Because he is now dead, the true account of the great man's youth can be told. As uncle to the boy, as well as trusted family physician and alienist to the Van Helsing family, those secrets not known to the general public have been subject to my examination. With it now clarified how I came to have this information, let us begin at the beginning.
Francis Van Helsing was born in Lodz, Carpathia, a mountainous province of what is now Rumania, in the year 1797. A prodigious lad even at birth, my brother's son weighed eleven pounds and measured 29 inches. His father, Count Wilhelm Van Helsing, an ex-patriate Dutchman and like myself a successful physician and land owner, had married a local girl whom he met in medical school in Berlin. Jeanot Trefz, was an extraordinary beauty descended from the ancient Dracula family line, who, despite Vlad the Impaler-that despicable blot on their family history, were of the highest nobility in Carpathia.
Marrying my elder brother shortly after she finished medical school, Jeanot remained childless until her fortieth year when, under mysterious circumstances (according to my brother they had not had sexual relations for over a year) she gave birth to Francis.
That Francis was to be a prodigy was evident quite young. He walked at four months and began speaking complete sentences at a year. By nineteen months he had begun reading and was able, as I can verify from my own observations, to recite Biblical passages by rote at two years of age. A formidable child even at that callow age, Francis had a beetling brow and a penetrating glance that could make one caught in a lie (as, for example, I did before administering him an injection) feel dreadfully uneasy.
No doubt he would have followed in the occupational footsteps of his parents and lived an unremarkable life had it not been for a tragic event that took place during his fourth year. As I discovered long after the fact, the Dracula line of the family of Jeanot Trefz was not at all pleased with her marriage to my brother Wilhelm, the salient factor being this.
The Draculas were confirmed free thinkers and openly hostile to the doctrines of Christianity, which my brother and his wife had steeped the boy in.
In particular, the oldest brother of Jeanot Van Helsing, one Milano Dracula, a bishop in the Catholic church, despised the marriage. Now one might wonder how it was that a freethinker became a Catholic bishop. The long and short of it was this. Milano's true allegiance was to the Anti-Christ, his having realized that the ideal place to promote the works of Satan was under the guise of Christian priesthood.
At any rate terrible arguments, as my brother reported to me, ensued between Jeanot and her elder brother the bishop of Lodz. The debates soon moved from an academic tenor to outright threats.
"If you insist on raising the boy in the pernicious doctrines of Catholicism, I will be forced to take action," cried the bishop.
"You are a disgrace to the family and to the church as well," answered Madame Van Helsing.
"You forget that we Draculas are descendants of Cain, dear sister. Ours is a proud legacy of evil. Our grandfather Vlad killed for the pleasure of it."
That ugly prelude to the events that followed was witnessed by my nephew and later reported to me as the boy sat in my office in a state of obvious trauma, unable to stop the furious blinking of his eyes.
What had happened was this.
Francis, then five, and his mother had left the estate in a carriage early on a rainy Saturday morning with intentions of spending a day shopping in Lodz. However, as the carriage descended the twisting mountain roads that led from the Van Helsing manor to the city, the normally well-behaved horses began to shy. At a narrow spot in the road overlooking a steep drop to the raging Vronica River below, the horses simply refused to go further.
Madame Van Helsing, who was habitually a kindly lady, growing frustrated, resorted to the whip. However, the horses bore the beating with trembling flanks, flaring nostrils, and frightened eyes and yet refused to continue their progress towards Lodz. Now the frightened boy saw the reason for their terror. Climbing lizard-like down from a cleft in the adjacent rocks, through driving rain, a tall, masked figure in a black cassock and high bishop's mitre blocked the road.
Though my nephew could not say exactly what was so terrifying about the approaching figure whose limp resembled that of his maternal uncle, he felt a dread shiver roar down his spine. Silently the figure of darkness approached the carriage.
"Descend, Jeanot," commanded the masked man.
"What are you doing here?" answered Francis's mother.
"I've come to settle the dispute." The voice of the masked man was resonant and deep as the bottom of a barrel. Then with a quick jerk, he seized my brother's wife and plunged a dagger into her breast.
The boy, Francis, flew at his uncle at once, but the bishop was a powerful man. With an effortless thrust of an arm, he knocked the boy from the carriage back against the narrow cliff wall. Then in an instant the bishop set upon his sister. At first Francis watched in confused terror, then he beat ineffectively at his uncle, who stabbed again and again. The screams of Francis' mother echoed from cruel mountain peak to mountain peak. And then when Jeanot Van Helsing was covered with gore, her brother lifted her body and viciously hurled it downward into the crevasse.
