At the Twilight's Last Gleaming Read Online Free PDF

dark cloak, that would have to be rehearsed over and over and over again, the Count leaning over the helpless Lucy, his arms wrapped around her, his mouth buried into her neck…
    I shivered there in my seat with anticipation.
    “Okay, yes, yes, you’re right. I’ve just got to concentrate now. I’ve got to get into character. Give me the bag.”
    Harry handed it over.
    I took a deep breath.
    I closed my eyes.
    I took another deep breath, reached in and pulled out the blonde wig.



CHAPTER SIX
    T HE CLOCK ON the wall of Principal Canthorpe’s office said 10:36 AM.
    I sat on a wooden chair in a row of wooden chairs facing the long, imposing front desk of the administrative office. It looked like some kind of bunker from which defenders could peer over, armed with rifles. The assembled secretaries clattered away at electric typewriters. The place smelled of the coffee machine and the over-waxed floors. The only attempt at color to the bland bureaucracy of the place were the American and Maryland flags, which seemed to be the main theme of the décor.
    I sat, unable to read my gothic novel. Instead, I watched the big second hand of the big standard issue school clock swing from number to number to number.
    I wasn’t feeling well.
    I’d had a very hard time sleeping the previous night. The cold day had dawned with a rawness that I still felt inside of me. I felt empty and frightened, with a familiar sinking feeling sinking lower than I’d thought possible.
    I wasn’t sure why, which was the most frightening part. It was that fabled sensation, I think, of someone walking over your grave.
    In fact, the auditions had gone well. Very well indeed.
    The mood struck by Mr. Crawley had immediately infected the students. Everyone seemed to enjoy reading the dated lines from the playbook. Moreover, as there was always plenty of work to be done on a play and there no vocational students involved with the drama department, every student attending knew that even if they didn’t get a role in
Dracula
, they could be a part of the production in some way. And it wasn’t as though a role in
Dracula
was like a role, say, in
The Glass Menagerie
. Melodramatic acting was fun. Scenery was actually rather tasty.
    And Peter Harrigan! Peter had been fabulous!
    Mr. Crawley had specifically requested that guys reading the Count Dracula lines tone down any tendency to perform them with the famous Bela Lugosi Hungarian accent. In fact, he’d especially asked that if possible, they might do a more stately Christopher Lee version – upper-class British.
    Peter wasn’t that good at either of those, and his upper classness was more Bostonian than anything from across the Atlantic. But gosh, he was tall and majestic! He had a perfect stage presence, tall with perfect posture. Totally self-possessed, he read the lines in an interesting way, but also with extreme animal magnetism.
    “I don’t drink….wine.”
    The words, and that sly smile echoed in my mind even now.
    I got shivers thinking about it.
    No question about it, I thought. We have our Dracula.
    And my try-out?
    Perhaps if it was a more professional, or even more experienced group, it wouldn’t have gone well. I’d been an angel in a church production. That was it.
    But I had a trump card and I played it.
    I’d lived in Britain, and I could jolly well do a bloody proper English accent. I could do it because I’d worked at it over there while we were stationed in England.
    I’d donned my wig and I’d read my lines, and I could see that everyone was wowed. Mr. Crawley had insisted that the attempt was part of the fun – perfection wasn’t necessary. But by time I’d finished I could see that he was quite impressed.
    “Where did you get that accent?” he said.
    “Public school, if you please, sir,” I said. “Indeed, I should have you know, I’m quite the fan of R.A.D.A.”
    His eyes had opened wide at that name drop. (Royal Academy for the Dramatic Arts, of