October 3, 188-, 5:30 p.m.
South Kogi-chô, Kanda Ward, Tokyo
As if it were already midnight, darkness had fallen, and then an unexpected visitor came to Renbei-jyuku. It was Niizuka Takako, the broker’s plump young daughter.
But when Chizuru answered the door, what she saw shocked her.
Takako’s face no longer possessed its characteristic roundness. She had become thin and pale, and her eyes had dark circles, as if someone had blotted ink beneath them. She said she was looking for Akane.
“I’m sorry. She is away in Fukuoka at our uncle’s place,” Chizuru lied. She figured Takako would leave, but she stood fidgeting, her face turned away. She must have something to say, Chizuru thought, something so serious that she needed to tell someone… anyone.
“Come inside. I’ll make us some coffee.”
Chizuru led her into the salon and made her some coffee.
After a sip, Takako suddenly began, “It’s about my brother.”
Her older brother, Renta, was going to be twenty-five this year.
He had shut himself inside an annex built inside the courtyard a week ago and had refused to come out. He had shut not only the shoji but the shutters, too, behind which there were no signs of activity until sundown. Since the family was well-off and he had been rather sickly since birth, he usually spent all his time studying instead of helping with the family business, so that his parents and their employees were used to his odd habits. But it was a different story when they learned that, for the past week, the maid had brought back all of his meals uneaten. In the kitchen, Takako had observed the maid’s dismay over the untouched dishes on the tray.
Five days ago, after the sun had gone down, she and her worried parents had gone to his room in the courtyard, and he had come out from under mountains of books, looking unnaturally pale but not at all gaunt.
“Are you feeling all right?” her father had asked.
And Renta had replied, “There’s no need to be concerned. You know I’ve never had much of an appetite. When I went to Yokohama the other day, I picked up some nutritious foreign foods, and I’ve been eating that secretly.” Since his translation work kept him up late at night, he had been sleeping until late in the day. He also had added that he didn’t want to be disturbed and didn’t want anyone in his room.
A normal parent might have demanded to see the food he had bought, but neither her parents nor Takako knew anything about foreign things. Takako’s brother, who had been admitted to Tokyo Imperial University with top marks seven years ago, would only have said things to confuse them; so his father had told him to finish his meals, and they left it at that.
Things would have been fine if her brother had done nothing, but he had been going out somewhere in the middle of the night. Takako had seen him. Since her brother had started going out at night, she decided to spend every waking moment following him. Since his teens, because he did not have to help at the family business, he had spent his time studying Western history and philosophy. But seven years ago, when he entered university, he had become obsessed with something horrible.
“What was it?” Chizuru was mesmerized.
“Western black magic. The occult. Monsters.”
A terrible shock electrified Chizuru’s whole body. A new development, which just might be connected with the count’s unexpected appearance in Japan.
“My parents work, so we don’t have to worry about money. And since my brother has always been sick and is such a bookworm, my parents allowed him to do anything he wanted. He started a correspondence with a bookstore overseas, and old foreign books and strange boxes started to arrive at our house.”
When Takako had gone to clean his room, she had found a few items, some of which made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.
A skull. A shriveled human hand. A bloody sword, human hairs and teeth, animal claws and fangs, bottles containing dead rats and other small creatures, and most terrifying of all—
“A live bat inside a cage. I’ve seen them before in the woods at Ueno and at the shrine in Asakusa, but never one this ugly. It had a snout like a pig, and small fangs stuck out of its mouth. When it noticed me, it forced its head out from between the bars and made these clicking noises with its fangs. If for some reason the cage had opened, it would have attacked me for sure. I was so afraid that I had to ask my brother about it, and he told me, ‘That is a vampire bat from South America. It feeds on animal blood and lives much longer than any ordinary bat. All living things need blood, after all. Anyway, if you ever go into my room again without permission, you’re going to get it!’ He scolded me terribly.”
Chizuru closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Thank you, God. I am grateful.
“And is your brother still studying those horrible things?”
“No, my parents were relieved to see that the shipments of books and strange boxes stopped about a year ago. But then he became obsessed with writing letters, and we started receiving letters from all over the world.”
There had been letters from America, England, France, Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, India, and Egypt. Of course she had recognized none of the names of the senders or recipients of her brother’s letters.
Many of the letters had come from Transylvania, but none of them had the name of the sender, only a wax seal with the letter “D.”
Chizuru repeated the initial “D” several times in her mind. D, D, D… D is for ‘Dracula.’
“There were so many letters that my parents suspected he was planning to go to Transylvania. They told me to ask him about it. So, when I did, he smiled at me as if he were seeing me for the first time and answered: