Dracula: The Three Women

Jonathan Harker had come to Transylvania to help the Count buy a house in London, but he now understood that he was a prisoner in the castle, and after an hour of wildly trying every door he sat down to think.He decided to keep his fear to himself, for he had seen the Count make his own bed and lay his own table, and that meant there were no servants in the castle.That night the Count made him write letters saying that he would stay a whole month, and Jonathan, seeing the sharp teeth and the quiet smile, understood that every word he wrote would be read.

Before leaving, the Count warned him never to fall asleep in any other part of the castle, saying that it was old and that there were bad dreams for those who slept unwisely.Later that night, looking out of a high window, Jonathan saw the Count climb out of his own window and crawl head first down the sheer castle wall, his cloak spreading around him like wings, exactly as a lizard moves.Frozen with horror, he asked himself what kind of creature could look like a man and yet do this, and he knew there was no escape.

A few days later, when the Count had gone out again in the same way, Jonathan searched the castle and found that every door was locked, and that the key to the great front door was gone.At the top of a stairway he found a door that only seemed to be locked, and by forcing it he entered a wing where ladies had lived long ago, with soft old furniture and tall windows full of yellow moonlight.The room felt peaceful, and although he remembered the Count’s warning, he wanted to disobey it, so he pulled a couch to the window and lay down to sleep.

When he opened his eyes he was not alone: three young women in elegant dress stood in the moonlight, and although the light was behind them, they cast no shadow on the floor.Two were dark, with sharp noses like the Count’s, and one was fair with golden hair, and all three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls when they laughed a hard, silvery laugh.They whispered together, and the fair one moved toward him and bent over him until he could feel her breath on his neck, and he lay perfectly still, caught between terror and a strange, dangerous longing.

But at that moment the Count burst into the room in a storm of fury, seized the fair woman by the neck, and with a giant’s strength hurled her away from Jonathan.His eyes blazed with a red light, and in a low voice that cut through the air like a knife, he cried, “How dare you touch him? This man belongs to me!”The women only laughed and said that he had never loved anyone, but the Count answered in a soft whisper that he too could love, and promised that when he was done with the young man, they could have him.

“Are we to have nothing tonight?” one of them asked, pointing to a bag on the floor that the Count had brought, and Jonathan saw that something inside it was moving.When the Count nodded, a gasp and a faint cry, like a smothered child’s, came from the bag, and as the women closed around it, they faded into the moonlight and vanished, and Jonathan sank down unconscious.