ she said, hissing like the most toxic asp, her tongue long and ugly. She said, ‘Do you not love your Lucy? Do you not want to give me more of your blood?’”

He turned his head away, looking into the fire, burning in the grate.

“Then what happened?” I was completely caught up in his story.

He did not look up. He spoke quietly. “I shut my eyes and screamed, and when I opened them again, she was gone.”

Seward was staring at me with such intent that I wondered if my husband was going to notice. But Jonathan clutched the arms of his chair, his face whiter than Arthur’s, his forehead pinched so tight that his eyebrows could not be distinguished from the furrows.

“Does Mrs. Harker need to be subjected to this, Arthur?” Seward asked.

Lord Godalming ignored his friend. He picked up two pieces of newspaper, waving them at me. “Lucy is alive, I tell you. I saw her, and so have others.”

I scanned the two articles that described a “Bloofer Lady,” who was luring the children of Hampstead away from their playgrounds, returning them hours later or the next day, with wounds at the neck and throat.

“The newspapers print fright stories like this every year as All Hallows Eve approaches merely to sell papers,” I said. “This is naught to do with Lucy.”

Lord Godalming turned to Von Helsinger as if he were about to spring on him. “You just said, before Mina came into the room, that there are women with unnatural powers over men and that they thrive on drinking blood! I believe that you turned Lucy into one of them with your strange treatments!”

Von Helsinger showed no reaction. Seward stood, putting his arm around his friend.

“Arthur, you must get hold of yourself,” Seward said. “With all due respect to my colleague, I believe that you have been having nightmares, which would be a natural response to the death of your wife. I can help you to analyze these dreams and settle your mind, but you must calm down.”

My husband interrupted. “I think we must excuse my wife.”

“As I have already suggested,” said Seward in his doctor’s voice. Seward offered his hand to me to help me out of the chair. To his colleague, he said, “Ring the bell, please.”

I did not take his proffered hand. Remaining in my seat, I said, “I will not be excluded. Lucy was my dearest friend.”

“That is why you must leave, Mrs. Harker,” Seward said. “All this talk of her, bloody and rising from the dead, is too upsetting.”

“I am not upset,” I insisted.

“Mina, let the men handle this.” Jonathan was animated now, his eyes bright, the lines of worry in his face smoothed over.

Von Helsinger reached under his desk, tapping something with his foot, which created a loud buzz. A few seconds later, Mrs. Snead arrived. “Escort Mrs. Harker to wherever she would like to go,” Seward said. He offered his hand again, and this time I took it. As I was leaving with Mrs. Snead, he mouthed the words, Come to me.

In the evening, 22 October 1890

At suppertime, Mrs. Snead brought me a tray of food with a note from Jonathan that I should dine alone in the room. Later still, he came to the room to change into heavy clothing.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I will tell you about it when I return,” he said.

I questioned him about what had transpired after I had left Von Helsinger’s office, but he would say no more, only that he was going somewhere with the men.

I had no idea how long they would be gone, but I wasted no time in asking Mrs. Snead to let me into Seward’s office. “I want to make use of his medical library while he is gone. That way I can look through the volumes without disturbing him.”

She let me into the office and lit the lamps before warily closing the door. Worried that she might reenter the room, I pulled a fat volume off the wall and opened it on the desk in front of me so that I might pretend to be reading.

Fortunately, I had convinced Headmistress a year before to purchase a phonograph to utilize in teaching elocution, for there was no better way to rid a girl of her coarse accent than to let her hear how she sounded to others. I looked through the cylinders on his shelf until I found the two that were labeled with my husband’s name. I reached for the first and removed its cardboard cover, afraid of what it was going to reveal.

The cylinder was new, its waxy surface still nubby, whereas for economy’s sake, Headmistress insisted that I use the same one over and over until its surface was smooth. I placed it in the machine and turned it on, praying that no one would hear. I supposed that I could tell Mrs. Snead that I had permission to listen to the doctors’ recordings and face the consequences if she reported me to Seward.

Sitting at the desk, I poised my diary inside the larger volume so that I could take notes. Coughing to clear his throat, Von Helsinger began to speak. “Jonathan Harker, twenty-eight years of age. The patient suffered a severe case of brain fever in which he experienced erotic hallucinations and loss of memory. He was hospitalized and treated, with an extended period of rest in the town of Exeter. Symptoms of neurasthenia, melancholia, and listlessness persist. Upon occasion, he also exhibits paranoia, believing that women, in particular his wife, are in league with the devil. Reasons for this assumption will become clear.”

My pen dropped from my hand, blotting ink on the few words I had already written. Von Helsinger’s voice continued. “Harker claims that while in Styria, the niece of the Austrian count for whom he was conducting real estate transactions, seduced him. He describes the girl as more beautiful than the paintings of Mr. Rosetti, with flowing hair of gold and a naturally red, sensuous mouth. Harker engaged in sexual relations with her, and, in turn, with her and two other women, both described as raven-haired beauties with mesmerizing eyes, red lips, and glittering white skin. All three of the women were irresistible and exotic, and in his words, ‘not pure like our English beauties.’ The women performed what he called ‘unspeakable and unholy acts,’ exciting his ‘most base instincts and desires.’ He was unable to resist them and, in fact, searched them out in the Count’s castle whenever they left him alone. After two weeks, he was no longer able to keep track of time. All three women were practiced in the arts of intercourse and fellation, which the patient had never experienced. Because of this, he awarded to these females magical powers.

