It was just a quarter before twelve o'clock when we got into the
churchyard over the low wall. The night was dark, with occasional
gleams of moonlight between the rents of the heavy clouds that scudded
across the sky. We all kept somehow close together, with Van Helsing
slightly in front as he led the way. When we had come close to the
tomb I looked well at Arthur, for I feared that the proximity to a
place laden with so sorrowful a memory would upset him; but he bore
himself well. I took it that the very mystery of the proceeding was in
some way a counteractant to his grief. The Professor unlocked the
door, and seeing a natural hesitation amongst us for various
reasons, solved the difficulty by entering first himself. The rest
of us followed, and he closed the door. He then lit a dark lantern and
pointed to the coffin. Arthur stepped forward hesitatingly; Van
Helsing said to me:-
  "You were with me here yesterday. Was the body of Miss Lucy in
that coffin?"
  "It was." The Professor turned to the rest saying:-
  "You hear; and yet there is no one who does not believe with me." He
took his screwdriver and again took off the lid of the coffin.
Arthur looked on, very pale but silent; when the lid was removed he
stepped forward. He evidently did not know that there was a leaden
coffin, or, at any rate, had not thought of it. When he saw the rent
in the lead, the blood rushed to his face for an instant, but as
quickly fell away again, so that he remained of a ghastly whiteness;
he was still silent. Van Helsing forced back the leaden flange, and we
all looked in and recoiled.
  The coffin was empty!
  For several minutes no one spoke a word. The silence was broken by
Quincey Morris:-
  "Professor, I answered for you. Your word is all I want. I
wouldn't ask such a thing ordinarily- I wouldn't so dishonour you as
to imply a doubt; but this is a mystery that goes beyond any honour or
dishonour. Is this your doing?"
  "I swear to you by all that I hold sacred that I have not removed
nor touched her. What happened was this: Two nights ago my friend
Seward and I came here- with good purpose, believe me. I opened that
coffin, which was then sealed up, and we found it, as now empty. We
then waited, and saw something white come through the trees. The
next day we came here in day-time, and she lay there. Did she not,
friend John?"
  "Yes."
  "That night we were just in time. One more so small child was
missing, and we find it, thank God, unharmed amongst the graves.
Yesterday I came here before sundown, for at sundown the Un-Dead can
move. I waited here all the night till the sun rose, but I saw
nothing. It was most probable that it was because I had laid over
the clamps of those doors garlic, which the Un-Dead cannot bear, and
other things which they shun. Last night there was no exodus, so
to-night before the sundown I took away my garlic and other things.
And so it is we find this coffin empty. But bear with me. So far there
is much that is strange. Wait you with me outside, unseen and unheard,
and things much stranger are yet to be. So"- here he shut the dark
slide of his lantern- "now to the outside." He opened the door, and we
filed out, he coming last and locking the door behind him.
  Oh! but it seemed fresh and pure in the night air after the terror
of that vault. How sweet it was to see the clouds race by, and the
passing gleams of the moonlight between the scudding clouds crossing
and passing- like the gladness and sorrow of a man's life; how sweet
it was to breathe the fresh air, that had no taint of death and decay;
how humanising to see the red lighting of the sky beyond the hill, and
to hear far away the muffled roar that marks the life of a great city.
Each in his own way was solemn and overcome. Arthur was silent, and
was, I could see, striving to grasp the purpose and the inner
meaning of the mystery. I was myself tolerably patient, and half
inclined again to throw aside doubt and to accept Van Helsing's
conclusions. Quincey Morris was phlegmatic in the way of a man who
accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery,
with hazard of all he has to stake. Not being able to smoke, he cut
himself a good-sized plug of tobacco and began to chew. As to Van
Helsing, he was employed in a definite way. First he took from his bag
a mass of what looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was
carefully rolled up in a white napkin; next he took out a
double-handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or putty. He crumbled
the wafer up fine and worked it into the mass between his hands.
This he then took, and rolling it into thin strips, began to lay
them into the crevices between the door and its setting in the tomb. I
was somewhat puzzled at this, and being close, asked him what it was
that he was doing. Arthur and Quincey drew near also, as they too were
curious. He answered:-
  "I am closing the tomb, so that the Un-Dead may not enter."
  "And is that stuff you have put there going to do it?" asked
Quincey. "Great Scott! Is this a game?"
  "It is."
