MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL

(unofficial addendum)

1 October.—It is with a heavy heart that I begin this secret journal entry, one not intended for anyone’s eyes but mine. The very word ‘secret’ is something I feel reluctant to even contemplate, for the meaning is loaded, at least in this instance, with a sense of deceit. It pains me to have to withhold information from those nearest to me, especially dear Jonathan, for in all my years of knowing him I have never kept anything from him. Yet circumstances leave me with no other option.

I have had an experience so utterly dreadful that I cannot bear to share it with others, even poor Jonathan, lest I cause them undue agitation. This is all the more true given that the episode that I am about to narrate is as mystifying as it is abhorrent. I am myself still uncertain as to its full implications. Therefore I cannot help but feel that, until I have reached a conclusion, presenting Jonathan with the full account of what I am about to commit to paper would only further distress the poor fellow’s already troubled mind. A time will come when the ancient menace haunting us will have been eradicated; only then will it be safe to bring all events leading up to it to light. Until that hour, I have no choice but to keep the present entry concealed.

“Last night I went to bed when the men had gone, simply because they told me to.” This sentence I have copied from today’s official journal entry because it’s true. It is the only thing that is true. Everything else contained therein is a harmless dream narrative that I’ve written for Jonathan’s eyes so as to not disturb him with the weight of what had really happened. What follows is the true account of the events of last night.

I had gone to bed as instructed, but didn’t even attempt to sleep. Apart from not being the least bit tired, there was the matter of the noise coming from Mr. Renfield’s room below, which I believe would have kept even the most somnolent person awake. I could hear the poor man’s voice intermingled with the barking of dogs and baying of other beasts that I couldn’t identify, as well as sporadic bursts of crashing, as if someone had been throwing things about in his room. All this rose to a thundery crescendo before being cut off with a startling suddenness. Then there was nothing but an eerie silence.

At the same time, a faint white mist began to trickle into the room through the keyhole. It appeared hesitant at first, as if merely testing the air, but after a moment it began in earnest, pouring in through all the cracks around and under the door until the entire floor was covered in a thick rug of white fog. The room became suffused with a dank sepulchral smell, while the temperature dropped to an uncomfortable chill. As it did, my eyelids began to feel heavy. The anxious wakefulness that I hadn’t been able to shake off was gone in an instance, and the drowsiness that overcame me in its stead brought with it a sense of detached acceptance. All of a sudden I was like a person watching events unfold in a dream.

The mist accumulated at the foot of the bed, where a broad silver fan of moonlight, so bright that it looked almost solid, streamed in through the parting in the curtains. Presently a few tendrils began to rise up out of the pooled mist, merging at length into a single tall shape that towered over me. Slowly, I sat up.

The substance of this white pillar gradually became thicker and thicker until it solidified into the likeness of a pale, stern-looking man with aquiline features. Even in my lethargic state, I needed no introduction to know that I was looking at Count Dracula. As I had already decided that all this had to be a dream, I did not raise an alarm at this intrusion but rather continued to look on in what felt like an almost disinterested way.

The Count, seemingly unimpressed with or unaware of my equanimity, made a pacifying gesture with one pale claw-like hand, and said, “Fear not, I will not harm you. I am only here to talk.”

I believe I said something in response, expressing my surprise as to why he should wish to talk to me in the first place, but my voice sounded distant and muffled in my ears. His, however, was remarkably resonant.

“It is not I, best beloved one,” he said, “who wishes to talk, but rather yourself. For your friends have isolated you with their kindness.”

“Your meaning escapes me.” As I began this utterance something popped in my ear and I was once again able to hear my own voice. It sounded rather harsh. The Count, however, looked unfazed.

“Surely the meaning of my words is clear,” he said. “Until very recently you were a valued member of the informal little group of adventurers assembled here in Dr. Seward’s admirable institution. You were not only their secretary, but also a shoulder to cry on. Only yesterday you attended their secret conference as an equal, a part of the inner circle. All this you did selflessly and irreproachably, only to be excluded from their confidence all of a sudden, with scarcely a second thought. And so here you are now, lying awake in the dark all by yourself while they plot their next move without you.”

