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“Oh, can't wait for the Friday Night Bite special,” says Dougal, wiggling in place with barely controlled glee. He's sitting on the common room sofa in between Mrs Doyle and Ted, and the latter pulls away wearily.
“Full hour to go still, Dougal. The television’s just warming up,” Ted reminds him.
They had switched the telly on just in time for the usual evening game show, in the hope that it warmed up before the first film started. Jack had given it a kick too, for good measure. Ted is still feeling his shin where Jack had hit him accidentally after Ted tried to pull the ancient priest off the telly. He sniffs and tries to make himself comfortable despite the wriggling.
“What's the film this evening?” Mrs Doyle asks.
“A classic,” says Ted and relishes in the name of one of his favourite B-flicks. “The Satanic Rites of the Brides of Dracula A.D. 1885.” He knows every scene, by memory, thank you very much.
“I don’t know about you, Fathers, but I never was one for all of that horror film nonsense,” sniffs Mrs Doyle, clearly disapproving of their choice for tonight's film. “The smut! The heaving chests! I never know how the unmentionables stay inside these dresses. Can't imagine it, with these low cuts. Can you imagine it, Father?” She turns to Ted.
“Uh,” says Ted, and he goes red. “You have to see the literary and film historical value, Mrs Doyle,” Ted says then in his best sermon voice. “Dracula might be the most famous literary creation ever. The whole world’s heard about him. And who wrote Dracula, eh – I shall tell you! An Irishman!” He looks at the other two to encourage a bit of patriotic sentiment.
“I thought he was Dutch ‘cause of the weird name,” Dougal contributes with a puzzled look.
“That’s Abraham van Helsing you're thinking of,” Ted corrects him, and then continues: “And you know who plays van Helsing in these smutty films? Peter Cushing! That's culture for you. He was in Star Wars!”
“Really?”
“Didn't you recognise him, Dougal?”
“No.”
“He was that officer.”
“He was Darth Vader?” asks Dougal incredulously. “Weird how they put him on stilts.”
“Vader wasn't– you know what, never mind that.” Ted turns to Mrs Doyle. “So you see, Mrs Doyle, it's not smut. Art, that's the word you're looking for!”
She blinks at Ted rapidly, furrows her brow. “I suppose, if you say so, Father.”
Gleeful at having defended the honour of his dear The Satanic Rites of the Brides of Dracula A.D. 1885, Ted leans back into the sofa and turns his attention fully towards the television set. He watches for a time. Dear me, he muses. He doesn't get what Dougal loves so much about these game shows. They always seem tedious. Dougal, however, sits glued to the screen and shouts “Ha!” now and then.
Generation Game playing in front of him and Father Jack snoring to his right, Ted makes himself comfortable. He pulls the knitted rug that Mrs Doyle brought from the spare room onto his knees and snuggles in.
“Foul play!” Dougal says. Mrs Doyle starts explaining why the rules allow for what Dougal didn't like. Ted half-listens.
Soon, Ted feels himself start to nod off a little between the game show and Dougal’s and Mrs Doyle’s rules arguments. A bit of a short rest before the feature, then. Just the thing, after all.
And would you believe it, then he's already snoring quietly.
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The howling of something that sounds, incomprehensibly enough, like a wolf makes him look around himself.
Hm. Ted frowns deeply. He's in a forest, apparently. A very concerningly Continental-looking forest, at that, if the coniferous trees and the snowy caps on the mountains far in the distance tell him anything and he paid attention in class during Geography lessons, which is not overly likely.
Evening is drawing in, and the setting sun's throwing shadows onto the forest floor. It looks a bit like they are moving across the ground, prodding at Ted’s shoes here and there. Shoes? Ted can't help staring. These are not his Penneys shoes for a few pounds. These are bespoke shoes, black leather, muddy but more refined than any footwear Ted came nearer to than a pavement outside Brown Thomas. He notices the grey woolen trousers, too. And when he looks up more, there's the hem of a thick woolen coat, and the coat itself that looks like something out of a glossy catalogue. Blimey, but he must look dashing. He even instantly likes the concerningly Continental coniferous forest better.
“Hullo?” he hears from beyond the trees to his left.
The voice seems familiar, and so he does hardly hesitate, and already has answered before it registers entirely that Ted still has no clue what is happening here. “Yeah? Someone there?”
“Oh I'm so happy you're here! Over here, in the thicket!” That sounds like Dougal.
