The Historian

Chapter 73

May 1954

I have no one to whom to write this, and no hope that it will ever be found, but it seems to me a crime not to attempt to record my knowledge while I am still able to, and God only knows how long that will be.

I was taken from my university office some days ago - I am not sure how many, but I surmise that this is still the month of May. On that night I said good-bye to my beloved student and friend, who had shown me his copy of the demonic book I had tried for years to forget. I saw him walk away with all the help I could possibly give him. Then I shut my office door and sat for a few moments in great regret and fear. I knew that I was culpable. I had renewed in secret my research into the history of vampires and I fully intended to come around by degrees to an expansion of my knowledge of the legend of Dracula, and perhaps even to solve at last the mystery of the whereabouts of his tomb. I had let time, rationality, and pride lull me into believing there would be no consequences to renewing my research. I admitted my guilt to myself even in that first moment of solitude.

It had cost me a terrible pang to give Paul my research notes and the letters I'd written about my experiences, not because I wanted them for myself any longer  - all desire to continue my research had vanished in me the second he had shown me his book. I simply, deeply regretted having to put this gruesome knowledge into his hand, although I was sure that the more he understood the better he would be able to protect himself. I could only hope that if any punishment followed, I would be the sufferer and not Paul, with his youthful optimism, his light step, his untried brilliance. Paul cannot be more than twenty-seven; I have had decades of life and much undeserved happiness. This was my first thought. My next thoughts were practical. Even if I wished to protect myself, I had no way to do so immediately, except my own faith in the rational. I had kept my notes but not any traditional means of warding off evil  - no crucifixes or silver bullets, no braids of garlic. I had never resorted to those, even at the height of my research, but now I began to regret that I had advised Paul to use only the resources of his own mind.

These thoughts required the space of a minute or two, and as it turned out, I had only a minute or two at my disposal. Then, with a sudden rush of foul, cold air, an immense presence was upon me, so that I could hardly see, and my entire body seemed to rise out of its chair with fear. I was enveloped, blinded in an instant, and I felt I must be dying, though from what I couldn't tell. In the midst of it I had the strangest vision of youth and loveliness, a feeling more than a vision, a sense of myself much younger and full of love for something or someone. Perhaps that is the way one dies. If so, when my time comes - and it will come soon, whatever terrible form it takes - I hope this vision will be with me again in the last moment.

After this I remember nothing, but a nothing that lasted for a period I could not and still cannot measure. When I came slowly to myself again, I was amazed to find myself alive. I could not see or hear, in the first seconds. It was like emerging from a brutal surgery, and my awakening was immediately followed by a comprehension that I was in pain, that my whole body was terribly weak and ached profoundly, that there was a burning in my right leg and in my throat and head. The air was cold and dank, and whatever I lay on was cold, so that I felt chilled all over. This sensation was followed by light - a dim light but enough to convince me that I was not blind and that my eyes were open.

This light, and the pain, more than anything else, confirmed to me that I was alive. I began to remember what I thought at first must have been the evening before - Paul coming to my office with his shocking discovery. Then I understood with a sudden plunging of my heart that I must be in the custody of evil; that was why my body had been brutalized and why I seemed surrounded by the very smell of evil.

I moved my limbs as cautiously as I could and managed through my great weakness to turn my head, and then to lift it. My sight was blocked by a dim wall not four inches away, but the feeble light I'd already perceived came in from above it. I sighed and heard my own sigh; this made me believe I could still hear, as well, and that I was simply in so silent a place that it had given me the illusion of deafness. I listened harder than ever, and, hearing nothing, I raised myself cautiously to a sitting position. The action sent miserable pain and weakness through all my limbs, and I felt my head throbbing. In the sitting position I regained more of my tactile sense and found I was lying on stone, and the low wall on each side of me helped me prop myself up. There was a terrible buzzing in my head, which seemed to fill the space all around me. It was a dim space, as I've said, silent and dwindling to darkness in the corners. I felt around with my hands. I was sitting up in an open sarcophagus.

This discovery sent a wave of nausea through me, but at the same moment I noted that I still wore the garments I'd had on in the office, although my shirt and jacket were torn in one sleeve and my tie was gone. The fact that I had my own clothes, however, gave me some reassurance; this was not death, not mere insanity, and I had not awakened in another era, unless I'd transported my clothes there with me. I felt my clothes and found my wallet in the front pocket of my pants. It was a shock to feel this familiar item under my hands. My watch, I found to my sorrow, was gone from my wrist, and my good pen from my inside jacket pocket.

Then I brought my hand up to my throat and face. My face seemed unchanged, apart from a very tender bruise on the forehead, but in the muscle of my throat I found a wicked puncture, sticky under my fingers. When I moved my head too far or swallowed hard, the wound made a sucking sound, appalling to me beyond all rationality. The punctured area was swollen, too, and throbbed with pain under my touch. I felt I might faint again from horror and hopelessness, and then I recalled that I had the strength to sit upright. Perhaps I had not lost as much blood as I'd at first feared, and perhaps that meant I had been bitten only once. I felt like myself, not like a demon; I felt no longing for blood, no wickedness of heart. Then a great misery swept over me. What did it matter whether I felt no bloodthirst yet? Wherever I was, it would surely be only a matter of time before I was fully corrupted. Unless, of course, I could escape.

I moved my head slowly, looking around, trying to make my eyes clear, and then I was able to discern the source of the light. It was a reddish glow far away in the darkness - but how far I could not tell - and between me and that glow loomed dark heavy shapes. I ran my hands down the outside of my house of stone. The sarcophagus seemed to be close to the ground, or to a stone floor, and I felt around until I'd determined that I could climb out into the dimness without falling any great distance. It was a long step out onto the floor, and my legs shook terribly, so that I stumbled to my knees as soon as I'd got out of the sarcophagus. Now I could see a little better, too. I made my way towards the source of soft reddish light with my hands in front of me, in the process bumping into what seemed to be another sarcophagus, which I found empty, and into a piece of wooden furniture. When I collided with the wood I heard something soft fall, but couldn't see what it was.

