Drakula halála ("Dracula's Death")

The following is an attempt to reconstruct with prose the plot of a lost film, based on a description of the film from Wikipedia, an online source. It may work as a short piece of fiction, but whether it does or not, the temptation to do so was much too great to resist. You could almost put it down to a spell cast by Dracula (in Hungarian, rendered Drakula), by all things Dracul, upon the author. Let us begin. Based on a novelization I have recently discovered, I plan to adapt this in yet another version as soon as time permits. This is my first attempt.

First, there are only four surviving frames of Drakula halála. The images are featured in the YouTube video embedded at the end of this article.

The plot of Drakula halála seems both eerie and dreamlike. Below, we endeavor to tell the simple, poetic tale of Dracula's Death.

Dracula's Death

Mary spent her days with a needle in her hands. She looked down. She knew she wasn't sewing the shroud of her father, but, undeniably, the cloth felt cold in her fingers. It was as if death was vibrating its dark energy through every single fold.

Outside, the world was grey, and rain pattered ceaselessly against the window pane.

They had taken Father, kicking and screaming and raving to the sanitorium. He had steadily grown more debased, had steadily lost his mind amid the shadows on the walls, raving about the ghosts, the spirits of the dead that haunted and tormented him.

"Last night," he said, his chin quivering, his eyes searching the corners of the room, the ceiling even, looking for finger scratches to appear along the plaster, "I heard a tremendous noise, I tell you! Alack! It was a tremendous bang. When I came out into the hallway in the morning, the books on the shelf had been thrust forward, as if an invisible arm had done it in the night--"

Mary retorted, "Rats!"

"No," exclaimed her mad father. "Not rats! Not mere vermin! Ghosts! Ghosts I tell you! There are spirits! They are everywhere! They are all around us, constantly. I hear them chewing in the night!"

And his daughter Mary had told him, "Oh Papa, you are going mad, I think. What you hear in the night, it is just the sound of rats chewing the drapery. That is all."

But her father would not listen to reason. Soon, it was all she could do to handle the old man, and when he became agitated, Karl, the servant boy, had to restrain him. Finally, when Papa became so strange in the head he began to wander the village all night, crying about his "spirits," he was locked up in the lunatic asylum, a dour, dark place that Mary hated to visit, although she dutifully did so, carrying a basket of goods for her dear, mad Papa.

It was when a messenger came to the door, soaked in rain, his shoulders dripping, that she was informed that her father had taken ill, that he was choking out his last desperate hours, that he was not expected to live through the night.

Mary looked off into the distance, past the messenger's shoulders, at the murk and gloom of the distant wood. In there, she knew, was an ancient, mud sinking hole of an old cemetery, a place where the headstones were so faded and rubbed-away by the fingers of time that the inscriptions on them could scarce be read anymore.

"Well," she stated flatly. "There's death all around us these days. It's everywhere. And time waits for no man, I suppose."

Mary would be along shortly, she assured the messenger.

She went to retrieve her basket and cloak.

***

She sloshed in the muddy trail, having refused the messenger's offer to accompany him back to the asylum, which, was conveniently near, oddly, a place just beyond the wood after crossing a field and making your way through a half-dead little village that was little more than a collection of ugly, near-barren little huts, mud-caked and rotting in the rain. An ugly, fat woman might eye you suspiciously while towering over her monstrous, filthy little brood as you passed by. No matter. It was all a part of the vast tapestry of life and death.

On, on. Ahead, the gates of the asylum, like rusted metal teeth, spiked the wind that whistled through the spaces, as she approached.

She put out her hand, pushed, the metal squealing like a tortured vermin as she entered, going up the walk to the large front door, ascending the stone steps. The asylum was in a dilapidated and decaying old manse, a place that once, like the haunted palace in Poe's poem, had seen the gaiety and laughter, felt the warmth and resonance of life. Now, they "laugh but smile no more," within these crumbling walls, she thought to herself.

She grabbed the heavy ring on the front door, and clapped a time or two, then waited. Within, she fancied she could hear murmuring, gabbling; laughter. The sounds of the lunatics, like a music, a "symphony of Hells."

A face appeared like a rotting moon in the ever-widening crack of the doorway.

