Chapter 16 #2
After the words Dracula—not dead? appear underlined multiple times, he moves on. The date at the top of this page steals my breath. It’s only a month before his death. This has to be it. The sequence of events that left him bleeding out on the floor next to where I sit.
She came to me tonight. She appeared behind the glass of the garden door, hair floating in a breeze that blew nowhere else. Feet bare. Skin like crushed seashells. Ethereally beautiful. I did not invite her in, but she stepped across the threshold on her own.
I need your help, she said, her dark eyes boring into me.
I knew then that this was no creature of the night, no agent of the devil.
This was an angel. God, at last, had noticed my efforts and deemed me worthy of His intervention.
Who was I to deny her? Who was I to say no?
She said the path would be strange and dangerous, but what does that matter?
There’s nothing for me here without Pieter.
I sit back, winded. Seeing it in writing makes me believe it when Mama could not. I really didn’t matter to him. Pieter was his son, and I was…nothing.
I don’t want to keep reading. I’ve longed for this information, but also dreaded coming to the end.
And the end is here, at last. All these months reading accounts he collected of ghosts and revenants and monsters, killed by fire, bound by crosses, struck down by lightning, abandoned on islands, buried face down, staked through the heart.
Reading about his own failures in vampire hunting, too.
It’s clear what I have to do: find where Diavola came from so I know where I can kill her.
And in order to do that, I have to know where Diavola took him.
Holding my breath, I turn the page. The next several sheets are cut out. I run my finger along the remaining edges, drawing blood. Though there are dozens of pages left in the journal, only one page has anything written. A hastily scrawled note.
I believed him. Forgive me.
Not her. So, who did my father believe? And why were those other pages cut out?
I lean back, infuriated. All this time wading through his impenetrable blocks of text, his meandering theories, his uncomfortable digressions describing random encounters with beautiful young women that had nothing to do with his studies, and it turns out the pages I need aren’t here.
But that “him” nags at me. Who did my father believe, and why did it trigger the only apology or remorse I found in thousands of pages? And why did he remove the story I need the most?
I weave my way through the stacks of journals I’ve piled on the floor. On a chair in the corner is a file Joren dropped off for me. I requested it, but it’s still unopened. Inside are the details of what happened to Dávid, and I haven’t been ready to read it.
I’m still not ready, but it’s time.
I don’t look at the photos. I don’t need to know anything except time of death. Thanks to our connection with Scotland Yard from past investigations, their inquiry into what happened to Dávid was respectfully thorough.
My memories of the day Berend died and the events at the Schauerhammer house are confused and jumbled, thanks in no small part to the concussion. I’ve assumed that Dávid died the day before, soon after he arrived in London, and that word didn’t reach me until later.
But I should have opened this folder months ago.
Because Dávid died in the early afternoon the day I went to the Schauerhammer house.
Which means there was no physical way for Diavola to have been in London with him.
Even on the fastest ferries and trains with the most direct routes, she simply couldn’t have traveled to München in time to rescue me that evening.
I want to retreat into one of my father’s supernatural theories—she flew as a bat, or traveled on moonlight—but I know Diavola travels by human means. Why else would she have asked Maher for help with train schedules? And the vampire Dracula traveled by boat and carriage to and from London.
Even with supernatural abilities and powers, Diavola couldn’t be in two places at once. Which means she isn’t the one who made Dávid do that to himself.
I pull out the rest of the report, hating myself even more for not reading it sooner.
On the day of his death, Dávid met with the projectionist, a well-known local figure named Leonard Guppy.
He was in the hospital with a badly broken leg.
According to the detective’s interview with Leonard, Leonard told Dávid that there was another camera operator who sometimes passed through.
They weren’t friends—something about the other man bothered the projectionist—but he happened to be in London that week.
They’d been together when Leonard broke his leg.
Here, the detective notes that Leonard seemed uncertain how the accident happened, but witnesses on the scene said he walked directly in front of a passing motorcar.
