Penclosa - Chapter 4

Talks. Tests. Terror.

Oct 11, 2024

MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL

30 April. Tuppeton.— Morning, morning, glorious groggy morning! It’s such a strange a thing to be glad of exhaustion, but the occasion merits it. I am not tired for tossing and turning or for rousing Jonathan out of the latest trap his mind concocts in sleep. I was awake with Van Helsing all night to see what would play out.

It was not far from the toll of eleven o’ clock when our watch bore fruit. Jonathan has ever been one for a quickness to deep sleep, both before and after the wretched events of last year, though habit as much as necessity makes him need so little of it. It hardly surprised me as much as the Professor that he could drop off so swiftly as to reach the point when dreams could form in less than an hour.

“He douses like a candle,” he would say after the event was done, “and lights like a bonfire.”

In the moment, however, our attention seized on Jonathan as his face began to show signs of a new storm within. I was flung back again to a hundred nights like it, and more recently to the fitful throes upon the couch as Miss Penclosa went to work. His poor face twitched as if some seamstress were plucking at threads inside, furrowing and denting him in the familiar masks of torment. Bodily he shuddered and flinched. By reflex I almost rose to wake him, but Van Helsing tapped my arm in reminder.

“If all goes as Miss Penclosa explained, he shall be quit of the nightmare before it reaches the crescendo. Should he reach it, then we know it has failed and we can make efforts to wake him.”

The crescendo being one of thrashing and crying out in words or simple noises of distress that have so consistently roused me from slumber.

“Should the command work, he shall not reach such a stage,” Miss Penclosa had told us in the Wilsons’ library. “He will be transported from whatever monsters are invented to menace him. Observe.” And we had watched as she spoke solely and earnestly to Jonathan in his trance. “Jonathan Harker. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Jonathan had said with such a calm flatness that it chilled me.

“Listen and follow my instructions. When you are faced by your next nightmare and your fear is on the rise, you shall find yourself taken away. Away from the place, the tormentors, the horror, no matter its shape. You shall drift up and away from danger. At the flight’s end, you shall descend safe and light to the shore of a great clear lake. High mountains will tower there. Mountains that forbid intrusion or interruption. No threat may reach you on that crystal shore. There you will find rest. As you sink into better dreams, as you sink beyond dreaming entirely, you will do so guarded and knowing, even asleep, that you are free from any harm. Do you understand that, Jonathan Harker?”

“I understand,” again in that tranquil tone.

To us she gave a softer command, “Remember, he must not know the nature of this implanted order. He must not be influenced by your description or else we cannot know for sure his telling is untainted tomorrow.”

Shortly after, Jonathan had been roused from the trance. He’d seemed wholly oblivious that he had been in it at all. Now here we were, at the cusp of discovering whether the mountain lake would prove refuge or not. For almost a minute he seemed at the verge of tipping into the climax of his usual nocturnal fit. Then, all at once, the frantic tension of him went lax. His expression unknit itself by steady increments as his breath steadied. The last sign of true emotion on him before he melted into a sleeper’s placid countenance was a faint smile.

From then to dawn, he slept in peace. Only as the sun’s first rays fell in the window did he stir from his dense slumber. He came to as Van Helsing and I balanced in that hovering place between excitement’s energy and the body’s uncaring demand of overdue rest. I was worse off than the Professor, naturally, as my head felt full of clouds and my eyes full of dry heat before I saw my Jonathan wake. And oh! Oh, how worth it to see him awake for the first time in so long without his gaze bloodshot and shadowed! To have him make a sluggish crawl up to wakefulness rather than the unhappy shudder of jumping into a workday or shaking in my arms. He seemed so muddled by the last sands of sleep that he peered at us in confusion.

Then he was suddenly up and awake as fully as a wind-up soldier with his key let go. And what do you think his first words were?

“My journal! I have to put it down!”

“Put what down?” asked Van Helsing. But Jonathan was already out of bed and laying his journal open on the desk, jotting details out in hasty shorthand.

“The dream. A dream, at least. It tore me straight from Hell itself. And yet it was such a mundane thing that usurped those demons I have to wonder at how it overpowered them.” Finishing his note, he looked up at both of us. I could have cried at how the relief glowed in his sweet face. He seemed not only a young man in that instant, but a boy scarcely at the far end of his classes. The same one who had mirrored my blushes when we made our first shy steps into romance rather than muffled and pining love. “It was a lake. One moment I was caught in a forest of thirsty teeth, the next I was by a serene lake set like a gem against silent mountains I didn’t recognize. Not the Carpathians, but no less scenic for it. Perhaps I saw such in an illustrated guide someplace before, or—,”

But the Professor and I had already given away the truth by our mingled shows of surprise and triumph. The dream was not random, but the invention of Miss Penclosa. At least, so we can safely assume for the present. It is possible that the rescue of a calm dream was a fluke, it is possible that his mind chose last night to show mercy in a way that reflected Miss Penclosa’s command. But we have all had too much close experience with the uncanny to have many doubts. The barest facts are that Jonathan saw himself saved from his latest nightmare by a dream that matched the mesmerist’s implanted command. Such we must present to Miss Penclosa and Prof. Wilson.

Said meeting is still mercifully tucked into the afternoon. Van Helsing and I will each need a good drowse of our own before we are suited to the task. Jonathan, meanwhile, is buzzing with as much elation as energy. I have urged him to take something of the town in for himself rather than bounce around our room like a trapped bee. There was some minor quibble over this, for he insisted that he did not wish to take in the sights without me. I insisted back that we really had very little idea of what there was to be seen. Tuppeton is just the size for tourists after a quaint escape, but without anything in the way of a guide. He could be our mapmaker for when we hit upon the freer part of our holiday. We’ve two weeks to us here and we must wring all the joy we can from it.

Jonathan took this for a mission—and, if I am any judge of his look, the beginnings of some benevolent scheme, such as the one which resulted in the lockets at both our necks—and set off to mark out some places worth a visit when we are together. For now, sleep beckons.

Good-night, good morning, good-bye.

Jonathan had erred.

Though he had the shield of his hat, he had neglected to wear a longer coat to mask the kukri. He’d not thought of it as he strolled out, hailed his cab, and let himself be deposited at a new point on High Street. In fact, he carried on quite blithely by shops and restaurants and eyed a distant park made florid with spring, noting all promising spots in his journal. For the better part of an hour, he failed to notice a single wide-eyed glance, subtly aimed fan or less subtle pointing finger. This might have gone on indefinitely had he not crossed paths with a boy at a corner carrying his printed cargo of the morning.

Jonathan might have stopped for a paper just for utility’s sake, for there was a chance the more popular venues of the town would be crowded somewhere in its folds. But he froze a moment at recognizing the scene centered on the front page. Greg Westman’s work sat below the headline, showing the frozen moment in which professor, solicitor, and mesmerist were all still as waxworks before the onlooking crowd. Though not a perfect picture, it certainly lent as much drama to the headline as any illustration. Unfortunately, the distortions that were the blurs of the party guests’ idle motion and a strange haze about his and Miss Penclosa’s eyes were not enough to distract from the clear depiction of the characters at the forefront.

It was so clear, in fact, that the boy peddling the papers stopped mid-pitch upon looking him in the face. His eyes doubled in size on seeing the blade on Jonathan’s hip.

“Did you really almost chop his hand off for trying to hit that lady?”

“Is that what the story says?” Jonathan asked as he paid the boy and sidled away with his copy.

“Said you seemed liable to.” The round eyes rolled again to the kukri. “Is it true you lot really have to get blood on your knife before you put it back in the scabbard? Like, if you don’t cut no one, you have to prick your hand first? That’s what my uncle says.”

“If so, it is not a rule I abide by. This blade has not cut anything alive.” Before the boy could ask more, Jonathan went hustling down the next street, hat low, face steaming, and gaze now very much aware of the stray looks that drifted his way. He dropped his attention down to the print and pinned back a sigh.

The Tuppeton Journal, 30 April

MADAM MESMERIST SAVED BY SOLICITOR’S STEEL!

It seems the docile days of Tuppeton are set for a shakeup this spring. Not to be outdone by the shock of the would-be night robbery at our Bank of England of two nights prior, we have seen another crime thwarted in the home of one Professor Bradford Wilson of our own humble Hollick University. A gathering in full swing was attended by three fateful guests: An educator, by name Professor Richard Atherton. A rising star in the murky practice of mesmerism, the assembly’s central guest, Helen Penclosa. And an unassuming solicitor traveling on holiday, a Mr. Jonathan Harker…

Jonathan leaned against a wall of brickwork and hid his face as best he could behind the paper, keeping his kukri turned away from pedestrian view. Thus masked, he regrettably read through the entire passage in all its sensational detail. According to the journalist, Atherton had confessed to everything short of murder under his hypnotic trance, Penclosa was refashioned into a hero-hearted but feeble little crone, and Jonathan was some escapee from a boy’s adventure tale who would have lopped the man into pieces for daring to raise a hand to a woman, let alone the poor limping lady who had aired her attacker’s foul truths, if only the police had not been called in to carry the villain away.

He wondered whether to keep it for Mina’s scrapbooking or if he should stow it safely away in the nearest bin.

“Jonathan?”

“Mr. Harker?”

The queries of his name overlapped each other as they came up behind him. He turned to find Miss Penclosa and Mrs. Wilson approaching up the street. Jonathan tucked the paper under his arm and greeted them in turn. What were they doing out and about? Mrs. Wilson cooed over her friend’s need for air and some mild exercise to break up her long sedentary periods at home, as recommended by the doctors. Miss Penclosa tutted back that it was a diagnosis as contrary to the last doctor’s insistence on nigh constant bed rest with scarcely a window cracked lest a chill get in. This, on top of the war of druggist recommendations that swapped one prescription for another. Penclosa sighed.

“It is all very dutiful of the physicians to make their guesses, but after four decades of guessing I can only guess in turn that half those medical fellows are all in on the same secret and prefer not to say it for hope of another penny in their pocket. That secret being the obvious truth that some bodies are simply weaker than others and no amount of advice or powders or pills or potions can make it otherwise.” She offered Jonathan a smile. “But I do have some faith in the supposition that happiness adds years to one’s life. If all the maudlin mystery novels insist that grief alone can waste a body away, it seems only natural the reverse is possible.”

“If that is the case, then I hope joy comes to you in surplus,” Jonathan returned. “You have certainly paid it forward to my cause. Or so we have reason to believe as of this morning.”

