It’s November 5th and even though I knew we were nearing the end, I find it still catching up to me. The finale is tomorrow, and the epilogue comes on the 7th. So for the next three days I’ll be updating daily to keep up with it.
I believe I’ve said it a few times already but just to leave it at the top: the end of Dracula isn’t the end of Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi. I’ve started a bunch of shit that I plan to finish so we all leave here fully informed on the horny history of Dracula and Stoker. I have Reading the Vampire and a few essays lying around to get through yet. I’ve been working on those. I guess 2023 is just going to be my Dracula year. I’m hoping it doesn’t bleed too much into 2024.
Away we go.
We open this time with another memorandum from Van Helsing. He warns Dr. Lobotomy that, even though they’ve seen some crazy-ass shit together, Dr. Seward might still call him crazy for the new hot garbage he’s about to say. I love it when people in this book say this.
All yesterday we travel, ever getting closer to the mountains, and moving into a more and more wild and desert land.
He doesn’t mean desert though right?
Again Van Helsing is unable to wake Mina in the morning. He decides he’ll be nocturnal now too, so he snoozes on the road. By sundown, he could see Dracula’s castle.
He wakes Mina, but again fails to hypnotize her. They take a break and feed the horses and themselves, but Mina refuses to eat. Van Helsing makes a little circle with crumbled communion cookie and Mina discovers that she can’t leave it. Van Helsing is reassured because, even though she might be becoming a vampire, she’s still herself. Her soul is safe.
Through the night Van Helsing has to get up several times to calm the horses. The temperature drops and flurries intensify and “with it a chill mist.” Van Helsing thinks he sees the mist taking the shape of women in trailing garments. Van Helsing wonders if he’s being beguiled by his memories of Jonathan’s journals and Dracula’s brides.
Van Helsing feels safe in his holy circle, but when the fire sputters he goes to tend it, but Mina stops him. He’s safer in the ring! But Van Helsing is more worried about Mina. Mina laughs, saying she’s safer from them than anyone.
Then they began to materialise till—if God have not take away my reason, for I saw it through my eyes—there were before me in actual flesh the same three women that Jonathan saw in the room, when they would have kissed his throat. I knew the swaying round forms, the bright hard eyes, the white teeth, the ruddy colour, the voluptuous lips.
They’re so hot! I think that Van Helsing is going into much more detail about how hot they are than Jonathan ever did. He just looked at their faces. But then, he was writing knowing that Mina would be reading, and he might have censored it some to save her feelings, as he was worried about her in that entry.
Yeah I looked back and he just talks about their hair, their faces, their lips, their ladylike demeanor, their lack of shadow, and how much he wants them to kiss him. Van Helsing in contrast wants to FUCK.
On another note, Jonathan says that the blonde one looks familiar. I wonder what that’s about?
The brides manifest and implore Mina to join them, but she’s horrified by the suggestion. Van Helsing is emboldened to see this and charges toward them to tend the fire, Jesus Cracker in hand. The girls draw back. He stays awake with Mina until sunrise, and the brides disappear, “the horrid figures melted in the mist and snow”. Everyone’s so repulsed by sex. The Victorian era was a difficult time.
With the dawn nigh, Van Helsing wants to hypnotize Mina, but finds her already asleep and impossible to rouse.
I have made my fire and have seen the horses, they are all dead.
Nooo!
Van Helsing has a busy day ahead so he plans to eat breakfast and carry on under the protective light of the sun.
Next we get Dr. Lobotomy. At sunrise Team Horse catches sight of Romani running off with a leiter-wagon in a hurry. It’s snowing and wolves are howling in the distance.
The horses are nearly ready, and we are soon off. We ride to death of some one. God alone knows who, or where, or what, or when, or how it may be….
I hope it’s you, Jack! (It isn’t, I know. Sigh.)
Van Helsing’s log resumes in the afternoon. He left Mina asleep in his sanctified circle and went to the castle. He says he brought a blacksmith hammer with him from Verești, and he uses it to smash the hinges from all of the doors, even though they were already unlocked, “lest some ill-intent or ill-chance should close them”.
Van Helsing follows what he remembers of Jonathan’s diary to the chapel in the basement. Before he sets to work he hears the howling of wolves, and is terrified for Mina. The holy circle can keep her safe from vampires, but not wolves! Oopsie. Instead of going to her, he gets to work, because if they fail to kill Dracula Mina is dead anyway.
He digs around for the graves and finds one of the brides. She’s so hot that Van Helsing hesitates. Many times in history, he’s sure, a man balked at what he had to do under the gaze of a vampire hottie, only to get ate.
Yes, I was moved—I, Van Helsing, with all my purpose and with my motive for hate—I was moved to a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyse my faculties and to clog my very soul.
He wonders if it’s because he’s so sleepy, but then “a long, low wail … woke me like the sound of a clarion.” It’s Mina! It rouses him enough that he can get back to work.
Van Helsing opens all the tombs and finds the sisters, but no one else. One more big and fancy tomb is adorned with the name DRACULA, the bed of the king himself. Van Helsing puts some wafer into it, banishing Dracula from it forever. Then he moves to the sisters.
The good doctor gets vague here, lamenting how hard it was to steel his nerve to kill the girls, calling it “butchery”, but when he cut their heads off they crumbled into dust “as though the death that should have come centuries gone had at last assert himself”.
On his way out, Van Helsing “fixed” the entrances so Dracula can’t go back inside, so probably some more communion wafer shenanigans. Then he goes back to Mina, who is anxious to see him return. She wants to leave and go meet Jonathan, who she’s sure is on the way.
I admit that I got a bit excited about Van Helsing purifying the castle but it still feels like we have an awful lot to do before the end. Then again, maybe a normal reader would be going through all of this at once. I’m kinda worried that the daily format will ruin the finale, but I guess I’ll have to read it properly another time. Not for the blog probably.