Tomorrow, August 18th is deadline hell day! Soon, I will be free. Freedom is right next door. Freedom is just peeking in.
August 15
Lucy, tired, wakes late. But then everyone learns that Arthur’s father is on the mend and is anxious to see his son married. “Lucy is full of quiet joy,” which I realize is weird to me. From her letters I thought she was a bit more of an energetic airhead, but maybe she’s chill all the time? And just tired from being feasted on by birds and bats?
Lucy’s mother confides in Mina that she doesn’t have long to live. Her heart is so weak that it’ll give out any day now. Mina’s relieved that she never told her about the sleepwalking.
August 17
Mina notes that a fugue has come over the house. As Lucy’s mothers hours count down, Lucy grows weaker even as she sleeps and eats well, “but all the time the roses in her cheeks are fading”.
Oh no! Her cheeks not so pink. :(
Mina keeps the door locked but sometimes Lucy wakes at night and wanders the room. Mina found her once leaning through the window.
When I managed to restore her she was as weak as water, and cried silently between long, painful struggles for breath.
I love “weak as water.”
Mina checks the spots on Lucy’s neck where she believes she got her with the safety pin and is concerned to see the wounds aren’t healing. If they don’t soon, she’ll call for a doctor.
After this we have a mysterious letter from Samuel F. Billington—the man who took custody of the Demeter and the things therein—to “Carter, Patterson and Co.” One set of lawyers to another, Whitby to London. It’s documentation entrusting the boxes (fifty of them!!) to Dracula’s new dilapidated house in Carfax. The letter I guess is sent ahead of time so the folks in London can hustle the boxes home as soon as they get there at 4:30pm tomorrow (the 18th). The movers are to leave the key inside and the new lord of the manor will enter with a duplicate.
Soon Dracula will be settled into his new home in London, just lousy with chumps like Lucy for the feasting.
This post isn’t very gay, is it? 3/10