@annaleen @randomgeek

Huh. Every time I re-read #Dracula, I feel like I discover more Victorian hang-ups: gender roles, women having power/independence/pleasure, foreigners, the rise of US power, sex in general… but yeah, angst over Empire would go a long way to explain characters’ talking about how great it is to have money and rank and Imperial institutions to use in their quest to take out the count. I’ll have to watch for more of that on my inevitable next read.

@annaleen

I found the invariants: Reality flickers but dread is continuous. Mind is the primary resource. The road still matters, even when it fails. Boundaries still hold.

Here is a special process I developed to strip syntax, produce bounded n-grams, randomize them, and reconstruct them based purely on internal coherence and repetition:

29 September. Dear Sir, dear Madam, if this reaches you at all, it will be because the road still means something, because the station still stands, because there is still a door that can be opened without the hand that opens it being taken away. We have come far enough to know only this: we must keep our minds, we must keep together, and we must not look back; yet we look back every time.

It began for us on the road, early morning, when the light upon the hedges showed what we first took for ordinary growth. The red weed lay thick, and where it had touched the ground it seemed to have made the ground its own. We had been walking for hours, one side and then the other, turning aside whenever the black smoke drifted low, because the vapour did not move like weather. It came as if it meant to come, and it went as if it had found what it wanted. The professor, who knows many things and says little, stood still and watched it without word; the doctor shook his head and told us we must try, we must try, though he did not say what “try” meant beyond keeping on.

There were two women with us, and a young man with a scar on his forehead who kept looking back as if his eyes were being pulled that way. An old fellow came upon us once: white face, deep blue eyes, hands that trembled, and he said, as solemnly as if it were a prayer, that none of us should go alone. He said there were black figures by the pit, and that he had seen white teeth in a face that was not a human face. We thought then that he was frightened into fancy, but afterwards, when we had seen what we had seen, we remembered his warning hand laid on the young man’s shoulder and the way he said it again: do not go alone.

We found the empty house near the pine woods, a place with a heavy door and a broken window, and we made our way in because it was better than the open road. It felt wrong to put our hands to that door, as if the house might resent being touched, but we did it. Inside, there was dust and a kind of swept emptiness, as though the place had been abandoned in a hurry and then forgotten by everything but the wind. We shut the door, locked it, then unlocked it again, and then locked it again; because the mind in such hours does the same thing over and over, thinking repetition will make safety.

We listened. The howling wolves were not close, yet they were everywhere, as if the sound came from either side at once. In the distance there was thunder, not storm thunder, but a single deep note that made one of the women whisper “thunder child” as if naming it would keep it away. The professor said nothing. The doctor said we must have fresh air, and then, almost at once, that we must keep the door shut.

Night came early. We watched the hall door, the broken window, the shadow under the sill. The young man’s eyes fixed on the dark as if he expected to see something that had already decided to be seen. We took turns, but sleep came in short time and then fled; we lay still and heard a voice that might have been a voice, and then we told ourselves it was only the house settling, only the pine trees. Still, every time the wind shifted, the black vapour seemed to press closer, and when it thinned we saw, far away, the suggestion of a great city; then nothing, as if it had been swept out of existence between one moment and the next.

Once, near midnight, there was a quick movement outside, and we all became aware at the same instant, as if a hand had touched the back of every neck. We held hands, without meaning to, without choosing, simply because the hand found a hand and gripped. Through the broken window we saw a face, and in that face red eyes, and beneath them white teeth, and the sight made one of the women throw herself to her knees. It did not come in. It did not need to. It stood still, as if it were listening to our breathing, and then it drew back. When it drew back, the darkness behind it seemed to draw back too, and for a second there were black figures, more than one, either side, as if the night had hands.

We did not speak for a long time. The professor, at last, said only, “We must go,” and the doctor answered, “At daybreak,” though none of us believed daybreak was a promise any longer.

In the morning, the red weed had come closer. It had found the edge of the road and the edge of the garden and had made itself comfortable, as if it had been waiting for us to stop so it could catch us. We ate what we had: cup of tea made weak because the hands shook, bread that tasted of fear more than flour. The old man returned, and with him two men and a dog cart. The dog cart looked ordinary enough that for a moment we felt foolish, as if we had dreamed the night. But the men on the cart would not come near the house. One called out that the station might still be reached; he called it “the railway station” like a charm. He said the road towards the river was worse, and he said that the black smoke had taken the mile end and the bend and the place where the pit opened like a mouth. He told us to get away, to get away, to get away, and then he drove on without looking back, as if looking back was the one thing that would surely kill him.

We argued in whispers. The professor stood with his back to the wall, eyes fixed, listening to something none of us could hear. The doctor kept feeling the young man’s pulse, because the young man’s heart beat too fast and then too slow, as if it were losing the right to its own rhythm. There was talk, quiet, ashamed talk, of transfusion blood. The doctor said it might be done, and then he said it might be death, and then he said we must try if we were to try anything. The professor laid both hands on the young man’s shoulders, steadying him, and said, “Not here. Not now.” And so we waited, because what else is there, when every way is a bad way.

