It was about fifteen minutes before midnight when we climbed over the low wall and entered the churchyard. The night was almost completely dark, except for occasional flashes of moonlight that appeared whenever the heavy clouds broke apart.
We stayed close together, with Van Helsing leading slightly ahead of us.
As we approached the tomb, I watched Arthur carefully. I was afraid that returning to a place filled with so many painful memories might overwhelm him. But he remained remarkably calm. Perhaps the strange mystery surrounding everything helped distract him from his grief.
Van Helsing unlocked the tomb.
There was a moment when none of us seemed willing to enter, for our own reasons. Van Helsing solved the problem by stepping inside first. We followed him, and he closed the door behind us.
He lit his lantern and pointed toward Lucy’s coffin.
Arthur moved forward slowly.
Van Helsing looked at me.
“You were here with me yesterday. Was Lucy’s body inside that coffin?”
“Yes, it was.”
Van Helsing turned to the others.
“You heard him. Yet one of you still doubts what I have told you.”
He took out his screwdriver and removed the coffin lid again.
Arthur stood there, extremely pale but completely silent. When he saw the damaged lead lining beneath the lid, the color rushed into his face for a moment, then disappeared again.
Van Helsing pulled back the lead.
We all looked inside.
The coffin was empty.
For several minutes, none of us could speak.
Finally Quincey Morris broke the silence.
“Professor, I trust you. Normally I would never question your word, because doing so would be an insult. But this is something beyond ordinary trust or honor.”
He looked directly at Van Helsing.
“Did you remove her body?”
Van Helsing shook his head.
“I swear on everything I consider sacred that I never touched her and never removed her.”
He paused.
“This is what happened. Two nights ago, John and I came here because we believed we were doing the right thing. I opened this coffin, which had been properly sealed, and found it empty just as we find it now.”
“We waited nearby. Then we saw a white figure moving through the trees.”
“The next day, we returned in daylight, and Lucy’s body was back inside the coffin. Wasn’t it, John?”
“Yes.”
“That night, we arrived just in time. Another little child had disappeared, but we found him alive and unharmed among the graves.”
“Yesterday I came here before sunset. Remember, the Un-Dead can move after sunset. I stayed here all night until sunrise, but nothing happened.”
“That was probably because I had placed garlic around the door. The Un-Dead cannot tolerate it, along with certain other things.”
“Last night, nothing came out.”
“So tonight, before sunset, I removed the garlic and the other protections.”
“And now we see that the coffin is empty.”
He looked at all of us.
“But be patient. We have seen strange things already, but tonight we may see something even stranger.”
He closed the lantern.
“Come. We will wait outside where no one can see or hear us.”
He opened the door and led us out. He was the last to leave and locked the tomb behind him.
The fresh night air felt wonderful after the horror inside that tomb.
The clouds raced across the sky, sometimes allowing the moon to shine through. The changing light seemed almost like human life itself, sometimes happy and sometimes dark.
I breathed deeply. The air was clean and free of the smell of death.
Far beyond the hill, the sky was beginning to glow from the lights of the city. In the distance, we could hear the deep, muffled sounds of London.
We were all deeply affected by what was happening.
Arthur remained silent, clearly trying to understand what this mystery meant.
I was becoming less resistant to Van Helsing’s ideas. Only an hour earlier I had rejected them completely, but now I was beginning to wonder whether he had been right all along.
Quincey Morris accepted everything with the calm courage of a man who was prepared to risk his life without hesitation.
Since he couldn’t smoke, he cut off a large piece of tobacco and began chewing it.
Van Helsing, meanwhile, was busy preparing something.
First, he took a thin, wafer-like material from his bag. It had been carefully wrapped in a white cloth.
Then he pulled out two handfuls of something that looked like soft dough or putty.
He crushed the thin wafers into tiny pieces and worked them into the dough with his hands.
Then he rolled the mixture into long, thin strips and pressed them into the cracks around the tomb door.
I was puzzled.