"Yes?" said the weird half-moon with the wispy white hair and large, ovoid cowlike eyes.

"I, I've come here to see my father. My name is Mary...."

She trailed off into uncomfortable silence. The figure seemed frozen for a moment, then said.

"Yes. Enter freely, of your own will. And leave some of the happiness you bring."

She thought this the strangest greeting she had ever heard, but did indeed enter. Inside, the stifling gloom of the foyer gave way to a central staircase leading up, up, into the darkened corridors beyond. A few patients, fellows with slack jaws robed in white gowns, with clueless, imbecile eyes, shuffled through the shadow as she went, apprehensively, following the lean, skinny form of the attendant, who carried a candleabrum and seemed par for the course for a ghost story.

Mary was led up to the first floor landing, down a hall, and then shown into a room where a nurse stood over the bed of the inert form with the blankets pulled up just below the breast bone. It was Papa.

Somewhere, an inmate was shouting to nothing and no one, and she heard the sound of those who speak to the air as if it is listening to them.

She knelt down clasped her hands in prayer, and, knowing it would be no good to speak to him, began instead to implore God; for forgiveness, for mercy, for grace.

It was just after midnight when he died.

The attendant came to tell her he was slipping away. She had been ensconced in a spare, cold, drafty room with a single canopied bed. A knock at the door, and an entrance. "Mistress, come quickly," said the lean, cadaverous man.

She had proceeded down the long corridor, but by the time she had entered, she was astonished to see that he had already succumbed. He lay inert upon the bed, uncovered for some strange reason.

She went to take the hand of the dead man. The cold, lifeless thing shocked her into a new awareness, and she heard the attendant, the nurse, and the chambermaid, who had all been hovering near her, retreat and close the door behind them as they went.

"Oh Papa," she implored, a single warm tear trickling down her cheek. "I implore you, forgive me for ever doubting the illness that grasped your mind in these, our last days together. Now, the curtain has fallen, and the drama is done..."

A voice behind her said, "Such poetic sentiment!"

She froze. The voice had an icy, chilling edge, as if a piece of grated metal was raked across a blackboard. She turned, and found herself staring into the hideous visage of a macabre shadow, a nightmare image come to life.

She paused, her heart clack-clacking in her chest with fear. And then she reminded herself of God and His protective touch. She asked, "Are you death?"

The wild-eyed, grinning figure, whose head she at first thought to be oddly shaped and flat on top, smiled a hideous, toothsome red grin, and said, slowly with a sepulchral throat, "I am...Drakula."

Suddenly, cold hands, like the iron clasps from a cold pine box beneath the Earth, grasped her tight in their clutches. She found herself borne aloft, through the roof of the ancient, creaking house, into the dark air, where spirits flew hither and thither in the cold, bleak, and moon-besotted night.

***

Onward, rushing onward, the cold breath of winter blowing in her face, she dare not look down at the Earth below. Caught she was in the talons of this monstrous bird, and below her the damned Earth swept past as shadow crawled across the face of it, like a ravening worm.

Ahead, the towering peaks of the mountain gave way to a carved sarcophagy of undead stone, rotting like a foul, accursed revenant in the grim black, its jagged peaks and crumbling towers a hideous death's-head mockery thrust upward to affront the face of the living God. Onward they flew, and this was their egress.

They came to a chapel. Suddenly, Mary found herself released. The giant shadowed vulture that had been carrying her freed her suddenly, resuming the form of a man, a living cadaver rather, a hideous mockery of a human form.

"We...shall...be wed...to each other," it said slowly. "Just as surely as man...and bride."

He put out one long, taloned hand, said, "Come, we shall be wed...until death...us do part."

MAry then found her clothing had changed, and she now wore the black lace and veil of a woman in mourning. She stood, shoulder to shoulder, with the strange Drakula, before an altar and, oh my God, she realized, the altar was made of the crushed bones of infants.

Before them, the crucifix had been thrust from its place. Instead, the dessicated form of a cadaver hung from the wall, as a hooded wraith strode forward.

"Do you, my dear Drakula, take this woman, Mary Land, to be thine own? To love, honor, and cherish, in sickness..."

