Page 23 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

23

May 20, 1890

Journal of Lucy Westenra

It was all silly of me. I’m hardly better than a child, as Mina often chides me. Running away to spend all our days on holiday in Whitby? Why would someone as smart and determined as Mina waste her life that way? I’m ashamed of the flight of fancy that led me to ever dream of it.

The things I imagined for our future fill my heart with confusion. I can’t write the whole of them, even here. There’s something wrong inside me. Something queer and sideways, which is why I pretend, always, with everyone. I need to kill that thing. I’ll find a way to be what Mina wants me to be. If it’s what she needs for her own happiness, I’ll make it happen.

But after all my foolish hopes were burst, everything is exhausting and fraught. Mother has been in here again, snooping. I found her bent over my bed, checking beneath it. I know she caught sight of my journal. She asked about the ink marks on my fingers. I told her I’ve been writing ever so many letters.

I can be cleverer than that, though. I’ve read enough detective novels to know it’s always necessary to throw bloodhounds off a scent. I went into town this afternoon while Mother was sleeping and purchased an identically bound journal. I’ll fill it with pretty lies, the Lucy she expects and demands to see, then leave it out where she can “find” it.

Then the true Lucy, the one sealed in the darkness between lips, the one who is so wrong even I don’t understand her sometimes, can stay safe and hidden.