Raymond Rudorff - The Dracula Archives

Tarted up slightly from old board but still unreadable ...

Raymond Rudorff - The Dracula Archives (Pocket, July 1973: Sphere, 1973)



"Non-fiction" according to the Pocket edition blurb.
The novel - a kind of prequel to Dracula - begins with The Last Confession of Franz Von Langenfels, September 1876. Three hedonistic students - Karl, Reinhold and Franz himself - spend the night in the ruins of the reputedly haunted Castle Cjesthe, once home to Countess Bathory. After a brief history of her life and crimes, Reinhold gives them a guided tour of her torture chamber, at the foot of which they discover a secret room containing a stone sarcophagus. The trio are stupid enough to loot the tomb whereupon supernatural vengeance takes a hand. Karl is crushed and spiked inside an iron maiden while Franz flees, still wearing the Countess's ring which proves impossible to remove. Elizabeth pursues him to his doom. "I know our intrusion into the vaults of the castle and our ghastly violation of the secrets of the tomb have released her monstrous spirit from its confinement." A cutting from a local newspaper, dated September 24th, tells of his subsequent suicide.

Next up, Leaves from the Journal of Ambrose Lessing and Leaves from Conrad Horheim's Journal truly transcribed by Ambrose Lessing: Lessing tells of how his friend Conrad Morheim sent him a letter at Nuremburg (December 1876) requesting his presence at Kalasz immediately as his beloved wife Adelaide is "inflicted by the strangest malady imaginable."

From her husband's journal we learn of Adelaide's strange, medic-baffling affliction and Conrad is of a mind that she's been possessed by a devil. Her strange behaviour dates from when she began to experience disturbing, oppressive dreams which spill over into her waking hours:

We walked slowly through the woods, admiring natures colouring and landscape and were approaching a pretty little church that stands near a hamlet when Adelaide uttered a low cry. As I enquired the reason for this cry, Adelaide motioned me away and began to run toward the courtyard, there looking around her with wild, staring eyes as she dashed from tombstone to tombstone in the verdant little cemetery where local people sleep their last. As I caught up with her again, she swayed, turned deathly pale and would have fallen had I not caught her. "Come", I said. "We must go back. You are indisposed", but she would not move and instead stared as though hallucinated at the grave before her - the recent grave of a poor young man, Franz Von Lagensfels, who had lately been interred there after a death which some people rumoured to be suicide.

By October 2nd, Adelaide's condition has rapidly deteriorated, to the point where she is oblivious to everyone and everything. Also, another woman's voice is heard yowling out from her chamber at night. When Herr Vogt, a hypnotist, puts her under, Adelaide cries out in this mystery woman's tongue then ... she is back to her old sweet self again. Or so it seems. Conrad isn't so sure - he reckons his wife has become secretive and scheming and turned their backwards son, Stephen, against him. And then the rumours begin: a young woman in white has been seen prowling the woods at night. Conrad calls in a Priest, who's just liberally festooned her room with the sacred wafer and holy water, and soon it's glaringly obvious what's happened: Adelaide has been possessed by Countess Bathory and will have to be staked!

Unfortunately, as far as taking notes is concerned, i ran out of steam at this point, but having just read the entry in Greg Cox's The Transylvanian Library (Borga Press, 1993) i can tell you that the Countess's efforts were not in vain as Stephen takes up where his mother left off, developing a keen interest in Black Magic and scattering several victims in his wake, until Professor Arminius, famous vampire-hunter and close colleague of the accursed Van Helsing, picks up his trail ...