#but i only see dracula/agatha and dracula jonathan

[ilovecathtates2]

Just Bloxham and Dr Helsing being pals™

And Bloxham entering Dracula’s home after the final scene

[supermauswithagun]

What did Jonathan Harker see in Budapest? pt. 2

Our dear friend Jonathan returned to Budapest! Except that he is not in the condition for more sightseeing. :( This time he will only see, as follows:

an ambulance. (No victorian era gentlemen were harmed while taking this photo. This is just a demonstration where doctors of the first ambulance company of Budapest were showing off their newest equipment at the 1896 Millennium Exhibition.)

The Old Szent János Hospital. Last year I’ve made a post about how the Hospital of St. Joseph and Ste. Mary did not exist, and why I think Jonathan spent his time recovering in the Old Szent János. Basically that was the only hospital in Budapest close to the Buda Hills where nuns were tending male patients. Jonathan asking for money to pay for his hospital stay suggests that he was in the Old Szent János, since this hospital mostly admitted poor and homeless people who could not pay for their treatment. (A new and more modern hospital was under construction, but it was opened a few years after Dracula was published.)

Except that I was wrong. Some people suggested that because of poor Jonathan was rambling about vampires and such things, he could have been taken to a mental hospital, and the Lipótmező Asylum fits Sister Agatha’s description just as well. Lipótmező is also in the Buda Hills, nuns were taking care of the patients, and it resembled a sanatorium more than the Old Szent János. Despite being an asylum, Lipótmező was a state owned hospital under strict medical supervision so there were no random experimenting like our other dear friend Dr. Seward did in Carfax. Anyway, here’s a picture of the Lipótmező as well, you decide which one you prefer for your upcoming fanfics.

And of course the nuns. In case of both the Old Szent János and the Lipótmező, they’ve belonged to the Company of the Daughters of Charity. Here’s one of them with a patient in front of the New Szent János Hospital in 1938.

Sadly I did not found any photos of the interiors of said hospitals, but here we have a picture from the 1896 Millenium Exhibition, showing hospital beds and a doctor’s uniform.

And if we were talking about fanfictions, let me be a little bit overindulgent here. I just love to imagine that after their wedding, when Jonathan starts to feel better, he and Mina try to use their remaining days in Budapest to make some good memories together before [spoiler]. They should really visit the Buda Hills, and have a picnic at the Normafa.

Or, if Jonathan feels up to it, they should walk all the way to the Gloriette at the top of the János Hill.

I just want them to be happy, okay?!

Again, all the pictures are from around 1897, the year when Dracula was published (except the one with the nun).

Sources under the cut: 

1. Ambulance:  Fortepan / Budapest Főváros Levéltára. Levéltári jelzet: HU.BFL.XV.19.d.1.10.250

2. Old Szent János Hospital: postcard published around 1890.

3. Lipótmező Asylum: illustration in Vasárnapi Újság from 1895.

4. Daughters of Charity nun: Fortepan

5. Hospital furniture: Fortepan / Budapest Főváros Levéltára. Levéltári jelzet: HU.BFL.XV.19.d.1.10.180

6. Normafa: Fortepan

7. Gloriette: postcard published around 1900.

[peachesanmemes]

I saw your DD graph asking for other ideas, so... if you still have any desire to do further Dracula graphs I'd be curious to see how the word count per character breaks down (not how much they speak but how much they write. Adding all their diary entries together, etc.). Obviously Mina wins by default from having typed up the whole novel but outside of that detail, how much did each person author?

Thank you so much for this ask! What an interesting data set this one is! Lots of unexpected information.

So first off, if you just want to visualize the author breakdown, ta-dahhhh!

Seward was staunchly in the lead, talking his head off and burning through those wax recording drums like no ones business. Poor Mina for having to transcribe it all. In total his words made up 39.3% of Dracula. Nearly 40%!

Seward unsurprisingly had the most individual entries overall at 47, and had the longest streak for being the narrator in an entry at 10 days (09/02 - 09/11) with Mina following right behind at 9 days (08/10 - 08/19)

Mina surprisingly was 3rd overall both in word count and number of entries. She wasn't even in the top 3 for most words in a day which is as follows.

1 - Seward October 3rd - 9942 words

2 - Seward September 29th - 7206 words

3 - Jonathan October 3rd - 5944 words

Van Helsing only had 9 entries total but still came in number 4 for word count, in front of Lucy. It's interesting to note that the amount a person writes doesn't correlate to the amount of time they are being written about/appear. Which is why Arthur and Quincey don't even beat out the newspaper clippings for words, lol.

There are lots of authors we only hear from a single time, like Sister Agatha. So I've decided to make a small fry pie as well. (Authors under ~500 words)

The captain of the Demeter and Van Helsing both had more days written than Lucy! Though I didn't break up number of entries, like when the log of the Demeter had 3 or 4 on one day or Lucy wrote a letter and in her diary.

If there is any data I haven't presented here that you're interested in feel free to tag me or shoot me an ask like this lovely person did!

[vickyvicarious]

I wanted her to tell me what they were; but she would only cross herself, and say she would never tell; that the ravings of the sick were the secrets of God, and that if a nurse through her vocation should hear them, she should respect her trust. [...] The dear sisters were so kind. Please God, I shall never, never forget them, nor the grave and sweet responsibilities I have taken upon me.

Sister Agatha respecting patient confidentiality (but making the effort to try and ease Mina's worries). Mina being so grateful to her and the others.

I've gotta add this hospital to the list of must-see locations on their We're Getting Closure Since Dracula's Dead tour. I can't believe I wasn't considering it already. Yes, the castle, yes, the inn (and the woman there who gave up her crucifix). Of course. But also, they absolutely must stop by the place where they got married! The place that saved Jonathan! The people who did so.

The nuns love their favorite patient and are deeply moved by his marriage in the first place, imagine how happy they would be to see him a few years down the line, so much more recovered. Still married and happy, and with a child now. And he and Mina both could thank them again for all they did, the kindness they showed...

[anncanta]

***

@alma37

There is one more thing in the ending of ‘Dracula’, which probably seemed so obvious to me that I almost never said it. The point is that the final scene, the moment with sex, represents not only the expression of Dracula's feelings but – perhaps most of all – Agatha's own desire.

It's hard to explain. We saw those understandable coincidences (which are never coincidences, especially in Moffat's writing) in other episodes where Dracula drinks someone's blood. Just drinking blood is one thing, especially in order to satisfy physical hunger. Here we are not talking about hunger at all, and not about the process of drinking blood as such. We see two people between whom a very specific dialogue is going on. Very precisely and openly spoken one. A dialogue in which the words are so carefully chosen that no one is left in doubt about what we are witnessing.

Someone has already noted that of all Dracula's victims, only Agatha sees him in her dream, and more than openly in the finale. And we, I hope, will talk about this again. But it is important to remember that Dracula ‘gets’ out of his victims their secret thoughts and desires, something that they may not always admit to themselves.

Remember the conversation between Agatha and Jonathan? Jonathan is obviously ashamed of his dreams about Mina. This is clear from Agatha's words. If Jonathan had been ashamed to talk about these dreams, she would have said so, ‘There is no shame in sharing this with us. It is not only what you did in Dracula's castle that is important, but also everything you thought about and what you felt, right down to your fantasies and dreams.’ She literally says this when they return to her question about whether he had sexual intercourse with the Count. And then she suddenly drops her usual pragmatic tone and begins to talk about dreams as heaven in which we can sin without fear of being punished.

I think this is the same pragmatism, only in relation to something else – ‘stop being ashamed of your dreams and tell me about them.’ Agatha sees perfectly well who Jonathan is, and she understands perfectly well that if he decides that talking about something is wrong or ‘undignified’, he will never tell – even if she threatens to cut him into pieces. Therefore, she, like a smart investigator, uses reasonable tactics that will help her counterpart talk.

Jonathan's dream and its meaning are clear to Agatha precisely because she is looking from the outside. She doesn't notice her own infatuation with the Count – until she stumbles upon Mina's shocked look in response to the words that ‘Dracula is the best among vampires,’ and immediately corrects herself – ‘the most successful one.’ She can see a situation, though: Dracula gives the victim what he wants. And Moffat and Gatiss want us to remember this. Then this will be repeated several times, but not as clearly as with Jonathan.

In this context, by the way, Zoe's reaction is interesting. Dracula, just like with Agatha, is quite frank with her and, unlike other victims, drags Zoe ‘to his home.’ But there she reacts like everyone else – immediately manifesting her desires. ‘You are killing me?’ And, just like with the others, Dracula gives her what she wants, ‘It doesn't have to hurt.’

But let's return to Agatha. From what we've seen, it's clear that the ending is a gift for her because that's what she wanted. Whether she realized it or not, whether she thought it was normal or unacceptable, she wanted to make love to him. And he wanted it too.

That's why the ending is so harmonious. And so even those who don't like it conceptually often can't stop rewatching this part.

Such is the power of art.

[tenebris-lux]

Quite an episode today! So many good parts.

Ben Galpin did a wonderful job voicing a man who’s recovering from something horrible and dark. Jonathan is careful with his words, as talking just enough to tell Mina that he needs to steer clear of that time is still treading the edge of unstable ground. Poor man. The fear and dread in his voice as he talks about just this much….

The music at this point had suspenseful ambiance. We all know what he went through, but Mina has no idea. But she can see him here, see what the experience (whatever it was) has done to him; hear his words as he says her full first name. Galpin’s delivery was perfect. Just through hearing his voice, I could imagine how Jonathan must be staring at the closed journal in his lap, the way his fingers grasp it as he doesn’t dare open it; like it’s Pandora’s box.

When I read the book again earlier this year and Mina talked about her wedding present, I was worried. I was thinking, “oh no, don’t make that promise, Mina. It’s well-meant and sweet and noble, but NOT a good idea.” I kept thinking of it as a visible proof of trust between them. While that is part of it, however, now through hearing it, I’m having second thoughts. She wrapped it up like a package, which disguises the appearance of it and puts it in a state to still some of the moving chaos in Jonathan’s mind. He won’t wonder, “Has she read it? Should I read it?” or tear himself to bits with worrying about it. It doesn’t even look like the journal he took on his trip to Romania now. It’s locked up. If the journal is Pandora’s box, Mina just put a bolt and padlock on it, so there’s no getting in there without effort. And I missed it earlier, but she didn’t promise to never open it; she’d only do so if some kind of crisis happens, in which case opening the journal wouldn’t be the cause of chaos, but could only possibly become an aid. So now I think that was a really clever idea. As for the visible proof of trust aspect, it’s there because if Jonathan has doubts in his own mind, he can at least count on her. That’s the real message there. He can trust her and her judgment.

I loved Sister Agatha’s insight. She won’t break confidentiality, but she can put some possibilities to bed. I don’t think that Mina thought at all that Jonathan had an affair since she got Agatha’s letter, but the possibility probably crossed her mind a few times during the long silence before that, when she had nothing to go on. So when Agatha brought it up, I think Mina realized she had forgotten about the idea and was relieved that she need never wonder again.

The music turned … the words that come to my mind are “victorious” and “triumphant”, when they got married. And well it should be. I wouldn’t use the word “joyous”, although there was joy in Mina’s voice and in the music. I think the feeling of victory and overcoming is appropriate here. It’s a triumph that Jonathan escaped and is alive; it’s a triumph that Mina’s helpless waiting was rewarded; it’s a triumph that they are reunited, and at last, at long LONG LAST, they are married. Jonathan’s not completely okay now, but he will get better. They crossed a giant hurdle, and can make each other stronger.

That’s the feeling the music conveys.

But then the abrupt change as we switch to Lucy.

The fear is back. Beth Eyre’s Lucy is always quiet and gentle, but the quietness is different this time. It’s tense, nervous, dreading. We all know that Dracula has resumed his feeding off of her. And now she’s alone. No bedmate to hang onto the key, or pull her back to bed if she sleepwalks. And no one to scare off the bats and shadows haunting Lucy.

She’s on her own. Smart of her to start keeping a diary, now that no one’s there to bear witness (her mum being a helpless case).

[see-arcane]

i read your wip and i cant help but feel.... pity, for penclosa. for choosing to do this, choosing the most harmful, horrible path. of course. of course he is. of course Jonathan is like catnip to her- but that doesnt mean she has to do This Bullshit in another, kinder world, perhaps she decided to be less of an Absolute Bastard about things and found love and caring and respect in some other heart, and genuinely Just Did Therapy On Jonathan. at least her persona, the face she puts on, seems to be a genuinely Cool Lady. it is a shame she has chosen this most awful cruelest path because she has the power to. i pity her because i feel like she could make a Different Choice where this story has a far happier course and ending for everyone- but, of course, she didn't. and now mina is going to fucking Get Her. as she should

You hit a lot of nails on their heads, Anon.