  "What is that which you are using?" This time the question was by
Arthur. Van Helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered:-
  "The Host. I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an Indulgence." It
was an answer that appalled the most sceptical of us, and we felt
individually that in the presence of such earnest purpose as the
Professor's, a purpose which could thus use the to him most sacred
of things, it was impossible to distrust. In respectful silence we
took the places assigned to us close round the tomb, but hidden from
the sight of any one approaching. I pitied the others, especially
Arthur. I had myself been apprenticed by my former visits to this
watching horror; and yet I, who had up to an hour ago repudiated the
proofs, felt my heart sink within me. Never did tombs look so
ghastly white; never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the
embodiment of funeral gloom; never did tree or grass wave or rustle so
ominously; never did bough creak so mysteriously; and never did the
far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.
  There was a long spell of silence, a big, aching void, and then from
the Professor a keen "S-s-s-s!" He pointed; and far down the avenue of
yews we saw a white figure advance- a dim white figure, which held
something dark at its breast. The figure stopped, and at the moment
a ray of moonlight fell upon the masses of driving clouds and showed
in startling prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the
cerements of the grave. We could not see the face, for it was bent
down over what we saw to be a fair-haired child. There was a pause and
a sharp little cry, such as a child gives in sleep, or a dog as it
lies before the fire and dreams. We were starting forward, but the
Professor's warning hand, seen by us as he stood behind a yew-tree,
kept us back; and then as we looked the white figure moved forwards
again. It was now near enough for us to see clearly, and the moonlight
still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp
of Arthur, as we recognised the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy
Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine,
heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. Van
Helsing stepped out, and, obedient to his gesture, we all advanced
too; the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb.
Van Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide; by the concentrated
light that fell on Lucy's face we could see that the lips were crimson
with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and
stained the purity of her lawn death-robe.
  We shuddered with horror. I could see by the tremulous light that
even Van Helsing's iron nerve had failed. Arthur was next to me, and
if I had not seized his arm and held him up, he would have fallen.
  When Lucy- I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it
bore her shape- saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a
cat gives when taken unawares; then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy's
eyes in form and colour; but Lucy's eyes unclean and full of
hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment
the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing; had she then
to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight. As she looked,
her eyes blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a
voluptuous smile. Oh, God, how it made me shudder to see it! With a
careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the
child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast,
growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. The child gave a sharp
cry, and lay there moaning. There was a cold-bloodedness in the act
which wrung a groan from Arthur; when she advanced to him with
outstreched arms and a wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in
his hands.
  She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous
grace, said:-
  "Come to me Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are
hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband,
come!"
  There was something diabolically sweet in her tones- something of
the tingling of glass when struck- which rang through the brains
even of us who heard the words addressed to another. As for Arthur, he
seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide
his arms. She was leaping for them, when Van Helsing sprang forward
and held between them his little golden crucifix. She recoiled from
it, and, with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him
as if to enter the tomb.
  When within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped as if
arrested by some irresistible force. Then she turned, and her face was
shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now
no quiver from Van Helsing's iron nerves. Never did I see such baffled
malice on a face; and never, I trust, shall such ever be seen again by
mortal eyes. The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to
throw out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the
folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the
lovely, blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the
passion masks of the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant
death- if looks could kill- we saw it at that moment.
  And so for full half a minute, which seemed an eternity, she
remained between the lifted crucifix and the sacred closing of her
means of entry: Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Arthur:-
  "Answer me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?"
  Arthur threw himself on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, as
he answered:-
  "Do as you will, friend; do as you will. There can be no horror like
this ever any more;" and he groaned in spirit. Quincey and I
simultaneously moved towards him, and took his arms. We could hear the
click of the closing lantern as Van Helsing held it down; coming close
to the tomb, he began to remove from the chinks some of the sacred
emblem which he had placed there. We all looked on in horrified
amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal
body as real at that moment as our own, pass in through the interstice
where scarce a knife-blade could have gone. We all felt a glad sense
of relief when we saw the Professor calmly restoring the strings of
putty to the edges of the door.
  When this was done, he lifted the child and said:
  "Come now, my friends; we can do no more till to-morrow. There is
a funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that.
The friends of the dead will all be gone by two, and when the sexton
lock the gate we shall remain. Then there is more to do; but not
like this of to-night. As for this little one, he is not much harm,
and by to-morrow night he shall be well. We shall leave him where
the police will find him, as on the other night; and then to home."