“What are you doing?”
Arthur and Quincey came closer to see.
Van Helsing answered calmly.
“I am sealing the tomb so the Un-Dead cannot enter or leave.”
Quincey stared at the material.
“And that stuff is supposed to stop her? Good Lord, is this some kind of game?”
“It is.”
Arthur looked at the material.
“What exactly is it?”
Van Helsing respectfully removed his hat.
“The Host. I brought it from Amsterdam. I have permission to use it.”
The answer stunned all of us.
Even the most skeptical among us could not bring ourselves to question a man who was willing to use something he considered sacred for such a serious purpose.
We silently took the positions Van Helsing assigned to us, hiding around the tomb where anyone approaching would not see us.
I felt sorry for the others, especially Arthur.
I had already experienced this terrible watch several times, yet even I felt my courage weakening.
The tombs looked unnaturally white in the darkness. The cypress, yew, and juniper trees seemed to become symbols of death itself.
Every movement of the grass and branches sounded threatening.
The creaking trees seemed to whisper warnings.
Even the distant howling of dogs sounded like an omen of something terrible.
We waited in complete silence.
Time seemed to stop.
Then Van Helsing suddenly made a sharp hissing sound.
“S-s-s-s!”
He pointed toward the long row of yew trees.
Far down the path, we saw a white figure moving toward us.
Something dark was held against its chest.
The figure stopped.
At that moment, the clouds parted and moonlight fell across the scene.
We could now see a dark-haired woman dressed in the clothing of the dead.
Her face was bent over a small, fair-haired child in her arms.
For a moment, everything was still.
Then the child made a small cry, the kind a child might make while dreaming.
We instinctively started forward.
Van Helsing raised his hand, warning us to stay where we were.
The white figure began moving toward us again.
Now it was close enough for us to see clearly.
My heart turned cold.
We recognized her.
It was Lucy Westenra.
It had Lucy’s face and body, but she had been horribly transformed.
The sweetness we remembered had become something cruel and merciless. The innocence was gone, replaced by something dark and seductive.
Van Helsing stepped out from behind the tree.
We followed him and stood together in front of the tomb.
He raised his lantern and opened its cover.
The concentrated light fell directly onto Lucy’s face.
Her lips were bright red with fresh blood.
Blood had run down her chin and stained the white clothing around her.
We were horrified.
Even Van Helsing, whose courage seemed almost impossible to break, looked shaken.
Arthur stood beside me. If I had not grabbed his arm, he would have collapsed.
When Lucy—or rather, the creature wearing Lucy’s form—saw us, she recoiled and gave an angry hiss like a cat caught by surprise.
Then she looked from one of us to another.
Her eyes were still Lucy’s eyes in shape and color.
But they were no longer innocent.
They were filled with something filthy and evil, as if hell itself were burning inside them.
At that moment, whatever love I still had for the creature before me turned completely into hatred and disgust.
If someone had told me then that she had to be killed, I could have done it without hesitation.
Lucy stared at us.
Then her expression changed.
A strange, seductive smile appeared on her face.
She casually dropped the child onto the ground.
She had been holding him tightly against her chest, almost like an animal guarding its food.
The child cried out and lay there whimpering.
Arthur groaned in horror.
Then Lucy stretched out her arms toward him.
Arthur backed away and covered his face with his hands.
But Lucy kept coming.
Her voice was soft, seductive, and terrifying.
“Come to me, Arthur. Leave the others and come with me.”
“My arms are waiting for you.”
“Come, my husband. Come to me, and we can be together.”
Her voice was strangely beautiful, almost hypnotic.
Even though she wasn’t speaking to us, the sound of it seemed to affect all of us.
Arthur appeared completely under her spell.
Slowly, he lowered his hands and opened his arms.
Lucy suddenly rushed toward him.
But Van Helsing stepped between them and held up a small golden crucifix.
Lucy recoiled violently.
Her face twisted with rage.
She rushed past Van Helsing as though she intended to escape into the tomb.
