I put off the September 13 entry so I could a. organize a sendoff party for my pal Waverly who is moving to San Francisco because they’re in LOVE and b. prepping for Hurricane Lee, who was due to arrive the evening of September 15. Waverly crashed at my place for the storm and power went out at some point in the wee hours of September 16th, came on long enough for me to make coffee, and has been off ever since. I write this with cold coffee leftovers by the overcast daylight through my window, using up my phone data and hoping my battery lasts. The power has been out for a little over 24 hours now, because Nova Scotia power is a scam.
The storm hasn’t been too bad, all considered, mostly because it was a near miss from us. Lee traveled up the west side of the province and made landfall with earnest near New Brunswick rather than in Nova Scotia, but the storm was large and the wind didn’t let up for quite a while, so there are leaves all over the place. I’ll try to add some photos to this entry.
Please enjoy this special edition power outage entry.
September 13
Called at the Berkeley and found Van Helsing, as usual, up to time. The carriage ordered from the hotel was waiting.
It took me a while to figure out what the choreography was here but I think I have it now. By saying he “called at” the Berkeley, Dr. Lobotomy means that he went there, and they probably went together to the hotel’s ordered carriage. Maybe my brain isn’t running very well without hot coffee today.
Dr. Lobotomy notes that the trees’ colors are changing, which is not the case here yet. Do they turn earlier in the UK?
They arrive at the Westenra home and Lucy’s mom says Lucy is sleeping soundly. Van Helsing is excited that his experiment is working, but Mrs. Westenra won’t let him take all the credit. She helped the situation by going to Lucy’s room in the night and taking away all of the stinky flowers and opening the window. Van Helsing keeps his composure until she leaves the room and then hauls Dr. Lobotomy to the dining room so Van Helsing can have a little breakdown. He laments that a mother, helping her child, did the best she could, and that as doctors they can’t explain things to her or else her heart will give out and she’ll drop dead.
Suddenly he jumped to his feet. “Come,” he said, “come, we must see and act. Devils or no devils, or all the devils at once, it matters not; we fight him all the same.”
I like this line.
They go to Lucy to find her drained again and this time Van Helsing himself offers his blood for the transfusion. He got some rest and managed to communicate to Mrs. Westenra that the plants were for a cure and that she should not move them. Van Helsing decides to settle in and watch over Lucy himself all night as well as the next, and tells Dr. Lobotomy he will summon him when he is needed.
The circumstances are so unusual that Dr. Lobotomy wonders if he’s been spending too much time with crazy people.
September 17 is a busy one with lots of people writing diaries and letters. We start with a Lucy diary.
Lucy has been resting and safe for four days and nights. She’s become so strong she says she doesn’t recognize herself. She writes that she’s been feeling better and also less afraid under Van Helsing’s care, and growing fond of the smell of garlic.
Since, however, Dr. Van Helsing has been with me, all this bad dreaming seems to have passed away; the noises that used to frighten me out of my wits—the flapping against the windows, the distant voices which seemed so close to me, the harsh sounds that came from I know not where and commanded me to do I know not what—have all ceased.
Has she mentioned these voices before? 🤔
She says she woke a few times in the night to find Van Helsing asleep beside her, and “the boughs or bats or something napped almost angrily against the window-panes” rather than intruding, so she’s feeling good about how things are going.
Meanwhile, Renfield comes at Dr. Lobotomy with a knife. There’s a brief struggle and Renfield cuts him on the wrist and then licks the blood from the floor like a dog. The attendants show up and take him away. He’s passive now, yelling “the blood is the life!”
Renfield noooo Seward is surrounded by hot exes now, it might not be a good time to test horny boundaries this far.
Dr. Lobotomy says he doesn’t have blood to spare. He still hasn’t recovered fully from everything with Lucy and he needs rest. Tonight he will go home and sleep.
The next piece is a telegram from Van Helsing to Dr. Lobotomy, arriving at 10pm, imploring him visit Lucy tonight and as often as he can.
I wonder if Dr. Lobotomy was already asleep? We now get a “memorandum” from Lucy, who struggles to write about the night’s events in case she dies that night, as she feels so weak.
She awoke to the flapping of wings at the window, “which had begun after that sleep-walking on the cliff at Whitby when Mina saved me, and which now I know so well.” Lucy says she isn’t afraid but she wishes Van Helsing or Dr. Lobotomy were around. She also hears the howl of a dog “but more fierce and deeper” under her window, but when she goes to look she only sees the big bat.
Her mother comes in to sit with her and Lucy convinces her to get in bed so she won’t catch a cold, and Mrs. Westenra agrees but says she won’t stay long. She gets jumpscared by the flapping at the window. There’s another howl and something busts through the window, shattering the glass. The head of a wolf peers through. Mrs. Westenra rips the garlic garland from her daughter’s neck and gurgles and faints. She cracks her head against Lucy’s and stuns her, but the wolf leaves and a particulate mist sweeps in through the window, saying it reminds her of how people describe a simoon. Lucy falls asleep as if from a spell.
She wakes before long to a cacophony of a distant bell, howling dogs, and a singing nightengale that Lucy, in a daze, believes to be the comfort of her dead mother.
The maids come running and move Mrs. Westenra off of Lucy. She leaves some garlic flowers on her mother’s chest and tells the maids to settle themselves with glasses of wine. When she leaves her room to join them she finds them all passed out in the dining room. Laudanum—medicine for her mother—was put in the sherry. Instead of being alone downstairs Lucy retreats to her room with her mother and writes this letter, which she’ll tuck against her breast to be found if she doesn’t survive. Wolves are outside and the mist is everywhere.
I appreciate the inclusion of mist form Dracula, especially making it sound more like sand than water. There hasn’t been much representation for misty vampires in recent history. Well, as far as I know, anyway! As established, I don’t know much about vampires.
The power is back on now and in my excitement I forgot what I was doing. Now, several hours later, a letter from Mina to her other spouse Lucy, which comes noted that Lucy never opened it.
Jonathan Harker is now back in Exeter with his wife, and Mr Hawkins turns up to welcome them back and bring them home to stay with him. He reveals to us, the reader, that he’s known Mina and Jonathan since they were kids. He asks the couple to live with him like they’re his children, since he has no one else to leave anything to.
It makes me wonder what Mina’s position in society is. Does she have any money? Do we know anything about her parents? Are both Mina and Jonathan penniless, struggling on the charity of their friends?
Jonathan is now a partner to Mr. Hawkins and Mina has her work cut out for her looking after the house. She mentions being able to see the Exeter Cathedral from her window through the elms.
Mina asks after Lucy’s mother (oops) and wishes she could come for a visit, but Jonathan still needs some attention. She begs Lucy for wedding details and adds some gay shit I’ll leave here as it is:
Tell me all about it, dear; tell me all about everything, for there is nothing which interests you which will not be dear to me. Jonathan asks me to send his ‘respectful duty,’ but I do not think that is good enough from the junior partner of the important firm Hawkins & Harker; and so, as you love me, and he loves me, and I love you with all the moods and tenses of the verb, I send you simply his ‘love’ instead. Good-bye, my dearest Lucy, and all blessings on you.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Well maybe Lucy isn’t dead but I don’t like her odds, especially on the night that Jonathan comes home to England and Renfield bites the hand that feeds. Poor Mina. What extremely gay things will she say next?
I realize now that in the last post I wondered if Lucy was dead and wished for Mina to save her but I’ve already given up hope now I guess!