Francis covered his ears as his mother exploded into the rocks below with a tremendous thud. Then to his amazement, his uncle, the bishop, removed a glittering cross which he waved in the air towards the boy, repeating a catechism of strange Satanic syllables that actually made the ears of the boy ache. An instant later, springing to the carriage, Milano Dracula sped off, whipping the horses like a madman.
That was the tale the boy told to me as he sat in my office shortly after his mother's murder. He had been brought by my brother, who, idealistic man that he was, refused to believe his son's account, for the bishop was the very soul of probity in the unsuspecting eyes of the world.
Struggling to cure the boy of stuttering that developed in the aftermath of his mother's death was a slow and ineffective business, as the child's self-confidence had obviously been shattered by the encounter in the mountains and the loss of his beloved companion. Furthermore, the allegations that I leveled at the bishop on the strength of the boy's testimony were ridiculed by the police in Lodz who suggested that if any human attack had occurred it was likely that the boy himself had fallen upon his mother in a fit of rage.
And thus, nothing came of the investigation, which the police eventually wrote off as the attack of a mountain lion. However, the following year the bishop succumbed to a stroke, which left him speechless and unable to use the right side of his body, a fit recompense for the misery he had inflicted upon his sister and the boy.
Despite Milano Dracula's stroke, the ensuing years were not pleasant for my nephew Francis. Though his father hired a housekeeper, the stern, old woman was no substitute for the boy's beloved mother. Thus, the child threw himself into academics to compensate for a world he found cold and dangerous.
By the age of ten Francis had mastered Greek and Latin and had begun to turn his mind to the mastery of science, which had become his new preoccupation. Living alone in the manor house with his busy father, the boy developed an aloof and silent manner beneath which, I believed, lurked a deep depression.
However, regardless of the state of interior emotions, Francis' health was fine, and at thirteen he was already a strapping boy with huge knuckles, powerful forearms, and a high school diploma from a Catholic secondary school in Lodz. It was around this time, however, that fate once more chose to test the boy's mettle.
The summer of 1813, an unusually hot summer, found my brother Wilhelm embroiled in a wage dispute with the laborer's on the Van Helsing estate. Though my brother was known to be among the most generous employers in Carpathia, one young firebrand leader of the field workers, a thickset fellow by the name of Bron Wikal pressed claims, on behalf of the peasants, for more and more money.
At length my brother lost his normal cordiality and gave Bron Wikal a public reprimand.
"You'll pay for those insults, Van Helsing," Wikal cried as his fellow peasants began to jeer, and Wikal waved his pitchfork menacingly.
"Father, you can't give in to their demands." Francis pleaded to my brother, for he saw the injustice of what Bron Wikal was demanding.
"No, and I shan't, my son." My brother's eyes glittered with determination.
It was that evening that Francis awakened to strange noises. Running to the window of his fairy tale room with sloping roof, he peered out and saw a band of noisy peasants departing along the path leading away from the manor house.
"Go home!" cried Francis, only to be met by curses from the aroused workers. Seconds later, he realized that the mansion was on fire. Smoke and flames were billowing everywhere as the manor house was already a fiery conflagration.
As soon as Francis pushed open the door of his room, he was blasted backwards by a seemingly living wall of flame.
"Father, Father," cried Francis racing to my brother's bedroom.
However, when he reached the smoke-filled chamber, to his bewilderment, Francis found his father lying in a coma, unresponsive to the boy's frightened pleas. Little did Francis know at the time, that his father had become addicted to belladonna, a calming, but dangerous drug I had prescribed my bother for the relief of stress.
When my brother failed to budge, with some difficult Francis hoisted him to his shoulder, but Wilhelm stood well over six and a half feet tall and weighed close to three hundred pounds. Staggering through the dark bedroom as flames hissed up the curtains and licked across the ceiling beams, the boy stumbled under the burden of his father's bulk.
With an anguished cry, Francis felt a sharp pain in his ankle that he had twisted in the fall. Then a sheet of wind-blown flame careened down the hallway to his right. Fumbling desperately, trying to get his father back onto his shoulder, Francis suddenly realized that flames were smashing his direction from the other way as well. Desperately, he tried to drag his father, but to his utter terror, he saw that his father's nightshirt had caught fire and flames were licking upwards towards his father's face.
Uncertain what to do, mind clouded with panic, Francis suddenly dropped to his knees. The smoke, the tremendous clouds of smoke, were robbing him of his breath. In a daze, his own hair now ablaze, he crawled in a frenzy in the direction of the door. And then just as he reached safety, the main beams of the manor house collapsed with a violent roar as Francis rolled down the steps and lost consciousness.