Talk turned to the results of last night’s dreaming as the sudden trio’s steps turned toward a suitable café. To Jonathan’s relief, they took a seat indoors. Between the fine light offerings on plate and in cup, he saw fit to take his journal from his breast again and make a brief note of the establishment’s name.

“Mina will want to try this place for lunch, I expect.”

“Where is your wife, now that you mention her?” Penclosa hummed. Her gray-green eyes flitted as if just then noticing the absent party. “Is she well?”

“Mina’s quite fine. Only resting up on account of keeping vigil with Van Helsing all night. We should all be refreshed for our more official get-together this afternoon.”

“I do feel a touch guilty discussing results without poor Bradford and his notebook out,” Mrs. Wilson said with an eye on Jonathan’s journal as it was tucked back in its pocket. “Even he had trouble settling down for bed, fussing with how he might tuck a study of subconscious healing into his larger compilation. He really is quite thrilled at the notion of your entering the whole as ‘Mr. Murray.’ I cannot tell whether he’ll be happy at the good news or crestfallen that he did not get to hear of it before us.”

“Results are results, Gloria,” Penclosa reminded over the rim of her cup. “He’ll be glad of them regardless. The more pressing matter is next steps.” This she spoke in Jonathan’s direction. “While it is a very good sign that your dream matched with my implanted command of yesterday, it is still not full proof of success by my ability. That will require recording repeated results with a variety of commands, all of which you must remain oblivious to while witnesses note the truth. Once that is established, we can move past the realm of mere experimentation and onto more difficult waters. At least from my side.”

“What waters are those?” Jonathan asked, wondering at the new gleam to her stare. She seemed less concerned than she did invigorated by the task before her.

“Programming a long-term command. It is one thing to mesmerize someone into doing a single task at such-and-such hour on such-and-such date. It is another still to induce a subject to obey a command by sheer wordless will. These are singular instances with a limited window of time in which my influence might steer a person. For an affliction that is recurring, as yours appears to be, it requires me to put far more exertion into the command so that it will repeat ad infinitum and by pure reflex. In short, you must accept a default action to take over whenever the appropriate stimuli appears—that is, the nightmares—and I must burn sufficient energy and will to make it stick. Should it succeed, you will never have to endure a session in which I plant a haven dream in your head again. It will be taken care of for good in a single shot.”

Jonathan nodded at this and fiddled with a last chunk of croissant.

“Since we are on the subject of this method, Miss Penclosa—,”

“Helen is still fine, Jonathan.”

“Helen, then. I must mention that there was some discussion last evening about the power behind your ability. Powers that Professor Wilson only brought up to Van Helsing as we were leaving the session. And which, contrary to your insistence that it was mere fatigue that so staggered you yesterday after my trance, are also a major strain upon your physical health. Professor Wilson claimed that you described your ability less as pure hypnotism and more as injecting your mind and will to make the command take hold. A sort of psychic detachment that poorly affects your body. I would not ask a doctor to injure himself so that a broken bone might heal. By the same token, good conscience makes me hesitant to ask the same of you if this toll comes with endangering your well-being. I would rather swim in a sleeping draught every night than risk wringing out another person for the sake of my bad dreams.”

Jonathan regarded her carefully. There was little enough to read in the change of her expression, for there was very little beyond a mild distressed pucker of her brow. But her eyes were a full catalog of emotion. At least of those stormiest sensations of the heart. Here was surprise, shock, worry, sorrow, loss, and even a flint or two of anger dancing in the greenish fog of her gaze. Chief among all was the look of a witness who not only saw a mere enterprise in danger of destruction, but could only watch on as someone held a pistol to a loved one’s head and tell her he would do her the service of pulling the trigger to save her the trouble.

All this impression passed in the space of a heartbeat. Penclosa touched the side of her neck, kneading again at the high collar, before dropping it with a sigh.

“I cannot fault you for such a conclusion, Jonathan. Indeed, it is but another sign of your merit that, hearing such an explanation, you did not either scoff at it or carry right on without regard to anyone’s well-being but your own. But I fear it is my own failure in description that has poisoned your view of the procedure as surely as Bradford and,” her hand fluttered airily at the window, “others have seized upon it as yet another wonder of spectral-to-psychical phenomenon. The truth of my power is…” She rolled her small shoulders in the universal motion of the baffled student. “…I do not know the truth. All I have given as definition of my ability is all I myself can wrap my head around, and it has not wrapped far.”

Here she turned with a glance of brief apology to Mrs. Wilson whose own eyes had widened at the lilt of an oncoming confession.

“Yes, Gloria, it’s true. Even a body that can perform uncanny tricks may still be a skeptic. And rightly so, I think, for all the romanticized edges of the process I have laid out in so many interviews.” She turned again to Jonathan. “I have defined the parameters of my power in just the way Bradford elaborated to your friend. It seems to me, as I do my work, that I have my greatest affecting power on a subject in those cases where it feels as if I am departing with myself to influence the other. But if such were the whole bald truth, how then could I even be alive enough to speak? If I had literally flung my mind, will, soul, whatever we call it, out of myself for the sake of steering another’s actions, I would be all but dead where I stood. Or fell. I will attest that in cases where I have exerted myself to the limit—that is, in demonstrations that required full manipulation of a subject to the point that they, wholly awake, lost any awareness of my influence as they performed a task—I have turned into a lethargic lump upon the couch. Yet even with my mind so far-flung and focused elsewhere, I am still housed within myself. The static puppeteer manipulating the strings of a mobile marionette.

“Both in these deeper states of operation and in lighter exertions, I have quite honestly described my own sensations in performing as being akin to sending my will out to engage the subject. And really, it is only rarely a case of maneuvering a whole body or mind the way one would, say, grapple with a fighter. It can really be as quick and idle a thing as setting a clock so that, whatever a subject would do naturally upon having an idea or impulse themselves, they will undertake without any force from me. You saw in that display with Atherton what a small effort it took. In that instance, I would say a mere atom of my will had to drift out and turn on a tap marked HONESTY in giant clumsy letters. It was easy to the point of laziness, for I suspect he is of that temperament who is used to pouring out his opinions and conquests whenever he thinks himself safe to prattle.

“In such a case as his, I would say any classic method of a good mesmerist could have done exactly the same. Really, I am ashamed in hindsight to have bothered with my own method at all. But this is all besides the point of your concern. Your fear is that my method is somehow bodily taxing to me. It appears that your Professor Van Helsing either misheard or our Professor Wilson misspoke, but the fact is that using my ability has positively no effect on my body. None. In reality, it’s the reverse. The mind is a plaything of the body. One cannot claim otherwise when a stinging bout of hay fever is enough to strike down the most brilliant scholar or engineer. So it is with me and an admittedly troubled body.

“I did speak the truth yesterday, that my exhausted state after your trance was born of overdue fatigue. But, I will admit, what broke my façade was the stress of meeting a mind that was not so easily open to influence as my more pliant subjects. Not impossible, but infinitely more meticulous. At least that was how it registered to the essence of me that I sent out. Again, there is no way to properly define that sensation or that essence beyond placeholders of ‘will’ and ‘spirit.’ Which, as poor Bradford can attest, are all deadly poison to an academic thesis about a practice already so far from scientific acceptance with regard to ordinary mesmerists. One day…” a dreamy look overtook her as her gaze moved out to the march of people and the blush of spring outside. “…One day I expect they shall carve my corpse open and find some aberration in my brain. Perhaps in my eyes. Some secret gland or malformation that will either explain all that I cannot, or else add a hundred more questions.”

Her gaze turned solemnly back to him again.

“All I know now is that I have this ability. A skill that can, that must be put to better use than causing entertaining dramas in a party or providing endless fodder for purely scientific observation. It is a terrible power and one I would tremble to picture in the hands of some tyrant on a throne—,”

Jonathan could not quite stop his hands from tightening to shaking stones in his lap.

“—but Fate has seen fit to pay off my infirmity with this gift. Which I suppose is all well and good to take account of, but I see you still worry. To that I add one last note. One I should hope was obvious.” Her solemnity cracked just enough to allow a smile. “I certainly don’t want to die over inducing a trance. I’d not have agreed to Bradford’s requests, or to yours, if I thought the use of my skill would suddenly result in my brain burning out or my heart popping from sheer frailty. Whatever my body deigns to do in the future will be wholly up to it. I know that.” Here her smile curled higher. “Just as I know there will be no repeat of my weariness from yesterday. The hardest part is done. Should we continue our sessions, it will be as simple as if I were walking in and out of a freshly-built door.”

His hands tightened again. Forcing them to relax, he laid them folded upon the table as he wrestled with relief and worry. He felt the pressure of full honesty nudge at his tongue until he had to bite it down. The concern was not only a belated one, but an even less permissible topic for a public setting than the track their table was already set upon. What polite way was there to say that he feared the very concept of another with such ability as hers probing in his head, even with witnesses to mark down every syllable of command to ensure his safety? Worse, what would such a distrust seem like to Miss Penclosa herself, who had hand-spun his first peaceful night in weeks out of charity?

And then there was the most pertinent question.

What would she even want of him if she were of a villainous bent? He lived comfortably, but a moderately healthy bank account was not an overflowing well of riches worth harvesting. He had known her for half a day and, as the newspapers put it, saved her from a most violent attack. He could think of no word or action that would paint him as some enemy worth menacing in the way of Atherton.

The short of it is that you are as nervous of her process as a skittish passenger who has never ridden a train but has heard awful tales of their twisted wreckage after freak accidents. What if! What if! All the while the train has already pulled into the station and all that’s left is unloading his luggage. That is you right now, Jonathan Harker. You are on the train. Do not throw yourself out the window for fear of a crash.

“You make a strong case,” Jonathan got out. “And I will agree to further sessions as they may be needed. Hopefully before the week is out all will be in place, the better to enjoy our final week in Tuppeton on its own merit and cease pestering you—,”

“You do no such thing,” Penclosa asserted. “It is precisely this form of mesmerism, or what we must term mesmerism, that is the entire point of studying it.”

“It’s true,” Mrs. Wilson put in, glad of a way back into the verbal fray. “So far all of Bradford’s observations have been in the form of mere example and experimentation, but precious little in the form of practical application. A success with your sleeping trouble would prove a vital addition to the research. Hypnotherapy has such scanty proofs worth anything in the scholar’s eye, at least from what I’ve skimmed of Bradford’s hoard of literature on the topic. As this is the case, and with my making the presumption that you will consent to furnishing my husband with a missing piece he has quite overlooked so far, I must at least offer you, Mrs. Harker and Professor Van Helsing a spot at the table when we lay out lunch today.”

