Dracula Summary & ending explained

Jonathan Harker's Journal. Castle Dracula, May.

I am writing this by candlelight, in a stone room high in a castle, and my hand is not as steady as I would like. Mr Hawkins sent me from Exeter to settle a property sale for a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, who wants a house near London. A simple errand for a newly qualified solicitor. The people of Bistritz, where I stopped on my way, did not seem to think so.

When I told the landlady of the Golden Krone where I was going, she went white. She begged me to wait, at least a day; that night, she said, was the eve of St George, when every evil thing in the world has its way. When I would not stay, she took the crucifix from her own neck and hung it round mine. I am a good Church of England man and thought it a little foolish. I have not taken it off.

On the coach that afternoon the other passengers crossed themselves when they looked at me. At the Borgo Pass a carriage was waiting in the dark, drawn by four black horses. The driver was a tall man with a hat pulled low, and when he took my arm his grip was like steel. All night we climbed. Wolves howled around us, close enough that the horses screamed. Twice the driver got down and walked into the trees, toward small blue flames that flickered in the woods, and once, when he stood among the wolves and lifted his arms, they fell back into the shadows.

The castle rose out of the night, black against the sky, with not one lit window. I waited in a great courtyard until a door opened and an old man stood there with a lamp, dressed in black from head to foot, his face bare but for a long white moustache.

"You are expected, Mr Harker," he said, with a slight, old-fashioned bow. "Please, come inside. You must be cold."

I stepped over the threshold, and he took my hand. It was colder than the night air, and it gripped like iron, exactly as the driver's had.