In the Footsteps of Dracula

by Stephen Jones

  But it is the character of the Count himself that provides the castle with its most singular feature, a pervading sense of loss and loneliness that would penetrate the bravest heart and break it if admitted. The wind moans like a dying child, and even the weak sunlight that passes into the great hall is drained of life and hope by the cyanic stained glass through which it is filtered.

  I was advised not to become too well acquainted with my client. Those in London who have had dealings with him remark that he is “too European” for English tastes. They appreciate the extreme nobility of his family heritage, his superior manners and cultivation, but they cannot understand his motives, and I fear his lack of sociability will stand him in poor stead in London, where men prefer to discuss fluctuations of stock and the nature of horses above their own feelings. For his part, the Count certainly does not encourage social intercourse. Why, he has not even shaken my hand, and on the few occasions that we have eaten together he has left me alone at the table before ten minutes have passed. It is almost as if he cannot bear the presence of a stranger such as myself.

  I have been here for over a month now. My host departed in the middle of June, complaining that the summer air was “too thin and bright” for him. He has promised to return by the first week of September, when he will release me from my task, and I am to return home to Mina before the mountain paths become impassable for the winter. This would be an unbearable place to spend even one night were it not for the library. The castle is either cold or hot; most of it is bitter even at noon, but the library has the grandest fireplace I have ever seen. True, it is smaller than the one in the Great Hall, where hams were smoked and cauldrons of soup were boiled in happier times, and which now stands cold and lifeless as a tomb, but it carries the family crest of Vlad Drakul at its mantel, and the fire is kept stoked so high by day that it never entirely dies through the night. It is here that I feel safest.

  Of course, such heat is bad for the books and would dry out their pages if continued through the years, but as I labor within this chamber six days out of every seven, it has proven necessary to provide a habitable temperature for me. The servant brings my meals to the Great Hall at seven, twelve and eight, thus I am able to keep “civilized” hours. Although I came here to arrange the Count’s estate, it is the library that has provided me with the greatest challenge of my life, and I often work late into the night, there being little else to do inside the castle, and certainly no one to do it with. I traveled here with only two books in my possession; the leather-bound Bible I keep on my bedside table, and the Baedeker provided for my journey by Mina, so for me the library is an enchanted place. Never before, I’ll wager, has such a collection of volumes been assembled beyond London. Indeed, not even that great city can boast such esoteric tastes as those displayed by the Count and his forefathers, for here are books that exist in but a single copy, histories of forgotten battles, biographies of disgraced warriors, scandalous romances of distant civilizations, accounts of deeds too shameful to be recorded elsewhere, books of magic, books of mystery, books that detail the events of impossible pasts and many possible futures!

  Oh, this is no ordinary library.

  In truth, I must confess I am surprised that he has allowed me such free access to a collection that I feel provides a very private insight into the life and tastes of its owner. Tall iron ladders, their base rungs connected to a central rail, shift along the book-clad walls. Certain shelves nearest the great vaulted ceiling have gold-leafed bars locked over them to keep their contents away from prying eyes, but the Count has provided me with keys to them all. When I asked him if, for the sake of privacy, he would care to sort the books before I cast my gaze upon them (after all, he is a member of the Carpathian aristocracy, and who knows what family secrets hide here) he demurred, insisting that I should have full run of the place. He is a charming man, strange and distant in his thoughts, and altogether too much of an Easterner for me to ever fully gain his confidence, for I act as the representative of an Empire far too domesticated for his tastes, and I suspect, too diminished in his mind. Yes, diminished, for there is little doubt he regards the British intellect as soft and sated, even though there is much in it that he admires. He comes from a long line of bloodletting lords, who ruled with the sword-blade and despised any show of compassion, dismissing it as frailty. He is proud of his heritage, of course, yet learning to be ashamed, contrition being the only civilized response to the sins of the past.

  I think perhaps he regards this vast library, with its impossible mythologies and ghastly depictions of events that may never happen, as part of that bloody legacy he is keen to put behind him. He is, after all, the last of his line. I suspect he is allowing me to catalogue these books with a view to placing the contents up for auction. The problem, though, is that it is almost impossible for me to judge how I should place a price on such objects. Regardless of what is contained within, the bindings themselves are frequently studded with precious and semi-precious jewels, bound in gold-leaf and green leather, and in one case what suspiciously appears to be human skin. There is no precedent to them, and therefore there can be no accurate estimate of value.

  How, then, am I to proceed?

  From The Journal of Jonathan Harker, 15 July—.

  Regarding the library: I have devised a system that allows me to create a table of approximate values, and that for now must suffice. First, I examine the binding of the book, noting the use of valuable ornamentation and pigments. Then I make note of the author and the subject, gauging their popularity and stature; how many copies have been printed (if indicated) and where; how many editions; the age of the work and its length; and finally, content, whether scandalous and likely to cause offence, whether of general interest, usefulness and the like. To this end I find myself making odd decisions, putting a history of Romanian road-mapping before the Life and Times of Vladimir the Terrible because the former may be of more utility in charting this neglected territory. Thus the banal triumphs over the lurid, the ordinary over the outrageous, the obvious over the obscure. A fanciful mind might imagine that I was somehow robbing the library of its power by reclassifying these tomes in such a manner, that by quantifying them I am reducing the spell they cast. Fancies grow within these walls. The castle is conducive to them.