Jonathan’s attempt to hide behind the café as excuse for an exit directly after the trance—and with it, escape from Prof. Wilson—died before it could even pass his lips. Miss Penclosa had already lit up at the notion and shaken off the last wisps of dire supplication to give her compliments to the Wilsons’ kitchen. Moreover, he would admit, there was some real temptation in the promise of recipes that both Penclosa and Mrs. Wilson had brought with them from Trinidad and that had been thoroughly mastered by the cook.

Then the entire conversation derailed upon spotting a couple peeking at their own table from over fan and glass, a tell-tale newspaper unfolded between their plates. Penclosa sighed something about the mistaken ‘madam,’ Mrs. Wilson felt sure her husband would find some way to graft the issue in its entirety into his log, and Jonathan wondered aloud what sort of caricature illustration they all might have suffered if Mr. Westman had not been there with his camera.

So talk went on until morning was nearly gone and ways had need to part. Jonathan paid for the table and declined a round-trip ride with the ladies to take him back to the hotel, preferring to walk his way back to High Street and see to his mapmaker notes.

“I see your book is packed almost all the way through with ink,” Mrs. Wilson hummed as he waved down a cab for her and Miss Penelosa. “If you find yourself running out of pages, there’s a perfectly lovely stationery shop near the university. We have its address scribbled down someplace at home. Bradford tears through notebooks like a fire and needs to stock up once a month.”

“Oh,” Penclosa suddenly started up straight, nearly upsetting her crutch. “Gloria, he and Mina might see it straight away if they were to attend the campus’ ball on the 3^rd…” Mrs. Wilson straightened in turn as some recognition clicked home. She whirled again to Jonathan as the horses drew up.

“That’s true. I don’t know how it slipped me. Though Helen gives the little party far more credit than it deserves. While I will not deny there is space and excuse enough for fine dress and dancing, it is hardly a rich revelry. Still, Hollick does polish itself up handsomely for the spring ball each year. Bradford can surely bring you, your wife, and Professor Van Helsing on as his guests. It’s to be held on the 3^rd of May, beginning at seven o’ clock, assuming it matches previous years.”

“I must run it by Mina first,” Jonathan said as he helped each lady up into her seat. He made sure to brace Miss Penclosa as she ascended, taking care with her and the crutch. “I admit we hadn’t thought to bring along ensembles suited for such an event.”

He did not admit that they had only recently acquired such passable evening dress for the sake of the trips out with Lord Godalming. A higher class of wardrobe had been of sparse concern to them for so long, first from lack of means and then from more pressing stresses following poor Hawkins’ death, that it simply hadn’t occurred to them to have anything finer to wear than their mourning apparel. He stopped himself short of asking the pair where he might find a reputable secondhand shop.

“No?” asked Penclosa, seeming truly crestfallen at the thought.

“Such are the hazards of planning for a walking holiday,” he tried to laugh. But Miss Penclosa only set her expression into that of a mathematician puzzling over a troublesome formula. “See you at three,” he finished, about to shut the door.

“At three,” Penclosa echoed, her gaze still far off. The cab pulled away and Jonathan hustled back to High Street, hunting idly for shopfronts sporting dresses or suits.

When the Harkers and Van Helsing arrived at the agreed three o’ clock, they found the session replaced by the forestalled lunch. If there was any aggravation at holding the meal off for his guests, it evaporated from Prof. Wilson on learning the results of the experiment from their own lips. He had already been buzzing when they arrived, as Miss Penclosa and Mrs. Wilson had delivered snippets of the good news. Half of the man’s plate went cold as his mouth was turned to a fountain of theories and questions. He took in more water than food to keep his tongue from going dry.

Mercifully, Van Helsing again accepted the sacrificial role by taking the nearest seat to the man and keeping him engaged in a verbal fencing match. The Harkers, Penclosa, and Mrs. Wilson found themselves in something of a quartet only half-attuned to the mesmeric chatter. Now and then Jonathan or Penclosa would add a remark as needed, but otherwise the conversation steered to other tracks. Jonathan made certain of it. He’d explained his reasons for such with Mina who had agreed and happily joined the cause of turning their talk to more than matters of hypnosis and nightmares.

Together they asked about Tuppeton and recommendations for places to idle in. In turn, Penclosa hooked them with queries about Exeter. Would they mind terribly if she asked after their home address for a few letters’ sake? If nothing else, she should like to be able to write to and from the Harkers as a matter of checking in, at least around the same time next year. Supposing the theory of springtime’s stimulus was correct, it would be wise to see if the long-term command was doing its job. The address was given and Miss Penclosa promised them one of the better postcards from the stationery shop. One featuring a watercolor of the perfectly pastoral little park that faced the university.

“Speaking of which,” Miss Penclosa added, “Are you still certain you’ve no attire for the ball? I shall make no promises, but I might have something to meet the occasion.”

Mina sat up at that even quicker than Jonathan.

“Oh no, no, you don’t need to…”

“Ah, but you don’t know what I mean to do. Which is really nothing. I am no Fairy Godmother, but supposing the idea I have in mind can be turned to action in time, and supposing the ensembles are to your liking, I can make a fine dress and suit appear for the dance. Should the garments suffice, I will insist that you take them and do so without any absurd quailing at wearing finery that was never going to be worn in the first place. Call it a poor trade to repay saving me from having my head bashed in on the button-tufting.”

“It’s all fine to talk of trades,” Jonathan put in before the topic could expand. “But we also intend to rob you. Or at least I do.” He indicated his dish of curried duck with a fork. “If only to make off with the recipe for this. Actually, everything on the plate, please.” His journal was already out.

“Likewise for whatever dessert is coming out,” Mina chimed, opening her own journal. “Only I should like mine a secret. He wants to hoard the lot so he has the lead.”

“The lead..?” Mrs. Wilson asked. The Harkers explained that they had turned cooking into a sparring match, each trying to learn and hone whatever fine recipes they could gather up. Even with Ms. Barclay reigning in the kitchen, they still found opportunities to assail each other with surprise dishes. Birthdays were battles. Valentine’s Day a time of war.

“You cheated this year,” Jonathan sniffed. Mina feigned shock as he turned to their audience. “She picked up a new German cookbook without my knowing and had a banquet of a supper and a mixed berry strudel waiting before I made it home.” Jonathan pretended not to see the accusing pen Mina leveled at his right.

“I’ll not hear any complaining from the man who had that titan’s breakfast waiting for me last year. Not a lunch, not a dinner, not a treat. No. I barely had my eyes open and you were up before the sun, whipping up a French bakery for me to inhale.”

“There are worse vices for a husband to have, Mrs. Harker.” This came from Mrs. Wilson who looked somewhat pointedly at Prof. Wilson. Prof. Wilson was looking likewise pointedly between his notes, Van Helsing’s, Van Helsing himself, and around again. “In any case, I will only be too happy to divulge the advantage of my recipes to you alone. San Fernando furnished me with plenty.”

“Then I must play ally to the other,” Penclosa countered, already turned to Jonathan. “I will not claim a great quantity, as my place in Trinidad was quite a crumb compared to Gloria’s fine city, but it cannot be beat for quality. Especially with regards to water fowl and seafood. Despite how widely Sir Walter Raleigh’s finding of the pitch lake has flown, we do not lack for clearer waters inland either.”

And so there was a call for the cook to fetch the recipe cards for each Harker to copy in comic secrecy. By the time they finished, the plates had been duly cleared and the next session beckoned. Well-fed and nigh drowsy already, Jonathan sat himself in yesterday’s spot on the library couch. Penclosa sat opposite in her chair to address the room at large, once more minus the Wilsons.

“So, to be wholly clear. Last night has all the appearance of a success. But as has come to my attention, my error of failing to better define my method has set everyone on edge, be it for concern for my health or for the more understandable worry that arises from the notion of a stranger’s will probing about in a loved one’s head. I accept full blame for overlooking such a factor. I am no doctor, but the delicate nature of what we are attempting here is such that it should have been explained before I allowed you all to assume I was merely expanding on traditional methods rather than exercising an inborn talent. That said, I feel a more definitive cap to our sessions should be set.”

Penclosa leaned slightly forward on her seat, her eyes hooked securely in Jonathan’s.

“I am not a prideful woman in most things, but I have no illusions when it comes to my ability. If I cannot do for you what needs doing before the week is out, Jonathan, then I will have to not only concede a loss to the power of your subconscious, but recommend you skip mesmerism entirely as a solution. There are but two experiments more I would wish to try, including today’s. If after tomorrow’s session your series of nightmares does not come to a full halt, I will call the experiment done and a failure. I’m not unaware of the unease that a body has even in the most mundane circumstances when you must trust another so completely with your well-being, knowing how easily it can be stripped away by a single evil moment.”

As she spoke, her hand floated out to graze the crutch leaning on the armrest. Clouds seemed to pass in her pale face and the murk of memories swam in her look.

“Much as Bradford may lament such a curt ending if it does end so limply, I know he will also turn cartwheels if we succeed in so short a time. Regardless, I ask you,” she looked to Mina and Van Helsing, “all of you, not to mention this shortened period to either him or Gloria. Bradford will try to encourage a longer try and Gloria will agree on his behalf. But I am determined to have this resolved without unduly prolonging what is clearly not a lark for anyone involved. You are not skeptics, nor are you partygoers after a silly story to bring back to friends.”

Miss Penclosa leaned forward once more, enough that she could lay her hand over Jonathan’s as it rested on his knee. The wells of her eyes seemed deep enough to fall into as she frowned up at him.

“You are suffering, and to drag it out for the sake of padding Bradford’s notes is as cruel as it is pointless.” Her hand pressed his another second before retracting. Then she was up and gaining her feet again. “Once more, an instruction will be given. But there shall be a new addition. As with yesterday, you are not to be privy to either after you leave the trance. Ready?”

“Ready.”

His eyes lay steady against hers as she made her strange passes, the feeling of warmth and rigor and detachment all coming in their order. Here was the mountain lake again. He soared and was submerged. Again, reflex made him a traitor to the process as he thrashed to be free of the implacable sinking. But this time there was even less effort in his plummet. What had been a tug-of-war before was now the towing of a cagey pup on his lead. Then he was rising again just as easily. Flying up, up, up until the surface broke and Miss Penclosa’s voice rang out:

“Awake!”

