Mina

Copyright ©
1994 by Elaine Bergstrom.

With thanks to Georgette
Gouveia, who provided the first spark of inspiration, and to Elaine Bergstrom,
who knew what to do with it.

In writing
Mina
, I have tried to remain as faithful to the
story of Dracula as possible. The novel Dracula is written as a series of first-person
accounts by Van Helsing, Jonathan and Mina Harker and the others. Near the end
of the story, Mina's first-person accounts are abandoned and her feelings
about her ravishment by the vampire never described save by the men. Perhaps
Stoker was uncomfortable dealing with the musings of the damned. Perhaps he
was attempting to convey the notion that Mina was being lost to the men as
Lucy had been earlier in the story. In any case, Mina's voice, so strong
through the early parts of the novel, is abruptly silent.

I begin my
novel here.

While faithful to the original novel, I restore Mina to her
rightful place in the final struggle with Dracula, then follow her back to London,
and to the new struggle to move into the future with a memory that, like Bram
Stoker's novel, and Dracula himself, can never really die.

From the journal of Mina
Harker, written on the train to Varna.

October 13
. I am writing this account
in a small notebook separate from the diary I keep in my traveling bags. That
diary, which details our desperate search for Dracula, is too public, and
though Van Helsing would never read it without good reason, I fear there may
be reason enough before this journey is done. This notebook will record my most
private thoughts. I intend that it stay with me always. It is written in
shorthand so that should it ever be lost or should I die, the others will require
the help of my husband in order to transcribe it. My dear Jonathan, if they
ask this of you, I beseech you to read no further. If I am dead, truly dead,
burn it. If I am missing, gone to him or lost during our quest, keep it safe
for me, for these thoughts are mine alone to share only as I see fit.

I shall begin this account on the
night at Dr. Seward's that I can never forget. We met after dinner in the
doctor's study. There, the five of us who had been involved in the sad affair
since the beginning-Quincey Morris; Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming; Jack Seward;
Jonathan and I-listened as Professor Van Helsing told of the nature of the
creature we faced. As Van Helsing requested, I wrote down everything he said.
I made only a few references to my own thoughts, and those were centered on my
concern for Jonathan. During his journey into the count's feral land, his dark
hair had become streaked with grey. Though he was scarcely twenty-two, lines
of worry were permanently etched on his handsome face. He had been through so
much at that fiend's castle that I feared even a discussion of the
vampire’s
nature would
tax his sanity.

As if Van Helsing didn't tax all of
ours. In an accent that grew thicker as he went on, he described bats, wolves,
mist, dust with terrible relish, as if we were all children and he some
sadistic uncle filling us with fear of the night. The inmate Renfield had
sounded saner on my visit that afternoon than Van Helsing seemed that night.
If I had not heard Dr. Seward's account of poor Lucy's true death, I would
have laughed at how seriously the others listened. Instead, with my free hand
pressed tightly to Jonathan's, I listened with horror all the stranger for my
belief.

When he had finished, the men did
something that I have never attempted to understand. In spite of all my
assistance to them, they decided to shield me from any knowledge of what they
would do from then on. In the months before this, I had traveled alone to
Budapest to be at Jonathan's bedside. I had helped nurse him. I had listened to
what had seemed at the time to be his ravings of pale female monsters, and of
some obsessive fixation on their incredible seductive beauty. I listened to it
all, knowing that somewhere within the fever and delirium my dear Jonathan was
trapped. I never mentioned his ravings after he recovered. Until the others
asked me to transcribe his shorthand diary, I never read them. Once I knew the
truth, I accepted it with as much courage as any of them, yet these men, these
dear, brave men, felt the need to protect me. For my own part, I felt no
resentment for their chivalry. No, my only resentment was self-directed for I
was too well bred to say an honest word of protest, though I recited enough of
them inwardly in the hours that followed.

When the men had left to go to the
ruins at Carfax and begin their hunt for Dracula's coffins, I went upstairs to
bed. Everything Van Helsing had said that evening weighed heavy on my mind,
and now that I was alone to reflect on his account, I felt a terrible fear.
Jonathan had described the creature they would face. Van Helsing seemed to know
even more about Dracula's powers, yet he led them to the abbey to begin their
search at night rather than in the light of day, when the vampire is most
helpless. I knew the men went with sacred hosts, holy water and crosses, but
after so many centuries, would a creature who Jonathan reported had rejoiced
at having a church on his property really be repelled by blessed symbols that
were not even of our own faith?

