Dracula: The Old Sailor

Mina wrote in her journal that she had found the nicest spot in all of Whitby: an old churchyard on the cliff above the town, beside the ruins of Whitby Abbey, with a view straight down over the harbour.Every day she came to sit and write, and every day an ancient sailor named Mr. Swales came to sit near her, for he said he was almost a hundred years old and had nothing left to do but talk.One afternoon, Mina asked him about the local legends — the bells that were said to ring out at sea whenever a ship was lost, and the white lady who was said to haunt one of the abbey’s windows.

Mr. Swales only laughed and told her not to fash herself over such things, for they were nothing but fool-talk invented to please gullible tourists, not sensible young ladies like her.A few days later, though, Lucy got him talking about something else — the gravestones scattered all around them — and his mood turned strangely fierce.“It be all lies, lock, stock, and barrel,” he told them, striking his walking stick against the ground for emphasis.

He pointed to one stone that claimed a sailor was “murdered by pirates off the coast of Andres” and said he happened to know the man had really drowned off Greenland, his bones lost forever at the bottom of the sea.“Do ye think all these men will come rushing back to Whitby when the trumpet sounds?” he asked, cackling, “they’d be jostling one another something terrible, trying to drag their tombstones along with them!”Uneasy at his dark humor, Lucy pointed to a different, gentler stone near their feet and read its inscription aloud: a mother’s tribute to a son who had died “in the hope of a glorious resurrection.”

Mr. Swales snorted and said the truth was far uglier — the son secretly despised his cruel mother, and had shot himself with an old musket rather than let her collect the insurance money she had taken out on his life.Lucy went pale and cried that it was her favorite seat, and now she would always know she had been sitting over a suicide’s grave.“That won’t harm ye, my pretty,” the old man said kindly, patting her hand, “I’ve sat here nigh on twenty years myself, and it’s never once troubled me.”

Miles away, Dr. Seward was keeping his own private record — of a patient named Renfield, whose strange hobby had begun with catching flies.Over the following weeks, Renfield fed his flies to a growing collection of spiders, then fed his spiders to a flock of sparrows he had tamed, each pet larger and hungrier than the last.When Renfield finally begged Dr. Seward for a cat to feed his sparrows to, the doctor refused — and began to suspect he was watching a dangerous, escalating pattern of hunger take shape.

Back in Whitby, Mina’s own worries were growing: it had been weeks since her last letter from Jonathan, and Lucy had quietly begun sleepwalking again, drifting through their room each night.As a heavy grey storm gathered out at sea, the old coastguard pointed to a strange ship struggling offshore, unable to decide whether to run for open water or risk the harbour — and Mina could not shake the feeling that something was coming with it.