Chapter 3 – First Night

Frankenstein looked on in stunned silence as Jekyll continued to struggle with the door. Jekyll gripped the knob with both hands, twisting with all his might, but the knob refused to turn.

"What is the meaning of this?" Jekyll snapped. He had broken into a sweat. Frankenstein wondered if it was nerves or exertion that had got the better of him. "It's locked!"

"Impossible." Frankenstein said, pointing to the handle, "There is no lock on this door."

Jekyll scowled as he inspected the knob. "Well, it has to be locked. Why else won't the damn thing open?"

"Even if it were locked, it would be a simple matter to unlock it from the inside, don't you think?"

Jekyll and Frankenstein both began to search the edges of door, looking for some locking mechanism that would explain their present problem. But there wasn't much to the rock walls and wooden frame. It was easy to see that their search would yield no results.

Jekyll gripped the knob again and halfheartedly tried to turn it once more. Nothing.

"Perhaps something has fallen against the door on the outside?" suggested Frankenstein. "It could just be wedged shut."

"Or you were right and some psychopath really has trapped us all here."

"Come on, I wasn't being serious."

"You weren't?"

"Well… Not entirely."

"Step aside."

Jekyll and Frankenstein both turned their heads in the direction of the werewolf's voice. William stood just outside the entrance of the den, Dracula and Vinny peering over his shoulders.

Jekyll and Frankenstein obediently moved a safe distance away from the door, each of them waiting to see what William would do. Frankenstein already had a fairly good guess. The boy was tall and broad shouldered, lean but still muscular. That he planned to break the door open by force was obvious.

Sure enough, William shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and sprinted straight at the heavy wooden door. With his head down and one shoulder angled toward his target, he threw his entire weight into the door, hitting with a heavy thud. He sprang back just as quickly with a pained yelp, his hand instinctively moving to his now bruised shoulder. The door escaped without injury.

"Ow ow ow!" The werewolf continued to whimper, rubbing the sore spot on his arm.

"Yes. That's about what I expected," Dracula said with a sigh.

He pushed William out of his way with barely a tap, though the boy winced as the vampire's hand made contact with his wounded shoulder. The others watched as Dracula made his way casually to the door, stopping just inches from its surface.

Frankenstein watched him with avid interest. The vampire bore no signs of nervousness. He was seemingly impervious to the growing anxiety building up in the rest of them. On the contrary, Dracula surveyed the door with cool confidence, sure of his preternatural abilities. Though not as broad as the werewolf, and certainly not as muscular, it was clear Dracula had power of his own.

Dracula raised one hand and placed it palm down on the door. He gave it a slight push, as if he really expected something to happen. Nothing did. The door didn't budge.

"Huh," Dracula said after a pause, "That's strange."

He rested both hands on the door and pushed. The door began to groan. Dracula was pushing against it with all his might, and the wooden boards were squealing in protest, but still it would not budge.

"It seems we really are stuck here," Vinny said with a note of enthusiasm.

Dracula shook his head in disbelief, "No… It's impossible… It cannot be!"

The rest looked on as Dracula pounded at the door with his fists. He hit it, kicked it, and pushed it again, all with the same disappointing result. Then, without warning his body vanished, only to be replaced by an eerie fog that pushed itself against the door, feeling along the cracks and attempting to seep along the frame. Apparently, this tactic also resulted in failure, for the fog quickly condensed itself into the form of a large black wolf. Frankenstein was fascinated to see this creature appear so suddenly, and to watch as it scratched the wooden surface of the door with heavy paws. It desperately tried to dig underneath, but the stone was even more resilient than the wood.

With a long, piteous whine, the wolf gave one last feeble scratch to the door. Then it drew back its lips into a vicious snarl, and just as quickly as it appeared, it transformed into a large black bat which flitted down the hall and away up a flight of stairs.

The whole ordeal lasted less than a minute. The rest of the party was left in stunned silence. Frankenstein was too busy putting his mind toward processing everything he had just witnessed. How could the vampire manage such drastic transformations? There was no telling what the other's thought. They were just as silent as he.