Jonathan dropped back into himself. Again Mina and Van Helsing moved to bookend him, albeit with less frantic concern than the last session.

“Was I talking again?”

“Not very much,” Van Helsing tried, though his expression strained.

“Shut the door,” Mina half-whispered. “I shall wait till morning.”

Jonathan felt his face go alternately hot and cold. Daring the smallest side glance to the mesmerist, he saw that while the woman didn’t look a fraction as harried as she had yesterday, there was a far more pensive curiosity etched in her face. Questions churned in her gaze.

“I hope the tailored dream finds you quickly tonight,” she said in lieu of a query.

Evening found the trio back in their positions in the Harkers’ hotel room. They burned a little of the time going over the particulars of the recipe hoards, the question of attending Hollick University’s ball—it happened that Van Helsing had packed a dance-worthy ensemble, just as he had packed coarse clothes for a hike, black garb for midnight skulking, and holy water hiding in a cologne bottle—and the morning’s newspaper. Jonathan had grudgingly revealed his copy to Mina and she and the Professor had both taken turns alternately reading, grinning, or wincing at the content. Mina’s ultimate verdict?

“Mr. Westman needs to invest in a better model after all. The effect on you and Miss Penclosa is terrible.” Jonathan couldn’t disagree. He had overlooked it due to the overwhelming weight of general mortification at the story itself, but now that he gave the image a proper look, it did have a somewhat ghastly air about it. Some flaw in the lens or the camera’s interior had played a haunted house trick. In the shot, Jonathan’s eyes were livid coins while his face seemed oddly gaunt, as though he were a dead or dying man with an angry rictus. Miss Penclosa must have moved her head before the image could finish setting the view, for her face was unpleasantly hazy and her wide eyes seemed like twin flares smeared in her sockets.

Which likely increased rather than lessened the appeal, I suppose. It already stars a man trying to bludgeon a defenseless woman at a party, scandals revealed by hypnotism, and a stranger swinging a knife. All we need now are two more acts and we can be tucked in a playbill.

“So he does. I suppose it isn’t fit to be a clipping for you after all. I’ll just put this in the bin, then.” But the newsprint was already rescued from his hand and being assailed with scissors. “Dare I hope this is where you’re getting my picture for the locket?” Mina did not pause her cutting.

“Oh, yes. It is such a stunning likeness after all.” She flung a balled of paper at him. Van Helsing looked up from one of his books with a caterpillar brow raised.

“Locket? Is that what you two are wearing?”

The Harkers confirmed as much and Mina told him the how of it as she finished her clipping and set to pasting it in her journal. She and the Professor each mentioned how they would begin to jingle if they added any more necklaces. As it stood, the lockets were just out of reach of jostling the crucifixes worn on their longer cords. The wearing of them was a matter of habit in travel, and they were each hung up by the bed when it came time to change into nightclothes. Jonathan’s gaze drifted to his own as his hand floated up to cradle the silver capsule at his neck.

He thought of a huge white hand stung by the presence of the good old woman’s gift. Then the Son’s mark burned into his wife’s pious temple like a brand.

On the heels of that, he struggled again, as he sometimes did, to remember if he had felt in any way divine as he hefted the coffin above his head or as he swung the steel down through an undead throat. His journal was proof of scattering God’s name throughout the days. He had breathed, ‘Amen,’ with the others on seeing Mina’s brow healed. Yet he had not knelt with the Professor, with Art or Jack. He’d been too busy playing the last resting couch for Quincey Morris, a mere mortal’s knife having gutted the life out of him in steaming red rivulets. Sometimes he could still feel the weight of the man’s head on his shoulder, his smile at Mina’s rescue shrinking and softening to the unfeeling mien of the dead.

We should have traded, Jonathan thought. One of many repetitions that would casually raise its voice in his head. An idle reminder among many. I should have died. He should have lived. Was he not the man of action in his country? Was he not the head of dozens of adventures before crossing our path? Art and Jack implied as much. Yet here I am as he sleeps in the earth under his homeland’s baking sun. Is that right? You pretend to think God was on your side at the last. You pretend to wonder otherwise when you know the truth.

You may have prayed, yes. But you did not care where that prayer went. You did not care of the who or the how, only the result. Dracula dead and sent to Hell. What was it you said in the house in Piccadilly? ‘I care for nothing now, except to wipe out this brute from the face of creation. I would sell my soul to do it.’ Well, you did it, didn’t you? With all things divine and diabolic considered, is it not possible there is some patient Other waiting somewhere for your promised exchange? What do you think, Faustus?

With such thoughts whirling, Jonathan braced for a sour night with or without a mesmeric aid. He scrubbed at his eyes and tried to cling to the sound of Mina and Van Helsing’s conversation. His grip did not last. Despite his efforts, an abrupt and insistent dizziness tilted the last of his consciousness back on its axis. His final wakeful thought was that it would be rude to nod off so early in the evening. There was no fatigue in his eyes or his head. If anything, he wished to stall his doze awhile.

But the swimmy feeling pressed at him again. Withing moments, his casual posture upon the bed became a sleeping one. Again he was layered in blankets and the night watch began anew. Come morning, he would wake early and fly to his journal. He would tell Mina and the Professor only flints of the new nightmare. Aloud, he would say only that he was transported back to the sunset chase in Transylvania, and that the battle went awry. In his pages, he would describe how after he lopped the Count’s head from his shoulders and the ash blew away, unseen hands forced him down into the earth box. The lid was hammered shut and he heard the sound of demonic porters laughing as he was hoisted and carried away for delivery to…he did not know. Nor want to know.

The nightmare’s ending was thwarted by a softer dream. This he would tell them of in detail, describing how he flew above the mountain lake again, this time with a change. He swore to feeling Mina’s own hand grasping his and pulling him up and away from the horror. They drifted away until they touched down inside the rows of a handsome theatre. Shakespeare on the stage. Her hand in his. It seemed a blissful thing stitched together from a heap of prior outings and all their joy was condensed into the dream like a sweet patchwork. Once more he would be met by delight and confirmations.

“The theatre was her suggestion,” Mina would tell him. “As was my hand. While you were in the trance, we took seats at either side of you. She had me take hold of your hand with mine on one side while she spoke in your ear on the other side. It was a command that you would feel my grip on you and that you would know it was me. That it would be the sensation that pulled you away to the show. Oh Jonathan, did you really feel my hand in yours?”

He had, Jonathan would tell her. It had seemed so solid it might have jolted him awake entirely for how present it seemed. But this was for the dawn.

For now, there was only the sinking of sleep and those who watched.

AUSTIN GILROY’S DIARY

April 31. I shall call it the 31^st if only because I write this past midnight.

The creature has had me again, but as a merciful change, I find myself more baffled and annoyed versus the usual stew of dread. She has had me put to work at something, but it is so out of place a thing I cannot lock upon the purpose. Let me lay out the facts. The first being that I did not realize she had snared my mind until after it was done and the strange chore was executed.

I remember coming back to myself while staring at my bed. There were clothes laid out on it. Nothing so miserable to discover as my poor coat and its damning green spatter, but something just as out of place. I was looking down at my new cobalt suit—indeed, the same trim ensemble I planned to wear to the university’s ball—and a fine dress for dancing. The dress was familiar. A sprightly affair of robin’s egg blue and cloudy lace whose tailoring frothed on the bed. I have seen it worn only once. Not out of doors, but in its owner’s boudoir as she twirled for me, the groom-to-be.

“For our honeymoon, Austin,” Agatha had said. “I want to wear it out dancing on the very first day that we are husband and wife.”

Why should Agatha’s gown be here in my room?

The answer found me when I looked to the clock. Even the window was a giveaway. My last recollection was of the latest edge of afternoon, tipping toward evening. Now the night was full and etched out by the moon and streetlamps. Time had been stolen from me again. So wholly that I had not been given the bitter allowance of at least seeing what I was doing. I must have been and gone to Agatha’s home in that interim. Again, I thank God that she and her mother are away a while longer. But new worry needles me just the same. Was I let in by her home’s staff? Or had I broken in as a burglar? Did Jane hand me the dress on some invented pretense or have I robbed Agatha’s wardrobe without reason or care? Did I dare go around to the place again and test either theory? What if—?

My thoughts broke off as I noticed something in my hand. Scissors.

New indignation boiled in me. Yes, of course. Of course the creature would want something so petty of me. What excuses could I make to poor Agatha when she returned home to find her dress stolen? What might become of me upon showing her the mangled remains?

God, God, that fiend, that devil, that callous, vicious, gloating cat in human skin!

But my mind swiveled again. This time to the lighter item my other hand. Velvet ribbon. At my feet were heaped two sets of packaging, the sort used by dressmakers. Fear and fury both dissolved under the newcomer of confusion. I was allowed to gawp another moment before I found myself sprung abruptly into action. The struggle I put up against the possession was not abandoned so much as recognized as a cursory reflex. Yes, the terrier knew he was to be dragged along, but he would not help the owner of the chain! Still, I had cognizance enough to see the motions I was spurred into and to take note of them. Oddity upon oddity, the suit and gown were not attacked, but neatly packed under my hands. The scissors were merely for the ribbon.

I was allowed to keep my awareness up until I finished tying the second of the two bows. Then came the swimming haze and oblivion once more. It left me as soon as it came on; or seemed to, as is ever the case. It was still dark out when I shuddered back to myself in the bedroom. All the paraphernalia of wrapping was gone and the parceled attire with it. There was no surprise when I checked my shoes and found the inner soles still warm from being recently shucked. I’d been out again.

For a while longer I stood puzzling at this. Now I am writing it all out and am puzzling still. All that can be ascertained is that I’ve been made to rob myself and Agatha of our best ensembles and deliver the fruits of that theft elsewhere. At night. Was to the Wilsons’ estate?

No, no, not there. It would make no sense. The questions it would raise would be too many. What excuse could she even have me make to them over such a delivery? A freak nocturnal urge of charity to the couple? Mine and Agatha’s frames are lithe and young compared to the Wilsons’ cheerily ample proportions in their middle age, and they’ve no lack of wardrobe. So where? To who? Why? Perhaps I’ve left them at the doorstep of some secondhand shop or handed them to some beggar couple on a street corner. Perhaps it is just another trivial nettling for its own sake. It could be. It must be.

