“I have never taken if off,” I said.
His finger snaked its way down my body to graze the wine-stained birthmark on my thigh. “But what is this?”
“It has always been there,” I said.
“It has wings, like a butterfly,” he said, tracing its outline. His trembling finger scoped the entire perimeter and then slid across my thigh. He put his hand over my sex and caressed it very gently, stirring me inside. He closed his eyes and slipped a finger into me. I felt him shiver. “Warm, so warm,” he said. “Living flesh.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “You have no idea what to do, do you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. I assumed that my husband should kiss me and touch me. That his lips would linger on my neck and other tender places, and that he would put an erect organ inside me. I expected it to hurt. Was I supposed to be more knowledgeable than that?
“Nothing, dear Mina. You are innocent. Thank God you are innocent.” He gave me a weird little grin, and then he lay on top of me. He pulled up his nightshirt so that our skin connected and he kissed me again, slower and deeper and with less urgency than before. I started to melt into his kisses, pressing against his long, muscled frame, and spreading my legs. He took his hard penis in his hand and rubbed it against my opening a few times before slowly sliding it in. Unlike his finger, his organ felt as if it were scorching my flesh. I cried out, but he did not stop.
“Does it hurt, Mina?” he asked. “Tell me the truth.”
“Yes, yes, it hurts,” I said.
“If you are the right sort of woman, it is supposed to hurt,” he said. “I’m sorry. I hate that I have to hurt you, but it makes me love you even more.”
“I’m going to do it now, Mina,” he whispered into my ear. “Try to relax.” He thrust himself deeper into me, making the pain worse, so much that I thought we were doing something wrong. I found myself appalled at having to endure it. I pushed him away from me.
“Don’t push me away. Prove that you love me. I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to, at least at first,” he said. He looked more desperate than aroused, his sorrow at causing me pain obliterating any excitement on his face. “The pain is a blessing, you’ll see. You have to get past the pain so that we can have our babies. And we must have them. We must create life to counter all the death around us.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant, but with his desperation, I did not think I would get a lucid answer. I took a deep breath and tried to let my body go limp. “Good, Mina. Do not resist me.” He started moving again, and I could feel him get longer and harder inside me. He lifted himself slightly to one side and looked down so that he could watch the thing go in and out of me, as if he had to see it to guide it. He slowed for a few merciful moments, sliding it in and out with great care and fascination.
Suddenly, it began to feel different, better, less hurtful, and almost like pleasure. I stopped panting and let my thighs relax, allowing him deeper access into me. I recognized the same pleasure I had experienced in my dreams, and I caught a glimpse of what lovemaking could be between us after I grew accustomed to having him inside me. But soon, he started moving faster again, and the pain returned. Then he cried out with a force that would have indicated that he was in greater pain than I. With one great propelling thrust, he finished, and I realized that it was over. He let out a deep sigh, buried his face in my hair that was strewn across the pillow.
He rolled off me and onto his back. He would not look at me. He stared up at the canopy. I could see his face because we had not turned out the lamps. I pulled my nightdress down around me.
“Am I so inadequate compared to your previous experiences?” I asked. I was angry and humiliated but still afraid that I had spoken a truth and that he would confirm it.
“Dear God, no. Is that what you think? No, Mina, it is something far more sinister.” His brows twitched and then tightened in an anguished grimace. “We went to Lucy’s crypt.” He closed his eyes again. “Godalming did not believe that Lucy was dead.”
My stomach turned, and I thought I was going to be sick. I sat up, drawing my knees up to my chest and covering myself with the velvet duvet.
Jonathan turned his desperate eyes on me again. “It was Von Helsinger’s idea. He is very persuasive. He is a follower of Mesmer. He will tell you so himself. He can hypnotize a person to do his will!”
“What did he say to you and the others to make you do this thing?”
“After you left the room, Von Helsinger suggested all the blood that Lucy had received in transfusions may be bringing her back to life.”
I went back to that awful moment when the men ejected me from their cabal. “Why did you demand that I leave the room? Was this gruesome scheme in its planning stage before I came in?”
“No. But when I heard Godalming describe Lucy standing over his bed, I-” He stopped talking and tried to collect himself. He spoke slowly, his mouth forming the words carefully. “Mina, for many weeks now, I have felt haunted by the women I-encountered-in Styria. I did not want to speak of it in front of you. At times, I suspected that you were one of them. Von Helsinger calls it paranoia. Forgive me. Now that we are truly man and wife and I have seen your innocence, I realize that I have been suffering from madness.”
He hung his head, and I noticed that the white streak in his hair had grown wider. “Von Helsinger said that visiting the crypt might enable me to leave my fantasies, if indeed they were fantasies, behind me. ‘Who knows, Harker?’ he said. ‘Perhaps an entire world previously relegated to fantasia is opening up to us few explorers. We must investigate. You may be a modern-day Perseus who will find and slay the Medusa!’ He was wrong. I am no hero but a prisoner of fresh terrors.”
I was furious that Von Helsinger had drafted my husband, a man with a tenuous hold on health and sanity, into this grim exploration to appease the doctor’s own fascination with the bizarre. “Tell me what happened.”
“I cannot,” he said. “You are too good.”
“Unburden yourself, Jonathan. Speak of it, and then we will learn day by day to forget it.”
Encouraged by my words, he began to spill out the horrific details of the evening. Godalming’s coachman had taken them to a street near Highgate Cemetery that was known for houses of ill repute. They intimated that they would be spending the evening in one of them, and agreed to meet him at midnight. Lit only by the soft radiance of the moon, they entered the cemetery, making their way straight to the Circle of Lebanon. “As we walked down the path to the vaults, I heard birds screeching from that mighty tree that sits atop the circle of tombs. I knew that it was a bad omen, that we were violating something sacred. I asked them to reconsider before disturbing a consecrated tomb. Seward would have turned around with me, but the others’ wills were too strong. I suppose that I wanted to prove to myself too that Lucy was dead and that Godalming had been hallucinating. I thought if a man like him was letting madness get inside his head, then it would not be so shameful for me to have succumbed to it too.”
With a hammer and chisel borrowed from Lindenwood’s toolshed, they opened the marble door to the crypt. “Godalming took it upon himself to open the coffin. Von Helsinger stood over him, encouraging him like an avid instructor. Removing the screws took an interminable amount of time. I was cold and sweating at the same time, which reminded me of having brain fever, and I feared that I might collapse. Finally, Godalming removed the last of the screws and lifted the lid.” He paused, and I waited for him to continue.
“It grieves me to have to describe it, but this is the condition we shall all find ourselves in after we are shut away in our coffins. Nature is cruel.” His eyes gleamed with a mixture of wonder and revulsion. “Her skin was pale, the color of ice when it is so cold it turns blue. Her lips were an unnatural scarlet, a stain by the embalmer’s hand. Patches of skin had burst open, as if the body were attempting to turn itself inside out.”
Jonathan recoiled at the memory. “I could have sworn that Von Helsinger was disappointed that Lucy was there in the coffin. I think he truly believed-wanted to believe-that the blood had brought her back to life. I could hold back no longer and I said to Godalming, ‘Are you satisfied, sir?’”
He stopped again, recalling the moment. His face flushed with anger. “Godalming looked me dead in the eye and he said, ‘No, Harker, I am not satisfied.’ He took a leather sheath from his sack and retracted from it a knife. The blade must have been nine inches long and sharp enough to slay a large animal. Instinctively, I put my hands up. I thought it was me he was going to stab with it. But Seward stepped in front of me. He said in that calm, dispassionate voice of his, ‘Arthur, I have seen you use that knife to cut a fish from a line. What are you going to do with it now?’