Coming close to Arthur, he said:-
  "My friend Arthur, you have had sore trial; but after, when you will
look back, you will see how it was necessary. You are now in the
bitter waters, my child. By this time tomorrow you will, please God,
have passed them, and have drunk of the sweet waters; so do not
mourn overmuch. Till then I shall not ask you to forgive me."
  Arthur and Quincey came home with me, and we tried to cheer each
other on the way. We had left the child in safety, and were tired;
so we all slept with more or less reality of sleep.

  29 September, night.- A little before twelve o'clock we three-
Arthur, Quincey Morris, and myself- called for the Professor. It was
odd to notice that by common consent we had all put on black
clothes. Of course, Arthur wore black, for he was in deep mourning,
but the rest of us wore it by instinct. We got to the churchyard by
half-past one, and strolled about, keeping out of official
observation, so that when the gravediggers had completed their task
and the sexton, under the belief that every one had gone, had locked
the gate, we had the place all to ourselves. Van Helsing, instead of
his little black bag, had with him a long leather one, something
like a cricketing bag; it was manifestly of fair weight.
  When we were alone and had heard the last of the footsteps die out
up the road, we silently, and as if by ordered intention, followed the
Professor to the tomb. He unlocked the door, and we entered, closing
it behind us. Then he took from his bag the lantern, which he lit, and
also two wax candles, which, when lighted, he stuck, by melting
their own ends, on other coffins, so that they might give light
sufficient to work by. When he again lifted the lid off Lucy's
coffin we all looked- Arthur trembling like an aspen- and saw that the
body lay there in all its death-beauty. But there was no love in my
own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken
Lucy's shape without her soul. I could see even Arthur's face grow
hard as he looked. Presently he said to Van Helsing:-
  "Is this really Lucy's body, or only a demon in her shape?"
  "It is her body, and yet not it. But wait a while, and you shall see
her as she was, and is."
  She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there; the pointed
teeth, the bloodstained, voluptuous mouth- which it made one shudder
to see- the whole carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a
devilish mockery of Lucy's sweet purity. Van Helsing, with his usual
methodicalness, began taking the various contents from his bag and
placing them ready for use. First he took out a soldering iron and
some plumbing solder, and then a small oil-lamp, which gave out,
when lit in a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at fierce heat with
a blue flame; then his operating knives, which he placed to hand;
and last a round wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches
thick and about three feet long. One end of it was hardened by
charring in the fire, and was sharpened to a fine point. With this
stake came a heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the
coal-cellar for breaking the lumps. To me, a doctor's preparations for
work of any kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect of
these things on both Arthur and Quincey was to cause them a sort of
consternation. They both, however, kept their courage, and remained
silent and quiet.
  When all was ready, Van Helsing said:-
  "Before we do anything, let me tell you this; it is out of the
lore and experience of the ancients and of all those who have
studied the powers of the Un-Dead. When they become such, there
comes with the change the curse of immortality; they cannot die, but
must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the
evils of the world; for all that die from the preying of the Un-Dead
become themselves Un-Dead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle
goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in
the water. Friend Arthur, if you had met that kiss which you know of
before poor Lucy die; or again, last night when you open your arms
to her, you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu,
as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would all time make more of
those Un-Deads that so have fill us with horror. The career of this so
unhappy dear lady is but just begun. Those children whose blood she
suck are not as yet so much the worse; but if she live on, Un-Dead,
more and more they lose their blood and by her power over them they
come to her; and so she draw their blood with that so wicked mouth.
But if she die in truth, then all cease; the tiny wounds of the
throats disappear, and they go back to their plays unknowing ever of
what has been. But of the most blessed of all, when this now Un-Dead
be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we
love shall again be free. Instead of working wickedness by night and
growing more debased in the assimilation of it by day, she shall
take her place with the other Angels. So that, my friend, it will be a
blessed hand for her that shall strike the blow that sets her free. To
this I am willing; but is there none amongst us who has a better
right? Will it be no joy to think of hereafter in the silence of the
night when sleep is not: 'It was my hand that sent her to the stars;
it was the hand of him that loved her best; the hand that of all she
would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose?' Tell me if
there be such a one amongst us?"
  We all looked at Arthur. He saw, too, what we all did, the
infinite kindness which suggested that his should be the hand which
would restore Lucy to us as a holy, and not an unholy, memory; he
stepped forward and said bravely, though his hand trembled, and his
face was as pale as snow:-
  "My true friend, from the bottom of my broken heart I thank you.
