Godfrey looked at me. “The real question is, who is this woman?”
“Me?” I put my hand to my chest. What did I have to do with anything?
“She is our apprentice,” Kate said.
“I suspect she is more than that,” Madam Gummler said. “I think she must be a sorcerer’s apprentice.” She held the photograph out to me. “Do you know this person?”
I looked at the image of myself sitting in the chair looking placid, uninterested, and a little bit afraid. Behind me, however, stood a man in elegant evening clothes. He wore a tall hat and a cape and carried a walking stick, which he held beneath the knob, exposing the golden dragon’s head atop it. Unlike the picture of the swaddled babe in the first photograph, his body was not a swirling and indistinguishable mass of ghostly light but nearly as fully formed as my own. His deep-set, haunted eyes stared directly at me. Long hair flowed about his shoulders. I did not have time to scrutinize the image because I recognized him instantly. As soon as I did, the icy feeling again crawled up my spine, all the way through my head and into my eyes. Blackness welled up, obscuring my vision, and I felt my body go weak. Before I could break my fall, I hit the floor and lost consciousness.
When I came to, Kate was insisting that Madam Gummler call a physician, whereas Jacob was insisting that they take me away from the place as soon as possible. I sided with Jacob, who went outside and found us a hansom cab. Madam Gummler handed me the photograph of-what could I call him?-the spirit of my mysterious savior-but her husband wanted to keep it to study.
“It belongs to us,” Kate said, grabbing it from them. I suppose she wanted to have it as evidence. I did not argue with her, nor did the Gummlers, and with photographs in hand, we left their parlor. On the way home, Jacob asked what had caused me to faint so suddenly, and I made an excuse that I had been feeling ill all day and probably should not have attended such a sensational event.
“Clearly, they tamper with every negative plate. I’ll wager that fifty women in England are in possession of a photograph with that handsome ghost standing behind them.” Kate turned to Jacob. “I wish you had waited to disclose our identities. They would have spun a fabulous tale about Mina’s ghost that we might have used in our story.”
“I was bored,” he answered. “We knew they were frauds, and we exposed them as such. Not exactly a challenge. Besides, why should some bereaved mother not believe that her child is hovering about in heaven?”
Kate had initiated the investigation into the Gummlers, and I could see that she was taking Jacob’s lack of enthusiasm as a personal attack. Fortunately, this took the emphasis off what had happened to me, and all the way home, they argued over the merits of publishing the article.
I left the photograph in their possession. I was terrified of certainty; if I never looked at it again, I would not have to confirm what I saw. I would be able to tell myself that the ghostly image was a photographer’s trick. As Jonathan had explained, it was a manifestation of my fears. In time, I would realize that my mind, upset by recent events, had attributed the features of my savior to this figure, and I could eventually put the incident to rest. Once safely married to Jonathan, these strange occurrences would dissipate into thin air. I would be so busy keeping our house and preparing to start our family that I would not have time for mysterious forays into the unknown. Just as enrollment in Miss Hadley’s school had made my early experiences with the supernatural disappear, so marriage to Jonathan would force normalcy upon me and once again obliterate these inexplicable elements.
But that very night, something happened in my dream that I could not put off to a rational explanation, an experience thrust upon me on some astral plane where I was not in control but subject to the specters that prowl the ethers. In this dream-though it felt more vivid than an ordinary dream-a man was on top of me and inside me, and I wanted him to be there. I held him in place, digging my fingernails deep into his back, clutching him to me, urging him to move deeper and deeper into me. Wicked and desperate, my desire was unbounded. I was frantically reaching for something, but what it was I did not know. My lust was like a ladder that must be climbed one rung at a time, but I could never reach the top.
I woke in the middle of this experience, body quivering, drenched in my own sweat, and still frantic to reach the unknown destination to which only the lover could deliver me. I was alone in the room, but the presence was still deep inside me, filling that dark cavity. I lay quietly for a long time, taking in my surroundings and reassuring myself with the familiar details of the room-the little chest of drawers, the single straight-backed chair, the washstand with a bowl and pitcher on top and the small wood-framed oval mirror above it. I named the furnishings out loud, hoping that the addressed items would somehow acknowledge me too and let me know that I was indeed in my room and not still dreaming. But was I? I was alone and yet I could still feel the man, or some presence, inside me.
The naming did not make the sensation go away. I had never touched myself in that place, so I did not know what it should feel like inside. I slid my nightdress up and my hand down. Cautiously, as if I were touching someone other than myself, I let my fingers slide past my navel; down my stomach; through the hair; and to the moist, hidden part of me. What a mystery it was, this part of my body, more secretive than a heart or lung, for I had seen pictures of those organs. I heard a noise outside my door and retracted my hand, but soon realized it was only the wind coming through the hall and rattling the doors. I wanted to go back to sleep again and forget all this, but I could not ignore the full feeling inside me. Something was literally filling me up. Had some ghost come in the night and violated me? If so, I had been his desperate and willing victim. I reached again between my legs, spreading them wider. Using my middle finger, I located the small entrance, and carefully slid my finger inside. It felt like nothing I had ever felt before, soft and smooth, and empty and full at the same time, a moist cushion of a cave. Something inside me contracted around my finger, resurrecting the familiar throb of my dream. Where had my lover come from, and where had he gone? I felt nothing but the wet, creamy, hot walls of my own body. Something made me want to linger and to explore, but the more I enjoyed the sensations, the more I knew that I should stop the journey along this dark path. I retracted my finger slowly and brought it into the cool, night air, and it carried with it the heavy, salty scent of the inside of that secretive grotto. Once I pulled my finger out, the full feeling subsided, as if no one had ever been inside me.
The next morning, I received a letter from Lucy Westenra, my dearest friend from school days, who was on summer holiday with her mother at the seaside resort of Whitby. “I am lonely for a female companion with whom to share the contents of my heart and mind, not to mention some interesting news on a subject dear to us both,” she wrote, enclosing a train ticket. Lucy knew that Jonathan was away and that Miss Hadley’s closed every August. The students and staff went to their families, and Headmistress traveled to see her sister in Derbyshire, so that I, with no relatives to visit, would spend a solitary month reading books, walking about London, and supervising the maintenance of the school property. I went through the daily mechanics of living, but with the abject loneliness of one who has no familial destination such as one was supposed to have in the summertime.
I had not received a letter from Jonathan in the weeks that he had been away, which also set my nerves on edge. Was he safe? Was he thinking about me? I attributed the lack of correspondence to the inefficiency of the post, so I sent him a letter with Lucy’s address in Whitby, asking him to write to me there.
In truth, I was anxious to have this interval with Lucy who, unlike Kate, would delight in the details of my impending wedding plans. Lucy had an ardent admirer in Arthur Holmwood, the future Lord Godalming, whom I had yet to meet. If Lucy had news to share, it must be that Arthur had asked the question he had been wanting to pose to her, and that she, who never seemed to be in love with him but had accepted that it was her fate to marry a member of the peerage, had answered in the affirmative. Lucy would not trouble me with Kate’s questioning of what the trajectory of female life should, or could, be in some utopian world that would never exist. It would be a relief to spend time in Lucy’s exuberant company, where we might share excitement about our destinies as brides.
Part Two
WHITBY, ON THE YORKSHIRE COAST