Ted stumbles around the trees, and suddenly there's a great mass of low trees and bushes and, incongruently, right in the middle of it he sees Dougal McGuire, looking at him with large, confusedly blinking eyes, and wearing what appears to be a white, slightly dirtied woman's dress that looks like it saw the past century.
“Doctor Ted!” says Dougal, and tries a wave.
“What are you doing here?” Ted hisses. “And why are you wearing your granny’s clothes?”
“What do you mean?” Dougal looks confused.
Ted sighs, and looks at the display. “Ok, another question. You called me Doctor Ted there. What's with the Doctor?”
“You are a Doctor, no?” says Dougal with a hint of a question in his voice. “Doctor Edward C. van Krilly, doctor, lawyer, prof-of-some-stuff-I-do-not-understand.”
Ted stares. Gapes. Blinks. Tries to speak. “Uh, I see. And you might be…?” He points at the Victorian-dress-clad Dougal.
“Marianne Danielle Wilhelmina McGuire.”
Dumbest name Ted’s come across, and he's seen plenty of cheap smutty B-films.
Then he realises. “Right. You're sure you don't mean Marius Daniel Wilhelm, or something? Because Marianne, Danielle and Wilhelmina are girl's names.”
“They are? But I like them, Doctor Ted. They're fine for me, I think.”
“Right-o.” Ted gapes at Dougal again, little toe to tips of hair; and then he realises that the hair of this Dougal must be a real impressive length, because it's curled into double buns almost like a character’s from a certain sci-fi franchise. Also, it's very tangled in dry leaves, as well as appearing to be quite stuck in a spiky-looking bush.
“Guess you need some help with that coiffure, heh,” he says lamely and indicates the mess.
“That'd be nice, please.”
When Ted is close enough to eye that fiend of a very spiky bush, he realises the problem.
These damn thorns are everywhere, and he doesn't think he can get his little pal out without pulling and pushing, and he hates to try that. And the thorns look really nasty, even to Ted who’s wearing leather gloves.
“If you give me just a second. I'll see if I can find scissors or something useful.” His coat’s substantial not only in heft and bulk, but also in amount of pockets apparently, and he opens about thirty before he grips something strange, metallic in a deep inner pocket close to the hem. “Ha!” he mutters triumphantly.
Dougal looks suitably eager.
And when Ted pulls the thing out, Ted’s words really leave him, because right in his hands he has the dream of every boy and young lad (and adult priest) that’d make the Star Wars franchise even more dollar-y money if you could buy it at the toy stores:
A real lightsaber.
“My arse,” mumbles Ted.
He's in awe. The lightsaber’s on soon enough, and it's green like good ol’ Luke Skywalker’s from Return of the Jedi (Ted’s favourite) and he feels like a big damn actual action star.
“OK, then,” he says, in a baritone he hopes is earnest and heroic.
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“That was pretty cool, even if I am too Victorian to be aware already what cool means, Doctor Ted.”
Ted stares at the ‘saber. He's floating on cloud nine, walking beside Dougal down a path they had found near where they met.
He'd made kindlewood out of that nasty fecker of a plant, and he hadn't even broken a sweat. Like a boss. A damn hero. With a lightsaber.
Ted sniffs and attaches the ‘saber to his waistcoat under his thick coat.
He’s never felt manlier.
And he supposes that means chivalry and that rot too, not only heroism, because it's now dark, and cold, and Dougal looks slightly underdressed for the occasion. He pulls his muffler out of the coat and offers it to Dougal.
“Here,” he says. “You better wrap yerself up warm.”
“Thanks,” says the man and beams.
“What should I call you, then?” he asks Dougal after they walked in silence for a second. “Marianne Danielle Wilhelmina’s a bit of a mouthful.”
“Maria’s fine,” says Dougal, then. He is bundled up in the muffler and looks much better.
Funny, that. Ted's heard the Virgin Mary’s name sometimes is given to males in Continental Europe, as a middle name. Huh.
“Right, Maria. You don't have to call me Doctor by the way, just Ted is fine.”
“Oh no, I couldn't!” Dougal objects right away.
“Why ever not, then?” Ted’s a tad confused at this antiquated propriety, truly.
“Because it’s not proper!” Dougal sounds properly puffed up and very indignant at the suggestion.
“Oh, don't be absurd, Maria. I use your first name, too. All right,” he sighs, and throws his hands up. “I give you my uh, gentleman's permission to call me Ted. There.”
Dougal looks stubborn. “I've always called you Doctor Ted,” he says finally. “Ever since we met on the way to Klausenburg.”
