Now Comes the Mist

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

T he next morning, I wake to find Dr. Van Helsing at my desk, surrounded by books and papers and ink. His jet-black hair stands on end as though he has been raking his hands through it, and he looks exhausted, but there is a strange, intense, almost excited energy about him. He has angled the desk chair to face my bed, and so the second my eyes are open, he is coming over.

“How are you feeling, Lucy?” he asks kindly, though I notice he keeps his distance.

I have to think for a moment. “Better,” I say at last, surprised. “My head isn’t floating anymore. And I am not as weak or feverish.” My stomach suddenly gives an immense rumble.

The doctor laughs. “Good! I will send for some food at once. What will you have?”

“I think I could eat every strawberry pastry in London,” I say, sitting up without difficulty. I lean back against my pillows, cheered by my return to health and the blue sky and sunshine outside my window. But when Dr. Van Helsing goes to the door to send a servant for my breakfast, I see white sheets draped over my full-length mirror and the looking glass at my dressing table. The revelation of last night comes back to me all at once, and my heart sinks.

Dr. Van Helsing comes back and sees my changed expression. “That is just a precaution, my dear. I did not want you to be distressed upon waking up.”

I touch my face, and my hands come away clean. “Please, may I see?” I ask quietly.

When he lifts the sheet off the full-length mirror, I am confronted once more by the nightmarish woman who looks like me: long black hair, dark eyes, pale olive skin with a tint of rose. But there are red droplets swirling across her skin and in the whites of her eyes, as though some unseen wind is blowing the blood around her face. I stare at the proof of Vlad’s venom swimming in my veins, manifesting only—for some ungodly reason—in a reflective surface.

Dr. Van Helsing replaces the sheet, hiding my shadow self from view. “Do not worry,” he says gently, taking the chair next to my bed. “Jack and I are working hard to find a solution. I have done much reading since last night, and we have a few promising leads.”

My fingers involuntarily clench on my blanket. “Such as?”

“I will tell you when Jack returns. In the meantime, I want you to remain calm and to eat, so that those rosy cheeks remain when your mother comes to see you later.”

My heart gives a tug of longing for Mamma. I did not see her face more than once or twice during this latest illness, likely on the doctor’s orders, for which I am grateful. “How is she? Is she sleeping and eating better than she had in Whitby?”

“She is well taken care of,” Dr. Van Helsing reassures me. It is not an answer, but I am beginning to see that he is a man who does not respond unless he can do so with the utmost truth.

I close my eyes, my chest tight with the guilt of what I have done to my beloved mother. “I have worried her into her grave, haven’t I?” I whisper. “I will lose her as I lost Papa.”

“Do not say that. Your mother’s heart malady began long ago.”

“But I have worsened it, and death will come.”

“Death comes for us all,” Dr. Van Helsing says calmly. “We have not the power to decide when, where, or how, nor does it serve us to predict or anticipate it.”

“All those books I read in Papa’s library,” I say, swallowing past a lump in my aching throat. “And still I find no comfort. How can we live so haunted by death?”

The doctor folds his hands over one knee, looking thoughtful. “In some cultures, death is celebrated as an occasion to remember the life of the bereaved. In my mother’s culture, no one is left to grieve or struggle alone. The entire community rallies when a person dies.”

“Papa said his grandmother wore white at her husband’s funeral. To her, it was the color of mourning and she would not be persuaded otherwise, though it caused a scandal. He said she was heartbroken and so alone, and I am afraid that Mamma … that I will …”

Dr. Van Helsing’s eyes on me are kind. “It is hard not to have community. Just as your great-grandmother was cut away from her roots, so, too, were you and I, when I lost my mother and you lost your father. Being transplanted is not easy. It makes sense that death weighs upon you.” He holds up a stern finger. “But we will not let it enter here. We will not invite it in.”

I look at him sharply, but Harriet comes in at that moment and he gets up to take the tray from her. She gives me a nervous smile before vanishing, and the doctor himself places my bacon, eggs, bread, and tea before me, all of which tastes divine. I devour it in minutes.

Dr. Van Helsing claps his hands, delighted by my appetite, just as Jack Seward strides into the room with two large boxes in his arms, looking disgruntled.

“The shopkeeper thought I had lost my mind,” he grumbles, setting them on my dressing table. “He must have assumed I was one of the patients at my own mental institution and not the physician responsible for them. What is this all about, sir?”

