Incarnation (3 page)

Little else was clear until I stumbled on a bathroom with its large, claw-footed tub at the center of its white-tiled floor. Turning a brass knob, I discovered that the water still flowed, though the pipes shuddered and sputtered when I turned it on. I think initially I had some notion of ending my agony
by drowning myself. I may even have tried. Of course, there was no point. A heart that no longer beats cannot be stilled. I spent the remainder of the night in that tub, draining and refilling it until at last the filth of the grave and all that had followed was washed from me.

When I rose again, it was almost dawn. In the pale light, I discovered that despite everything that had happened and all I had done, my skin was unmarred by a single scratch or bruise. My body possessed a remarkable ability to heal itself. It remained to be seen if my mind could do the same.

I lived in the house for several months, leaving it only to hunt. The remainder of the time I strove to learn all I could about the life that had been mine. Nor was I alone. Memories of my parents and most especially of my sister, Amanda, clustered round me. In the airy music room where we had often sat after dinner, I discovered that I could play the piano passably well and the harp somewhat. Among dozens of well-thumbed musical scores, my favorites were Chopin’s haunting nocturnes so evocative of moonlit landscapes. But I also returned again and again to Debussy’s more daring harmonies. Music, it seemed, had been and still was important to me. Yet it could not engage me exclusively.

The library held many books; I devoured them. But the book that fascinated me the most was the diary I found in Lucy’s—my—old bedroom. In it, I had recounted the small triumphs and disappointments in the life that had been mine. That lost self showed herself to be of a generally sunny disposition, optimistic, and resilient. But I had also nurtured a yearning for adventure and a conviction that the world held far more than I had yet discovered. The life planned out for me—marriage to a proper young man, children, the fulfillment
of my role in society—elicited expressions of impatience and even, I must say, of fear.

Is that all there is?
I had written.
Does life hold nothing more? People say we are at the beginning of a brilliant new age, yet I seem to have no part in it.

And finally, just days before the end—

I went up to the old nursery today. The puppets I used to play with are all still there behind the little stage. They look so dusty and forlorn. How tempted I was to snip their strings.

I
n addition to my other pursuits, I resumed the habit of wearing clothes. The armoire was filled with them, but there were more in an adjacent dressing room. I spent hours trying on garment after garment—chemises, camisoles, drawers, corsets, skirts, shirtwaists, dresses in modest pastels or whites, gowns equally virginal, riding habits, boots, belts, bonnets, and on and on. But I never ventured near a mirror; something about them repelled me. In the process, I discovered that I had grown more slender and, oddly, a few inches taller, as though the experience of dragging myself from the grave had stretched my bones. My hair, once I had completed the laborious process of untangling it, proved to be auburn and possessed of a natural curl. I took to wearing it tied back by a simple velvet ribbon so that it did not get in my way as I read. Or hunted.

Throughout this time, the dark figure of the opera house and my tormented dreams in the cave did not return. Yet his presence hovered in my mind, leaving me oddly unsettled, as though there was somewhere else I needed to be, something else I should be doing.

Occasionally, I saw a carriage or wagon pass by on the road
beyond the end of the drive, but no one approached the house. Once, during a fierce storm, shutters in the back parlor banged open and water flooded in.

Had I not been there to close them hastily and mop up the damage, the floor would have been ruined. More and more, the house had the air of having been abandoned suddenly.

That troubled me, but I was undecided what to do about it until one day, exploring beyond the rooms where I had become comfortable, I found what was clearly a man’s study. The shutters were still drawn, the chamber cast in gloom. A faint scent of cigar smoke, discernible only to my greatly heightened senses, lingered over a desk of burled wood and leather. On that desk, tossed as though in anger or despair, I found a bundle of typescript pages. The first page bore a title and the author’s name:
Dracula: A Novel by Bram Stoker
. I settled in a nearby chair and began to read.

At first, I thought it no more than a tale of adventure. But to my dismay, I quickly discovered that it was something else entirely. Shockingly, Mr. Stoker’s tale of hapless Lucy Westenra, as he dubbed her, and the creature he called a “vampire” turned out to be a sensationalized, cheapened version of what had befallen me. That this could be so astounded me. How had the author come by such information? Why had he twisted and perverted it as he had done? And why had I found the evidence of his fabrication on my father’s desk?

By morning, I had absorbed all that the book had to tell me as well as all that it could not. When I stood at last, I knew where I had to go. And what I had to do.

CHAPTER 1

T
he London fog carried the sharp bite of sulfur from the coal dust that shrouded the city. Spectral fingers drifted along the Strand, winding around the hackneys and private carriages waiting for the theatres to let out. The yellow glow of the new sodium lights reflected in the black puddles left by a storm that had passed over a few hours before. It had brought not the freshening scents of the countryside, as Dickens remarked, but the foul, stale, wretched addition to the gutters that was a London rain.

Stepping carefully, I moved in the direction of a cobblestone alley near the corner where the Strand meets Wellington Street. A young whore with hennaed hair and rosy tits peeking above a soiled lace bodice occupied the spot and clearly meant to keep it. Her first reaction was to sneer at my modest appearance. I could not blame her. My hair was piled high on my head in a loose bun. I wore a simple shirtwaist beneath a fitted jacket, with a matching pleated skirt that brushed the tops of my boots. A wide belt, clenched around my narrow waist, held my purse. The style had been popularized by the American artist Charles Dana Gibson, who saw it as the personification
of the ideal woman—bright, pretty, and capable. Once it had suited me well. Now it was merely a disguise.

