Afterwards, when she left me alone, my heart was too full to sleep. So I have written it all down, and the sun is now high in the morning sky.

I pray Arkady has told the truth, that his agent shall watch over us by day, for exhaustion at last overtakes me. To sleep . . .Chapter 7 The Diary of Abraham Van Helsing 22 NOVEMBER 1871.

Can any more tragedy befall us? Within a week, I have seen my father dead and my family torn apart, all of them lost to me in one fashion or another.

After Stefan's fantastical departure and return, and Mama's even more impossible tale of a family's supernatural curse, I found myself trapped in a restless mind that could neither entirely believe nor entirely disbelieve. Logic a.s.sured me that madness was not contagious: how, then, could my mother and brother both have fallen prey to the same delusions?

But the thought that I should, based on secondhand reports, let the only family I have known be scattered to the winds-this evoked great anger in me. I was angry, too, that those dearest to me should have taken leave of their senses in a way that brought us all suffering, and so soon after Papa's death. In all fairness, though, mixed with my rage was an undercurrent of bitterness that owed itself to another source of pain.

I saw the look he gave her, and she him, when he returned.

So it was that this morning, after hearing Stefan's wild story and Mama's insistence that we all leave, I lost my temper and left at once for my hospital rounds -a full hour early.

Noontime found me in a still disagreeable state; so much so that for the first time in memory, I failed to return home for dinner. I had no office appointments, but any unscheduled patients who might come would be turned away, unless Stefan rose from his bed to tend them. I had no concern, I told myself, for any of them.

Let them worry about my whereabouts, I thought, full of righteous self-pity; and I refused to eat dinner at all, as though this might punish someone other than myself. Indeed, I wallowed in my misery with a great deal of satisfaction, allowing all the jealousy submerged from my boyhood to surface-thinking of how Mama had always favoured Stefan, how she and Papa had spoiled him, never demanded from him what was demanded of me, the elder.

Oh, my brother, if I had only put aside my selfishness and believed you!

I remained at the hospital until the afternoon (and was extremely annoyed when no one from home sent a message inquiring after me), when I made a leisurely round of my homebound patients.

I went to the boarding-house where Lilli was situated last, for she was, she said, always loneliest in the evenings. It was late afternoon; the sun had just set, but even then I had no intention of returning home. Had I not made the terrible discovery-an omen, I think now -perhaps I might not have returned home at all that night; perhaps I might have gone to an inn.

Her landlady told me in hushed tones that Lilli had worsened in the night and had eaten nothing that day but remained in bed sleeping. After knocking softly on the door, I entered her room quietly-but I need have taken no pains, for the poor dear woman had been dead some hours. I can see how the landlady took her to be asleep, for Lilli lay there quite sweetly, with eyes and mouth closed, and hands resting neatly atop the quilt as though the mortician had already done his work. But her skin-waxen and unnaturally pale, as yellowish-white as her spa.r.s.e ivory hair-was cool to the touch, and rigor mortis had begun to set in.

An omen, yes. I sat down in my customary place beside her bed and wept a moment; then I dried my eyes and told the landlady to summon the mortician. I might have been generous and offered to fetch him myself, but I was suddenly overwhelmed by an urgent anxious desire to return home.

Indeed, as I made my way out into the bleak winter evening, the grey of dusk rapidly darkening to black, both my pace and pulse quickened as the odd sense of dread increased.

The sight of home did nothing to a.s.suage my unease: rather it only increased it, for as I neared, I saw that not a single light shone in any window. Indeed, the lamp that Mama lit every night in antic.i.p.ation of my return was dark; the sight chilled me more than the cold night wind.

I bounded up the front steps and threw open the door. The house was utterly dark; to my right, the drawing-room hearth, which should have been blazing by this time, was cold.

But more ominous than these was the soft keening that issued from upstairs-high-pitched, inhuman, full of such abject misery that I responded to it without thought, taking the steps three at once until I arrived at its source.

The door to my own bedroom was flung open. Bitter cold greeted me as I entered; the sash had been thrown open, and the white curtains billowed in the wind. I rushed to close it and lit the lamp.

Upon the floor at the foot of our bed sat the source of that infernal nocturne: my wife, her collar unb.u.t.toned, gaping open to reveal the frilless camisole beneath, her long hair free and tousled, framing a stark white face broken by three dark depthless pools- mouth and eyes.