The next day as he sat in my office, his hair burned from his singed scalp, his face dark with the residue of smoke he'd inhaled, Francis, now an orphan at age thirteen, was a pitiful and broken figure. How or what I could do to rebuild the spirit of the grieving lad I hardly knew. The best I could do was take his hand, and sit calmly as tears streamed down his cheeks.
As executor of his father's estate I made arrangements for the boy to continue living at the Van Helsing property under the supervision of a nurse from the village, whom I trusted implicitly.
It was to my utter surprise one month later when Ilse, the nursemaid, came to my office with a wild look upon her face.
"Gone, Doctor. The boy has simply vanished."
Managing to calm the kindly woman down, I determined to form a search party for Francis, whom Ilse suspected had taken refuge in the forest. Now I must tell you that the forest in and around Lodz at that time was dark, primordial, and infested with wolves. The search party that I formed penetrated the forest for two weeks, but no trace of the boy was found. When search ultimately failed, all I could conclude was that the boy had elected suicide in punishment for his own wrongly-perceived guilt over the death of his father and mother.
However, that erroneous conclusion was put to rest fourteen months later when a wild, disheveled creature clad in rags and with hair to the back of his neck stumbled into my office. Shyly Francis extended his hand.
I ran to embrace the lad, but he shrank from my touch.
"Francis, where have you been, boy?"
"The dark night of my soul has been passed in the wilderness."
"You mean to say you lived like an animal for the whole time you have been gone?"
"Yes, uncle, for I was oppressed with a sense that I was unworthy to live among human kind, and so I existed in a cave, living upon wild berries and such game as I could trap with my own hands. And then as my self-loathing reached its peak, a strange encounter occurred which as brought me back to your office and civilization."
Though greatly overjoyed to see the boy alive, I was puzzled by what strange encounter he might be alluding to, and so I questioned him.
"It was as I was lying in my darkened cave, overwhelmed with a wretched sense of my own worthlessness, that a bat the size of an eagle swooped towards me and perched near my eyes upon a limestone ledge."
"You feared this bird?"
"Yes, not only its size, but its glittering eye radiated an aura of unmistakable evil."
"And?"
"The foul bird began to speak in a voice unmistakably human."
Was my nephew mad? It was not beyond belief that a man living such an isolated existence might be subject to hallucinations. "And what said this bird?"
"It began to speak of blood as the life-giving source of all human energy. It told me that as a descendant of the Dracula family line, it was my duty to steal blood from necks of devotees of Christ as did all my living relatives, including my deceased mother. At that foul insult I struck at the bird."
Now I was certain that the pitiful lad before me had taken leave of his senses, though my wondering eyes bid him continue his story.
"However, uncle, to my amazement the bird was insubstantial as finely spun silk. 'Like your maternal uncle the bishop,' said the bird, 'you are fated to be an agent of Satan; thus, take yourself from this remote cave and go about your appointed role.'
"And how replied you to the bird?" I said in mortal shock.
"I seized the sorry thing by its insubstantial neck and wrung its throat, determining that regardless of what a low thing I had been in childhood I must now labor to destroy the evil which the bird had described to me. And thus, I have come to see you once more uncle and resume my life as a normal man."
Whether or not I should confront the boy with my suspicions that he had gone mad and was in need of institutionalization troubled me as he grew silent. But then he opened his hunter's bag which he wore about his throat, and, with a filthy hand, removed the wrenched-neck carcass of a large, evil-looking black bird the likes of which I had never seen before. And upon the breast of that strange black avian were three scarlet numerals-666.
"And this I have brought you, doctor, that you might see that my tale is as true as the fact that I am sitting before you," said my nephew, regarding me with perceptive, brown eyes that seemed to eat directly to my soul.
After that strange experience I took the lad under my wing. In time his body which had grown emaciated during his trek in the wilderness, and his eyes which had grown sunken and mournful, took on renewed vigor as the boy returned to a healthy diet. It was during this period that Francis plunged into mastery of the violin and a renewed interest in science. Despite my remonstrance and pleas that he get more sleep, the boy often spent the entire night absorbed in study.
Notwithstanding these excesses, his sixteenth birthday found young Van Helsing a specimen of excellent health. His sunken cheeks and emaciate body had filled out, and he entered young adulthood, a handsome, strapping specimen.
It was about this time that I hired a university student to tutor Francis in the new science of physics. Britta Keesnck was the daughter of a wealthy city doctor of my acquaintance who had made a fortune performing operations of an unusual nature, including reattachment of severed limbs.