That is, until Vinny spoke up, "Well, that was quite a performance."

"Yes, but unfortunately not very helpful," Jekyll said with a sigh. He lifted his hands to his temples and rubbed his head. Sure sign of a headache in progress, thought Frankenstein. He felt a passing sense of pity for his fellow scientist.

"Don't you realize what this means?" Jekyll continued, "We're all stuck here till… Till hell freezes over, probably."

"Or at least until our captor identifies himself and begins making demands." Frankenstein finally thought aloud, adding to the conversation.

"D-Did you see?" William stammered. Frankenstein and Jekyll both directed their attention to him, but from the looks of things, the boy hadn't been paying attention to their conversation at all. His eyes were wide open, thick eyebrows arched high and mouth left agape. "A w-w-wolf. He… He became a wolf."

"Yes, yes…" Jekyll said, rolling his eyes. He exchanged a glance with Frankenstein before continuing. "Alright, we get it. You're under a curse. But I highly doubt his transformations are in any way connected to your problems."

Frankenstein responded to a slight tug on his sleeve by turning to stare into the upturned face of Beth. She smiled at him, and indicated the stunned werewolf with a slight tilt of her head. "Perhaps we had better go back to the study?"

Frankenstein followed the direction of her gaze and smiled. He patted Beth's hand lightly before pulling away to grip William by the arm instead.

"Come along then!" he said in the most cheerful voice he could muster. "What you really need is a drink. Now, I'm sure the old vampire must have something stored away. We'll check this dreary den first…"

"I could use a drink myself," said Jekyll, sullenly following Frankenstein into the study.

Frankenstein felt someone pat him on the shoulder and jumped before he realized it was Vinny, still creepily filling out clothes with no body to claim them.

"I doubt you'll find anything," his voice whispered, emanating only inches from Frankenstein's ear, "Remember, he doesn't drink… wine."

"Very funny," Frankenstein said, shrugging off Vinny's contact.

Sure enough, a brief search of the study's contents was enough to establish that there was nothing in the room one could use for a bit of recreational drinking. Frankenstein did find plenty of books that appeared to be written by hand, though the language was indecipherable to him. Jekyll swore they must have been hundreds of years old. Other items of note included a dark painting in oil of a beautiful young woman, assorted black and white photographs of men in top hats scattered around the floor, and a human skull shoved under the sofa.

When Vinny pulled this last item from its dusty, forgotten dwelling and held it above his shoulders to test its comic effect, Frankenstein decided he had had enough of their search.

"This is pointless," he announced to the room at large.

"There's got to be a kitchen or something around here that would yield better results." Jekyll grumbled, in apparent accord with Frankenstein's own feelings. He was still on hands and knees searching under the sparse furniture, Vinny's last find having not discouraged him in the slightest.

"Do you guys really need a drink that badly?" William asked. He had spent most of the search standing awkwardly to one side, as if simply trying to stay out of everyone's way was hard enough work for him. "I mean, shouldn't we talk about what's happened? It looks like we're all trapped here…"

"Not until after drinks," interrupted Jekyll. He quickly pushed himself off the ground, slapping the dust off his hands as he straightened up. Frankenstein thought he moved rather quickly for a man with so much gray in his hair. And really, if he was being honest about who he said he was, the man had to be at least a hundred and fifty years old…

"You don't look a day over fifty," Frankenstein blurted gracelessly, following the train of his own thought.

Jekyll's face twisted into a frown, "What?"

"No… Sorry. I meant… Shall we try the kitchen, then?"

"Like I've been trying to tell you for the last fifteen minutes, he probably won't even have a kitchen! Hel-lo! The guy's a vampire! I'm I the only person who gets that this guy only drinks human blood?" Vinny held up the human skull as evidence of the truth of his words, but his taunts fell on deaf ears. Frankenstein and Jekyll were already headed out of the room, Beth trailing in their wake. Only William stopped for a moment, just to grab the skull out of Vinny's invisible hand.

"Have some respect for the dead, will ya?" he mumbled, placing the skull carefully on a side table before ducking back into the hall.

