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The candlestick in Joe’s hand is warm, its light blinding in the complete dark of the vast cathedral before him, and his throat soon begins to ache with strain at how forcefully he intones each syllable of the hymn headed by the usually foul-mouthed Quincey. It was a moonshot, but it actually works. That unfathomable fiend invited in is stopped in his tracks by the sounds of their voices, and he can do not but sing louder in hopes that the Count might be driven away for good on this night.
When he turns back to check upon his compatriots, his eyes land on the form of sweet Luke, that delicate frame so worn out that he’s slumped onto Arthur’s chest, whether from pure exhaustion of the night, Dracula’s influence, or another of his typical fainting spells, he cannot ascertain. Regardless of the source, it seems to have brought him some measure of peace, at least. No longer is he spewing those obscene words that might be more appropriate for Quincey, nor is he howling along with the wolves as if he were nothing more than a common beast himself.
His expression is rather tranquil in this moment, though his eyes might be a bit sunken in. The fact that it’s Arthur there to catch him feels, by no exaggeration, so deeply unfair that it makes his blood boil.
‘My humblest apologies, but whether Luke lives or dies is of little consequence to me.’
He repeats that in his mind, over and over again as if that itself is the only scripture he truly needs.
Renfield is still here, though the contraption is acting in an awfully confounding manner, somehow having escaped from his room… No matter. If the Camellia Club survives this, he will simply take Renfield back by force if he has to and all again will be right with the world.
And then he will have that flaxen-haired imitation all to himself. No arguing, no choosing another, a beauty and kindness that shall never fade so long as Joe’s own mind is intact to improve upon and maintain it.
That’s right. Renfield is a much, much better alternative.
As their voices reach a cacophony, finally daylight breaks around us, the light overpowering every sense even filtered through the stained glass. But that, too, is another of his tricks. The same way he must have surely commanded Renfield to come to the chapel, the way he must have deceived Luke into inviting him inside the school, the Count has surely pulled the shroud over their eyes, making it so easy to believe that this deluge of light could ever be the God-given morning sun they know so well.
When the door is opened, when he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is not the obliteration where Professor Van Helsing once stood, but instead the absence in Arthur’s arms. Like a gaping hole torn into their reality, before they even knew it, they’ve lost the one they vowed to protect, the one each and every person here loves in their own ways.
All that remains is the professor’s right arm. The shouts around Joe increase in volume, the boys, searching for Luke; the red-haired girl—Mina, he’s learned is her name, searching for Lucy, but there isn’t a single trace, not a hint that he had even been present to begin with.
After searching everywhere they can think of for Luke, the only thing the four of them can do is just… go back to the dormitory. In the dead of the night, the police could not be summoned for what would come across as a mere boys prank, and an official investigation couldn’t be arranged until the morning hours.
Joe lies in his bed, bottle of chloral in hand, not bothering to change out of his uniform. He just wants to sleep, to forget this wretched night ever happened, so he downs a few pills, however many land in his palm.
It is easy to drift into that space, the place between consciousness and the realm of dreams, where the light shines just a bit brighter and the shadows aren’t so cruel.
As soon as his eyes flutter shut, he’s brought back to a precious memory. He was a thirteen-year-old, and it was his first semester at Whitby. He’d been chosen to play a sick man in their grade’s play, whether by some attempt at helping him adjust to his new surroundings or a cruel prank on the comparatively naive foreign boy he was at the time, he still isn’t sure.
That was the first time Luke had ever spoken to Joe.
Before their first rehearsal, the actors involved in the production used one of the classrooms nearby the assembly hall as a makeshift dressing room, standing mirrors leaned up against the walls at varying angles, racks of dusty costumes in the middle, and a few makeup kits on the desks.
Joe had arrived earlier than was even suggested, his own diligence interplaying with a nervousness about his first appearance in front of a crowd of his peers. He was alone, except for one other who was already occupying the room, standing a little pigeon-toed at one of the mirrors. Joe grabbed his costume, the rags and the bandages, and giving the other boy some space, he stationed himself two mirrors down.
