NICK WILDE'S JOURNAL—continued

I woke up in my own bed and in my nightshirt, and had to wonder how I got there. At first I thought I'd dreamed the whole thing, and I'd never been so relieved in my life. Then I started to notice little things that got me confused, and worried. First I noticed that my watch was unwound, and I always wind it up before bed. Then I noticed, with a bit of a chill, that my clothes weren't where I usually put them, or folded the way I fold. Just when I was really starting to wonder, I noticed something on my white shirt that sent a chill through my bones: a black hair.

I stepped back from it like it had turned into a scorpion. Had Dracula changed me for bed? That would be creepy enough by itself, but if that meant he'd carried me back to my room…

I searched for some sign of another explanation. If he had been messing with my clothes, he hadn't found my journal. Thank goodness for that; I need some record of this nightmare if I'm going to not go crazy – or at least, if anyone's going to know what happened if I do go crazy. The crucifix was still in its spot, too. I couldn't make up my mind if it had been a dream or not, but I couldn't stop shaking at the thought of those women.

'He'll have blood enough for all of us,' they had said. What did they want with that? They weren't ghosts, they weren't mortal mammals, but what were they? I didn't know, and I sure wasn't in a hurry to find that out.

18 May.— Went to check the room again in daylight, but no dice. The doorway at the top of the stairs was forced shut; so hard some of the woodwork splintered. I tried it anyway, but it was fastened from the inside even with the bolt open. I don't know what to think now, but I think I can scratch any hopes that I was dreaming.

19 May.— I'm trapped now, but good. Last night, Dracula asked me to write some letters in advance to my friends back home.

"Let one say that your work here is nearly done, and that you will start for home soon," he commanded in such a suave tone it made my teeth hurt. "For the next, write that you are starting in the morning, and in the third say that you have left and arrived at Batstritz. That will do well. The posts here, I am afraid, are few and uncertain, and if you write now it will give your friends peace of mind."

I swallowed, even as I started to write the first letter. "What if I'm delayed?" I asked, trying to sound calm. He knew I knew too much. He had to be planning to kill me. What else could I do, though, but play along and hope for a chance to slip out?

He smiled warmly; too warmly for something like him. "If any mischance should arise then I will countermand your letters and have them held until the proper date, and all shall be well. Besides, there shall be a great deal of business and work to do between now and our departure, and it would be a terrible oversight if in all of it you did not write later."

As he finished this, I saw something in his eyes; he was getting mad. It reminded me of when he hurled the woman across the room. I couldn't do anything but play along, so I swallowed again. "How should I date them?"

He smiled in satisfaction, leaned back, and calculated a minute.

"June twelfth, June nineteenth, and June twenty-ninth will do well," he reasoned.

God help me. Is that all the time I have to live?!

28 May.— Thank you, God, I may have a chance. A band of local wolves have made camp around the castle; gypsies, who I can't pin down from my field guides but seem to be friendly enough anyway. I couldn't understand a word they said, but I saluted them in the local language as much as I could and they took off their hats to me; the friendliest sign I've seen in weeks. I threw them a few gifts of my nicer things, and then wrote letters to Hopps and Clawkins. Hopps' will tell everything that's going on, or at least what I can tell without sounding like a bedlam. It's not even close to the whole story, but maybe it'll be enough for her to get someone to help. There's got to be someone. Just to be safe I'm putting it in shorthand which most mammals don't know, but Judy will. For Clawkins' letter I'll just write up some business stuff and ask him to talk with Judy. He's not healthy enough for the whole story, but God help me, maybe between the two of them they can get someone to help me. I threw the letters down to the wolves, with a gold piece and signs to have them posted. The wolf who took them pressed them to his heart, bowed, and put them in his cap. And that's it. All I can do.

I snuck back to the study and began to read. No sign of the Count, so I wrote…

It's over. I'm dead. Those aren't wolves outside, but two-faced snakes with fur!

The Count came in and sat down next to me – how my fur crawled just having him near me – and opened two letters. He spoke in a smooth cool voice that made my blood feel like cold mud.

"A Szgowlny outside gave me these. I don't know where they are from, but of course I shall take some care of them. Ah, I see one is from you, to my dear friend Clawkins, and the other…" he studied the one to Judy, and the dark blazing-eyed look came to his face. "What is this vile thing, then?" he asked in disgust. "An outrage upon friendship and hospitality! Not signed, though; where could it have come from? Well, it cannot matter to us, now, can it?"

I wanted to scream my throat out as he calmly held the letter and envelope in the lamp flame until both were ash. "It was kind of you not to want to trouble me with the one to Clawkins, though your wish miscarried. Of course I shall send it on; your letters are sacred to me. Your pardon, my friend, for breaking the seal; will you not reclose it?"