Without question Britta was extraordinarily beautiful with a mane of dark hair, flashing blue eyes, a perfectly oval face, tiny hands, and a voluptuous body. How it did not occur to me that Francis would be enamored of the girl, I suppose, is a resultant of my age where passions flame low.
However, as their tutoring sessions progressed, I found Britta and Francis often sitting alone in the grape arbor, too close for student and pupil.
"Francis," I said, one afternoon following my observation of them leaning together, "is your interest in Britta going beyond that of pupil and tutor?"
I was surprised to see the boy turn violently red with embarrassment as though caught in a terrible lie.
"I don't think so, Uncle," was his clipped response.
Despite that some weeks later, he came to my office one Wednesday when I was through seeing patients for the day. The slope of his shoulders told me something was amiss as he slumped into an arm chair. I stared at him in silence, giving him time to gather his thoughts.
Finally he cleared his throat and, nervously shuffling his hands, said, "Would it be a terrible sin if a student found himself in love with his tutor?"
I laughed. "This is not 1500, Francis. Certainly it's no sin to find oneself in love under any circumstances."
His face brightened into a powerful smile. "Then it is good, for Britta has won my heart completely."
"But are your affections returned?"
"Of that I can not be sure, but when she takes my hand I feel a fire surge through me that I can barely contain."
I grew alarmed at that remark. It was one thing for the boy to have an adolescent crush on the Keesnyck girl, but quite another to think that they had begun to touch her and might have illicit sexual relations.
I leaned forward in my chair. "Francis, I must warn you. You have a bright career, a brilliant career lying before you. You must not ruin it by fathering a child out of wedlock. You could both ruin your life and Britta's as well."
The salmon-like flush that spread across young Francis' forehead caught me off guard. It was as if the idea of his love actually proceeding to sexual relationship had never crossed his innocent mind. I felt the instant need to apologize, and I did so.
It was not long after that, however, that a major shift in the tide of events occurred. The summer had grown hot, heavy, and languorous with day after day of crushing heat. Villagers slumped about as if defeated by the sun as meanwhile Francis' tutoring sessions continued, for he was to enter university in the fall.
The event in question happened as twilight had departed from the lush grass of my mansion. As the first hint of darkness fell, I had broken my usual habit of reading by the bay window, and had decided to stroll the grounds. As I walked, hands clasped behind my back, I heard heavy breathing near the grape arbor.
Suspecting the worst, I crept forward, and then I saw the unexpected. Fully clothed, Britta was lying atop Francis, who appeared to be in a swoon. The girl's mouth was ardently pressed to the boy's neck, but what shocked me the most was her face. Her normally beautiful features had transformed into those of a wicked banshee, her eyes huge and bulging from her swollen forehead.
Uncertain what was happening, I cleared my throat. Britta immediately rose from where she was lying atop Francis, blood dripping from her fangs, her eyes horrible, malevolent, and red. I could scarce contain my revulsion.
"Is this the proper conduct of a tutor towards her pupil?" was all I could say.
With a reptilian hiss, Britta wheeled at once and disappeared on the run as Francis slowly staggered to his feet with the air of a man recovering from a mortal blow.
When he saw me, my nephew blushed visibly even in the thickening darkness.
"Are you all right, boy?" I said, suppressing my irritation, for I was concerned about what I had seen.
"I'm weak, Uncle, quite weak."
"Britta was here a moment ago."
"Britta? Yes now I remember. She kissed me."
"And was that a kiss to your neck?"
He touched his hand to where I pointed, and his fingers came away damp with blood. Then as he looked at me in deep puzzlement, he said,"So strange, Uncle, so very strange. It was as if my brain had been sucked out of my skull, an irresistible, electrical feeling that left me powerless to resist."
My hands grew cold at his words, for I now realized what I had witnessed. And so I revealed to Francis the depths of my suspicions. Yes, I had known that the Keesnyck family was distantly related to the Dracula family, but it had never occurred to me that lovely Britta, too, would bear the moral taint that stained that line. Now I could only wonder what would have happened to Francis had I not accidentally happened by that evening.
Thus, it was that Francis spent the rest of the summer overcoming his attraction to Britta, whom I dismissed as his tutor the next day. In retrospect, I think it was at that time he made the connection between the death of his mother and Britta's assault on his sanity; and he made the commitment that would guide the rest of his adult life. The entire line of Dracula descendants had to be purged of their evil, and to that end my nephew, Francis Van Helsing, would bend his talents from that day forward.
End-
