Reggie Oliver - The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholars Tale

The Dracula Papers

Book I: The Scholars Tale

The Dracula Papers

Book I: The Scholars Tale

Reggie Oliver

Chmu Press

The Dracula Papers

Book I: The Scholars Tale

by Reggie Oliver

Published by Chmu Press, MMXI

The Dracula Papers, Book 1: The Scholars Tale copyright Reggie Oliver 2010

The right of Reggie Oliver to be identified as Author of this

Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published in January 2011 by Chmu Press.

by arrangement with the author.

All rights reserved by the author.

First Kindle Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Design and layout by: Bigeyebrow, Reggie Oliver and Chmu Press

E-mail:

Internet: chomupress.com

Dedication

For Anthony Christian and Marian Fannon

great artists, great friends

Olivers ability to create a sense of time and place in every one of these stories is exemplary.... As a work of spiritual terror it has few peers.... Thomas Ligotti and Matt Cardin are the only authors writing today who equal the assurance demonstrated by the author of this tale in ripping away the veil separating mundane reality from the shrieking abyss it conceals... The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini is unquestionably brilliant.

Jim Rockhill, All Hallows

Olivers sharp eye for character and ear for dialogue never desert him.... Reggie Oliver rediscovers many if not all the qualities which make the English Ghost Story classic.

Ramsey Campbell, Dark Horizons

Reggie Oliver has a controlled and vivid wit, a precise eye and ear for style, and a powerful sense of the strange.... an infernally talented writer.

Roger Johnson, All Hallows

Contents

Introduction

Three years ago I was in the Czech Republic at a place called Duchov, researching for a biography of Casanova. The great eighteenth-century adventurer spent the last years of his life in the castle of Dux (or Duchov) as librarian to Count Waldstein. It was there that he wrote his Histoire de ma Vie , the masterpiece of autobiography known to the world as the Memoirs of Casanova . Naturally I studied what original Casanova manuscripts remained at the castle, but I also decided to examine all the books in the library dating from Casanovas time. I was looking particularly for volumes which had once belonged to him. It was known that Casanova came to Dux with a substantial library of his own and that these were almost certainly absorbed into the collection at Dux on his death.

It was a huge task, but full of interest. I discovered a number of volumes which had undoubtedly belonged to Casanova. Some had his usual signature, Casanova de Seingalt, scrawled in sepia ink over the title page; some even contained notes in his handwriting. Many of the books testified to his lifelong interest in the occult, and one in particular, a quarto edition of Aldo Sinesiuss De Conjuratione (Antwerp, 1567), was very well thumbed and annotated. But imagine my excitement when, turning to the back cover, I found, inserted into a sort of pocket in the binding, a few sheets of manuscript paper unquestionably in Casanovas own hand.

It is the sort of discovery that every researcher dreams about. I was quite alone in the library. I could have put those pages into my briefcase there and then and walked out with them, though in fact I was not remotely tempted to do so. It was late in the afternoon; soon I would be turned out of the library by the curator and forced to drive the six miles back to my dreary hotel. I began to read frantically, making as I did so a rough translation. Here it is: