Chapter Text
Jonathan Harker was, admittedly, an easy man to startle. Anecdotes of such rude surprises ranged from a bird flying into the glass of his window, to his lovely Mina simply calling for him from within their own house. Many an innocuous action had spooked him before, and many more would follow suit.
Jonathan was not, as it were, an easy man to rattle. To shake to his core. To truly disquiet in a way that stuck.
This journey was testing those firmly held truths.
He was a solicitor's clerk not a week prior, but now graduated to full-fledged solicitor, it was as if the world had decided to test his resolve.
Leaving promptly on the first of May, the young man made his way East. He traveled by train, as Mina was so happy to direct him on, and strived to talk with those that would be willing to receive his questioning. Admittedly, the food is what ended up most taking his interest.
Entering on the last leg of his travels, he settled at an inn in the village closest to his client’s abode. He was glad to have refreshed his German before the trip, for none there spoke more than a scant few words of English. The conversation was never limited though, and despite the lack of much vocabulary to communicate, the people were kind.
It soon appeared, however, that they made their thoughts home, as he had heard those in the area were prone to do, in a prevailing superstition of all things evil. Especially, so it seemed, in relation to Count Dracula. Despite the man's obvious influence — to pay for his lovely stay at the inn, to procure him a space on the coach — the peasantry refused to further address his existence.
It came to a head on the fifth, which he had been gravely informed was the eve of St. George's Day. The old lady, who ran the inn alongside her husband, had begged him to stay, even just until the next morning. In the eyes of these people, this night was when all hateful specters of the world could reign free. Yet Jonathan could not bring himself to miss this opportunity, this promise he had made to the good Mr. Hawkins. And so he left, a rosary hanging new and weighted around his neck.
He stepped onto the coach, bags taken kindly yet in a dizzying hurry. They sped along, the hills growing steeper, the forest darker. Orchards and fruit trees bled into thick pine and oak, and once breaching the mountain pass, the very atmosphere began to froth with the edge of thunder. The driver’s face held nothing but grim determination all down the road. Spurts of wry humor, infrequent and increasingly dim, never once abated the man’s furrowed brow despite the smile on his face.
Though they arrived at the meeting place rather early, a calèche still drove out from the woods to collect him. Face hidden under the brim of a hat, bearded mouth barely lit by the lamps on their own coach, the man who had come for him did not bring hope for his path forward. Unfortunately, even after his ominous warnings and jests which left his fellow passengers paler than the dead, Jonathan felt he had no choice but to allow this new coachman to take his luggage. To grip his arm with almost strangely strong, ice cold hands, and lead him up onto the seat.
Before he went, he was subjected to glances of pity, wishes of good luck, and even some small gifts of protection. As he stepped onto the vehicle, there was not a single soul who did not turn his way and doggedly cross themselves.
The driver, despite his overtly threatening demeanor, was courteous as to provide him with a cloak and rug to stave off the chill air, and inform him of a plum brandy stashed beneath the seat. Still, the swell of unease he had been valiantly shoving down into the deepest reaches of his bosom now threatened to bubble over.
There was no light left but the moon, and though his German was excellent, the coachman did not offer up further conversation. Jonathan made no attempt to break the silence. This man would have nothing comforting to say to him. He was too preoccupied now, bogged down with due worries about what kind of place he had found himself traveling to, and to what kind of person.
He did notice, in spite of his splintered attention, when the carriage began to slow. Head emptying into blank dread, his heart ran with nervous energy as they slowed to a crawl.
Jonathan peered cautiously out past the walls of the coach. They could not possibly be at the Count’s castle yet. He would have spotted it at some distance, for even such a night could not hide a castle.
But no, he saw nothing. There was only the starless sky, and faint outlines of trees no further than a meter out from him on either side.
He forced himself to speak. However much he may have feared the coachman, such a pace through this forest only made to enhance the consuming sense of vulnerability. Emotions were stirring that would swallow his psyche if left well alone.
And, something he feared to acknowledge, was the press of eyes he could swear to feel boring into him.
“Are we nearing our destination so soon?”
“Hmm?” The answer was much less enthused than the manner he had spoken in before. It was distracted. He was tense, shoulders set and hands clenched on the reigns. Looking to the man’s face, Jonathan could see his head moving steadily. It rotated on a slow swivel that presumably gave him the view all about them.
“Just that, we have slowed very dramatically, and - and I do hope there is nothing wrong. Are we stopping for something?” He would not let a tremor, from what he attempted to convince himself was the cold, threaten his speech.
The driver took pause at the question. His posture straightened minisculey. His every fiber seemed to force itself back into that air of nonchalance and dark mystique that had been so off putting.
“Ah. No, of course not, mein Herr.” his tone bordered on jovial, but the deepening shadows which crossed his face betrayed him, “I had thought to see a deer ahead. Very sickly thing. It has gone into the woods now, do not fret.”
Jonathan did not believe him. The words rang as hollow lies. He did not know what the driver could be hiding, but it was something that had even him spooked.
And yet he did not protest; he could not open his mouth again. He had barely been able to bring himself to ask why they had all but come to a stop in the middle of the forest. His mind was set. Any further inquiry would bring him no closer to an answer.
A second more, eyes straining to see past the pitch, ears to listen past the indelicate crunch of sand, then they sped off. The night black mares once more took up in their powerful run.
They continued on. A bleakness enclosed their every side, only guided forward by virtue of the white sand road. Some many minutes passed like this.
Then they turned.
Sharply, without warning or hesitation, they swerved. If Jonothan was any more tired, any less wary, he may have well sat longer on his next thought before allowing it to surface. But there was no mistake to be made. The driver had turned them completely around in one quick movement. They were now racing down the same straight road, but in the opposite direction.
He looked out at the fastly passing void, but his worry could do nothing to stop it. To stop whatever hell he had been thrown into. To stop this horrible carriage of doom, hurtling down a path to nowhere. At that moment, Jonathan accepted this inescapable fate. Trapped forever with this coachman, who was surely himself one of the damned dead forced to roam the region, who slunk out of hiding only on the eve of St. George’s Day to steal away a poor unwitting soul.
Ho looked out, and there were eyes staring back from the brush.
Spiraling thoughts violently forced back on course, Jonathan snapped his head back to catch a glimpse of that piercing yellow once more. They sped by too quickly, however, and the dull glow was lost to him. He had less than blinked, and it was as if they had never been there. But they had been.
Those eyes. Not the eyes of a wolf nor those of an owl.
And certainly not the eyes of a deer.
It was no few hours later by the time the coachman ceased his pointless searching, or whatever it may have been that he was truly doing. So long that it felt like some horrible nightmare. He looked again for those eyes every pass they made, and in each he failed to find them. The feeling of being watched only served to heighten the madness that was no doubt making home in his brain. Cemented now he had something to attribute it too.
Then there came the sounds of wolves. Howls circled them, and Jonathan reared back in time with the horses. They made a turn, right this time, onto a much narrower road. The canopy closed above them; jagged formations of stone jutted toward the road, as if to snare them. Thunder rolled still overhead at irregular intervals.
Midnight had befallen them, as was almost certainly the plan from the very start.
The driver once again began to sleep his gaze out in front of them, head moving from side to side. Jonathan felt dread climb further up his chest. But it soon became evident that, no, he was no longer looking for the “deer”, for they both saw the true goal at the same time: a flame of blue light.
All at once, the calèche halted, and the coachman went off into the woods without explanation. Not that Jonathan ever expected to receive one.
This happened several more times. The blue flames danced in their ghostly ways, drawing his attention further than he would ever have expected. But his spirit was weak with terror, and though frightful in their own right, the lights were all the same enticing. Jonathan was almost tempted to follow the coachman, to give in fully to whatever horror this was for the sake of answers, when he heard something.
The driver had gone so far as to be well out of sight now, and the wolves had ceased their howling. And for a moment, he swore he could hear yelling.
Incomprehensible at such a distance, but Jonathan’s mind quickly filed the voice as one of a fellow englishman.
Then his small world of silence crumbled, as the horses began to whine and stamp in the excited way which they are known to.
He realised with a start that the quiet of the wolves was not of their absence, but rather a cunning ambush. The clouds parted briefly, and the silhouettes of the beasts loomed over him and the equally petrified horses from upon the surrounding rocks.
Fortuitously, or perhaps not so, the coachman returned at that moment. He held his hand up in motion to leave, and the wolves slinked off without delay.
Jonathan wanted to be shocked by this revelation. He wanted, oh so desperately, to claim ignorance; to believe this was all the machinations of a sleepless brain’s wandering. But as he sat back solidly in the coach, and the driver looked around once more before departing, he was brought back to those eyes. The eyes that he could no longer feel watching him, but that he knew just as well were real.
And that one detail forced him to contend with the fact that all of this was hauntingly real.
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He did end up in Transylvania, through the Carpathians and to the Count's castle. Safely, of sound body but certainly not mind.
To have given up hope of arrival, only to stand before the ancient structure what felt like day long hours later, did nothing to put at rest his unease. No, the pervading sense of wrongness had by this point seeped too thoroughly into his sockets. He could not unsee. Not even as the driver left him with his bags on the Count’s front step, strong hands touching his for what he hoped to be the final time. Not even as the coachman drove the calèche around to another entrance. Not even as he stood there for hours, waiting to be allowed in.
Maybe he could’ve run then. Traveled back the road on foot and escaped this wretched place. He had a feeling however, too solid to ignore, that he would not travel very far.
When the door opened, rusted and creaking from what may very well have been to centuries of disuse, Jonathan did not move.
The man who stood there must under all laws have been Count Dracula. And yet he was too familiar. He spoke in clear, accented English, rather than German. He invited him in once, twice, and Jonathan felt exceedingly tempted to stay there. He let himself believe he had an option, and indulged once more in the idea of running. The Count took his bags, and invited him in a third time.