It took several more minutes of searching before they finally found the kitchen. The fact that most of castle was in ruin and all doors leading to the outside were closed tight shaved at least half an hour off their search. They found several other darkened lounge-type rooms, a few antiquated, seemingly unused bathrooms, and a dining room before locating the kitchen. It looked as little used as much of the rest of the house. An inch of dust clung to every surface and a colony of spiders had made their homes in abundance. Apparently, Dracula had little use for any of the rooms in his house other than his somber den.

"Told you so," Vinny said, tapping a copper pot that hung from the ceiling. He was rewarded with a fine layer of dust that floated down from the abandoned cookery, landing on his head and shoulders. Frankenstein smiled a little to see the basic contour of Vinny's head for the first time, the dust just managing to give the impression of hair, brow, and cheeks. Vinny, perhaps suspecting that Frankenstein was observing him so closely, quickly rubbed the dust off on his sleeve. "There's no way you're going to find anything here. I bet rats couldn't even find something to eat in this place."

"That's where you're wrong!" Jekyll cried out triumphantly. He emerged from searching through the cabinets holding a dusty black wine bottle in one hand. "Doesn't drink wine, huh?"

William wrinkled his nose, "Do you even know how old that stuff is? What if it's not good anymore? I've heard of people dying from drinking bad wine, you know."

"Then it would certainly put an end to all my problems, wouldn't it?"

Frankenstein couldn't tell if Jekyll was joking or not, but he certainly hoped so. Either way, Jekyll proceeded to uncork the bottle and lifted it toward his nose for a sniff. With a satisfied smile toward William, he passed it to Frankenstein for further inspection.

There was no label on the bottle, but the style of it indicated that it wasn't so old after all, just a little dusty from sitting so long in an unused kitchen. Frankenstein wondered for the first time if this castle had belonged to Dracula for very long. Perhaps this bottle was a remnant from previous tenants?

Not wishing to dwell too deeply on the fate of these imagined predecessors; Frankenstein lifted the bottle to his own nose, took a hesitant sniff, and with a shrug of his shoulders, sampled the wine.

"It's good," he said with a surprised smile, handing the bottle back to Jekyll.

He accepted the bottle eagerly and took a large mouthful of wine in one swallow. He then tried to hand it off to William, who eyed the bottle with suspicion.

"No thanks," he said, "I think I'd better stay as sober as possible.

Jekyll shrugged his shoulders and said, "Suit yourself," just before taking another long swig and handing the bottle off to Vinny.

The invisible man also hesitated before tasting the wine, but unlike William, he chose to follow Frankenstein and Jekyll's example. "Bottoms up!" he said cheerfully, and the others watched with curiosity as the bottle lifted itself in the air and the dark red wine ran down an invisible throat.

"It's very odd…" Frankenstein said with interest, referring to the unusual sight. He had thought the wine would disappear immediately upon entering Vinny's mouth.

"Yeah, kind of an odd taste." Vinny said, thinking Frankenstein meant the wine. "You don't suppose ol'Dracula mixed it with something, do you?"

"You mean it could be poisoned?"

"No, I mean maybe it's blood."

He did his best to make the last word seem as horrifying as possible, adopting a gravelly tone and drawing out the vowel, but the others were completely unfazed.

"Please, why would he do that?" William asked.

Vinny answered, "I don't know, emergency rations maybe?"

The bottle was once again passed on, this time to Beth, though she looked uncertain of what to do with it. Glancing toward Frankenstein for guidance, she met his eye. Frankenstein gave her a subtle shake of his head, and the bottle was quietly placed on the counter, forgotten just as quickly as the scheme to find it had arisen.

"Phones," William said suddenly, "We could call for help."

"Look around you," Jekyll said sneeringly, "Just look at this place! I'd be surprised if it's equipped with running water! Do you really think Dracula keeps a phone?"

"Well, maybe not him. Maybe one of us. Haven't you all heard of a cell phone?"

"Sorry, but a mobile doesn't really fit with the look I'm going for here," said Vinny.

"Hyde didn't exactly leave me with many provisions," Jekyll said, "Unless you count the stolen car."