…Only I cannot help noting that, like her cruel order with the bank window, I was made a puppet after dark. She at least wanted me to have good odds of going undetected. I was set to this enigmatic errand for a purpose, yet I cannot picture it.

All I know now is that I am tired. Perhaps with the morning shall come the police, prepared to arrest me for being spotted while stealing my fiancée’s dress. Is that a higher or lower penalty for a would-be bank robber? I wonder.

Morning saw Jonathan on his own again.

Once more, his vigil keepers in the night had burning eyes and groggy heads that needed their own rest before the afternoon. Rather than send him out for more mapmaking, Jonathan decided to preserve some surprise and busy himself first with the hotel’s breakfast and an amble to the park. But he had barely gained the bottom of the steps before the man behind the lobby desk came up to him with an envelope in hand.

“Mr. Harker?”

“Yes?”

“There was a delivery for you late last night, sir. Well, a delivery and a half. Seems the letter meant to go with the parcel got lost. Had a boy just in now to hand it off with the boxes.”

“Boxes? We haven’t ordered anything. Are you certain?”

“Says as much.” The man handed him two notes, each typewritten.

For Delivery to Jonathan and Mina Harker, Care of Hardt Hotel. Do Not Separate.

“The man who dropped the boxes off must have been in some kind of hurry, coming and going like he did the other night. Probably lost the letter in the rush. But it’s here now too, tucked in with your things. If you’ll follow me, sir.” Jonathan shadowed him, still confused. “I would have come up with the lot, only you’d already given your request about not being bothered after dark.”

“Thank you,” Jonathan got out, now doubly stunned at the packages unearthed from the lobby desk. They were done in brown paper, but the way the paper belled up at the top suggested the boxes inside were irregular in shape. There was the softest rustle inside as he took the two packages. The man helpfully balanced the adjoining letter on top. Jonathan read the address’ slanting script. The Wilsons’ estate. But the name crowning the house number was Miss Helen Penclosa.

Realization fell in place like a stone. Even so, he kept a slippery grip on denial all the way back up the stairs and into the room. Mina stirred blearily at his entrance—cat’s feet he may have, but the door creaked terribly—and then her tired eyes widened at the sight of the packages. She shared a glance with him.

“Jonathan. She didn’t.”

“I believe she has.” Jonathan laid the boxes on the dresser and turned the letter in his hands. “I’m sorry for disturbing you. We can do this later, after you’ve rested.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to rest now.” Mina said as much while grinding sleep out of her lashes. “Really though, she cannot truly have…” She gestured at the parcels. “It’s been less than a day since she even mentioned the ball, let alone any secret cache of attire.”

“Perhaps it isn’t clothes,” Jonathan tried. “It could just be boxes of stationery and recipe cards.” Even as he talked, he split the wax seal and fished out the notepaper within. It was a creamy stock that smelled faintly of potpourri. The letter read:

To my dear Harkers,

Before you insist you cannot accept these gifts, understand that I will not cease to be a pest until you at least try the things on and understand that their former owners, referring to myself and the owner before me, shall not miss them in the slightest.

Fate has conspired on our behalf, it seems. If you’re reading this, that means I was not wrong in assuming the desired articles were in storage with the rest of my preserved possessions. These recent additions are, if you will believe it, almost as well-traveled as myself! At least insomuch as they have sailed across the Atlantic twice over, and that without ever being donned or danced in. To explain: Gloria was not my only friend in Trinidad, but certainly the better of them, for I had another who was, in politest terms, a companion who lived and died by her imported frivolities. Josephine I knew before Gloria, and only for a brief time after, thus sparing her the acquaintance. I shall save you the burden of a full history with the woman and so skip to the chief points.

First, that the gown and its partner suit were commissioned for her and her latest gentleman. This she had done overseas, measurements and demands dictated practically from the other side of the world, based upon a whim that struck her in the latest English fashion plates.

Second, that by the time the pair was completed, packaged and set upon the boat, Josephine’s love for London tailoring had turned to Paris’ patterns.

Third, that when the garments finally arrived at her door, she had her heart set on Madrid’s designs. Which is all to say that she deemed the clothes no longer worthy of her or her gentleman. A poor boy who had also been swapped out in the meantime. Quite without thinking, she foisted both on me as ‘gifts,’ regardless of the obvious dilemmas of both my physical status and being without a gentleman to hand the suit off to. This was just prior to meeting up with Gloria once again, as she was taking on the twofold task of a pilgrimage to visit her family and to help me move my things across the sea to England. Josephine’s untouched donations went on the pile.

All of this amounts to the fact that these clothes have had two trips along the waves, all in a mere heartbeat of months, just to wind up back in their homeland with a destiny of gathering dust.

Unless, of course, you do them the honour of wearing them to the ball. Any alterations will be a simple matter, but if my eye serves, they shall be quite near to your proportions already. Do try them on when you have the chance and tell me either way if they are suitable. Let me know once you come around at three o’ clock.

Yours faithfully,

Helen Penclosa

“Well, that does make a little difference,” Mina said, though a frown still haunted her lips. “Assuming it’s true and not just a kind story to make the donation easier.”

Jonathan couldn’t help agreeing. It was too convenient and, they suspected, too expensive a coincidence. This feeling grew into a tripled hesitance when they finally opened the parcels and discovered the richly tailored blue within. Robin’s egg for her, cobalt for him. The finishing dismay was that they fit rather well.

“Are you sure?” Mina turned to him. “Perhaps something is too loose or too snug? Does anything chafe or pinch?”

“Not that I can tell.” Jonathan walked and stalked and cautiously bent arms and legs. “Everything is fairly comfortable. Sorry.” They carefully peeled the new attire, Mina returning to her nightclothes and Jonathan to his original ensemble. “So. What shall we tell her?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” she yawned. “I do not wish to lose an opportunity to dance with you. But I also…” Her look spoke more articulately than any words she fished for. He nodded back at her.

“I know.”

“It would be rude to turn it all down, I suppose.” Her sigh was followed by another yawn. The whites of her eyes were nearly pink. “We want to dance. She’s gone to the trouble of delivering a present. Her presents fit. We should. Shouldn’t we?”

“If you’re up to it.” He threw a smile across to her. “You know I would dance with you in anything in any room. It does not have to be this ball on this holiday in those borrowed clothes.”

“Borrowed,” she echoed. “Is she loaning them or gifting them outright? I was not clear on that. None of my head is clear right now.”

“Should I ask you again after you’ve slept?”

“You should,” she said half into her pillow. The half a face he could still see smiled back at him.

“Then I will. Good-night and good morning.”

“Night and morning,” she yawned back as he shut the door.

Breakfast came and went in a pleasant blur and the nearby swatch of greenery and dog walkers that was Emmerine Park chased close after it. Jonathan let his feet take him where they liked. It was a habit he always fell into when the opportunity to explore even a tiny vista of nature arose. He thought he’d seen a duck pond there in passing and had intended to circle around to see whether it was picturesque or sadly scummy. But his feet did not obey.

Whim, it seemed, drove him in the opposite direction until he was on one of the footpaths. It was not long at all before he spotted a familiar little figure posed on one of the benches with a book open in her lap. Her expression was clouded with a soft disappointment.

“You look as if your reading has let you down,” Jonathan spoke up. When Miss Penclosa raised her head, it was less in shock than relief. “Good morning again.”

“And to you, Jonathan.” She shut the book with a light snap. It was a clothbound cover. While the title was faded, he could see a stamped illustration of mythic Greek figures striking poses. “No, the reading does not let me down. This is an old treasure—a first edition some decades out of print—but my head has not been in a place to wring the joy out of it. Yet I will make a play at clairvoyance and predict I shall be better for your company.”

As she spoke, Jonathan found himself already taking the seat beside her. So quickly he almost sat upon the crutch she had laid there as if to reserve the whole bench.

“You flatter me to say so. I must admit that I feel somewhat too doted upon these past few days.”

“Ah. You received the parcels, then?”

“We did.”

“And?”

“They are lovely ensembles, Helen.”

But accepting them on a loan, let alone as gifts, feels too great a donation on your behalf.

Was what he meant to say. But as Miss Penclosa’s eyes fell on his, a switch seemed to turn over in his tongue.

Out loud, “They fit us well. Though we have some misgivings about accepting such a fine loan of costume, we’re both tempted by the chance to dance.”

“Wonderful. Those who are able should dance when they can.” Jonathan watched her hand move to her bad leg. “I used to be able when I was small. But an unpleasant turn on a horse turned an off leg into a wretched one. Even if anyone had bothered to ask, I would only have been able to hang on like a millstone in a party dress and topple us both. You simply must dance while you can, Jonathan. You never know when the ability might be taken out of your hands. Shoes, rather.”

“It was, once.”

Penclosa’s maudlin look sharpened to something else. He couldn’t place what.

“Pardon?”

“There was a period in which I was quite literally half the man I am today. Brain fever and malnutrition whittled me down to a haggard scarecrow after…” His throat worked around something hot and cutting. “…after escaping that bleak experience on the Continent.” Jonathan tried to pin his tongue. But again, that strange switch turned and it went on against his will. “Even after being nursed back to cognizance and my health finally progressed, Mina found me barely more than a living corpse. We were married in my sickroom and I could only sit up in my bed to give my vows. My legs were nigh useless when I left with her. A cane kept me up halfway through the mend. And that was all while my mind was still patching itself back together. For all the time and care that went into the hospital’s treatment of me, it was being back with Mina that seemed to tumble me toward true rejuvenation.”

Jonathan looked down into Miss Penclosa’s face and was struck again by an inability to register precisely what expression he was seeing. There were some looks he might compare it to, but which were absurd to think of. The least confusing of them was a flash of yearning.

How very odd. Could it be because you are sitting here rambling about how you had only a stint of ill health, speedily erased by the love and minding of your beloved, while she sits there with her permanent injury and no darling of her own? Gasp. How very surprising. Imbecile.

“I—,” Words clogged and clotted in him. At least, the words he thought he wanted to say. An apology? A change of topic? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that the next words to leave him were, “I must ask you an obvious question, Helen, if only for clarification. You will be at the ball, won’t you?”

“I will,” she said. There was a peculiar weight to her voice. Her foggy eyes seemed suddenly dark. “Why?”

“Because I would be most obliged if you would reserve a dance for me. I will make no promises of my being any kind of showman on the floor, but if you are willing to risk me making a fool of us both, I believe I have strength enough to support us.”

