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common. They are devils of the pit.
     
I shall not remain alone with them; I shall try to scale the castle farther than I have yet attempted. (Takes gold from table)
     
I may find a way from this dreadful place. And then away for home! Away to the quickest and nearest train! Away from this cursed spot, from this cursed land where the devil and his children still walk with earthly feet!
     
At least God’s mercy is better than that of these monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. At its foot a man may sleep—as a man. Good-bye, all! Mina!
     
    CLIMBS OUT BY WINDOW.
     
    <>
     
    ~ * ~
     

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,