Everything is tainted in Castle Dracula. Every choice, every comfort, every contour and crevice of just existing in that place becomes distorted with an undercurrent of malice. Everything from being a charming guest (or else) to enjoying a moonlit view (the moonlight is made of eyes and teeth and reaching hands) to the privacy of a bedroom (your things are stolen, you are stripped while unconscious, the door is locked) and even to the simplicity of choosing whether you wish to live or die (why is there a third option, no, no, no, not that, please not that, not this, not forever, please, God, no—). It’s all spoiled.
And this latest entry highlights one particular pleasure that I think may be just as soured for Jonathan as things like being touched or appreciating nature’s beauty.
Laughter.
Every time we have heard laughter since Dracula imprisoned him, it’s been at his expense. Dracula’s laughter. His hired workers’ laughter. The Weird Sisters’ laughter.
Ha ha, look how helpless he is! Ha ha, look how afraid he is! Ha ha, look how crushed he is!
What makes it an especially torturous knife twist, though? The idea that the laughter doesn’t just come from cruel amusement at his situation or what’s planned for him. It feels almost like the laughter of an old team snickering over the expected fretting of the new addition. They’ve seen this play out before. The ladies have, in all likelihood, lived this out before.
The welcome to the castle, the impenetrable locks, the tightening noose of Dracula’s attentions and demands, the pleading at the window for help that will never come, the desperate attempt to make it out only to be stopped short by the precipice or the wolves.
I wonder if that giggling little chat outside the bedroom door is a tradition with them. Speaking and laughing just loud enough to ensure the new addition on the other side can hear and know what’s coming. It reads almost like a sorority’s hazing. It’s just so much funnier when you’re in on the joke, on the giving rather than the receiving end of the requisite assault and those final fatal kisses.
All of this with the expectation that someday, some night, there will be another voice laughing with theirs laughing outside the door as someone new makes their last weeping prayers. Ha ha.