  In my tenth week I started upon the high barred shelves, and what I find there surprises, delights and occasionally revolts me. Little histories, human fables set in years yet to be, that reveal how little our basest nature changes with the passing decades. These books interest me the most.

  I had not intended to begin reading any of the volumes, you understand, for the simple reason that it would slow my rate of progress to a crawl, and there are still so many shelves to document. Many books require handling with the utmost care, for their condition is so delicate that their gossamer pages crumble in the heat of a human hand. However, I now permit myself to read in the evenings, in order that I might put from my mind the worsening weather and my poor, pining Mina.

  The light in the library is good, there being a proliferation of candles lit for me, and the great brocaded armchair I had brought down from my bedroom is pulled as close to the fire as I dare, deep and comfortable. Klove leaves his master’s guest a nightly brandy, setting down a crystal bowl before me in the white kid gloves he always wears for duties in this room. Outside I hear the wind loping around the battlements like a wounded wolf, and in the distant hills I hear some of those very creatures lifting their heads to the sky. The fire shifts, popping and crackling. I open the book I have chosen for the evening and begin to read.

  From The Journal of Jonathan Harker, 30 August—.

  I have the strangest feeling that I am not alone.

  Oh, I know there are servants, four, I think; a raw-looking woman who cooks and cleans, her husband the groom, an addle-pate underservant born without wits who is only fit for washing and sweeping (he might be the son of the cook; there is a resemblance), and Klove, an unsmiling Germ
an butler whom I take to be the Count’s manservant. I mean to say that there is someone else here. I sense his presence late at night, when the fire has banked down to an amber glow and the library is at its gloomiest. I can feel him standing silently at the windows (an impossibility, since they overlook a sheer drop of several hundred feet) but when I turn to catch a glimpse of this imagined figure it is gone.

  Last night the feeling came again. I had just finished cataloguing the top shelves of the library’s west wall, and was setting the iron ladders back in their place when I became aware of someone staring at my back. A sensation of panic seized me as the hairs stood on my neck, prickling as though charged with electricity, but I forced myself to continue with my task, finally turning in the natural course of my duty and raising my gaze to where I felt this mysterious watcher to be standing.

  Of course, there was nothing corporeal to see—yet this time the feeling persisted. Slowly, I made my way across the great room, passing the glowing red escarpment of the fire, until I reached the bank of mullioned windows set in the room’s north side. Through the rain that was tickering against the glass I looked out on the most forsaken landscape imaginable, gray pines and burned black rock. I could still feel him, somewhere outside the windows, as if he had passed by on the wall itself, and yet how was this possible? I am a man who prides himself on his sensitivity, and fancied that this baleful presence belonged to none other than my host. Yet the Count was still away and was not due to return for a further fourteen days, (I had been informed by Klove) having extended his trip to conclude certain business affairs.

  This presents me with a new problem, for I am told that winter quickly settles in the mountains, and is slow to release the province from its numbing grip. Once the blizzards begin the roads will quickly become inundated, making it virtually impossible for me to leave the castle until the end of spring, a full seven months away. I would truly be a prisoner here in Castle Dracula. With that thought weighing heavily on my mind I returned to my seat beside the fire, fought down the urge to panic, opened a book and once more began to read.

  I must have dozed, for I can only think what I saw next was a hallucination resulting from a poorly digested piece of mutton. The Count was standing in the corner of the library, still dressed in his heavy-weather oilskin. He seemed agitated and ill at ease, as if conducting an argument with himself on some point. At length he reached a decision and approached me, gliding across the room like a tall ship in still seas. Flowing behind him was a rippling wave of fur, as hundreds of rats poured over the chairs and tables in a fanned brown shadow. The rodents watched me with eyes like ebony beads. They cascaded over the Count’s shoes and formed a great circle around my chair, as if awaiting a signal. But the signal did not come, so they fell upon one another, the strongest tearing into the soft fat bellies of the weakest, and the library carpet turned black with blood as the chamber filled with screams . . .

  I awoke to find my shirt as wet as if it had been dropped into a lake. The book I had been reading lay on the floor at my feet, its spine split. The gold crucifix I always wear at my neck was hung on the arm of my chair, its clasp broken beyond repair. I resolved to eat earlier from that night on.

  From The Journal of Jonathan Harker, 22 September—.

  The weather has begun to worsen, and there is still no sign of the Count. Klove has heard nothing of his master, and as the days grow shorter a forlorn darkness descends upon the castle. The skies are troubled, the clouds heavier now, ebbing to the west with their bellies full of rain. The library occupies my waking hours. It is like an origami model of Chinese paper, ever-unfolding into new configurations. Just when I think I have its measure, new delights and degradations present themselves. Yesterday, I started on a further set of shelves housing nautical chart-books and maps, and while reaching across the ladder to pull one stubborn tome free, triggered the opening of a mahogany flap built in the rear of the shelf that folded down to reveal a hundred further volumes.

