Page 123 of The Extraordinary Florence Stoker

Just as the lights were due to be turned on, I rose, bent towards Ellen, and whispered.

‘I know my enemy. Time to defeat him.’

In a swirl of satin and fur, I departed. As if I was never there.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

London, 1927

The harsh breathing swelled the darkness. The walls had come alive and were gulping for air. I was supine, paralysed with fear. The floorboards creaked. A weight lowered onto the bed and, unable to stop the momentum, I rolled towards it, my head exploding with a silent scream.

There was a tearing sound. I waited for the pain to strike.

‘Mrs Stoker?’

I woke with a cry and sat up in bed, snatching the mess of blankets to my throat.

‘Why, Mrs Stoker,’ panted Vera, a fist against her breast. ‘You scared the bejesus out of me.’

The curtains were drawn; silvery light filled the room. I pressed a hand to my pulsating heart and looked about. Apart from me and Vera, the room was empty.

‘Are you alright, Mrs Stoker?’

I tried to smile, but it became a cough. Like a fever-dream, ever since I’d seen that damn film, the phantom that had haunted me for years had returned. This time, as a monster who attacked my sleep, a nightmarish amalgam of the dead and undead.

Vera remained by the bedside, her brow furrowed. ‘Should I fetch the doctor?’

I waved her concerns away. ‘I’m fine.’ I managed a weak smile. ‘Fine. It was just a … bad dream.’

‘Bad? Since when were you made the Mistress of Understatement?’ Vera clucked and, after poking the fire and applying the bellows to it, an action that sent spirals of smuts into the room, began to shake out the shawl I’d carelessly draped across a chair, folding it. ‘Honestly, missus, if yer not crying out in the small hours, you’re waking so tangled in yer bedclothes yer like one of them wrestlers at the carnival.’

I watched her in bemusement. Always so busy, like a bee, flitting from flower to flower. She chattered the entire time, one eye on my face. Leaving the subject of my fraught awakening, she talked about the incessant rain and fog, the price of sausages, the train that had become derailed just outside Victoria Street Station, the omnibus that had overturned, thankfully killing no-one but blocking the road for most of the day. I half-listened, more concerned with ensuring the shadows in my room didn’t detach themselves from the walls. Bram’s count had the ability to shapeshift …

Vera stopped what she was doing. ‘You’ve been having those night terrors an awful lot of late.’

Night terrors. That was an excellent description.

‘My ma always said they’re a sign something’s troubling your conscience.’

‘There’s nothing troubling mine, thank you,’ I said more brusquely than I intended. She meant well, but was too close to the mark.

I remained in bed as she refreshed my washing water and brought in a pot of tea, still talking. As the nightmare faded, her chitter became soothing background music. I drank in the sallow light, relished the everyday noises carrying from outside, the normality of her conversation. Moonbeam barked to be admitted to the room. Vera opened the door, and the dog scurried over, rising on her hind legs and scraping the bed. I scooped her up and burrowed my face in her fur. She smelled of dewdrops, grass and violets. Vera must have taken her for a walk.

Settling the dog on the mattress, I waited until Vera left to cook breakfast, then used the privy, splashed some water on my face and returned to bed. Moonbeam climbed over my legs and stomach like an explorer discovering new territory.

I lay back on the pillows, absent-mindedly stroking the dog, who was busy licking her little paws, and thought about what Vera said. Something’s troubling your conscience. Mine was troubled, and it wasn’t only because Nosferatu was now loose upon the world. Despite the injunction to destroy the film, copies had turned up in America and across the continent. If that wasn’t bad enough, caught up in wanting to claim Dracula for myself and any associated profit as well as credit as a producer, I’d acted rashly. Allowed others to convince me that we could do better than align Bram’s work with Mr Deane’s theatrical production alone, even though he’d finally got the London theatre run he’d been longing for.

The London critics may have been savage about Mr Deane’s interpretation, but the audiences loved it. Was it that Mr Deane had so blatantly exploited audiences’ fears – or rather, their longing to be frightened – that I objected to and made me distance myself from his play? When I heard he’d hired a nurse to remain in the foyer to attend to anyone whose nerves overcame them, I thought it a ridiculous bit of theatre itself. But use the nurse many patrons did, and word escaped. Audience numbers grew. The Evening Standard reported that while other glittering productions costing a fortune to mount wilted and died in the West End, Dracula ‘has gone on drinking blood nightly’. All well and good until it became literal.

When a very disturbed young Russian boy threw himself in front of a train at Victoria Station, allegedly after seeing the play, I simply had to disassociate myself from it. Fortunately, Mr Deane managed to keep any connection out of the press, but I knew.

Mr Bang and a gentleman named Harry Warburton (Mr Deane’s backer) began to pressure me to reconsider my relationship with Mr Deane. In the aftermath of the boy’s death (he was only sixteen – sixteen!), I was amenable to their ideas – including bad ones.

Over a year ago, I’d commissioned a man called Charles Morrell to write a different theatrical version of Dracula. It had turned out to be a disaster, and not merely because it was dreadful. I’d insisted he stay close to Bram’s original ideas, the dialogue in the book, the action too, but it simply hadn’t translated to the stage. Mr Deane had been right all along. Shame raced through my body, the heat resting in my cheeks. What a misadventure that had been. Ill-conceived from the outset.

While I wanted to blame others for my poor judgement, Mr Warburton and Mr Bang first and foremost – I should never have listened to them – the fault was all my own. Caught up in the thrill of being so involved, of being listened to when I insisted scenes missing from Mr Deane’s version be included, I failed to see what critics and audiences did. And I failed to consider Mr Deane’s loyalty to me. The Morrell play closed faster than the lid on Dracula’s coffin.

My vanity project, Phil had called it, and she’d been right. I was forced to eat humble pie. If Dracula was to succeed, I needed Mr Deane.