The tragedy of 'You Didn't Have to Do This, You Could Have Been Our Friend,' hits much more truthfully and so much more sourly when it's with this cast of characters versus Miss Penclosa's original story. In, "The Parasite," we can see the foundation of her plans for Austin Gilroy almost from the outset. Even if she wasn't thinking of enslaving him from day one, she still made her move after only a week of interaction with the man, pouncing on the very first occasion when she got to mesmerize him while the two were alone.

One week. Just one week with Gilroy, in which I imagine he was only ever anything but professional with her--especially as his thoughts on her are made hideously clear even before she started tightening the mental collar. (Ick, she's over 40. Ick, she's 'deformed' for having a bad leg. Nothing like his sweet young Agatha. Never mind that he's in his thirties. But moving on.) Gilroy gave her only the barest amount of regard in that period.

But the opportunity was there. Her want was there. Her loneliness. Her power.

Why not, Helen? You have your hooks in now. You have him. Why not? You can make it real. You can make him love you. And what does a pretty young bauble of a girl like Agatha need him for anyway? She'll get another, girls like her always can. Go on, Helen. He's yours for the taking. He will love you in time, with enough prompting...

I stand by some personal theories about why she goes the route she does. Potential bleak origins come into it that I'll try to flesh out in the story, but the most important factor is what her goal is in the present. Because really, opting for coerced affection rather than literally anything else she might wring out of a victim is telling. Hypnotism is notorious in fiction for being used to carry out thefts and sundry violent dirty work and, as with Dracula and the Brides' victims, a paralytic allowance to have themselves be preyed on. But the uniquely intimate (and so uniquely dread-inducing) decision to try and puppeteer someone into being your personal paramour is special in the worst way.

Love is the highest priority in Miss Penclosa's hierarchy of needs. She wants to have a partner (puppet) who will adore her and tell her so and be as smitten with her as she (thinks she) is with him. And, as seen in "The Parasite," she also likes it when that trapped puppet-lover verbally agrees with her that his actual fiancée is dull and worthy of insult. She wants to be the only one for her beloved and wants him to disparage all others. Interesting results to come on that front with Mr. Harker. Anyway.

Now we come back to the problem of the Harkers. In the case of Austin Gilroy, her original unhappy 'beau,' we had a protagonist who wasn't exactly a prince. Loyal and loving to his Agatha, true, and suitably horrified at being forced to follow Penclosa's orders (and she does order something quite nasty as a parting shot)...but he's also a bit nasty on his own. He insults people who believe in clairvoyance or the supernatural, he's snide about Penclosa's looks in the extreme, and is generally not that great a guy to anyone but his fiancée and close friends.

But Jonathan Harker? Sweetheart supreme? Him walking into the picture is like Penclosa being starved and just now seeing she'd been scrabbling after stale crumbs this whole time when a five-tier wedding cake existed for the taking all along.

The catch is that the Harkers are far, far, far more endearing than Gilroy ever was. One of their best friends is an old professor whose guest they are at the party. They owe a debt of more than gratitude to at least two older women, Sister Agatha and the unnamed lady who gifted Jonathan her own crucifix as protection. Both of them have suffered ailments beyond mortal ken, and only escaped them by the charity and heroism of others. These are the least judgmental young people in all of England. Though both were understandably skittish about her kind of mesmerism, they were still open to her, still prepared to be outright friends.

You could have been their friend, Helen. You could have. This one weakness, this one obsession, is the only thing between you and a companionship that is natural, organic, untainted by the conditions of being a circus performer for your friend's husband and his precious study. Real friends, Helen. All of them would be.

He would be.

...But that isn't enough.

Of course it isn't. Jonathan Harker is the romantic daydream come true. He is not the man a woman settles for--he's the beloved prince every girl dreams of when she's still young enough to believe romance exists outside of books and stage plays. He's real, Helen. He's right there for the taking. And who can stop you but you?

Helen Penclosa wants what she wants. And if the means are there, if the prize she had thought all this time was only a fantasy is sitting in front of her, if this is her one chance--well. Why would she settle for mere friendship? Why feign happiness with a freely given slice when she can run off with the whole cake?

It is a tragedy in the making. Because Miss Penclosa is a woman of depth, a woman of character, a woman who is canny and witty and wise, a woman who could so easily have been a friend for life if she had just given her help and done no more. But she is also a woman whose vices are sequestered in the greedy pit of her heart. And that pit's needs come first.

[magpiefngrl]

2022 Book Review

so the first thing I noticed, looking back at what I read this year, is that I haven't read any books that blew me away (with one exception, see below). Unlike 2021 (see last year's posts here and a short one here) when I read books that left me with my jaw on the floor. The other thing I noticed is that in 2022 I went for a lot of rereads. I'm a big re-reader, if I love something I want to expose myself to it as often as I can, but this year I reread way more than I normally do. Then again, I've had a super busy summer and some pretty tough months following that, so it's not so surprising I sought out familiarity and comfort.

Total books read: (if I finish current read) 82 81

Books that stood out in 2022 and other musings:

I. The Queen's Thief series (you'll also see me refer to it as The Thief). Prob my most enjoyable read of the year. Two of the six books thrilled me in a way I hadn't felt in yonks and the other four were pretty good too. Also: A. I'm proud of starting and finishing a series in the same year, it doesn't always happen. B. jfc I have a new blorbo I'd die for.

II. The Wimsey books. I started going through them chronologically and read all of them (bar one, I think). I'm pleased that I started the series and finished it--like I said above, it doesn't often happen, esp in recent years. These are murder mysteries featuring a Duke's younger brother as the amateur sleuth. The mysteries aren't Agatha Christie level of competence (I figured out several murderers before the reveal and I'm not even particularly good at this), nor are all the novels equally good, but Sayer's witty prose was a true joy and her dialogue is a masterpiece.

III. Other top books of the year:

Siren Queen (queer SFF), Black Sun (native American inspired SFF), The Atlas Six (dark academia SFF), How to Bang a Billionaire (contemporary m/m romance), The Goldfinch (contemporary literary), Hogfather (fantasy, humour), and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (historical fantasy, am at 70% and really loving it).

IV. I'm always excited to see fanfic authors moving on to original fic and I try to support those authors when I can. I've now created a shelf on my GoodReads so I can keep track. This year I read A Restless Truth, the sequel to Marvellous Light by Freya Marske, which was tremendously engaging, and I also read the self-published duology Magpie Ballads (Elegy is the first novel's title) by Vale Aida (only on Amazon atm). This author is superb, I truly love their writing style and how confidently they handle their craft (description, dialogue, narration etc). I have Thoughts TM on plot and story, but overall a very strong debut.

V. The exception (mentioned above): Lymond. What else. I finished Pawn in Frankincense in January and it destroyed me. Absolutely left me in a puddle weeping on the floor. I'd stalled in the book (and series) halfway through for years now. Each 1st Jan I'd be like "...and I need to finish the Lymond books this year!!!!" and it never happened--but then, in 2022, it (almost) did. I also read The Ringed Castle in autumn and am one third in Checkmate. Progress! (I had high hopes of finishing CM before NY but alas. Still trying to finish another long book.) Anyway, Pawn in Frankincense is the novel that blew me away in 2022.

VI. The new thing of the year: receiving daily-ish emails in my inbox with chapters from a classic book. I didn't go for Dracula as I read it some years ago but I signed up for Dangerous Liaisons. I was familiar with the plot, having watched the amazing adaptation (and the other, less than amazing one), but I still enjoyed the book a great deal. Receiving the letters in my inbox was a new and fun experience.

VII. Disappointments! Let's have some of those. The Glass Hotel: found it bleak and dull; DNF'ed it but I might return to it when I've got the energy for a slow story. Wilder Girls: not quite a disappointment but it could've done a lot more with that unique premise. Time Is A Mother (poetry collection): sacrilegious perhaps, but Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds is unparalleled and this one suffers in comparison. Alix E Harrow has turned out to be a hit-or-miss author for me after all. Although I loved the first installment of her fairytale verse, I found A Mirror Mended lacked the depth of the first novella. Good but not memorable. And finally Nghi Vo's Into the Riverlands, the third novella of her Singing Hills Cycle, was OK. A decent read but nothing more.

VIII. I don't read non-fiction at all, it's really not my thing, unless it's books on the writing craft. I used to seek them out avidly, but not anymore. After going through a couple dozen of these books, you realise they all start sounding alike. That being said, writing craft books can be motivating during times of block and often you might find a few gems of advice that can be very inspiring. This year I only read one such book (Writing 21st Century Fiction by D. Maas), which was nothing ground-breaking but included a few exercises that I'm eager to try.

past years

2015 2016 2019 first half of 2020 top 5 books of 2020 2021

[mzannthropy]

From time to time I like to muse about what book adaptations I'd like to see Sam Claflin star in (like, there is no law that say he can't do more of them, is there). More under the cut:

Of course, the first one I will say is Agatha Christie. There are quite a few suitable characters that he could play, be it murderers or heroes. Remember Chris Evans in Knives Out, particularly that scene when the will is read out, where he goes "eat shit" at everyone--Sam would totally kill it playing someone similar. Benoit Blanc films are Agatha Christie derivative and Ransome is a very typical Agatha Christie character, so he could be one of those. As for the heroic ones, there's still plenty, for example I've just thought about Angus from Towards Zero. The good thing about Agatha's books, aside from them being fantastic mysteries, is that there is almost always a love story (usually two people who met thanks to the crime and may have been suspects but are innocent getting together), so there'd be that too.

My second favourite author is L.M. Montgomery, and you know who I'm gonna suggest as a character for Sam to play--it's got to be the one and the only Barney Snaith from The Blue Castle. (For those unfamiliar, he's the swoon worthiest of all swoon worthy romantic heroes, also go read the book, it's in the public domain.) That is if people are okay with a British actor playing a Canadian. Sam would have no problem getting the accent right, but seeing as LMM is such a cultural treasure, they might prefer a Canadian actor.

Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall surely needs a new adaptation. I'd like to see Sam playing Gilbert Markham, the main male character of the story. Anne doesn't get as much recognition as her sisters bc Charlotte cancelled her, but she deserves it as much as them. The book is about a woman escaping from her abusive husband, undoubtedly an important topic.

Dracula, if we could finally get a proper accurate adaptation. Sam could play any of the suitor squad (Jonathan should be someone younger, imo), but the one I think he'd capture best is Jack Seward.

These are the main ones I thought about. Not much, but then my reading has been... tragic for the last decade or so. I like Daphne du Maurier, though I've only read some of her works and Sam's already done My Cousin Rachel. But the other day I imagined Sam as Jem Merlyn in Jamaica Inn and got myself all hot and worked up.

[ranthebow]

Thoughts about BBC Dracula

So, I ended up watching the entirety of BBC Dracula yesterday and I have thoughts. Don’t know how many will make it here and how coherent they will be, but I’ve just been thinking about it all day and I’d like to just write them down. Warning, spoilers ahead.

On one hand, I think I quite enjoyed watching it. There is clever dialogue, fun sexual tension with the women clearly being the top (Sister Agatha’s verbal whipping of Dracula in the first episode is such a delight). They also took the story of Dracula and tried to do something new with it, taking characters and situations we know and turning them into something new and surprising, just enough to keep me, an avid Dracula fan, on my toes.

However!

So, so many things were just...bad, at the same time. The clever dialogue sometimes turned into cringey, modern one-liners, because that’s just what shows do these days. Character’s actions didn’t make sense based on what we knew motivated them, usually within the second or third act of their own character arcs. Queerness was kind of thrown into the mix, in a really random way, just to say it was there? Like, yes, Dracula has a lot of queer energy, especially his interactions with Jonathan, even in the book, but considering how they handled that as the episodes went on (starting with a very dramatic “Did you have sexual intercourse with Count Dracula?” at the beginning of episode 1, just for the shock), it really felt awkwardly placed in there. The first episode was so queer coded. There was so much potential!! And then Jonathan dies, and all that potential is thrown out the window. It was strange. And then, the worst of it all...the very last episode. 