This groping in the dimness was terrifying, and I expected at any second to be pounced on by the Thing that had brought me there. I wondered again if I might not actually be dead - if this was some terrible version of death, which I had momentarily mistaken for a continuation of life. But nothing pounced on me, the pain in my legs was convincing enough, and I was getting closer to the light, which danced and flickered at one end of the long chamber. Before this glow, I could see now, loomed a motionless dark bulk. When I was within a few yards of it I saw a fire on a hearth, burning low and red. It was framed by an arched stone fireplace, and it gave enough light to play off several massive old pieces of furniture - a great desk littered with papers, a carved chest, a tall angular chair or two. In one of the chairs, which had its back to me and its front to the fire, someone was sitting very still - I saw a dark shape just above the chair back. I wished now that I had felt my way in the opposite direction, away from the light and towards some possible escape, but I was terribly drawn by my glimpse of that dark shape and the regal chair below it, and by the soft red of the fire. On the one hand, it took all my willpower to walk towards it, and on the other I could not have turned away if I had tried.

I came slowly into the firelight on my bruised legs, and as I rounded the great chair a figure slowly rose and turned to me. Because his back was now to the fire, and because there was so little light around us, I could not see his face, although I thought in the first second that I caught a glimpse of bone-white cheek and glittering eye. He had long, curling, dark hair, which fell around his shoulders in a short mantle. There was something about his movement that was indescribably different from that of a living man, but whether it was swifter or slower I couldn't have said. He was only a little taller than I, but gave a sense of height and bulk, and I could see the spread of his broad shoulders against the firelight. Then he reached for something, bending to the fire. I wondered if he was about to kill me and I stayed very quiet, hoping to die with some dignity, however it happened. But he was merely touching a long taper to the fire, and when it caught he lit other tapers in a candelabrum near his chair and turned again to face me.

Now I could see him better, although his face was still in shadow. He wore a peaked cap of gold and green with a heavy jewelled brooch pinned above his brow, and a massive-shouldered tunic of gold velvet with a green collar laced high under his large chin. The jewel on his brow and the gold threads in his collar glittered in the firelight. A cape of white fur was drawn around his shoulders and pinned with the silver symbol of a dragon. His clothing was extraordinary; I felt almost as frightened of it as I did of his strange undead presence. It was real clothing, living, fresh clothing, not the faded pieces of a museum exhibition. He wore it with extraordinary richness and grace, too, standing silently before me, so that the cape fell down around him like the swirl of snow. The candlelight revealed a blunt-fingered, scarred hand on a dagger hilt, and farther down a powerful leg in green hose and a booted foot. He shifted a little, turning in the light, but still silent. I could see his face better now, and the cruel strength of it made me shrink back - the great dark eyes under knitted brows, the long straight nose, the broad bonelike cheeks. His mouth, I saw now, was closed in a hard smile, ruby and curving under his wiry, dark mustache. At one corner of his lips I saw a stain of drying blood -  oh, God, how that made me recoil. The sight of it was terrible enough, but the immediate realization that it was probably mine, my own blood, made my head swim.

He drew himself up even more proudly and looked me full in the face across the dimness that separated us. "I am Dracula," he said. The words came out cold and clear. I had the sense that they were in a language I did not know, although I understood them perfectly. I was unable to speak and stood staring at him in a horrified paralysis. His body was only ten feet from me, and it was undeniably real and powerful, whether it was actually dead or alive. "Come," he said in that same cold, pure tone. "You are tired and hungry after our journey. I have set out a supper for you." His gesture was graceful, even courtly, with a flash of jewels on his big white fingers.

I saw a table near the fire, laden with covered dishes. I could smell food now, too - good, real, human food - and the aroma made me feel faint. Dracula moved quietly to the table and poured out a glass of something red from a decanter there, something I thought for a moment must be blood. "Come," he said again, more softly. He moved away and sat down in his chair, as if he thought I might be more likely to approach if he stayed at a little distance. I went haltingly towards the empty chair by the table, my legs trembling under me from sheer weakness as well as fear. I sat down among the dark cushions there, a collapse, and looked at the dishes. Why, I wondered, did I long to eat when I might die any moment? It was a mystery only my body understood. Dracula was gazing into the fire now; I could see the ferocious profile, the long nose and strong chin, the dark curl of hair over his shoulder. He had pressed his hands thoughtfully together, so that his mantle and embroidered sleeves fell away, showing wrists of green velvet and a great scar across the back of his near hand. His attitude was quiet and pensive; I began to feel I was dreaming rather than menaced, and I dared to lift the lids of some of the dishes.

Suddenly I was so hungry that I could hardly restrain myself from eating wildly with both hands, but I managed to lift the metal fork and bone knife on the table and carve up first a roasted chicken and then a piece of some gamey dark meat. There were ceramic bowls of potatoes and gruel, a hard bread, a hot soup full of greens. I ate ravenously, trying to slow myself enough to keep my stomach from cramping. The silver goblet at my elbow was brimming with strong red wine, not blood, and I drank it all. Dracula did not stir during my meal, although I couldn't help glancing at him every few seconds. When I was done I felt almost ready to die, content for a long minute. So this was why a person about to be executed was given a last meal, I thought. It was my first clear thought since I had awakened in the sarcophagus. I slowly covered the empty dishes, trying to make as little noise as possible, and sat back, waiting.

After a long while, my companion turned in his chair. "You have finished your dinner," he said quietly. "Then perhaps we can converse a little, and I will tell you why I have brought you here." His voice was clear and cold again, but this time I noticed a faint rattle in its depths, as if the mechanism that produced it was infinitely old and worn. He sat looking thoughtfully at me, and I felt myself shrinking under his gaze. "Do you have any idea where you are?"