Dr. Van Helsing leaps out of his chair, looking energetic and cheerful despite his lack of sleep. He pulls some pale purple flowers out of the boxes. “These are for you, Lucy.”

“That’s very kind of you, Doctor,” I say, bewildered.

His thick black brows form a stern line. “They are not for looking pretty. They are an experiment. You see, I have been reading an interesting book that may hold answers for us, particularly after what happened last night with the mirrors. Will you trust me in this?”

“Yes,” I say with foreboding in my heart, wondering how close to the truth he has come. He approaches my bed slowly, his eyes on my face as he holds the flowers about two inches from my nose. I stare at them, puzzled. The stems are long, thin, and green and the blossoms are tiny purple spheres. But the most notable quality of the odd bouquet is its thick, strong, cloying smell. I look up at Dr. Van Helsing, who seems pleased by my confusion.

“We are not too late,” he says, satisfied. “Hold these, Lucy.”

Obediently, I take the flowers. I sniff them and immediately sneeze.

“Sir, you are going to frighten her if you don’t explain,” Jack says wearily as Dr. Van Helsing dives into the open boxes again. He brings out at least two dozen similar bouquets and looks around my room with an appraising eye, like a newly married woman decorating her new home. He puts flowers on my dressing table, hangs some from a string over my bed, and places more on the stack of books beside my bed. All the while, he hums a merry tune, and Jack and I exchange glances of mutual certainty that he has gone completely mad.

“These, my young friends, are garlic flowers,” Dr. Van Helsing says at last, laying at least seven bunches along the two closed windows of my room. He bends to scatter two or three more bouquets under and around my bed. “And in that second box over there, which you so kindly brought at my request, Jack, must be the garlic bulbs themselves.”

“I cleaned out the shopkeeper’s entire stock,” Jack says, shaking his head ruefully at me. “He must have thought I was planning some sort of pungent feast.”

But I am not listening. I am thinking, as my blood runs cold, that one of Vlad’s limitations is garlic. He told me that the sight and smell of it offended him. “Something to do with its ability to cleanse the blood, which is anathema to the venom I carry,” he had said.

Van Helsing knows. He knows .

Neither he nor Jack seem to notice my discomfiture. “As I was saying,” the doctor goes on, still happily absorbed in distributing the garlic flowers around the room, “I was reading an interesting book I found in Amsterdam shortly after your first attack, Lucy. It spoke of creatures that feed upon the blood of humans. For I strongly believe that is what happened to you.”

Jack shakes his head and mumbles something.

Dr. Van Helsing ignores him. “I suspected from the very beginning that you had endured no dog bite. Dogs bite out of fear, protectiveness, anger … a host of reasons that do not include the drinking of blood. But you had lost so much from your person, and not even half of it was found on your clothing or the terrace. It must have gone somewhere . So the logical question would be: where did it go? And the answer is: into the creature that hell spat out.”

I shiver and pull the bedclothes to my neck. If the doctor knew what had truly happened, would he think that I was a creature that hell spat out? Would Arthur and Mina and Mamma?

“I have also read essays and articles from leading men in science across multiple continents,” the doctor continues. “Not just Europe, but my native Asia also, where they have seen attacks of this kind before. They are rare, but there is documentation. Creatures such as bats, for instance, sometimes live upon the blood of large farm animals. And there are other beasts and beings, though where science touches folklore, I cannot tell. Their threads are blended together.”

“What do you mean by folklore?” I ask, my voice thin and strained.

Jack glances at me. “Sir, are you sure Lucy should be hearing this?”

“It will not frighten her. The most frightening event has already happened, no? Twice, in fact.” Dr. Van Helsing lifts heavy white stalks of garlic from the second box and begins stringing them over the windows and door of my bedroom like strange, bulbous wreaths. “By folklore, I mean accounts of supernatural beings throughout history that subsist on the blood of the living. Some stories are mere fairy tales, told by firelight to thrill the soul. Others are more poisonous, propaganda originating from prejudice and hatred of certain peoples and religions.”

I have to remind myself to breathe as he drapes the garlic over my full-length mirror.

“Some of the tales, however, are so plausible as to seem like first-hand accounts of true events. Fortunately, I have not one of those minds that rejects theories for being passed around by mouth and not gained by research.” Dr. Van Helsing frowns at Jack, who has just scoffed. “I take all precautions. I look at nothing as impossible. And I read of how country people—farmers, peasants, the nomadic groups who migrate from land to land—deal with blood-drinking beings.”