Being, as I still was, convinced that none of this was real, I did not question how he knew any of what he had just told me, nor did I make too much of an effort to contradict his claims.

“My friends are acting with my best interests at heart,” said I. “They are aware that what they do poses no small amount of danger, and have thus decided to keep me away from further involvement with their plans, as they would never forgive themselves were any harm to befall me.”

“Nevertheless,” said the Count, “it cannot be a pleasant feeling to be left in the dark.”

I said nothing.

“To be so excluded,” he went on relentlessly, “by those dear to you, most of all Jonathan.” Again there was a pause. “After all, you never kept secrets from one another in all the years that you have known each other.”

“My dear Jonathan is only doing what he believes is best for me.”

“What he believes, perhaps. But he never did ask your opinion on the matter, did he?”

There was a mocking tone in Dracula’s voice that made me, in that moment, less careful in my choice of words than I otherwise would have been. “What does it matter? Jonathan knew that I would have conceded his views. We always see eye to eye.”

“Is that really what you would have done, or would you have perhaps expressed some reservations? For it does vex you, does it not, being no longer privy to their agenda?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed with a sudden force, springing up to my feet unwittingly. It was only after I had found myself standing before Dracula that I realised what I had done.

Even the Count himself looked momentarily startled by the violence of my reaction. But he recovered quickly.

“You have been confined to this place for too long,” he said, holding out his hand to me. At the same time he began to merge with the moonlight, tiny motes of silvery dust dancing around his dissolving form. “Let us go away for a while. Come, you can do this too.”

Needless to say, I had no intention of following him, nor did I have the faintest idea as to what he’d meant by that last statement of his. I could do what precisely? As I inwardly debated this matter, my foot took an unconscious step towards the moonlight. There was a gentle tugging sensation, as if some magnetic field at the centre of the light beam was drawing me in. At the same time, a vortex of silver dust arose around me, seemingly out of nowhere, and enveloped me completely. I felt an unseen force lift me off my feet. 

As sudden as it was, this whirlwind only lasted a moment, for the next instance I found myself standing on solid ground again, with Dracula beside me. The setting, however, had changed. We were now outdoors, amidst ancient trees whose branches rustled in a chilly nocturnal breeze. At first I thought we were outside the house, but then the sight of a familiar church, semi visible in the moonlight some distance away, made me realise that we were in Whitby, standing in the churchyard by the old stone bench where poor Lucy and I used to sit together. This was also the very place where I had seen the diabolical figure of the Count for the first time, as he preyed on my friend.

“You are wrong,” said Dracula as if reading my mind. “We had already met the night before, except you don’t remember. But that is all right.” His blood-red mouth stretched into a gruesome grin. “I made sure you did not remember until you were ready.”

“Impossible,” I whispered, feeling faint.

“Not so. Think now and you will remember. Go back in your mind to the night of the storm.”

I did not wish to reminisce about that grim night back in August, when I had been kept awake by the combination of Lucy’s restlessness and the anxiety of not knowing the whereabouts of my dear Jonathan. But Dracula’s presence did something to me, even though he appeared as unmoving as a gravestone. It was as if his mind reached out and nudged me back to that fateful night, where I had no choice but to relive it with a new kind of awareness.

That evening had been a quiet one, and no one could have foreseen what was to come. The storm arose all of a sudden, quickly turning into a raging force so destructive it was almost unearthly. The thunderous winds and towering waves tore through the bay, casting ashore the Demeter—the strange abandoned ship that brought with it the fiend that now stood before me. At first I struggled to recall my own impressions of the tempest, but being back in Whitby, within earshot of the rolling waves that washed against the unseen cliffs beneath, unlocked hidden memories that presently began to rise to the surface of my consciousness.

Standing by the window on my side of the room I’d shared with Lucy, I had watched the churning black clouds sweep over the Kettleness and gather in the sky above the bay. All the while Lucy slept undisturbed, a small miracle, or so I thought, for she had suffered no fewer than three sleepwalking spells in the hours leading up to the storm. The more the storm raged, the more restful Lucy seemed to become, as if the former had drained the energy out of her.

