Authors: Stephen Curran
David coughs to get my attention and nods at something over my shoulder. I ask him what he wants me to do. He nods again.
Looking behind me I see a large mahogany wardrobe taken from my bedroom, crammed into the corner and completely blocking the bookshelves.
“Did you move that? Thank you, but I think I preferred it where it was. It's of no use to me here.”
My companion takes the pipe from his mouth and points the stem at the round-cornered doors.
“You want me to open it?”
I get up, cross the rug and take hold of the brass handles. A formidable presence waits for me within, something dark and heavy, something massive enough to distort time. I brace myself and pull.
What confronts me is a solid wall of mud. A scattering of loose dirt falls to the carpet but otherwise it is packed in tightly, filling the space's every inch. I look to David for an explanation but he is busy savouring his tobacco and displays no interest. I scratch the surface with my forefinger and more dirt falls away. Diligently rolling up my shirt sleeves I briefly notice a small puncture wound in the crook of my arm. Then I grab a fistful and let it drop. Miss Morley will be angry with me in the morning but I have no choice. Using of both hands now I dig out a hole. Before I know it I am up to my elbows, then my shoulders, burrowing like a dog and pushing towards the back. When the hole is sufficiently wide I place my knee on its lip and haul myself inside.
The glossy mud reaches farther than I had anticipated, far beyond where the bookshelves should be. Soon I am able to stretch my entire body out flat with no trouble at all. More and more deeply I delve, excavating as I go, the tunnel collapsing in my wake. I dig around rocks, and pipes, and the roots of trees. Then, just as I think I will never come to the end, I see sunlight.
The soil around my fingers crumbles away and fresh air rushes in. With surprising ease I am able to lift myself from the ground, disoriented to find I have been digging not horizontally, but vertically. Brambles scratch my head and torso as I push through them. The dirt on my face is too thick for me to see but wherever I am the air is damp and cool. Once I am free I take a few deep breaths then wipe my eyes.
I am under a darkening sky, surrounded by tall trees. My clothes are torn and caked with mud. My hands are bleeding. I wonder how far I am from a town or a place where I can shelter. Looking down at my feet I see I have lost my shoes and socks. I clench my toes and release, clench and release.
I see am being watched. Two children stand in the low lying fog, a boy and a girl, roughly twelve years of age. The girl has black curly hair and wears a white dress. The boy is athletically built with a long face, like my father's. Taking fright on encountering me – a broken-down, bleeding vagrant in the woods – the girl turns and flees. Before following her, the boy meets my eyes, communicating a flicker of vague recognition.
I am alone and the light is dying fast. From somewhere on my right comes a familiar noise, like the snapping of fingers or the clucking of a tongue. Turning towards it I see nothing but a dense veil of mist. Could my senses be deceiving me? Are these just the natural sounds of the forest reflecting from the trees? I look again and the mist is clearing, partly unveiling what I first take to be an enormous and muscular black dog, the size of a horse. The mist thickens and the shape changes.
Stepping towards me is an elderly man, seven foot tall at the least, with agile, slender limbs and a long white moustache hanging down either side of his mouth. His skin is pale, his lips are red. His costume is speckless, black from head to toe. With his manifestation comes a powerful smell of rotting vegetation. I know who he is. We have met before.
“Poor Renfield,” he says, a simple expression of sympathy that brings me trembling and weeping to my knees. He speaks but doesn't speak. “Do you know my name?”
I do. I have known it for as long as I can remember.
“It is time. Do you understand?”
I understand completely and with all my heart.
Without a sound he treads through the brambles, the silver top of a wooden cane in his hand. The ground beneath his feet ripples like water. All around, the birds of the forest have woken and are calling to each other.
“I know how hard this has been for you. I know what you have endured, how terribly you suffered. Look at you. Humiliated, foul, unable even to speak.”
I look into the old man's eyes. They are shining, black and inscrutable, like those of a sea creature.
“I promise you though, it has not been for nothing. As gruelling as your trials have been, they were necessary to lead you here.”
Placing his arms around my neck he draws me to him, laying his cold cheek to mine and murmuring into my ear. The birds are in a frenzy, their squawks a dreadful cacophony.
