Line #14 NightmareFuel/Dracula


1	!!The Novel
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6	* The description of the Count crawling out of the castle window and then face-down across the stone wall (with several hundred feet of sheer cliff face below it) and into another window is terrifying.
7	* Dracula's mortal minions [[NoSympathy laughing at Jonathan's predicament]] when he looks to them for help, and turning the correspondence he entrusted to them back over to his captor. Dracula makes a point of burning the letter to Mina in front of Jonathan, driving home that there's no way for him to escape.
8	* Jonathan Harker's first encounter with the vampire "Sisters". He never knew there were other people inside the castle and these three appear out of nowhere as he's half asleep to feed on him. The blonde Bride is only an inch from biting him before Dracula arrives to stop her. Keep in mind that at this point Jonathan is unaware of how vampirism works and that if the sisters had succeeded there, he likely would've became a vampire himself. Of course, while Dracula prevents this assault, he ''does'' promise them that he'll give them Jonathan once he leaves the castle. Needless to say, Jonathan doesn't stick around to become their meal/chew toy. Especially when he nearly falls asleep at one point from exhaustion and notices some odd bits of light in the sky. At first, he passes it off as dust motes, but then they start to form into the sisters and he quickly wakes up, seeing nothing. Whether it was his mind playing tricks on him or not is unknown, but it's pretty much all the motivation he needs to make his escape.
9	** Notably, this moment handily averts DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale. Jonathan is essentially being drugged by the women to keep him sedated and willing, and it is played for all the horror Stoker could manage.
10	** Later in the novel, Van Helsing and Mina are confronted by the vampiresses with Van Helsing ''barely'' having time to put up what amounts to a holy barrier around the two of them before the three women try to attack them, and this goes on for ''the entirety of the night''. Their presence is so much that their horses die from fright (or are fed on, depends on the adaptation). What's more, the dialogue between Mina and Van Helsing had the latter promising to protect her. But she states that, if anything, ''he's'' the one that's being protected. They are there to add Mina to their ranks, as they sense that she's nearly a vampire, something that Mina seems to both relish and is terrified of, and haven't come to hurt her. But for Van Helsing, they'll likely kill him on the spot once the chance presents itself. Luckily, the two manage to hold out until the dawn comes and the sisters flee back to the castle.
11	* That village woman coming to the castle to demand her baby back. After the sisters already [[EatsBabies ate him]]. Shouting abuse at the helpless Jonathan, who doesn't pity her when the wolves come since he feels that her fate was better than finding out that the vampire women had devoured her child.
12	* When Jonathan goes to find a way out of the castle, he manages to come across Dracula's coffin and finds him sleeping in it. He tries to strike him with a shovel, but Dracula somehow manages to dodge it. Dracula then opens his eyes but due to the sun he can't move at the moment; however, he knows Jonathan is there and just... stares at him. After this, Jonathan decides to just get the heck out of Dodge before sundown.
13	* Renfield, in a moment of clarity, begging to be removed from the place where he can do the most damage in his madness, only to be utterly dismissed by the heroes.
14	** His [[RedemptionEqualsDeath brutal death at Dracula's hands]] [[TheDogBitesBack after he 'betrays' the vampire by trying to save Mina]] is pretty chilling too. The fact that it's described in such detail doesn't help.
15	* Dracula's metaphorical rape of Mina — which only gets worse when she has to re-tell it from her point of view — is especially graphic and chilling.
16	** During her re-telling Mina mentions that Dracula threatened to kill Jonathan, who was unconscious beside them, if Mina tried to scream during the attack. As if being attacked wasn't horrifying enough, knowing that the person you love most is in danger if you try to fight back adds even more horror to the whole encounter.
17	* Dracula sucks so much blood from Lucy that even her ''gums'' are rendered pale!
18	** The way Lucy's transformation just gradually comes about as she gets weaker. By the third attack, Lucy can barely respond to the men anymore, yet they notice she seems stronger at night, especially as she sleeps. Eventually, Van Helsing notices, to his horror, that the bite marks that were present on her neck have now vanished and her canines have now become much sharper. When Arthur comes to her, Lucy's demeanor changes to be uncharacteristically seductive as she asks Arthur for a kiss. Van Helsing, seeing what's happening, prevents this and Lucy regains her senses. The creepy part comes when it seems she knows what's happening to her and ask Van Helsing to protect Arthur as a final request before she passes away. However, Van Helsing knows this isn't over; while the Lucy they know did die, the transformation is just finishing up and she's becoming a monster.
19	** Lucy's condition before TheReveal. She is somehow losing blood to the point of near death, with multiple transfusions needed, and sleepwalking to God knows where.
20	* The ship captain's ApocalypticLog detailing Dracula picking off his crew one by one [[NothingIsScarier while remaining hidden in the shadows]].
21	** An alternative interpretation is that [[NotMeThisTime Dracula was innocent]], and that it was the captain's second in command who killed them all. This seems likely given Dracula's apparent frustration near the end of the journey, the man's (who is the last survivor besides the captain) increasingly erratic and hysterical behavior, and Dracula not harming anyone on his return voyage.
22	** The entire Demeter sequence is an all-around nightmare scenario: you're trapped in close quarters with a SerialKiller, with no one else around for miles, nowhere to run, and no means of defending yourself, and the only reason the killer has kept you alive ''this'' long is because they want to go wreak havoc elsewhere, and ''you're driving''. No wonder the director of ''Film/TheLastVoyageOfTheDemeter'' (an AdaptationExpansion of this chapter) described it as ''Film/{{Alien}}'' with Dracula!
