Johnathan Harkers Journal, May 7th 1897The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from a window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything!
The Count spoke.
"Come, Tell me of the properties you have procured for me... I do so long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity - to share its life, its changes, its death..."
"You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked. There is reason that all things are as they are... We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things"
"Should you leave these rooms, you will not by any chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle. It is old and has many memories, and there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely."
In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner.I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, for, though the moonlight was behind them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me and looked at me for some time.
They whispered together, then they all laughed -such a silvery, musical laugh.
"Go on! You are first, and we shall follow; yours is the right to begin"
"He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all"
I lay quiet, looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me until I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of her lips on my throat and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there.
But in that instant another sensation swept through me as quick as lightening. I was conscious of the presence of the Count.
"How dare you touch him, any of you?... This man belongs to me...When I am done with him...You shall kiss him at your will."
My feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the Count begin to crawl down the castle wall face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings.
15th June. I hear below the sound of many tramping feet and the crash of weights being set down. The Count has a lowly group of gypsies
enslaved to him. Day and night they toil, filling boxes with decrepit earth from the bowls of the castle. Earth? Why do they fill these boxes with earth?
There in one of the great boxes, of which there were fifty in all, on a pile of newly dug earth lay the Count!
This was the being I was helping to transfer to London. Where - perhaps for centuries to come - he might amoungst its teeming millions satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless.
I shall not remain alone with these awful women; I shall try to scale the castle wall farther than I have yet attempted. I may find a way from this dreadful place. Away from this cursed land where the Devil and his children still walk with earthly feet.
Next week.... The Count arrives in England.
21 May 2008, 01:39:58 AM
