Free The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 by Gerald W. Page

grim castle walls. Pursuivant nodded and questioned.
    "I'm no authority on what you might find in Transylvania," he said, "but this looks convincing."
    A man. walked from the wings toward them. "Hello, Caspar," Drumm greeted him. "I want you to meet Judge Pursuivant and Lee Cobbett. And Miss Laurel Parcher, of course." He gestured the introductions. "This is Mr. Caspar Merrick, our Count Dracula."
    Merrick was elegantly tall, handsome, with carefully groomed black hair. Sweepingly he bowed above Laurel's hand and smiled at them all. "Judge Pursuivant's writings I know, of course," he said richly. "I read what I can about vampires, inasmuch as I'm to be one."
    "Places for the Delusion number!" called a stage manager.
    Cobbett, Pursuivant and Laura went down the steps and sat on chairs. Eight men and eight girls hurried into view, dressed in knockabout summer clothes. Someone struck chords on a piano, Drumm gestured importantly, and the chorus sang. Merritt, coming downstage, took solo on a verse. All joined in the refrain. Then Drumm made them sing it over again.
    After that, two comedians made much of confusing the words vampire and empire. Cobbett found it tedious. He excused himself to his companions and strolled out and across to the old, tree-crowded churchyard.
    The gravestones bore interesting epitaphs: not only the familiar Pause O Stranger Passing By/ As You Are Now So Once Was 1, and A Bud on Earth to Bloom in Heaven, but several of more originality. One bewailed a man who, since he had been lost at sea, could hardly have been there at all. Another bore, beneath a bat-winged face, the declaration Death Pays All Debts and the date 1907, which Cobbett associated with a financial panic.
    Toward the center of the graveyard, under a drooping willow, stood a shedlike structure of heavy granite blocks. Cobbett picked his way to the door of heavy grillwork, which was fastened with a rusty padlock the size of a sardine can. On the lintel were strongly carved letters, Chastel.
    Here, then, was the tomb of the stage beauty Pursuivant remembered so romantically. Cobbett peered through the bars.
    It was murkily dusty in there. The floor was coarsely flagged, and among sooty shadows at the rear stood a sort of stone chest that must contain the body. Cobbett turned and went back to the theater. Inside, piano music rang wildly and the people of the chorus desperately rehearsed what must be meant for a folk dance.
    "Oh, it's exciting," said Laurel as Cobbett sat down beside her. "Where have you been?"
    "Visiting the tomb of Chastel."
    "Chastel?" echoed Pursuivant. "I must see that tomb."
    Songs and dance ensembles went on. In the midst of them, a brisk reporter from Hartford appeared, to interview Pursuivant and Cobbett. At last Drumm resoundingly dismissed the players on stage and joined his guests.
    "Principals rehearse at eight o'clock," he announced. "Gonda Chastel will be here, she'll want to meet you. Could I count on you then?"
    "Count on me, at least," said Pursuivant. "Just now, I feel like resting before dinner, and so, I think, does Laurel here."
    "Yes, I'd like to lie down for a little," said Laurel.
    "Why don't we all meet for dinner at the place where we had lunch?" said Cobbett. "You come too, Phil."
    "Thanks, I have a date with some backers from New London."
    It was half-past five when they went out
    Cobbett went to his quarters, stretched out on the bed, and gave himself to thought.
    He hadn't come to Deslow because of this musical interpretation of the Dracula legend. Laurel had come because he was coming, and Pursuivant on a sudden impulse that might have been more than a wish to visit the grave of Chastel. But Cobbett was here because this, he knew, had been vampire country, maybe still was vampire country.
    He remembered the story in Pursuivant's book about vampires at Jewett City, as reported in the Norwich Courier for 1854. Horace Ray, from the now vanished town of Griswold, had died of a "wasting disease."