Free Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty

wrong.”
    “Do you wish for me to proceed with negotiations with the family, sir?”
    “Mr. Barkeley, that manuscript belongs here . . . with me. You are to make an initial offer of two million dollars U.S. If countered, escalate with two even amounts up to four million. If that does not close the transaction, call Mr. Ardelean for further instructions.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Funds will be wired to the museum’s account the following day. You are to take possession of the entire display yourself and immediately transport it here.”
    “Understood, sir.”
    “Upon my acceptance of the manuscript, Mr. Ardelean will instruct the bank in Zurich to credit your account for an amount equal to the purchase price.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “That is all.”
    “Sir?” I called into the darkness.
    Arthur spoke: “He is gone.”
    “I don’t believe I heard his last instruction correctly.”
    “You heard it correctly.” He smiled and patted me on the back. “You are no doubt just overwhelmed.”
    “Four million dollars?”
    “It is not just four million dollars, Mr. Barkeley. It is four million dollars in a Swiss account for you to draw at your choosing.”

N o need for coffee; I stayed awake looking into the southern Transylvania night, counting dots of light while the town bedded. Below there was no traffic, no one afoot, no sign of humans save the diminishing house lights. Dogs howled and returned calls deep into the woods.
    I tried to keep sinister thoughts at arm’s length, because, well . . . fiction is fiction. But I could not deny Mara’s list of traits: the red eyes, the odor, his smelling radius and breathing patterns, his swift movement, and his comment that he smelled fear. Or did he say he sensed it? Regardless, the eccentricities matched many of my more reclusive clients who wished not to be identified. Perhaps I was looking for those traits out of my own fears. After all, I was in the house that Dracula built.
    I tried to shake the images by staring out into the night, and dared look up as the moon tracked straight above the castle. Clouds scurried eastward, shading the moon, and when it shone again the bright light illuminated the trees below along with the night’s airborne predators. As a child I remember seeing skeeter hawks near the lake, birds that dive through mosquito clouds for their meals, and I now recognized their distinct diving patterns. A flock darted down and toward the castle walls, looking as if they would either crash into a door or window, only to alter course and circle back.
    Several bats flew by, and Mara’s comments echoed along with the novel’s passages telling of bats at the window. Stoker described the vampire’s flight as deliberate and straight-lined, ending with a graceful landing on a sill, but this colony winged about with much jitter and weave, and none alighted on the sill. It was the first time I had ever seen the flight of bats backlit by moonlight.
    Four million dollars is serious money; not just in what it could purchase, but in what I could do. That much money meant freedom from worry and a buffer against a whimsical market. Now I would be free to work and make decisions only from a position of strength, bargaining from the top hand.
    And of course I would take care of those who took care of me. I had fully intended to approach Doug Carli about supporting the nuns with a mortgage guarantee, but after the four-million-dollar offer I decided I would purchase the house outright and just let them live out their days in security. That was the only money I cared to spend in my head before receiving it.
    Then I stepped back and recalled something Doug once told me: “No one goes from zero to millions without getting in bed with something ugly.”
    After what seemed like only an hour or two, I shared breakfast with Luc on a tray he delivered to my room. Setting up on a small table, he looked well rested. “So you met with the old man last night.”
    I