[HM] Dracula’s Guest
The letter arrived at dusk.
Not by post, precisely. Post did not reach the castle in any ordinary sense. It came instead folded into the breast of a frightened man who had been paid too much to ask too few questions, and who left the instant the Count took it from him.
Dracula broke the seal beneath a single lamp.
Messrs. Hawkins & Harker.
His dark eyes moved once across the page.
A solicitor’s clerk would be sent.
Young.
English.
Expected within the week.
For several moments, the Count stood perfectly still.
Then he looked around the great hall.
Dust lay silver upon the unused chairs.
A cobweb stretched between the antlers above the fireplace.
One of the wall hangings had come loose at the corner and sagged with the exhausted air of something that had been waiting three hundred years for someone else to fix it.
Dracula frowned.
This would not do.
He rang a bell.
The sound echoed magnificently through the castle.
No one came.
Dracula waited.
Still no one came.
Naturally.
He crossed the room, opened the door through which a servant ought to have entered, and vanished into the corridor.
The next six nights were extremely busy.
The guest chamber came first.
Dracula stripped the bed himself, carrying the ancient linens away beneath one arm with an expression of grave aristocratic displeasure. Fresh sheets were retrieved from a cedar chest. He shook them out, regarded the result, then shook them again.
He had not made a bed in some time.
After several attempts, he stood at its foot and examined the blankets.
One corner was longer than the other.
His mouth tightened.
He remade the entire thing.
The room was aired, though opening the windows admitted mostly fog and the distant howling of wolves. The Count dusted the furniture with an old linen cloth, polished the brass basin, replenished the pitcher, and placed a small stack of towels beside it.
He stopped.
Three towels.
Too few?
He considered Englishmen.
Four towels.
Better.
Then came the dining room.
Dracula dragged six chairs away from the table and left only two.
Too intimate.
He returned two.
Too formal.
After twenty minutes, the table had four chairs arranged around it, although there would only ever be two occupants.
That looked correct.
Silver was polished.
Candlesticks were cleaned.
The Count discovered, with evident irritation, that one candlestick had developed a green stain near the base.
He scrubbed harder.
The stain remained.
Dracula stared at it.
The next evening, there was a different candlestick.
The kitchen proved more troublesome.
The Count did not eat.
This had certain disadvantages when entertaining.
He opened cupboards one after another.
Flour.
Salt.
Dried beans.
Several onions of questionable age.
A wheel of cheese.
Something in a jar whose identity had been lost to history.
Dracula removed the jar, carried it outside, and threw it into the ravine.
He consulted books.
Englishmen, according to one volume, liked beef.
According to another, they liked mutton.
A third suggested kidney.
Dracula closed the third book.
“No.”
He arranged for provisions to be purchased anonymously in the village.
The following night, he stood in the kitchen wearing a dark waistcoat with his sleeves rolled carefully to the elbow, regarding a joint of meat as if it had personally insulted him.
The meat went into a pan.
Then out.
Then back in after Dracula consulted the book again.
Potatoes were peeled.
One slipped from his hand and rolled beneath a cabinet.
He stared at it.
The potato remained where it was.
Dracula slowly bent down and retrieved it.
Later, he prepared soup.
The first attempt was too salty.
The second was not salty enough.
The third was acceptable.
He poured all three into one pot.
Acceptable enough.
The wolves howled outside.
“Quiet.”
The wolves stopped.
On the fifth night, Dracula practiced answering the door.
He stood behind the great entrance and opened it with deliberate slowness.
Too theatrical.
Again.
He opened it more quickly.
Too eager.
Again.
A long pause. The door swung inward.
Perfect.
“Welcome to my house.”
He considered this.
“Enter freely and of your own will.”
Better.
He repeated it several times until the words sounded spontaneous.
Then he practiced taking a coat.
He had forgotten where coats were ordinarily put.
Eventually he settled upon a chest in the hall, reasoning that no guest would be likely to inquire closely into the domestic arrangements of a Transylvanian castle.
On the final evening, the Count walked through every room Harker was expected to see.
Fire lit.
Wine poured.
Meal ready.
Guest room prepared.
Dining table set.
No dust visible in direct candlelight.
Dracula paused beside the staircase and listened.
From somewhere far below came the faint drip of water.
From outside, wolves.
Otherwise, silence.
He smiled.
An excellent household.
At last, the sound of wheels reached him from the mountain road.
Dracula’s expression changed instantly.
All trace of exertion vanished.
His shoulders settled.
His face became composed, remote, almost bored.
He descended the staircase at an unhurried pace, stopping only once to straighten a cushion he had forgotten.
Then he reached the door.
Behind him, the castle stood glowing with fires he had lit, beside a dinner he had cooked, beneath chandeliers he had cleaned, with a bed upstairs whose corners had taken him forty-five minutes.
The carriage stopped.
A knock sounded.
Count Dracula waited three beats.
Not two.
Two would seem eager.
Then he opened the door.
“Welcome to my house,” he said smoothly. “Enter freely and of your own will.”
Jonathan Harker stepped inside and looked around in wonder at the grand old castle and its mysterious unseen servants.
Dracula inclined his head.
Effortless