“Impressive,” Captain Seward said. “I admired her discipline.”
“She was beautiful,” Jacob Raines said wistfully.
“More like a man, than a woman,” Mrs. Quarrie observed. “Though I’m glad of her help.” The elder Quarries were too emotionally drained, frightened and physically exhausted to have fully registered their loss yet.
“I appreciate her change of heart,” the old ranger added, studying the jungle curtain where Harkon and her group had slipped into the shadows.
“I remember this...” Virginia James said at a distance. She had moved through the trees toward the clearing. The moon gave the long grasses around the distant cabin an eerie twilight gleam.
The governess had come back to consciousness a couple hours after their initial escape, though the blow to her head had left the poor woman with amnesia. She was unable to recall much after their arrival on the African shore and their discovery of the yurt.
“I can’t wait to see Lilly!” Miss James said, pushing through the undergrowth with a happy smile. “So, that spoiled little thing is at home with a ‘cold’ reading novels while I’m out walking. Sounds like a fib to me...more likely the work of that Phillip Holmes.” She gave them all a quick but scolding look. “I can’t say I approve of your choice in chaperones.”
The Quarries limped over to Miss James, their bruised eyes brightening, appreciating their role as caretakers for the woman; and they relished her bittersweet remarks about their granddaughter.
Van Resen had discouraged his friends from disclosing the terrible truth to her, thinking that Miss James would not benefit from such revelations so far from medical care.
He hoped that with professional help she would some day be able to handle the emotional realities and recover her memory. From his understanding of psychoanalysis there were no limits to its restorative capacity.
The scientist had been pleased to see Miss James’ blank look at any mention of savages, or the wild man Gazda. Additionally, puzzling out her presence in the jungle triggered pain to her head injury and so her attention would immediately shift to something more pleasant.
In the end, she had decided they had become lost while walking and the rest of the fiction of Lilly’s whereabouts had evolved from there.
The Quarries and Jacob had been understandably sad for the duration of their exhausting escape from the savage lands—though Harkon’s young companions could lift their spirits. The old ranger was much more resilient—even optimistic. He knew they were still in danger, and he was determined to see no more loss of life.
“Ginny’s getting better every day!” Captain Seward said, watching Virginia James among the trees. “It’s a damn shame she doesn’t remember Lilly or her friend.”
“Captain, please,” Van Resen said quickly, before drawing the ranger aside. “It is important that she never remember him.” The big Texan’s face twisted up again. They’d both been over it, but Seward was a practical man who gave credit where it was due.
“He helped us, Doc.” Captain Seward set his fists upon his hips. “And I don’t buy your dead and not dead business. We both saw Lilly regain consciousness by the fire, and what happened after that was her fear and our imaginations. People don’t know their own strength when they’re that scared. That’s all it was. There was nothing we could do. And Lilly’s friend? As I see it, we lost a good man performing a rearguard action.”
On the day following their escape, the castaways had wondered why the savages had not followed, and whether Gazda was responsible for that—or if he had even survived.
“There was one cause for Lilly’s illness, death and brief resurrection. It was not nature or God...” Van Resen said in hushed tones. “But Gazda.”
The ranger opened his hands, and tipped his head to left and right—entirely unconvinced.
“I investigated the grounds around our hut, and explored the dark grove that grows and to which all healthy life gives sway. There is an odor to that place, a smell of death—the same that I detected upon Lilly, and later Miss James and Gazda, but sadly, that was not the only thing that connected them. I found artifacts buried there that answered my questions about our shelter and its former inhabitant. A terrible resurrection had occurred in that very place. Something was brought here by the man who built that yurt—something dead that he brought back to life.” Van Resen saw that the others were continuing through the undergrowth toward the clearing, and were well out of hearing.
“This book...” Van Resen pulled the old tome from his jacket. “Gives the reader instructions for rendering life to something that is dead. I have told you of a discredited doctor, and quoted often from his notes. It was he, Abraham Van Helsing and his brave assistants that slew a nosferatu—a beast in man form. They killed it, and so it should have ended. Yet this evil has since been restored in Gazda.” He glanced into the dark trees behind them. “I’m afraid he will survive his vengeance upon the savages...”
“There’s got to be some other explanation, Doc—what’d you tell me once, hysteria?” The Texan shook his head. “Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about him. We haven’t seen hide nor hair, so I reckon he died fighting all them savages.”
“If we get the chance, I will argue my case with the evidence I have found here and with my mentor’s actual notes—but for now, my friend, we must find shelter,” he said, moving toward the others, before stopping to pull the Texan close.
“Captain, you would protect this fine woman Virginia James with your life because in your long association you have come to know the gentle heart that beats within her,” he said. “I, too, in so short a time, have come to love the simple beauty of her nature and would protect her with my own life as well.”
The big Texan nodded as Van Resen again glanced fearfully back the way they had