At the sight, I sank to my knees in pity and horror beside her, for I knew I looked again upon a madwoman, on my poor darling Gerda as I had first seen her, in a sanitorium cell.

Wild and wide and full of unspeakable anguish those eyes were, so far gone into that dark, h.e.l.lish country that when I laid my hands gently on her shoulders and called her name, she neither saw nor heard me -only continued emitting that high piercing wail, her lovely face contorted in a rictus of despair, her gaze focussed on an invisible terror.

All my questions, all my attempts to comfort, went unanswered, unheard. Helpless, I rose to investigate, knowing that if she could not explain the event that had triggered her relapse, I should have to deduce it.

My first deduction stung like a viper's bite: the bed was not made, as it always was shortly after she rose. The quilt had been thrown carelessly to the floor, the sheets tangled, the pillows scattered and bearing the impressions of heads that I knew did not include my own.

This distressed me mightily, but it was nothing compared to what followed-for I glanced up from that incriminating sight to check my little son's crib, wondering whether he had been witness to the moral outrage that had occurred here.

The blackest terror I have ever known seized me as my gaze fell upon my little son's crib, draped in shadow.

Empty. G.o.d in Heaven! Empty . . .

But surely he was in the house, I told myself, though I had never seen him elsewhere but at his mother's side. I knelt down and grabbed my wife's arms, shook her. "Little Jan! Where is he? Where is he? With Omar Gerda never saw, never heard. I scrambled to my feet and shouted my son's name into the darkness, searching foolishly for him beneath his crib, his bureau, his toys." When that proved futile, I rose and hurried downstairs-pausing on my way to knock on Stefan's closed door and call out; receiving no reply, I threw open the door and found only emptiness.

With horror, I dashed to the end of the hallway and Mama's room, calling out for her as I threw open the door.

To my utter relief, I saw my mother lying on the bed, sleeping soundly; but when I lit the lamp and spoke to her again, I found she was in a deep stupour from which she could not be roused. I even took her hand and gently slapped it, only to receive no response.

I rose, glancing round the room for my little son, and found of him no sign. In an utter panic, I ran down the stairs, from room to room, looking even in cabinets, closets, the unlikeliest places.

Gone. Gone, nowhere in the house. But of course, he could not be. What child could have lain quiet, listening to his mother's screams?

In the end, I ran outside into the cold and shouted his name down the street . . .

Only to hear it echo back at me in the evening stillness. And in that dreadful moment when I knew him gone, I longed to join my wife's descent into madness.

I might have stood out there forever, mindless of the winter wind, but Gerda's renewed keening galvanised me. I was numbed by shock, pushed beyond all limits; the strain of the last few days and the pure horror of what had just occurred so taxed my mind and heart that all thought, all emotion abruptly ceased.

In a state of cold, blank calm, I walked inside and with impossibly steady hands poured a gla.s.s of Papa's port for my wife.

I ascended the stairs a shattered man.

Thus I returned to Gerda's side. But my wife would not stop her grieving to take the wine; only when I raised it to her lips would she drink.

As she did, I comforted her as I would an infant, smoothing the hair back from her feverish brow with my cool hand, patting her back, whispering rea.s.surances. Though she still did not see me, though her gaze was still fixed on some awful memory, she quieted at last, and I grew bold enough to ask again, "What has happened? Where is the baby? Where is Stefan?"

Her eyelids fluttered, and her parted lips began to move. Certain of an answer, I began to withdraw the wine-but suddenly she raised an arm, with such swift force that the gla.s.s was overturned. Port spilled down onto her skin, onto her camisole, staining its snowy whiteness like dark, sweet-smelling blood while she screamed, pointing at the window.

"Gone! She-she took them both!"

I turned in the direction of her stricken gaze and saw the impossible: a white face, hovering like a suspended mask outside the gla.s.s pane, and clearly masculine (though my wife accused a female, in my confusion, I paid no heed). For a moment, I was honestly frightened, for this seemed a truly supernatural feat, but then common sense seized me.

This was certainly a burglar with a ladder, and no doubt the man who had stolen my poor child, perhaps with hopes of ransom. And now he thought to come for my wife. . . .

Full of outrage, I rushed to the window and threw it open, thinking to injure (and thus capture) the criminal by giving the ladder a mighty shove.There was no ladder, no face, no criminal, only cold wind and black night.

