Dracula: The Chapel at Carfax

Late that night the five men climbed the wall into Carfax, armed with crosses, garlic flowers, knives, and revolvers.Arthur also carried a little silver whistle, in case the old house was full of rats.Seward opened the rusty lock, and they stepped into darkness, dust, and thick spider webs.

Jonathan, who had studied maps of the house, led them to the old chapel.The air inside was terrible; it smelled of earth, old blood, and decay.They counted the great wooden boxes of earth: only twenty-nine of the fifty were left.

For a moment Jonathan thought he saw the Count’s pale face and red eyes looking out of the shadows, but there was nothing there.Then hundreds of tiny lights began to shine like stars in the dark corners; they were the eyes of rats.In a moment the whole place was alive with thousands of them.

Arthur threw open the great oak door and blew his whistle, and three terriers came running from Seward’s house.The dogs rushed at the rats, and soon the rats fled, as if an evil presence had left with them.As morning came, the men locked the door behind them, glad that no one had been hurt.

Back at the house, Jonathan found Mina asleep, looking paler than usual.While the men were at Carfax, Mina had dreamed that a white mist crept into her room under the door and became a pillar of cloud, with a light in it that burned like a red eye.The last thing she remembered was a white face bending over her out of the mist, but she told no one and wrote it only in her journal.