Mary felt the weight of the crucifix around her neck grow heavy with force, with the power of the Holy Spirit, who was guiding her hand, compelling her as she ripped it from her neck, and, thrusting it forward, suddenly sent a shockwave through the form of Drakula.

His face exploded into pain. His mouth opened and closed, a gurgling moan erupting from his lips. He shrank back, into the darkness.

Mary turned, fled. And then minutes and hours seemed to blur together as she ran, becoming insensate, through darkened spectacles of time, as the world went down to black. Onward, pressing onward, running still, even though asleep.

***

When she came back to consciousness, it was in her spare bedroom. Above her, a white-haired old man, the director of the asylum, a doctor, hovered.

"You've had a bad turn," he said quietly. "Your father's death seems to have sent you into a shock. It was lucky that some locals found you, brought you home. They sent for me--"

MAry looked up into he face of the doctor uncomprehendingly. She had been in some far-off place, she knew. How had she managed to escapre that awful being, and survive?

"You will remain here, and I think you will be fine. I'll return soon. I must go and attend to another patient. I should return by this evening."

And with that, he doffed his hat, gathered his bag, pulled his coat around his frame, and was off. Mary lay in the silence for what seemed an interminable period, listening to the drip, drip, drip of water in another room. She could hear bustling in the next room, most assuredly the servant girl, and she could hear the clock tick, steadily. The shadows climbed the wall as the day settled down into evening.

Her eyes felt heavy. They began to droop.

Her door creaked open.

A hunched figure entered.

Those eyes. Those lips. Those jutting, canine teeth.

Drakula!

Mary felt herself frozen stiff in her bed, her arms held at her side as if by invisible bonds. Her mind was racing in terror.

"Come to me, my pet," said the foul revenant before her, thrusting out the long, talon-like fingers before her in the dark. "Come home, to our wedding bed!"

And as if in a vision, Mary suddenly found herself drowning in a vast communal grave, the rotting limbs of long-buried cadavers reaching up from the icy, worm-besotted earth to pull her below, into the black, charnal abyss of eternal decay.

"No!" she screamed, her very soul rebelling against this damnation prepared for her in grave dirt. Beside her, a lone lamp burned upon the night stand. Seizing it, she thrust it forward at the shadow, but it disappeared with an echoing, icy laugh.

Then her bed clothes and the curtains were ablaze.

This broke her spell, and she was running again.

***

The doctor looked about him.

"Why have you brought me here to this desolate, lonely peak, by such a weed-choked, circuitous route? Is this some sort of a trick?"

The driver of the sleigh was an ugly and ill-kempt man, a peasant through and through, and looked none too bright. He chewed a moment, reflectively, and said, "Begging your pardon, M'lord, but a man paid me very well to see you here, by hook or by crook. And so's I know which side my bread is buttered on, I do. And so, here we are."

"Man," asked the doctor. "What man?"

The driver of the sleigh looked astonished for a moment, as if the mere recollection of the man's face frightened him all over again. He said, "Blimey cor, he but he was an odd duck! Hair was all pushed up and flat on top, like this--" And he motioned with his hands on the sides of his face, as if to demonstrate. "And teeth jutting out like this, and a crazy smile, what could chill the blood in your veins." And the driver demonstrated with curled fingers about the jutting teeth.

And then he said, "But it was the eyes, those cursed eyes, M'lord. I think those, most assuredly, I shall never forget."

"He had distinctive eyes, then?" asked the Doctor.

"Oh my yes. Burned like twin coals. As black as night. Never forget them. Never."

The Doctor sat down on a large stone, overlooking the cliffside. In the distance, smoke drifted into the air, in a column. Apparently, a house was burning to the ground, far off. He wondered at that, and, also, why the driver had come in a sleigh, and how they had gotten so far over such rough terrain, as there did not appear to be a drop of snow on the ground.

***

She ran exhausted through the wood. In front of her, the village. But she did not stop there, for some unaccountable reason.

"It is death there," she thought madly. "Everyone is dead there!"

She was going back to the asylum, where Papa had breathed in his last.

She could still hear the death rattle of his collapsing lungs.

Below her, her footfalls in the moist earth ate up distance and time.