“Do you?”

“I believe so. Shall we experiment?”

“How do you mean?” Again, a shift in her voice. The jade of her eyes had blackened down to emerald. Perhaps it was just the effect of a cloud drawing its curtain over the sun, but they remained dark as he told her he should like to have her arm and try to pace the park as far as she was comfortable. “Only, do not use the crutch. If you consent to share a dance, we’ll not be able to juggle it. So, if you would…”

She would, she did. Penclosa traded the crutch for his arm and they began a walk around the path. They passed couples and families, hounds and birds. It was not until they circled around to the other end’s pond full of overfed water fowl and lilies that Penclosa finally tapped his shoulder to sit on the next bench.

“Are you sore?”

“No, Jonathan, and I am surprised you aren’t. But this is nice spot to sit a moment.” She beamed up at him and seemed, if only for an instant, to have shed twenty years off her face. “A better view.”

“So it is,” Jonathan agreed, his gaze traveling over her head to a far bend of the pond. “Only, I hope we do not disturb the owners.”

“Owners?” Jonathan pointed out the apparent landlords of the water. The ducks and geese had crowded uneasily to one side of the water while two stately swans promenaded on their own side. Cygnets drifted merrily around them. “Ah. Well, I shall not throw stones at them if you don’t.”

“Agreed.” Jonathan tapped her fingers lightly where they still looped about his arm. “I feel we have passed at least enough time for a dance and I feel no worse for it. We shall make out alright if I put both arms to use. Again, only if you do not mind—,”

“Consider the dance reserved, Jonathan. I have not walked so steadily since I was a girl.” She twisted the crutch idly in her hand as if fiddling with a massive pen. “You are certainly more than healed since your grim trial in Europe. Mina must be a miracle worker. Alternatively,” the crutch stopped spinning, “the experience itself rattled something powerful loose in you. Such can be the case in extraordinary circumstances.”

Jonathan thought of the 3^rd of October. The reflection that had taken over in the glass. The myriad changes of body and soul that had never undone themselves. He shuddered despite the balmy air and thumbed the kukri’s handle.

“Perhaps it was both,” he admitted. “I have no room to discount it.”

“I fear being rude in asking, but I cannot help my curiosity,” Jonathan watched as Miss Penclosa’s hand drifted up to rest on his shoulder. “What is it that happened to you beyond mere illness? You are of a singular character, Jonathan, I can tell as much from even our short acquaintance. The sort of monster who could not only do you such lasting harm, but would wish to do so must also be of a singular sort. Surely the kind who deserves addressing.” The resting hand squeezed. “If you tell me, you can trust implicitly in my secrecy.”

“I—I would really rather—rather not—,”

His tongue twitched and tossed like a fish in his mouth. His mind more so.

What is wrong with you?

“I shall judge nothing, Jonathan. I swear that. My own history is a strange thing. Stranger than any of what Gloria or Bradford knows of me. I would gladly trade my tale for yours if it is a matter of confidences.”

“In Transylvania, there was—I was—no.” His hand was suddenly clapped over the top of hers, prying it from his shoulder. “No,” he tried again. “It is not a thing I wish to revisit, nor is it entirely my tale to share. If you say something fantastical lays in your past, I will trust it, and not pry for your telling it when I cannot bring myself to share mine. Instead,” he etched a quick smile in place for her, “let us turn away from bleak topics. We are already scheduled for a last dive into the snarl of my mind this afternoon, and that all professional and dire work. I much preferred the talk we all shared yesterday over our myriad meals. As I recall, I’d meant to bother you about a finer description of your homeland. You mentioned a lake where your fine recipes sprang from. If it is half so scenic as the one you gift me each time you put me under, I should like to learn its name. I am an admitted fiend for such views.”

Miss Penclosa seemed to glow anew as her other hand released the crutch and folded itself over his clasping fingers.

“You are a young man afflicted with wanderlust, I see.”

“I am. Or was. Most of my life has been lived in the boxes and brickwork of city life, and so when I lay eyes on a proper landscape it feels like a gift. But what of yourself? You must have some reason for traveling as far as you have.”

“A slower wanderlust. Trinidad was not my first home, nor shall England be my last.”

“No?”

“No. I did indeed befriend Gloria when we were both younger women, but my girlhood was elsewhere. Can you guess the land?”

“America? England? Spain?”

“You are right and wrong. My girlhood was a mobile thing, for my father moved us about with his whims. I am a natural born Englishwoman, so to speak, but my youngest years were splintered across Spain and France, Greece and Italy…”

Jonathan sat and listened as she poured out a broad tour of fabulous scenery like a verbal string of pearls. Mountains and meadows, lakesides and seashores, vineyard villages and ancient metropolises of breathtaking architecture, all still brimming with the descendants of grand ancestors. Even the ruins were pure majesty. And the cuisine was a wonderland, of course.

“I am certain I had a little collection of favorites I scrawled down. Not so much a diary as a log for meals I did not wish to lose as our kitchens kept taking on local culinary masters. It must be buried somewhere. Supposing I find it before you and Mina depart the week after next, I would happily loan it to you for the advantage. Supposing you can make out the details in my old penmanship.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure I would trust you with it,” Penclosa nodded. “Especially as, if it were terribly vital to me, I would know where the volume is. Like this.” She held up her tome with the faded illustration of gods and monsters. “Mythologies and Monstrosities of Ancient Greece, collected and printed just a year before I left the Mediterranean. Purchased as a joke, if you can believe it.” She flipped through the old pages and Jonathan saw the margins were cluttered with pen annotations in Greek script. “It is an English volume collected by an Englishman, and so the retellings in nigh every chapter are absurdly off compared to what the natives of the country know of their own history and legends.”

“I do not doubt it,” Jonathan said. “I take it the notes are a friend’s?”

“My own. I did it as an amusement. Just picking out little things to laugh at to pass the time. But we are off topic.” She set the book aside. When she looked up at him again it was through the narrow fringe of her lashes. “This book is precious to me. The diary, should I find it, will be more precious to you and the noble but nefarious cause of out-cooking your wife.” Her hand drifted up again to his shoulder. “I am only too happy to help.” Fingernails grazed the skin just above his shirt collar—

Moonlit mist, sleep that wasn’t, that isn’t, that tickles, prickles, pricking on the throat, scraping on the thin thin skin, pulse is pounding panic, alien ecstasy squirming like maggots in brain and body and blood and there are kisses for them all—

—and he bolted up from the bench as if struck by an electric current. Miss Penclosa herself startled back, her eyes gone wide.

“Jonathan, what is it? What’s wrong?” Her face dented in true worry as her line of sight dropped to his throat. He realized he had his hand clamped to the side of his neck. The place where the eldest of the Weird Sisters had meant to take her turn. Where their master had kissed him good-bye the night before departure. His palm scrubbed the spot as he tried to laugh.

“I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to jump like that. Only, I think something pinched under here.” He fished desperately under his shirt collar, nudging aside the soft cord of the crucifix in favor of blaming the silver culprit of the locket chain. His finger hooked it out to show her. “Perhaps I should swap this out for a finer length. I thought something had stung me for a moment.”

“Perhaps,” Penclosa echoed. Her gaze was now fully on the locket. “It is a lovely thing.”

“It will be lovelier still once Mina and I have photographs to set in them.” Jonathan told her of the visit to the jewelers and the trade of locks. In turn, Penclosa used Mina’s mention to inquire after last night’s experiment. Was it a success? It was, he said, and told her of the theatre and feeling the grasp of Mina’s hand pulling him to safety. “I would have sworn it was Mina herself trying to wake me, it felt so real in the dream,” he sighed as they walked. They were now circling back to the park’s entry. Much of the morning had burned off and afternoon was only a few hours distant. “It was so strange. I wouldn’t expect such a tangible feeling to be possible while asleep.”

“Of course it’s possible, if only because it is just a feeling. Had I instilled the command, you could just as easily have felt her hand in yours while awake. It’s the same principle as those who lose a limb to amputation and swear they can still feel it itch or flex. The mind owns all the senses and it decides what a body can feel.”

“I do not doubt it,” Jonathan got out as he tried to raise his arm for a cab. His other was still clasped by Miss Penclosa. Even so, he found his other arm frozen just as low as its twin.

What is the matter with you today?

“We still have time before we must go and sit for the last trance,” Miss Penclosa hummed. “If you like, we can head up to the university. I can show you the stationery shop. Perhaps we might pick you out a new journal as a souvenir.”

“Mina needs one too,” he stammered through a smile whose corners strained. “New ink as well.” He tried again to raise his arm. It merely twisted the crutch idly where he held it. As if fiddling with a massive pen. “But I should like to wait until she is with me before hunting anything down. I must save some surprises for the rest of our holiday.”

“All the better to do it now, while she is unaware.” The hand not clasping his arm patted him at the shoulder, careful not to graze his neck. “It would be such a small detour.”

Jonathan tried to keep his eyes forward and found he couldn’t. Instead, he was looking down again into Miss Penclosa’s own unblinking stare, her small smile.

Another twist and fumble was happening in his head. One that insisted he really owed it to her to play escort a while longer. Miss Penclosa had already proven herself a giving figure and she was clearly eager for company. Yes, she had left Gloria behind for the morning—and no wonder, what with her best friend having her own husband to catch up with when he wasn’t neck-deep in research. It was obvious she had excused herself to give her hosts some privacy that could not be had with her hanging about, so she had taken herself away with a book to be alone in the park’s early crowd. But she had found a friend in the young man she had reached out to help, and it was only polite to join her, to follow her guiding hand through Tuppeton, the better to make his maps and give her back some of the happiness she had so graciously given to his sleeping mind and—

Are you so polite you would leave Mina to wake up alone and trot after you all the way to the Wilsons? Because that’s what’s waiting if you let this go further.

A shiver that was nearly a spasm twitched up his spine. His arm sprang up just as a hansom pulled around the corner. The driver trotted up and each click of hooves seemed to shake loose the cobwebs that had grown over his thinking.

“I’m sorry, Helen, I must be there when Mina wakes rather than leave her guessing at my lateness. We have an unofficial pact with each other on that subject.” Miss Penclosa’s grasp grew snug as the horse came to a stop. It softened again when she took the crutch from him.

“What subject is that?” she asked.