Tell me what I am to do, and I shall not falter!" Van Helsing laid a
hand on his shoulder, and said:-
  "Brave lad! A moment's courage, and it is done. This stake must be
driven through her. It will be a fearful ordeal- be not deceived in
that- but it will be only a short time, and you will then rejoice more
than your pain was great; from this grim tomb you will emerge as
though you tread on air. But you must not falter when once you have
begun. Only think that we, your true friends, are round you, and
that we pray for you all the time."
  "Go on," said Arthur hoarsely. "Tell me what I am to do."
  "Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place the point over
the heart, and the hammer in your right. Then when we begin our prayer
for the dead- I shall read him, I have here the book, and the others
shall follow- strike in God's name, that so all may be well with the
dead that we love and that the Un-Dead pass away."
  Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set
on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing
opened his missal and began to read, and Quincey and I followed as
well as we could. Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I
looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with
all his might.
  The Thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling
screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and
twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together
till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam.
But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his
untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the
mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled
and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to
shine through it; the sight of it gave us courage, so that our
voices seemed to ring through the little vault.
  And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the
teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still.
The terrible task was over.
  The hammer fell from Arthur's hand. He reeled and would have
fallen had we not caught him. The great drops of sweat sprang from his
forehead, and his breath came in broken gasps. It had indeed been an
awful strain on him; and had he not been forced to his task by more
than human considerations he could never have gone through with it.
For a few minutes we were so taken up with him that we did not look
towards the coffin. When we did, however, a murmur of startled
surprise ran from one to the other of us, We gazed so eagerly that
Arthur rose, for he had been seated on the ground, and came and looked
too; and then a glad, strange light broke over his face and
dispelled altogether the gloom of horror that lay upon it.
  There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so
dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded
as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen
her in her life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity.
True that there were there, as we had seen them in life, the traces of
care and pain and waste; but these were all dear to us, for they
marked her truth to what we knew. One and all we felt that the holy
calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only
an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign forever.
  Van Helsing came and laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder, and said to
him:-
  "And now, Arthur, my friend, dear lad, am I not forgiven?"
  The reaction of the terrible strain came as he took the old man's
hand in his, and raising it to his lips, pressed it, and said:-
  "Forgiven! God bless you that you have given my dear one her soul
again, and me peace." He put his hands on the Professor's shoulder,
and laying his head on his breast, cried for a while silently,
whilst we stood unmoving. When he raised his head Van Helsing said
to him:-
  "And now, my child, you may kiss her. Kiss her dead lips if you
will, as she would have you to, if for her to choose. For she is not a
grinning devil now- not any more a foul Thing for all eternity. No
longer she is the devil's Un-Dead. She is God's true dead, whose
soul is with Him!"
  Arthur bent and kissed her, and then we sent him and Quincey out
of the tomb; the Professor and I sawed the top off the stake,
leaving the point of it in the body. Then we cut off the head and
filled the mouth with garlic. We soldered up the leaden coffin,
screwed on the coffin-lid, and gathering up our belongings, came away.
When the Professor locked the door he gave the key to Arthur.
  Outside the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the birds sang, and it
seemed as if all nature were tuned to a different pitch. There was
gladness and mirth and peace everywhere, for we were at rest ourselves
on one account, and we were glad, though it was with a tempered joy.
  Before we moved away Van Helsing said:-
  "Now, my friends, one step of our work is done, one the most
harrowing to ourselves. But there remains a greater task: to find
out the author of all this our sorrow and to stamp him out. I have
clues which we can follow; but it is a long task, and a difficult, and
there is danger in it, and pain. Shall you not all help me? We have
learned to believe, all of us- is it not so? And since so, do we not
see our duty? Yes! And do we not promise to go on to the better end?"
  Each in turn, we took his hand, and the promise was made. Then
said the Professor as we moved off:-
  "Two nights hence you shall meet with me and dine together at
seven of the clock with friend John. I shall entreat two others, two
that you know not as yet; and I shall be ready to all our work show
and our plans unfold. Friend John, you come with me home, for I have
much to consult about, and you can help me. To-night I leave for
Amsterdam, but shall return to-morrow night. And then begins our great
quest. But first I shall have much to say, so that you may know what
is to do and to dread. Then our promise shall be made to each other
anew; for there is a terrible task before us, and once our feet are on
the ploughshare, we must not draw back."
 

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