This is the entry for September 18th! I’m posting it on September 19th because I tried to update some website stuff yesterday and it was a catastrophe. After about 24h offline, durafujo is back in time to fill you with a hot blood load.
But the entry from today will have to come later. It’s been a long day and I’m so very sleepy.
September 18
We open with another article in the newspaper, The Pall Mall Gazette. (Apparently Pall Mall is a London street.) The headline reports that it’s about an escaped wolf.
This author, like the asshole in Whitby, has no idea how to say anything with brevity. I wonder if Stoker is making fun of someone or if he’s just never read a newspaper.
Our writer ends up imposing himself upon Thomas Bilder, the old man who looks after the area of the zoölogical gardens that contains the wolf…usually.
“Now, sir, you can go on and arsk me what you want. You’ll excoose me refoosin’ to talk of perfeshunal subjects afore meals. I gives the wolves and the jackals and the hyenas in all our section their tea afore I begins to arsk them questions.”
Omg this shit again hahahhaha
Bilder tells us the wolf’s name is Bersicker (Is this phonetic dialect spelling of “Berserker”?) and that he’s a gray wolf from Norway. He reports that two hours after feeding he heard a ruckus and found Bersicker struggling to get out of his cage.
There wasn’t much people about that day, and close at hand was only one man, a tall, thin chap, with a ‘ook nose and a pointed beard, with a few white hairs runnin’ through it. He had a ‘ard, cold look and red eyes, and I took a sort of mislike to him, for it seemed as if it was ‘im as they was hirritated at. He ‘ad white kid gloves on ‘is ‘ands, and he pointed out the animiles to me and says: ‘Keeper, these wolves seem upset at something.’
“‘Maybe it’s you,’ says I, for I did not like the airs as he give ‘isself. He didn’t git angry, as I ‘oped he would, but he smiled a kind of insolent smile, with a mouth full of white, sharp teeth.
Omg it’s been so long since we’ve seen the man himself. I’m excited now.
Bilder pets Bersicker and is shocked when Bersicker lets Dracula pet him too. Bilder asks Dracula if he’s also “in the business” (zookeeping?) but Dracula says no. “But I have made pets of several.” And then he leaves.
Bilder said all was well for the rest of the day until evening when the wolves started howling and making a racket. When he went to check on them around midnight he found the cage bars wrested apart.
The writer is very open about bribing this guy for more information, which is some pretty interesting journalism. Bilder tells his theories about where Bersicker might be found until the wolf walks up to the house and Bilder lets him in. The wolf is totally chill and Bilder notes that he’s busted up with glass. He takes the wolf back to his enclosure and our writer walks off with an interesting ending to his article.
Dr. Lobotomy picks up from here. He must have been asleep because he notes that he lost the whole night. He packs up his phonograph podcast recorder and takes it with him to Lucy’s.
His log resumes after his arrival, ten o’clock, where he goes to the door and knocks to get no answer. He curses the lazy servants, but has a bad feeling. He runs around the building trying to find a way in and then Van Helsing arrives as well. When they catch up, Van Helsing suspects they’re too late, but they should move as fast as they can.
Van Helsing pulls out a surgical saw and Dr Lobotomy uses it to cut the bars from a kitchen window. They slip in and find the servants in the dining room, alive, and then make their way to Lucy’s room.
They find Lucy and her mother in the bed, Mom’s face frozen in a look of horror, and Lucy with her, pale and the marks on her neck bare. Van Helsing listens to her heart and says she’s still alive. Dr. Lobotomy runs to get brandy (checking to be sure it isn’t also drugged) and while Van Helsing is doing his work with Lucy he tells Seward to wake up the maids. They need to run Lucy a warm bath at once.
Dr. Lobotomy does as told except that one of the maids was very young and hard to rouse, so he put her on a sofa and let her sleep. (Worth mentioning as this is probably the most endearing thing I’ve seen Dr. Lobotomy do.) The rest prepare a bath for Lucy. A messenger from Arthur shows up and Dr. Lobotomy tells him to get lost for now and then forgets about it. Lucy seems to gain some strength while our doctors engage in “a stand-up fight with death”.
Once Lucy is warmed they put her to bed and the doctors parley in the dining room.
The shutters had been opened, but the blinds were already down, with that obedience to the etiquette of death which the British woman of the lower classes always rigidly observes.
I assume that means they close the blinds when someone has died? Is this something just for “the lower classes”?
Lucy needs another blood transfusion and Van Helsing wonders who might have the strength left for it. Just in time, our cowboy Quincey Morris steps out of the gloom to Dr. Lobotomy’s elation. Apparently Arthur asked him to check on Lucy after Dr. Lobotomy hadn’t sent him anything in days.
