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Carter, one of the world’s leading experts on Dracula, owns many editions of Bram Stoker’s novel, maybe even as many as his well-heeled rival, Mikaela Klove. But one thing has always eluded him: the chance to examine the possibly apocryphal blue edition of Stoker’s seminal vampire tale. If it actually exists, the elusive edition is rumored to contain a different ending and a never-before-published chapter tantalizingly set in Dracula’s personal library.
Determined to read it for himself, Carter travels to Transylvania, where the rumored treasure might be hidden. But once there, he’ll need to work with his nemesis to solve the mysterious puzzle – or risk an endgame neither he nor Mikaela can afford to lose.
Drawing on his renowned flair for the outré, Christopher Fowler – an author ‘in the first rank of contemporary mystery writers’ – reimagines Stoker’s lost chapter and intersperses it with an unforgettable journey through Transylvania.
Welcome Page
About Reconciliation Day
Reconciliation Day
About Christopher Fowler
About the Series Editors
About Death Sentences
Mysterious Press.com page
The Mysterious Bookshop page
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
Each day I expect the count to return. My work cannot be completed if he does not appear. But each day the door remains bolted, and I must return to my work again. I fear now that it will never be complete.
How well I remember the day I arrived. Never had I felt such a dread ache of melancholy as I experienced upon entering this terrible, desolate place.
The castle is less a schloss than a fortress, and dominates the mountain skyline. It 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 castle’s inadequate protection from the elements. The ramparts and walkways appear unchanged from the time of their construction. I wondered if hot oil was once poured from them onto the heads of disgruntled villagers who came to complain about their murderous taxes.
There is one entrance only, and this at the top of a steep flight of steps, faced with a pair of enormous studded doors. Water is drawn up from a central well in the courtyard by a complicated wooden contraption. Gargoyles sprout like toadstools in every exposed corner. The battlements turn back the snow-laden gales that forever sweep the Carpathian mountains, creating a chill oasis within, so that one may cross the bailey without being blasted 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 stained glass through which it is filtered.
I was advised not to become too well-acquainted with my client. Those in London who have dealings with him remark that he is ‘too European’ for English tastes. They appreciate the nobility of his lineage, 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. 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. I have not seen him consume a morsel of food. It is as if he cannot bear the presence of a stranger such as myself.
I have been here for 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 in 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, were hams were smoked and cauldrons of soup were boiled in happier times, and which now stands as cold and lifeless as a tomb, but it carries the 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.
The count explained that the library had once been cared for by its own custodian and that he had died at a greatly advanced age, and then only through an unfortunate accident. He had fallen into a fast-running river and drowned.
The heat from the fireplace is bad for the books and would dry out their pages if continued through the years, but as I labour in 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 civilised hours.
Although I came here to arrange the count’s estate at the behest of my employer Peter Hawkins, 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 English, Latin and European 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 civilisations, accounts of deeds too shameful to be recorded elsewhere, books of magic, books of mystery, books that detail the events of impossible pasts and possible futures.
Oh, this is no ordinary library.