Dracula opens with a young solicitor's assistant, Jonathan Harker, en route from Budapest into Transylvania, to visit the Castle Dracula and to meet with Count Dracula, a nobleman who has recently purchased an estate in London called Carfax. Harker worries, as he approaches the castle, about the superstitious locals, who seem to fear Dracula. Harker is picked up by a strange driver and taken to the castle, where he meets the Count and begins to discuss business. Harker finds the Count odd—he is active only at night, and seems never to eat. And the Count appears to be the only person living in the Castle.
Harker realizes, slowly, that Dracula was, in fact, the "strange driver" who brought Harker there, and that Dracula is holding Harker prisoner. Harker observes Dracula crawling out his window, along the castle walls, "like a lizard," and even believes he has seen Dracula turn himself into a bat. Harker, in the meantime, stumbles upon a room of the castle in which he meets the demonic forms of three women, who appear to want to drink his blood. But Dracula intervenes, saying Harker is "his," and carries Harker back to his own bedroom. Eventually, Harker decides to escape and finds a deep basement chapel in the castle, where Dracula sleeps in a wooden box filled with earth. Harker attempts to K*ll Dracula by gashing him in the face with a shovel, but Dracula seems only superficially harmed. Harker escapes from the castle through his window and brings his journal with him to show his experiences to his fiancée, Mina.
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