Episode 1 was focused on Jonathan Harker’s experience and escape from Count Dracula, as well as introducing Agatha Van Helsing and having her interact with Dracula in a very confident, sexually charged way, with her tentatively winning. That is, of course, until the end of the episode, where Dracula gains the upper hand and does something with her (we don’t know what yet). Then, episode 2, Dracula has the upper hand in another sexually charged battle of wits with Agatha. Only for...Agatha to die and episode 3 (the final episode) to be set 100 years later? With an Agatha look-a-like? This comes back to the idea that things were set up, had so much potential, and they went for the easy shock, rather than a satisfying conclusion. Like, yes, I was very shocked when Dracula walked out onto the beach and was immediately surrounded by helicopters and cars, indicating that he was no longer in the time we had just seen him in. But then it quickly became clear that was all they had planned to do with it. All the character interactions we had come to love and expect, just gone.  Everything we know to be true about the world, gone. It’s new and alien, even for the viewer. So much of episode 3 was just spent on setting up new characters. And for what? That’s not what I had hoped to see at that point. Agatha had won, than Dracula had won, making them equal for one last showdown in what could have been a very interesting episode 3. But that’s not what happened! It made me want to not care for the new characters, almost out of spite of how different the show suddenly felt. And the writers tried to rectify this problem (clearly showing they knew it was going to be a problem) by...essentially making Zoe be possessed by Agatha? Like, why though?? Zoe clearly was a different person and didn’t have the same chemistry, or history, that Agatha did with Dracula. And the writers knew that was the main hook of the first two episodes, the interactions between Dracula and Agatha. So to tie it all together, they had to bring Agatha back somehow? When they killed her in the first place, just for the shock of it? And then!! Even more annoying...they had set up this big thing, from episode one, that there was a singular reason that ties all of Dracula’s lore together, from his fear of the cross to his inability to stand the sun, all things that only he experienced, no other vampire. And it was just because he had convinced himself to be afraid? That’s what made him different from other vampires? That he was a coward? Then how did he stay sane for hundreds of years when, apparently, no other vampire can? Everything was made to seem so clever, only for everything that happened at the end, that ties it all together, to be so silly. That entire final scene in Dracula’s apartment is so unsatisfying, until the very end, when he is killing her (and killing himself in the process). That scene was lovely and an actually great ending. But it was clearly Agatha at that point again, so what was the point of making it modern in the first place?

Okay, I have so many more thoughts haha, from how BBC Dracula missed the point of Dracula (which I still want to see, even when adaptations do cool, new stuff with the story) to more things that I actually liked about it, because there is a lot more than I mentioned (like Lucy. I really liked Lucy...until they messed up her motivation just as she died too), but I feel like I wrote a lot so that might come later. Hey, if nothing else, this is a piece of media that made me think! I had fun with it, for sure. The more I like something, the more likely I am to critique it, especially when my like of it feels like such a guilty pleasure considering all these things I clearly didn’t like about it lol. I’ll always be a sucker for Dracula content, it’s true

[serial-serializednovelreader]

- OOP Dracula pulled another “disguise myself in the skin of the people I killed”

- also idk why he was hitting me now but he let Mina go. What is she doing now? How is she? I hope she’s ok!

- oh wait he didn’t lol Agatha was just worried (as she should be)

- but also why does she reveal all her plans to him, like what’s the point in that? It seems a bit counterintuitive — that’s like my only note on her character at this point.

- I really don’t like what they did with Adisa (the valet/servant that was in love with Ruthven). Like they play him up to be a super smart character, but he decides to leave the sea bear circle (yes that is what I’m calling it) because he wants to “be his own person” and “not fall to superstition”. Like even the most skeptical person would see that it was working and realize it’s smarter to not mess with that. I realize that he just lost the love of his life and he’s not thinking clearly but PLEASE give him more credit than that. I think if Dracula had baited him with “he’s still alive/he’ll be a vampire soon” or if Adisa had just said “I have nothing left to lose I’d rather die” then I could see it. Perhaps the second thing was implied, but it could have been stated more clearly. I just feel like it’s a disservice to his character to write him like that and feels icky. But maybe thats me?

-does everyone think they can take on dracula now???? Why are they all attacking him?

- BURN BABY BURN lollllll get wrecked dracula! So glad…wait why are there still 15 minutes left???

- if she’s so concerned about dracula healing from his wounds why wouldn’t they just throw out the box with the dirt on it? Or am I missing something?

- she honestly looks pretty good for becoming a vampire, but I guess he wasn’t doing it as fast as he was with Jonathan (why do they always have to show the bloody fingernail peeling though I really don’t like that).

- yeah sinking the Demeter is their best option but I just know Dracula isn’t going to let them get away with it.

[vickyvicarious]

Who’s Read What in Dracula? - Mina Murray

A spoiler-free breakdown of what documents Mina has read, and when. I will add a new entry whenever she gains access to, creates, or finishes a document.

Links to other characters’ posts, explanation of the color-coding I’ve used, and all other notes/explanations relating to how I am sorting/tracking this can be found in my WRWD Masterpost.

Tracking begins below the cut.

May 9

Letter to Lucy

Letter to Mina

Mina writes a letter to Lucy anticipating her visit. She also mentions having read a short letter from Jonathan in Transylvania, saying he's doing well and will be home in about a week.

May 13?

Letter to Mina

Mina receives Lucy's letter, likely written on or about May 11. Given swift postage I imagine it would not take very long for her to get it, so I'm allowing a couple of days. This is also an attempt to balance the time between letters.

Total documents: Letter to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina

May 17?

Letter to Lucy

Mina writes a second letter to Lucy, apparently expressing sympathy. We don't see this letter and thus don't know its exact date. I've placed it midway between the other letters from Lucy.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina

June 7-12?

Dictated Letter Home (May 11)

Based on later statements, it appears that Mina likely received Jonathan's first dictated note, claiming he would be home in about a month. The letter he wrote her in the first days of his travel only took a few days to reach her, but the final dictated letter took roughly a month, so I'm using that as a guideline for roughly how long it takes mail to arrive from Castle Dracula (perhaps a little less, as she's not in Whitby needing mail forwarded to her yet). This would mean Mina would have been expecting him to begin his return journey roughly around the time she received this letter.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Dictated Letter Home (May 11)

July 24

Whitby Journal

Mina arrives in Whitby and begins the journal she planned to write while there, starting off with a description of the graveyard where she likes to hang out.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Dictated Letter Home (May 11), Whitby Journal

July 25

Dictated Letter Home

After she asks for any news of her fiance, Mr. Hawkins forwards Mina one of the letters Jonathan wrote on Dracula's behest. Based on her description ("a line dated from Castle Dracula, and says that he is just starting for home."), it appears to be the second one written on May 18, the one falsely dated June 19, which claims "that I was starting on the next morning from the time of the letter". It could also be the one falsely dated June 29, which claims "that I had left the castle and arrived at Bistritz." Mina is immediately suspicious of this out-of-character letter. This letter also appears to be sent several weeks after she would have been expecting him to leave (based on his previous dictated letter).

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29')

August 8

Demeter Article

Mina reads the article about the dramatic grounding of the Demeter, and pastes it into her journal.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Article

August 9

Demeter Article

Log of the Demeter

Mina copies the second article about the Demeter (and the accompanying captain's log) into her journal.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter

August 19

Letter from Budapest

Letter to Mina

Mina receives mail. Mr. Hawkins forwards her Sister Agatha's letter. He also sends her a letter (which we do not see) helping to arrange her travel to go to Jonathan. This date also marks the final entry in Mina's Whitby Journal.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina

August 24

Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy

Mina arrives at the hospital in Budapest, reunites and is married to Jonathan, and writes a letter to Lucy about it. She also receives Jonathan's Castle Dracula Diary, but on his request does not read it. Instead she seals it shut with her wedding ring.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy

September 4-6?

Whitby Letter

Mina likely receives Lucy's letter from Whitby within a few week or so of it being sent to her. There's a lot of confusion surrounding the date of when the letter was written, and I also have wondered about if Mina might not have gotten it before leaving Budapest, but on further reflection I think that she probably did, since there's no mention of it arriving later. So if it was indeed sent on the 30th, she probably got it around these dates.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy, Whitby Letter

September 17

Unread Letter to Lucy

Mina writes Lucy a letter to catch her up on what has happened since her wedding. She's returned to Exeter, where Mr. Hawkins has designated the Harkers as his heirs.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy, Whitby Letter, Unread Letter to Lucy

September 18

Unread Letter to Lucy

Mina writes Lucy another letter, this time relaying the sad news that Mr. Hawkins has died suddenly. Mina is also struggling with keeping up a cheerful face for Jonathan, who's still suffering from nightmares and now uncertainty about his ability to run the firm.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy, Whitby Letter, Unread Letters to Lucy

September 22

Post-Whitby Journal

Telegram to Mrs. Harker

Mina picks up her journal again for the first time since she left Whitby, detailing Mr. Hawkins' funeral and an alarming flashback Jonathan experienced. She also gets a telegram from Van Helsing informing her of the Westenras' deaths.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy, Whitby Letter, Unread Letters to Lucy, Post-Whitby Journal, Telegram to Mrs. Harker

September 23

Castle Dracula Diary

Mina breaks the seal and reads Jonathan's diary, in hopes that the knowledge within will help to care for him.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy, Whitby Letter, Unread Letters to Lucy, Post-Whitby Journal, Telegram to Mrs. Harker, Castle Dracula Diary

September 24

Letter to Mrs. Harker

Van Helsing sends Mina a letter asking if he can visit and talk to her "about certain matters vitally important". She types up Jonathan's diary, in case others need to read it.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy, Whitby Letter, Unread Letters to Lucy, Post-Whitby Journal, Telegram to Mrs. Harker, Castle Dracula Diary, Letter to Mrs. Harker

September 25

Telegram to Van Helsing

Letter to Mrs. Harker

Telegram to Mina

Letter to Van Helsing

Mina sends a telegram agreeing to Van Helsing's request for a visit. Before he arrives, she types up her Whitby Journal in case he wishes to read it. After his visit, he writes her a letter confirming that everything in Jonathan's journal is true. She writes back her thanks and an invite for breakfast with both Harkers in the morning. She also receives a wire from Jonathan letting her know he will be back tonight.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy, Whitby Letter, Unread Letters to Lucy, Post-Whitby Journal, Telegram to Mrs. Harker, Castle Dracula Diary, Letters to Mrs. Harker, Telegram to Van Helsing, Telegram to Mina, Letter to Van Helsing

September 27-28

Message to Billington & Son

Reply from Billington

This is somewhat speculative, but based on their actions in the following days, it seems fairly clear that after Van Helsing left, Jonathan and Mina began to share their information and take action. Jonathan likely wrote to Billington & Sons on the 27th and heard back from them the next day, but depending on whether they used telegrams or letters, the timing could vary. As they were working together on this, I imagine Mina would have probably seen these communications as well.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy, Whitby Letter, Unread Letters to Lucy, Post-Whitby Journal, Telegram to Mrs. Harker, Castle Dracula Diary, Letters to Mrs. Harker, Telegram to Van Helsing, Telegram to Mina, Letter to Van Helsing, Message to Billington & Son, Reply from Billington

September 29

Telegram to Van Helsing

Telegram to Mrs. Harker

Phonograph Diary

Telegram to Jonathan

Escaped Wolf Article

Bloofer Lady Articles

Mina sends Van Helsing a telegram saying that Jonathan is in Whitby, and she is on her way into town to meet him. She gets a telegram from Jack explaining that he will meet her at the station instead as the professor is leaving for Amsterdam. Mina listens to Jack's audio diary. At first she only listens through September 9, but before the day is through she has listened to all of it and begun to type it all up. She also goes through the newspapers Jack collects, looking for any evidence of Dracula since the date he landed in Whitby, and finds the Bloofer Lady article, as well as probably the Escaped Wolf article.

Total documents: Letters to Lucy, Letter to Mina, Letter to Mina, Whitby Journal, Dictated Letters Home (May 11 + 'June 19/29'), Demeter Articles, Log of the Demeter, Letter from Budapest, Letter to Mina, Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy, Whitby Letter, Unread Letters to Lucy, Post-Whitby Journal, Telegram to Mrs. Harker, Castle Dracula Diary, Letters to Mrs. Harker, Telegrams to Van Helsing, Telegram to Mina, Letter to Van Helsing, Message to Billington & Son, Reply from Billington, Telegram to Mrs. Harker, Phonograph Diary, Telegram to Jonathan, Escaped Wolf Article, Bloofer Lady Articles

[anncanta]

***

It's amazing how some things reveal themselves when you look at them from the outside, through someone else's eyes, or after some time, when you forget the details that lie in the foreground and therefore seem obvious.

I couldn't figure out where I got this pattern in which Dracula in my fanfictions is very careful with Agatha the first time he bites her. It was so bright and acutely palpable, and it appeared again and again. Dracula behaves gently, he does not rush her and somehow makes her understand that it will not be painful and scary, and interesting discoveries await her. You see, it seemed to me that this was just my fantasy. Well, you never know what kind of kinks a person can have. Such light BDSM in a vampire way.

And then I understood, thanks to @moremoveslessannouncements-blog and her post, why. It's in the text. Fanfiction never lies. Fanfics always show what is in the canon, it just may be the main feature of the hero or plot or a secondary one. But in this case, everything was right before my eyes.