“Even under hypnosis, he has had difficulty talking about aspects of the experience, so I asked him to write them down. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:

Ursulina invited me to ride with her one morning. Never have I seen a person, male or female, gallop across difficult terrain with such reckless abandon. Her dazzling blond tresses danced in rhythm with the steed’s long white tail as she galloped across the valley ahead of me; it was as if she were the goddess of dawn riding Pegasus. After exhausting me in the outdoors, she enchanted me in the castle by engaging my senses with feasting and music and dancing, and lulling me with wine, all the while slowly removing her clothing and mine, one agonizing piece at a time. Then she showed me the very meaning of pleasure with her hands, her lips, her mouth, and even her teeth. When she had me in her thrall, and when I was at my most vulnerable, she invited two of her demon sisters to join us. These creatures weaken a man’s feeble will against temptation, thrilling him with every bliss-making act. Oh, they have secrets, sir, undreamt of secrets to bring a man to a state of incomprehensible enjoyment.

“Harker continues to have vivid dreams about the women, especially the one named Ursulina. He cannot release her from his mind, imagining that it is the girl herself who comes to him in his dreams and makes love to him. I proposed that nocturnal emission was a common experience for the male, but he insists that his experience is different. ‘It is not an ordinary dream, doctor,’ he says. ‘It is as if she is possessing me.’ He believes that he acted immorally by succumbing to the women, but he admits that at times, he has had to restrain himself from returning to Styria to look for them. Over this, he feels tremendous guilt.”

Von Helsinger paused, breathing laboriously. I heard him shuffling papers and striking a match, presumably to reignite his pipe. My mind raced. How was I to compete with these seductresses of unearthly beauty and sexual prowess? I, who had kept myself pure so that I might marry a respectable man and, in turn, have his respect? Oh, the irony of having lost that man to degenerate women.

After a few little sucking noises and a deep exhalation, the doctor continued. “I had originally believed that Harker’s sexual naïveté caused him to attribute supernatural elements to an orgiastic encounter. However, what he subsequently revealed leads me to ruminate on a different and more dramatic conclusion. He claims that at the height of ecstasy, which he described as a dark place where pleasure and pain cannot be distinguished, the women took turns breaking his flesh with their nails and teeth and extracting blood.

“I ask myself, is it possible that young Harker was in fact seduced by she demons? Without the factor of the blood taking, it would be presumed that the women were mere harlots, who can also drain the vital forces from a man and leave him in the confused and fevered state Harker describes. But if the blood taking is interpreted literally and not as a hallucination, it is possible that these were vampire women, the unnatural creatures of myth who achieve extended or eternal life by drinking the blood of others.

“I have long heard tales of bloodsucking female creatures and of the incubi who harbor them, in this case, the Austrian count. One of the symptoms of having being bitten by them is the craving it creates for reoccurrence, such as Harker describes. The brilliant minds of the ancient world wrote of these blood drinkers, trying to grapple with their powers. Men like Aristotle and Apuleius, and the historians Diodorus Siculus and Pausanias, wrote of their magic and mystery and the horror they wreaked upon mankind by the seduction of the innocent. They have gone by many names: lamia, witch, demon, succubus or incubus, sorcerer or sorceress. Lilith, the first wife of Adam, was one such fiend. Some believe that these creatures are descended from those who mated with the gods and Titans, creating a terrible hybrid that is neither human nor divine. Some say there exist those who were born mortal and made themselves immortal by taking the blood and vitality of other humans. These are the so-called undead.

“The writer who visits John Seward is full of such tales from the darker regions of Moldavia, Walachia, and the Kingdom of Hungary, places I have never been. He presents a good case for their existence. ‘There can be no great smoke arise be there no fire, Dr. Von Helsinger,’ he says. He is intrigued by my experiments with blood and in blood’s mysterious powers as research for some horrific work of fiction he has in mind. I introduced him to Goethe’s poem “The Bride of Corinth,” about a female vampire, and to the “Vampirismus” of Hoffmann, for which he was most grateful. He has also gathered stories about the vampire from a compendium of medieval sources and folktales: the vampire lives on the blood of others, which he takes by night; he must sleep in a coffin filled with his native soil; he is active from dusk to just before dawn but sleeps during daylight hours; he is repelled by garlic and Christian symbols such as the Host, holy water, and the cross; he can be killed by a silver bullet or by a stake through the heart and decapitation; and he is able to assume the shape of certain animals with which his species identifies, such as wolves and bats. Fanciful and horrific stuff, most of which I have heard from folktales. But I have found that in researching the metaphysical, it is important to rekindle that part of the brain’s imagination that one left behind in the nursery.

