The Mammoth Book of Dracula (6 page)

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CHRISTOPHER FOWLER

Dracula’s Library

CHRISTOPHER FOWLER was born in Greenwich, London. He is the award-winning author of ten short story collections and thirty novels, including eight volumes in the popular “Bryant & May” series of mysteries.

Fowler has fulfilled several schoolboy fantasies—releasing a terrible Christmas pop single, becoming a male model, posing as the villain in a Batman graphic novel, running a night club, appearing in
The Pan Books of Horror Stories,
and standing in for James Bond.

His work divides into black comedy, horror, mystery and tales unclassifiable enough to have publishers tearing their hair out. The author’s often hilarious and moving autobiography
Paperboy—
about growing up in London in the 1950s and 60s—was published in 2009.

Jonathan Harker stays on at Dracula’s Castle, but at what cost to his immortal soul...?

~ * ~

BEING A DIARY chronicle of the true and hitherto unrevealed fate of Jonathan Harker, discovered within the pages of an ancient book.

From The Journal of Jonathan Harker, 2 July
—.

I have always believed that a building can be imbued with the personality of its owner, but never have I felt such a dread ache of melancholy as I experienced upon entering that terrible, desolate place. The castle itself—less a chateau than a fortress, much like the one that dominates the skyline of Salzburg—is very old, thirteenth century by my reckoning, and a veritable masterpiece of unadorned ugliness. Little has been added across the years to make the interior more bearable for human habitation. There is now glass in many of the windows and mouldering tapestries adorn the walls, but at night the noise of their flapping reveals the structure’s inadequate protection from the elements. The ramparts are unchanged from times when hot oil was poured on disgruntled villagers who came to complain about their murderous taxes. There is one entrance only, sealed by a portcullis and a pair of enormous studded doors. Water is drawn up from a great central well by a complicated wooden pump-contraption. Gargoyles sprout like toadstools in every exposed corner. The battlements turn back the bitter gales that forever sweep the Carpathian mountains, creating a chill oasis within, so that one may cross the bailey—that is, the central courtyard of the castle—without being blasted away into the sky.

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 labour 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 travelled 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 under-servant 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 German 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 yards) 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, grey 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.