|
|
email janitors@hazardous.com
October 31, 1998
Bran Castle, Romania
|
|
The time I waited seemed endless, and I felt doubts and fears crowding upon me. What sort of place had I come to, and among what kind of people? What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked... I began to rub my eyes and pinch myself to see if I were awake. It all seemed like a horrible nightmare to me, and I expected that I should suddenly awake, and find myself at home... But my flesh answered the pinching test, and my eyes were not to be deceived. I was indeed awake and among the Carpathians. |
|
|
I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully awake I must have noticed the approach to such a remarkable place. As I stood, the driver jumped again into his seat and shook the reins; the horses started forward and dissapeared into the night. |
|
|
Blessed are those wonderful women I met on the day before who gave me such strange gifts: a crucifix and a necklace of garlic. The crucifix I have always looked at as something idolatrous, but how I cling to it now for protection! |
|
|
Suddenly I heard the clanking of chains and the great door opened and there stood a man. "Count Dracula?" He bowed in a courtly way as he replied:- "I am Dracula. And I bid you welcome to my house. Come in; the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest." |
|
|
His face was a strong - a very strong - aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty doomed forhead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. |
Text excerpts from Bram Stoker's "Dracula."
email janitors@hazardous.com