You see, I always thought that in the scene in the workshop, he was threatening her. ‘I will make you last’, ‘You'll be part of me’, ‘You'll travel to the new world in my veins’ ... This text is truly threatening. If it weren't for the body language that accompanies it.

Context is important, especially the physical, bodily context.

This is not a threat.

This is a threat.

If you forget about the text for a moment and watch what Dracula is doing, he slowly approaches her, looks at her intently, and gently runs his hand along her neck.

Let's turn on the sound and look at everything together. And again we ask the question – what is he doing?

I mean, not what are his actions, but what are they about?

And I'll tell you. He explains to her what will happen.

And when I realized this, I realized how blind I was. Because, well, look. How many of his victims did Dracula explain what he was going to do to them and how it worked?

Jonathan didn't even know what Dracula was doing until he found himself exhausted at his desk with the prospect of being locked in a box in a couple of weeks.

The Grand Duchess was eaten during a passionate waltz, without further ado.

Abramov and Portman were devoured almost without ceremony.

With Dorabella, Dracula made a good attempt to be polite and gallant but did not go into details of what was happening.

I purposely describe this so cynically so that it is clear what I mean.

Agatha is the only one of all Dracula's victims (perhaps except for Lucy, but that's a separate discussion) to whom he explains what would happen.

I only now realized what it was.

Let's return to Agatha's workshop. Dracula lets Mina go, and he and Agatha are left alone. He knows she's scared. He doesn't see, he knows it. He has an animal sense and can smell her fear. Agatha can be calm outwardly as much as she wants – he senses it. This is not yet Dracula we will see in the third episode, so it doesn't even occur to him to let her go. But he is interested in her. He likes her. And he – clumsily, in his own way, as best he can – calms her down. ‘Don't be afraid. You won't disappear. You will become a part of me. Your life will continue in the new world in a new form.’ And then this touch on the shoulder: ‘Hush, it won't hurt.’

I heard it. This appears in literally every text I write about them, one way or another. But I sincerely thought that it was my imagination.

If anyone still doubts it, then there is a scene between Dracula and Zoe in the third episode. Here, Dracula has already come a long way and therefore can express what he feels, not only with a gesture – now frankly intimate – but also with words. He can tell her this, still rather rudely and seasoned with mockery, but directly: ‘It doesn't have to hurt.’ The scene in his mind palace is not only a dialogue with Zoe here and now. This is a memory. He can afford more now. And he does. But it's still not quite ‘that’. We will see how he succeeded in the finale.

Well, to summarize, I would like to note that this entire storyline is missing in the script. It has the text that Dracula speaks on all three occasions (episode 1, in Agatha's workshop, episode 3, in the mind palace, and the finale), but it doesn't have the body language and subtle interactions that create this entire plot. Which is logical – the film and the script are not the same thing, the film is formed in the process of working on it, and some things are simply born on the set. But when the text is ready, they are impossible not to be noticed and impossible to be ignored. Luckily, fan fiction exists.

Thanks again @moremoveslessannouncements-blog.

[dominantslasherking]

Dracula with dominant Male S/o

My Stories are meant for the much more mature audience, 18+

Backstory: You tell sister Agatha the tell of your stay with Dracula, but oh, it doesn't end there, Dracula wants his husband back.

Agatha enter the room, taking a swift look at you with a curious gaze, she watched as you boredly got up from your bed and went over to the seat, to sit with her.

"(Name) (Last name) Correct?" Sister Agatha gave you a smile, setting some papers down and a book. "Jonathan talked a lot about you." She traced the book. "And how close you and Dracula were, Tell me (Name) do you love him?" She bluntly asked looking directly at you.

The door suddenly clanged, another nun entering, "We are to be observed, apparently I cannot be alone with a man.." She spoke, trailing back to you, waiting for your response.

"Straight to the point I see, do I love Dracula? Yes." You spoke as Agatha nodded her head, "Well, do tell." She smiled as she listened to your story.

<><><><><>>><<<>>><<<<>>>><<<<>>>><<<<<<<>>>>>>><<<<>>>><<>>>

The carriage came to a quick halt, You and Jonathan both exited the carriage to only be met with the cold breeze and the darkness of the night sky. You observed your surroundings and looked at the castle.

Bats suddenly swarmed Jonathan as you quickly helped him wave them away. Once you both turned you were met with the castle doors opening to reveal a warm light.

"Well, I suppose we enter?" You spoke, not wanting to be in the cold no longer as you wrapped your scarf tightly around you.

"That would be best," Jonathan carried his suitcases in both of his hands, you only having one considering you didn't bring much.

Entering the castle, it was slightly cold but much warmer from the inside. You swat away the annoying fly which made a buzzing sound. Continuing to walk, Jonathan yelled out for someone, as you followed him to what seemed to be the dining table which was nicely lit.

You looked as saw Jonathan already making himself at home, grabbing some wine and pouring it for himself.

Eyes snapping towards the railing just above the dining area, you found a very elderly man, assuming he was the owner of this castle you quickly introduced yourself. "You must be the Count, excuse us for our intrusion, I'm here as Jonathan's companion on this trip to Transylvania..." You gave a small bow, not noticing the intense gaze of the vampire.

"I was just uhm- Getting you some wine...Count..." Jonathan spluttered out in nervousness, "I do not...drink wine..." The count spoke with his fluttering accent.

"I Bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, and of course Mr. (Last Name).." Dracula held back at purring out your name with much interest. "I am...Dracula."

You and Jonathan watched as Dracula turned away, seemingly making his way downstairs and into the dining room.

"I must say, this place is quite...huge, and dark..." You hummed out to your dear friend who only nodded before taking a seat. You notice there were only two seats, at the long table one of opposite ends.

Awkwardly standing as the count made his way into the dining room, walking with his cane and suddenly taking a seat.

Watching Jonathan and count Dracula interact was interesting, but certain words caught your interest.

"They, are without... flavor." Dracula spoke out, Jonathan quickly correcting him, "I think you mean without, character?" After that, you quickly drowned out what they were saying not wanting to intrude on the conversation that you weren't really in.

What snapped you back to reality was, Dracula saying that you and Jonathan must stay here a month? Baffled you looked at your friend who was equally in shock.

Dracula drew closer to Jonathan and continue to speak to him. "There is no need to teach, just simply remain by my side, and I'll...absorb you..."

<<>>

"So this is where I will be residing?" You spoke to Count Dracula, him already leaving Jonathan into a room, you were simply mesmerized by the capacity of the castle, and did believe Dracula when he said this place was hard to navagate.

"Yes, I do hope you find it to you....liking..." He slowly spoke watching as you take off your jacket. "Thank you..." You spoke taking out your hand for a shake, which you did not get.

Dracula exited the room as he said goodbye and left in the shadows.

<<>><<>>><<<>>><<<>>>><<<>>><<<<>>>><<<>>>><<<>>><<>>>><<>>>>>

"I'm asking if you had sexual intercourse with count Dracula?" Agatha asked causing you to let out a chuckle.

"Of course I did darling, you would've thought I was the beast with how I ravished him." You couldn't hold back your laughs as Agatha looked at you in slight amusement.

"But, that was simply, later on, I don't sleep with people I just met." Your laughter died down as you continued on with the story.

<<>><<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<>>><<>>><>><>>><>>><<<>>><>

"Count, Dracula?" You called out through the emptiness of the halls, it was currently daytime, but no light from the sun really entered the castle.

"Ugh.." You muttered tracing your neck, feeling a sharp pain ever since you woke up from your slumber.

"Yes?" Hearing a voice from the darkness, it was definitely the Counts, but it seemed he lost a bit of his accent which was strange indeed.

Count Dracula slowly came out of the shadows, his face slightly younger it seemed, no longer riddled with bags, but still slight wrinkles his hair was also no longer white but a grey.

You were utterly confused, maybe you thought he was older because you were tired from the long journey? That was the only reasonable thing you could come up with, other than that, you were lost in thought.

"You are like no one I have ever tasted, simply sensational..." Dumbfounded by his words, you just thought he couldn't find the right English term in his sentence but you escused it, because you weren't no Jonathan with his smarts. Sometimes you even fumbled on your english.

"Thank you??"

<>><<>>><<<<<<>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>><<>>>><<>>><>>>

"The rest was quite boring really, for a few weeks, I stayed in my room while getting food from the maids/butlers, Dracula was busy I suppose..." You blandly spoke to sister Agatha.

"So you didn't experience anything strange, no writing on the windows? What about Jonathan did you bother checking up on him??" She questioned leaning forward to listen.

"Nothing, strange, except the bite marks on my neck, which I assumed was mosquito bites at the time...And Jonathan...It was strange, at that time, I completely forgot about him, I was too busy drawing in my journal I suppose..." You muttered out.

"Awe, Yes your Journal, I've taken a look at the drawings..." Agatha pulled out your Journal and opened it, to see the drawings of which you drew during your time at the castle.

"An amazing talent you have, truly, What I have noticed is that...you keep drawing, Count Dracula...And he simply gets younger and younger until he looks like a handsome gentleman..." Sister Agatha passed and smirked, "You gave him such, monstrous features as well, I was almost afraid that the drawing would jump out at me..." Agatha looked towards the other nun who was shaken up by the amazing drawing details.

<>><<>>><<<<<<>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>><<>>>><<>>><>>>

"Count, thank you for inviting me for dinner, I was beginning to bore myself in the room-" Your voice suddenly stops as it made its way to Dracula and his handsome features...How was this possible...he was...young?

Suddenly your brain began to click things together, the marks on your neck, his features growing younger- And Jonathan...oh god- he looked horrific, deathly pale and the loss of hair...

You looked at Dracula's wine glass, which was full of a red liquid..."Who's blood is that?" You slowly asked out, not afraid when he got up and sped towards you at an inhuman pace.

Dracula brought the blood towards your nose, "Who do you think?" He gave a smile, his large hands racing across your neck, "It was very hard to control myself...I must say, you have the most delicious blood I have ever tasted...not only that..." Dracula stopped, as he set the blood down and looked up at you.

"Your transition is remarkable, no hair loss, your skin not losing pigment, body not decaying..." The Count licked his lips which made you swallow down some saliva.

Trying to not give in to your desires you snapped your gaze away from his face.

"You were the driver...I can tell by your eyes..." You whispered out as he smirked, "Darling, you have such sharp eyes.." He smiled, making you drift your head back towards him, when you looked down at him, you realized that your faces were so close, you could smell the enticing musk of his aroma, it was strange you weren't that very keen in smell, but these weeks everything about you seemed to heighten.

"However, I have noticed a change, that never one of my other creations had...Your eyes, are turning into a shade of red..." Dracula spoke never take his eyes off you.

<>><<>>><<<<<<>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>><<>>>><<>>><>>>

"You were not scared, after finding out what he truly is?" Agatha asked wanting to know more, "No, I wasn't scared of him or what he was...I was scared of my desire, to know more, want more...I've always been a strange person, my mother thought I was crazy, my father thought I was strange, so he sent me away, to not corrupt his other children..." You huffed out.

"And yet, here you are, looking for help." Agatha smiled as if she knew what you wanted, "No, not exactly..." you trailed off piping her interest greatly.

"Then why are you here?" She asked in confusion, the other nun looking just as confused.

You looked out at the small window which was reflecting sunlight. "I was stolen away of course, shall I tell you about that?" You asked, getting no response.

<>><<>>><<<<<<>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>><<>>>><<>>><>>>

"I do not wish to go..." You spoke to Jonathan who was looking horrible, It was already been two months, and in those two months your interest and liking towards Dracula have increased, he even fed you his blood personally, because he did not want you to drink from anything or anyone but him.

"H-He's done something to you.." Jonathan stuttered out in a broken voice, "Look at you, you're just like him, and those eyes- Please, I will get you some help-" Jonathan drew closer to the sunlight on the parapet.

You shook your head, as you heard Dracula suddenly swish his way in, "Jonathan...Trying to take my husband away? That's, very naughty of you, do I not treat you well enough?" Dracula hissed out with some sarcasm.

Once Jonathan was at the edge of the Parapet, he gave a smile, as he suddenly grabbed you by the arm into the sunlight, as Dracula didn't dare move out of the shadows fearing the light.

Jonathan pulled you into his chest, as he fell, dragging you down with him, and falling into the streaming steep river.

<>><<>>><<<<<<>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>>>>>><<<<<<<>>>><<>>>><<>>><>>>

You finished off, taking another glance at the small window, to see the sun finally near its end.

"Husband? Why would he call you that?" Agatha asked composing her shock as she finally noticed your red eyes slightly gleaming in the dim-lit room.

You held up your hand, flashing off your finger, to see a ruby red ring, glazed with black garnet around it.

