Dracula

The story opens with Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, traveling by train to Transylvania, a region of mountains and forests in eastern Europe. He is going on business: a local nobleman, Count Dracula, is buying a property in England and needs help with the paperwork.

As he gets closer to the Carpathians, the mood changes. Peasants cross themselves when they hear the count's name, an old woman gives him a crucifix as a gift, and the coachman hurries so he won't be on the road after dark. It is the region's folklore showing up before the first scare even happens.

Harker writes everything down in a diary, with the curiosity of someone who thinks he is collecting exotic stories to tell his fiancée, Mina. He doesn't yet know he is walking into a trap, and that naivete is what makes the beginning of the book work so well.

At the castle, the count is polite, cultured, and strangely cold. He speaks English carefully, never eats in front of his guest, and only appears at night. The hospitality gets stranger: the doors are always locked, and Harker realizes that instead of a guest, he has become a prisoner.

One morning, while shaving, Harker notices that the mirror doesn't show the count standing right behind him. In a sudden fright, the host rips the mirror off the wall. Soon after, Harker sees him crawling down the castle wall headfirst, like a lizard, and understands that this man is not a man.

Three vampire women try to attack him in the castle, and the count drives them off only because he wants his guest alive a while longer. Think of a job interview where everything is too good to be true, and you find out too late that the door doesn't open from the inside.

After getting what he wanted from Harker, the count has crates of soil from the castle loaded onto a ship bound for England. He sleeps inside them, because he needs his native soil to regain his strength.

Harker, alone and almost without hope, escapes the castle by climbing down the same wall where he saw the count crawl. He ends up in a hospital in Budapest, sick and with his mind in a fog, and that is where Mina finds him and the two get married.

Meanwhile, England carries on peacefully, unaware that the count is already on his way and has bought houses in London. The book cuts to another story, and the reader understands that danger travels faster than warning.