“Soon,” he says. “Soon you will be magnificent.”
PART THREE
I clear away the rotting food and release the blowflies. The spiders I tip out of the window from their wooden box, watching them tumbling sideways, carried by the wind. Their purpose – to teach me about the sustenance one living animal can gain from consuming another – has been served. I have no further need for them. On the distant horizon the thin line of trees look black against the grey sky.
I feel healthy and purged. It excites me to imagine what might happen now. What form will the next stage of my renewal take? Am I to be sent instructions, by means of another vision, or thought transference? Or will my course be signposted by gifts, just as happened with the spiders and the sparrow? If I am impatient it is only because I am keen to do my saviour's bidding. I am sure he understands. I shove the box in the bottom of my wardrobe.
When Seward arrives I am sat on the edge of my bed trying to empty my mind of thoughts, hoping to prevent the obstruction of any psychic communications. Disappointingly, my request for a pot of green tea instead of dinner was ignored and I was given chicken and vegetables. I ate the vegetables but left the meat, finding I could barely stand to have it on my plate: a dead lump in thin gravy, decaying from the moment the animal was killed, providing no nourishment at all.
“Thank you for cleaning up your room as I asked.”
Annoyed by the distraction I keep my mouth shut.
“Don't you feel better? More wholesome? Living in such squalor could only have worsened your condition.”
It is impossible to block out his chatter: “Yes, but please be assured, it was not done for your sake.”
“I'm glad to hear you're taking responsibility for your own surroundings.”
“That is not what I meant. Is it really necessary for you to speak so much?”
He takes a seat on my chair: “We have never discussed what happened when you relocated to England from Ceylon. Godalming’s notes mention you lived with your uncle. Is that right?”
“What of it?”
“Do you remember much about him? Was he good to you?”
“I remember a great deal about him. He took me into his home, at my father's request, without hesitation. Of course he was good to me.”
“Did it upset you that your father sent you away?”
“Not in the least. Our school could only ever have taken me so far. I needed to be given a formalised education. I will admit that coming to a new country with an unfamiliar climate and culture was jarring at first but I adapted soon enough. Pragmatism is one of the traits I inherited from my father.”
My earliest years were spent on a missionary settlement in Manepy, passing many of my days as any young boy would be expected to in such idyllic surroundings: racing to the tops of Sadikka trees and splashing about in the ocean. What hazy memories remain of this period are mainly populated by Indian girls in straw-roofed huts, backgrounded by golden horseshoe beaches and a cobalt sea. I spent most of my time alone, my younger sister Dora only being of interest to me as an occasional target for bullying.
When I was roughly five, too young to fully understand what had happened, my mother died of consumption. A few years later my father - a practical man by all accounts - took it upon himself to find a new wife and, seeing no possible candidates in our station, took me with him for an exploratory trip through the Malay Peninsula. Dora, being laid up in the Green Memorial Hospital with a mild bout of malaria, was left in the care of a Dutch missionary family of our acquaintance (the father of whom had taught me a few words of their first language). As it happened, I never saw her again. While we were away her adopted family moved to Bangkok where she reportedly succumbed to the same deadly disease that had taken our mother.
My father and I were staying in Singapore when he met an American named Sylvia. Somehow he persuaded her to leave the Christian church group with whom she was travelling and return to Manepy as his wife. She was a shy woman and did not make friends easily, preferring whenever possible to communicate through my father. I never got to know my new stepmother very well and suspect she was never fond of me: an arrangement which suited me perfectly. My concerns lay elsewhere.
One might imagine a boy's education would suffer in these circumstances but the missionary school was of the highest standard and its library stocked with a surprisingly varied and impressive range. It was here that my passion for learning was first aroused. By the age of ten, with little help from my teacher, I was fluent in Sinhalese, and had developed a workable grasp of Burmese, Hindi, and Tamil. I had read more novels than any of the adults on the settlement, leaving my classmates far behind. I wrote, too: poems and a journal and any number of stories. But it was the sciences which took the strongest hold over me. Sitting under the trees outside the library while Ceylon Lorikeets called to each other I devoured books on botany, geology, zoology, astronomy: whatever I could find. Assisted by my father I became a keen lepidopterist, taking advantage of the jungle to build my collection and diligently pinning my specimens to cork boards which I displayed in my bedroom.