Beth spoke up to address Frankenstein, "Darling, your phone…"

"Left it in the car," Frankenstein said apologetically, "I thought this was to be a dinner party, remember? I didn't want any calls to interrupt my evening."

"Well I have one," William said with a sigh, and he turned to skulk out of the kitchen.

Sparing a moment to glance at one another, the rest followed in his steps. William led them all back into the front hallway, where his backpack sat steadfastly on the floor, just as he'd left it. As the wolf-boy resolutely began to search through all the pockets, Vinny leaned toward Frankenstein and said in a stage whisper, "20 Euro says there won't be any signal."

"Absurd." Frankenstein said distinctly, not bothering to match Vinny's theatrics of speech, "You don't have any money to bet. Where would you have hidden it?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

William cut in before Frankenstein was obligated to respond. "Damn!"

"Oh no! Was I right? There's no signal? No Wi-Fi?!"

"No…" William said, turning to look at them over his shoulder, "My phone is gone."

Frankenstein was forced to repeat him before the news could properly sink in, "Gone? Gone where? How is it gone?"

"Someone must have taken it while we were searching the house."

"Preposterous, the only other person in the house is that vampire, and what reason could he possibly have for taking your phone?" said Jekyll, "Maybe you dropped it on your way here."

"Impossible. I remember stopping at the last town I passed to make a call, and once I was done I put the phone down toward the bottom of this pocket here." He indicated one of the zippered pouches, "There's no way it could have worked itself out."

"That's true, I watched him stuff it in right after his call. He zipped it up and hasn't touched it since," Vinny added.

William turned toward him, his complexion wan, "And how long were you following me exactly?"

"That's not important right now!" Vinny exclaimed, suddenly eager to change the subject, and more interested in their dire predicament than he had ever expressed before. "The important thing is we're trapped, and we've got to find some way out of this castle!"

"There is no way out."

Their small party turned toward the gloomy voice emanating from the top of the stairs. Dracula appeared, sauntering down the dark stairway with his shoulders slumped and an expression of utter misery. He sulked past them all without as much as a sideways glance, taking refuge once again in his den. He paused briefly in the doorway, just long enough to spot the skull William had placed on a table. "Ah, there you are," he said with something akin to fondness, and taking up the skull, retreated to his chair by the dying fire.

Frankenstein noted with some perturbation the way Dracula sat with the skull cradled in one hand as he patted it with the other, seemingly deep in thought. Ignoring these clear signs of insanity in what could already be considered a very dangerous man, Frankenstein followed him into the room.

Jekyll was not long in following, his agitation mounting by the second. Apparently, he had not enjoyed enough wine to sufficiently depress his spirits. "So we're really stuck here then?"

Dracula took his time before answering. He gave the skull several more pats and stared at the glowing embers of his fire. Muttering a few incoherent sentences to himself, he suddenly pronounced, in a steady, loud voice, "Yes, stuck. That's exactly the word for it. I have searched every door, window, and secret passage that this castle holds, and could find no exit anywhere. It's as if every door is stuck, every window casement welded shut. And I, for all my strength, cannot even manage to break glass. For all my powers, not even as mist can I slip under the doors."

"But how can any of that even be possible?" asked Jekyll.

"Why don't you ask him?" Dracula recommended with the sort of carelessness one only acquires after accepting the hopelessness of a situation. He gestured toward Frankenstein, "He is the one who suggested we would all be stuck here in the first place."

Frankenstein watched the others turn toward him with growing suspicion, and he suddenly felt the full extent of the dangerous position he was now in. Luckily, Beth intervened for him before Frankenstein was obliged to say a word.

"What are you implying?" she demanded, stepping between Frankenstein and the others. Her words were for everyone, but she addressed herself pointedly toward Vlad with a kind of fearlessness even Frankenstein found surprising. "Do you honestly think Victor is behind this? Nonsense! I've been with him all this time! I saw the look on his face when he received his invitation to come here! And if you could have seen him then, seen his look of surprise and fear, then you would not be making such groundless accusations!"

Frankenstein rested his hand on Beth's arm to quiet her, though he was grateful to her for coming to his defense.

