Fjallkonan #10 | 15 March 1901
WITH THOMAS SUFFERING LIKE THIS, THE DUTCH professor arrived as though he was summoned. Wilma cordially welcomed him, and it wasn’t long before she told him all about her journey to Castle Dracula—and about Thomas’s journal. This seemed very important to the professor, and he asked if he might borrow the text,323 which Wilma had transcribed. He promised to come back the next day and spent the night reading the journal. When he returned, he told Wilma that the notebook was worth its weight in gold, as it shed light upon many things that hitherto had been hidden in the dark.
He said that Thomas was so baffled upon seeing the man on the street in London because in that moment some memory of his stay with the Count must have been triggered. This vague reminiscence, however, must have seemed so unfamiliar to him—now that he’d forgotten all about his stay at the castle and didn’t even know about his journal—that he’d believed he was losing his wits. Wilma then fetched her husband for an interview with the professor.
The professor and Thomas talked for a long time, and Van Helsing came to the conclusion that Thomas was now regaining his memory,324 although he couldn’t remember the incident at Piccadilly on the day of Mr. Hawkins’s funeral.
The professor gave Thomas some healthful advice and asked him to remain quiet for the time being, and to avoid anything that might upset him. He had the journal with him and wanted to show it to some of his acquaintances.
A few days later Barrington came to visit Wilma. He had just returned to London and now travelled to Exeter—where Thomas and Wilma lived325—to learn about Count Dracula’s real estate purchase in London. She informed him that Thomas was recovering his memory, and that his diary had been found.
Barrington andWilma agreed that he shouldn’t talk with Thomas until he had consulted with Van Helsing, and they arranged to meet again in two days.
Van Helsing and Barrington arrived at the appointed time and had a long talk with Thomas, after which Barrington came to Wilma once more to tell her that he wondered about the professor’s views. He respected him highly, but he thought him a religious sentimentalist, prone to superstition. He said that he personally didn’t rely on anything other than facts and thought that there had to be a logical explanation for everything that was said about Count Dracula and his accomplices, even though these stories seemed bizarre to many people.
With these words he left their house.
Professor Van Helsing began to explain his research and its results to Wilma, saying, “The inventions of the nineteenth century are amazing. They have created a new world, teaching us to recognize the forces of nature that our ancestors either had no knowledge of or which they ascribed to the supernatural. Nowadays scientists can hardly dismiss any phenomenon as inconceivable within the limits of physical law. Nature has an infinite range of such laws, but human perception cannot fully grasp them because the sensory organs aren’t sophisticated enough.
“There must be powers and principles that our descendants will someday discover, even if we do not know them now. They will learn to understand these forces, and domesticate and control them. Who knows, perhaps there is a world of invisible beings influencing us to act on behalf of good or evil,326 depending on their intention.327
“I—and many other thinkers of our time—have reached the conclusion that such creatures do exist and that they obey certain laws which are unknown to us, as they are equipped with an entirely different range of gifts and powers than we are.
“Folklore recognizes many things that science knows nothing about, or which scientists deny. One such thing is the fact that there are creatures wandering about here on earth after they die.328 Let’s consider such a being, as a person, for example, who has lived sinfully in life, as a criminal or murderer. He departs like any other man, but his soul cannot break free from the body, which binds it to the earth. The soul then remains attached to the corpse and—by some law that we do not know—can settle in it again, bring new life to it, and use it, furthermore, to satisfy its natural lusts. In order to maintain this existence, however, this vermin must feed off the blood of living humans—and by virtue will never stop killing.
“So it is said in folklore, to which we may add that these un-dead creatures329 are, according to popular belief, supposedly able to influence other people—not only the wicked, but also the weak.”330
They discussed Lucia’s death and the professor said,
“I have every reason to believe that this innocent girl was afflicted by the same forces I speak of now—or by a kind of hypnosis, which these enemies of mankind use to turn decent people into their tools, once they manage to gain power over them. She, who was carried to her tomb adorned in the white garments of innocence, now has this same effect on her beloved; she is now trying to pull him into the grave with her.331
“I am convinced that the Powers of Darkness are spreading around us. We find many examples in the newspapers pointing to it, but our friend Barrington is of another opinion, claiming he can explain all in a much different way.”
He bid farewell to the couple and left, but Wilma placed no faith in his words, regardless of how much she respected him.