The whore opened her carmine-painted mouth to warn me off, only to freeze when my eyes met hers. The monster I had become stirred within. The whore turned ashen and darted away into the night.

I sagged a little in relief when she was gone but I did not let down my guard. Surrounded by the hot, coppery fragrance of pulsing blood, the warmth of living flesh, the beating of collective hearts, the effort needed to restrain myself was almost more than I could muster. Hunger gnawed at me. Had a rat appeared just then, I would have swallowed my revulsion and drained it in an instant. But London rats are wilier than the country prey that had sustained me thus far, wilier even in some regard than the humans with which they must contend. Nothing stirred in the alley.

I drew back into the shadows, but kept my gaze on the Lyceum Theatre across the street. Its columned façade gave the appearance of an ancient Greek temple. The play advertised on placards out in front was one I had seen with my family the previous year during our visit to Paris. That seemed a lifetime ago—the life I had known having effectively ended on the windswept moors near Whitby when I fell under the spell of the seductive being who had so transformed me.

Thinking of him, I was startled by the arrival of the black-uniformed Watchers gliding along on their upright Teslaways, their faces invisible behind the visors of their helmets. A few years before, such vehicles would have been restricted to the pages of novels by H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and the like. But the luring to England of the brilliant scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla had brought about a technological revolution,
the implications of which were only just beginning to be felt. At the same time, fear of anarchists and others deemed “subversives” had prompted broad new laws that gave the authorities unparalleled powers over ordinary citizens. Not everyone was entirely happy with the results. My father, for instance, had worried that civil liberties were being undermined by the government’s ever-expanding ability to observe and control its citizens.

As the guardians of the public safety took up position outside the theatre, the ushers threw open the doors and light poured into the street. First out were the upper-class patrons of the private boxes and the dress circle, the gentlemen in their evening dress or military uniforms and the ladies in their gowns and jewels. When they had been taken up into their carriages, the decent professional men and their wives who occupied the stalls were let out through one door, while the rowdy students, tradesmen, and foreigners from the balconies were made to wait before exiting through another.

All along the Strand, theatregoers were departing. Hundreds thronged the road under the gaze of the Watchers, calling farewell to friends, hailing cabs, exclaiming over the evening’s entertainment or complaining of it. All was ordered and proper until a tall, somber-looking man suddenly cried out in alarm and slapped a hand to the pocket that moments before had held his wallet. A Watcher took note, spied the fleet-footed thief, and promptly pursued him. Weaving his scooter in and out of the crowd, he quickly overtook the miscreant, rendering him insensible with an electrical cudgel.

Other Watchers arrived on the scene and the boy was tossed into the back of a police van. His case would be heard in one of the summary judgment courts set up to deal with
matters of civil disorder. Within hours, he would be tried, sentenced, and committed to serve his term without the possibility of appeal.

The streets of London were safer than they had ever been, but the prisons were fuller. There was talk that more such institutions needed to be built quickly.

The brief flare of excitement faded away as the streets cleared. In my mind, I went over my plan once again. I would approach the Lyceum Theatre, enter through the back, and seek out the author of the deceitful version of my life. I would not kill him; on that I was determined. But I would compel him to tell me why he used me as he had.

A clutch of young men hovered at the stage door, praising the attributes of the female lead, a certain Belgian actress who was linked romantically to the Crown Prince. When the cast finally emerged, the lady smiling in sables and diamonds, a cheer went up. Invitations were offered, accepted, or declined. Finally, the last of the stragglers departed.

Still, I waited. The lights in the theatre dimmed. The ushers let themselves out, offered muted good nights to one another, and vanished into the darkness between the pale pools of the sodium lights. The stagehands followed. Quiet, in startling contrast to the recent clamor, descended. The life of the city had moved on into the nearby streets crowded with restaurants and pubs, far enough away for my purposes.

The time had finally come. I stepped forward, only to stop suddenly when a flicker of movement near the theatre caught my eye. Was my quarry departing already? Was I in danger of missing him? But no, the shape I glimpsed between wisps of fog did not resemble the man identified as Mr. Bram Stoker, whose sketch in
The Illustrated London News
I had studied with such
care. Instead, the figure appeared strangely garbed in a long robe such as a monk might wear. A hood concealed the head and face. Even as I puzzled over this, another identical figure appeared, followed by a third. Together, they took up position in front of the theatre.

I am not given to flights of fancy, but just as the whore had sensed danger when she looked at me, I knew that the hooded trio was a threat. They had the shape of men, but they moved with the lumbering heaviness of beasts, and even when they stepped into the light, darkness concealed their faces.

Although I had been in London only a short time, I had sensed the presence of beings that were other than human. But I had no wish to discover anything about them or, indeed, to allow any distraction from the dual forces that drove me. I was torn between the compulsion laid upon me by the singer in the opera house, so powerful that it had drawn me from the grave, and by my own yearning for the half-remembered human life that I had known. Both compelled me to find the one who had transformed me and demand from him both an explanation for his actions and a means of undoing them.