When nightfall came, she collapsed. Roused she was later, lying in the single rough bed, in the cold asylum room.

"You've had a rough time of it, young miss, but now you are here, you are home. And all is well."

Whoever he was, she didn't recognize him. He left her, and fear and hunger crawled around in her belly as the clock ticked in a distant room, rain pattered dismally against the pane, and somewhere, down the corridor, she could hear the moaning, chattering, imprecations to God and curses from those upon whom He had never looked with favor. She found herself dozing, and then:

"Come. It's almost time. He'll be here within the hour."

A woman, she supposed a nurse, peeped her head in, but seemed covered with shadow. It was too dark to adequately see her. In a few moments, Mary crept from bed on legs that felt weak, trembling, and, unguided, she proceeded to follow the form down the hall, and out the back way.

"Where are we going?" she asked

"To the garden," the shape behind whose back she walked stated. "He's coming. Tonight."

Who? she wondered. Who is coming?

It was out the French doors and down the steps where the inmates of the asylum were gathered in their ugly wonder. Drooling down their chins, hobbling around on lame feet, their glaring eyes looking fire, or alternately, as void and vacant as a vast expanse of sky. Some of them, Mary observed, bore the scars from experimental brain surgery. All of them, she decided, were the denizens of their private Hell.

Suddenly, from out the crowd, he came.

Strifing forth from the darkness, it was he. Indubitably the Beast.

The cadaveric visage of the vampire Drakula shone forth, emerging against the throng of imbeciles and wretches that surrounded him. Mary wondered, for a moment, if they were not standing amidst the tombs.

He raised one bony, long-fingered hand, said, "You...my bride...have run from me. But...I always...find that...for which I seek. Either in this world...or...the next..."

And his cursed eye bore deeper, deeper into her soul than any gaze she had ever met, and his curled, taloned finger seemed to shoot lightning bolts of pain into her body, and she could feel her back bend and her chin thrust skyward.

Then--

"You! You foul, rotted thing. I'll stop you! I'll stop you, dead in your tracks. I'll never allow you...to seize..control!"

And a man stepped forward from the crowd of inmates, held up a pistol and fired a bullet into Drakula's heart.

Mary felt the spell broken. Drakula clutched his heart. Strangely, no blood issued forth from the wound, but he fell anyway. Inert, he lay upon the cold ground in the filth.

Mary felt herself swooning, but then--

"I am here darling, you're safe now. He can't hurt you. He can't hurt any of us, ever again."

She felt herself pulled around, was staring into two of the most boldly striking, beautiful eyes she had ever seen. Oh, it was George! George! How could she have ever forgotten him? How could she have ever doubted he would return?

"Oh George, darling! It is so wonderful to be held again, in your warm and comforting arms. Promise me, promise you'll never leave again!"

George held her close to him, cheek to cheek, and said, "Oh darling, you know I shan't. But come, let us go inside now and repair to your room. Hey, what's this?"

And as they turned to leave, George stepped to the ground and retrieved something. Mary saw that it was a small book, a diary.

"Why," said George, it belonged to Drakula. It's his journal. Look at the title: 'Diary of My Immortal Life and Adventures.' Why, it's a record of all he's done!"

Mary thrust her hand out and took the thing from George, flinging it to the ground.

"Darling, let's be rid of such things. From now on, we'll live every day in the shadow of the sun."

Later, she went to the garden to claim the thing in secret. Examining it, she noted the entries were all in her unmistakable hand.

Fin?

DRAKULA HALALA: Lost Hungarian Film

My book: Silent Scream!: Nosferatu. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Edison's Frankenstein--Four Novels.

Silent Scream! Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Edison's Frankenstein--Four Novels.

“Silent Scream plunges into the nightmares of early horror cinema, where shadows spoke louder than screams and monsters first took shape. Within these pages, you’ll find chilling new adaptations of Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Metropolis — stories that defined horror before Hollywood ever gave us Dracula or Frankenstein. These silent terrors return with all their eerie atmosphere intact: crooked streets, haunted castles, vampiric fiends, and madmen who bend reality itself. For fans of classic horror, this is a resurrection of the genre’s roots — when every flicker of film could conjure a nightmare, and silence itself was screaming.”

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