Each October I like to spend 31 days looking at something from popular culture which has to do with horror. For 2017: Dracula Month!
Each day of this month I will take a few moments to regard a work from popular culture which adapts, continues or satirizes Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. Today I give you: Dracula's Guest.
This short story is the only other work Bram Stoker wrote which references his most famous creation, Dracula. However, it didn't see print until 1914, after Stoker's death. It was originally part of the novel but Stoker excised it from an early draft. The story is narrated by Jonathan Harker during his initial journey to Dracula's castle. When Harker's coachman loses his horses Harker is briefly stranded in the wild. He ventures into nearby cemetery (because Harker is not hip to horror tropes) and finds a still-living woman entombed in a crypt - then lightning strikes the crypt and destroys it. A wolf menaces Harker, but officials sent by Dracula rescue him. And there it ends.
It's not a very good fit with Dracula, the novel. There, everything dark and supernatural is rooted in Dracula himself; in "Dracula's Guest," the lady in the tomb and the wolf are both seemingly extraneous to Dracula. The wolf is particularly unusual as in the novel, wolves are either Dracula himself or his servants; the wolf in "Dracula's Guest" has to be chased off by the men Dracula sends. The men coming to rescue Harker also sits uneasily within the opening of the text, where every person Harker meets is suitably terrified of Dracula, unlike the obliging fellows seen in the excised copy.
As it stands, "Dracula's Guest" would have added more atmosphere to the opening of the novel but it is largely a cul-de-sac unrelated to Harker's journey to Dracula's home. Stoker was correct to remove it from his next draft. If you already enjoy Dracula and want more of Stoker's text obviously this is your only refuge - but it isn't by any means an essential read.
You can read this story at archive.org.
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