Page 13 of Lucy Undying

14

Boston, September 25, 2024

Client Transcript

There’s no elegant or easy way to cut off someone’s head.

It’s a gruesomely tedious process. Layers of skin and tendon, to say nothing of the throat—hardly a minor obstacle. And then the spine. Arthur had to change tools at that point, a sheen of panicked sweat dripping down his face so it almost looked like tears.

But he wasn’t crying.

When at last he’d managed to remove Dove’s head, he at least had the decency to retire outside and vomit for a while. The old Dutch pervert stuffed Dove’s mouth with garlic, patted her hand, and sighed in bitter regret. While staring at her breasts, now mutilated by the blade between them.

I trembled, hidden in the darkness. If Raven hadn’t played her trick, that would have been my head laboriously cut off. I had died once; I didn’t want to again. I wanted to exist. I wanted to be real.

The men, satisfied that their holy work was done, left my mausoleum. I sat on the floor to weep for poor Dove. Then I heard the men outside exclaiming. Unable to resist, still angry at what they’d done, I slipped out after them.

They’d found what Dove dropped. The little bundle she had been cradling? It was a toddler. The old Dutch man picked him up, and I followed them at a distance. They never once looked over their shoulders. Men! No danger for them simply by existing in the world.

I wanted to know if the child was alive or dead. It felt crucial. All this time, sheltered by my mausoleum, Dove had been hunting children. My very soul felt oily and contaminated. Imagine my surprise, though, when the men simply left the child on the pavement outside the cemetery.

The sun was rising. Despite all Raven’s warnings, I didn’t care. I crouched by the little bundle. He was pale and held in an unnatural sleep, but he was breathing. Doubtless those brave, stalwart men didn’t want to answer the questions that would be asked should they show up at a hospital with a child in this state. I picked him up and carried him gently, wishing I could provide him with some warmth.

The sun was unpleasant but bearable. Raven made it sound deadly, but it just made me feel slow and vulnerable and weak. Much like I had been in life, so hardly a surprise. But a stark contrast now that I knew what it was to have power.

I found a bakery and stepped inside. It was warm, and I could hear the bakers in the back. The child would be safe. I laid him gently on the floor where he’d be impossible to miss. I wished I could have done more. But he was alive, and Dove was ended, and it would have to be enough.

I couldn’t believe what she had done. I still can’t. For the record, killing children is taboo even among vampires. Distasteful. Both figuratively and literally. Much like wine, blood is best when it’s fully matured.

There’s a theory I have of vampirism, though, having met so many of our kind. What we held in our hearts the moment we died doesn’t change. It never leaves us. We’re not just preserved in body, we’re crystallized in soul and mind. Frozen.

“How could she do that?” I asked Raven a few nights later. I was sitting on top of my mausoleum, looking out over the cemetery, which had seemed so infinite and bold and full of newness. Now it looked small and sad and lifeless.

“I never asked.” Raven wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Our husband didn’t mind her peculiar diet, so it was never a problem. She always was a bit off, though. When she came to us, she had just lost her only child and was more than half mad.”

Dove had died at the height of her despair as a grieving mother. I wondered later if that was what crystallized in her. If she froze at a moment of such agony that all she could do was inflict it on others. If she was compelled to mete out the same trauma, the same loss, to every mother she could. A twisted way of looking for reflections to understand her grief.

Raven had already moved on, even though they’d been together for more than a hundred years. “Why he picked her, I’ll never understand. But he’ll like you. You’ll hold his interest. You’re much prettier. We’ll be so happy together, once he comes back to us!” There was a frantic edge to her voice as she scanned the borders of the cemetery.

I was watching for someone, too. My four would-be murderers never came back to memorialize or mourn me. Not once. But they weren’t who I was waiting for anyway. I had no use for my fiancé, the doctor, the cowboy, and the old Dutch man.

That sounds like the setup for a joke! A lord, a doctor, a cowboy, and an old Dutch pervert walk into a mausoleum. “Hey, you cut the line,” the vampire bouncer says.

“We’re trying to get ahead,” my fiancé answers.

Get it? A head? Okay, not my best punch line. The other I thought of was very dirty, and I didn’t want to shock you. I can see you’re still upset about Dove.

Anyhow, those four men’s brutal efficiency in ending what they thought was my afterlife had defeated me in a way. Raven had been right: I could never go home. I had no home, not anymore. There was no one who would see me as a miracle instead of an abomination. At least not among the men. And I didn’t know how to find Mina. I wandered London day and night, trying to feel out old familiar paths even though nothing looked the same to my changed eyes. Eventually, I found the flat where she’d lived. It was empty. I’d forgotten—she’d married.

But I remembered something else then, walking those streets, looking for Mina. I remembered why I’d died.

I desperately needed to find Dracula, too. To make certain that my death had been worth it. That I really had taken Mina’s place, and that she was safe. I needed Mina or I needed Dracula, and somehow finding Dracula felt less threatening. I already knew what he was, and he already knew what I was—exactly what he’d made me.

But if I found Mina and she rejected me? If she recoiled, or was scared, or wanted me ended? It would have broken me. Shattered my crystallized heart forever.

Mina and Dracula. Dracula and Mina. In a way, they’re the poles of my existence. The axis I spin on. My death, and my life. And me in between, turning and turning and never getting anywhere.

I wanted to find Dracula for another reason, too. I had so many questions I couldn’t even put into words. Sometimes it felt as though I were one giant question, flinging myself in desperation at an uncaring universe.

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