1 - A terrible night..

At that time, I was a thirty-five-year-old young man who knew nothing about the supernatural world. I believed that science had uncovered everything there was to know. I was naive, of course.

I traveled to Britain to attend a hematology conference attended by elite professors of this science from all over the world. But as is often the case—lectures aren't always that interesting—and that day, I spent four of the darkest hours of my life listening to endless talk about leukemia, Mediterranean anemia, and more.

The seated doctors had succumbed to a kind of boredom, unhappiness, and intellectual stagnation that I prefer to call "conference stupor." They had all lost feeling in their backs and limbs. Their buttocks had become one with the seats, and some of them began passing the time by whispering to each other, hands over their mouths like schoolchildren.

"Thank you."

For a moment, these miserable souls couldn't believe their ears, but the speaker had already finished his lengthy lecture. Sighs of relief rose, followed by polite applause.

Grateful applause!

The lecturer was a distinguished old man named Richard Cummings. I had met him in Egypt more than once and was greatly impressed by him. He was tall, majestic, and intense. He was deeply passionate about history and art, particularly the history of the Pharaohs. This was the common ground that brought us together. After the lecture, I approached him, and he immediately lit up with joy and friendliness. He even shook my hand—a gesture quite unusual for the English. He asked me what I thought of his lecture, and I politely lied, saying it was wonderful. He then invited me to his country house in Yorkshire, explaining that he saw me as a civilized, sincere, and deeply devoted man of science.

And so, following strict English traditions, I found myself at the entrance to the garden of his beautiful English house at exactly seven in the evening. The moon cast a soft, calm light over the ivy branches hanging from the sloping roof of the house. In the garden, I inhaled the unfamiliar scents of flowers whose names I didn't know. Inside, the house was elegant yet simple, the home of a devout Catholic family. The living room featured a large collection of ancient crosses and a grand painting of the Last Supper. His middle-aged wife was polite and gentle, while his daughter, Catherine, was a teenager but far more sensible than her years.

I realized just how religious they were when they recited the table prayer before dinner. I felt a pang of shame for forgetting to say "Bismillah" before I started eating. I muttered it under my breath and began filling my stomach with the beautiful-looking but hideous-tasting dishes for which English cuisine is infamous across Europe.

After dinner, in the cozy living room, Dr. Richard sat by the fireplace, puffing on his pipe and sipping coffee contentedly. It seemed to both of us that life couldn't get any better than this moment. Dr. Richard asked, "How does it feel to be a descendant of those genius pharaohs?"

I smiled, unsure how to respond, and murmured, "With remorse."

"I regret that we didn't preserve their civilization and all they discovered. Sometimes, it feels like there's nothing left to uncover after all that has been found."

"I think the age of revelations has passed, and a new era has begun—the era of development. And here begins the role of a man of science like me, who believes in the science of the supernatural and thinks that every myth has an origin unless someone tries to uncover it. The ancients stopped at myths, and thus, we must open new doors."

He glanced around the empty room, then whispered, "Take the legend of Count Dracula, for example. No one has truly meditated on it. They've researched electricity, electromagnetic waves, nuclear fission, and antibiotics, but they've never paused to consider this myth. Here comes the role of a man of science like me, who believes that this myth didn't emerge from nowhere and takes a moment to reflect on it. There's much suspicious historical evidence... Blood, this mysterious red liquid, is a symbol of both life and death. Consider the blood-drinking rituals in India, the mummies with fangs found in China, the Spartans' banquets where they drank blood mixed with vinegar and spices, the sea turtle blood consumed in Jamaica to treat rheumatism, and the medieval magic books that all speak of expelling vampires as a given.

And here we begin—with intellectual flexibility—to assert that at one time, somewhere, there existed nightmarish creatures that lived on blood, like Dracula."

"Oh!"

That was Catherine's voice. She had just entered the room and overheard the last sentence. She quickly apologized, saying she wanted to go up to her room.

Dr. Richard said, "This is better... There are things one should not say in front of women. You understand me."

He walked to the electric light and turned it off. The room was now dark, save for the soft, dim glow of the fireplace. He said in a dramatic, affecting tone, "This is the right atmosphere for such terrifying conversations!"

I felt a shiver run down my spine. The flickering flames of the fireplace reminded me of the cold, fearful journey back to my hotel that awaited me after this evening.

Dr. Richard stood before one of the hanging paintings, contemplating it in the dancing light of the fireplace. He whispered, "I have searched and searched for many years with one of my fellow historians... and today, I can say that we have proven, with material evidence, the existence of Count Dracula."

The nightmarish word echoed in the darkness, and I startled in my seat. Dr. Richard was, in fact, a wonderful theater director.

"The story, as everyone knows, is the tale of that count who lived in Transylvania in the fourteenth century. He was a tyrant in every sense of the word, but he was not one of the living dead... except that a writer named him 'Dracula,' meaning 'the devil,' and Bram Stoker immortalized him in his famous story, which still sends shivers down people's spines to this day. Then came world cinema—Vincent Price, Lon Chaney—to complete the picture. Today, I say: Dracula actually existed, just as the stories portrayed him, without any exaggeration."