5 November, afternoon.--I am at least sane. Thank God for that mercy
at all events, though the proving it has been dreadful. When I left
Madam Mina sleeping within the Holy circle, I took my way to the castle.
The blacksmith hammer which I took in the carriage from Veresti was useful,
though the doors were all open I broke them off the rusty hinges,
lest some ill intent or ill chance should close them, so that being entered
I might not get out. Jonathan's bitter experience served me here.
By memory of his diary I found my way to the old chapel, for I
knew that here my work lay. The air was oppressive. It seemed
as if there was some sulphurous fume, which at times made me dizzy.
Either there was a roaring in my ears or I heard afar off the howl of wolves.
Then I bethought me of my dear Madam Mina, and I was in terrible plight.
The dilemma had me between his horns.
Her, I had not dare to take into this place, but left safe from
the Vampire in that Holy circle. And yet even there would be the wolf!
I resolve me that my work lay here, and that as to the wolves we must submit,
if it were God's will. At any rate it was only death and freedom beyond.
So did I choose for her. Had it but been for myself the choice had been easy,
the maw of the wolf were better to rest in than the grave of the Vampire!
So I make my choice to go on with my work.
I knew that there were at least three graves to find, graves that
are inhabit. So I search, and search, and I find one of them.
She lay in her Vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous
beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do murder.
Ah, I doubt not that in the old time, when such things were,
many a man who set forth to do such a task as mine, found at
the last his heart fail him, and then his nerve. So he delay,
and delay, and delay, till the mere beauty and the fascination
of the wanton Undead have hypnotize him. And he remain
on and on, till sunset come, and the Vampire sleep be over.
Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love,
and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss, and the man is weak.
And there remain one more victim in the Vampire fold.
One more to swell the grim and grisly ranks of the Undead!...
There is some fascination, surely, when I am moved by the mere
presence of such an one, even lying as she lay in a tomb fretted
with age and heavy with the dust of centuries, though there
be that horrid odor such as the lairs of the Count have had.
Yes, I was moved. I, Van Helsing, with all my purpose and
with my motive for hate. I was moved to a yearning for delay
which seemed to paralyze my faculties and to clog my very soul.
It may have been that the need of natural sleep, and the strange
oppression of the air were beginning to overcome me.
Certain it was that I was lapsing into sleep, the open eyed
sleep of one who yields to a sweet fascination, when there
came through the snow stilled air a long, low wail, so full
of woe and pity that it woke me like the sound of a clarion.
For it was the voice of my dear Madam Mina that I heard.
Then I braced myself again to my horrid task, and found by wrenching
away tomb tops one other of the sisters, the other dark one.
I dared not pause to look on her as I had on her sister,
lest once more I should begin to be enthrall. But I go on
searching until, presently, I find in a high great tomb as if made
to one much beloved that other fair sister which, like Jonathan
I had seen to gather herself out of the atoms of the mist.
She was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful,
so exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me,
which calls some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers,
made my head whirl with new emotion. But God be thanked,
that soul wail of my dear Madam Mina had not died out of my ears.
And, before the spell could be wrought further upon me,
I had nerved myself to my wild work. By this tim e I had
searched all the tombs in the chapel, so far as I could tell.
And as there had been only three of these Undead phantoms
around us in the night, I took it that there were no more of
active Undead existent. There was one great tomb more lordly
than all the rest. Huge it was, and nobly proportioned.
On it was but one word.
DRACULA
This then was the Undead home of the King Vampire, to whom so many more
were due. Its emptiness spoke eloquent to make certain what I knew.
Before I began to restore these women to their dead selves through my
awful work, I laid in Dracula's tomb some of the Wafer, and so banished
him from it, Undead, for ever.
Then began my terrible task, and I dreaded it.
Had it been but one, it had been easy, comparative. But three!
To begin twice more after I had been through a deed of horror.
For it was terrible with the sweet Miss Lucy, what would it not
be with these strange ones who had survived through centuries,
and who had been strenghtened by the passing of the years.
Who would, if they could, have fought for their foul lives.
Oh, my friend John, but it was butcher work. Had I not been
nerved by thoughts of other dead, and of the living over
whom hung such a pall of fear, I could not have gone on.
I tremble and tremble even yet, though till all was over,
God be thanked, my nerve did stand. Had I not seen the repose
in the first place, and the gladness that stole over it just
ere the final dissolution came, as realization that the soul
had been won, I could not have gone further with my butchery.
I could not have endured the horrid screeching as the stake
drove home, the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam.
I should have fled in terror and left my work undone.
But it is over! And the poor souls, I can pity them now
and weep, as I think of them placid each in her full sleep
of death for a short moment ere fading. For, friend John,
hardly had my knife severed the head of each, before the whole
body began to melt away and crumble into its native dust,
as though the death that should have come centuries agone had
at last assert himself and say at once and loud, "I am here!"
Before I left the castle I so fixed its entrances that never more can
the Count enter there Undead.
When I stepped into the circle where Madam Mina slept,
she woke from her sleep and, seeing me, cried out in pain
that I had endured too much.
"Come!" she said, "come away from this awful place!
Let us go to meet my husband who is, I know, coming towards us."
She was looking thin and pale and weak. But her eyes were
pure and glowed with fervor. I was glad to see her paleness
and her illness, for my mind was full of the fresh horror
of that ruddy vampire sleep.
And so with trust and hope, and yet full of fear, we go eastward to meet
our friends, and him, whom Madam Mina tell me that she know are coming
to meet us.