Give Me My Child...A Short Story related to Dracula

[Gwaimir Windgem]

If you've read Dracula, you may remember, at one point Jonathan speaks of him bringing a child to the castle, and the mother appearing at a later time, seeking her baby. This is about that.



Where has he gone!
The words raced through the mind of the agonizing woman as she wildly dashed through the untamed forest. She would have screamed them out loud, but the effort of her sprinting pace left barely enough air to exhale. Her hair flew about tempestuously as she flung constant glances to the left and to the right, searching for some trace of the trail of the monster she was desperately trying to follow. No sign, no footprint, no broken twig, no bent blade of grass betrayed the passage of the fiend. She opened her mouth in a silent cry of agony, but still she had no air with which to wail. She sprang across a brook that bubbled in a chillingly cheerful tone, and caught her foot in a grasping root of some greedy tree. She fell to the ground, her own strong run hurling her like a rock against the hard forest floor.

He had come through the town of Bistritz almost a month ago, by the great steam-powered train. She knew this, not because she had seen him, or not even because she lived in that town, but because the word of the strange foreigner had reached even the tiny village where she lived. The word of the gossip (which was of course the most reliable source of news for rustics such as she was) told that he had come from far, far away, wearing the clothes of some bizarre distant land, and speaking a very strange form of German. He had stayed, it was told, at the Golden Krone Hotel, a house which some might consider to be a fine example of the olden ways of the people. Others might wonder why the proprietor chose to make such a silly mimicry of the simple ways of the peasantry in such an urban place as Bistritz; for the town was no country hamlet, but an elegant old place rich in history, and in the strange, violent history which many found so much more interesting than the happenings in a tiny rural community. Yet not for many years had this land seen so strange a traveler as he. He had stayed in the Golden Krone for one night only, and had mysteriously gone off late the evening after. Rumours were whispered that he had gone to the home of that ancient and terrible demon whose name struck horrible fear in the hearts of all who knew of him, all whom the enlightened Western cultures would call superstitious. They said he went to visit the devil’s lair, and she doubted it not.

She sprang up again, her senses regained, shaking her head clear of the effects of her fall. Again, she glanced about wildly, trying to see where he had gone. Again, she took off deeper into the forest, filled with a terrible passion, a terrible purpose, a terrible fear.
Where has he gone!
The trees crowded around her closely, cutting off nearly all of what little light was cast by moon and star, as she thrust herself deeper into the forest. Forging on through the thick trees and thicker undergrowth, her thin body slipped through the densest parts of the wood, until at last the black trunks began to relent, and to give her more room. She ran on unhindered, running far in the night; but she was not a strong woman, and could not run forever. The strain on her heart and the strain on her body both wore her down to the point of exhaustion. She burst into a clearing of the forest, and staggered to the top of a mound in the clearing. There, she could run no more, and fell to her knees, sobbing for air, sobbing for sorrow.
“O God, where is my girl!”

She had worked long and hard that day, for her life was a hard but good one. The garden needed weeding badly, and caterpillars had begun to infest it, as well. From dawn till noon, she laboured and toiled, rooting out the greedy weeds, and routing the hungry maggots. She stopped only briefly, a half an hour for lunch, and then she went back to work uprooting with a tinge of regret the wild beauties which stole her vegetable’s soil. When the sun went down, she took up her needle, worked at sewing a fine blanket so her child could be warm. Winter was not near, but it was always good to be ready. But it was then that her daughter came to her. The tiny child with the golden locks pleaded with her Momma. The moon was so big and beautiful! Couldn’t they go walking, and see what the lake looked like under the moon? But her mother was busy, making a blanket so she would be warm in winter; and besides, it could be dangerous out at night. But the child said that winter was far, and the moon was much nearer. Looking out the still open door, the woman saw the white orb, and the silver light on the trees, and she set down the quilt and threw her cloak about her shoulders. After all, the wolves were only hungry in the winter.
Towards the lake they walked the peaceful walk of one who has all the time in the world. The child ran ahead of her mother, exclaiming over each little flower she had not seen before, and intently observing the passage of insects; but her mother warned her to watch out for snakes. The path bent around a hill, and the tiny girl ran around it, for she was sure she had seen some new blossom. But a tiny shriek drifted around the hill she had gone, quickly muffled. Her mother sprang into a sprint, calling out the name of the golden-locked girl. As she turned round the hill, she only caught a glimpse of a tall man disappearing into the forest, dressed in some bizarre garb the like of which she had never seen before. It took only a moment for her to remember the story of the outlander wearing peculiar garments, and she knew for certainty that he was the abductor who tried to spirit away her babe. For while the rustics were as a whole good folk, they were also as a whole suspicious of that they did not know. She bounded after him with a cry of outrage; but soon, she no longer knew where he had gone.