"Beth is telling you the truth," he said, "though I deny ever being fearful, there was certainly a great deal of surprise on my part, and more than a little curiosity when I received my letter. What I told you all before of my circumstances is as true now as it was then."

"But you were the first to say we'd be stuck here," said William, "And that was just before Jekyll found out the door was locked."

"I was only suggesting a possible outcome of our being summoned here! I didn't actually know we'd be trapped!

"I suppose if someone took the trouble to seek us all out and bring us together, they wouldn't be in a hurry to let us all go again," Jekyll reflected.

"Yes! That's what I've been trying to say all along!"

"So, what? We just wait around until this Y person decides to let us in on the joke? We're trapped here until he shows himself?"

"No, I have a better idea!" Dracula suddenly exclaimed, "I'll just kill all of you!"

The rest stared at him in stunned silence, hoping he wasn't serious, but realizing that if he was the man he claimed to be, such an outcome wasn't as unlikely as it sounded.

"After all, it's my castle. I have no reason to leave. Let Y trap me here if he pleases. It will be a simple matter to kill you all one by one, and I shall have peace and tranquility once again."

Frankenstein, thinking quickly, was the first to speak up, "Very true. That would certainly clear up your problems with us unwanted guests."

Jekyll gaped at Frankenstein, obviously thinking he'd gone crazy. Frankenstein ignored him, and continued to press his case, even daring to take a few steps closer to the vampire.

"But consider… What would happen to you after we were all dead, and you continued to be trapped in your own house?"

"What does that matter? It's my house. As long as I'm alone I will be comfortable."

"Yes, but for how long? You'll have to leave at some point, if only to, well…Have a drink. But say you kill us and Y never reveals himself. Say he keeps the place locked up. Then you'd be stuck here forever with only the dead to keep you company. I mean, we've established that Y brought us together for some purpose, though it is unknown to us. Your murdering all of us would disrupt his plans. He'd be pretty angry about that, I imagine, and you would be his prisoner indefinitely."

Dracula didn't seem to like that idea at all, which was precisely what Frankenstein had intended. His ploy might be obvious to the vampire, but that didn't make his argument any less valid. There was no use in risking their unidentified host's displeasure without knowing the consequences.

"Very well, but there's no guarantee he will ever release us, even if I keep you all alive. So how am I to benefit from not killing you?"

"I'm so glad you asked! Consider our qualifications. Jekyll and I are both men of science, and if Vinny's condition is anything to go by, I'd say you can count on his knowledge as well. With our combined efforts, I'm sure we can find a solution to our predicament. If we can find a way out of this trap together, then we can all be back to our homes, as we would like, and you can have your castle all to yourself again, free to come and go as you choose."

Dracula did not look entirely convinced, but with a surge of relief, Frankenstein watched him nod his head in acquiescence.

"Fine. I will not kill anyone… For the moment. But it seems to me that you will not all be necessary, nor be equally of use," he spared a glance in William's direction, "I reserve the right to kill any of you at a later point as I see fit."

Happy to have secured his own safety for the moment, Frankenstein simply smiled and nodded his own head vigorously. "Quite right, quite right. And so you should. Very much your privilege as the owner, isn't it? Couldn't stop you anyway, I imagine, if you were in a mind to murder. Very good of you to postpone… But well, perhaps we'd better get started?"

"Get started with what?" William asked with a tone of incredulity.

"Finding our way out of this mess of course! Best not to wait if we're depending on Dracula's good will! Let's start with what we know about Y."

"Nothing," Jekyll said immediately. "We know absolutely nothing."

"That's not true!" Frankenstein insisted, "Think for a moment. We know that it's someone who knows all of us."

"Every movie buff in the world knows who we are," Jekyll argued, "Every literate person in the free world must know our names."

"Yes, but we're not just looking for a fan of horror movies. We're looking for someone who knows enough to about us to know that we are not works of fiction."

"But who in this day and age would actually believe in vampires, werewolves, and invisible men?" William asked.

They were silent in thought for a moment, when Dracula suddenly surprised them all by bursting out laughing.

"He would have to be a mad man," the vampire said with a smile.