“The subject of being missing for longer than we promised each other. Even for the most innocuous reasons. You inquired about my history. I can tell you at least that my being entrapped was enabled partly because Mina was fed lies concerning my well-being. Mina’s own condition befell her because—,”

Of you.

“…because she was left unattended with the assumption that she was not in danger. We are both creatures of clocks, calendars, and correspondence, and the Hell of last year has only made us more anxious when something transpires to keep us apart beyond our planned hours.”

“I see,” Penclosa said, and Jonathan was slightly heartened to see that there was more of pondering than disappointment in her face. There was also something of conspiracy to her too. Though he’d been half-joking earlier, now Jonathan saw the truth in his words—the woman was doting on them. He and Mina only had mere secondhand stories of distant relatives who unloaded buckets of affection and gifts whenever this nephew or that niece came around. Perhaps some of that kindness had been transplanted to them now. As if in answer to the thought, Penclosa tried to keep him from fishing out the fee for the driver. “Oh, Jonathan, that isn’t necessary, I have it quite taken care of.”

“Too late,” he said as the money came out. “Besides, the sum to take you around to the Wilsons is more than a bargain compared to what you sent our way.” So saying, he handed the bemused driver his pay for the trip with one hand and offered his other to help Penclosa up into her seat. “Until three.”

“Until three,” Miss Penclosa echoed. Though now a sharp shine of mischief had entered her look. “It seems ours is a battle of the benefactors. But I shall get you yet, young man. You’ll see.”

Jonathan only waved her a smiling farewell. He cut a quick route back to the hotel the moment the hansom turned out of sight. Clear as his head felt, it still seemed to buzz and spin in a way that made him wonder whether his breakfast had been laced with liquor. What had he been thinking? When he explained to Mina how he had unwittingly guaranteed their presence at the ball for the sake of Penclosa’s dance, he could tell the same question was simmering behind her eyes. It was not a terrible thing, not even an inconvenient thing, but still. The decision had been made without her.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan got out once more. “It just seemed like something kind to give her in turn. For all this.” He gestured helplessly at himself, the clothes, the whole of the past two days. “None of us has yet brought up payment for the service she’s performing. Thus far, all of what she’s done has been in the frame of doing a kindness. A boon for us, for her friend’s husband. She’s asked for nothing in all this and given so much, and it seemed only right to—,”

“Jonathan.” Her hand was in his again. One squeezed the other. “It’s alright. I was more inclined to the ball than not, if I’m honest. Even if I wasn’t, it would be an unimaginable trial to spin a polite reason against it with all the effort she’s done for you alone, never mind the delivery of some fine dress-up for the two of us. Though you do bring up a good point. We cannot leave things standing as an act of charity from her.”

“Does the Professor have any idea of what a doctor might be charged under similar circumstances?” Jonathan tried to think. “Jack would have an estimate…”

So talk carried on as they prepared for the trip to the Wilsons. Van Helsing did have a fair guess as to what an ordinary psychologist might charge for their string of consultations. It was no small number, but it was doable. The Harkers made note of it, but all three in the party kept quiet on the topic until they were seated in Prof. Wilson’s library with the door shut. They’d scarcely gotten past the word ‘pay’ before Miss Penclosa cut them off.

“Would you expect me to take out my purse for saving me from Atherton’s attempted cudgeling? No? Then I refuse a penny for my work here. We are each of us responsible for rescuing one another’s heads, in a sense. It is natural recompense and I’ll not hear a word otherwise.” In a lower tone she added, “And if it comes into Bradford’s head that he should start charging fees for my skills and showings, I believe we may be responsible for an entirely new monster: a manager.” She spared a moment to bristle before shaking the entire topic off. “Now, let’s have no more talk of that. You’ve already given your good report to Bradford, yes? Then let’s begin upon our last session.”

Jonathan was not sure whether he should put up his hands in surrender as Miss Penclosa waved the crutch at him like an impatient shepherd shooing a stubborn ram. He sat in his place as Mina and Van Helsing took their positions, though Van Helsing moved a pace nearer.

“If I may be free to ask, might we not allow him to be in a conscious state to learn what you wish of him this instance? We have proved twice over that your mesmeric orders have been followed, all the time with him asleep and all unknowing. Especially if this is to be your last and strongest implanting of command, one to see him through nightmares to come, should he not learn what it is you intend?”

Penclosa grinned and nodded, “It is overdue that we stop playing charades on that front. Whether we all keep him in the dark or not, we will know whether this last effort works or not by whether he finds peaceful sleep after this without another session to bolster it.” She turned to Jonathan with her hands folded. Though she still smiled, there was a grave edge to her eyes. “What I mean to do today is not a guarantee. I have succeeded the few times I attempted it, but the emphasis is on ‘few.’ I do not try it often for the same reason a strongman will only dare to lift beyond his comfort. It is tricky. It requires the height of mental exertion. Even now, when I am rested and comparatively hale, the ability I mean to call on will be singularly taxing.”

Jonathan frowned across at her, beginning, “But you told me…”

“And I didn’t lie. The work of my mind does not hinder my body, only ever the reverse. But the mind can injure itself with overwork upon a harrowing problem. This is the case with my manner of setting a long term or ‘repeating’ command in a subject. It is for that reason I will not go to the theatric effort of my standing without the crutch. I know from experience that, whether I succeed in implanting the command or not, I will drop like a felled tree the moment I finish the work.”

“What?” The query startled out of all three parties in her audience, but Jonathan unstopped the rest of his words first. “Then we can’t do it. If this is so intense an act that it causes you injury—,”

Penclosa waved her hand again, “No, no injury. At least so long as I don’t perform while standing. But as I’m sitting, the only issue will be my slumping in a sort of faint. Perhaps a brief headache on waking, but no worse than the sting of hay fever. The strongman comparison was wrong of me. It is really more a matter of a practiced diver holding their breath and needing to rest upon surfacing. The commands I’ve given so far might be likened to holding it for one or two minutes. A long-term command is like going without air to the point of unconsciousness. Frankly, it is a laughably small price to pay should I succeed with you today. A few moments of me going out like a light versus months of wretched dreams and threadbare sleep. Seems an easy enough choice.”

“Indeed it does.” Jonathan sighed. “It shall have to be a prescription after all.” Penclosa’s face turned a shade paler.

“What?”

“I appreciate all that you’ve done and all you wish to do. But with due respect, you downplayed the toll that you knew would strike in our first session and did not mention the particulars of personal cost in your gift until after. I cannot in good conscience trust that you aren’t softening the potential risk for this last and far greater effort as well. I’ve no doubt it is done out of kindness, and thank you for what you’ve given thus far, but—,”

As he spoke, Jonathan had risen to his feet. From either of their respective corners, Mina and Van Helsing were making their approaches. He couldn’t read yet who the Professor was more concerned for, but he thought Mina’s gaze had some knotted filament of both worry and secret relief in it. Jonathan had taken one step in her direction before some impulse made him look down. His eyes locked onto Miss Penclosa’s as if magnetized. They seemed large as a cat’s.

“Sit down, Jonathan. Please.” Jonathan blinked and discovered he had sat himself back on the couch. “We have witnesses. We have Gloria and Bradford and a whole staff to shout for if something should go truly awry. You trust Professor Van Helsing’s judgment, don’t you? And Mina’s, surely?”

“Yes,” Jonathan answered almost before he could think the word. “Yes, of course.”

“Then surely you trust that they shall leap to my aid or yours if anything more arduous than what I described takes place. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, shall we begin?”

“Yes—,” his tongue twitched, “That is, only if everyone is sure on this course.”

“We will keep watch,” Van Helsing assured.

“We’re right here,” from Mina. Tone and face were just as assuring, but again Jonathan was sure he caught some stray wisp of displeasure; a reverse to the seeming respite that had flickered in her a moment before. “It’s fine, Jonathan. We’ll stop it the moment either of you seems in danger. Alright?”

Jonathan opened his mouth to answer.

“Jonathan.” He turned to look Miss Penclosa in her eyes again. Even seated, she seemed as if she were looking down. Her arms were raised. “Watch my eyes.”

Jonathan watched. The eyes became a lake once more…but even as he flew to it, as he braced for the sinking again, he found the image dissolved. In its place was a sputtering storm that raged between flickers of nightmare and a dulling void. An errant thought insisted this was the product of Penclosa’s stamping in her influence while his subconscious lashed back. It seemed to be proven true as the spurts of horror came less and less to him. Shriveling as the blank quiet held its place for longer and longer intervals. The last flash was the longest.

Count Dracula stood with his antique silver lamp in the titanic threshold of the castle. Jonathan stood without. Reflex made him reach for his luggage but he had brought nothing. The Count smiled out at him with laughter burning in the furnace of his eyes. More of mirth shined on the spires of his teeth.

“I bid you a bittersweet farewell from my house, Jonathan Harker. You go freely and of your own will. Enjoy it while you can.”

“I am not yours,” Jonathan pushed out past the clog of fear and hate. “Not anymore. Not even your specter lays claim on me. I ended you and now you are to be exorcised. Permanently.”

“Me? Jonathan, my dear friend, I am going nowhere. I am here in life and death and undeath forevermore.” The Count’s unoccupied hand gestured at the nebulous dark that was at once Castle Dracula, the Carpathians, the sentient gloom itself. “No, it is you who are leaving. Snatched away like a beloved treasure from my hand and into another’s. Shall you enjoy that scenic lake amid grand mountains? A trip to the stage? Such a wide range of make-believe awaits. Perhaps you will even be allowed to come up with your own scenes. Though I have my doubts.”

Jonathan wanted to be gone. Jonathan wanted to will the kukri into his hand and cleave the vampire in two. Jonathan wanted to wake up.

Instead, Jonathan caught himself thinking. It was a scarcely lucid thought, being in this state, but it squirmed to unhappy life regardless. The thought was twofold and terribly simple.

First, that he was not speaking with Dracula. Because of course he wasn’t. Dracula was elemental dust on a Transylvanian breeze and a rotted memory. The monster in front of him and all the auxiliary horrors that joined him were now, as ever, figments of his own mind. He was talking to himself. The cruelest, coldest, most fearful and fearsome part of him that had joined the echo of his sundry miseries with the loathing that would rise up in himself at odd hours.

Count Dracula would not have gotten so far in his bloodstained plans if he had not opened the door to him. In broad daylight, on paper, it was a flimsy fact. Mina was right—that he happened to be the solicitor tapped for the job was mere chance. The Count would have made it to England no matter who the pawn was. But that lessened nothing of the guilt. It was no surprise that variety often saw his nightmares dumping him into reach of the monster’s collateral.