"I think...-" Agatha let out a scoff as she smiled, "I think our session will end here." Agatha also peered at the window and notice you smiling.

"It's too late..." Your husky voice hushed out, watching them leave the room, and making sure to lock it.

Agatha roamed the halls of the convent frantically, passing every nun and telling them to follow her outside.

Agatha made her way out and stared at the gate, which had a pack of wolves growling.

"What is happening?" An elder nun looked up at the bats fluttering and covering the night sky.

"We are under attack, by the forces of darkness..." Agatha spoke, looking up at the bats. "Why would the forces of darkness wish to attack a convent?" The nun asked in confusion. Agatha responded simply.

"We have Dracula's husband..." Making her way towards the gate she spoke to the wolf, "Dracula...the bats are a little noisy...would you mind?" The wolf howled as the bats scattered in the sky.

The wolf's body began to contort and stretch until it suddenly began to rip open to reveal the Count himself, Dracula, naked in all his glory.

"You have...something of mine...I wish for you to return him." Dracula gave a sadistic smile, as Agatha stood her ground, "Why should we, you can't even enter, without permission. You hold no power here." Agatha drew closer to the gate, not scared.

"(Name) correct? You wish for him by your side? I do not think so." Agatha challenged her face holding no ounce of fear.

Dracula pursed his tongue on his upper mouth in annoyance making a tsk sound. "How, pitful-" Dracula watched as Agatha said something and the nuns pulled out stakes.

"Impressive, but utterly useless, do you know why?" Dracula smiled, "I've already been invited in..." Dracula ripped the gate open, and sped away, suddenly drinking the nearest nun, throwing her to the floor, and grabbing another one to feat upon. Nuns scattered and screamed.

In a few seconds, before Agatha could even blink, most of the nuns lay dead, some drained others just brutally killed.

"If you would have just returned my darling husband without question, this would have happened." Dracula's loud voice boomed out, as he was nowhere in sight.

<<>>

Screams could be heard, from the distance, as you boredly lay on your bed, looking at the ceiling, that was until of course, the door of the 'prison' flew across the room.

You flew upwards and stood in front of your vampiric husband. "Oh my- saving me looking like this?" You laughed staring at Dracula's naked form.

"You must be teasing me," You leaned down and pressed a kiss on Dracula's lips, which he eagerly returned.

"Shall we go home?" You asked, placing your arm around Dracula's waist, "Yes, you see I have prepared a...interesting trip for us." Dracula took your hand in his, as you sped away together.

[rallamajoop]

Dracula canons in Yuletide 2022

Unsurprisingly, in the wake of that whole Daily Dracula thing, there were a lot of Draculas nominated for this year's Yuletide exchange this year ‒ not just a lot of Dracula characters, but whole different adaptations of the novel. And being that kind of terrible Dracula-nerd, I figured I'd make a list and share some notes on which-version-is-which. Now, I've only seen about half of these, and can't speak to what all the other folks who actually nominated them loved about them, but I'll take any excuse to ramble on about different Dracula-adaptations at this point, so here we go.

We've got a couple of movies, a couple of telemovies, a TV series and even a musical to cover here, so I'm just gonna put them all in chronological order, starting with the novel.

Dracula - Bram Stoker (Novel 1897)

Nominated characters:  Abraham Van Helsing  Arthur Holmwood  The Correspondent  Dracula  John "Jack" Seward  Jonathan Harker  Lucy Westenra  Lucy Westenra's Mother  Mina Murray Harker  Mr. Hawkins  Mr. Swales  Quincey Morris

Damn, Daily Dracula has done it's thing: folks have nominated basically everyone. (Well... except Sister Agatha. GDI, where's Sister Agatha, people?! Has that 2020 Moffat/Gatiss version put everyone off?)

But, moving onto the adaptations-

1. Dracula (Movies - Hammer) (1958-1974)

Nominated characters:  Dracula  Lawrence Van Helsing | J. Van Helsing  Lorrimer Van Helsing

Okay, yes ‒ this nomination was me. Look, Peter Cushing's Van Helsing was being reincarnated into whole new eras and having confusing chemistry with Christopher Lee's Dracula long before anyone ever thought to do the reincarnation-thing with Mina, and I want all the fic about it, is that so wrong? (Or, you know, the excuse to write some myself. Or really anything about these versions of the characters interacting ‒ I'm not picky!)

2. Count Dracula (1977)

Nominated characters:  Abraham Van Helsing  Jonathan Harker  Mina Harker  Renfield

One of the two British telemovie Dracula adaptations to come out of the 1970's (the 70's was a BIG decade for Dracula). This one was the more faithful to the novel ‒ too faithful, if anything, since some new ideas or creative storytelling could have gone a long way to distract from the limitations of the budget. That said, I did like their Dracula: the costuming isn't much to write home about, but he has enough presence to elevate every scene he's in (and, I mean, if you're going to get one thing really right in a Dracula adaptation...)

3. Dracula (2006)

Nominated characters:  Abraham Van Helsing  John Seward  Lucy Holmwood  Mina Murray

Yet another British television Dracula, this time one where Arthur Holmwood is tricked into helping bring Dracula to British shores by a vampire-worshipping cult, in the mistaken belief the Count can somehow cure him of congenital syphilis. No, really! Seriously though, my biggest disappointment with this one was it didn't go wild and weird enough ‒ the sad soap opera life of Arthur & friends just can't hope to compete with all that high-gothic camp, and 90 minutes just isn't time for all these ideas to breathe. But it must be said, Marc Warren makes a surprisingly compelling Dracula, and his one big vampire-sex-scene with Lucy is... quite something. Basically, I can definitely see why someone might want fic about these versions of the characters ‒ there's lots in this universe left to expand on.

4. Dracula: l'amour plus fort que la mort - Ouali (2011)

Nominated characters:  Jonathan Harker  Poison  Satine  Sorci

Well, okay. This one is, er, a French musical version? XD God, do I love the stuff you'll find nominated for Yuletide! So: not a version I'm familiar with, but going by this one summary I found, what we have here is one of the (MANY) post-1991-Coppola-version rip-offs where Mina is a reincarnation of Dracula's wife... but also one where Dracula hasn't spoken since his wife's death, and now employs three very gloriously campy servants to speak for him (Poison, Satine and Sorci, from the noms above). As someone who doesn't speak a word of French and knows this thing only from 5 minutes on youtube (I mean, the whole show's up there, though the quality's not great), these three are great value, and I can totally see why someone would nominate them for Yuletide.

5. Dracula (TV 2013)

Nominated characters:  Lucy Westenra  Mina Murray  Alexander Grayson | Dracula  Jayne Wetherby

A short-lived TV series reimagining of Dracula, where the Count shows up in London posing as an American steampunk inventor called Alexander Grayson, and yet another of the (many) post-Coppola versions where Mina is the reincarnation of Dracula's tragically-dead-wife, etc. Admittedly, this is an adaptation I know only by its reputation as the show that that finally gave us lesbian!Lucy (!!!) only to have her turn around and sleep with Jonathan for dubious plot reasons (theFUCK?) ‒ but I'd be the last to judge anyone who enjoyed it as a guilty pleasure and/or just wants to run away with the characters and let them have some real fun.

6. Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing (2021)

Nominated characters:  Abraham Van Helsing  Arthur Holmwood  John Seward  Lucy Westenra

Huh. Well, okay. First point: the poster is a lie ‒ this actually seems to be a fairly-straight, (very) low-budget film adaptation of the novel ‒ just one that starts about when Van Helsing arrives (ie, when Lucy is already very ill). So, more drawing-room-drama than Hugh-Jackman-material. Have not seen it, but have a trailer! Now you know just about as much about it as I do.

Honourable mentions

In the "do I even count this?" bonus round, we've also got the 2016 Van Helsing TV series (nominated characters: Axel Miller and Catherine) ‒ a show set post-vampire!apocalypse and starring a Van Helsing descendant. There's also a character called Van Helsing nominated for the Kyuuketsuki Sugu Shinu | The Vampire Dies in No Time manga, and a "Dracula Vance" nominated for a video game called Panilla Saga, about whom google will tell me nothing very illuminating. Ah, well. Seriously though, the total number of different Van Helsings nominated in this year's Yuletide must be some kind of record.

I'd also be remiss not to mention that the original 1872 Carmilla is also nominated, as is the excellent 1970 Hammer adaptation The Vampire Lovers. And rounding out our list of Victorian vampire lit, some weirdo has also nominated Varney the Vampire, but that one really needs its whole own post...

[see-arcane]

Barking Harker TEASER

The following is a rough draft of the first chapter for the in-progress horror novel, and alternate ending Dracula sequel, Barking Harker.

It will contain unsettling imagery.

It will contain unsettling possibilities.

It will contain things that bite, bleed, scream, and laugh.

If all this is acceptable, then welcome. Enter freely and of your own will. 

And leave all of the happiness and humanity you bring. 

For a version that isn’t in Tumblr format eye strain mode, check out the Google Doc version HERE.

Link to Barking Harker TEASER 2 is HERE.

                                              Barking Harker

                                                        TEASER

                                                      C. R. Kane

                                          Preludes and Interludes I:

                                                   Nights in Asylum

                                          SISTER AGATHA’S OBSERVATIONS

           The Hospital of St. Joseph and Ste. Mary brought Jonathan Harker into its care on the 8th of July. While not the worst case admitted in Sister Agatha’s time, he was several leagues away from the best-off. The Englishman, so his manner and voice gave him away long before ever uttering his address, was like one trapped at the point of waking from a supreme nightmare. A persistent dread kept his eyes wide and wet, his body taut, his brown brow puckered in a constant flux of distress and distrust.

         Less of the staff than of the reality around him.

         “I cannot trust me,” he told her over his broth. Whether hearty or thin, his meals seemed perpetually doomed to chill half-eaten on their tray. Appetite had withered in him even before his arrival to judge by his gauntness. “I cannot trust that I am awake and safe. I cannot trust that the nightmare I left was genuine or some spiraling betrayal of the mind. I cannot—,”

         She’d watched him rub furiously at the side of his neck, as though trying to scour something away. A hoarse noise left him.

         “I cannot be like them. Mina’s waiting. Mr. Hawkins will be wanting an update. I cannot be…”

         Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing at his neck. Fresh dew balanced on his lashes.

         “Like who?”

         The question nettled him. His lips twitched up in a rictus, the false smile of one doing their best not to shake apart in a fit.

         “Any of them. The women in the castle. The monster in the box. The dream in the hail storm.” The smile broke open on an awful laugh. More a sob in dismal disguise. “The unhappy couple stolen from their dirt in Exeter. Not them. Please, not any of them.”

         Scrubbing, rubbing, scratching, clawing.

         Before he could draw blood, she asked, “Does your neck itch?” The assault stopped. He stared at his hands for a spell, regarding the crescents of topmost skin now embedded in his nails. He rubbed circles in one palm, then the other.

        “No, there is no itch. It does not even ache. It ached before. After they…” The grey eyes rolled up to her like cloudy marbles. “Do you see anything there?” He dragged at the shirt collar. Sister Agatha looked. Aside from the tint caused by the fresh clawing, the skin was the same unmarked umber complexion as the rest of him. Albeit an unhealthily pale shade of copper, considering. He seemed like a man fresh from living in a cave.

         “No, it looks quite fine. No rash, no injury.” Just as there had not been with their initial medical examination. A trial in itself, as he had suffered a scandalized anxiety at his being even half-bare before male doctors and female nurses alike. One of the newer girls had touched him—only to pluck a mote of cotton from the hair at the nape of his neck—and he had sprung away as if she’d struck him. He had stood rigid, seeming to judge the merits of running versus snatching up the nearest items at hand for a weapon.

         Registering his own state, he’d apologized profusely to her. At a distance. The girl had stammered her own apology back, mumbling about the cotton.

         “Not cotton,” he explained, eyes flitting to a wall mirror. An expression mingled between relief and misery had taken his face. “Only my hair.”

         Sister Agatha had rarely seen the reality of ‘shocked white’ locks over the years, and even then it was often with those patients someplace past forty years. Jonathan Harker was scarcely past twenty. Whatever the truth of his experience was, it had been so titanic that it had burst his mental state like an egg against brick. That it had the trappings of an abrupt attack, mingled as it was with plain fever of the brain and body, alongside malnutrition, gave her hope that it was an instance of trauma rather than outright mental impairment.

         Something monstrous had happened to him, and so his mind, at once a traitor and good-intentioned aide, had costumed the event with genuine monsters.

         By the second week of August, when the worst of his symptoms would cool, Sister Agatha would do him the courtesy of writing ahead to his employer and his fiancée. The latter would include her postscript, trimming his ravings down to mere babble of wolves and poison and blood; of ghosts and demons; and the rest, she confessed to good Mina Murray, she withheld out of fear.

