chapter 4

I still could pass for a man of 23, yet I was over 100 years old. I tried to adapt to the new times as best as I could. Whitby now had a railway connection to Scarborough, Pickering and even Leeds, much further away.
I had enough money from my help and investments with alucard to love on, so I did not have to worry about going out to earn a living.
Although my standard of living had improved, I lived the life of a quiet recluse. I slept during the day, then at night, I would sit and read, or take a stroll around the town. When I felt hungry, I would venture up to the graveyard and help myself to the bodies in the newly dug graves. When I had eaten my fill, I would cover the grave over again so well that no one would know I'd been there.
I lost weight because I did not feed as often as I had when I was with alucard.
At first it had bothered me that the bodies were already dead. Sometimes, they were over a week old before they were even buried.
Of course that affected the quality of the meat and the taste. I ate my fatty meat unrendered by any cooking process. Sometimes the meat was full of disease.
I tried to avoid the bad meat, but my eyesight was not it's best. More than once I felt victim to the germs I picked up from my victims.
After falling ill with a tummy bug three times running, I decided that I ought to investigate how to remove the meat from it's location, transport it to my house and cook it. The cooking would remove the germs that were making me feel ill... or so the modern day theory read.
I surmised that my neighbours may object to me cooking my meat when they were asleep. But when I thought about it. They did the same every week, cooking for the family when I was in bed. Why should it be any different for me?

Whitby was becoming quite a literary Mecca.
Bram stoker visited in 1890. He heard some of the tales of alucard in and around the town. He wrote the tales down and published them in a book called 'dracula'. Thankfully, any details about my own exploits were omitted.

I laid low until 1914.
At the beginning if the First World War, I thought I would be safe staying where I was. I had no valid birth certificate or marriage certificate because no one believe that a man who looked 23 was nearly 150 years old!
If they brought in the draft, I had no fear of being called up. Officially I had to be dead!
I cannot say that I could understand what was going on, but I ventured into the local pubs to find out. I would buy a pint to try to merge in with the people around me, but I rarely drank much from it. I did not need to drink. I did not get any pleasure or satisfaction out if it. But I realised that if I sat with others who had been drinking, I could find out a great deal about what was going on in the world.
The Whitby gazette, I found, was an excellent journal, but it's reporters concentrated upon local news.

It was only a few months into the war when the town was attacked from the sea. I heard the blast and it being night time, I went out to investigate. The coastguard building was ablaze. There were people running and screaming in the streets in panic. There was only one or two lights visible out at sea, so we could not tell what was out there or how many were out there. I did not know where those who were fleeing were heading. I would not like to scale the cliffs in the darkness. Then there was the desolate moor to contend with. It was easy to lose ones way in the dark and stray from the path. Away from the path, you could find yourself being sucked into a bog, or you might find something you were not expecting up there. I had left several body parts amongst the bracken and gorse over the years.
Whitby people were not as superstitious as they once had been. They knew they would not be spirited away by bad fairies or goblins. Science had yet to prove that they even existed and me lived in a much more enlightened age these days.
No I was happy to take my chances in the town.
Some, I suspected might run to the railway station, but the first train did not leave town until five minutes past eight.
I was just beginning to recover, when there was heard a second bang. A bright flash was seen out at sea. Momentarily a great German dreadnaught was to be seen in the flash from the gun. Only one was visible, but there could be more out there. The shell hit something up at the abbey. Gracious me! Did they not have any morals? The abbey may have been in ruins for a thousand years, but they were our ruins! I knew where every fallen stone was, every broken wall. The thought that the germans may have damaged the ruin that overlooked the town that I held so dear was overwhelming.
I decided to risk my life to investigate... I'd lived too long anyway. It did not matter if I died. My life was no longer satisfactory anyway.
I fully expected more shells to hit as I ascended the 199 steps up to the abbey, but none came. I considered myself lucky.
It was impossible to see the damage caused in the dark, but I did have a good view of the harbour and the coast guard station as it blazed, lighting up the sky.
The fire brigade were there now, bravely showering it with water from hoses driven by the hand pumps on their horse drawn fire trucks. I could see others had started a bucket relay, taking water from the harbour to try and quench the flames.
All their brave efforts were for naught. The coast guard station was lost.
But something else was list on that fateful day.
Confidence.
Britain had fought all it's wars on foreign soil for hundreds of years. Was this the beginning of a fully blown German invasion? I looked at the abbey. A thousand years ago it had crumbled at the hands if the Danes and the Vikings. What would be left of our little town when the Germans were finished with it?
I turned around as the sea twinkled with the first rays of sunlight.
We were all in danger now.
It did not matter whether you were military or civilian. Man, woman or child, rich or poor. Human or subhuman. The Germans were hitting out indiscriminately.
How would we possibly be able to fight back? Our army was small and weak in comparison to the kaiser's disciplined troops. They had bigger, better ships, their aeroplanes and zeppelins were second to none.

That evening, the Whitby gazette was full of what had occurred. Whitby had not been the only town to have been hit. They had hit the grand hotel in Scarborough. Citizens had started to build barricades in the street with their bare hands to defend themselves from the ensuing invasion.
Then they had gone on to hit ordinary houses and ordinary people in Hartlepool. Hartlepool were definitely the hardest hit. Women and children had been killed. Many were wounded. They may have hung a monkey thinking he was a Frenchman in the past, but they did not deserve this!

I considered what I was to do all night. I could volunteer to fight, lie about my true age. I could say my documents were destroyed in a fire. Unfortunately my nocturnal habits would be fround upon. I could be discovered for the monster that I truly was.
I considered staying where I was, but a man who was fit and young and not fighting for king and country would raise suspicion.
I decided my best option was to leave immediately. I had to leave not only my home town that I'd known for 150 years, but also my country.
I packed up my few meagre possessions and wrapped myself up well to hide myself from the sunlight.
I caught the train to Leeds, and on to London. I caught a cab across the city to catch my next train to Portsmouth. There I rested for two days before I caught a passenger ship to New York.
I was in the middle of the Atlantic crossing when the captain called us all into the dining room and told us that the Lusitania was sunk. It was a great blow to us all. The optimism of travel was replaced with the realisation that we could suffer the same fate. We were all in very grave danger and we had nothing to defend ourselves with, other than our captain's good judgement and our speed.