I had hoped not to have to speak to him, but I felt that there was little point in my keeping silent, which might enrage him, although he seemed calm enough at the moment. It had also suddenly occurred to me that by answering, by engaging him somehow, I might buy a little time in which to test my surroundings for possible escape, or for some means to destroy him, if I could work up the nerve, or both. This must be night, or he would not be awake, if the legend was accurate. Eventually morning must come, and if I was alive to see it he would have to sleep while I stayed awake.

"Do you have any idea where you are?" he repeated, almost patiently.

"Yes," I said. I could not bring myself to address him by any title. "At least, I think so. This is your tomb."

"One of them." He smiled. "My favorite one, in any case."

"Are we in Wallachia?" I could not help asking it.

He shook his head so that the firelight moved in his dark hair and over his bright eyes. There was something inhuman about the gesture that made my stomach twist inside me. He did not move like a living person, and yet - again - I couldn't have said exactly what the difference was. "Wallachia became too dangerous. I should have been allowed to rest there forever, but there was no possibility of that. Imagine - after fighting so hard for my throne, for our freedom, I could not even lay my bones there."

"Where are we, then?" I tried, again in vain, to feel this was an ordinary conversation. Then I realized that I didn't simply want to make the night pass swiftly or safely, if there was any chance of that. I wanted, too, to learn something about Dracula. Whatever he was, this creature, he had lived five hundred years. His answers would die with me, of course, but this fact did not prevent me from feeling a twinge of curiosity.

"Ah, where are we," Dracula repeated. "It does not matter, I think. We are not in Wallachia, which is still ruled by fools."I stared at him. "Do you - do you know about the modern world?"

He looked at me with a surprised amusement that set his terrible face curling.

For the first time I saw the long teeth, the receding gums, which gave him the look of an old dog when he smiled. The vision was gone as quickly as it had come - no, his mouth was normal, apart from that small stain of my blood - or someone's - below the dark mustache. "Yes," he said, and I was afraid for a second that I would have to hear him laugh. "I know the modern world. It is my prize, my favorite work."

I felt that some kind of frontal attack might be in my interest, if it engaged him. "Then what do you want with me? I have avoided the modern for many years - unlike you, I live in the past."

"Oh, the past." He put his fingertips together again in the firelight. "The past is very useful, but only for what it can teach us about the present. The present is the rich thing. But I am very fond of the past. Come. Why not show you now, since you have eaten and rested?" He rose, again with that movement that seemed determined by some force other than the limbs of his body, and I rose quickly with him, afraid that this might be a trick, that he might lunge for me now. But he turned slowly and lifted a candle out of the stand near his chair and held it up. "Take a light with you," he said, moving away from the hearth and into the dark of the great chamber. I took a second candle and followed him, staying clear of his strange clothing and chilling movements. I hoped he was not going to lead me back to my sarcophagus.

By the sparse light of our candles I began to see things I had not been able to see before - wonderful things. I could now make out long tables before me, tables of an ancient solidity. And on these lay piles and piles of books - crumbling leather-bound volumes and gilt covers that picked up the glimmer of my candle flame. There were other objects, too - never had I seen such an inkstand, or such strange quills and pens. There was a stack of parchment, glimmering in the candlelight, and an old typewriter supplied with thin paper. I saw the gleam of jewelled bindings and boxes, the curl of manuscripts in brass trays. There were great folios and quartos bound in smooth leather, and rows of more modern volumes on long shelves. In fact, we were surrounded; every wall seemed to be lined with books. Holding up my candle, I began to make out titles here and there, sometimes an elegant bloom of Arabic in the center of a red-leather binding, sometimes a Western language I could read. Most of the volumes were too old to have titles, however. It was a storehouse beyond compare, and I began to itch in spite of myself to open some of those books, to touch the manuscripts in their wooden trays.

Dracula turned, holding his candle aloft, and the light picked out the glow of jewels on his cap - topaz, emerald, pearl. His eyes were very bright. "What do you think of my library?"

"It looks like a - a remarkable collection. A treasure-house," I said. A kind of pleasure went over his terrible face. "You are correct," he said softly. "This library is the finest of its kind in the world. It is the result of centuries of careful selection. But you will have plenty of time to explore the wonders I have assembled here. Now let me show you something else." He led the way towards a wall we had not yet approached, and there I saw a very old printing press, such as one comes across in late-mediaeval illustrations  - a heavy contraption of black metal and dark wood with a great screw on top. The round plate was obsidian with the polish of ink; it picked up our light like a demonic mirror. There was a sheet of thick paper lying on the shelf of the press. Leaning closer I saw that it was partly printed, a discarded attempt, and that it was in English. "The Ghost in the Amphora," ran the title. "Vampires from Greek Tragedy to Modern Tragedy." And the byline:

"Bartholomew Rossi."

Dracula must have been waiting for my gasp of astonishment, and I did not disappoint him. "You see, I keep up with the finest modern research - up to the minute, as they say. When I cannot get a published work, or I want it at once, I sometimes print it myself. But here is something that will interest you easily as much." He pointed at a table behind the press. It held a row of woodcuts. The largest of them, propped up to view, was the dragon of our books - mine and Paul's - in reverse, of course. With difficulty, I kept myself from exclaiming aloud. "You are surprised," Dracula said, holding his light near the dragon. Its lines were so familiar to me that I could have cut them with my own hand. "You know this image very well, I think."

"Yes." I held my candle tightly. "Did you print the books yourself? And how many of them are there?"

"My monks printed some of them, and I have continued their work," he said quietly, looking down at the woodcut. "I have nearly fulfilled my ambition of printing fourteen hundred and fifty three of them, but slowly, so that I have time to distribute them as I work. Does that number mean anything to you?"

"Yes," I said after a moment. "It is the year of the fall of Constantinople."

