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They swirled around him, underneath and beside him, trailing celestial speckles of moonlight as they camouflaged themselves in the black backdrop of stars. Even out of sight, Jonathan knew they were there, and each creeping beast and broken branch in the forest seemed to echo with their metallic laughter.
He knew that it had been more than one day since he'd awoken, breathless and bleeding amongst the brambles, a halo of gold coins glinting across the moss that cradled him - yet, in all the uncounted courses of the sun since, he had not slept. He couldn't while they were near. Instead, he had walked, relentlessly keeping the rising moon at his back as he moved on, endlessly marching to the west, hoping with each hazy nightfall that they, with their hard eyes, their shining teeth, their hungry lips... that they had finally failed to follow.
That failure never came. They stood close by for all he did not see them, at least not as the were: full-formed flesh both pale and red by turns, skin glowing like the blush on an unripe fruit. They knew how to creep, how to slither and hide in the darkness, and from there they knew how to pocket themselves in the gaps which lay inbetween all things his eyes could reckon. It was some perverse game they played - to harry and hunt him when he had no ground to run to, forever stopping short of ending the chase. He assumed as much in any event. They could have surely taken him if they'd wished it. In the endless push forward, he had lost the one sign they feared, dropped somewhere forgotten along the path like so many other articles his pockets wouldn't hold. His cross, his gold, his diary... all gone missing as his numb form marched ahead, half-aware of itself, knowing that with each fall of the sun he would hear them; catch shadowy trails of their floating hair in the corners of his vision; feel them, even, pulsing and writhing in the black spaces to which he dared not look back. At times he swore that they even touched him, lighting on his flesh in the shape of aerial dust that they might bite and nibble at the red crisscrosses the thorns and branches had traced across his skin.
In the daylight, of course, they lay dormant and, it was then, if he must, that he might pause. As the sky brightened, he could take a few moments to lean on the fallen piece of aspen he used as a walking stick and close his eyes. His body felt hollow when it came to rest, as the stillness afforded him an opportunity to fully appreciate the winnowing effects of hunger and fatigue. Even then, in the darkness that lived beneath his own eyelids, the thought of them still remained, and he would see once again the hard white outlines of their faces floating over him, lips moving as if to speak once more his name: "Jonathan... Jonathan... Jonathan..."
It was a reminder that he had but a passing respite. In this savage forest, fretted with silver rivers and gloomy promontories, he knew they remained still in wait. He was in their domain, and England, God, and Mina were all far away.
It was in the daylight, of course, that he could remember himself a little. The eternally overcast sky hung over him, brightly cracked with grey as he trudged onward. There was a surety in the sun, a quiet amidst the droning swell of the wilds that dimmed the reality of their presence. His footfalls fell detachedly on the earth while his mind wandered back to the grey towers of Exeter Cathedral, looming large over him as he covertly waited with slowed steps each evening, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Hartwood Finishing School's assistant schoolmistress as she glided down the cobblestone roads between civilization and the house on the hill. They'd met before, of course, both grubby orphans tethered to different keepers, seeing each other now and again on marketdays and those erratic sabbaths when his second father felt sufficient piety to subject him to services.
Tokens. He'd lost any and all that mattered for the task at hand, but that was how everything had begun, hadn't it? He'd proposed to her the first time with a broken link of a carter's chain, rescued from the mud and polished as best a boy of eight years and a torn handkerchief could. She'd been too much a lady even then to accept, telling him with a half-smile that she wasn't out yet and likely never would be. He'd kept it though, by accident if not by fate, and found it in a pasteboard box of rubbish and old conkers years later, even after he'd scraped together the money to buy a proper ring with a proper stone.
There was none of that now. He could think back to happier times but not his happiest, for to hold that in his mind was to know the despair of its loss. There was no cathedral – no ring – no bells to give voice to the swell of his heart as she said her soft words of worried acceptance. The trees bent around him, disfigured as though the air of this strange land itself crushed them downward, their shapes and forms standing haglike over him in ways reminiscent of those things not yet visible.
He must have slept at some point, but could not remember doing so, just as he could not remember the passing of days between himself and the castle. He could well have been dreaming the whole development, for he saw them, and though they had no rhyme nor reason by which they revealed themselves, he could not muster surprise when they stepped out from the shadows. Both fair and dark, they shaped themselves before his eyes, greeting him gaily with arms entwining as they reached out to touch him with their slender long-nailed hands. Women and not women. Fiends from the pit. Their hair sailed behind them like cast aside veils as they beckoned. "You are weary... lay down your head and rest. Lay down and we shall tend to you."
It was dark or he dreamt it was, and it seemed a profanity to acknowledge them when he could focus his gaze on the shadows. Still, temptation pressed him, to gaze upon their shroud-wrapped forms and accept their hospitality, if only with his eyes. A sluggish “no” fell from his lips as he turned back from where they gathered, only to find them arrayed behind him all the same: ruddy lips and gloating eyes waiting for him as they had before.
