CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jonathan Harker's Journal

3 October—I cannot express how terrible a time this is for both Mina and myself. If we make it through this, I feel that nothing in the world will ever be able to harm us again. But will we make it? I fear we may not.

All of us have agreed that Mina is no longer to be alone and that all information will be shared with her from now on. She agreed with this, as well. Professor Van Helsing asked her if she was afraid. Her answer was, "no".

"I've decided that I will kill myself if ever an idea to harm any of you comes into my mind," she said.

"No, Mina," Van Helsing replied, "You are brave to say this, but you mustn't die. Death would only turn you into the same kind of thing as the Count. You must keep away from death. You must!" He then addressed the rest of us in the room, "You may not realize it, but we are much more powerful now than we were before. We know which houses the Count owns. We know where he is. My guess is that he lies at the Piccadilly home, for it is rather far from here, but centrally located in the town. We also have the power now, thanks to my research, to break the magic that protects him in these homes. What we now have to think about is how to get into the homes. We cannot break in like thieves. The police will surely come and arrest us. No, we must go to the home at around ten o'clock in the morning. Then, no one will feel that we are acting strangely. We can hire a blacksmith and simply tell him that we have been locked out of our home. After all, we are respectable men in society. No one would ever think that we had a bad purpose."

Our plan for the day was to first go to the house next door and destroy all of the boxes inside. After that, all of us, except for Godalming and Quincey, would go to Piccadilly. Mina, meanwhile, would wait for us here at the hospital. I did not want to leave her alone, but she convinced me that I could help her more by going with the others.

Before leaving, Van Helsing arranged garlic in Mina's room to protect her in case we did not return before the sunset. He also took out a piece of bread used in church ceremonies and placed it on her forehead; however, as soon as it touched her skin, it began to burn into her. Mina screamed and the professor quickly took away the bread. My poor darling then fell to the floor, crying, "Oh! Even God will not accept me as I now am! I must wear this shameful mark on my head for the rest of my life!"

"No, you will not!" yelled Van Helsing, "We will do everything in our power to see that this evil is removed from the earth forever! Have faith in us, dear Mina! Now, let's pray together, before going.

We all sat in a circle, placed our hands together, and prayed to God for help in our difficult task. We also promised one another that we would never give up the fight until it was truly finished. Then came the time to go.

At Carfax, nothing at all was changed from our previous visit. Immediately, we got to work opening all of the boxes in the prayer area. They were all full of dirt, which vampires must have in order to rest during the day. From his bag, the professor took some holy bread he had borrowed from a local church and placed one inside each box. This made the boxes completely useless to vampires, for holy items can destroy them. Then it was time to move on to the other houses.

At Piccadilly, the professor, Dr Seward, and I waited in a park across from the house, while Godalming and Quincey got a locksmith to open the front door. As we sat in the park, smoking, I became increasingly nervous. Time began to move very slowly and the house seemed to stand silently waiting for us.

When our friends finally returned with the locksmith, it took them no time at all to open the door. In the end, not a single person on the street paid any attention to them or thought their behavior strange. As soon as the locksmith was gone, the rest of us joined Godalming and Quincey in the house.

To our surprise, there were only eight boxes, instead of the nine that we had expected. Quickly, we placed the holy bread inside each of them and then began to look around for the missing box. Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be found. Wasting no time, Godalming and Quincey, taking a set of keys with them that were lying on a table in the dining room, went off to the Count's other two homes to deal with the other boxes. The rest of us remained at Piccadilly to wait for the return of either our two friends or possibly the Count.

(end of section)