"I thought you would see it," he said with his bitter smile. "It is the worst date in history."

"It seems to me there are many contenders for that honor," I said, but he was shaking his great head above his great shoulders.

"No," he said. He lifted his candle high and in its light I saw his eyes blaze up, red in their depths like a wolf's, and full of hatred. It was like seeing a dead gaze suddenly rustle to life; I had thought his eyes bright before, but now they were savage with light. I could not speak; I could not look away. After a second he turned and contemplated the dragon again. "He has been a good messenger," he said thoughtfully.

"Did you leave mine for me? My book?"

"Let us say that I arranged it." He reached his battle-scarred fingers out to touch the carved block. "I am very careful about how they are distributed. They go only to the most promising scholars, and to those I think may be persistent enough to follow the dragon to his lair. And you are the first who has actually done it. I congratulate you. My other assistants I leave out in the world, to do my research."

"I did not follow you," I ventured to say. "You brought me here."

"Ah - " Again that curve of the ruby lips, the twitch of the long mustache.

"You would not be here if you had not wanted to come. No one else has ever disregarded my warning twice in a lifetime. You have brought yourself."

I looked at the old, old press and the woodcut of the dragon. "Why do you want me here?" I did not wish to rouse his anger with my questions; tomorrow night he could kill me, if he liked, if I'd found no escape during the daytime hours. But I could not help asking him this.

"I have been waiting a long time for someone to catalogue my library," he said simply. "Tomorrow you shall look at all of it in freedom. Tonight we shall talk." He led the way back to our chairs with his powerful, slow step. His words gave me a great deal of hope - apparently he really did not mean to kill me tonight, and besides, my curiosity was rising high in me. I was not dreaming, it seemed; I was speaking with one who had lived through more history than any historian can presume to study in even a rudimentary way in a single career. I followed him, at a careful distance, and we sat down before the fire again. As I settled myself, I noticed that the table with my empty supper dishes was gone, and in its place was a comfortable ottoman, on which I cautiously propped my feet. Dracula sat magnificently upright in his great chair. Although his chair was tall, wooden, and mediaeval, mine was comfortably upholstered, like my ottoman, as if he had thought to provide his guest with something suited to modern weakness.

We sat in silence for long minutes, and I'd just begun to wonder if he meant us to sit this way all night when he began to speak again. "In life, I loved books," he said. He turned to me a little, so that I could see the glint of his eyes and the lustre of his shaggy hair. "Perhaps you do not know that I was something of a scholar. This seems not widely known." He spoke dispassionately. "You do know that the books of my day were very limited in scope. In my mortal life, I saw mainly those texts that the church sanctioned - the gospels and the Orthodox commentary on them, for example. These works were of no use to me, in the end. And by the time I first took my rightful throne, the great libraries of Constantinople had been destroyed. What remained of them, in the monasteries, I could never enter to see with my own eyes." He was looking deeply into the fire. "But I had other resources. Merchants brought me strange and wonderful books from many places - Egypt and the Holy Land, and the great monasteries of the West. From these I learned about the ancient occult. As I knew I could not attain a heavenly paradise" - again that dispassionate tone - "I became an historian in order to preserve my own history forever."

He fell silent for some time, and I was afraid to ask more. At last, he seemed to rouse himself, tapping his great hand on the arm of his chair. "That was the beginning of my library."

I was too curious to keep silent, although I found the question bitterly hard to frame. "But after your - death, you continued to collect these books?" "Oh, yes." He turned to look at me now, perhaps because I had asked this of my own volition, and smiled grimly. His eyes, hooded in the firelight, were terrible to meet. "I have told you, I am a scholar at heart, as well as a warrior, and these books have kept me company through my long years. There is much of a practical nature to be learned from books, also - statesmanship, for example, and the battle tactics of great generals. But I have many kinds of books. You shall see tomorrow."

"And what is it you wish me to do for your library?"

"As I said, to catalogue it. I have never made a full record of my holdings, of their origins and condition. This will be your first task, and you will accomplish it more swiftly and brilliantly than anyone else would be able to, with your many languages and the breadth of your knowledge. In the course of this task, you will handle some of the most beautiful books - and the most powerful - ever produced. Many of them do not exist anywhere else anymore. Perhaps you know, Professor, that only about one one-thousandth of the literature ever published is still in existence? I have set myself the task of raising that fraction, over the centuries." As he spoke, I noticed again the peculiar clarity and coldness of his voice, and that rattling in the depths of it - like the rattle of the snake, or cold water running over stones.

"Your second task will be much larger. In fact, it will last forever. When you know my library and its purposes as intimately as I do, you will go out into the world, under my command, and search for new acquisitions - and old ones, too, for I shall never stop collecting from the works of the past. I will put many archivists at your disposal - the finest of them - and you shall bring more under our power."

The dimensions of this vision, and his full meaning, if I was comprehending it correctly, broke over me like a cold sweat. I found my voice, but unsteadily.

"Why will you not continue to do this yourself?"

He smiled into the fire, and again I saw that flash of a different face - the dog, the wolf. "I shall have other things to attend to now. The world is changing and I intend to change with it. Perhaps soon I will not need this form" - he indicated with a slow hand his mediaeval finery, the great dead power of his limbs - "in order to accomplish my ambitions. But the library is precious to me and I would like to see it grow. Besides, I have felt for some time that it is less and less secure here. Several historians have come close to finding it, and you would have found it yourself if I had left you long enough to your own devices. But I needed you here at once. I smell a danger approaching, and the library must be catalogued before it is moved."

It helped me, for a moment, to pretend again that I was dreaming. "Where will you move it?" And me with it? I might have added.