Bewildered, I shut the window once more and turned back towards my wife, only to discover that the man with the gleaming white face and hands stood between us.

The sight of him provoked renewed screaming from my wife. I hurried to her side and held her, covering her with a blanket to ease her trembling, shielding her with my body from this intruder.

He made no advance but said in a low voice so strangely powerful that I heard it easily over Gerda's shrieks: "Abraham. I fear I am too late."

He was a handsome man of indeterminate age, with jet-dark hair and eyebrows, and features that struck me as oddly familiar. I opened my mouth to shout at him, to demand his ident.i.ty and purpose and the whereabouts of my son and brother, but to my total astonishment, the words that issued from my lips were: "Do I know you?"

"Perhaps," said he, "but there is no time. They have taken Stefan, and wherever he is, he sleeps now. Tell me what you know."

"He is one of them, just like her-and she has taken them! Taken Stefan and Jan!" Gerda shrieked, tearing away from me to lunge at the stranger, and pummelled his chest with her fists. The blanket slipped from her shoulders, exposing the camisole most immodestly, but she was too distraught to notice or to care.

He made no effort to defend himself from her blows, nor did they seem to discomfit him in the least -but her words overwhelmed him with sickly dread. At them, he closed his eyes and whispered, " Just like her." Zsuzsanna has been here, then."

I caught hold of her and pulled her from him, covered her again with the bedclothes. "Do you know this woman Zsuzsanna, sir? Were you her accomplice? And if so, what have you done with my child and brother?"

He did not reply but peered beyond us at the dark hallway, and suddenly I saw his eyes widen with fear. "Your mother," he demanded of me swiftly.

"I cannot wake her," I said, with a small shake of my head.

Before I could interrogate him further, he swept past us-or rather glided by, with preternatural silence and speed. I heard not a single footstep in the hall, but within an instant he had returned, with Mama unconscious in his arms.

The sight of her calmed Gerda, who fell silent and allowed me to continue giving her small sips of the port, and to bathe her warm brow with a washcloth wrung with water from the basin.

We watched as, with infinite tenderness, the stranger lay Mama on the bed; with infinite tenderness knelt by her side and whispered, Mary. . . .

That sight, and the look of genuine love and relief on my mother's face when she woke to the sight of him, convinced me more than any other to trust him. I knew that this was the man she had written of in her diary.

"Arkady," she said, and graced him with a smile. "Thank G.o.d, you are still with us!" Yet the sad affection on her face soon turned to panic; she sat upright with a cry, and clutched his arms. "Stefan!""Gone," Arkady replied. "Alive, but asleep; when he wakes, I will know more. There is no point in following until I know the direction he has been taken. For now, you must tell me what you can."

My mother raised her hands to her eyes and groaned; for a moment, I thought she would weep, but she soon mastered herself and looked up at him steadily. "Zsuzsanna. I was so exhausted this afternoon that I fell into a deep sleep despite all efforts to remain awake; and once there, I dreamt of Zsuzsanna's eyes, beautiful, brown, shot through with shimmering gold. Languour overcame me; I knew this meant that she was trying to enter the house, to steal Stefan from us. ... I struggled to resist it but was too tired to emerge. I was paralysed, unable to move, to speak, even to open my eyes."

My poor mother let go a hoa.r.s.e sob. Arkady tried to gather her into his arms, but she pushed him away with a gesture that intimated she was undeserving of comfort. And again she raised her hands to her face and said, "It is all my doing!"

No, I wanted to say, it is my fault. Had I returned home earlier, none of this could have happened.

But Arkady spoke first. Gently he caught my mother's wrists and lowered her hands. "I deserve the blame more than any of you. I should have suspected my sister capable of such treachery." And his visage blazed with such abrupt and dangerous white-hot wrath that my mother and I both recoiled from it. "What a fool I was, to think us safe because Vlad was still in Transylvania, because Zsuzsa would never betray me! She must have made arrangements to come days ago, perhaps weeks. Perhaps she even knew of Stefan's whereabouts before I discovered them! No," he said, shaking his head at Mama's faint protests, "it is more my fault than anyone else's. Had I been more cautious, Vlad's agent would never have discovered my resting-place; he very nearly succeeded in trapping me there tonight. Thanks to my own mortal a.s.sistant, I was merely delayed. But long enough.

Long enough!"