The thundering of the gales made me feel transfixed, and I found myself quite unable to leave my place by the window, as much as sleep beckoned me. The gusts came with a steady rising and falling rhythm that felt strangely soothing. After a while I began to detect a different tone underneath the wind, a kind of quaint melodious howl—the call of some nocturnal animal or the cadence of some exotic instrument. I was reminded of the lines from Coleridge’s Eolian Harp:

Such a soft floating witchery of sound

As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve

Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land…

The sound was all that and more, for something untamed lurked beneath the surface. And it was calling for me. I cast a look at Lucy to make sure she would not stir, before putting on my overcoat and going out.

Once outside, I was nearly knocked off my feet by the sheer force of the storm, and I had to brace myself against the howling wind as I walked in a direction that my feet seemed to know better than my half-slumbering mind.

At last I found the source of the mesmerising tone—a lone grey wolf with eyes that glistened red under the electric charge of the storm. He lingered in the middle of a footpath in the restless manner of a dog waiting for someone to catch up.

The wolf was emitting a single plaintive note that the wind carried in all directions. Hearing that tone from such a short distance did something to my mind, but I cannot say what it was for I don’t understand it myself. As it were, I approached the source of the sound without thinking. As I did, the force of the wind gradually diminished. Once I had reached the wolf and crouched down to stroke his fine fur, the storm had ground to a standstill. At least this was how it appeared from within the charmed circle that surrounded us. Everything inside it was calm and yet I could see that beyond its invisible limits the storm still raged on unabated. It was as if the wolf was its unmoving center, which science terms ‘the eye.’

Then the wolf bolted, and I found myself exposed to the fury of the elements once again. “Wait!” I cried, and ran after him.

I followed the wolf down the path, over the hill and then up the steep stone steps that led up to the old church. Halfway there I lost sight of him. When I reached the churchyard at the top of the steps, I saw him once more, except he was no longer a wolf. He had now taken on the form of a man. A tall gaunt one in a black suit with bushy hair the same colour as the wolf’s fur had been. What happened then was so awful that I nearly fell into a swoon.

“Yes, so you do remember,” said Dracula to me as we stood in the same churchyard. “I made you then what I am—flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.”

The memory of this horrific event would have been too much to bear even if I hadn’t remembered what happened next. For after Dracula had finished his hideous blood rite that had left me drained, I looked up and saw that we were not alone in the churchyard. There was someone else there, sitting on my favourite bench. As a ray of moonlight passed over the seated figure, a shocked gasp escaped my lips.

“Mr. Swales!” I cried. It was the dear old man who had told me so many charmingly grim tales of yore. He had been sitting there, staring at the monstrous spectacle before him with a look of utmost horror frozen on his blanched face. He remained like that for another agonising moment before a frightful spasm twisted his features and he fell to the ground with a dreadful snap, as if something had broken inside him.

I made as if to run to him, but Dracula gripped my arm.

“No need. It was his time,” he said with a hideous sardonic smirk.

The Count’s dry chuckle brought me back to the present time, or whatever passed for it, as we stood by the now-empty seat.

“I am at a loss,” said I, “as to why you have brought me here and made me remember that which I never desired to recollect. I wish to return.”

“No, you don’t. You have no desire to return to a place where you will continue to be kept in the dark. You want to be like me.”

I recoiled. “Never! I would never wish to be a cold-blooded predator like yourself. Or those horrible women.” I was referring to the three women that dear Jonathan had stumbled upon whilst held captive at Castle Dracula, the succubi that accosted the poor fellow in the most scandalous way. I was certain that the Count knew whom I meant.

“Those three,” said he, “can only be what they have always been. They were base in life, and are therefore even more so now, for everything they once were has only been enhanced with their new powers.” He peered at me critically. “Unlike them,” he continued, “you have no base desires. You only wish to know. But in order to know, you need time.”

“I confess, I do not follow.”

“Come, I’ll show you.”