Kla– Wait. “Was that Klausenburg you said?” he wants to know, his voice sounding less heroic and baritonically manly, and more squeaky like a mousey little Catholic priest. “For a moment I thought you said Klausenburg.”
Dougal blinks at him, and looks doubtful. “I did, didn't I? Or have I said Budapest, oh dear? Because we met on the express from Budapest to Klausenburg. You remember, don't you?”
Ted digs his heels in, and they stop right on the path. “What year have we?” he pants.
“Oh, 1885, I think.”
“I see,” Ted wheezes, and that's it for manliness or dignity. “And you wouldn't be a teacher on the way to her new position in the mountainy part of Transylvania?” he asks, sounding as if he took a snort of helium as a party trick.
“You do remember!” Dougal squeals and turns round to jump on the spot.
“We are so fucked,” Ted groans and attempts not to swoon. He holds on to Dougal’s arms.
“No, we are lucky!” says Dougal suddenly. Ted opens his eyes. “Look, Ted!”
He's pointing up the path and maybe quarter of a mile away, there's brightly shining lights.
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“Welcome to the Running Piglet, come in, come in, have some tea!” a crooning voice greets them as soon as they open the door to the quaint roadside inn and a powerful smell of pastry and tea leaves wafts out in an almost visible mass of vapour.
Ted recognises her instantly when they're inside and his eyes have become used to the brighter light. Mrs Doyle is not much changed, her hair’s maybe different and her dress longer and apron neater, but she's the same old housekeeper, make no mistake.
Already she hurries towards them. “Tut! Walking in such weather, and at night! Poor dears!” she croons, and grabs Dougal and Ted by their elbows and steers them deeper into the room, and sits them into two chairs by the warm fire. Ted is even grateful for the woman's usual fuss.
“Let me make you a cup of tea,” she says, and toddles towards the kitchen.
“The coachman was an eejit,” Dougal tells Mrs Doyle a bit later when she's pouring him tea, and then he continues in one great sentence, “didn't want to go to our stop, so he lets us out on the road, then we walk, and I hear wolves, so I hide behind a tree, and then that mean plant’s all in my hair, but Ted here– I mean, Doctor Ted rescued me!”
So that was what was going on before, then. Ted accepts a cup of warm tea from Mrs Doyle and frowns to himself. Thus far, they'd been all over the Brides part of the plot to The Satanic Rites of the Brides of Dracula A.D. 1885. That's the Rites part still left. Wasn't there something about virgins…? He looks at Dougal suspiciously. He doesn't know about him, but if he's anything like the Dougal McGuire he's familiar with… hm. Ted might be in trouble, as well. Depends on what you counted, he guesses. Then he feels himself becoming red in the face so he concentrates on Dougal speaking.
“… we’re on our way to Castle Dracula, actually,” Dougal says.
Before Ted can add that no, we probably will not go to Count Dracula, his Bed & Breakfast has ridiculous reviews on holidaylettings.co.uk, there's already a great inhale from Mrs Doyle, and she looks at both of them, biting her lip in clear disapproval.
“If you go, you should take this,” she says then, and strolls off behind the bar, from where she pulls up a sizeable bouquet of dry garlic flowers and two metal crucifixes. “I’ll give them to yous two for free.”
“Hear that, Ted?” Dougal chitters happily. “We don't even have to pay the kind lady for local knick knack.”
“I'll get us some rooms,” Ted says with a grunt, and begins to rummage around his pockets for loose change.
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They make their progress towards Castle Dracula in pouring rain and rather murky dawn-light.
A knock had roused Ted from slumber earlier in the morning, and when he'd dressed and opened the door, he found Mrs Doyle standing before him, informing him that the Count sent a coach for him and Marianne and they were to set off a.s.a.p.
Dougal’s looking through the window now as the path towards the castle becomes steeper and steeper. “Somehow I do not think the Count likes normal visitors overly much,” he states.
“Ya think?” Ted asks dryly. He'd been observing the frequency of signage along the path inscribed with cheery stuff such as: “Peasants and Priests Feck Off”, “Lord of Darkness – Pedlars Beware” or “Blood Donation Appointments by Telegram”. He nervously touches the crucifix he's wearing under his wool coat. The flowers are evenly wrapped around his person in a large garland – and on his waistcoat, he has the lightsaber (coolest vampire hunter gimmick, or what?).
When they finally drive into a cobbled courtyard, and the driver dismounts to help them out of the carriage, a haughty pale man under a large dark umbrella hurries forward to introduce himself.