He wheeled and gestured at Gerda, who now sat beside me on the floor, resting mutely with her head against my shoulder, her gaze turned inwards. "She knows the rest of what has happened here; perhaps she can help us."

"She is catatonic," I said, stroking her hair as though I could smooth away whatever trauma had provoked the rebirth of her madness. To hear myself saying those words again broke my heart. I knew I had lost part of her heart to Stefan-but I had hope, then, that she might be convinced to return to me. Now she was utterly lost to us all. "She has been like this before. She will speak to no one for some time. Days, perhaps longer."

"She will speak to me," Arkady said softly. And he crouched down in front of us and reached a hand towards her-slowly, tentatively, with the palm turned up, as one might approach a wild animal.

She cringed as he neared, and burrowed her face into my shoulder; when he put his hand lightly upon her shoulder, she jerked as though electrified and began to tremble. But then he said, softly-in the loveliest, most melodic and soothing voice I have ever heard anyone, male or female, use: "Gerda. I mean you no harm. But for Stefan's sake, I must know exactly all that has happened."

She glanced sideways at him, her eyes wide with terror, but the instant her gaze met his, her shivering ceased. To my amazement, she turned and faced him, and after a moment of staring deeply into his eyes, hers closed, and she began to speak, in the slow dreamy murmur of one entranced: "She was here.""Who?" Arkady demanded sharply. "The woman who looks like me?"

"Yes ..." my wife answered dully. "In the afternoon. Bram was gone, and Mama and Stefan asleep. I was in the kitchen with little Jan, making the dinner for everyone, when she rang at the door."

"I would not open it, of course. Before he left for hospital, Bram ordered me not to, especially after the man masquerading as a patient stole Stefan away. She asked for Doctor Stefan Van Helsing, saying that someone at the hospital had referred her to him for a complaint. I turned her away, explaining that they were not available and could see no one to-day. But the woman was dressed so prettily, and her face so kindly and so beautiful, that when she paused in mid-turn to glance back at little Jan, balanced upon my hip, she asked, 'Oh. And this is your little boy?"

"Her voice was so wistful that I could not be rude; and she was so very lovely-perhaps the loveliest woman I had ever seen-that I just wanted to continue looking at her. So I answered, 'Yes, this is our little angel. Only he is not so heavenly right now; he is tired and late for his nap."

"Jan had been crying, so I had picked him up to comfort him; but at the sight of the pretty woman, he silenced at once and stared at her, his eyes growing rounder and rounder.

" 'How handsome he is!' the woman exclaimed with a dimpled smile. 'Such a beautiful child!

Is he Doctor Stefan's?"

"No, I explained, it was Stefan's nephew, that I was the other Doctor Van Helsing's- Abraham's-wife.

"How wonderful,' she said. 'And how lucky you are to have such a healthy, perfect son.' She began to turn away again, but I saw that her expression had grown unutterably sad, so much so that it touched my heart. I opened the door a crack and asked her what was the matter.

"She faced me then, her gaze intent and steady and so beautiful, I let go a breath. "I cannot have children of my own," she said. " I have consulted physician after physician and was hoping your brother-in-law could help me."

"I stood in the doorway, moved by her pathetic story, moved by her grace and charm as a man might be moved. I would have done anything she asked at that moment, no matter how injurious to myself or even my child; and so, when she inquired sweetly, 'Might I come inside?' I opened the door wide.

"She entered smiling, and I-I remember only that I had entered a state of bliss, wanting only to be in her presence, to follow her as a flower follows the sun. When she asked, 'May I?' and held her arms out to my shy son, he stretched out his own eagerly to her, and I let her take him as though it were simply natural to hand him to a total stranger.

"So she took him, and I watched with strange dreamy pleasure as she rocked and tickled and kissed him. When she kissed his lips, his cheeks, his forehead, I felt no alarm; not even when she leaned down to brush his tender little throat teasingly with her lips.

"No, I watched with antic.i.p.ation; with jealousy, even, for I longed for her lips to touch mine, longed to feel her caress against my skin. I might have pulled her to me and demanded such, but I was in such a languidly euphoric state that I did not want to move or speak. She held my little boy and began to sing to him softly, and I watched as he grew gla.s.sy-eyed and silent beneath this creature's gaze."Then she laid him upon the kitchen table and turned to me as I stood, stunned by a strange mixture of fear and longing. She put her arms round my waist, and I felt myself grow sweetly limp, with the same melting sensation triggered by Stefan's kiss. Soon I lay on the floor, and she knelt beside me like a child at bedtime prayer and whispered in my ear, as though we were co-conspirators: 'He is so small, I dare not touch him, while I am so hungry! But I dare not go to Stefan so. . . ."

