on unconsciousness. A mere conversation drained what little energy I possessed; after speaking but a few sentences, I often grew pale, and cold to the touch, as sweat crawled from my pores, and I shivered as my moisture met the seaside air. My heart would sometimes beat fiercely in my breast, irregular, as if the organ sought rhythm and could not find it. And the headaches: they would befall me and linger, day upon day, a belt tightening around my head at the leisurely hand of a fiend.
I spent the days and nights in my little attic room, wondering if my last dusk had just passed or if I would wake to see the dewy dawn.
I was not entirely alone in the attic; there were two other rooms. One belonged to my sister Matilda, eight at the time, and the other was occupied by our nanny, Ellen Crone. She shared her room with Baby Richard, my recently born brother and her most pressing charge.
The floor below mine housed the home’s only indoor privy as well as my parents’ room and a second bedroom occupied by my other two brothers, Thornley and Thomas, nine and five, respectively.
At the ground level could be found the kitchen, a living room, and a dining room with a table large enough to seat the entire household. There was a basement as well, but Ma forbade me from ever descending those steps; our coal was stored down there, and exposure to its dust could consign me to my bed for a week. Behind our house stood an old stone barn. We had three chickens and a pig there, all tended by Matilda from the time she was three years old. In the beginning, she had named the pigs, but around her fifth year she realized someone was switching the larger sows for smaller ones at least twice a year. By her sixth year, she realized those same pigs went to the butcher and found their way onto our supper plates. She stopped naming them then.
Over all of this, Ellen Crone watched.
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
Where to start? There is so much to tell and precious little time to tell it—but I know when all things changed. By the time one particular week came to a close, I would be healed, our dear Nanna Ellen would be gone, and a family would be dead. It started innocently enough, with a little eavesdropping. We were but children—me, seven; Matilda, eight—and yet that fall season was never to be forgotten. And it began with only two words.
* * *
? ? ?
OCTOBER 1854—“Buried alive,” Matilda said again, her voice low. “That’s what she said. I heard her true.”
Although she was one year older than I, I spent many of my waking hours in Matilda’s company, particularly when I found myself confined to my room, as I was today. We were standing at my window, and Matilda was pointing towards the harbor. “Ma said the man was diseased, and when he pled for help, the men who answered only dug a hole in the earth and pushed him in. What type of person does it take to do that? How could others participate in good conscience?”
“Ma said no such thing,” I told her. Following her finger with my eyes, I tried to see through the fog rolling off the water.
“She did. If you ask her about it, I am sure she would deny saying it, but she told Pa when he returned home from work not more than twenty minutes ago. I came to you straightaway.”
I tried not to smile, for I knew Matilda only spun such a tale in order to boost my spirits, but the corners of my mouth rose nonetheless, and she smacked me on my shoulder. “Now you’re mocking me.” She frowned, turning from the window.
“Where did you say this happened?”
She didn’t answer, staring instead at the far wall.
“Matilda? Where did this occur?”
With a deep sigh, she returned her gaze to the window. “At the cemetery behind Saint John the Baptist Church. She said they buried him amongst the suicide graves.”
“Suicide graves?”
Matilda grew frustrated. “I’ve told you about them before; they’re hidden at