  I carefully cleared a space and set these books in stacks according to their coordinated bindings, and only once they all stood free of their secret home did I start to examine them.

  I find delicacy escapes me at this point; they were lexicons of erotica, frankly illustrated, alarmingly detailed, outlining practices above, below and altogether beyond the boundaries of human nature in such an overt and lascivious manner that I was forced to return them to their hiding place before Klove brought me my nightly brandy, for no gentleman would wish such volumes to fall into the hands of servants.

  After he had departed the room I took time to examine the single edition I had left out. It was much like the others, designed more to arouse the senses than to provide practical advice concerning the physical side of matrimony. The room grew hot about me as I turned the pages, and I was forced to move back from the fireplace. The drawings were shameless, representing actions one would scarcely countenance in the darkest woods, here presented in brightest daylight. Still more shocking was my discovery that the book was English, produced in London, presumably for foreign purchasers. While I was examining this, I began to sense the presence once more, and this time as it grew I became aware of a smell, a sweet perfume akin to Atar of Roses—a scented water my own Mina would often dab at her swan-pale neck. The perfume, filled as it was with memories of home, quite overpowered me and I grew faint, for I fancied I saw a lady—no, a woman—standing on the staircase nearest the windows.

  She was tall and handsome rather than beautiful, with a knowing look, her auburn hair swept back and down across a dress of sheer green gossamer, with jewels at her throat, and nothing at all on her feet. She stood with her left side turned to me, so that I could not help but notice the exaggerated posture of her breasts. It was as though she intended them to incite my admiration. The effect was indecent, but nothing to the effect produced when she turned to face me directly, for the front panel of the dress was cut away below her waist to reveal—well, her entire personal anatomy. Stupefied by her brazenness, wondering if she was perhaps ill, I found myself unable to move as she approached. Upon reaching my chair she slid the outstretched fingers of her right hand inside my shirt, shearing off each of the buttons with her nails. I was acutely aware that the naked part of her was very close to me. Then, reaching inside the waistband of my trousers, she grasped at the very root of my reluctantly extended manhood and brought it forward, bursting through the garment’s fly-buttons. When I saw that she intended to lower her lips to this core of my being, every fiber of my body strained to resist her brazen advances.

  Here, though, my mind clouds with indistinct but disagreeable impressions. A distant cry of anger is heard, the woman retreats in fear and fury, and I awake, ashamed to discover my clothing in considerable disarray, the victim of some delirious carphology.

  From The Journal of Jonathan Harker, 7 October—.

  The snow has started falling. During these increasingly frequent squalls, all sights and sounds are obscured by a deadening white veil that seals us in the sky. From my bedroom window I can see that the road to the castle is becoming obscured. If the Count does not return soon, I really do not see how I shall be able to leave. I suppose I could demand that a carriage be fetched from the nearest village, but I fear such an action would offend my absent host, who must surely reappear any day now.

  I am worried about my Mina. I have not heard from her inside a month, and yet if I am truthful part of me is glad to be imprisoned here within the castle, for the library continues to reveal paths I feel no Englishman has ever explored.

  I do not mean to sound so mysterious, but truly something weighs upon my mind. It is this; by day I follow the same routine, logging the books and entering them into the great ledgers my host provided for the purpose, but each night, after I have supped and read my customary pages before the fire, I allow myself to fall into a light sleep, and then—

  —then my freedom begins as I either dream or awaken to such unholy horrors and delights I can barely b
ring myself to describe them.

  Some nights bring swarms of bats, musty-smelling airborne rodents with leathery wings, needle teeth and blind eyes. Sometimes the ancestors of Vlad Drakul appear at the windows in bloody tableaux, frozen in the act of hacking off the howling heads of their enemies. Men appear skewered on tempered spikes, thrusting themselves deeper onto the razor-poles in the throes of an obscene pleasure. Even the Count himself pays his respects, his bony alabaster face peering at me through a wintry mist as though trying to bridge the chasm between our two civilizations. And sometimes the women come.

  Ah, the women.

  These females are like none we have in England. They do not accompany themselves on the pianoforte, they do not sew demurely by the fire. Their prowess is focused in an entirely different area. They kneel and disrobe each other before me, and caress themselves, and turn their rumps toward me in expectation. I would like to tell you that I resist, that I think of my fiancée waiting patiently at home, and recite psalms from my Bible to strengthen my will, but I do not, and so am damned by the actions taken to slake my venomous desires. Who are these people who come to me in nightly fever-dreams? Why do they suit my every morbid mood so? It is as if the Count knows my innermost thoughts and caters for them accordingly. Yet I know for a fact that he has not returned to the castle. When I look from the window I can see that there are no cart-tracks on the road outside. The snow remains entirely unbroken.

  There are times now when I do not wish to leave this terrible place, for to do so would mean forsaking the library. And yet, presumably, it is to be packed up and shipped to London, and this gives me hope, that I might travel with the volumes and protect them from division. For the strength of a library exists in the sum of its books. Only by studying it—indeed, only by reading every single edition contained within—can one hope to divine the true nature of its owner.