Had the
vampire been buried in consecrated ground the first time? Had he, like some
profane messiah, risen anyway? Crosses.

Holy water. Fools!

These were the thoughts racing
through my head and keeping me from sleep, until sleep became impossible even
if I had been ready. Dogs began barking outside. Their cries apparently roused
Renfield, for I heard his mad screams in the asylum wing of the house, screams
soon echoed by the other inmates until the asylum resembled less some orderly
haven than the bedlam of a pauper's madness. It occurred to me then that I was
utterly alone, and terribly vulnerable.

In this state of mind, fear began to multiply until I longed for
relief. I went to the table near the hearth and poured myself a glass of sherry.
As I did, some motion in the crack between the heavy velvet drapes caught my
eye. With my arm extended so I could keep my body as far from the window as
possible, I slowly pulled one drapery back. Though I expected to see a bat or
worse staring in at me, there was nothing but the usual evening fog rising
from the murky waters of the Thames. As I let the curtain fall, a new sound shattered
the pressing silence of the night.

I wish that
I could say that I thought the cry had come from Jonathan or one of the others
exploring the ruins of Carfax, for that

would have been a far better excuse for opening the window than
the cry of an animal in pain. I thought that perhaps one of Seward's dogs had
wounded a rabbit or hedgehog and the poor animal was suffering in the bushes
beneath my room. Knowing the dangers that night now held, I ran to the bed
stand and found the blessed crucifix Van Helsing had asked me to keep with me always.
With this firmly in my hand, I unlocked the window and pulled it open.

A cold, damp
breeze poured over me, carrying with it a heady scent like some exotic perfume.
Though I wanted to shut the

window, I backed away. A mist
too thick to be natural rose outside. I saw eyes glowing red in the center of
it.

A face
slowly formed in the cloud, a face that could only he Dracula’s. His expression
was lonely, defiant, as if he read my

thoughts and
mirrored them. In his hand, he held the limp body of a rabbit. The blood
glistened as it seeped from the wound in the animal's side, and I knew it was
the poor creature that I had heard cry out, the animal Dracula had killed to
meet his terrible needs. He looked younger than Jonathan had described, hardly
older than Jonathan or I. It seemed that he was telling me that any blood would
satisfy him, that he did not need to kill men to survive.

He was dressed entirely in black.
His face and hands were pale in the wan firelight and his deep-set green eyes
that had been red-perhaps mirroring the use of his dread power-were human now,
though dark and strangely lightless, like those of a dead man whose tears no
longer moistened them.

Yet he had an arresting face-with
high, arched brows and a long, rather thin nose with flared nostrils. I had
expected a mustache, for that was how Jonathan had described him, but now he
was clean-shaven, his hair the length of any proper Victorian gentleman, his
sideburns neatly trimmed. He had mirrored Jonathan's grooming so well that he
would fit in perfectly in London. Noble, rich, foreign, he would be the rage
at social gatherings where the exotic-in food, drink and guests-was always
revered. He had laid his plans so well, save for Van Helsing's arcane
knowledge and the determination of our little band.

I suddenly
longed to meet the creature the men feared. To hear his voice. To learn,
perhaps, what he intended to do about the

threat my husband and the
others gave him.

I, not Renfield, invited him inside; not with a word but with my
heart and my thoughts and my damned curiosity. In the moment when his body
separated from the mist and stood before me, I understood. The dark powers at
his command could touch some passion deep within the human heart and use it
for his end.

He stared at
me, and for a moment, I had an astonishing revelation of where his mesmerizing
power lay. All his thoughts were

fixed on me as no other man's had ever been. Even Jonathan, on the
day i agreed to be his wife, had a portion of his mind elsewhere. But with
Dracula, I was the center of all his attention, the one who could satisfy his
terrible need, give him strength. The others were protecting me. This creature
would use me-willing or no-for his own ends. The understanding gave a heady
feeling that made me weak with a desire I found horrifying. The room closed in
around me. At the end, blind, entranced, I felt only his arm supporting me,
his pale hand, as cold as the death that had come to him centuries before,
brushing away the hair that covered my outstretched neck. His eyes were fixed
on mine. I smelled the cloying sweet scent of his hair as it brushed against my
face. The quick prick of pain which followed led to-I can only admit it
now!-an ecstasy I had never imagined could exist in this life or the next.