By afternoon the air had changed. Green smoke lay low beyond the pine trees, and where it lay the world looked wrong, as if the colours had been rubbed and put back in the wrong order. We heard, far away, the thunder again, and this time it was answered by something like a long sigh, and then a silence that made the howling wolves seem almost friendly. We took that silence as a warning. We gathered what we could, bag, blanket, whatever was not nailed down; and we left the empty house as if it were a betrayal, because it had sheltered us and yet it had not kept the night from looking in.

We went along the road with one on either side of the women, side by side, and the old man ahead, though he was slow, because he knew the turns. Once we passed the old chapel. It stood black against a pale sky, and the door was shut. The young man reached for it, and the old man struck his hand away with sudden strength, saying, “No,” as if the chapel were more dangerous than the open road. Through the chapel’s broken window we saw nothing; that nothing was worse than seeing something.

At the bend the pit opened on our left, and the ground there fell away as if it had been cut. We stopped because our feet stopped, because the mind stops when it sees a place that might swallow it. Across the pit, on the far side, we saw the black figures again. They did not run. They did not walk. They seemed simply to be there, a cluster of absence shaped like men and not-men. The professor said, “Go back,” and the doctor said, “No, forward,” and in that moment of speaking the figures drew nearer, not by moving but by making the distance between us seem suddenly shorter. The women began to cry without sound. The young man stared and then whispered, “I opened the door,” though no door was there.

We went forward.

When we reached the river, it was not a river that promised crossing. It was a great river that looked like a black sea, and the far bank might as well have been a hundred miles away. We looked for a boat, for a board ship, for anything, but the only thing that came was another drift of black vapour, rolling over the water as if it meant to drink the river dry. We turned aside into the ruins by the bank, and there, among broken stone and torn iron, great boxes, twisted frames, we found shelter that was not shelter.

Night again. Always night again.

We heard footsteps on stone, and then we heard nothing, and then, close, the same face: white face this time, or perhaps only the face of whatever light remained, red eyes bright as embers, white teeth fixed in a smile that did not belong to any human being. It stood at the threshold of our ruined room, and for a moment the professor raised his head, and the doctor’s hand went to his own arm as if measuring veins, and the young man began to laugh like someone whose mind had slipped. The thing at the door did not enter. It waited. It knew time.

We did not sleep. We watched. We counted hours by saying them aloud, one o’clock, two o’clock, five o’clock, because naming the hour made it feel like time was still ours. At sunrise, if it was sunrise; the sky only grew less dark, we saw the red weed again, nearer than it had any right to be. It had crossed the road in the night. It had found the edge of the river. It had learned.

30 September. Dear Madam, dear Sir, there are moments when the mind tries to make a story out of terror, because a story has a beginning and an end, and terror is only a long spell. We are in that spell now. The professor says we must watch and we must move at the right moment. The doctor says we must keep our strength, and he speaks again of transfusion blood as if the body were only a machine that can be repaired with another’s generosity. The old man has gone; gone far, or taken away, or simply folded into the grey of the road. We have not the courage to look for him.

We will try for the station again. We will go early morning, before the black smoke thickens, before the green smoke rises, before the red weed finds our feet. If the dog cart comes, we will take it. If there are two men, we will go with them. If there is no one, we will go alone only if we must, and we will hold hands even then, because the hand is the one proof we have left that we are still ourselves.

If you hear of a great city swept out of existence, believe it. If you hear of wolves howling where there are no wolves, believe it. If someone tells you of red eyes and white teeth watching at a door, do not argue with them. Shut your heavy door, but do not trust it. Keep your mind. Do not look back; yet if you look back, as we do, know that the looking back is not weakness but the last stubborn act of a mind refusing to be driven like cattle into darkness.

We go now. The professor has stood up. The doctor has taken the bag. The young man with the scar has stopped shaking, which frightens me more than the shaking did. One of the women has whispered “God bless” under her breath so many times it has become a kind of breathing. Outside, the vapour shifts. Somewhere, far away, the thunder answers itself.

Whatever happens, remember this: we did not mean to be brave. We only kept going because stopping felt like opening the door.

@annaleen That is a fascinating take! I think we'd all like to know more, as in, I had no idea Dracula was anti-imperialist! Would you be willing to post a bit more about this? (or maybe a blog post?)

@annaleen That is a fascinating take! I think we'd all like to know more, as in, I had no idea Dracula was anti-imperialist! Would you be willing to post a bit more about this? (or maybe a blog post?)

@annaleen war of the worlds, no bias here🤭

@annaleen Okay, I'm very interested in hearing more about Dracula as an anti-imperialist novel. Can you say more?