Dracula in London

Museum in Great Russell Street (since my visit to London was solely to search through the museum’s vast archives of manuscripts, the location of my rooms could not have been more advantageous for my purposes). On this particular day—kept from my research at the museum by a cryptic note delivered to my room early that morning—I was exploring the narrower, less-often traveled streets of the vicinity, in search of an address which seemed more and more to me a flight of fancy in the mind of whomever had composed the note, when the heavens opened wide and within moments the rain was pounding down violently. I was in Little Russell Street, just behind the church that fronts on Bloomsbury Way, and there was no way for me to find immediate shelter from the storm. The address written on the note was obviously someone’s idea of a joke, for I had been up and down this street no less than three times.

So why had I not noticed the little bookshop before?

It seemed that as soon as the sun was obscured by the rain clouds, the tiny edifice simply appeared out of the rain, set between a baker’s and a haberdashery where before there had been only, I am certain, a cramped alleyway.

I shall state here that, despite the path of research my life has been dedicated to, I am not a man who is given to either hallucination or flights of fancy. I neither believe nor disbelieve anything. I have shut myself away from the rocks and wisdom of ages, as well as the so-called great teachers of all time; I close the front door to Christ and Einstein and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to rains of frogs and lands hidden above the clouds and the paths of lost spirits. “Come this way, let’s see if you can explain yourselves,” I say unto these phenomena, always taking care to look upon them with a cold clinician’s eye. I cannot accept that the products of minds are subject-matter for belief systems. I neither saw nor did not see a bookshop hidden away on this street. It simply was, at that moment, where the moment before it was not.

I crossed the street and entered the place, nearly soaked through.

The first thing that assaulted my senses was the so-very-right smell of the place. Perhaps you have to be a true lover of books to understand what I mean by that, but the comforting, intoxicating, friendly scent of bindings! and old paper was nectar to my soul.

I called out, asking if anyone were there. When no response was forthcoming, I removed my coat, draped it on the rack near the door, and—after patting down my hair and shaking off the remnants of rain from my shoes and sleeves—proceeded to browse through the offerings.

The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with sagging shelves full of books, and I could see at a glance that, though the stock contained everything from academic texts to the usual classics, its primary focus was on matters philosophical and occult; everywhere I turned there were books such as Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia, the ancient notes of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae detailing his conclusions that the Earth was spherical, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, the Hindu Rig Veda, the poems of Ovid, the plays of Aeschylus, Lucan’s De Bello Civilia… my heart beat with tremendous anticipation. What treasures would I find here?

It was only as I was admiring an ancient copy of the Popol Vuh which sat under a glass case in the center of a great table that I became aware that I was no longer alone. How I knew this I could not then say, though what was soon to follow would make the reason clear.

I turned and saw the proprietor.

Though he appeared to be only a few inches taller than I, there was, nonetheless, a sense of power and great, massive presence about him. His fierce, dark eyes stared out at me from underneath thick eyebrows that met over his knife of a nose. His heavy white moustache drooped down past the corners of his mouth, drawing my attention at once to his red and seemingly swollen lips, which were flagrant and somehow femininely seductive against the glimmer of his face. Though he was obviously an older gentleman, he carried himself with the grace and power of a man fifteen years my junior.

“Mr. Fort,” he said, in a heavily accented, full, rich basso voice the New York Opera would have swooned to have sing upon its stage, “I am so very pleased you were able to accept the invitation.” He offered his hand. “It is a great honor to meet a gentleman such as yourself, who shares my interest is matters of data that Science has excluded.”

I shook his hand. His grip was steel. I winced from the great pressure and the pain it sent shooting up my arm.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, releasing my hand. “I sometimes forget that, in my enthusiasm, my handshake can be a bit…”

“Formidable?” I said, massaging my fingers.

His smile was slow in appearing but total in its chilling effectiveness. “What a kind way to put it.” He turned and started toward a door near the back of the shop. “If you’ll be kind enough to follow me, sir.”

I did, though somewhat reluctantly. After all, what did I know of this fellow or his intent? True, in my studies I had come across many strange tales told by sometimes stranger individuals, but (at this point in my life, at least) I rarely had to meet any of these people face to face. Still, I must admit, my curiosity was stronger than either my anxiety or trepidation.

I need speak in a bit more detail of the cryptic note which was delivered to my room as I was readying myself for the day’s research at the museum. It arrived in a heavy envelope which contained—aside from the letter itself —several newspaper clippings, which I will summarize momentarily. It read as follows: “My Dear Mr. Fort: I know that you will read the enclosed with great interest, but also with your Intellectual’s eye. Come to the address written below before the noon hour and I will give you irrefutable proof that these incidents are, indeed, based on fact and not myth. I urge you to keep this appointment.”

Below the body of the writing were these words: Denn die Todten reiten schnell (“For the dead travel fast,” a line from Burger’s “Lenore”).

The letter was signed only: A.S.

Having read with great delight Mr. Jules Verne’s famous novel, I found myself smiling at the thought that I might encounter the fictitious Arne Saknussemm at the end of my own “journey.”

The clippings came from newspapers such as Lloyd’s Sunday News, the Brooklyn Eagle, Ottawa Free Press, and the Yorkshire Evening Argus. All of them detailed stories of various bodies which were discovered to have died from massive blood loss— often the bodies were drained totally of their blood supply. All of the deaths had another fact in common: each victim, though at first thought to have been the target of a robbery-related assault, was found to have “tiny puncture marks” near or on a major artery. Sometimes there were more than one pair of these marks (a body found in Chicago had at least thirty such puncture marks on her legs) but, in each case, saliva was found within these punctures, leading, naturally, to the conclusion that each of these victims had been killed by “mentally disturbed” individuals who suffered “the delusion of vampirism.”

My hope is by now you will understand why my curiosity overpowered any anxiety I might have been experiencing.

The proprietor opened the door and led me down a long stone stairway which emptied out into a surprisingly cavernous basement. Lighting a kerosene lantern, he proceeded to lead me down a slope in the floor to an area which I can only describe as being a sort-of hidden theatre; there were a few rows of seats (which smelled of old fire) and a raised stage, more than a few of whose boards still bore the black marks of a fire.

As I sat where the proprietor directed me, I noticed the insignia of the Lyceum Theatre on the back of the seat in front of me, and realized at once that these seats—as well as portions of the stage before me—had been scavenged from the great fire which destroyed the Lyceum in 1830. (That they might have been scavenged from the wreckage of the 1803 fire did not, at the time, seem a possibility to me.)

The proprietor wandered away into the darkness, the light from the lantern growing smaller and more dim as he made his way through a curtain off to the side. I heard him moving around backstage, then a few squeaking sounds, a cough, and then the curtain fronting the stage rose slowly to reveal a series of chairs and small podiums, each on different levels, arranged in a manner befitting a “dramatic reading”—what is often called “Reader’s Theatre” in America.

There was, however, only one person on the stage as the lights came up, and he was neither standing nor seated behind one of the podiums.

He was in a wheelchair, downstage center, illuminated by a spotlight from above. His face was half in shadow, even after he raised his head to look out at his “audience.”