         Yet not a fear for the young lady’s opinion of the poor bridegroom-to-be.

         Truth be told, it was a fear she would never commit to paper. Not to any record, lest she look back on it and recall the whole of the young man’s stay. To examine such details too closely was to risk opening an abyss within her mind. One which she suspected to be bottomless and greased with a wonder untouched by the benevolence of miracle, and edging instead towards…

         Well.

         It was not worth the ink for her notes. Nor even her own breath, wasted on choking out the particulars she witnessed—or supposed she witnessed—to another ear. This was a place of healing and faith, not superstition, they would tell her. Supposing they did not invite her to enjoy the other side of their hospitality outright. Jonathan Harker’s early period was a warning against risking such a change of status. As illustrated by the escapade with the glass. 

          After Sister Agatha had confirmed there was no mark upon his neck, he had asked for a mirror. Seeing in the glass that she spoke the truth, he had loosed two small tears, his lips twitching as he uttered a single sentence. A whisper so low she almost missed it.

         “It is a foul bauble.”

          In the next instant, he had shattered the glass against the wall and tried to take a shard to his throat. 

          Sister Agatha and two others had to wrestle with him to get the piece away, though he succeeded in nicking his stubbled cheek. It had taken a fourth to get his arms down and the wrists fastened. Later, the doctors would remark that it was an incredible feat for a man half-wasted away. Yet said flicker of vitality was hardly noteworthy compared to the hideous reaction that followed as they fastened wrist and ankle. It was less a result of his being bound, but the action involved to make him so.

         He had bellowed oaths at the flurry of bodies, fighting and bucking like a rabid thing.

         “No more! You will have no more from me, you leeches! I will not go back, I will not be your stock! Get off me, get off me, you damned—,”

          Then the sedative needle pierced his skin. 

          It stunned all present by how immediately opposite the intended effect was. Namely, Jonathan Harker shed all semblance of censorship, sanity, and human address, instead erupting with curses to make a sailor swoon, followed by a nigh animalistic series of howling screams that would leave him hoarse on waking. All the while, he kicked and yanked at his restraints with a redoubled strength. The struts creaked dangerously for a moment before the drug began to win the battle.

         As they finished binding him, those miserable grey eyes blinked rapidly, fighting sleep as much as consciousness, muttering all the while, “No, no, no, not again, please, I cannot do it again, no, no…”

         He slept. Poorly.

         Even in better weeks to come, unbound, harmless and charming, Jonathan Harker would never sleep well as long as they had him. He spasmed, shivered, and moaned as nightmares sent memories to hunt him even in his rest.

           Sister Agatha was there when he woke from that first drugged stupor. She felt her heart twist into knots as the epiphany dawned across his face. It was not an unfamiliar expression in her work; sane, mad, or ill, finding oneself immobilized was never a happy discovery. Yet in the Englishman, the sight became a relaxant. He untensed even under the gleam of sweat and tears. Whatever invisible wires kept him rigid were cut and he sank deeper into the mattress like a thing gutted.

         “Here. I am here,” he murmured to himself. Then he turned to croak at her, “My apologies for the outburst. I thought you were someone else.”

         “So we took it.” It was already being circulated among some of the staff that, assuming there was more than an imagined impetus for his behavior, his mind had translated the work of some human jailor to more legendary horrors. Sister Agatha regarded again the pallid tint of him; a man who had lived too long without sun. Her eye drifted to the fresh cut scabbing on his cheek. “Yet that does not explain your desire to commit one of the worst sins against oneself, as much as God. You claim you have a loved one waiting for you. Your fiancée.”

         “Mina,” he breathed. The word left him like prayer. “Yes, Mina is at home. I could not let them keep me. Not like that.”

         “Yet you would end yourself rather than go home to your Mina? You appear to have fought terribly to get as far as you have.”

         “I did not think clearly. I am not thinking clearly.” His throat bobbed with a dry gulp. “The trouble is I can no longer tell if I am safe to return to her. They did it, you see. Him. The sisters. They got what they wanted. Those three, they almost dragged me back that night in the forest. Perhaps they might have if they were not so eager for the meal. They took their turns right there in the clearing just as he had his in the bedroom. But they overindulged. Even depleted, I was still able to slip them, content as ticks as they were. Or else they allowed me to escape, knowing what would become of me.

         “Yet it was so strange, Sister. The blood, the pain, they happened. But by sunrise, the evidence was gone. I got to the trains still thinking it may have been a nightmare. I was so focused on the worst of possibilities; perhaps it had invented the scenes of room and forest alike to purge itself. Which feels absurd. I did not imagine the fear any more than I imagined their cold hands or the ivory pins of their teeth. Unless I did. Unless, unless, unless. That has been my state since I fled the place. Especially since I truly do not feel the pain in my throat or find the wounds. Gone, all.

         “If I am suddenly mad, I am no longer worthy to be with Mina. If I am not mad, if what happened was reality, then I fear I am not safe to be with her. Not until I know for certain that, as sure as the Devil inflicted his kin upon me, God has done me the mercy of a miracle. The bite came more than once. I was siphoned and marked. But come daylight, any sign was erased. I have prayed for answers. For confirmation to prove one answer is truer than the others. As yet, I still cannot tell. All possibilities have their drawbacks.

         “I dread to be mad. I dread the idea that the Hell I left and all its smiling devils were real. But at least the third, with its blessing, also proves the kindness of God in blotting out the monsters’ parting gift. For that, I pray most.” Jonathan Harker blinked up at her, the greater bulk of his desolation evaporating away into a simpler mask of request. “May I ask you for one thing, Sister?”

         “What is that, Jonathan?”

         “I should like to be held here at least a month. Regardless of how well or ill I appear, I plead for a month, barred in by the Cross and steadier heads than mine. More than anything, I require trustworthy senses that can observe objectively, with God’s eye over your shoulder. Whatever expenses shall be incurred by my stay, I can give you information and addresses to see to payment; as well as, if it is allowed, a surplus to aid those who come after me. Is such an arrangement possible?”

         “It is, Jonathan, absolutely. But I would ask you something in return. Two things.”

         “What are they?”

         “The first, that you feel free to call me Sister Agatha. The second, that you will eat fully at your next meal.”

         “I will, Sister Agatha.”

           Now clearly set upon his own deadline of a month, the restraints were undone, though a watch was kept to ensure he did not have another grisly change of heart. With the exception of the man’s persistent nervousness and fitful sleep, the larger part of his trouble should only have been the fever. Indeed, under more ignorant circumstances, Sister Agatha would gladly have assigned all the strangeness of his stay to that dreary illness.

         The poor fellow seemed in a constant state of warmth, saturating his clothes and the sheets with perspiration like a boiling clockwork. Neither medicine nor ice seemed to blunt the heat. A fact that was not made better with the young man’s insistence that he was scarcely aware of his own temperature. Certainly not half so much as he was aware of things beyond the small world of his sickroom.

         For instance:

         “Did they ever find the culprit who took Frau Brodbeck’s ring?”

         The name struck her like a cold pin.

         “Pardon?”

         He must have seen some accusation in her face, for he half-hid behind his glass of water. Still, he nodded at the door.

         “From the room across the hall,” he murmured. “The lady there, Greta Brodbeck, found me reading last night. I flatter myself that my German must have gotten better to understand her, for she spoke all in a rush.”

          Sister Agatha felt an entire bouquet of icicles sink in her bowels.

          “That was—that is how Frau Brodbeck speaks as a rule, Jonathan. Barely a pause to breathe.” As she said it, her own breath cramped in her throat. “What was it she said to you?”

           “She insisted her wedding band was stolen and swapped with a paste replacement. She says to confront Dr. Weiss about it, for she claims the thief is one of his new hires, some fellow with a mole under his right eye. Her band had a diamond and two rubies. The swapped ring she showed me has a dull crystal and a spray of false emeralds. She seemed quite upset about it, as she’s to leave the hospital soon and none of the staff have listened to her about the matter.”

         “Well, that will not do. This is the first I have heard of it, but I know there is time. She does not leave until the morning,” Sister Agatha said, impressed at her own placidity. It was the stillness of thin ice over a lake wild with life swimming in frenzy, but it held. She even smiled. “I will bring it up with Dr. Weiss.” Before she could reach the door, there was a creak as Jonathan sat up in bed.

         “Before you go...”

          “Yes?”

          “Do you know whose dog it is on the grounds out there?” She turned to blink at him. 

           “What dog do you mean?”

           “The one that was barking under the window last night. I confess, it frightened me at first. Imagination almost remade it into a wolf and I have had more than my share of the creatures. Transylvania and Munich both seemed intent on inflicting their company. But the pitch out there,” he gestured to the window, “was wrong. The bark was too deep to be anything other than some large purebred’s noise. I managed to hobble to the window to look for it, but I only caught sight of it running off around the hospital’s east corner. Certainly big enough to pass for a wolf, but for the shape of it.”

           Saying so aloud brought some measure of relief to his tired features. Sister Agatha smiled in turn, now with less performance in its upturned corners.

            “I’d not realized we were playing host to the animal. We would have heard if it was bothering the patients, so it must have snuck in some way and fled again.” Jonathan nodded at this, cloudy eyes rolling to the window.

            “Perhaps it’s lost. Some household may have misplaced a family member.”

            “We shall keep an eye out should it return. Try to rest, Jonathan--and please, do let someone know if you need help leaving the bed next time.”

            Sister Agatha left him as he gave her his assent. 

            She waited until she was at least three doors away before her idle step turned into a brisk march. 

             Six doors turned it into a pace just short of a jog  down to the building’s bowels.

             Greta Brodbeck was waiting for her there, as patient as any corpse pending delivery to those with the duty of collection. In this case, her granddaughter. The ring on her wedding finger was as Jonathan described it. Faux crystals presented to him by an incensed old woman who had been dead most of the day before. The same Jonathan, she knew from the staff, who continued to break his bedridden streak only to force himself around in unsteady circuits of his room for his legs’ sake, to use the facilities, or to stare out the window. With the exception of his failed dog-watching, this was always done with a steadying arm and another’s assistance.

           He had never been down to the morgue. He never even left his room.

           These facts were shelved in the cellar of Sister Agatha’s mind as she went to Dr. Weiss, claiming to recognize the ring as a fake, and to ask the new young man, Arnold Baum, about where the diamond and ruby original might be. It took little pressing to force the fellow’s truth and the ring out of him, along with some hastily engineered tale to do with a sick relative, or perhaps a friend, who desperately needed the money, and really, Frau Brodbeck was hardly going to miss such a thing…

           The trouble sorted, Sister Agatha briefly thought of telling Jonathan what state Frau Brodbeck was in when she made her complaint to him.

           Would a ghost story help a man in his condition? Yes, it could be a miracle. It could also be a fantastic illusion born of the fever. All he would see is a tally mark to the monstrous theory he now holds about himself and the shadows of the world. Hush, Agatha.

          Even so, she battled herself over it.

           She found her fretting was moot upon her next visit. One she had put off until the evening, almost hoping he was too drowsy for pleasantries. But when she opened the door, she found Jonathan propped up in a chair beside the window. Grated as it was, he was allowed to let the glass up for a much-needed breeze. He was peering down at something when she came in. Smiling. 

         For a moment, Sister Agatha thought it hung strangely on him. Like a carved slit more than a true expression.

         “What has you in such a fine mood, Jonathan?”

         “Mm?” He blinked and the smile flickered out of place. “Apologies, my mind floated off for a moment. Do I seem in a fine mood?”

          “You were smiling at something.”

           “Was I? Oh, well, there was good news today, wasn’t there?” The smile returned, this one less static. “Frau Brodbeck stopped in to tell me you rescued her ring in time for her exit. She was most grateful. Though there were some parting words she had regarding the thief that I doubt I should repeat.”

           Sister Agatha felt the blood drop out of her face even as she buttressed her own smile. Jonathan seemed to note this and was on the verge of a question Sister Agatha was still unsure how to answer, when a dog began to bark. The young man whipped his head back around so quickly she worried something might snap. Instead, he leaned into the glass and the strange smile curled again.

         “I’m here, I’m here. Hello again!” His eyes swept back to her. They seemed even more faded against the exhausted bruise-brown shadows that ringed his gaze. The grey had faded almost to a misty hue. She thought briefly of Greta Brodbeck’s dead stare as she returned her stolen ring. The eyelids had cracked open in the interim between visits, revealing the clouding that marked all cadavers’ eyes within days. They seemed to watch her now, set in Jonathan Harker’s living face. “It’s our visitor,” he laughed. “He really is a hefty one. There must be some hole in the fence he’s wedging through.”