It was nearly dawn when I heard Jonathan
tiptoe into the room. Shamed, wanting to wait and sort out the night's terrible
events before I confessed to what I had done, I kept my eyes shut. Jonathan's
hand touched my forehead, and he left me. As soon as I was alone, I glanced at
the window and saw that the drapes were drawn, the sash latched. I stood in
front of a mirror and examined myself carefully. There were no marks on my
skin. Last night had been a dream, or a delusion born from worry, nothing more.

I vowed to
keep my dream a secret. The men were being strong for me; I would be the same
for them. I closed my eyes and

slept. When I woke, the clock
in Dr. Seward's study was chiming eleven.

It was too late for breakfast so I
rang for a maid and asked for tea. While I waited for it, I reread the account
I had made from all our notes and journals, looking for some clue that would
help the men in their terrible task. A strange exhaustion had taken hold of me,
and I found my mind wandering so often that I had to work to keep it on the
task.

I thought of
Lucy as I read the account. I miss her laughter, her jests, the gossip we
shared with one another only months ago. I

found it impossible to
believe that she can really be gone. . .

No use dwelling on what cannot be
changed. Nonetheless, the sorrow of her death brought tears to my eyes, and I
might soon have been crying outright had the maid not arrived with my tea,
biscuits and preserves. She also brought me a recent copy of
Lippincott's Monthly,
which
featured the beginning of a new story by Oscar Wilde. Critics of
The Picture of Dorian
Gray
implied that the piece was somehow scandalous. I found it
intriguing, the moral that beauty could conceal terrible evil certainly apropos
in our circumstance. Jonathan had long ago passed judgment on Mr. Wilde, and I
made certain that the magazine was returned to Dr. Seward's study before
dinner so my husband would not find it in my possession.

Dinner was strained. Jonathan,
especially, seemed pained by the thought that he must keep the men's actions
from me. I have no idea what sort of horrors they had faced the night before,
though I suspect my imagination is far more lurid than the truth would be.

I said good night to them
early, hoping that sleep would come more easily. I was not so fortunate.

Instead, as on the night before, I
dreamed of Dracula rising in the fog outside my window, of my hand throwing
back the sash, of his white face above me and, dear Lord, his body pressing
mine against the bed. When I woke, Jonathan slept beside me. He had stripped
off only his outer clothes, and his shirt and pants smelled of smoke and
dampness. His work is so dangerous, so important, I dared not disturb his
sleep. I carefully rested my hand on his shoulder and closed my eyes once more.
Dreams. How could I avoid them when Jonathan was in such danger and I could
not be a part of it?

That thought was the last thing I
recalled until I woke late that morning. As I slipped out of bed, a sudden
dizziness made me grip the bedpost for support. I took a deep breath and
steadied myself and went to the window and cracked open the drapes. The day was
foggy, but in the distance I could just make out the crumbling walls of Carfax
Abbey as nothing more than a dark shadow in the gray light. I turned and, as I
had for the last two nights, examined my neck in the mirror. There did seem to
be a pair of raised places on the skin, but these were hardly the seeping
welts poor Lucy had on her neck. Perhaps these were nothing more than the product
of my own hysteria, as the stigmata were for the medieval Catholic mystics and
saints.

I decided I
would not have the men worrying about me when they had so much else to think
of. That night I drank a sleep potion

that Dr. Van Helsing mixed for me. It was, as he promised, very
light-so light that I recalled quite distinctly everything that happened that
night and saw in the pattern of what occurred some semblance of the nights
before it.

And much of what I told the men
later was a lie. Dracula came as he had before, in a mist that flowed through
the-cracks in my latched window. He needed no invitation; I had already
brought down the barriers that might have kept him at bay. Though I could not
move, I was more conscious than I had been on the nights before. I could see
Jonathan lying beside me in a deep sleep. I was afraid to call his name
because in the moment I saw who was in our room, Dracula told me that my
husband's waking would mean his death.

I did not
trust my body to remain passive under the vampire's touch, so I slipped
carefully away and stood in the center of the

room, before the one I
already thought of as my master.