The book was more than two hundred years old. Dust rained from the spine when he opened it. In faded ink, a kabbalistic exercise, were pages of his dreams. They filled half the book and then stopped. Feigelman read the final entry, written in Bucharest two nights before his transformation. Not that he needed to read it. He'd memorized the entire volume more than a century before.

I am holding a newly cut garnet in my left hand. My father is standing beside me, as if he were still alive. "That is first-rate," he says, smiling.

Feigelman closed the volume. The gaslights cast flickering shadows on the leather cover. Then he closed his eyes and imagined himself writing a new dream into the book. For he hadn't slept in more than two hundred and fifty years, so he could only daydream about dreaming.

13 October 1913

It is night. I am traveling in a coach to Vienna. An old man gets on when we stop to change horses. He makes me uncomfortable and I get out.

Feigelman put the book on the table in front of him. That was his most frequent daydream. But it didn't happen like that. He stayed. The vampire leaned over. A single drop of blood dripped onto his hand, garnet red. The vampire got out at the next stop, leaving Feigelman to his fate, lacking even a temporary escape from the world.