0513485001343534196 christopher fowler (6 page)

But if it is merely a medical condition, why am I beset with bestial fantasies? What power could the Count possess to hold me in his thrall? I find it harder each day to recall his appearance, for the forbidden revelations of the night have all but overpowered my sense of reality. And yet his essence is here in the library, imbued within each page of his collection. Perhaps I am not ill, but mad. I fear my senses have awoken too sharply, and my rational mind is reeling with their weight.

I have lost much of my girth in the last six weeks. I have always been thin, but the gaunt image that glares back at me in the glass must surely belong to a sickly, aged relation. I appear as a bundle of blanched sticks by day. I have no strength. I live only for the nights. Beneath the welcoming winter moon my flesh fills, my spirit becomes engorged with an unwholesome strength, and I am sound once more.

I really must try to get away from here.

From the Journal of Jonathan Harker, December 18th 1893

The Count has finally returned, paradoxically bringing fresh spirits into the castle. For the life of me I cannot see how he arrived here, as one section of the pathway below has clearly fallen away into the valley. Last night he came down to dinner, and was in most excellent health. His melancholy mood had lifted, and he was eager to converse. He seemed physically taller, his posture more erect. His travels had taken him on many adventures, so he informed me as he poured himself a goblet of heavy claret, but now he was properly restored to his ancestral home, and would be in attendance for the conclusion of my work.

I had not told him I was almost done, although I supposed he might have intuited as much from a visit to the library. He asked that we might finish the work together, before the next sunrise. I was very tired -

indeed, at the end of the meal I required Klove's helping hand to rise from my chair - but agreed to his demand, knowing that there were but a handful of books left for me to classify.

Soon we were seated in the great library, warming ourselves before the fire, where Klove had set bowls of brandy out for us.

It was when I studied his travelling clothes that I realised the truth. His boots and oil-cloth cape lay across the back of the chair where he had supposedly deposited them on his return. As soon as I saw that the boots were new, the soles polished and unworn, I instinctively intuited that the Count had not been away, and that he had spent the last six months here in the castle with me. I knew I had not imagined what I had seen and done. We sat across from each other in two great armchairs, cradling our brandies, and I nervously pondered my next move, for it was clear to me that the Count could sense my unease.

'I could not approach you, Jonathan,' he explained, divining my thoughts as precisely as an entymologist skewers a wasp. 'You were simply too English, too Christian, too filled with pious platitudes. The reek of your pride was quite overpowering. I saw the prayer book by your bed, the cross around your neck, the dowdy little virgin in your locket. I knew it would be simpler to sacrifice you upon the completion of your task.' His eyes watched mine intently. 'To suck your blood and throw your drained carcass over the battlements to the wolves.' I stared back, refusing to flinch, not daring to move a single nerve-end.

'But,' he continued with a heartfelt sigh, 'I did so need a good man to tend my library. In London I will easily find loyal emissaries to do my bidding and manage my affairs, but the library needs a keeper. Klove has no feeling for language. To be the custodian of such a rare repository of ideas requires tact and intellect. I decided instead to let you discover me, and in doing so, discover yourself. That was the purpose of the library.'

He raised his arm, fanning it over the shelves. 'The library made you understand. You see, the pages of the books are poisoned. They just need warm hands to activate them, the hands of the living. The inks leaked into your skin and brought your inner self to life. That is why Klove always wears gloves in this room. You are the only other living person here.'

I looked down at my stained and fragrant fingers, noticing for the first time how their skin had withered into purple blotches.

'The books are dangerous to the Christian soul, malignant in their print and in their ideas. Now you have read my various histories, shared my experiences, and know I am corrupt, yet incorruptible. Perhaps you see that we are not so far apart. There is but one barrier left to fall between us.' He had risen from his chair without my noticing, and circled behind me. His icy tapered fingers came to rest on my neck, loosening the stiff white collar of my shirt. I heard a collar stud rattle on to the floor beneath my chair.

