Karen Essex

  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 guilel
ess 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 hav
e 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?