He took the proffered handshake, and the cold strength of the grip confirmed to him that what little he might have hoped was for naught.
But the Count was courteous in all manners. The Count carried his bags up the winding staircase, insistent on being an accommodating host. He escorted him to his room, urging him to freshen up after the journey. Jonathan could not help but stop to note how high up this guest room was.
He took that time to worry; to stress and hold back peels of manic laughter which threatened to push through his teeth, tears that made him pinch his eyes closed. This was surely not a trial that all new solicitors faced, but he must endure all the same. A half-baked plan was invented then, to not say anything. To go along with what the Count may expect of him, for what other option would there be? He could not fight, and he could not run. Not yet at least.
No, he would wait.
He would wait until the Count retired for the night, or went to his other duties, or at the first sign that he was not lying in wait behind the next doorway. He would run out and find the stables, mount the fastest horse and ride back to the town. As much as the driver’s — or Count Dracula’s — winding path had worked to confuse him, he knew he would be able to navigate back without direction. He had to.
His entrance into the dining room was a fierce battle for composure. The Count had not let on that he knew anything, and so neither must he.
The table was laid finely, though only for one. His courtly host gave some excuse of having already eaten. Of course he would, for is it not known that the dead do not eat but the souls of those they catch?
Jonathan sat, and he supped. The food, delicious as he may have found it had circumstances been less dire, refused to sit in his churning gut. He could see the Count eyeing him from his perch beside the fireplace, and so handed to him the letter from Mr. Hawkins — who himself should have been the one on this trip — as to not invite any talk.
It seemed that would not be possible however, as his so gracious host began to read the note aloud. The contents on their own were flattering. Had it not been for the almost indiscernible, though no doubt sinister gleam in Count Dracula’s eyes, he would have taken the words only as the complement they were. As it stood, there manifested a darker nature to the last sentences when taken together with who it was that read them.
“... He is discreet and silent, and has grown to manhood in my service. He shall be ready to attend you when you will during his stay, and shall take your instructions in all manners.”
Jonathan did not think it was the flickering of fire light which made the man's lips appear to twitch, as they would to suppress a grin.
The Count talked at him all through supper, and asked him questions about his travels to which he could barely respond without sounding terse. After, he was expected to pull up a chair next to the fireplace to converse further. At some later moment, wolves began to howl outside, and Jonathan’s polite expression almost gave way to terror. Dawn streaked through the windows by the time he was told to rest.
Count Dracula’s sharp canines showed in a smile as he suggested, “So that you may feel more comfortable to talk when sleep no longer clouds your mind, my friend. Slumber as long as you wish, for I have business until the afternoon.”
He would not sleep. That was one of few things of which he could be certain.
He was led back to his room once more, like a child which required constant supervision, lest they injure themselves or set the house ablaze. There he ruminated on his plan of escape. He needed only wait until the Count left for his business. Surely, that would give him ample opportunity.
So he waited once more for long, empty hours. He thought it wise at some point to stop and record all in his journal that he had witnessed. Indeed half of the account was a faithful retelling; the other was split between reassurance of his sanity, and time spent in a fruitless effort to rationalize to the paper his horrible accounts into something that was not so mad.
As the sun fully lit the room, and morning rolled over to mid-day, he rose from the hunched position in which he sat beside the door. He had listened as best one could to the goings on of the castle, and though he had not heard the Count leave his home, he had last been close to the door hours ago. At some point, he heard the faint murmurs of talking, but they sounded of pure, unaccented English. He concluded it to be the mental wanderings of a weary mind.
His lids laid heavy atop his eyes, steps swaying more than was safe. It was not only tiredness, he knew, but also the dispersion of what energy fear had brought to him.
He walked out of his room with strong caution, weary of any misstep that might draw attention. He looked about, and saw dishes on the table. Not from last night, but new ones, presumably for a breakfast. They were, however, strangely empty.
Not as if unused, but as if already eaten from, and in a rush if he was to judge by appearances. Had the Count indeed eaten something? Was he not so much of the undead as to not require human food?
But no, the main plate was set for the seat he was given last night. Further, what he had seen of the Count’s castle was otherwise meticulously clean, so the leaving out of such things was highly unlikely. Upon closer inspection, there was an obvious note left beside the meal.
It read, “I have to be absent for a while. Do not wait for me. -D”
The message gladdened his heart to see. To know that the Count was truly absent was a relief.
The feeling, however gracious he was for it, was short-lived. For the disappearing meal left one pressing question: who else was in this castle?
A spike of dread pierced his heart at the thought of some evil servants lurking in the shadows. But no, he would have seen them by now, would he not have? And even if he had missed them thus far, surely they themselves would be of the same ilk as their master, and so not need to eat. And more pressingly, what servant, however maleficent, would consume the food left for a guest?
This led naturally to the idea of someone else in the castle. A true human person. Perhaps a fellow captive? An observer?
He could swear to hearing soft footsteps echoing up from the stairwell. Unbidden, images of piercing yellow eyes entered his head.
Or perhaps, it was yet another monster.