As fledgling English lawyer Jonathan Harker treks into the Carpathian Mountains to complete a real estate transaction, frightened peasants warn him of horrible dangers that await him.
Harker, terrified by eerie events along the way, finally meets his client, Count Dracula, a tall, gaunt old man with a surprisingly powerful handshake. Harker soon realizes that he is a prisoner in Dracula's sumptuously furnished castle-a castle strangely devoid of mirrors.
Later, as fifty coffin-size boxes are brought into the castle in preparation for Dracula's departure, Harker knows that the count plans to do more in London than see the sights-and fears that the rational modern world is ill-equipped to recognize, let alone defeat, the count.