"To an ancient spot, older even than this one, that has many fine memories for me. A remote place, but one closer to the great modern cities, where I can easily come and go. We shall set the library down there and you shall increase it vastly." He looked at me with a sort of confidence that might have been fondness, on a human face. Then he stood up with his vigorous, strange movement. "We have conversed enough for one night - I see that you are tired. Let us use these hours to read a while, as I usually do, and then I shall go out. When morning comes, you must take the paper and pens you will find near the press and begin your catalogue. My books are already sorted by category, rather than by century or decade. You will see. There is a typewriter also, which I have provided for you. You may wish to compile the catalogue in Latin, but I leave this to your discretion. And, of course, you are free now and at any time to read whatever you would like to."

With this he rose from his chair and selected a book from the table, then sat down again with it. I was afraid not to follow suit, and took up the first volume that came to hand. It turned out to be an early edition of Machiavelli: The Prince, accompanied by a series of discourses on morality I'd never before seen or even heard of. I could not begin to decipher any of it, in my present state of mind, but sat staring at the type, or turned a page at random. Dracula seemed deeply engrossed in his book. I wondered, stealing a glance at him, how he had accustomed himself to this nocturnal, underground existence, the life of a scholar, after a lifetime of battle and action.

At last he rose and set his volume quietly aside. Without a word, he stepped into the darkness of the great hall, so that I could no longer make out his form. Then I heard a dry scratching sound, as of an animal in crumbling earth, or the striking of a match, although no light appeared, and I felt myself vastly alone. I strained my ears, but I couldn't tell which direction he had gone. He was not going to feast on me tonight, at least. I wondered fearfully what he was saving me for, when he might have made me his minion that much more swiftly and slaked his thirst at the same time. I sat in my chair some hours, rising now and then to stretch my sore body. I dared not sleep as long as it was night, but I must have dozed a little in spite of myself just before dawn, because I woke suddenly to feel a change in the air, although no new light entered that dark chamber, and to see Dracula's cloaked form approaching the fireside. "Good day," he said quietly, and turned away towards the dark wall where my sarcophagus lay. I had risen to my feet, compelled by his presence. Then, once again, I could not see him and a deep silence shrouded my ears.

After a long while I took my candle up and relit the candelabrum and also some candles I found in sconces along the walls. On many of the tables I discovered ceramic lamps or small iron lanterns, and I lit several of these as well. The increased illumination was a relief to me, but I wondered if I would ever see daylight again, or if I had already begun an eternity of darkness and flickering candle flame - this in itself stretched before me as a version of hell. At least I could see a little more of the chamber now; it was very deep in every direction and the walls were lined with great cabinets and shelves. Everywhere I saw books, boxes, scrolls, manuscripts, the piles and rows of Dracula's vast collection. Along one wall stood the dim shapes of three sarcophagi. I went closer with my light. The two smaller ones were empty - one of these must have been the one in which I'd found myself.

Then I saw the largest sarcophagus of all, a great tomb more lordly than all the rest, huge in the candlelight, nobly proportioned. Along the side ran one word, cut in Latin letters: DRACULA. I raised my candle and looked in, almost against my own will. The great body lay there, inert. For the first time I could see his closed, cruel face clearly, and I stood staring at it in spite of my revulsion. His brow was knitted tightly as if from a disturbing dream, the eyes open and staring, so that he looked more dead than asleep, his skin waxen yellow, his long dark lashes unmoving, his strong, almost handsome features translucent. A tumble of long dark hair fell around his shoulders, filling the sides of the sarcophagus. The most terrible thing to me was the richness of the color in his cheeks and lips, and the full look his face and form had not had in the firelight. He had spared me for a time, it was true, but out in the night somewhere he had drunk his fill. The little spot of my blood was gone from his lips; now they bloomed ruby beneath his dark mustache. He looked so full of an artificial life and health that it made my own blood run cold to see that he did not breathe - his chest never rose and fell in the slightest degree. Strange, too: he was wearing a different suit of clothes, these as rich and fine as the ones I'd seen already, a tunic and boots of deep red, a mantle and cap of purple velvet. The mantle was a little shabby over the shoulders, and the cap sported a brown feather. His collar shone with gems.

I stood there gazing until the strangeness of the sight made me feel faint, and then I fell back a pace to try to gather my thoughts. It was early in the day, still  - I had hours until sunset. I would look first for an escape, and then for a means to destroy the creature while he slept, so that whether I succeeded or failed in vanquishing him I might immediately flee. I took my light firmly in hand. Suffice it to say that I searched the great stone chamber for upwards of two hours without finding any exit. At one end, opposite the hearth, was a great wooden door with an iron lock, and this I pushed and pulled and tried until I was weary and sore. It did not budge a crack; in fact, I believe it had not been opened in many years - perhaps centuries. There was no other means of egress - no other door, no tunnel or loose stone or opening of any sort. Certainly there were no windows, and I felt sure we were quite deep underground. The only niche in the walls was the one where the three sarcophagi lay, and there, too, the stones were immovable. It was a torment to me to feel along that wall in sight of Dracula's still face with its hugely open eyes; even if the eyes never moved I felt they must have some secret power to watch and curse.

I sat down by the fire again to recover my fading strength. The fire never burned lower, I noticed, holding my hands above it, although it was consuming real branches and logs and gave off a palpable, comforting heat. I realized for the first time, too, that it was smokeless; had it been burning so all night? I drew a hand over my face, warning myself. I needed every ounce of my sanity. In fact - in this moment I made my resolution - I would make it my task to keep my mind and moral fibre intact to my last moment. That would be my sustenance, the final one left to me.

When I had collected myself, I began my search again, systematically, looking for any possible way to destroy my monstrous host. If I managed to do so, of course, I would still die alone here, without escape, but he would never again leave this chamber to prey upon the outside world. I thought fleetingly and not for the first time of the comfort of suicide - but that I could not allow myself. I was already at risk for becoming like Dracula, and legend asserted that any suicide might become undead without the added contamination I had received  - a cruel legend, but still I had to heed it. That way was closed to me. I went through every nook and cranny of the chamber, opening drawers and boxes, checking shelves, holding my candle aloft. It was unlikely that the clever prince had left me any weapon that might be used against him, but I had to search. I found nothing, not even an old piece of wood that I might somehow have sharpened into a stake. When I tried to pull a log from the fireplace, the flames blazed up suddenly, burning my hand. I tried this several times, but with the same demonic result each time.