He saw broken-necked babes drained dry as mummies cradled in the wolf-ravaged arms of a corpse mother. He swam in a sea of blood alongside sailors without faces and a haggard captain with prayers that went unanswered, a crucifix grasped in mincemeat hands. He laid down frozen in bed as he watched Lucy bow her neck out a window as a bat that was not a bat drank her away, the bed melting into a coffin in which they both lay boxed side by side, her eyes and smile still luminous in the dark as she asked if he’d like a drink from the weeping bundle tucked to her lips. He cradled Quincey in his arms, the man’s head bent back on his shoulder, the peaceful smile turned bitter as he said it was worth it to die for Mina, but it really should have been her husband, no?

He saw Mina.

God, God.

Mina.

All these phantoms and more. Sometimes they were there to watch Dracula and the Weird Sisters and Hell itself coil around him. Deserving witnesses watching justice done.

But now there was only Dracula himself. The last mask for the bile of his mind.

Which brought him to the second half of the thought.

Why did this hateful shape seem so happy to see him taken out of its reach?

“But I say too much. I would not wish to spoil your latest,” the Count’s grin doubled in size, trying not to laugh, “victory over my dire machinations. You are on your way to a softer domain than mine. Plush and perfumed and made with love.” The hand without the lamp pointed past Jonathan’s shoulder. “It is certainly a finer sight than my abode.”

With the helplessness of a dream, Jonathan turned to look. A house towered there with proportions to rival Castle Dracula. It stood against a backdrop of lush acreage with a horizon that suggested the spine of a mountain range. The house was a colossus of charming mint and foaming white fretwork that gave an impression almost of being a confection. It stood in a daylight that abutted the Count’s endless night. As he watched, the front door opened. Waiting. He went rigid with cold as a long white hand slid over his shoulder. The Count’s voice crawled in his ear.

“Not an hour shall you wait in my house against your will, though sad I am at your going.”

Without knowing why, Jonathan felt his tongue unfasten against his will.

“I was to be given to the wolves, and at my own instigation.”

But there were no wolves. None howled, none surged. Even the Count’s hand had disappeared. And the open door beckoned. It seemed to tug at him.

Jonathan marched out of the dark, into the light, up the steps. Yet his foot hesitated on the threshold. Up so close, he could see the great home’s interior was wholly black. A dim, dizzying, almost buzzing abyss. There was not even sunlight from the innumerable open windows to illuminate it.

Only two points of light hovered in the dark. Silver-green coins.

They stared.

They pulled.

Jonathan lurched a half-step over the threshold, almost falling, and grasped at the doorframe. In the stumble, he looked over his shoulder. All of the daylight had doused into night. A blackness unbroken but for the small glow of Dracula’s lamp and the brighter scarlet drops of his eyes. They were still giddy. But it was a glee that seemed tinged with something grimmer. Something he couldn’t quite—

He is you and you sense you think you feel you know that you shouldn’t…

—place.

The sharp teeth flashed in a last leer as the Count intoned, “My door is always open for you, my friend. The only issue is whether or not you can find your way back.”

Within the ruddy circle of light, the vampire lifted his hand to his lips and blew a parting kiss. Then the light went out.

“Jonathan,” a soft voice. It belonged to the owner of the house. It wanted him to, “Come inside. Nothing will hurt you here. I promise.” He turned back to face the door and almost jumped to see the silver-green lights had grown closer. No, that wasn’t right. Not closer.

Bigger.

There were no walls or windows or doors inside the house. Only that dreaming black space and the eyes of a giant. The irises burned and the pupils yawned and they were not eyes at all but mouths and they wanted him to step inside to swallow him whole—

“Jonathan. Come in. Now.”

Jonathan felt himself grasped by an unseen force and thrust through the door. There was a feeling of unwelcome weightlessness. He touched nothing with hand or foot even as he was handled through the blinding dark up to the nightmare of the eyes. For it was a nightmare and he feared and he flailed and he clawed at nothing but nothing. The eyes watched and grew and shined all the while. It was not until he twisted around to see if he could make out the door, not until it occurred to him that the door no longer existed, that he cried out.

In the same instant, the void and the eyes in it were gone. He was sitting on a couch. Velvet. He wore a silk robe. Spring looked in the bright windows at him and a tea service sat waiting on a table of elaborate reliefs and foliate flourishes. He held an open book bound in leather and studded with glass gems. There was an impression that he read it, though the contents were a mystery to him in the present, just as it would be on waking. All he knew was that he enjoyed it. That all was well.

At least until he came back to himself on the couch in the library. The moment he awoke, he was greeted by the sight of Helen Penclosa flopped back in her chair.

Her eyes were rolled up to the whites.

JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

31 April— Tonight begins the final test. The longest! My guarantee is that Dracula and all the miasma of horror his ghost has brought in nightmares will be banished from now on. So Miss Penclosa has claimed. God, the scare of that instant.

I returned from my trance in time to see Van Helsing rushing to her side as Mina came to mine. I’d not find out until the dire moment died down that I had been at my worst in terms of reaction on this last session. I had murmured as if in slurred conversation with someone. The only clear words any heard were the ones I repeated in some anxious echo:

“Given to the wolves. Given to the wolves. Given to the wolves.”

Not long after I seemed to suffer some minor fit on the couch. Mina says I even opened my eyes, but saw nothing of the room. She says my gaze rolled wildly and my breath came in the frantic gusts of the hysteric on the edge of full panic. I have my suspicions as to the vision that spurred it. I implied it was the last dregs of my usual frightful phantasms. Miss Penclosa passed me a tired but smiling look as I did; I suspect she knows it was the product of her own method that so rattled me before she had me tucked into that protected and welcome space. The haven home which she’d no doubt still been willing into me while I tumbled in that unfinished void.

But all this is secondary. Miss Penclosa only just skirted the edge of truth in describing how this larger scale of her talent would affect her. If it were not for the thin rasp of her breath and the sweat on her brow, she might have been dead where she sat. It was as Van Helsing was checking her pulse and turning to Mina to call in the staff that our mesmerist shuddered back to herself. She did so with a trembling gasp, the way a body does after being deprived of air too long. Her face was horribly waxen even while conscious. Even her eyes seemed newly awful in the fatigue-shadowed sockets, like glass shining in dark holes.

“It is nothing,” she insisted to the Professor. “Certainly no worse than past experiences. Believe it or not, that was the least exerting time I’ve ever had of it.”

“I choose not to believe you, Miss Helen Penclosa,” Van Helsing said. It was almost a huff. “This was no faint. You were as a body concussed! Your pulse is too quick, too thin!”

“Time and a tumbler will see to that easily enough,” she insisted back. “It is really not half so bad as it looks, I assure you.” She’d turned a grin of groggy delight on myself and Mina. “And I shall feel all the better if, by the time we meet again at the ball—that is, a period of two nights and three days, over which there shall be no trances—you will report at least an early glimpse of success. At the risk of hubris, I will wager that this trance has done the trick. You’ll not be troubled by another nightmare.”

I would like her to be right. More, I would like to stop worrying Mina so. She confessed that once again she felt a terrible temptation to pounce on Miss Penclosa for seeming to tip my mind over into a horror of her own making. Though she is at least partially correct in this instance, it can only have been a collateral effect of Miss Penclosa constructing the haven I found myself in at the end. I shall tell her all in time. Ideally once we are gone from here and the insulation of our holiday has padded memory out between now and home. I’d tell her now, but I see too much of suspicion and admonition in her when Miss Penclosa comes up.

“I am ashamed of it,” she told me, “but for all her goodwill and good work, I continue to catch myself being unsettled by her. Even angry. Which is ridiculous, isn’t it? I know it is. Would I be so angry at a doctor for having to needle you or I with a syringe?” She laughed, but the smile did not touch her eyes. “But it seems so strange and unpleasant a method in her hands. A mesmerism that is not wholly mesmerism, but looks like…”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Invasion. Intrusion. A fight you lose each time. I know, I know, it is merely a subconscious reaction, but it makes the sight of it no easier.”

“You’ll never have to see it again,” I said, trying for cheer. And it is true. Successful or not, Miss Penclosa has given her word that today’s session was to be our last. If she cannot fix me now, she never will. But Mina only shook her head.

“The trances have made me nauseous to witness. But they aren’t the only thing that troubles me about her.”

“Then what does?”

“I don’t know. Which is troubling in itself, isn’t it? Paranoia is catching, it seems. In my case, far too early for the sensation I recognize.”

“Mina, what do you mean?”

She looked at me with eyes that brimmed with apology and wretchedness and deepest, tenderest care. Her next words were nearly a whisper.

“I mean I feel the same apprehension that seized me last summer. When the Demeter came in to Whitby.”

That staggered me for a good while. An hour passed in which we clung together and spoke in voices so small that walls made of tissue could not have let an eavesdropper overhear. We lobbed comfort back and forth, questions too, and ultimately circled back around to how we both still carried the brand of Dracula’s plotting. Though I was quick to point out both her sensibility compared to my sleeping reaction in tandem with the assurance that the wisely fretting corner of her would be proven wrong in just over a week’s time. Of course it is natural to be wary of a stranger who so suddenly takes an interest in us—

“In you,” Mina insisted.

—to the point of foisting gifts and abrupt familiarity all at once. Doubly so for the fact that, yes, the woman’s whole purpose has been to jostle things around in my brain to stop it from biting itself in sleep. It is invasion, it is intrusion, it is manipulation of the deepest order. A kind of influence that Mina knows all too well and hates to see thrust upon me. Yet it is already all but over. A fact that heartens her somewhat and yet serves to make her feel absurd and boorish for discomfort. Which would not do.

“If that’s the right way for you to feel, then what does that say about me?”

Yes, it’s an old trap, but a good one. She has used it on me more than once. Our respective foibles are often mirrors and we cannot cut at ourselves without also cutting the other.

I can hear the Professor knocking. Time to go.

To keep reading, go here:

Next: Penclosa Chapter 5

Previous: Penclosa Chapter 3

Beginning: Penclosa Chapter 1

Lyksander

Jan 19

Hello! Could there be a link at the end of chapters directing to the Next chapter? Substack doesn't automatically show if there's a new one and you have to click back and look yourself otherwise and most ppl won't! (for example below me I only see old Harker chapters)

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