After getting this information from Leonard, Dávid raced to find the other cinematograph owner before he left London again. That was the last anyone saw of Dávid alive.
There were no leads on the mysterious other man.
Leonard couldn’t recall his name, or give a clear description of what he looked like.
Only that he wore a rose on his lapel and was cold.
The word “cold” is underlined and followed by a question mark, as though the interviewing detective couldn’t understand how that adjective applied to a man.
A shiver runs down my spine. I know exactly what Leonard meant.
I turn to the next sheet. Dávid was alone in a park when he died.
A couple walking their dog found him not long after.
His throat was slit, the blade still held in his bloodied hand, his eyes staring up.
There were no footprints in the soft earth nearby, but there were the distinctive divots of a tripod.
“Two of them, this whole time,” I whisper. Is that why they record the murders? To share their exploits with each other?
I drop the file. One of the photos of Dávid’s body slips out. I hold it, forcing myself to look. Forcing myself to bear witness.
Dávid is dead because of me. Because I was so fixated on chasing Diavola, I couldn’t understand that nothing in the world—nothing—is what I thought it was.
I sent him to his death. I got Berend killed.
The only good thing I’ve done since my father died was cut off Maher, Inge, and Joren before I destroyed them, too.
Maybe without me they can survive. Maybe they can slip back into the reality I can never rejoin. The one where the dead stay buried.
Mama knocks on the door again.
“Not now,” I snap.
She knocks more firmly. I’m about to yell at her to go away, and then I remember another conversation we had.
I’m a fool. I’m as bad as the men I work with, overlooking crucial details because they came from a woman. As much as I tell myself I’m fine with how Mama is, I don’t respect her. Because if I did, I would have realized long ago that Mama has known this whole time. Everything.
She told me my father wasn’t mad, because she knew. She’s always known. My father didn’t cut out those pages. He would never have desecrated his own work that way. But Mama?
If she thought she was keeping me safe, she’d do anything.
I throw the door open. “Where are they?”
“We’re out of eggs.” She shoves a basket at me. “Clean yourself up and go get some. And throw this garbage out while you’re at it.” She glares around the study at my father’s writing.
“He was right,” I snarl. “There are monsters out there, and you know it’s true.”
“Yes,” Mama says.
Getting confirmation staggers me. Part of me still doubted, still wanted her to be the innocent, silly, housebound Mama I’ve always known. Brilliant but limited. The woman my father wanted her to be, I realize with increasing shame.
“How long have you known?” I ask.
She tugs down the high collar she always wears.
There’s a puckered old scar on the side of her neck.
“I didn’t stop going outside because I was too sad over Pieter’s death.
I stopped going outside because they can’t get in here without an invitation.
And unlike your father, I had the sense to learn from my brush with evil.
I only pray that you do, as well.” With that, she turns and stomps back into the kitchen.
I follow her. I’m aghast, and horrified, but I’m also livid. “Why didn’t you tell me!”
“Why would I tell you?” She sets to work chopping potatoes, the knife snicking through them with practiced ease.
“I wanted to keep you out of it entirely. I thought when you started working with Joren you’d get enough satisfaction solving the solvable that you’d stay away from the unknowable.
Even when you began chasing your devil, I hoped you’d wear out before it destroyed you. ”
“But you helped us! You connected us with so many of father’s old contacts!
We got cases through your friends, so many requests that—” I stop, finally making such an obvious connection I should never be allowed to call myself a detective again.
“Every case your contacts brought us in on was an actual murder we were able to solve. Ones that never had anything to do with Diavola.”
She raises a sardonic eyebrow at me. “I’m your mother. I’m allowed to meddle. And I wanted you to know what it felt like when you could actually help. I wanted that to be the thing you began chasing. It still can be.” She holds out a jar of preserved carrots for me to open.
I take it automatically, then pause. “Mama. Where are the missing pages from Papa’s journal? The last ones, that talk about whatever deal he made with Diavola?”