The boy has returned!
They fill Lucy with Quincey’s blood. If Lucy gets pregnant now they’ll have a really fun time trying to figure out who the father is. Now if only Mina were here to fill Lucy’s veins with her hemoglobin, it’d be a proper swinger party.
After another transfusion, Lucy hasn’t made the same comeback they were hoping for, but she is coming around. Quincey is sent to rest and eat, and Dr Lobotomy checks in with Van Helsing to find him reading Lucy’s letter from yesterday.
There was a look of grim satisfaction in his face, as of one who has had a doubt solved.
He lets Dr. Lobotomy read it, and he’s baffled, wondering if Lucy is insane. Van Helsing says not to jump to conclusions and just put it out of his mind for now.
Dr. Lobotomy has been thinking about writing a death certificate for Mrs. Westenra to set up proceedings to be minimally disruptive to Lucy. Van Helsing praises him for being so attentive.
“… Truly Miss Lucy, if she be sad in the foes that beset her, is at least happy in the friends that love her. One, two, three, all open their veins for her, besides one old man. Ah yes, I know, friend John; I am not blind! I love you all the more for it! Now go.”
So much love everywhere! In all the moods and tenses of the verb. Again I don’t know if people just talked like this all the time or if they were being gay on purpose.
On his way out, Dr. Lobotomy meets with Quincey in the hall. He also plans to send a telegram to Arthur telling him what’s going on. Quincey calls him “Jack,” and I don’t think anyone else calls Dr. Lobotomy that, so it’s cute to me. He asks to talk briefly with Dr. Lobotomy when he gets back. He agrees, leaves, comes back, checks on Lucy, and returns to Quincey for a talk.
Quincey tries to make sense of the circumstances afoot by asking questions and comes to see that just about everyone has given their load (of blood) to Lucy.
“And I guess Art was in it too. When I saw him four days ago down at his own place he looked queer. …”
Good for him!
Quincey tells a story of a mare who was attacked by a vampire bat on the Pampas, and lost so much blood that he had to kill her out of mercy. It’s fun that he seems closer to figuring this out than Dr. Lobotomy.
As he spoke the poor fellow looked terribly anxious. He was in a torture of suspense regarding the woman he loved, and his utter ignorance of the terrible mystery which seemed to surround her intensified his pain. His very heart was bleeding, and it took all the manhood of him—and there was a royal lot of it, too—to keep him from breaking down.
I love and appreciate men being affectionate with each other and being obviously upset when bad things happen to people they love. But also I think it’s fun to imagine this is a reverse harem situation for Lucy, just because. Let me just make this dating sim where Lucy chooses from her suitors and Dracula is the secret lover.
Anyway, Quincey catches wise to the nonsense afoot and asks if Arthur was the first to donate his blood. Dr. Lobotomy admits it since Quincey’s figured so much out after being here for 20 minutes.
Then I guess, Jack Seward, that that poor pretty creature that we all love has had put into her veins within that time the blood of four strong men.
I really just think this is the funniest shit and I can’t help myself.
Of Lucy’s blood, Quincey asks “what took it out?” Which shows he’s head and shoulders above the rest of the class. Dr. Lobotomy admits he doesn’t know and that’s the real question. Quincey volunteers himself to be on Lucy watch, and I guess she isn’t going to die today after all.
When Lucy wakes she grabs first for her letter and is thrilled to find it still there and friendly faces around her, until she remembers that her mother is dead and she cries a bit. They reassure her that she won’t be alone. She falls asleep and, in sleep-rips up the letter. Van Helsing slips it from her paws in two pieces but she continues to mime the action until she opens her hands as if to scatter the shreds. Our doctors are all puzzled by this but not sure what to make of it.
We finish off with a letter from Mina to Lucy, also noted that it is unopened. Apparently last night, while Mrs. Westenra was dropping dead, so was Mr. Hawkins. Jonathan and Mina are cut up about it, Mina saying she never knew her mother or her father. I’m so hyped for more Mina backstory.
The wealth that Hawkins has left to them, and the business, feels like a lot of stressful responsibility to Jonathan. Although her support is welcome to him, he’s not the same determined man he was before he left for Transylvania. Mina feels bad for unloading on Lucy but she feels she has to confide in someone, as being strong for Jonathan all the time is exhausting.
I’ve been there, Mina!
Hawkins is due to be buried next to his father at a graveyard in London, so while Mina frets about Jonathan she hopes to swing by to see Lucy too.
HANG IN THERE LUCY, YOUR WIFE IS COMING WITH A HOT LOAD OF BLOOD TO FILL YOU UP WITH.