Dracula Chapter 11 Summary

Lucy's Diary, September 11

Lucy doesn't understand why Van Helsing was so insistent about the garlic flowers, but she still thinks he's just the sweetest old man ever.
She actually finds the scent of the flowers to be kind of nice and comforting, and goes to sleep.

Dr. Seward and Van Helsing head over to Lucy's house together.
Mrs. Westenra, Lucy's mom, greets them as they go into the house, and brightly tells them they she moved all those smelly flowers out of Lucy's room during the night.
Dr. Van Helsing doesn't want to say anything to alarm Mrs. Westenra, but that was the worst thing she could have done.
As soon as Mrs. Westenra leaves, they rush up to check on Lucy.
She's worse than ever, and needs another transfusion.
This time, it has to be Van Helsing—Dr. Seward just donated blood so he's already too weak.
They give her a sleeping pill, and when she wakes up, she seems a lot better.

Lucy has slept well for several days now—ever since Dr. Van Helsing started insisting on leaving the garlic flowers in her room all night (Mrs. Westenra now knows not to take them out).
Lucy says that one night she heard the sound of a bat at the window, flapping "almost angrily."

The chapter switches over to a newspaper article describing the escape of a wolf from the zoo in London, dated September 18.
The journalist for the newspaper interviews the zookeeper and asks about the wolf in question.
The zookeeper is a funny guy with a cockney accent, who says that the wolf, named Berserker, was actually the sweetest wolf around.
But the day before he escaped, some stranger—a tall, thin guy with a hooked hose and a pointy beard—had stood in front of the wolf's pen. When the zookeeper warned the stranger not to mess with the wolf, the stranger said that he was used to dealing with them, and then scratched the wolf's ears.
That night the zookeeper found the wolf's cage all twisted up and the wolf gone.
But as the journalist is finishing his interview with the zookeeper, the wolf comes trotting back, looking a bit worse for wear (he's got some cuts from broken glass).

As Dr. Seward is working in his office, Renfield suddenly bursts in, knife in hand, ready to attack. Dr. Seward tries to dodge, but gets a cut on the wrist, which bleeds onto the floor.
Renfield dives for the puddle of blood, and starts licking it up, saying "The blood is the life!"
Dr. Seward is glad that he hasn't gotten called to Lucy's house by Dr. Van Helsing, because after the blood transfusion and the cut on his wrist, he's lost a lot of blood and needs some rest.
(Turns out, though, that Van Helsing did send a telegram summoning Dr. Seward to Lucy's house, but the telegram got delayed somehow.)

Seward is rushing to Lucy's house, having just gotten Van Helsing's telegram a day late.

Lucy left a note, dated the night of September 17.
She writes that she feels very weak, but that she did place the flowers around her room that night before bed.
She is woken up by the sound of flapping at the window.
She wishes Dr. Seward were in the next room, and doesn't know why he didn't come when he got the telegram Van Helsing sent.
She decides to stay awake because she's afraid of bad dreams and doesn't want to bother her mother.
After a while, her mother looks in on her, and Lucy asks her to come and lie down in her bed for a while.
They lie there together for a while, but then the flapping at the window starts up again.
Mrs. Westenra is terrified, but Lucy calms her down a bit.
But then there's a sudden crash, and a wolf sticks its head right through the glass of the window.
The wolf quickly withdraws and runs off.
Mrs. Westenra is now really terrified and she clutches at the flowers around Lucy's neck, rips them off, and then dies of terror (she had a heart condition).
Servants come in because of the noise and carry out Mrs. Westenra's body.
The servants are all scared because their mistress has died so suddenly and so strangely. They slip off to have a nip from the sherry bottle to calm down.
Unfortunately, someone has spiked the sherry with laudanum (a mixture of alcohol and opium used as a medicine), and they all pass out asleep on the floor.
So Lucy is alone in the house with her dead mother and four unconscious servants.

READ THE BOOK: Chapter 11