Draculas Guest

Dracula’s Guest - Bram Stoker
Abraham Stoker was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel
Dracula. "Dracula's Guest" is one of his short horror story published posthumously. The story's narrator
is an unnamed Englishman who is spending some time in Munich, Germany on his way to
Transylvania as the guest of Count Dracula.
The story opens on a sunny afternoon. An Englishman is leaving his hotel to go on an
excursion. Herr Dellbruck, the hotel manager, warns Johann, the coachman, that a snowstorm is
coming. When the Englishman notices a very inviting road, he asks Johann to drive down that road.
The Englishman asks where the road leads to. He says that there was a village there once but nobody
has lived there for hundreds of years. He says that sounds were heard coming from the cemetery.
When graves were opened, corpses were found to have rosy faces and blood on their mouths. All of
the people fled the village and went to places "where the living lived and the dead were dead".
Johann says once again that it is Walpurgis Night and asks the Englishman to get back into
the coach. He tells Johann to go back to Munich and Johann reluctantly leaves. The Englishman sees
a tall thin man approaching Johann's coach at the top of a hill. The terrified horses break free from
the coach and run off. When the Englishman looks again, the tall thin man has vanished.
The Englishman follows the road for a long time. It gets colder and darker but the Englishman
is determined to see the deserted village. When it begins to snow, the Englishman takes shelter in a
clump of yew and cypress trees. He thinks that he may be able to take shelter in one of the deserted
village's ruined houses. When he reaches the building, he sees that it is a marble tomb. An inscription
above the tomb's door reads, "Countess Dolingen of Gratz in Styria. Sought and found death 1801".
Carved on the back of the tomb in the Russian alphabet is, "The dead travel fast." An iron spike has
been driven through the roof of the tomb.
Hailstones begin to fall instead of snow. The Englishman is forced to stay in the doorway of
the tomb. He looks inside the tomb at the moment of a lightning flash. He sees a "beautiful woman
with rounded cheeks and red lips" who looks as if she is asleep. A strong gust of wind blows the
Englishman away from the tomb's doorway. Lightning strikes the iron spike in the tomb's roof and the
tomb falls apart. The Englishman sees the dead woman rise up and scream before she is engulfed in
fire. He loses consciousness.
When the Englishman regains his consciousness, he finds a large wolf standing over him and
licking his throat. Soldiers on horseback reaches and they fire at the wolf and it runs off. They do not
pursue the animal, saying that it was, "A wolf - and yet not a wolf". The commanding officer points
out that the wolf did not pierce the Englishman's skin. As the soldiers carry him away, the
Englishman hears the officer tell the other soldiers that they will say nothing about what happened
except that they found the Englishman in the presence of a large dog. A soldier who protests that it
was no dog is soon silenced.
Back at the hotel, the Englishman asks why soldiers were sent out in search of him. Herr
Dellbruck knew that the Englishman was in trouble when Johann returned with the remains of the
coach without the horses. Even before Johann returned, however, Herr Dellbruck had received a
telegram sent from Bistritz in Transylvania by the Eastern European nobleman who is expecting the
Englishman to come and visit him. The telegram opens with the words, "Be careful of my guest - his
safety is most precious to me." The writer goes on to say that he will pay Herr Dellbruck handsomely
for keeping the Englishman safe and that, "There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night."
The telegram is signed by Dracula. The Englishman almost faints when he reads the telegram. He is
amazed that Dracula, hundreds of miles away in another country, knew exactly what danger he was
facing.

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Dracula’s Guest - Bram Stoker

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