At last I returned to the great central sarcophagus, dreading the last resort that lay there: the dagger that Dracula himself wore at his belt. His scarred hand was closed over its hilt. The dagger might well be made of silver, in which case I could plunge it into his heart, if I could bring myself to take it from his body. I sat down for a while to gather courage for this endeavor, and to overcome my revulsion. Then I stood and put my hand cautiously near the dagger, holding up my candle with the other hand. My careful touch did not prompt any flicker of life in the rigid face, I saw, although the cruelty of the expression, the deep pinched look of the nose, seemed to grow sharper. But I found to my terror that the great hand was closed on the dagger hilt for a reason. I would have to pry it off myself to reach the dagger. I put my hand on Dracula's and the feel of it was a horror I do not wish to put down here, even for nobody but myself. His hand was closed like a stone over the dagger's hilt. I could not pry it off or even move it; I might as well have tried to remove a marble dagger from the hand of a statue. The dead eyes seemed to kindle with hatred. Would he remember this later, when he awoke? I fell back, exhausted and repelled beyond strength, and sat on the floor again for some time with my candle.

At last, seeing no possible success to my schemes, I resolved on a new course of action. First, I would make myself sleep a short time, while it was still around midday, at the latest, so that I might awake long before Dracula without his waking first and finding me asleep. This I managed for the space of an hour or two, I think - I must find some better way to sense or measure time in this vacuum - by lying down before the hearth with my jacket folded under my head. Nothing could have persuaded me to climb back into that sarcophagus, but I managed some comfort from the warmth of the hearthstones under my aching limbs.

When I awoke, I listened carefully for any sound, but the chamber was deathly still. I found the table near my chair supplied again with a savory meal, although Dracula lay in the same state of paralysis in his tomb. Then I went in search of the typewriter I had seen earlier. Here I have been writing since then, as swiftly as I can, to record everything I have observed. In this way I have found some measure of time again, too, since I know my own typing pace and the number of pages I can cover in an hour. I am writing these last lines now by the light of one candle; I've extinguished the others to save them. I am famished now, and miserably cold, in the dankness away from the fire. Now I will hide these pages, eat something, and engage myself in the work Dracula has set for me, so that he will find me at it when he wakes. Tomorrow I will try to write further, if I am still alive and enough myself to do so.

Second Day

After I wrote my first entry above, I folded the pages I'd written and inserted them behind a nearby cabinet, where I could reach them again but where they were not visible from any angle. Then I took a fresh candle and made my way slowly among the tables. There were tens of thousands of books in the great room, I estimated - perhaps hundreds of thousands counting all the scrolls and other manuscripts. They lay not only on the tables but in piles inside the heavy old cabinets and along the walls on rough shelves. Mediaeval books seemed to be mixed with fine Renaissance folios and modern printing. I found an early Shakespeare quarto - histories - next to a volume of Thomas Aquinas. There were massive works on alchemy from the sixteenth century next to an entire cabinet of illuminated Arabic scrolls - Ottoman, I surmised. There were Puritan sermons on witchcraft and small volumes of nineteenth-century poetry and long works of philosophy and criminology from our own century. No, there was no pattern in time, but I saw another pattern emerging clearly enough.

Arranging the books as they would have been stored in the history collection of a normal library would take weeks or months, but since Dracula considered them sorted, according to his own interests, I would leave them as they were and merely try to distinguish one type of collection here from another. I thought the first collection began at the wall of the chamber near the immovable door and ranged through three cabinets and across two large tables: statesmanship and military strategy, I might call it.

Here I found more Machiavelli, in exquisite folios from Padua and Florence. I found a biography of Hannibal by an eighteenth-century Englishman and a curling Greek manuscript, dating back perhaps to the library of Alexandria: Herodotus on the Athenian wars. I began to feel a new chill as I turned through book after manuscript, each one more startling than the last. There was a dog-eared first edition of Mein Kampf and a diary in French -  handwritten, spotted here and there with brown mould - that appeared from its opening dates and accounts to chronicle the Reign of Terror from the point of view of a government official. I would have to look at it more closely later -  the diarist seemed not to have named himself anywhere. I found a large volume on the tactics of Napoleon's first military campaigns, printed while he was on Elba, I calculated. In a box on one of the tables I found a yellowing typescript in the Cyrillic alphabet; my Russian is rudimentary, but I was certain from the headings that it was an internal memo from Stalin to someone in the Russian military. I couldn't read much of it, but it contained a long list of Russian and Polish names.

These were some of the items I could identify at all; there were also many books and manuscripts whose authors or subjects were completely new to me. I had just begun a list of everything I could identify, dividing it roughly by century, when I felt a deepened cold, like a breeze where there was no breeze, and I looked up to see that strange figure standing ten feet away, on the other side of one of the tables.

He was dressed in the red-and-violet finery I'd seen in the sarcophagus, and he was larger and more solid than I seemed to remember from the night before. I waited, speechless, to see if he would attack me at once - did he remember my attempt to take his dagger? But he inclined his head slightly, as if in greeting.

"I see you have begun your work. You will, no doubt, have questions for me. First, let us breakfast, and then we will talk of my collections." I saw a glint in his face, through the dimness of the hall, perhaps a flash of gleaming eye. He led the way with that inhuman but imperious stride back to our fireside, and there I found hot food and drink again, including a steaming tea that brought some relief to my chilled limbs. Dracula sat watching the smokeless fire, his head erect on his great shoulders. Without wishing to, I thought about the decapitation of his corpse - on that point, all the accounts of his death agreed. How did he retain his head now, or was this all illusion? The collar of his fine tunic rose high under his chin, and his dark curls tumbled around it and fell to his shoulders.

