Dracula - Couverture souple

Mina Murray’s Journal

11 August, 3 a.m. — No sleep now, so I may as well write. I am too agitated to sleep. We have had such an adventure, such an agonizing experience.

I fell asleep as soon as I had closed my diary. . . . Suddenly

I became broad awake, and sat up, with a horrible sense of fear upon me, and of some feeling of emptiness around me.

The room was dark, so I could not see Lucy’s bed; I stole across and felt for her. The bed was empty. I lit a match, and found that she was not in the room. The door was shut, but not locked, as I had left it.

I feared to wake her mother, who has been more than usually ill lately, so threw on some clothes and got ready to look for her. "Thank God," I said to myself, "she cannot be far, as she is only in her nightdress."

I ran downstairs and looked in the sitting-room. Not there! Then I looked in all the other rooms of the house, with an ever-growing fear chilling my heart. Finally I came to the hall door and found it open. I took a big, heavy shawl and ran out. The clock was striking one as I was in the Crescent, and there was not a soul in sight.

At the edge of the West Cliff above the pier I looked across the harbour to the East Cliff, in the hope or fear — I don’t know which — of seeing Lucy. For a moment or two I could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured St. Mary’s Church and all around it. Then as the cloud passed I could see the ruins of the Abbey coming into view; and there, on our favourite seat, a half-reclining figure, snowy white.

The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much, for shadow shut down on light almost immediately; but it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell.

I did not wait to catch another glance, but flew down the steep steps to the pier and along by the fish-market to the bridge, which was the only way to reach the East Cliff. I must have gone fast, and yet it seemed to me as if my feet were weighted with lead, and as though every joint in my body were rusty.

When I got almost to the top I could see the seat and the white figure, for I was now close enough to distinguish it even through the spells of shadow. There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. I called in fright, "Lucy! Lucy!" and something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes.

BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA. Abridgement copyright (c) 2004 by Jan Needle. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.

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'The door is shut, and the chains rattle; there is a grinding of the key in the lock; I hear the creaking of lock and bolt...I shall not remain alone with them. I may find a way from this dreadful place, away from this cursed spot, from this cursed land, where the devil and his children still walk with earthly feet!'

Young lawyer Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania on business for a mysterious Count. Months later in England, beautiful Lucy Westenra falls ill and dies, inexplicably, as if from a severe loss of blood. Lucy's friends, including Jonathan's fiancée Mina and the intrepid doctor Van Helsing, must begin a desperate battle against a powerful, ancient evil, in Bram Stoker's definitive gothic tale.

'Those who cannot find their own reflection in Bram Stoker's still-living creation are surely the undead' New York Times

'A nineteenth-century world of phantoms, mystery and dread' Sunday Telegraph

'Staggeringly lurid and perverse' Sarah Waters