'After tonight you will no longer need to use my library for the fulfilment of your fantasies,' he said, his steel-cold mouth descending to my throat, 'for your fantasies are to be made flesh, just as the nights will replace your days.' I felt the first hot stab of pain as his teeth met in my skin. Through a haze I saw the Count wipe his lips with the back of a crimson hand. 'You will make a very loyal custodian, little Englishman,' he said, descending again.

Here the account ends. The library did not accompany Count
Dracula on his voyage to England, but remained behind in his castle,
where it continued to be tended by Mr Harker until his eventual
demise many, many years later.

PHOENIX

It was the year 2000, supposedly the start of everything new, but everything new was already old again. True, the New Year's Eve celebrations had been noisier than most, and a bunch of people had been shot dead downtown, killed by pistols and rifles fired jubilantly in the air.

Brett Ellis had thrown a party in a marquee for two hundred people.

Some of the guests were his friends. Most were colleagues. Brett was an American success story; a wealthy, handsome Los Angeles advertising executive who had made his own way up the corporate ladder. Married with a young son, the thirty-two-year-old businessman lived in a beautiful Spanish-style ranch house in the Hollywood Hills with his elegant wife Mara and Davey, who was six.

Brett was a vice-president of merchandising development for one of the new multimedia agencies now controlling American advertising. He had a reputation for being a hard negotiator, and for getting what he wanted. Remembering his own humbler beginnings, Brett simply wanted the best for himself and his family. His life was comfortable and predictable. He did not fear his enemies (of whom he had plenty) because he was at peace with himself and sure of his abilities. He was a little smug, perhaps, a little too complacent. In a town like LA, that didn't exactly make him a criminal.

He certainly never paid much attention to the increasing number of homeless people on the streets, or the escalating incidents of violence he saw on the news. In his determination to assure himself that life was perfect, he had even managed to turn a blind eye to the obvious evidence that his wife had taken a lover.

Then one day, Brett became aware that someone was following him, a shabby little man in a beaten-up red Volkswagen. The car was parked outside his office for a whole day, and parked outside his house while Brett and his wife were throwing a birthday party for Davey. When Brett ran out to speak to the driver, he pulled away from the kerb with a squeal of tyres.

Brett called the cops. He was not prepared to take chances. He gave the police a full description of the man, but they told him they couldn't do anything unless he had been physically threatened. They had bigger problems to deal with. There were riots brewing once more in downtown LA, had been ever since New Year's Eve.

Brett lay in wait for his stalker. He finally trapped him one evening when the day's suffocating heat broke in a cataclysmic rainstorm. Mara had taken Davey to the movies in Westwood. She hated driving anywhere in the rain. Brett was not sure she knew how to operate the windshield wipers. He saw the VW parked across the street when he got up to fetch a soda, and ran outside in his socks, surprising the driver, who was dozing at the wheel.

Frightened, the old man told Brett his name was Elias. He worked at the Church of the Phoenix downtown, and he had been following Brett for several months.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?' shouted Brett, losing his cool. His socks were soaked, and the stormy weather had given him a headache. When the old man refused to answer, Brett reached through the open window of the car and grabbed him by the collar. 'I swear I'll break your neck. Do you know what this is doing to me?'

'I don't mean any harm,' begged the oldster. 'I have to be here. I have to watch over you.'

'What are you talking about?' He loosened his grip on the shirt, frightened that he might really break the frail old man's neck.

'You're one of the Chosen Ones,' Elias replied, 'as inscribed by the prophecies of Nostradamus and the Book of Daniel, and revealed in the doctrines of the Phoenix.'

Brett should have walked away then, but he didn't. He hesitated a moment too long, and ended up staying to listen. The Chosen Ones, explained the old man, were a handful of decent law-abiding people who would lead the church - and indeed the whole world - into a pure new era of goodness and natural harmony. Clues and signs in certain church texts led the way to Brett's door. There were other Chosen Ones in the world who would help him to achieve this grand goal of world improvement at the start of the millennium, but he had to be patient.