I was just short of throwing up as I addressed and resealed the letter with a fresh envelope. He took it back, and a moment after he left the room I heard him softly lock the door. Stupidly, I tried it. Locked, as I expected.

Everything is done now. I've lost it all.

An hour or two passed. When the Count came back, he woke me up where I'd fallen asleep on the sofa.

"So, my friend, you are tired?" he asked, as courteous and cheery as the night I came. Why does he play me like this? He's got the letters he wants; why not just kill me now? But he went on. "Get to bed. There is the surest rest. I may not have the pleasure of talk tonight, since there are many labours to me; but you will sleep, I pray."

I wanted to scream in his face; tell this thing to just finish me off and stop toying with me. Somehow I didn't even have that in me. I went to bed, and strangely slept without dreaming. At least I caught that break.

31 May.— Wracked my brains for days. Saw little of the Count, but not as little as I wanted. This morning I woke up with the idea to get some paper and envelopes from my bag and hide them in my pockets in case I got a chance to use them. Dracula, again! Every scrap was gone; notes, memoranda, my letter of credit, rail routes and schedules; everything I could use if I got out! What's that thing up to now?! Why is he doing this?!

17 June.— Have been over every part of the castle I could reach, and everything in Dracula's library, as often as I could when he wasn't around. There has to be something in there, but I'm not finding anything! He doesn't complain anymore if I try to make myself absent; he seems to enjoy my dread now. Still sets out food. I tried starving myself, but I couldn't do it.

This morning, while I beat my head in my paws for an idea, I heard the pounding and scraping of horses' hooves outside, and the grinding of wheels. I jumped to the window and saw two wagons pull into the courtyard, each pulled by eight horses; allied with the Slothvaks based on their clothes. I ran to the door, hoping to meet them in the courtyard. Surprise! My door was fastened from the outside.

I ran back to the window and called to them, and they looked up. Just at that moment, though, the head of the Szgowlny came out, and seeing them point to my window he said something that made them laugh. I think he must have said I was Dracula's bedlam or something, but whatever he said, they wouldn't look at me afterward. I begged, pleaded, cried, and they only turned away to their business. This seemed to concern the wagons' cargo; great square boxes, which thunked emptily when moved – which the horses did with ease. When they were all unloaded and packed in a great heap in one corner of the yard, the Slothvaks were given some money by the Szgowlny. Spitting on it for luck, they stowed it in their belts and went back to their wagons. I could only watch helplessly; numbly, until they disappeared from both sight and hearing.

It may interest readers to know that this chapter and the one before it, in the original writing, contain one of the more frequent issues marring Stoker's novel; unexplained knowledge. The original novel has the women euphemistically saying that Harker has "kisses" enough, not blood (an example of the sexual connotations of vampirism?), yet Harker writes the very next morning that they're out for his blood. I adjusted it for the purposes of this version.

The original novel describes Dracula's workmen as Szgany, a category of gypsies which I do not believe had been previously discussed in the story and for which, as such, I had not yet made a proper animal version. I got around this by merging them with the wolves which Dracula had repulsed on the way to his castle but which, in later chapters, he called to do his dirty work. To further this, I shifted around some of the info Harker was able to get about them from his field guide, so as to make it less obvious in advance that they'd blow his plan to Dracula. As a kind of happy accident, this brings them right back around to werewolf lore in general; the smiling face transposes with the ravening monster, and sometimes one is not sure which is the truer self.

Looking over the dates as I worked on this, I noticed a number of curious gaps which Stoker doesn't make any effort to explain. I'm ignorant as to why these holes appeared in the original novel, unless they had something to do with the apparently many ideas that were meant to appear in the novel but never did (similar to the omitted chapter since published as its own short story, "Dracula's Guest"). In any case, I've done my best to fill them in a way befitting Nick's quite natural decline into crazed desperation and terror.

My use of the word "allied" is something of older English, in which context it didn't mean necessarily leagued together (as in combat or expectation of combat), but associated with. In this case, I combined the horses with the Slovaks/Slothvaks identified in the original novel as their drivers. Obviously, in a world of anthropoid horses the drivers would be redundant, so I allowed (for the purposes of the story) that the Slothvak tribes might include horses as the other tribes included a mix of species. I could have gone the other way and had ground sloths do the work of horses, which they'd easily be strong enough to do, but I doubted Dracula would want something so slow to work for him in any capacity.

Unfortunately, I ended up making a rush of this chapter and couldn't do quite the job I'd have liked to do of putting everything in Nick's voice. Still, I hope that it will be enjoyable to you all.

Happy Halloween.