In the stillness of his own despair, he waited. They approached. With no other avenue of escape, he closed his eyes as he had when they'd first met, refusing them his glances as he stood in dumb anticipation of whatever was to come. He felt their hands on him, cold as clay as they griped themselves over his forehead, arching his neck forward. As if to prolong the agony of their transaction, they did nothing else, and Jonathan felt himself sink into the stupor of his own exhaustion, waiting for "kisses" that never came.
He must have slept, now if not before, for he found himself tumbled in the rot of leaves, his throat aching and his clothing in further disarray than he had recalled. The white glare of daylight again hung over him, and he found the strength to rise half-way, such that he could see the maze of hills and tree-spires which still trailed in every direction. He shook as he imagined what had happened while he slept, and the taste of something metallic lay strong on his lips: like the copperiness of blood but sweeter, almost cloying so, as though it were a nauseous medicine sombody had over-sugared in the hope of rendering it palatable. He stumbled when he tried to walk, and the first fall was a bad one, knocking the wind from him anew as he failed to catch himself.
"Just finish it, you cursed things," he mouthed with the barest whisper, "Finish it and let me rest."
There was no response save for the trill and hum of the birds and Jonathan regretted his words before the last of them had left his mouth. Somewhere, hidden away from the images of this accursed land, remained the form of the dark, soft-eyed woman seeing him off at St. Katherine's wharf, and even now, hemmed in and hopeless as he was, it seemed like a betrayal to die a moment sooner than he possibly could help. There was a terror in thinking back to her: her fingers crisply folding whatever consoling missive Peter would send if any word of his fate should be received. She would be poised and collected as a woman always ready to be disappointed must be. Her infernal stoicism, her resilience - more heart-rending than tears or spectacle. Jonathan could not go into the darkness with that on his conscience, leaving further burdens for a woman resolved never to cry on her own account.
His muscles ached anew with the stiffness brought about by rest, and casting a hand round for his dropped aspen branch, he found his footing. The world warped around him once more as he stumbled toward where he thought Klausenburg must lie.
Throughout both his sleeplessness and those gaps he reckoned must be sleep, they did not relent. He did not expect them to. They grew bolder in their overtures, their bodies manifest before him as he tried to claw his way through the night terrain. Siren-like they called to him, with open arms and trailing raiments, the hems of their dresses brushing across him as they gamboled and danced in the glade. "Stay here and rest, Jonathan. Sleep here and let us tend you." Their jewel red mouths intoned the same chaunts and invocations, showing flashes of the white teeth with each syllable they crooned. He no longer tried to run. He certainly hadn't the power to fight, weary and unarmed as he was. He did only his utmost to move on, to push westward, reckoning that if they had grown so bold and not yet struck, there was little else to be done. Nightly, they floated fey-wise around him as he marched, and the heat of his rag-clad flesh felt like fire in the midst of their cool breath as they sang. He tried, and failed, to avert his eyes. Each evening they seemed to draw closer, and again and again his mind touched upon the same wild unspoken desire. He longed to touch their cold white arms and feel the kiss of their icy skin against his burning body... longed, but did not.
Mina. The spoken word had replaced the crucifix he'd lost. Her name, if it was no token against them, was a token for himself, and he was able in those dark moments of the night to press ahead until sunrise relieved him from their spell.
In the white stretches of day, it dawned slowly on him that he must be lost. He had wandered for so long and yet found no sign of habitation: no roads, no peasants huts, no fields or orchards. For all his attempts to follow the course of the sun and moon, he had not even seen an end to the mountains. "Perhaps it is because this is his land," he thought aloud to the unrelenting wild, as though the villain could lock and bar his county as easily as his doors. It was a disheartening idea, and was made all the more woeful by the fact that he was either mad enough or in such toils that it seemed within the realm of possibility.
Jonathan's steps seemed to slow after this realization. There had always been something oppressive in the air, but now, knowing that he was lost, it grew tangible, as though something physically held him back from his object of escape. He wondered if it had always been thus, or if fear was simply retarding his progress. His memories, in the meantime, seemed to pour from his skull and flood the scenery. The dust lined floors of the library sprawled their way across the root strewn ground, bringing with it the scent of old books and ink. He felt again the frustration of crabbed fingers and endless lists of provisions and addenda: the minutiae of the 1882 Property Act, the changes the Irish anticipated after Ashborne... dull as the dirt underneath him, all of it. A lump formed again in his throat he heard those clumsy recitations play out in his mind, words still thickened by the remnants of his Devon accent, slurring together as surely as his steps.
The night came without warning, weaving itself into the patchy fabric of the half-world he inhabited. As soon as the slender moon rose at his back, he saw his watchers once more, the fraying fabric of their sleeves skirting his body as they danced, hands joined, in a circle around him. “Sleep this night and know rest,” they hissed, their dark eyes glittering with animal intensity akin to the St. George's Eve wolves. “There is no need for worry or toil here.”
He did not know if it was in defiance or surrender that he fell forward, but their touch lay heavy on him and he felt the stupor of sleep weigh him down.
