Page 88 of The Extraordinary Florence Stoker

We finished our tea and began to rise. It was time to head to the New Empire Theatre.

As we made our way back downstairs and into the train station, I thought about the vampire book. Bram was right to alter direction; so few were keen for his romances, sweet and dramatic as they were. Ghostly tales and those featuring the inexplicable and strange had never really gone out of style. As if to drive the point home, Lucy and Violet began to discuss the merits of the books on display in WH Smith as we made our way down to the train – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by Edgar Allan Poe, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mr Wells’s works. And there was our friend George Du Maurier’s Trilby, which had captured imaginations everywhere – including my own.

I read it the moment it was published and was astonished to discover it was about a young artist’s model, Trilby, who’s mesmerised by a wicked older musician, Svengali. Hypnotised by him, she becomes a famous singer, despite being tone deaf, and conquers the world. The story ends in defeat, death and shame. Clearly, Mr Du Maurier remembered our exchange by the aviary that day at Violet’s. Did he see me as a witless woman who fell under the spell of an older man? Only, Bram was no Svengali … Or was Trilby a feminine version of Bram? To me, Henry Irving was Svengali incarnate and I told Mr Du Maurier so the next time I saw him.

‘What can I say?’ he’d shrugged. ‘You inspired me, Mrs Stoker. But, any resemblance to an actual person is solely in your imagination. Trilby is nothing more than a work of fantasy …’ And then he winked.

I was still thinking about Mr Du Maurier and how much Bram had enjoyed his novel, even writing a congratulatory letter to him, as we boarded our compartment, fussing over who should sit where, taking the opportunity to brush our coats and repin our hats. As we pulled out of the station in a bluster of smoke and screeching metal, it occurred to me that Mr Du Maurier had captured the contemporary mood with Trilby. People paid enormous sums these days to be hypnotised and even crowded music halls to witness acts performing it – willingly surrendering their self-mastery to another. There was also an increasing desire to seek affirmation of the spirit world, or something existing beyond. It wasn’t just through stories like Dorian Gray, or Poe’s or Charlotte Riddell’s works. Even Lady Jane (God rest her soul – there’s no doubt Oscar’s internment finished her) had often had a psychic visit and loved reading Tarot cards at her Saturday luncheons and such. Poor O even consulted a woman claiming to be able to see the future before his trial. Her predictions of his great triumph predictably inaccurate. I hoped by embracing the supernatural, Bram’s new book would bring him the kind of success Mr Du Maurier and Mr Wells enjoyed.

We arrived at the New Empire Theatre just in time to admire the light blue and salmon pink stage boxes and the plum-coloured upholstery of the seats before the vast auditorium darkened. On a huge screen in the centre of the stage, flickering black-and-white images appeared. Spellbound, the audience swiftly hushed.

I flinched as a train sped towards me, horses galloped across dry ground, kicking up dust, faces loomed then dissolved, buildings, too. Lights shimmered across my vision making my heart somersault and my breath catch. Why, it was as if we were being mesmerised or, better still, being given a taste of what Wells’s intrepid time-traveller experienced – a glimpse of a possible future.

As the film ended and we sat in awed silence, I prayed it was a future where Bram attained the recognition he so deserved.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

London, January 1897

As was his habit when a manuscript was completed, Bram started reading me The Un-Dead – the book that had taken him almost seven years to write. For three consecutive nights, starting on New Year’s Day, 1897, I listened to his chilling tale about a strange foreign nobleman who retained an English lawyer to buy real estate in England, and wrought destruction upon any who dared cross his path.

Bram poured us both a drink in preparation for bringing this wild, unnatural story to its conclusion. I peeped through the curtains and saw the moon was obstructed by angry clouds that roiled and transmuted into eerie shapes. At least half the streetlights weren’t working, plunging the road into gloom. Thick fog curled and drifted, obscuring then revealing the few cabs and folk foolish enough to be abroad this wretched night.

I shuddered and drew the curtains tightly.

‘Ready, Florrie?’ asked Bram.

We assumed our usual places. Me, curled up in a chair, wrapped tightly in a blanket with my feet tucked under me, Bram with two lamps nearby so he could see the pages clearly. The fire crackled, throwing macabre silhouettes against the walls, turning Bram’s face into a landscape of crags and gullies.

I was relieved the tale was almost over. I’d scarce slept since Bram had begun his reading, my dreams filled with skeletal men with long fingers, hairy palms and elongated teeth. Full red lips whispered in my dream-ears, fangs gnashed, blood flowed, and moans and screams both terrifying and carnal taunted my unsettled psyche.

A part of me wished to hear no more of this benighted tale. The stronger, braver, part of me had to know how it ended.

With a fortifying sip of wine, Bram picked up from where he’d left off the night before: with the brutal death by unseen hands of Count Dracula’s factotum, the suborned and somehow possessed Renfield.

As Bram resumed, it was as if mother nature unleashed a protest against such a malevolent tale. Volleys of rain thrashed the windows, the wind howled and shrieked, shaking the glass. Beyond the drawing room, the floors creaked, and the walls shivered as if to expel unwelcome guests. The clock in the hallway chimed erratically.

With every page, the horror that had lodged inside my chest from the very beginning grew until I was filled with such dread, it was as if a huge sword hovered over me, threatening to skewer my soul. I was transfixed, scared to move. It was difficult to draw breath. My heart beat with alarming rapidity. The warmth of the fire, the blanket I clutched, didn’t touch me. I was bitterly cold yet also somehow febrile as I journeyed alongside the courageous Crew of Light through the snow-bound Carpathian wilderness, fending off vampires and wolves, tracking the wagon that carried the coffined count back to his castle while the sun sank behind jagged mountains, towering silhouettes against a vermillion sky.

The climax of the story drew closer, Bram increasing the pace as, at last, the Crew of Light forced the cart with its cursed load to halt. Leaping aboard, the brave men prised the lid of the coffin away.

I was on the edge of the chair, a fist pressed to my mouth.

‘I saw the count lying within the box upon the earth,’ read Bram. ‘He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew too well.’ He paused. ‘As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph.

‘But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan’s great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat; whilst at the same moment Mr Morris’s bowie knife plunged into the heart.’

The count’s body turned to dust, vanishing as motes into the darkness.

The story ended.

The world was hushed.

I could neither speak nor move. I was completely untethered. Dire thoughts invaded my imagination, evil and foreboding. Dear God. I resisted the overpowering urge to cross myself. I wished I’d a Catholic icon to protect me – a relic, the gold crucifix Oscar had once gifted me, the host, anything. But a crucifix hadn’t saved the captain of the Demeter in the Whitby harbour chapter, had it?

I could scarce believe that my husband, the man who wrote children’s fairytales, albeit dark, and adventure, mystery and romance novels, had penned this.

This was something else. I was reminded of the fear that held the city to ransom during the Jack the Ripper years and knew this vampire tale would arouse the same type of anxiety.