"While she spoke, she unfastened my collar, my blouse, then ran her palm-so bitter, bitter cold-admiringly over my skin before she bent forward and pressed her lips against the flesh above my collarbone. As I shivered, trapped between fear and antic.i.p.ation, she parted those lips, and I felt the sweep of her tongue as she tasted the flesh there.

"Then came the pain: cold, electric, piercing, as though small sharp daggers bit into my skin.

I cried out weakly and struggled, but as her tongue and mouth pulled hard against the wound, a sudden intoxicating warmth enveloped me, and I fell silent again. Indeed, the quieter I grew, the more pleasurable my trance became, until it eclipsed even the ecstasies of love. I felt myself floating away blissfully from my own body, and wanted it never to end.

"I remember the woman's voice: Shall I take you across, then? Across the great abyss?

"I knew she spoke of my death; and I wanted it. Yearned for it, as one yearns for physical release in the midst of pa.s.sion.

"No. No-yearned for it far more than that. But it was not to be. I remember her high, crystalline laughter as she said, No. You are more useful to me as a spy. I fell into velvet darkness a time and was disappointed when I woke and found myself alive.

"My memory fades then. ... I remember that when I opened my eyes again, I lay upon the floor in my own bedroom, watching a scene between myself and Stefan as though I were a disembodied observer. Nearby in the crib, sleeping silently-or else trapped in the same stupourous trance-was my litde boy.

"Yet I knew it was not me that I saw-but the beautiful woman, who had somehow taken on my appearance. When I concentrated, it seemed I could almost see her face beneath the illusory sh.e.l.l of my own.

"I lay in full view of them both, yet he did not see me, as she and Stefan argued tearfully, while I was unable to speak, to warn him, to do anything except watch them both.

"Stefan stood beside my bed, his arms grasping hers, his face gazing down into hers with the love he reserved for me as he told her he was leaving. Leaving forever, so that the rest of us would be exposed to no danger.

"She answered just as I would have: that she did not understand, could not understand, how any peril could be so great that it should tear us apart. She cried, and Stefan-he is so soft-hearted, so kind," Gerda said, smiling sadly in a way that pierced me to the soul. I looked away, unable to meet the others' gazes as she continued, "He could not bear her tears and cried with her. She begged to go with him, but he said no, it would be too dangerous; and besides, she belonged with her husband and child. He had intended to leave without saying anything to anyone-but then he feared they would misunderstand and endanger themselves trying to rescue him.

"So he wrote a letter for us all; but in the end, he could not leave without bidding her-me- good-bye. And I-" She hesitated. "I mean, she. I thought perhaps the guilt had caused me to go mad again, to leave my body, so that I now observed myself. It was like watching a play in which I was the actress. She said she could not so easily let him go. She showered him with tears and pleas and kisses; he tried to turn away, tried to leave, saying that he had erred once and would not do so again. But in the end, her determined kisses were returned, and she fell into his arms.

"So I watched, unable to speak or move while this strange woman who looked so like me bedded my lover; perhaps it is what I deserve, after treating my good husband so wickedly.

That hour was the most bitter of my life, for I was forced to remain silent while another woman kissed my Stefan's face, ashine with tears, and he hers. His final caresses, his final words, were stolen from me, and I could not even weep. Surely she had entranced him so that he did not see her true appearance.

"No, I could only stare as he slowly, gravely undressed this strange and beautiful new Gerda, as though she were a bride on her wedding night. Could only listen to his murmurs that she had never before looked so lovely as she in turn undressed him.

"So they lay down together, and the woman pressed her gleaming white skin against his darker flesh in the twilight. Bodies writhing, they coupled with the same intensity and pa.s.sion as Stefan and I had that night-"

Here I closed my eyes, stricken at the directness of her confession, shamed for her and myself in the presence of my mother, of this stranger.

"And in the midst of their pa.s.sion, when Stefan released a hoa.r.s.e, whispered cry of ecstasy, that cry turned to one of horror. For the woman had resumed her true appearance, and my poor lover saw that he lay with another woman-beautiful, compelling, chillingly malignant.