Bram Stoker’s story is constructed as a series of a notes and letters sent by different characters. The storyline begins with a letter from Jonathon Harker, a young English lawyer who travels to Transylvania, intending to finalise a property transaction with a client, a one Count Dracula. However, upon arrival in Transylvania, the local citizens react with terror when he reveals the place of his visit - Castle Dracula. 

 

Immediately having met with Count Dracula, Harker notices straight away the Count’s pale and gaunt appearance, and peculiar habits. Yet further, when Harker cuts himself whilst shaving, the young lawyer witnesses Dracula lunge at his throat. Thus follows an encounter with three female vampires, very nearly resulting in the protagonist’s demise. Hereupon, Harker realises that Count Dracula is indeed a vampire, survives via eating human blood, and, it seems, Harker himself is the Count’s next victim. Dutifully he attacks his host, but, instead, having been unsuccessful, the forlorn and wearied lawyer is locked inside the castle, while the Count departs to England. 

 

Moving towards England in the scrambled narrative, the next figment involves Harker’s fiancé, Mina, meeting a friend called Lucy who has recently got engaged after previously having rejected several previous suitors. Lucy is, alas, suffering from her old habit of sleepwalking. One time Mina finds Lucy outside a graveyard, noticing at that point also a shadowy figure arching over her as well. Later, Mina notices two small red marks on Lucy’s neck, which, she surmises, must been have been caused when Mina accidentally pricked her with a pen.

 

Yet, alas. Over the following days, Lucy falls ill and at one point is seen aside a bat. Mina departs in search of Harker, leaving Lucy in the care of Dr. Seward and Dr. Van Helsing who treat her using garlic, yet nonetheless the young woman dies. Jonathon, having escaped from the castle, together with his now wife, Mina, both return to England, where they meet with Dr. Van Helsing and judge that Lucy must have contracted vampirism. Accordingly, they unearth her corpse and spike her with a steak through the heart. Thereupon, having realised that Dracula relies on 50 boxes of dirt from his homeland, Transylvania, to travel overseas, the group track the Count himself down and eventually kill him by driving a steak through his heart, thereby bringing an end to the tale.