“Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!”

He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice―more like the hand of a dead than a living man.

Stoker’s Dracula tells the story of Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman, who is also a vampire. He attempts to move to London, in order to spread his undead curse, and to complete the transaction, he enlists the help of one of the story’s main protagonists, Jonathan Harker, a solicitor who becomes a prisoner in Dracula’s castle.

The events of the novel ultimately lead to a battle between Count Dracula and another of the main protagonists, the vampire hunter, Abraham Van Helsing, with the latter aiming to destroy Dracula and prevent his curse from spreading.