His tired face stares back at him a hundredfold as his image bounces from one looking glass to the next. Bram tries to look away, only to find himself peering back into the eyes of his own reflection, each face etched with lines belonging on a man much older than his twenty-one years.
Between the mirrors, he has nailed crosses, nearly fifty of them. Some bear the image of Christ while others are nothing more than fallen branches nailed together and blessed by his own hand. He continued the crosses onto the floor, first with a piece of chalk, then by scraping directly into the stone with the tip of his bowie knife, until no surface remained untouched. Whether or not it is enough, he cannot be sure, but it is all he could do.
He cannot leave.
Most likely, he will never leave.
Bram finds his way back to the chair and settles in.
Outside, a loon cries out as the moon comes and goes behind thick clouds. He retrieves the pocket watch from his coat and curses—he forgot to wind it, and the hands ceased their journey at 4:30. He stuffs it back into his pocket.
Another bang on the door, this one louder than the last.
Bram’s breath stills as his eyes play back over the door, just in time to see the dust dance at the floor and settle back down to the stone.
How long can this barrier hold against such an assault?
Bram doesn’t know. The door is solid, to be sure, but the onslaught behind it grows angrier with each passing hour, its determination to escape growing as the dawn creeps nearer.
The petals of the rose have already begun to brown, much faster than the last.
What will become of him when it finally does breach the door? He thinks of the rifle and the knife and knows they will be of little use.
He spots his journal on the floor beside the basket of roses; it must have fallen from his coat. Bram picks up the tattered leather-bound volume and thumbs through the pages before returning to the chair, one eye still on the door.
He has very little time.
Plucking a pencil from his breast pocket, he turns to a blank page and begins to write by the quivering light of the oil lamp.
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
The peculiarities of Ellen Crone. That is, of course, where I should start, for this is as much her story as it is mine, perhaps more so. This woman, this monster, this wraith, this friend, this . . . being.
She was always there for us. My sisters and brothers would tell you as much. But how so, is where inquiries should lie. She was there at my beginning, and will no doubt be there for my end, as I was for hers. This was, and always shall be, our dance.
My lovely Nanna Ellen.
Her hand always reaching out, even as the prick of her nails drew blood.
* * *
? ? ?
MY BEGINNING, what a horrid affair it was.
From my earliest memories, I was a sickly child, ill and bedridden from birth until my seventh year, when a cure befell me. I will speak of this cure in great length to come, but for now it is important you understand the state in which I spent those early years.
I was born 8 November 1847, to Abraham and Charlotte, in a modest home at 15 Marino Crescent in Clontarf, Ireland, a small seaside town located about four miles from Dublin. Bordered by a park to the east and with views of the harbor to the west, our town gained fame as the site of the Battle of Clontarf, in 1014, in which the armies of Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland, defeated the Vikings of Dublin and their allies, the Irish of Leinster. This battle is regarded as the end of the Irish–Viking Wars, a bloody conflagration marked by the death of thousands upon the very shore over which my little room looked. In more recent years, Clontarf found itself the destination of Ireland’s rich, a holiday setting for those wishing to escape