The Nosferatu Scroll

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‘Open it.’

The torchlight gave the priest’s face a haunting, almost satanic, quality, an impression reinforced by the chamber in which he was standing. It was a small underground room in the castle, located in the same part of the building as the cages that held the wolves. Four flickering torches were mounted in sconces, one on each wall, but they failed to drive away all the shadows.

A sturdy table stood in the centre of the room, and on it lay a large, ornate, black wooden coffin, the closed lid divided into two parts and hinged on one side, the other edges secured with screws. The coffin had arrived from the Schwarzenberg Palace in Vienna two days earlier and had immediately been carried into St George’s Chapel in the castle. There, the upper section of the coffin had been opened to allow the mere handful of mourners who had appeared in the building to see the thin, white face of the body inside.

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