He’d glanced over toward the nearby mirror, spotting the blonde-haired boy in the reflection, his natural beauty concealed beneath a layer of foundation and a soft pink lip tint. He’s working on his eyes now, blending his eyeshadow with his ring finger as if he’s done this hundreds of times.
Luke spoke first, perhaps having sensed the new student staring at him. “They always have me playing the female parts,” he said beneath his breath.
“… Do you hate it?” Joe asked.
“No, not at all,” he’d responded with a small, shy smile. “I rather like it, actually. There’s something romantic about seeing the role built up layer by layer. Like oil on canvas.”
“You’re a painter.”
“Mhm,” he says, nudging his long eyelashes up with his index finger.
He was so beautiful, unlike anything he’d ever seen. His skin was as pale as the bleached bedsheets of the dormitory, not the pinkish hues of his classmates, but a perfect, pure white.
Without thinking, his hand rose as if he were a man possessed, he took one step toward Luke and his fingertips trembling as he so slowly reached out to touch that slender neck…
Luke seized his hand, gentling his touch as he turned his gaze from the mirror up to his new friend.
“F-Forgive me,” Joe stuttered out, realizing himself. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s okay. I should apologize for grabbing you so suddenly. You only wanted to brush away this fallen bit of hair, didn’t you?” Luke whispers, releasing that hand to instead pluck a strand of his pale blonde hair that had fallen to his chest. “Thank you.”
An angel. At that moment, Joe was sure that this boy was a Christian angel. That pure beauty, the graceful magnanimity…!
His eyes followed the hair as it fluttered down to the ground, and he wanted… Yes, that was the first moment he’d felt the desire to hold it in his hands, to collect it for himself, though he hadn’t a clear purpose for it yet.
“You’re Joe. Joe… Suwa,” Luke continued, an acknowledgment. “The very polite introduction you gave in class caught my attention; not many boys around here show such maturity. My name is Luke Westenra.”
Joe accepted the handshake offered to him, and he smiled a smile he hadn’t quite mastered yet. “It’s an honor to meet you, Luke,” he said quietly in the scant space between them. “It pleases me to know that I had not made a fool of myself.”
“And you,” he said with a soft smile. “I believe I saw you lingering outside the Photographic Society’s club room, but you never quite stepped inside. Are you handy with a camera?”
“I am. I headed my school’s photography club back in my home country,” he admitted, lowering his gaze.
“Why not join them, then?” Luke inquired.
“A portfolio is required to apply,” Joe said quietly. “Unfortunately, I was not permitted to bring my prints with me when I came to England.”
“By whom?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.
“My mother,” Joe said before he could think better of it.
“Oh…” Luke sighed. “That’s a shame, isn’t it? The Photographic Society would be much better off with someone like you in their midst… You know what, let me introduce you to Arthur.”
“Arthur?”
“My special friend, Arthur. I’ll work something out for you, as my new friend. He couldn’t stand it if he knew a fellow gentleman was so bereft...”
“Your new friend…” Joe gaped.
“Starting now,” Luke said, and he had grabbed Joe’s hand once more, this time with all the gentleness in the world. “You’ll have afternoon tea with us, play cricket with the others, and accompany me when I want to sketch out by the abbey, okay? And when you get access to a camera, I want to see what talent lies in these fingers.”
All Joe could do is nod along, swept along by Luke’s carefree and reckless promises, dumbfounded. And before he could even think of the words to thank him, Luke lifted himself up on his tiptoes and pressed a small, just barely-there kiss to Joe’s lips.
He gasped softly, but Luke didn’t relent, keeping himself pressed to Joe’s chest as if he was waiting for Joe to back away, daring him to do so.
Joe brought his hand to rest upon Luke’s slight back, his lips surrendering to the smaller boy despite every part of his body trembling in confusion and a mild offense. And then he pulled away, as any upright man should, too proud to let the momentary loss of composure continue for even a second longer.
At least that’s how he remembers it happening.
But something’s wrong. Luke isn’t letting him go, he’s clinging to him even more desperately, pressing their mouths together almost painfully.