          As if in answer, another bark sounded. It was a thunderous noise. The kind that belonged to breeds made for fighting bears and winning. Sister Agatha joined him at the window. She followed his gaze out and down to what looked like a black mountain on legs. True, the shape of it denied any lupine heritage, but its stature was gigantic. Two children could ride on its back without buckling, perhaps three.

          Children with no fear of death, her thoughts amended.

           The iron-dark hound stared up at their window with eyes made lambent in the lights of the hospital and the bright half-moon. Almost yellow. Its stare never broke to blink.

           “Watch,” Jonathan whispered, not looking from the dog. He moved slowly aside, away from the frame, until he was no longer visible through the grate. The dog barked again. It boomed loud enough to shock the heart. Jonathan chuckled and bowed back into view. The black dog settled. It did not wag its tail, nor did it pace or whine. Only watched the Englishman watch it. As if she’d spoken aloud, he nodded and hummed, “He’s a serious one. Some manner of working dog.”

           “It could be,” Sister Agatha agreed, trying to distract herself with squinting for a collar hidden in the black pelt. “Yet no one I asked mentioned any sightings of him and no one has come to call about their missing pet.”

           “Not a pet,” Jonathan told the grate. “He is self-employed and takes his duties seriously when they come to him. But now he waits on his associate. The white dog.”

          “There’s another?”

          “Not yet. But soon.” There was a languid note to the words she did not care for. Turning, she saw that Jonathan seemed to have fallen asleep sitting up. His shut eyes still faced the window. “Black dogs do much. But the white dog is made for more. It smiles and laughs even when it hates. Hurts. Most of all when it is hungry.” His temple rested against the window frame, the dark eyelids revealing the dance and twitch of a dreaming mind. A small sound leaked out of him. Something that stuttered in a way that could have wept or giggled. His lips split over his teeth in a hard grin as tears traced his cheeks. Then, plaintive as a child, “I do not want the white dog to come.”

          Sister Agatha roused him just enough to guide him to the bed where he sank down on top of the sheets, shaking and cooking in his own illness. When she went back to the window, the black dog was gone. She spoke to the others, warning them of the massive hound and insisting on a search of the surrounding fence for gaps it might be winnowing through. None cared to think of what damage such a creature might do to patients or staff cornered outdoors. Yet daylight revealed no openings in gate or fence suitable to be its threshold.

           Regardless, the black dog returned the following night. On many nights more. According to Jonathan, it did not bark so long as it could see him. But despite his initial fondness for the animal, or what passed for fondness on realizing it was not a wolf, he now dreaded his visitor.

          “It knows things I don’t,” he told Sister Agatha, led again to his sweat-soaked bed. “It knows what the white dog will do, what the white dog will demand if it gets to me here. And it will. Frau Brodbeck told me so. She seemed sorry to tell me. And—such an absurd thing to say!—she claimed I could take what I needed when the white dog came. I did her the service of the ring, so she would do a service in turn. Isn’t that strange?”

         He giggled and sweated and sobbed into his pillow until sleep dragged him down. Said sleep twisted and twitched terribly, his dreams full of hunting and hauntings, a gibberish of pleas flying from him in supplication to God, to dogs, and to some unknown specter:

         “I do not want it, I don’t want any, please, I don’t…”

          Far more bitter fits mingled fear and wrath against those initial demons who ushered him into their haven, making his lip curl and hands clutch violently at the air:

          “Why do you walk and talk and feast? Why do you not fester in your box? Why are you not the prey of your pets, of the birds and the flies? Come, my friend, let me take you home…”

          All the while, he burned hotter and hotter within the oven of his flesh. Almost three weeks of this wretchedness passed before he reached his hottest point. The thermometer screamed red to its tip. They prepared an ice bath.

         He let them carry him to the tub’s edge, but insisted on stripping under his own power. This he did without blushing before his audience. Such might have been taken as an improvement if he had not continued to claw mindlessly at himself—as though his skin were a last stubborn garment to be removed. He let the attendants’ hands stop his own without fuss. The grey eyes, now so wan around the pupils they were almost gone, tipped wildly in their sockets.

        His only words were a sing-song burble:

        “Burning above in old lands of sand, cool in the graves below. They burrow deep and they burrow far, where only dead and worms know. One of the dogs taught me that. Can you guess which, Sister Agatha?” His laughter came in a soft mad stream between his bared teeth, giddy as a hyena.

         At least until his eyes rolled entirely into his head and his mind rolled away with them. When they brought him out of the bath, the ice had melted and he was solidly, implacably unconscious. He did not stir through the rest of the day. Nor the night. Nor the day after that.

       “His temperature is dropping.”

        “Good. I have yet to see a fever so stubborn in its breaking. It’s a wonder he did not set the bed alight, poor boy.”

        “Doctor. His temperature has been dropping two degrees every hour.”

          Down, down, down, out of fever and into a frigid cold. The window was shut, blankets were piled, and warmth was fed thinly into the cool statue that was Jonathan Harker. His breath was the only sign they were not nursing a corpse. On the second night, Sister Agatha was stirred from a brisk nod she took for a nap.

         The black dog was barking again. That she felt the tremor of it in her chest failed to surprise her. Even Greta Brodbeck’s presence did not manage a shock.

         “Because you are dreaming,” Sister Agatha insisted to herself. “You are dreaming and you will wake and all that makes sense now will make none then.”

         Is this a dream? the dead woman asked in her usual rush. So Sister Agatha assumed. Frau Brodbeck’s lips did not move and the words were not words. Yet she did speak. Are you certain?

         Sister Agatha was on her feet now, knowing she had to be out. Jonathan could not appease that awful hound as he was. Frau Brodbeck walked with her. She was dressed in her fine funereal attire and her ring winked prettily as they marched down the halls. None were there to see them. Sister Agatha could not bring herself to call for anyone.

         If it was a dream, it would not matter. If it was not, what would happen if they saw what she did? What would happen if they didn’t?

         Her attention flicked back to her companion. Frau Brodbeck seemed as whole as the day she was taken away for burial. And yet there seemed to be something hidden beneath the wrinkled shell of her. A secret and unpleasant core.

         “Is your soul not at rest, Greta?”

         I rest. He eats.

         The black dog barked.

         Something barked back.

         It froze Sister Agatha as surely as bolts driven through both feet. The sound of it was not powerful for its volume, nor did it carry the same implicit threat of the black dog. Yet it struck deeper for the...what? The wrongness. 

          Yes, the wrongness of it. It ate through her ears, burrowed in the coils of her brain like insects and flourished there, sending a pestilence rippling outwards. Bile leapt in her throat, gooseflesh shriveled her skin, and a noxious pit fell open in her stomach that could not decide between a reaction of revulsion or terror.

           “That is not a dog,” she heard herself croak. “It cannot be a dog.”

            It is and it is not. Leave him be, Agatha. He will be a good boy once he’s done.

             Another thunderclap bark from the black dog. Another eldritch answer from his companion. It nearly cackled.

            “Greta, is that the white dog out there?”

             When Frau Brodbeck did not answer, Sister Agatha turned to her. Regret slammed through her like a giant’s open hand.

             Greta Brodbeck was only a third there. A rotten Greta, a piecemeal Greta, more skeleton than flesh in the remains of her burial garb. Only her left hand was perfectly intact, along with its ring. The maggots had given those fingers the courtesy of being their final stop. Elsewhere they were busy weaving in and out of the pallid scraps of meat still left on the rest of her bones. Even that was sparse.

           For the other two thirds of Greta Brodbeck had been stolen. Snapped bones jutted from the residual decay, with the marks of great animal teeth and clawed gouges making even this much ragged. It was as if she had been worried at by wolves. Or—

           Bark, bark.

           What remained of Frau Brodbeck’s face smiled. Half her head was too stripped of meat to do anything else.

           Do not worry. I will not miss such a little thing. She raised her left hand—the only hand—and laid it on Sister Agatha’s shoulder. The grip was light, but solid. Cold. If you look, you will regret it.

           Sister Agatha blinked. She was alone in the hall. She remained alone, still hearing the barking of the things that were not dogs.

           “This must be a dream. I would not do this otherwise.”

           For she found herself almost running out into the terrain of the hospital grounds. She was struck only for a heartbeat by the tilted beauty of the night; an alien landscape of flowers and gates and hills she did not know under the pale moonglow. But this respite ended with mayfly speed and any bud of poetry withered and died with it.

          Sister Agatha saw the dogs.

          The black dog, a hill of fur and lantern eyes, sat as if posed for a portrait. There were no features to it but the eyes, the shape, and the vivid white daggers of its teeth. A decayed human calf was clamped in them. At its feet, slowly disappearing down a different gullet, was a tidy heap of rotting anatomy. Bones and meat and a tumble of organs on which flies and moths hopped, taking their minor fills before the greater maw descended. The maw of the white dog.

          The latter was a vision that offended immediately and entirely. Not least because it was a creature that seemed stretched and pressed into the rough mold of a man. The result was a horrid pastiche of both.

           It sat stooped on its haunches, the back turned to her as the head bowed low and tore at human gristle. It had hands to hold its meal close, thickly knuckled and set with heavy claws. A hide that was an imperfect tint of deathly grey-white pallor and a dim living brown sheathed the botched architecture of bone and muscle. Its only note of true white was the hair. The bulk of its wild pelt stood along head, shoulders and the stark ladder of the spine. Sister Agatha thought abstractly of mange.  

           Her hand went to the Cross as God’s words came through her lips. Hearing her, the black dog slowly raised its head. Sister Agatha spoke louder. Faster. The black dog growled once around its mouthful of leg. Sister Agatha knew at once that the black dog could split her with paw or jaw if the urge came.

          It was older than the names men had given it. Older than the English’s fatal joke of the church grim, older than Black Shuck. Older than any title breathed upon humanity’s dirt. Older than the hammer and nail and the Son destined to dangle from the trinket at her neck. The black dog had a duty to a force as old as life itself.

         Do not interrupt.

         “Deliver us—deliver us,” the words were caught in her. “Deliver us from—,”

          The white dog turned to look at her. Its mouth was a huge and impossible hollow. It hung wide and grinning as a serpent’s mouth. Just the size for the head staring out at her between the vise of teeth.

          Jonathan Harker’s dead gaze met hers just as the jaws snapped shut.

           “Sister! Sister! Agatha, it’s alright!”

           She woke to a circle of wide-eyed faces hovering over her. One was Sister Klara paused in the act of bringing salts to her nose. Another was Dr. Weiss, looking near a faint himself. The third was—

           “Jonathan?”

           The young man had stumbled from his bed to come crouch and worry with the others. She recognized the his room, albeit seen from the wrong angle. For some reason she was on the floor.

           “Good morning,” he tried to laugh. She found it somehow relieving that he couldn’t. The relief redoubled at the sight of his eyes—grey, yet unclouded. Bright.

           “What is this? What’s happened?”

           “What happened is you were screaming loud enough to scare the birds,” said Dr. Weiss.

            “You were already on the floor,” Sister Klara added, tucking the salts away. “We thought it was a fit until Jonathan pointed out you were asleep.”

             “I tried to wake you,” Jonathan murmured, “but at the time I assumed I was still dreaming too.” This time he managed a true and sheepish smile. It sat right on him. “Not a good night’s sleep for either of us, it seems.”

             Sister Agatha muttered an agreement and spent the next twenty minutes trying to shoo ensuing questions from her fellows the way one swats at flies. It was not until late afternoon that she returned to check in on Jonathan. Though his hands trembled, he was making steady progress through a meal, forkfuls of beef disappearing one after the other.

           “I think this is the first time since you arrived that you have eaten with any appetite.”

           “Mm?” he hummed, still chewing. He swallowed hastily and fidgeted with apology. “I think you’re right. A belated gluttony, but for a special occasion.”

           “What occasion is that?”

           “A twofold celebration. The first, that my latest temperature sees me at 37 °C, and it appears to be holding. The second being our point on the calendar.” Here a bittersweet sort of joy lit him up. Washed out and lean though he remained, Sister Agatha could not deny there was some new ember of vigor struggling to stoke a fire in him. “It has been over thirty days since I arrived here. In those thirty days, yes, I was sick. Last night was…” The chipper new edge to his features wavered. He had laid aside his tray and now rested both hands—rather, clamped them—upon a book in his lap. The only volume he had on his person when the hospital collected him. The only one he had read and reread during his stay.

            A small traveler’s journal, a third of its pages made dark with writing. To her knowledge, he had not asked for pen or pencil since coming. He gripped the little book until his knuckles showed white.

           “It was a particularly bad one, if only in my head.”

           The hands relaxed. He brightened again.

