June 11

Room door still locked.

I’ve tried ramming with my shoulder and achieved nothing but a sore shoulder.

I’ve tried kicking and achieved nothing but a sore foot.

June 19

Today, one of my post-dated letters should have been sent out. I was running out of time.

I thought about this logically. It was always at night when scary things happened. In fact, I had never seen Blackula, his brides, or his wolves during the day. Either he had a very strict and very odd sleep schedule – or I was safe during the day.

I had to get into his room. Not his brides’ room – Count Blackula’s real room. He probably kept his key in there. Even if I couldn’t find the key, maybe I could find something else to help me escape. But that room could only be reached by that hole in the tower wall. Blackula could scale walls and his brides could fly. I could do neither. But times were desperate.

I opened my window and memorized the general direction of Count B’s hole. Then I took a deep breath, heaved my legs over the windowsill, and stepped on the stones on the tower outside. The stones were big, roughly cut, and covered with centuries’ worth of sticky grime.

“Don’t look down. Don’t look down,” I thought to myself.

I looked down. The depth immediately made me dizzy. From then on, I kept my eyes on the stone in front of me. Within a few minutes, I was at the windowsill of the count’s room. I slid in and crouched down, looking for Blackula, but he wasn’t in the room. Not only that, but the room was also almost completely empty. There were a few random pieces of furniture, but they were covered with a thick layer of dust. I quickly looked around the room, but there was no key.

In the room were two doors: one door that led to the normal part of the castle, and the other that seemed to be a tunnel leading downwards. I carefully went down the tunnel. It was dark and musky. After some time of walking, I came to a heavy, metal door. I calculated that I was on the first floor of the castle. I pulled open the door and looked inside.

There were several rooms inside the first-floor vault. Piled around all the rooms were large boxes. I opened the lid of a few of them. There was nothing but dirt inside them.

Each room had a large, ornate coffin. I walked into one of the smaller rooms and opened the lid of the coffin. I stifled a gasp. The Black woman with the weave was inside it. But she didn’t seem truly sleeping. She was not breathing. She had no heartbeat. I quietly closed the lid and went back into the largest room.

This time there were no surprises. I opened the lid and found Count Blackula inside his coffin. No breath, no heartbeat. He too, seemed lifeless. His Black skin was sunken in and ashy. His white Afro and white mustache were thinning.

My fingers trembled but I forced myself to go through all his pockets. No key. I stood there thinking about what I should do, when Blackula’s eyes suddenly opened. His eyes were glassy and dead. I screamed, ran away from the mausoleum, and climbed over the walls of the tower. I threw myself on my bed and covered myself with a blanket.