Perhaps Brett would like to come along to the church some time and join in one of the services - they would be very honoured to have him. In fact, some of the hymns were about him.

'Just how am I supposed to change the world?' he asked against his better judgement. It was kind of flattering, the idea of being worshipped.

'Well see, it's not possible to reveal the answer yet,' said Elias. 'We're still waiting for a further sign.'

Elias explained that he was honoured to have been chosen to monitor Brett's movements, and to make sure that no harm came to him before his appointed time to act. In the eyes of his church, it was a privileged position to be in. He told Brett to think of him as a guardian angel.

Clearly, Elias was a nut.

But, Brett decided, he was a harmless one. It fed his ego to know that people were singing his praises, even if they too were all nuts. No-one ever sang his praises at work. However, he warned the little man that if he caught sight of him again, he would call the police to the church and have him arrested for harassment.

'Go on, get out of here,' said Brett, releasing his grip. Elias started the engine. Before he drove off, he leaned from the window and handed Brett a card with the address of the church printed on it. 'You must watch for the signs that you have been chosen,' he exclaimed. 'They will be natural symbols of peace and harmony, and they'll be surrounding you in ever greater force until the appointed time!'

'And don't let me catch you near my property again!' Brett called back. Sure, he thought, shaking his head, I'll keep an eye out. Meanwhile, stay the hell away from me.

Over the next few weeks, he worked long, late nights on a TV

campaign his team was developing for a new kind of cola. The primary-coloured commercials they produced together were vacuous and irritating, and somehow seemed to provide an ironic comment on his empty life. Lately he noticed Mara was seeing more of her fancy man, even though she insisted she was visiting a friend in the Valley. After the campaign was delivered, he decided to take the family on vacation to Hawaii. Hiring a yacht, they headed out into the seas around Maui, even though Mara hated the ocean. Brett hoped the enforced intimacy of the boat might help them get back together.

One morning he was swimming aimlessly in the calm clear waters when his wife leaned over from the deck railing and called urgently to him. 'For God's sake, Brett,' she shouted in agitation, 'don't move a muscle!'

All around him, numbering in their thousands, poisonous jellyfish had gathered. The Portuguese men o' war gently bobbed in gelatine star clusters. Gingerly, he pushed his left arm through the water, nudging them aside. Then his right. He made no sudden movements. It was important to do nothing that would scare them into stinging.

Incredibly, he managed to reach the boat completely unharmed. The family watched as the jellyfish gently dispersed like an expanding universe.

Other oddities occurred that spring. One night they were drawn from the house by a scrabbling noise above them, and found birds of every imaginable species landing on the roof. Two days later, a vast brown swarm of bees surrounded the car as he waited in traffic at the corner of La Brea and Melrose. Other drivers got out of their vehicles to watch and take photographs. The bees massed noisily, dancing back and forth on the hood of the Mercedes before dispersing into the sky. Shiny-backed beetles swarmed in the basement, much to Mara's consternation. She shivered in horror as their iridescent bodies rippled crossing the floor.

'Looks like you've developed an affinity with nature, honey,' she half-joked.

It wasn't just living creatures that were affected, either. Technology started behaving strangely, too. Brett's infrared laptop began to pick up odd scrambled signals whenever he was around. One morning it beamed a huge file of biblical gibberish into the RAM of his office computers, crashing the system. The next day he was working on the laptop when his spreadsheet fuzzed away into the ether, to be replaced by a badly drawn image of a bird bursting into a blaze of flame. The repair shop could find nothing wrong with it. They suggested that maybe someone was playing a practical joke.

The episode with Elias had itself become something of a joke in the Ellis household, but it was one that stopped being funny the very next night. Brett had given up waiting for Mara to come home and was getting ready for bed. He was standing in his darkened bedroom when he suddenly had the feeling he was being watched. Pulling his T-shirt over his head, he walked to the windows and looked down into the scrubland beyond the back yard. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw dozens of people standing among the trees and bushes, motionless and silent, staring up at his house. In the flickering shadows they looked like statues.