release her from his mind, imagining that it is the girl herself who comes to him in his dreams and makes love to him. I proposed that nocturnal emission was a common experience for the male, but he insists that his experience is different. ‘It is not an ordinary dream, doctor,’ he says. ‘It is as if she is possessing me.’ He believes that he acted immorally by succumbing to the women, but he admits that at times, he has had to restrain himself from returning to Styria to look for them. Over this, he feels tremendous guilt.”
Von Helsinger paused, breathing laboriously. I heard him shuffling papers and striking a match, presumably to reignite his pipe. My mind raced. How was I to compete with these seductresses of unearthly beauty and sexual prowess? I, who had kept myself pure so that I might marry a respectable man and, in turn, have his respect? Oh, the irony of having lost that man to degenerate women.
After a few little sucking noises and a deep exhalation, the doctor continued. “I had originally believed that Harker’s sexual naivete caused him to attribute supernatural elements to an orgiastic encounter. However, what he subsequently revealed leads me to ruminate on a different and more dramatic conclusion. He claims that at the height of ecstasy, which he described as a dark place where pleasure and pain cannot be distinguished, the women took turns breaking his flesh with their nails and teeth and extracting blood.
“I ask myself, is it possible that young Harker was in fact seduced by she demons? Without the factor of the blood taking, it would be presumed that the women were mere harlots, who can also drain the vital forces from a man and leave him in the confused and fevered state Harker describes. But if the blood taking is interpreted literally and not as a hallucination, it is possible that these were vampire women, the unnatural creatures of myth who achieve extended or eternal life by drinking the blood of others.
“I have long heard tales of bloodsucking female creatures and of the incubi who harbor them, in this case, the Austrian count. One of the symptoms of having being bitten by them is the craving it creates for reoccurrence, such as Harker describes. The brilliant minds of the ancient world wrote of these blood drinkers, trying to grapple with their powers. Men like Aristotle and Apuleius, and the historians Diodorus Siculus and Pausanias, wrote of their magic and mystery and the horror they wreaked upon mankind by the seduction of the innocent. They have gone by many names: lamia, witch, demon, succubus or incubus, sorcerer or sorceress. Lilith, the first wife of Adam, was one such fiend. Some believe that these creatures are descended from those who mated with the gods and Titans, creating a terrible hybrid that is neither human nor divine. Some say there exist those who were born mortal and made themselves immortal by taking the blood and vitality of other humans. These are the so-called undead.
“The writer who visits John Seward is full of such tales from the darker regions of Moldavia, Walachia, and the Kingdom of Hungary, places I have never been. He presents a good case for their existence. ‘There can be no great smoke arise be there no fire, Dr. Von Helsinger,’ he says. He is intrigued by my experiments with blood and in blood’s mysterious powers as research for some horrific work of fiction he has in mind. I introduced him to Goethe’s poem “The Bride of Corinth,” about a female vampire, and to the “Vampirismus” of Hoffmann, for which he was most grateful. He has also gathered stories about the vampire from a compendium of medieval sources and folktales: the vampire lives on the blood of others, which he takes by night; he must sleep in a coffin filled with his native soil; he is active from dusk to just before dawn but sleeps during daylight hours; he is repelled by garlic and Christian symbols such as the Host, holy water, and the cross; he can be killed by a silver bullet or by a stake through the heart and decapitation; and he is able to assume the shape of certain animals with which his species identifies, such as wolves and bats. Fanciful and horrific stuff, most of which I have heard from folktales. But I have found that in researching the metaphysical, it is important to rekindle that part of the brain’s imagination that one left behind in the nursery.
“Is it possible that these fiends or their hybrids, who have fascinated and occupied minds greater than mine, have always existed-biological misfits who have no link on Darwin’s evolutionary chain? If so, I am curious to see if the males and females share the engendered traits in their human counterparts. If Harker was not hallucinating, and he was indeed seduced by supernatural women, whose behavior mirrors wanton human females, then the aforementioned hypothesis is correct.