           “Yet that itself should be taken as good news. It and the passage of time have, at the very least, provided an overdue confirmation. Whatever concerns lay ahead for me now, they are not the ones I feared most. I will take whatever victories I can in this state. All that said, I think I am about due to take my troubles off your shoulders. To that end, I would ask for one final piece of help.”

             It was the 12th of August when Sister Agatha wrote the letters he could not, sending them the same day. There was no barking in the night.

            It was the 24th of August when Mina Murray arrived, boiling over with equal parts relief and dismay at the sight of her fiancé. The latter feeling was not helped by the revelation that his current state was a vast improvement to how he had arrived. Still, the couple left St. Joseph and Ste. Mary’s happy, for the Superior saw over their wedding vows right there in Jonathan’s room. They departed as husband and wife and many remarked that there were few couples of greater health or wealth who could boast even a fraction of the joy carried by that blissful pair.

           Sister Agatha felt a warm release unfold in her chest as she watched Jonathan Harker depart. A tired young man, his dark hair still feathered with that premature sprinkle of white, but one who transformed with every look at his beloved into the handsome youth he must have been before his shock fractured him. As if Mina Harker’s presence alone were medicine and the fellow’s brain was finally sending orders to mend the body into a presentable shape. She wished the couple well, asked the Lord to shelter them, and rejoiced at another silent night.

          It was the 26th of August when Sister Agatha received belated word that there had been some madman at work in a churchyard not a day’s ride away. This she heard from one of the hospital’s cooks.

         “Happened two weeks ago, my brother said. Some vandal tore up our poor Frau Brodbeck’s plot. Some fools have tried to put it on wolves, but it is so much ignorance. Wolves have food enough aboveground. They would not put a pack’s efforts into digging up the lady’s fine coffin and rattling her old bones apart.”

         “How do you mean?” Sister Agatha asked, praying against an answer. The cook shook her head without lifting it from her work. A hen deprived of its bones, chopped fine, then finer. Something greasy moved in Sister Agatha’s throat at the sight.

         “They found her coffin pried open and most of the dear woman torn away. I expect they blamed wolves more than any graverobber or lunatic because her wedding ring was left alone. Even madmen, they think, would not have left the jewelry behind. But Lorant says it must have been a man and a dog, for all the paw prints tearing up the earth about the spot. Which I take to be doubly evil, if I may say it. Staining one’s own hands with such vile work is one thing. Dragging one of God’s kindest creatures into it is cruel. The poor things are too loyal not to go along with their master’s whims and there are such fiends in the world who would abuse it…”

          Sister Agatha nodded and excused herself.

           There was no barking that night either. She dreamed just the same.

          In it, Jonathan Harker had finished the supper of Greta Brodbeck and proceeded to eat himself bite by laughing bite.

                                                  SANITARIUM SUITE

            Cozening the madman at the window was taking more time than he would normally have suffered if the need were urgent.

            As it was to be the first misdirection of many, the lunatic’s invitation would need to happen soon to cement what the valiant knights would declare the timeline of their remaining woman’s violation. The Penelope to her friend’s Helen. He had intended to collect them as a pair anyway, but circumstances had altered his itinerary. Surprises abounded.

           Her aid in the would-be crusade, for one.

           Jonathan Harker for another.

           Oh, but it had taken all his will, and no small amount of interest in another notable face, not to turn his head in Piccadilly as the young man spotted him. All the while gawping and shaking against his wife. If he had not reached out and pressed his screeching mind down to sleep on the bench, his and Mrs. Harker’s small holiday would have been spoiled, and that would not do.

           Now here was the lovely couple again. Hale and happy and dreaming whatever the righteous dream of.

           He had gained entry to the sanitarium scarcely an instant after the young doctor offered it as their personal sanctum to operate from. Dr. John Seward thought himself a king of this meager castle, his subjects either loyal or too disempowered to do any ill against him. But, like with so many soft rulers of the age, he lost sight of how easy even the strongest foundation could be chipped at with an axe of gold.

           In a guise, he had feigned the role of a man seeking a place to store an ‘unwell’ wife. Might he have leave to examine the cells? Cost was no object and he would not cast his dear madwoman into anything but the finest of padded boxes. He had been toured about the place, the madman of the window being already pressed to sleep and his prey busily fussing over his demise floors above. In, out, and gone with the stamp of invitation carried away for future use. Such as now.

          Now, when the deeper part of true sleep was pulled ever deeper, until the Harkers drowsed too heavily for dreams. The girl would know nothing of his presence until future visits masked him in the veil of a nightmare. Her young man would not know him at all. Not for some time.

         He took a moment to idle once the fog congealed to flesh and bone. His pacing went soundlessly around the room as he lifted this, nudged that. He pondered the merits of silently rearranging the entire room’s furnishings, including the bed and its sleepers, for the lot of them to wake to. It would almost be worth it to imagine their faces. The thought tickled enough to make him lay a plotting hand on the headboard.

         But no, it would be too much a waste. They did not know of his premature access and it was best to keep them blind until the madman caved to him. There was time enough to play later. For now, work. Insomuch as he could call the matter any sort of labor.

        He circled to Mina Harker’s side of the bed and lifted the whorls of hair off her neck. Simple access. But on the chance that her husband or their assembled champions had the wit to check one another’s throats, a less obvious location was called for. And really, he had started this excursion in the spirit of holiday. Why not indulge?

        Pressing at the couple’s minds again, he sank them just short of a comatose stupor, then peeled away the covers. Her nightdress was already rucked suitably high. The mark he left upon the handle of her hip was small. A pinprick that might be attributed to any number of scratches and jabs from her daily ensemble. More, unless she was the sort to twirl bare before the mirror, only her husband would manage to spot the pinpricks. Despite the young man’s experience, even he would not recognize so meager a wound.

         His bite broke her skin as daintily as toothpicks sinking into fresh bread. One sip. Another. Done.

          The impatient hedonist in him stamped its feet and demanded a deeper drink; such a small nip was barely enough to slick his teeth.

          “A moment, a moment,” he hummed to himself. He slit his finger on a canine. “Business comes first.”

           The cut dripped a murkier red than living blood, but it was his, and that was key. With one hand he parted the girl’s lips and slid the bleeding digit down onto her tongue. The blood ran on its destined route. A pitifully dull sight compared to what was to come. He had rehearsed the eventual pose in his mind a dozen times already, likewise the inevitable gnashing of fangs and wicked litanies. Even clever children needed pageantry to goad them along now and then. His theatre with Mrs. Harker was destined to be one of his gaudier performances. The people of this land were such cringing sorts. A glimpse of his bloodied breast in her shrieking mouth would stick them all like a hot spur. Especially her dozing neighbor.

           “I wish I could be there as it happens,” he whispered to the sleeping faces. He took the finger back and saw, to no surprise, it had healed already. His knuckle tipped her chin up until the mouth closed. “I know there will be much more to see. Far greater sights to share.” His hand drifted to Jonathan Harker’s head and crawled in the brown-white field of hair. The hand crept to the shelf of his cheek as he traced the vanished trail of that slipped razor. “But I hate that the game needs so much distance in this stage.”

            His claw swiped open a new red line. He bent to it, tasting the cut until, as before, it sealed. The young man slept on.

            He floated away to the cupboards and drawers of the little space. Here was the typewriter standing like a beacon of temptation on the desk. It would take only the smallest note to upheave them all:

            My Friend,

                  Thank you for tonight’s drink and those before it. See you soon.

                                                                                            —D

             Again he resisted.

             Though not quite enough to ignore the collection of typed memorandum Mrs. Harker had amassed. Hours crept by as his practiced gaze flew through the assorted narratives. Much of it bored him to the point of pain, bar the doctor’s description of his poor Helen—ah, no, Lucy—and her cruel demise. He had felt her destruction even at a distance, like the severing of a limb. Brisk as their time had been, she had been his, and the robbery would have demanded recompense even if the knights were not striving for his end.

           “When the time comes,” he told the shape of Mrs. Harker, “do not take your new lot as my seeking a mere replacement. I mean that sincerely. It will be a revenge. You have done sizable work here,” he rustled the pages, “and are deserving of a retribution for your own sake. I would not short you such a private attention.”

          There was scarcely anything else worth noting beyond the scant half-truths the Dutchman was feeding them. It was pleasing to see that the nonsense with the garlic flowers and the crucifixes had been swallowed like honey with only a few days’ playacting and toying with the wolf. He wondered if they would get to the Wafer trick with him before the game moved to the next phase.

          Setting aside this latest drudgery, he thumbed until he found a surprise wedged near the bottom of the stack, a buried treasure. His eyes flashed like suns as he turned the horrid crescent of his smile to the man in the bed.

          “You kept a diary? Wherever did you hide it?”

           Mr. Harker stayed silent on the matter. So he remained as his translated entries were devoured page by page. His reader nearly sulked as the section reached its end. The newer entries were perused, but there was little enough intrigue in them. Nothing but loving foam and earnest goodwill and yet more swooning over the apparent genius of the Dutchman. Yet there was some gold to sift from the dirt. Of the two ills that had rattled him since his miraculous departure, it had been the fear of madness more than monsters that wounded his spirit. Uncertainty had been the thing to unmoor him. Even a reality populated with demons could be shouldered so long as he knew it to be reality.

           “Good man,” his reader intoned. “Too many take the opposite turn. They break and never repair. But look at you, my friend. Ready to hunt once the goal is set. It is almost worth it to have you run away from home.”

            Smiling, he set the typed pages back where he found them. It was even shorter work to unearth the journal itself. No longer afraid of spies, the good solicitor had tucked the slim volume under his pillow. His wife had done likewise. Still in the damned shorthand, he saw. He had intended to begin studying the art of that curt cipher once he was established in his desired estates. Rather, as fate had conspired, if he was settled. He shook his head. Such a thin holiday, this!

           A last impetuous urge tugged at him to make off like a burglar with the journals. Perhaps even the typewriter. The pens, the pencils, the paper, the ink…

          “No, I will not,” he sighed and tucked the diaries back in their places, laying the sleeping heads back in the dents of their pillows. “A poor attempt at our old fun is no reason to spoil our time to come.” He walked his nails under Mr. Harker’s jaw. “Thirsty work lays ahead, my friend. Would you mind terribly? Your darling scarcely spared a drop.” His young friend gave wordless assent. “My thanks.”

         Memory rolled back to that final night shared in June, the pretense dead, the door swung open, the crucifix’s nettle-sting cast away with a swat as the awaited meal was thrust screaming into his teeth. His friend had been far too addled with consciousness to be pressed into sleep or trance. No, it had come down to the comic tragedy of a struggle. He almost laughed now to think of how the shaving razor had been waiting behind the crucifix, wanting to harvest something from the expected thief.

          Again, too fast for such flailing.

          He had drunk deep with his friend awake and hating and wetly muted against any prayer that might have come to mind. Finished, he had snatched the razor away and left his guest to mull the next night and those to follow with his eager keepers. Good-night, good-night, my friend, thank you for all you have given.

          Once away, he had related much of the scene to his loves before their laughing lot shut themselves in to sleep. Not to worry, not to worry, the young man was not depleted. Nor would he ever be, should all go well. Too much good evidence suggested it would. Even Mr. Harker’s escape from his hostesses was a positive sign.

           “Do not think I failed to notice all you did not write, my friend,” he spoke against the unmarred throat. “Was it because you thought it brought no merit, leaving them as a living man? Or because you knew others would read the whole of it? What would she think of that night? Of all the ones before it?” The spires of his teeth shined. “I wonder.” They slid into the pulse with perfect neatness.

          The sleeping face hardly twitched. Seconds passed. A minute. Then he was unhooked from the red fountain and nursing the residue from his gums. The punctures closed before he counted to ten. He drummed his fingers over the spot.

          “Much quicker than our misadventure in Munich, yes? I thought that fretting little soldier might have gone after you even with the officer there. He almost popped your skull even before he saw the mark. I do wish that scene had made it to your diary, if only to see how you might scramble to make it rational. Did you disregard it as imagination? What do you think of it now, my friend?” He bent until his mouth was nearly in the shell of the young man’s ear. “I have saved you more than once since you first crossed the water. Despite how you chose to repay me.” He took up one of the sleeper’s hands and pressed the fingers to the unchanged scar upon his white brow. “I would be most annoyed at this if it did not prove me right. A shovel, Jonathan! Of all things!”

          He bit back a tide of laughter and laid the limp hand down upon Mrs. Harker.

          “No, please, you need not apologize now, nor pour out your thanks. All will be mended in due time. We have aided each other already, as is only right for friends.” He righted the clothes and the covers until the couple was as they’d been. “My Harkers, my Harkers. We have such work before us. And play, where it can be taken.” He was all but vapor now. Eyes and a smile pinned to smoke. “I look forward to it.” 

         With that, the last of him faded and leaked away into the far corners of the night.