But when she came within a few feet of the door, she suddenly stopped.
It was as if an invisible force had blocked her path.
She turned around.
Moonlight fell directly across her face, together with the steady light from Van Helsing’s lantern.
I had never seen such hatred and fury on a human face.
Her beautiful complexion had turned gray and lifeless.
Her eyes seemed to burn with an unnatural fire.
Her forehead twisted with rage.
Her beautiful mouth opened unnaturally wide, revealing her blood-stained teeth.
The expression on her face seemed to say only one thing.
Death.
For what felt like half an hour, though it was probably less than a minute, she remained trapped between the crucifix and the sealed entrance.
Finally, Van Helsing turned to Arthur.
“My friend, answer me. Shall I continue with what I have to do?”
Arthur dropped to his knees and covered his face.
“Do whatever you believe is necessary, my friend.”
“There can never be anything worse than this.”
He groaned as if his heart were breaking.
Quincey and I immediately went to him and helped him to his feet.
Van Helsing lowered his lantern and walked toward the tomb.
He carefully removed some of the sacred material he had placed in the cracks.
We watched in disbelief.
Lucy—her body completely solid and real—somehow passed through the tiny opening in the door.
The gap was barely wide enough for a knife blade.
Yet she slipped through it as easily as smoke.
Once she had disappeared inside, Van Helsing calmly replaced the sacred material around the door.
We all felt an enormous sense of relief.
Van Helsing picked up the child.
“Come, my friends. There is nothing more we can do tonight.”
“There will be a funeral here at noon tomorrow. We will return afterward.”
“By two o’clock, the dead woman’s friends should all have gone. Once the sexton locks the gate, we can stay here without being disturbed.”
“There will be more work to do then, but nothing like what we have faced tonight.”
He looked at the child.
“As for this little fellow, he has not been seriously harmed. By tomorrow night he should be perfectly well.”
“We will leave him somewhere the police can find him, just as we did the other night.”
He turned to Arthur.
“My dear Arthur, you have suffered terribly tonight. But later, when you look back, you will understand why this had to be done.”
“You are going through the deepest part of your suffering now. By this time tomorrow, God willing, you will have come through it.”
“Do not grieve more than you must.”
“I will not ask you to forgive me yet.”
Arthur and Quincey came home with me.
We tried to comfort one another on the way.
The child was safe, and we were exhausted.
Eventually, we all managed to sleep, though none of us slept peacefully.
On the night of September 29, just before midnight, Arthur, Quincey, and I went to meet Van Helsing.
It struck me as strange that all three of us had dressed in black.
Arthur was naturally wearing mourning clothes, but Quincey and I seemed to have chosen black without even thinking about it.
We reached the churchyard at about half past one.
We kept out of sight while the gravediggers finished their work.
When the sexton finally believed everyone had gone and locked the gate, we were left alone.
This time Van Helsing had brought a long leather bag instead of his usual small black case.
It was obviously quite heavy.
When the last footsteps disappeared down the road, we silently followed Van Helsing to Lucy’s tomb.
He unlocked the door, and we entered.
He closed it behind us.
From the leather bag he took out his lantern and lit it.
Then he took two candles and fixed them to nearby coffins by melting the ends, giving us enough light to work.
When Van Helsing removed Lucy’s coffin lid, we looked inside.
Arthur was trembling.
Lucy lay there in the beautiful stillness of death.
But I felt no love when I looked at her.
All I could feel was disgust toward the evil creature that had taken Lucy’s body while her true soul was gone.
Even Arthur’s expression hardened as he stared at her.
Finally, he spoke.
“Is that really Lucy’s body?”
“Or is it some demon that has taken her shape?”
Van Helsing answered quietly.
“It is Lucy’s body, but it is not truly Lucy.”
“Wait a little longer, and you will see the difference.”
She looked like a nightmare version of the Lucy we had known.
Her teeth were unnaturally sharp.
Her mouth was stained with blood.