Once again, he held out his hand and this time both of us slipped through the moonlight portal in unison. However, for the second time that night we did not emerge where I expected. Instead of reappearing in the room we had set out from, we arrived somewhere that couldn’t have even been in the same house, for I could see the moonlit outline of Dr. Seward’s sanatorium through a narrow window on my left. So we had to be in some building right next to the doctor’s, and this could only be Dracula’s own residence, Carfax.

We were in a small circular chamber with bare walls of crumbling stone. It was dark apart from the ever-present moonlight. Judging by the distance of the room’s single window from the ground below, we must have been at the top of the mansion’s highest tower. The centre of the room was dominated by a rectangular stone slab about the size of a divan. An elongated unmoving shape, covered by a lustrous black fabric, lay stretched out on top of it. There was something reminiscent of the mortuary in this bleak setting, and yet I was not afraid, knowing as I did that I could always escape for as long as the moonlight conduit was within reach.

“I have created something,” said the Count, “that might be of use to you.”

With that, he pulled back the shroud, revealing a slumbering female figure lying on the stone. I gasped, for it was myself. Or at least it was an ethereal version of myself, for its form seemed scarcely more substantial than the moonlight. Nevertheless, the verisimilitude was striking, and even the gown the figure was dressed in was identical to my own.

“What is that?” I asked once I’d found my voice.

“In the great halls of the school where I learned the dark arts, we called forms of that kind eidola or homunculi. But this is neither of those things. It is something special that I have created just for you. It’s yours, if you want it.”

“Why would I want such a thing?”

“For someone who wishes to start a new life, one that is bound to no rules of the old, it can be of aid to leave behind a remnant of themselves. Just a temporary imprint so as to not arouse the suspicion of those left behind.”

I gasped once the full meaning of what he was suggesting had dawned on me. “You would have me leave my beloved Jonathan and all of my friends for you? Why would I desire to do such a thing as to be with you?”

“You are like me. Desire or lack thereof is of no consequence to you, it is only knowledge that matters. If you stay with me, you will learn from me all you have ever wished to know, with an infinite amount of time to do so. All I ask in return is for you to be my little helper.”

I immediately denounced any possibility of his idea ever coming to fruition, explaining emphatically how I found the very notion of abandoning dear Jonathan not only abhorrent but also unthinkable. Dracula listened to all of my arguments with a look of infinite patience. “In fact,” I added by way of conclusion, “I am at a loss as to why you have even chosen me.”

“I have not.” There was something in Dracula’s tone that made me look up. His face was stern and earnest. “You chose yourself,” he continued, “for you were the one who heard the call. I have no choice but to accommodate you.”

To this, I had no ready response. I looked at the insistent moonlight, which had now fanned out like a silver curtain between us. To go away now and leave this strange nightmare behind would have been as easy as walking out of an open door.

JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

(unpublished entry)

2 October.—I was given a dreadful scare upon returning to our room in the early hours of the morning, for Mina was not there. The bedclothes were disturbed as if she had gone to sleep or tried to, but there was no sight of her.

At first I thought she might have gone down to Renfield’s room, for she sometimes goes to see the madman in order to console him with her kind words. As I stood by the window, I caught a glimpse of movement with the corner of my eye. I turned and saw Mina through the window. For some reason she had gone outside.

I rushed out, but when I arrived at the place where I had seen her, which was about half way down the mist-covered lawn that lay between Dr. Seward’s house and Dracula’s awful Carfax residence, for a terrible moment I thought I had been mistaken, as there appeared to be nothing there save a thick ray of moonlight reaching down to the ground.

But then a passing cloud made the moonlight shift, and I could see that it had been Mina there all along. She emerged out of the silver light with its radiance highlighting her features. The glow was so bright that for a second I thought the rays were passing through her. Then she moved towards me and I could see that it had only been a trick of the light.

I went to her and asked her if she was well. Mina assured me that everything was all right and that she had only gone out to get a bit of air. Despite her soothing words, I felt a tinge of worry, for her voice sounded hollow.

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “tomorrow we should ask Dr. Seward to prepare a sleeping draught for you.”

“Yes,” Mina said, “I would like that very much.”

I took her hand in mine and together we walked back to the house.