At the Twilight's Last Gleaming Read Online Free PDF Page A

stationed, I trembled. Somehow the damp cold of the summer night had seeped in. There was ground fog collecting near a creek, and tendrils of it drifted up, translucent beneath a gibbous moon peeking out of the clouds.
    Something is out there, I thought. Something dark and needy…and lonely.
    From that moment on, I was fascinated with the legend of the vampire. Films I’d seen didn’t really actually capture the core essence of what I’d felt reading the book.
    The book itself was not as popular in England as it was in America. But because of copyright problems, Bram Stoker received none of the American royalites. He died with no idea of how popular his book – and character – would become.
    I wasn’t aware that a play version of
Dracula
even existed until I heard about Crossland’s intended production last December. But it absolutely made sense.
    The version we were using was the one that was performed on Broadway in New York in the 1920’s. In 1924, the actor Hamilton Deane had adapted it from the novel, after buying the rights from Stoker’s widow. Deane had had a success with his adaptation of Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
. He’d intended to play Count Dracula himself, but then decided to take the meatier role of Van Helsing, casting Raymond Huntley as Dracula. (Huntley, I was happy to hear, was now an actor in Hammer Horror films.) The play toured England for years and then had a successful run in London. In 1927, Horace Liveright brought the play to Broadway. He hired John L. Balderston to adapt it for American audiences. This is the version that starred Bela Lugosi, and the version Tod Browning’s film was based on. This was the version that we were using for the play script.
    I’d read it, of course.
    It was kind of creaky.
    I was naturally curious of course as to what kind of interpretation Mr. Crawley would give it. A melodrama about an evil blood sucking aristocrat, coming to England to spread the undead disease of vampirism from foul pockets of the Balkans through the world and presumably to take charge of it all?
    Hmm. Fun, but not campy, sounded good.
    But then, it didn’t really make any difference, because that’s not why I was trying out today.
    Mr. Crawley clapped his hands together.
    “All right, then, folks. Let’s get started. If you haven’t got copies of the play, they’re a pile of them right over there, in that coffin.” He smiled gently and extravagantly swept down to take his place in a chair at the side of the stage to observe the proceedings. He hauled up a large spiral bound book to take notes.
    I craned my neck around.
    “He’s not here,” I whispered. “Peter’s not here.”
    “Maybe he’s already got the part,” said Harold.
    “But this morning he said he’d be here,” I countered.
    “Say, did you make an appointment with Dr. Canthorpe.”
    I nodded.
    “When is it?”
    “Tomorrow at 10:30 AM. I missed part of biology. Got a permission slip and everything.”
    “Better you than me. That kind of guy scares the crap out of me.”
    I shrugged.
    “What am going to do? What’s he going to do.”
    “Intimidate you.”
    “Well he’s not my father and he can’t cut my allowance, so there’s a worry gone. Now lets concentrate on this play, huh?”
    The playwrights had cut out a few roles in the novels and made some changes in this and that, but the basic characters were the same. And the word around the school – and from the boy himself - was that Peter Harrigan was going to play Count Dracula. When Count Dracula comes to England, his first victim is the blonde daughter of Doctor John Seward, who runs a mental institute in the English countryside. Her name is Lucy.
    This is not a sudden victimization. Oh no, Lucy gets visited plenty of times at night, and there’s plenty of neck-sucking before she finally dramatically dies – and becomes a vampire herself.
    Yes, and there’s plenty interaction between Lucy and Count Dracula.
    Intimate action, covered by a