"Now," he said, "let us take a brief tour." He lit all the candles again, and I followed him from table to table while he lit the lanterns there. "We shall have something to read by." I did not like the way the light played on his face as he bent over each new flame, and I tried to look instead at more of the book titles. He came to my side as I stood before the rows of scrolls and books in Arabic I'd noticed before. To my relief, he was still five feet away, but an acrid smell rose from his presence and I fought off a little faintness. I must keep my wits about me, I thought; there was no telling what this night would bring. "I see you have found one of my prizes," he was saying. There was a rumble of satisfaction in his cold voice. "These are my Ottoman holdings. Some of them are very old, from the first days of their diabolical empire, and this shelf here contains volumes from their last decade." He smiled in the flickering light. "You cannot imagine what a satisfaction it was for me to see their civilization die. Their faith is not dead, of course, but their sultans are gone forever, and I have outlived them." I thought for a moment that he might laugh, but his next words were grave. "Here are great books made for the sultan about his many lands. Here" - he touched the edge of a scroll - "is the history of Mehmed, may he rot in hell, by a Christian historian turned flatterer. May he rot in hell also. I tried to find him myself, that historian, but he died before I could reach him. Here are the accounts of Mehmed's campaigns, by his own flatterers, and of the fall of the Great City. You do not read Arabic?"

"Very little," I confessed.

"Ah." He seemed amused. "I had the opportunity to learn their language and their writing while I was their prisoner. You know that I was in bondage to them?"

I nodded, trying not to look at him.

"Yes, my own father left me to the father of Mehmed, as a pledge that we would not wage war against the Empire. Imagine, Dracula a pawn in the hands of the infidel. I wasted no time there - I learned everything I could about them, so that I might surpass them all. That was when I vowed to make history, not to be its victim." His voice was so fierce that I glanced at him in spite of myself and saw the terrible blaze in his face, the hatred, the sharp upwards curl of the mouth under its long mustache. Then he did laugh, and the sound was equally horrifying. "I have triumphed and they are gone." He put his hand on a finely tooled leather binding. "The sultan was so much afraid of me that he founded an order of their knights to pursue me. There are still a few of them, somewhere in Tsarigrad - a nuisance. But they are fewer and fewer, their ranks are dwindling to nothing, while my servants multiply around the globe." He straightened his powerful body. "Come. I will show you my other treasures, and you must tell me how you propose to catalogue them all."

He led me from one section to another, pointing out particular rarities, and I saw that my surmise about the patterns of his collecting were correct. Here was a large cabinet full of manuals of torture, some of them dating to the ancient world. They ranged through the prisons of mediaeval England, to the torture chambers of the Inquisition, to the experiments of the Third Reich. Some of the Renaissance volumes contained woodcuts of implements of torture, others diagrams of the human body. Another section of the room chronicled the church heresies for which many of those manuals of torture had been employed. Another corner was dedicated to alchemy, another to witchcraft, another to philosophy of the most disturbing sort.

Dracula paused in front of a great bookshelf and laid his hand on it affectionately. "This is of special interest to me, and will be to you, as well, I think. These works are biographies of me." Each volume there was connected in some way to his life. There were works by Byzantine and Ottoman historians - some of them very rare originals - and their many reprints through the ages. There were pamphlets from mediaeval Germany, Russia, Hungary, Constantinople, all documenting his crimes. Many of them I'd neither seen nor heard of in my research, and I felt an unreasonable flare of curiosity before I remembered that I had no reason, now, to complete that research. There were also numerous volumes of folklore, from the seventeenth century on, ranging over the legend of the vampire - it struck me as strange and terrible that he included these so frankly among his own biographies. He brought his great hand to rest on an early edition of Bram Stoker's novel and smiled, but said nothing. Then he moved quietly away into another section.

"This is of special interest to you as well," he said. "These are works of history about your century, the twentieth. A fine century - I look forward to the rest of it. In my day, a prince was able to eliminate troublesome elements only one person at a time. You do this with an infinitely greater sweep. Think, for example, of the improvement from the accursed cannon that broke the walls of Constantinople to the divine fire your adoptive country dropped onto the Japanese cities some years ago." He gave me the trace of a bow, courtly, congratulatory. "You will have read many of these works already, Professor, but perhaps you will glance through them with a new perspective."

At last he bade me settle by the fire again, and I found more of the steaming tea waiting at my elbow. When we were both resting in our chairs, he turned to me. "Soon, I must take my own refreshment," he said quietly. "But first, I will ask you a question." My hands began to tremble in spite of myself. I had tried until now to speak to him as little as possible without incurring his rage. "You have enjoyed my hospitality, such as I can offer here, and my boundless faith in your gifts. You shall enjoy the eternal life that only a few beings can claim. You have the free run of what is certainly the finest archive of its kind on the face of the earth. Rare works are open to you that, indeed, cannot now be seen anywhere else. All this is yours." He stirred in his chair, as if it was difficult for him to keep his great, undead body completely still for long. "Furthermore, you are a man of unparalleled sense and imagination, of keen accuracy and profound judgment. I have much to learn from your methods of research, your synthesis of sources, your imagination. For all these qualities, as well as the great scholarship they feed, I have brought you here, to my treasure-house."

Again he paused. I watched his face, unable to look away. He gazed at the fire. "With your unflinching honesty, you can see the lesson of history," he said. "History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so. Good is not perfectible, but evil is. Why should you not use your great mind in service of what is perfectible? I ask you, my friend, to join me of your own accord in my research. If you do so, you will save yourself great anguish, and you will save me considerable trouble. Together we will advance the historian's work beyond anything the world has ever seen. There is no purity like the purity of the sufferings of history. You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you. We will wash our minds clean with blood."