“Welcome to Castle Dracula. I'm Jessup, His Lordship’s head butler, or P.A., as the rabble calls me. Ah, ah. Little joke. His Lordship will be with you soon. If you will follow me.”
The Entrance Hall of the castle is different than one might expect from a Dracula plot, Ted admits. The ensemble is less Gothic Revival and much more Nouveau Riche, with a lot less dust and more satin curtains and gold plating.
Ted is not one iota surprised to suddenly hear Bishop Brennan’s theatrical tones before he sees him. “I bid you welcome to my house!” Good God. He even has the faux-Hungarian accent, Ted thinks.
And then The Man Himself enters stage right, swooping up before them dressed in dark suit and cravat and with his ridiculous cape which flutters after him, and raises an imperious brow.
All bravado Ted might have held onto earlier evaporates like the morning mist. He gulps a bit. “H–hello B–bishop–, I mean–” He hurriedly searches for the correct address, but his mind supplies one word only, and he says it automatically: “Len.”
Brennan bristles, and then he barks: “Do not call me Len, you buffoon of a little man! I am a Count! You’ll address me properly as ‘My Lord’!”
“Yes, My Lord,” Ted squeaks and doesn't enjoy how all that yelling really makes the chomp-y incisors in Brennan’s mouth stand out.
“FFFFECK!” echoes through the entire Hall without preamble, followed by a minor commotion and the clatter of wood and metal against tile floor.
Brennan holds the bridge of his nose between two graceful fingers, and gives one deep sigh. “You'll have to excuse Baron Hackett. It's late in th– early in the morning for him.” Then he bellows in an inviting tone, “Come here and welcome our guests with me, Baron!”
“GUESTS! DRRRINK!” Jack's white hair appears first, and then the entire form of Father Jack stumbles in, eyes glued first to Ted, then Dougal, and then back. He has a cape, too, notes Ted suddenly, although it's much limper than Brennan’s majestic Dracula cape.
“Baron Hackett has a great fondness for saying that word, you must understand,” muses Brennan while holding Father Jack at an arm’s length by the collar.
“DRINK!” whimpers Jack.
Ted looks at Brennan, then at Jessup and Jack, and suddenly, he is feeling a little tired of this theatrical display of faux gentility, and even his bravado makes a reappearance and brings the cavalry.
“Ha!” he cries, and reaches inside his collar for the little crucifix, brandishing it in excellent sight of the three vampires before them. A hiss rises in unison. “Fondness, my arse! I know what you are, fiends!”
“REVERSE REVERSE!” exclaims Father Jack and gives Brennan a kick.
Ted slowly advances on them, like Peter Cushing on Christopher Lee, except Lee is handsomer and so the whole thing feels less gothically romantic than it could have. He hopes that Dougal is paying attention, at least, to gush about him afterwards and tell the entire region of Transylvania about what a swashbuckling hero Ted is.
He reaches inside his coat, and elegantly brings out the lightsaber with a fluid flick of his hand, and then he switches the activation panel on, and the green light bathes him and he fancies himself even more of a swashbuckler.
“Back, fiends of the night!” he exclaims in a heroic sort of broad-chested hero-voice.
“FECKIN’ PRIESTS,” Jack grunts, and then he throws a whole collection of bottle caps at him.
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Ted startles as several beer bottle caps hit the floor with a metallic clatter.
“Fecking priests,” mumbles Jack from his chair.
Ted looks about himself, fuzzy and bleary-eyed. Wasn't he in Transylvania just a moment ago, facing off against a be-fanged Jack, Jessup, and Brennan? And now he seems to be back on Craggy Island, sitting wedged against the arm of the sofa and–
A well-known face leans forward into his line of sight.
“…Maria?” Ted asks, blearily.
“No, just Dougal,” Dougal says and pokes him into the side. “The film is starting, Ted!”
Ted straightens himself and grabs one of the sandwiches Dougal passes over to Ted, chomping down on the bread like a man who really did travel two thousand miles from deepest Romania.
The title card of The Satanic Rites of the Brides etc. flashes, gaudy and promising.
And in the end, everyone agrees it was a great time, even Mrs Doyle, who hints she might even, perhaps, drop a VHS from the video store into the grocery basket when she goes for the weekly shopping.
(And the credits of this episode of Father Ted feature Mrs Doyle hauling a behemoth of a mountain of VHS tapes out of Chartbusters, looking a bit harried.)