“In conclusion, when I first began with Harker, I did not dream that his infirmity would reveal the exchange of blood as its possible source. What luck! Thus my lifelong devotion to delineating the essential elements and mysteries of blood is validated once more. One thing is certain: the blood is the life. Its qualities hold the secrets of life and death, of mortality and immortality. Did the ancients not offer human blood to the gods? Did they possess the knowledge that human blood somehow enhanced divine powers? It seems a contradiction, yes. But science is full of paradoxes.
“As for Harker, he is a male and strong, and the loss of blood seems to have been minimal. He does not require a transfusion. With time, he will fully recover. However, he is impotent with regard to his wife. I prescribed a series of visits to a brothel. As a customer paying for the services, he will be restored to the natural position of power over the female and his potency will return.”
The phonograph stopped playing, and Von Helsinger’s rough voice gave way to the ghostly moans of the institution wafting into the room. I put down the pen, letting the blood flow back into my hand after my furious scribbling, but Von Helsinger’s words hit me like blows to the body. I had stopped breathing and now took a deep intake of air, hoping it would clear my head. What was this man doing advising his already adulterous patient to go to prostitutes? I could not decide what was more insane-that remedy for his ailment or the idea that he had been attacked by supernatural creatures, an idea encouraged by that redheaded menace who had stumbled into my life in Whitby. And even more baffling, Jonathan seemed to be living out the same erotic, blood-drinking experience that I had in my dream. Why were both of us being haunted?
I bent over, resting my head on my knees, hoping that I would not black out. Suddenly, I heard the door creak open, sending a fresh shiver up my spine. I looked up. Mrs. Snead was looking at me suspiciously. I sat up, blood rushing to my head. It took me a moment to speak. “Oh, I must have dozed off,” I said.
Her strange, sideways glance was blank. She cast her eyes downward at the notes in my journal. “Are you done here, madam?” she asked. “I cannot leave my duty unless I lock up behind you.”
The second cylinder sat untouched on the shelf. “Would it inconvenience you terribly if I stayed another thirty minutes?” I asked.
She agreed to return later and begrudgingly left the room, closing the door behind her. I waited for several interminable minutes before gathering the courage to reach for the cylinder. I slowly substituted it for the other, trying not to make one incriminating sound. I started the machine and reached for my pen. Von Helsinger cleared his throat and began speaking.
“We must remain skeptical of Harker’s claims while entertaining the possibility that they are true, at least to a degree. The reality that he encountered vampire women is remote, but he might have fallen into a coven of self- proclaimed witches who take men’s blood to use in magical spells. It would behoove me as a metaphysician and a man of science to travel to Styria and investigate the matter. Perhaps I shall do so in the spring. It would be interesting to see how the harpies, whether mortal or not, would react to a transfusion of male blood, if I could find a way to do such a thing. Perhaps young Harker might help with this. At the very least, I would like to procure samples of their blood to study.
“In the meanwhile, I am committed to remain God’s warrior on a crusade to obliterate the evil brought upon the female by the sin of Eve. God created woman to be pure and naive, but the sinners Lilith and Eve were not satisfied with His will and tainted their sex. If God had wanted woman to have knowledge, would He have forbidden her to pick from the tree? Yet today’s woman would transform Europe into the new Gomorrah with her demands to turn nature upside down.
“I admire the work of Sir Francis Galton, but I do not believe that his theory of eugenics will have any impact. We will never be able to prevent the inferior classes from breeding. More realistic is to create a female that is a better breeding machine able to produce superior progeny. Once the transfusions are perfected, the female recipient will genetically assimilate the higher traits of the male-strength, courage, moral rectitude, rational thinking, even superior physical strength and health-and will thereby bring a healthier biological profile to the mating process. I believe that in the future, we will not only improve the quality of the female through the transference of superior male blood but also may create an uberbeing, or even an immortal being-not the fiends of Harker’s description but a noble, godlike creature.
“The transfusions must be perfected! Why some patients react to the transfused blood with high fever and shock I do not know. The young wife of Lord Godalming, a woman even more duplicitous than most, may have had blood that was inordinately female, which reacted badly to its opposite, that of strong and virile males. In the