23	* The villagers referring to Dracula's castle as hell incarnate.
24	* Pretty much the entirety of the newly-vampirized Lucy.
25	** It starts with the fact that once she arises, she begins to go after children. We only get second hand reports of it, but she proceeds to come off as a friendly motherly figure to her targets helped by her looks (hence why they dub her the "Bloofer Lady", which is a child-like way of saying "Beautiful Lady"), then takes them to a secluded area and feeds on them. Grade-A fear right there. Granted, she never takes too much blood to completely drain them. But the bite is enough to infect them with the vampire curse and likely if she continued, [[UndeadChild undead children]] would be roaming the streets of London and continue spreading the curse to their parents and likewise to others.
26	** Then there's the confrontation in the cemetery with the hunters. Seward describes her as cat-like when they get her attention and she hisses at them. But even more disturbing is how she goes from creature-like to seductive in the span of a minute and tries to seduce Arthur. It nearly works, as Arthur is swayed by her voice, only for Van Helsing to ward Lucy off with a cross. The monstrous side comes back as [[HissBeforeFleeing she hisses and screeches at them until she's finally forced to flee back into her tomb]]. Shown by somehow slipping through the tomb door. Most adaptations aren't really sure how to do this; some just simply go for her turning into mist, but others interpret her ''actually squeezing through the door as if turning her body putty-like''.
27	** The staking itself deserves a special mention. In most modern media, a vampire being staked is depicted as not really different than stabbing, with the body turning to ashes after death in some cases. In this book, on the other hand, it's depicted in a gruesomely realistic way: poor Arthur has to ''slowly'' [[StakingTheLovedOne dig the stake through Lucy's heart]] with the help of a hammer, with a description of the gushing blood and her screams of agony as she literally rips her own lips to shreds.
28	** And finally Seward and Van Helsing take the time to decapitate her corpse and stuff her mouth with garlic to make sure she doesn't come back again. Quincey at least took Arthur away so he'd be spared seeing his fiancée's head cut off.
29	* Dracula has a wealth of powers that modern renditions don't give him. Such as being able to control wolves (and turn into a wolf himself), and having control of the weather. Written down like this, they don't sound scary. But in context, he knows exactly how to use them. Such as telling Jonathan, yes, of ''course'' he can leave the castle... and then summoning a pack of hungry wolves to the door so if he tries to leave, he will be eaten.
30	* Dracula being able to [[DaywalkingVampire walk in the sunlight with only dampened powers]] is rather chilling. Modern stories say he stays in his coffin the day. In the book, he could be anywhere and still stalking his prey.
31	** In fact, that's one thing a lot of media seem to keep forgetting about vampires. They can blend in with humans and no one would be the wiser till they attacked.
32	* One scene that tends to get overlooked is the ParanoiaFuel that is the beautiful lady in the hat. Mina and Jonathan are out walking together, and the beautiful lady happens to catch Mina's eye. Then she realizes that a man is also watching the lady very closely. At this point in the novel, Mina hasn't met Dracula yet, so she doesn't realize that he's scoping out his next victim. As the lady gets into her own carriage, Dracula proceeds to hail his own cab and follows her. Just imagine you're out in town, minding your own business, when you unknowingly catch the eye of someone who wants to harm you. And that someone decides '''to follow you back to your house.''' He probably ''did'' feed on her, too, at least until he realized that Van Helsing's crew was on to him.
33	** Jonathan, for his part, recognizes Dracula....and immediately collapses into a PTSD-induced panic. When Mina has brought him away, he passes out for a while on a park bench and awakens with no memory of it. This is a shockingly realistic depiction of trauma reactions: his brain was so traumatized that it suppressed the memory of what happened.
34	* Dracula wasn’t just coming to England to skulk around in dusty old ruins and nibble on society ladies. In his library Harker finds stacks and stacks of books about every facet of the British state; economics, finance, politics, history, constitution, etc., including the official Who’s Who of the country's civil service and the military. The Count was arming himself with strategic intelligence about how Britain worked, who the vital cogs of government were, where they could be located and who they were related to. This was no simple hunting expedition, he was planning a one-man invasion aimed at infiltrating the very highest levels of the British Establishment and turning key people into his slaves. He came not just to feed, but to rule.
35	* Though Van Helsing makes clear that the legends about vampires way predate Dracula (assuming he was once a medieval aristocrat) the Count’s specific brand of vampirism includes gaining a measure of control over a human’s mind by drinking their blood. He is able to block Mina and Lucy (and possibly Harker and maybe even Renfield) from speaking about him through mental coercion after drinking from them. Now, given that Dracula is engaged in wholesale experimentation with the limits of his abilities, consider that during his predation on Lucy he is gifted huge amounts of blood from Van Helsing, Seward, Arthur and Quincey. Who is to say that Dracula has to take the blood direct from a vein in order to exert control over someone? Maybe the crazy, self-sabotaging decisions made by the Hunters after they donate blood to Lucy had a sinister cause.
36	* After Dracula attacks Mina and starts the process of turning her, Jonathan does not reject her but swears that if she must become a vampire he'll join her. This is very romantic – in context it's not "We'll become cool immortals together!" but YouAreWorthHell and his love for Mina being stronger than even his horror of vampires – but it also comes with him being the only character present who refuses to promise to MercyKill her if she turns. He's so adamant in fact that it raises the question, would he have killed the other men to protect her?
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Context NightmareFuel / Dracula