Her breath caught, her sobs quieting, she began to despair; she began to fear that she would never find her child. The more her now-cooled mind thought of it, the more she realized that she was almost without a doubt quite lost; the more she grew to feel that her daughter was lost forever. As the passion of her blind rush cooled, the dread and certainty of her loss set in. She raised her face to give out a hopeless wail, and out of the corner of her eye she saw a looming shape, not far away. Turning her head, she saw the full shadowed form of the ancient castle of the noble Szekely family which had ruled the provincial land for centuries. She saw, towering in the distance, Castle Dracula. And suddenly, she knew where he had gone.

She had run to the castle, not with the wild desperation that had filled her as she had plunged through the forest, but running nimbly with a measured step and with a clear-headed determination. Yet the closer she came to the ancient lair, fear began to press stronger about her, to crowd its way from the air she breathed into her strained mind. The oppression grew stronger, and her cautious senses heightened as she came closer and closer to the foreboding castle, the devil’s lair; but her step did not slow, for she ran for her child. Finally she came up to the dread gateway, and seeing that it was shut, gave an agonized cry. Her body had hardly recovered from her first long flight, and the weariness of both began to catch up to her. She leaned against a corner of the gateway for a moment to catch her breath, holding her hands over her heart, as if to slow its wild beat. She looked up at the castle, and saw a face peering down at her from between the bars of a window. The light of the moon was bright and clear that night, and a chill came over her as she recognized the strange style of garb worn by the creature that had stolen her girl. She threw herself forward, and shouted in a voice of anger and hatred, “Monster, give me my child!”
Her maddened eyes did not see the look of bewilderment on the face in the window, and her enraged mother’s mind registered nothing but the unmistakably peculiar clothes.
She fell to her knees, and raised her hands to the bewildered face which seemed to her so vilely smug. “Monster, give me my child!” She cried out the same plea, but in a tone of such heartbreak and such terrible lamentation that no human heart could be unmoved. But still, her child did not appear, and no reply was given.
In sheer, wretched helplessness, she began first to tear at her hair, and then to beat repeatedly on her breast, as if to placate the endless hunger of her anguish with physical hurt, overcome with the violence of extravagant emotion. Then she threw herself forward and beat on the unyielding door with her naked hands.
Far above, she heard just faintly a whispering call, inhuman, harsh, and metallic. As she stopped to listen, the call was answered from far and wide by the focused and hungry howling of wolves. She froze, and turned to stare at the open courtyard. The wolves were summoned, she knew, by the thing which had taken her child. They would come, and she would die. As the certainty of her death came upon her, she began to quietly say a prayer.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc… ” Here the woman paused, fear entering her mind for the first time. She knew that the hour of her death would come soon, as surely as she knew the meaning of the words. After an endless moment of fear, she mustered her courage and faced death again, “…nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen..”
Again she prayed the prayer, and again, bombarding the ancient Virgin with a plea for her prayers. Finally, as she crossed herself one last time, the wolves pour into the courtyard, a great pack of them. Quietly the grey heralds of death bore down on her, their lips curling in silent snarls. Again, terror flitted around the corners of her mind, but she banished it quickly, and drew a deep breath, her last.
“Sweet Jesus, take my soul!”

The sun rose the next day, a cold orb of red gold casting soulless light upon a colder world, a land with less of a soul. Under the castle of the evil Count lay the broken and mangled body of an anguished mother separated from her child; yet her face was untouched, and upon it was a peaceful smile, for the loving mother had been eternally reunited with her darling child.
And the Englishman Jonathan Harker attempted to devise an escape from the hellish stronghold before he suffered a similar fate.

[Spock]

...most interesting.....I don't remember anything about the premise but then it's been a few years since I read BS' book.

[durinsbane2244]

yay for latin Hail Mary! i know that...

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I thought about digging up a Magyar one, or summat similar, but I decided for artistic purposes, the Latin would be more recognisable.