Everything about her appearance seemed sensual, cruel, and completely unlike the pure woman we had loved.
Van Helsing began preparing everything he had brought.
First came a soldering iron and some solder.
Then he took out a small oil lamp. When he lit it, it produced an intense blue flame.
Next came his surgical knives.
Finally, he removed a thick wooden stake, roughly three inches wide and about three feet long.
One end had been hardened in the fire and sharpened to a point.
He also had a heavy hammer.
As a doctor, I was accustomed to seeing instruments prepared for difficult work.
But these objects terrified Arthur and Quincey.
Still, neither man backed away.
When everything was ready, Van Helsing looked at us.
“Before we begin, you must understand what we are dealing with.”
“This knowledge comes from ancient records and from the experience of those who have studied the Un-Dead.”
“Once a person becomes Un-Dead, they are trapped in a kind of immortality. They cannot truly die.”
“They continue through the years, creating more victims and spreading evil.”
“Anyone who dies after being attacked by one of the Un-Dead can become Un-Dead themselves.”
“So the evil keeps spreading, just like ripples moving outward after a stone falls into water.”
He looked directly at Arthur.
“My friend, if Lucy had kissed you before she truly died, or if you had allowed her to embrace you last night, you would eventually have become one of them after your own death.”
“You would have become what people in Eastern Europe call a nosferatu.”
“And you would have helped create more creatures like her.”
“This poor woman’s terrible existence has only just begun.”
“The children she attacked have not yet suffered permanent harm.”
“But if she continues as Un-Dead, she will keep taking their blood. They will grow weaker, and her power over them will draw them back to her.”
“She will continue feeding on them with that terrible mouth.”
“But if Lucy can be truly released from this existence, everything will end.”
“The wounds on the children’s throats will disappear, and they will return to their normal lives without ever understanding what happened.”
“More importantly, when Lucy is finally freed from being Un-Dead, the soul of the woman we loved will also be free.”
“She will no longer spend her nights doing evil and become more corrupted each day.”
“She will be able to rest peacefully with the other blessed souls.”
“So the person who performs this act will actually be setting Lucy free.”
Van Helsing paused.
“But should that person be one of us?”
“Wouldn’t it mean something to know that the man who loved her most was the one who gave her back her peace?”
“Wouldn’t it bring comfort during the lonely nights to think, ‘My hand was the one that released her. I did for her what she herself would have chosen if she had been able to choose’?”
“Tell me. Is there anyone here who has a greater right to do it than Arthur?”
We all looked at Arthur.
He understood what Van Helsing was offering him.
It was not an act of cruelty.
It was a final act of love.
Arthur stepped forward.
His hand was trembling, and his face was as pale as snow, but his voice was firm.
“My true friend, I thank you from the bottom of my broken heart.”
“Tell me what I have to do, and I will not hesitate.”
Van Helsing placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Brave lad. You only need courage for a moment.”
“This stake must be driven through her heart.”
“It will be terrible. Do not imagine otherwise.”
“But it will be over quickly.”
“Afterward, you will feel more relief than you can imagine.”
“When you leave this tomb, it will be as though you are walking on air.”
“But once you begin, you must not stop.”
“Remember that Quincey and John are beside you. We will pray for you the entire time.”
Arthur swallowed hard.
“Go on. Tell me exactly what I must do.”
“Hold the stake in your left hand and place its point over her heart.”
“Hold the hammer in your right.”
“When we begin the prayers for the dead, I will read from this book, and the others will pray with me.”
“Then strike in God’s name.”
“Do it so that the woman we love may finally rest, and the Un-Dead creature may disappear.”
Arthur took the stake and hammer.
Once he had decided to act, his hands became completely steady.
Van Helsing opened his prayer book and began reading.
Quincey and I followed as best we could.
Arthur placed the point of the stake against Lucy’s heart.
I could see the small mark it made in her pale flesh.
Then Arthur struck with all his strength.
The creature in the coffin twisted violently.