I clutch the purple blooms in my hand. “By using garlic?”

“It is one of the most common methods of repelling them, yes.” Dr. Van Helsing surveys my room, which now feels stuffy and pungent with the heavy scent of garlic. “The wild rose has also been used. Some turn their clothes inside out and sleep with their heads at the foot of the bed, so as to confuse any bloodthirsty creatures who visit in the night.”

“Forgive me, but this is errant nonsense and superstition,” Jack interjects.

Dr. Van Helsing paces with his hands behind his back, as though lecturing in a classroom. “Perhaps. But perhaps not. Are you willing to take that chance?” he asks soberly, and Jack falls silent. “I have also read of these creatures being repulsed by sacred objects and images. It does not matter what religion. It seems that any item pertaining to faith may be harmful, from prayer books and scrolls to beads, candles, and statues of deities.”

“And crosses, I suppose,” I say quietly. “I saw how you watched me last night.”

“I knew you were a sharp young lady, Lucy Westenra,” he says, nodding with approval. “Yes, my eye was on you when Mr. Morris took out his silver cross and began to pray. But the sight of it affected you not, nor does the smell of garlic.”

Nor the sun , I think. Nor does human food taste repellent to me. Perhaps the limitations do not take effect unless I am a full vampire. Then again, my own face has changed in the mirror. My hands tighten around the garlic flowers, and I hear a stem snap under the pressure of my fingers. “Then I have a question for you, Dr. Van Helsing,” I say. “If these hellish creatures are kept at bay by such items as you mention, why, then, can I tolerate them?”

Jack looks shocked. “Lucy! You are not one of those creatures.”

“Do not classify yourself thus,” Dr. Van Helsing says, his face fierce and intent. “You may have been infected by one, that is possible. But you are not and can never be one.”

“Why not?” I ask softly. They regard me in silence. “Why could I not transform into a creature such as you describe, after having been attacked twice?”

“Because you are inherently good,” Jack says, and the older man nods in agreement. “Because you are a young lady who lives a clean, pious, and modest life. What Dr. Van Helsing speaks of is the stuff of penny dreadfuls, not fit to be read, in my opinion. But if there is any truth in it at all, none of it would apply to you, so pure and virtuous as you are.”

I long to scream at their determination to think of me as some perfect angel. All I have ever asked, all I have ever wanted, is to be treated as a person. But women are not people , I think bitterly, knowing that if I said as much to Mina, she would have a thing or two to say back. “I am tired,” I say, dropping the flowers on my bedside table. “Could I be alone for a while? To sleep?”

Dr. Van Helsing shakes his head. “I’m afraid one of us will have to sit with you.”

“What for, Doctor?” I ask, exasperated. “Are you afraid that this creature will somehow fly through my windows and drink my blood again?”

“As it happens, yes,” he says solemnly. “That is precisely what I fear.”

I grit my teeth, longing for the peace and solitude of the mist. Of the churchyard in my dreams, cool and grey and silent. “I would prefer to sleep without being watched every minute, as though I might attack someone. For that is why you pulled Arthur away from me last night, did you not, Doctor? Because you thought I might bite him?”

“I do not yet know the details of your condition,” he says calmly. “But I rule nothing out. It is my life’s work to study rare infectious diseases, and I have seen many strange things in my time. I ask you to trust me and forgive me for anything you deem unnecessary or intrusive.”

Jack purses his lips in sympathy. “We could leave her door open and go into a different room. At least then the poor girl would have some measure of privacy. It must be hard on her to always have people prowling about,” he adds, and I give him a grateful look.

Dr. Van Helsing frowns. “I’m not certain that—”

“We will be right across the hall, where we can hear everything. Look around, Van Helsing.” Jack points to the garlic bulbs and flowers covering almost every inch of my room. “You’ve created a veritable minefield for this beast, in whose intelligence I strongly doubt.”

“Very well,” the older physician says, his brow still furrowed. “But Lucy, I want you to call out if there is even the slightest disturbance or sound. Will you promise me this?”

“I promise,” I say at once, and they leave.

Across the hall, my newly sharp ears hear Dr. Van Helsing whisper, “Whatever you do or do not believe, I advise you not to underestimate the intelligence of this creature, Jack. For anything that understands how to travel from Whitby to London, perhaps even by train, and how to follow and target that poor girl, is no simple wild beast but a being of preternatural cleverness and sophistication.” He pauses. “A predator, obsessed with its prey.”