He turned the full flood of his gaze on me then, the eyes with their ancient knowledge blazing up and the red lips parted. It would have been a face of the most exquisite intelligence, I suddenly thought, if it had not been shaped by so much hatred. I struggled not to faint, not to go to him on the instant and throw myself on my knees before him, not to put myself under his hand. He was a leader, a prince. He brooked no trespasses. I summoned my love of all I had had in my life, and I formed the word as firmly as I could. "Never."

His face kindled, pale, the nostrils and lips twitching. "You will certainly die here, Professor Rossi," he said, as if trying to control his voice. "You will never leave these chambers alive, although you will go out from them in a new life. Why not have some choice in the matter?"

"No," I said as softly as I could.

He stood, menacingly, and smiled. "Then you shall work for me against your will," he said. A darkness began to pool before my eyes, and I held internally to my small reserve of - what? My skin began to tingle and stars came out in front of me, against the dim walls of the chamber. When he stepped closer I saw his face unmasked, a sight so terrible that I cannot remember it now - I have tried. Then I did not know anything else for a long time.

I woke in my sarcophagus, in the dark, and I thought it was once again the first day, my first awakening there, until I realized that I'd known immediately where I was. I was very weak, much weaker this time, and the wound in my neck oozed and throbbed. I had lost blood, but not so much as to incapacitate me completely. After some time I managed to move around, to climb trembling out of my imprisonment. I remembered the moment I had lost consciousness. I saw by the glow of the remaining candles that Dracula slept again in his great tomb. His eyes were open, glassy, his lips red, his hand closed over his dagger - I turned away in the deepest horror of body and soul and went to crouch by the fire and to try to eat the meal I found there.

Apparently he means to destroy me gradually, perhaps to leave open to me until the last minute the choice he presented last night, so that I might still bring him all the power of a willing mind. I have only one purpose now - no, two: to die with as much of myself intact as I can, in the hope that it may later be some small restraint on the terrible deeds I will do once I am undead, and to stay alive long enough to write all I can in this record, although it will probably crumble to dust unread. These ambitions are my only sustenance now. It is a fate beyond anything I could weep for.

Third Day

I am no longer completely certain of the day; I begin to feel that some other days may have passed, or that I have dreamed several weeks, or that my abduction occurred a month ago. In any case, this is my third writing. I spent the day examining the library, not in order to fulfill Dracula's wishes that I catalogue it for him but to learn whatever I could from it that might be of benefit to anyone - but it is hopeless. I shall just record that I discovered today that Napoleon had two of his own generals assassinated during his first year as emperor, deaths I have never seen chronicled elsewhere. I also examined a brief work by Anna Comnena, the Byzantine historian, entitled "The Torture Commissioned by the Emperor for the Good of the People" - if my Greek serves me. I found a fabulously illustrated volume of cabala, perhaps from Persia, in the section on alchemy. Among the shelves of the collection on heresies, I came across a Byzantine Saint John, but there is something wrong with the beginning of the text - it is about dark, not light. I will have to look carefully at it. I also found an English volume from 1521 - it is dated - called Philosophie of the Aweful ,a work about the Carpathians I have read about but believed existed no longer.

I am too tired and battered to study these texts as I might - as I should - but wherever I see something new and strange I pick it up with an urgency out of proportion to my complete helplessness here. Now I must sleep again, a little, while Dracula does, so that I can face my next ordeal somewhat rested, whatever happens.

Fourth Day?

My mind itself begins to crumble, I feel; try as I may, I can't keep proper track of time or of my efforts to look through the library. I do not simply feel weak but ill, and today I had a sensation that sent fresh misery through what remains of my heart. I was looking at a work in Dracula's unparalleled archive on torture, and I saw in a fine French quarto there the design for a new machine that would cleave heads instantaneously from their bodies. There was an engraving to illustrate this - the parts of the machine, the man in elegant dress whose theoretical head had just been separated from its theoretical body. As I looked at this design, I felt not only disgust at its purpose, not only wonder at the wonderful condition of the book, but also a sudden longing to see the real scene, to hear the shouts of the crowd and see the spurt of blood over that lace jabot and velvet jacket. Every historian knows the thirst to see the reality of the past, but this was something new, a different sort of hunger. I flung the book aside, put my throbbing head down on the table, and wept for the first time since my imprisonment began. I had not wept in years, in fact, not since my mother's funeral. The salt of my own tears comforted me a little - it was so ordinary.

Day

The monster sleeps, but he did not speak to me all of yesterday, except to ask me how the catalogue is coming along, and to examine my work on it for a few minutes. I am too tired to continue the task just now, or even to type much. I will sit in front of the fire and try to collect a little of my old self there.

Day Last night he sat me before the fire again, as if we were still holding civilized discourse, and told me that he will move the library soon, sooner than he had originally intended, because some threat to it is drawing closer. "This will be your last night, and then I will leave you here a little," he said, "but you will come to me when I call for you. Then you may resume your work in a new and safer place. Later we shall see about sending you out into the world. Think all you can about whom you will bring to me, to help us in our task. For now, I shall leave you where you will not be found, in any case." He smiled, which made my vision blur, and I tried to watch the fire instead. "You have been most obstinate. Perhaps we will disguise you as a holy relic." I had no desire to ask him what he meant by this.

So it is only a matter of a short time before he finishes my mortal life. Now all my energy goes to strengthening myself for the last moments. I am careful not to think of the people I have loved, in the hope that I will be less likely to think of them in my next, damned state. I will hide this record in the most beautiful book I have found here - one of the few works in the library that does not now give me a horrified pleasure - and then I will hide that book as well, so that it will cease to belong to this archive. If only I could consign myself to dust with it. I feel sunset approaching, somewhere out in the world where light and dark still exist, and I will use all my waning energy to remain myself to the last moment. If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.