A
Visit to Dracula’s Castle
I heard a heavy step approaching behind the
great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of coming light. Then there
was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back.
A key was turned with a loud grating noise, and the great door swung back.
Within stood a tall old man, clean-shaven
but for a long, white moustache, and dressed in black from head to foot,
without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an
old, silver lamp in which the flame burned without a chimney or glass of any
kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the
open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly
gesture, saying in excellent English but with a strange accent, ‘Welcome to my
house! Enter freely and of your own willl’
He did not step forward to meet me,
but stood like a statue, as though he were turned into stone. The instant
however that 1 stepped over the threshold, he stepped forward and, holding out
his hand, grasped mine with a strength, which made me wince. His hand felt as cold as ice — more like the
hand of a dead man than a living one.
Again he said, ‘Welcome to my house.
I am Dracula and I bid you enter. Come in, Mr. Harker, the night air is chill
and you must eat and rest.’
12
May
I came
out of my room and went up stone stairs to a window where I could look out over
Sheer space to the opposite wall of the castle. What I saw was the Count’s head
coming out of a window.
Then I saw the whole body of
the man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall
over that dreadful sheer abyss, face down, with his
cloak spreading out about him like great wings. I saw his fingers and toes
grasp the corners of the stones where the mortar had eroded, and in this way he
moved downwards with great speed - like a lizard darting along a wall.
Is this a man or some sort of monster that looks like a man. I am filled with the dread of this horrible
place. I am in awful fear and there is no escape for me. I am surrounded with
terrors that I dare not think of....
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