A terrible scream burst from her open mouth.
Her body shook and convulsed.
Her sharp teeth slammed together, cutting her lips until blood and foam covered her mouth.
But Arthur did not stop.
He looked like some ancient warrior as his steady arm rose and fell again and again.
The stake drove deeper into her body.
Blood burst from the wound around it.
Arthur’s face remained firm.
There was a sense of duty in his expression that gave all of us strength.
Our voices grew stronger as we continued the prayers.
Slowly, the creature’s movements weakened.
The shaking stopped.
Her teeth no longer snapped together.
Her face became still.
At last, the terrible struggle ended.
Arthur’s hammer fell from his hand.
He staggered backward and would have collapsed if Quincey and I had not caught him.
Sweat poured down his forehead.
He was breathing in short, broken gasps.
The ordeal had nearly destroyed him.
Without the deeper purpose behind what he was doing, he could never have endured it.
For several minutes, we were so focused on helping Arthur that none of us looked into the coffin.
Then we heard a quiet sound of surprise.
We turned.
Arthur rose from the floor and looked inside.
A strange, joyful expression slowly appeared on his face.
The horrible creature was gone.
Lucy was there.
She looked exactly as she had in life.
Her face was once again gentle, peaceful, and pure.
There were still signs of illness and suffering on her features, but those marks only made us love her more because they reminded us of the real Lucy.
A deep calm rested over her face and body.
It seemed like a small earthly sign of the eternal peace her soul had finally found.
Van Helsing came to Arthur and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“And now, Arthur, my friend, have you forgiven me?”
The emotional strain finally overwhelmed Arthur.
He took Van Helsing’s hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it.
“Forgiven?”
“God bless you.”
“You have given my dear Lucy her soul back.”
“And you have given me peace.”
He put his arms around the Professor and rested his head against his chest.
Then he began to cry silently.
None of us moved.
When Arthur finally raised his head, Van Helsing spoke gently.
“And now, my child, you may kiss her.”
“Kiss her dead lips if you wish. That is what she would want if she could choose.”
“She is no longer a demon.”
“She is no longer one of the Un-Dead.”
“She is truly dead now, and her soul is with God.”
Arthur bent down and kissed Lucy.
Then Quincey and Arthur left the tomb.
Van Helsing and I stayed behind.
We cut the stake down so that only the part inside the body remained.
Then we removed Lucy’s head and filled her mouth with garlic.
We soldered the lead coffin shut and replaced the coffin lid.
After gathering our things, we left the tomb.
Van Helsing locked the door and handed the key to Arthur.
Outside, the world seemed completely different.
The air was fresh.
The sun was shining.
Birds were singing.
Everything around us seemed peaceful and alive.
There was happiness everywhere, although our joy was mixed with sadness.
At least one terrible burden had finally been lifted.
Before we left, Van Helsing spoke.
“My friends, one part of our work is finished.”
“It was the most painful part for all of us.”
“But there is still a greater task ahead.”
“We must discover who caused all this suffering and destroy him.”
“I have clues we can follow.”
“But it will be difficult. It will take time, and there will be danger and pain.”
He looked at each of us.
“Will you help me?”
“We have all learned to believe now, haven’t we?”
“And if we truly believe, then we also understand our duty.”
“We must continue until the very end.”
One by one, we took his hand.
We made our promise.
As we walked away, Van Helsing continued.
“Two nights from now, meet me at John’s house at seven o’clock. We will have dinner together.”
“I will also invite two other men whom you have not yet met.”
“I will explain everything we have discovered and show you what I have planned.”
“John, you must come home with me now. There is much we need to discuss, and I need your help.”
“I am leaving for Amsterdam tonight, but I will return tomorrow night.”
“Then our great search will begin.”
“Before we start, I have much to tell you. You need to understand what we are facing and what dangers await us.”
“Then we will renew our promise to one another.”
“There is a terrible task ahead.”
“And once we begin, we must never turn back.”