Twice in my life I have been guilty of stealing: once a few years later, when I stole a knife from my a drawer in our kitchen in Yorkshire, and once when, at the age of ten, I slipped a favourite entomology text under my shirt to take with me on my solo trip to England. Only minutes before my father had visited the library to tell me he was sending me away to live with his brother. Sylvia had come with him but she wandered off part way through the conversation. My ship wasn't due to sail for another fortnight but taking possession of the book seemed like an immediate priority, whatever the risk. Who knew whether a copy would be available in Whitby, or even anything similar? Leaving my father and my home seemed tolerable, even exciting. Leaving my favourite book was unacceptable. If the librarian saw me sneak between the shelves and remove it he didn't say anything.
“Do you think your uncle ever resented taking you in?” says Seward. “Especially after he was invalided. That's what happened, isn't it?”
“I'm not sure I care for the question. Of course he wasn't resentful. He relished the opportunity to guide me, to pass on his values. My uncle was an extraordinary man: driven, disciplined, fiercely principled. Even after he had been robbed of his physical robustness. I like to think I have taken after him. Far more than my father, he made me into the man I am today.”
The doctor wanders over to the window and runs his hand over the newly cleaned sill. Dark patches, I notice, circle his tired eyes and he has shaved off his unimpressive beard. He is restless, filling in time: “Was it easy to put everything in order? Did it take long to clear out your pets?”
He suspects I have eaten them: “Bother them all. I don't care a pin about them.”
“You mean to say you never cared for them? Even after I went to all the trouble of providing me with that box? It wasn't easy to find, you know.”
“The box?”
“Yes. The wooden box I gave you. You were very pleased. Do you not remember?”
Before I have a chance to respond something swells in my chest, pushing my words out of the way and forcing itself irresistibly up into my throat and out of my mouth: “The Bride maidens,” I blurt, somewhat startled. I do not know what I am saying.
“What was that?”
“The Bride maidens. They rejoice the eyes that wait the coming of the bride. But when the bride draweth nigh then the maidens shine not to the eyes that are filled.”
“What do you mean? Are you quoting scripture?”
٭
Only hours later, when Seward has taken his leave and I have changed into my nightgown and climbed into bed, am I struck by the meaning of these words. It is a message, of course, a message from my master and saviour, delivered in the form of a riddle. Staring hard at the far wall I attempt to unpick it. It stands to reason that I am the 'one who waits'. Therefore my saviour must be the bride that draws near. But who are the bride maidens? Are they the attendants? My fellow inmates? I sit up and pull my legs towards me.
The solution strikes like a thunderbolt. The maidens represent knowledge. Knowledge will not be imparted to anyone whose eyes are filled. So I will not receive my message if I am awake. In such a state of exhilaration it will be difficult for me to fall asleep but I lay back and close my eyes...
A vision: the outer boundary of the airing court. Above the wall the sky is cloudless and the moon is three-quarters full. At first nothing seems out of place but if I concentrate I can see a portion of brickwork has become distorted, misty, as if something opaque hangs before it. An extraordinary intelligence is calling out to me. I must find a way to reach it.
Shoving my bed sheets away I go to the shutter and quietly push up the window. Surly it is too high to jump? From this perspective, here on the second floor, the patchy grass below seems dauntingly distant. Although I was not witness to the event I remember hearing of an inmate who tried the same thing and shattered the bones in both his legs, leaving him unable to walk. I must consider this logically; employ my trained scientist's mind. Struck by an idea I put on my shoes without bothering with socks or changing out of my nightgown. Then I strip my bed and heave the mattress to the window, folding it in the middle and giving it a series of shoves with my shoulder to force it through. It hits the ground with a hollow thud. Gathering my resolve I take hold of either side of the frame and clamber onto the sill. After taking a few seconds to prepare myself I launch into the chilly night air.