even for a brief instant, would the spell have broken? Would the snake strike?
I wanted to look away.
I wanted to look away with all my heart and soul, but I simply could not. I stood perfectly immobile, as if this man gripped my head with both of his long, bony hands and held me at arm’s length, eye to eye.
“When did you last see Miss Crone?” he asked in that thick, smooth voice.
“Not since childhood,” I replied softly. The instant before the words left my lips, I told myself I would say I knew no such person. I intended to tell this man, this stranger to me, this hypnotic snake charmer, nothing. “She left when I was scarcely more than a boy.” The words flowed from my mouth as if I were in a dream state, an outside observer. I said this knowing I could say nothing else even if I wanted to. And I did want to. But I was no longer in control.
Oh, those eyes! Those horrid, godless eyes. They bore through me, piercing every inch of my soul with a blackness blacker than the blackest pitch. An itch erupted so deep within my skin it was as if ants were crawling over my bones. I wanted to run. I wanted to run so badly, yet my will held no power over my body; there was only this man somehow holding me inert and compelling me to speak against my every wish.
“If you had, you would tell me, correct?”
I heard these words not with my ears but my mind. I told him about the time I saw her at the sweets shop as a child, then again while at college, and finally I told him how I thought she was at the theater only days ago. When I finished, his lips twisted into the most fiendish grin, and the force with which he held me fell away. My body slackened and drooped, my muscles aching with exhaustion.
His hand went to my shoulder and squeezed it, almost a caring gesture but with enough pressure to induce pain. “I have not seen her in many years; a visit is overdue. Should you run into her again, you will give her my best, will you not?”
“But your name,” I heard myself say. “I do not know your name.”
At that, he released my shoulder and the grin returned. I could not help but look at those teeth, those savage teeth, glistening white, accentuated by dark red lips and his pale, vein-stenciled flesh. “You should hurry home; your wife needs you.”
He was gone then. I do not know if I lost time or he simply vanished, for after such an encounter even that crazy notion did not seem so far-fetched. One second he was standing there, mere inches from me, and the next there was no sign of him. I looked up and down the street to no avail. My house beckoned to me in the distance, and I welcomed the sight.
Again I ran.
I ran as fast as my tired legs would take me, and all the while I felt eyes on my back. I pushed through the door and closed it quickly behind me. The instant it shut, a heavy force thudded against the other side with enough strength to jostle the light fixtures in the room. I pulled the curtain aside from the window next to the door and witnessed a black dog, the largest dog I had ever seen. It crossed my yard and disappeared among the trees. The creature glared back at me only once before disappearing, its eyes a glowing red.
Upstairs, Emily cried out.
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
11 August 1868, 9:30 p.m.—I ran my hand over the soft velvet seat of my brother’s coach. “Thornley has done well for himself.”
Matilda studied the interior, too, her eyes drifting over the meticulously carved and polished mahogany, stained a beautiful chestnut brown.
As promised, Thornley had ordered the coach prepared quickly, and we were off to Clontarf with little delay. His driver had hitched a team of four horses for the trip, insisting it was no bother and would only improve our time. I also had observed him loading a shovel