“Luke,” Joe chokes out. “W-What’s happening? What are you doing?”
Luke’s delicate fingers hook over Joe’s waistband, and he whispers, “Let’s fuck.”
No, no… Luke would never says something like that, Luke is innocent, pure unlike the three of his friends. He’s an angel, a madonna gracing this planet with his presence.
“Joe,” he whispers in his ear, “Come find me, Joe, come kiss me. Kiss me, fuck me, take me…”
Joe gasps, his hands never settling. Find him. If this isn’t just a dream… If Luke is attempting to make contact with him somehow, he has to seize this opportunity.
“Luke, where are you?”
“Don’t call me by that horrid name,” she hisses, teeth grazing Joe’s ear. “It’s Lucy!”
“Okay,” Joe breathes, trying to soothe her. “I won’t make that mistake again, Lucy. Just tell me where you are, and we’ll find you, okay? All of us.”
“In town, somewhere I don’t recognize. Come to me,” she pleads, eyes wild, searching. “Fuck me hard, Joe… All three of you…"
“What did he do to you? What has the Count done to you?” Joe interrogated, his voice bordering on a pathetic beg.
Lucy’s eyes suddenly become glassy, gazing off to some far away point, and she smiles softly. “The Count… Count Dra-cu-la…”
“Lucy, tell me,” Joe rasps, gripping her waist tight.
“He made me a woman,” she whispers. “Truly. The way you and Arthur and Quincey never would...”
“He-”
Joe can feel the bile, bumpy with the dozens of pills he swallowed earlier, rising up his throat. He quickly grips the side of his bed and yanks his upper half over the side, vomiting and expelling the entire contents of his stomach onto the wooden floor below.
It wasn’t a dream, he knows that immediately. There’s no way he could ever dream up such a vile image of his beloved. Those words, those demands… But for as misguided as they were, that had truly been their Luke begging for his help. He scrambles down the stairs to the open dormitory, sweating profusely, and he wakes Arthur and Quincey with trembling hands.
They don’t even ask for an explanation. When they see the state he’s in, they immediately jump to their feet and prepare to take back what’s theirs. It is now that he feels quite grateful for what he has found here in England, two great chums as these that he may steel his own nerves against, that would take up their weapons at the drop of a hat to go rescue the only one who truly matters.
It’s a crude methodology, perhaps suited more towards one as cocksure as Quicey, but when he thinks about Luke clinging to him, begging in that sweet voice, he finds that such distinctions matter now.
The three young men search the streets of Whitby, but in the end, Luke is nowhere to be found. Joe was so certain of what he saw and heard within the vision, but perhaps… it had simply been his own mind supplying what he wanted to see. It would not be the first time an effect as this has occurred after he’s swallowed down his drug, and certainly he partook in a more indulgent manner on this night than any other before.
With shame, Joe confesses to his companions that he feels now his instinct to search again was born of nothing more than a nightmare.
Even then, none among them can resolve themselves to return to their beds for quite some time.
In the inspector’s office, they make some attempt at explaining the circumstances surrounding Luke’s disappearance to the best of their ability, obfuscating some details so as not to appear as completely deranged as the full truth would have them sound.
Luke’s mother makes an appearance just as the boys are being told in a rather indelicate way to stop making up fairytales. Dressed down from her usual over-extravagance—that gaiety which seems a result more of naïveté rather than conceit—she all but throws herself onto the inspector’s desk in a fit of tears, begging for him to institute a search, that her Luke is not gone from this world, he can’t be, and laying out a sizable sum to defray the costs herself.
There would be no man in this world who could be unmoved by the sight of a mother crying for her child, and Joe is unashamed to say that it brought a tear even to his discerning eye.
It’s only days later that she, too, disappears from this world. Her funeral is grand, but her legacy is not: with no living relatives to vouch for her wishes, her requests of continued searches for her Luke are discarded.
He can’t focus on it too much, not anymore than he’s already done. All Joe can even think to do now is to throw himself into his work, to continue his progress on Renfield, the only thing left in his secret, shattered heart.