Once again, Jonathan did not know when or to what he had awakened, although the sky overhead was backlit by the sun. The protection afforded him by the day, however, was small solace, for struggle as he might, he could no longer lift himself to his feet. It was as if a great weight lay on his chest, and he could do naught but lie beneath it unmoving, eyes fixed on the firmament as his brain uselessly tried to command his body to rise.
It was small comfort that he had heard accounts of such things: the night hag, the demon lover... He could not remember if the thin brown volume he'd consulted at the British Museum had mentioned them as native to this region, but the Wallachs held every other superstition dear, and he'd found that more than one of them contained a seed of truth. In any event, it did not do to linger long now on thoughts of the days before. He knew where it would end. Recollections came unbidden. The reading room in London led inextricably to the crisp white letter on Hawkins' desk that had sent him there, and from there everything was Exeter and after that, Mina – Mina to whom he could no longer even crawl.
He ought know better than to think back to fairy stories and folk legends, anyhow. The thing... things... which prevented him from rising were real, and even unseen, he knew their touch all too well. His failing body burned as they pressed him, held him, squeezed the air from his lungs. Even in the stark and purifying light of day, he swore he could hear their sibilant laughter as they worked, kneading the last gasps of life from his lips, waiting for the twilight to give them full reign.
Knowing the futility of the action, Jonathan tried to scream, and then tried to whisper. As the expanse of clouds faded to a blackening grey, he tried merely to close his eyes. Nothing availed him, until the pale faces of his captors floated over him triumphant, and he found in himself the strength to cry a single word as darkness descended.
“Mina!”
The young man began to cry the name anew as Jola stood over him, unsure again as to what she ought do while waiting for the sister to take things in hand. The Englishman was always so even-tempered by daylight, such that it became all the more frightening to see the setting sun transform him so. The tired novice nevertheless did all she could to maintain a stoic demeanor, knowing she wasn't the first to be afraid of the man as her mind mumbled bits and and snatches of her vows back at her, exhorting her to the sort of compassion the vocation required. It was still with a timid hand that she tried to wet his fever-wracked face with the compress, cringing in sympathy as he recoiled at her cold touch.
“You are safe,” she tried to say soothingly in what stilted English she had. “You need rest..."
His eyes widened, fixing on her face. It was again as if he had never seen her before, although admittedly she was never quiet certain he'd ever seen her to begin with. Through all the quiet of each day, he barely seemed to acknowledge her, as though his thoughts were someplace very far away from Buda. With nightfall, the young man fell into such paroxysms of terror that he seemed to regard her and any other sister that tended him as though they were his mortal enemies. Jola wished she knew what it was that frightened him so, for while he never seemed to become truly violent, his fits were of such an intensity that she could imagine him committing some accidental outrage in the midst of them.
"Mina..." he croaked again, shivering as the clack of footsteps echoed down the hospital's hall. In a few minutes she heard Sister Agatha's quick rap on the door, announcing that she was about to enter.
"He's much the same, sister," Jola tried to explain in as calm and responsible a tone as she could muster. "He still doesn't seem to know where he is... and he keeps repeating...”
“Mina, yes?” The superior crossed herself as she glided to the man's side, her inexpressive features falling upon the patient as he arched back his head and groaned.
"He speaks of little else, and when he does...” Jola bowed her head as she trailed off.
"Words better kept between him and God," Agatha said gravely. She took a seat near the window, taking a moment to draw the thin fraying curtain across the view of the illuminated cityscape below.
"May I... Ought I go?" Jola asked.
Sister Agatha arched her head as if she were about to nod when suddenly the man on the bed lurched forward, his pale hand grasping at Jola's sleeve. The novice gave a half-shout and moved her own hand defensively to her face, but within seconds she felt his grip on her loosen, as if the strength of the stranger's arm had melted to water in the instant it had touched her.
Agatha craned herself over the bedridden man cautiously, glancing pointedly a few times toward the door as if to hurry Jola toward it. To her surprise she saw that the gentleman was weeping. With the back of her hand she felt the skin of his brow and found it still hot to the touch, but something in his stunned expression had altered drastically. His eyes turned to her pleadingly, bearing none of the fear which had shaped his countenance for so many long weeks.
“Get the doctor,” she said firmly as Jola walked briskly from the room, “I think the fever is breaking.”
Jonathan kept waiting for them to strike, for their hard teeth and taloned hands to tear him asunder. They were close now, close enough that he did not see how they could get much closer without intersecting. Some stoical part of him considered that he ought prepare himself for the end so inevitably at hand, but as near as death was, he could not bear to embrace it.
The grip by which they held him broke suddenly, as he reached a formerly leaden hand up toward the closest of them, hoping to push her away if only for a matter of seconds. To his astonishment, the image before him passed away under his fingers, dissipating like a dull fog as he touched it. Overhead, he saw the same white sky under which he had lain before, cracked like flaking plaster and illuminated by a yellow flickering light that was not the sun.
He turned, and saw the the white-hard face of another specter fade into a backlit figure, wrapped in thick set cloth and gazing at him with grey-lashed eyes.
Though his understanding was still wanting, he did not recoil when it reached forward to touch him.