Today's Drac.

Dracula is returning to its roots. The Count is fleeing back to his native Transylvania and the intrepid hunters are pursuing him to his lair. Two of the men are currently following him up the river in a steamer, while another two are following the course of the river on horseback as outriders. This is fortunate since it decreases the opportunity for them to hold each other’s hands. A few miles away in a horse drawn carriage, Van Helsing and Mina are making straight for Castle Dracula across the wild and increasingly wintry Carpathians. By a stroke of good fortune, nobody ever feels the need to go to the toilet.

At the moment the spotlight is on the good doctor and the beautiful lady, and winter is closing in. As they rest by their camp fire – which is less camp than it would have been had the other men been around, of course – the snowflakes begin to coalesce into the forms of Drac’s three girlies. They’re the ones who tried to bite Jonathan at the beginning, if you remember. According to Van Helsing’s memorandum, their faces are even whiter than the snow, but their lips remain red and voluptuous.

Mina doesn’t like them. She says nothing, but there’s definitely a nose-wrinkling ‘yuck’ suggested by the tone of her expression. I suspect this might be due to her aversion to women of a certain class – they being the only ones who have lips quite that voluptuous and that particular shade of red. Why she makes no mention of God at this point remains a mystery.

Fortunately, the wise and resourceful Doctor has constructed a protective circle to keep the Gruesome Girlies at bay, and it works. Having tried both their glassy, tinkly voices and their low mournful ones to tempt our Decent and Defiant Duo into biting range – all to no avail – the GGs eventually give up and go away. And here comes the sad bit.

The only casualties are the horses, which have, for some reason not made entirely clear, succumbed to the influence of the Count’s lady friends. They’re dead, and that really isn’t on, especially since Mina has made a somewhat repetitive habit of saying what nice horses they are in her journal. However, we must let that one pass, and hope that the duo are now dynamic enough to complete their journey across the Pass on foot.

More to follow, no doubt. Time I had some soup.