“Is it possible that these fiends or their hybrids, who have fascinated and occupied minds greater than mine, have always existed-biological misfits who have no link on Darwin’s evolutionary chain? If so, I am curious to see if the males and females share the engendered traits in their human counterparts. If Harker was not hallucinating, and he was indeed seduced by supernatural women, whose behavior mirrors wanton human females, then the aforementioned hypothesis is correct.

“In conclusion, when I first began with Harker, I did not dream that his infirmity would reveal the exchange of blood as its possible source. What luck! Thus my lifelong devotion to delineating the essential elements and mysteries of blood is validated once more. One thing is certain: the blood is the life. Its qualities hold the secrets of life and death, of mortality and immortality. Did the ancients not offer human blood to the gods? Did they possess the knowledge that human blood somehow enhanced divine powers? It seems a contradiction, yes. But science is full of paradoxes.

“As for Harker, he is a male and strong, and the loss of blood seems to have been minimal. He does not require a transfusion. With time, he will fully recover. However, he is impotent with regard to his wife. I prescribed a series of visits to a brothel. As a customer paying for the services, he will be restored to the natural position of power over the female and his potency will return.”

The phonograph stopped playing, and Von Helsinger’s rough voice gave way to the ghostly moans of the institution wafting into the room. I put down the pen, letting the blood flow back into my hand after my furious scribbling, but Von Helsinger’s words hit me like blows to the body. I had stopped breathing and now took a deep intake of air, hoping it would clear my head. What was this man doing advising his already adulterous patient to go to prostitutes? I could not decide what was more insane-that remedy for his ailment or the idea that he had been attacked by supernatural creatures, an idea encouraged by that redheaded menace who had stumbled into my life in Whitby. And even more baffling, Jonathan seemed to be living out the same erotic, blood-drinking experience that I had in my dream. Why were both of us being haunted?

I bent over, resting my head on my knees, hoping that I would not black out. Suddenly, I heard the door creak open, sending a fresh shiver up my spine. I looked up. Mrs. Snead was looking at me suspiciously. I sat up, blood rushing to my head. It took me a moment to speak. “Oh, I must have dozed off,” I said.

Her strange, sideways glance was blank. She cast her eyes downward at the notes in my journal. “Are you done here, madam?” she asked. “I cannot leave my duty unless I lock up behind you.”

The second cylinder sat untouched on the shelf. “Would it inconvenience you terribly if I stayed another thirty minutes?” I asked.

She agreed to return later and begrudgingly left the room, closing the door behind her. I waited for several interminable minutes before gathering the courage to reach for the cylinder. I slowly substituted it for the other, trying not to make one incriminating sound. I started the machine and reached for my pen. Von Helsinger cleared his throat and began speaking.

“We must remain skeptical of Harker’s claims while entertaining the possibility that they are true, at least to a degree. The reality that he encountered vampire women is remote, but he might have fallen into a coven of self-proclaimed witches who take men’s blood to use in magical spells. It would behoove me as a metaphysician and a man of science to travel to Styria and investigate the matter. Perhaps I shall do so in the spring. It would be interesting to see how the harpies, whether mortal or not, would react to a transfusion of male blood, if I could find a way to do such a thing. Perhaps young Harker might help with this. At the very least, I would like to procure samples of their blood to study.

“In the meanwhile, I am committed to remain God’s warrior on a crusade to obliterate the evil brought upon the female by the sin of Eve. God created woman to be pure and naïve, but the sinners Lilith and Eve were not satisfied with His will and tainted their sex. If God had wanted woman to have knowledge, would He have forbidden her to pick from the tree? Yet today’s woman would transform Europe into the new Gomorrah with her demands to turn nature upside down.

“I admire the work of Sir Francis Galton, but I do not believe that his theory of eugenics will have any impact. We will never be able to prevent the inferior classes from breeding. More realistic is to create a female that is a better breeding machine able to produce superior progeny. Once the transfusions are perfected, the female recipient will genetically assimilate the higher traits of the male-strength, courage, moral rectitude, rational thinking, even superior physical strength and health-and will thereby bring a healthier biological profile to the mating process. I believe that in the future, we will not only improve the quality of the female through the transference of superior male blood but also may create an überbeing, or even an immortal being-not the fiends of Harker’s description but a noble, godlike creature.

“The transfusions must be perfected! Why some patients react to the transfused blood with high fever and shock I do not know. The young wife of Lord Godalming, a woman even more duplicitous than most, may have had blood that was inordinately female, which reacted badly to its opposite, that of strong and virile males. In the coming days, we will observe the effects of the infused blood on the other inmates. I predict that we will see miraculous improvements in the behavior of some of these hysterics.

“I hold to my theory that blood transference is the key to expedited human evolution. The female, strengthened by male blood, will be relieved of her biological and moral weaknesses, and from the union of two superior beings will come a race of supermen with the highest and purest of human qualities and the most desirable genetic characteristics.”

Chapter Thirteen

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.

23 October 1890

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.