Dr. Van Helsing's Memorandum

I knew that there were at least three graves to find, graves
that are inhabit. So I search, and search, and I find one
of them. She lay in her Vampire sleep, so full of life and
voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to
do murder. Ah, I doubt not that in the old time, when such
things were, many a man who set forth to do such a task as
mine, found at the last his heart fail him, and then his
nerve. So he delay, and delay, and delay, till the mere
beauty and the fascination of the wanton Undead have hypnotize
him. And he remain on and on, till sunset come, and the Vampire
sleep be over. Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open
and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss, and
the man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the
Vampire fold. One more to swell the grim and grisly ranks
of the Undead! . . .

There is some fascination, surely, when I am moved by the
mere presence of such an one, even lying as she lay in a
tomb fretted with age and heavy with the dust of centuries,
though there be that horrid odour such as the lairs of the
Count have had. Yes, I was moved. I, Van Helsing, with
all my purpose and with my motive for hate. I was moved to
a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyze my faculties
and to clog my very soul. It may have been that the need
of natural sleep, and the strange oppression of the air
were beginning to overcome me. Certain it was that I was
lapsing into sleep, the open eyed sleep of one who yields
to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow-stilled
air a long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me
like the sound of a clarion. For it was the voice of my dear
Madam Mina that I heard.