Dreaming in the Land Beyond the Forest: My Visit to Dracula's Castle

[In honour of the 10th anniversary this week of my visit to Castle Bran in Transylvania—the public face of "Castle Dracula"—I'm reposting my essay "Dreaming in the Land Beyond the Forest," which was written from notes in my journal on May 9th 2004, and which first appeared (in a slightly different form) on Advocate.com that October, then in my essay collection, Other Men's Sons. I visited the castle while on a weeklong visit to Romania to the set of Seed of Chucky, for a series of articles that appeared in Fangoria in the fall of 2004.]

I’m writing this in the courtyard of Castle Dracula.

I’ve
 waited my whole life to write those words in a nonfiction essay.

The low westering sunlight slants down through
the distant, forbidding vista of the blue-green
 mist-shrouded Carpathian Mountains, edging the 
rough cobblestones and the stone-cut mullioned
 windows of the ancient castle with blood-tinted 
late-afternoon shadows that seem oddly patient, 
though somehow hungry.

Not bad, if I may 
say so myself. I like it. A little over-the-top, a
 little purple, but then again, horror fiction is one
 literary genre where a touch of the grape isn’t just forgivable, it’s actually encouraged.

The thing is, it
 happened. I was there. It’s nonfiction.

I wrote the above
 paragraphs on May 9, 2004, in Bran village, in 
Transylvania. They are paraphrased from some notes in my 
journal, written specifically for this essay, which 
would be crafted many months later.

My literary
 intention in writing them was to see if I could take the
 elements around me—the village, the courtyard of Castle Bran, the mountains, the sunset—and merge the 
journalist’s eye for detail with the horror
 writer’s inner eye for color and atmosphere 
through the power of imagination.

The facts are
 technically accurate: The sun was setting, the Carpathians
 were blue-green, the land is largely forgotten, and the soil 
of Transylvania has seen more bloodshed than most in
 Europe.

I was in search of answers—all of them 
journalistic and pertaining to the film I was there to
 cover for the magazine that had flown me halfway across the
 world.  None of the questions were about vampires. Whether
 the shadows seemed “hungry” or not is a 
matter of artistic vision, and since I wrote it, I am 
the ultimate authority.

That’s the magic of the
 writing craft, and one of the gifts of 
imagination—to bring a waking dream to life on
 the page.

If I say they
 were hungry, then they were hungry.

In the popular 
imagination, Castle Bran has become the de facto
 “Castle Dracula,” one of the seats of
 power of the 15th-century Wallachian prince, Vlad the
 Impaler, whose historical identity was the
 genesis of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, 
published in 1897. I first read it in 1971, when I was
 9 years old.

My mother started
 me on this twilit road with the grisly “bedtime
 stories” of the Brothers Grimm, replete with ogres
 and demons and ancient wind-blasted castles where 
witches dwelt. I graduated to British fantasy writers
 like Alan Garner, then to English ghost stories of the M.R. 
James school, and American horror comics. Laced 
throughout were the Christopher Lee Dracula films I
 adored, among the best of the Hammer Films oeuvre. I
 read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at our
 villa outside of Geneva when my father was posted to the 
United Nations there in the mid ’70s, learning 
early what I would later rediscover upon rereading 
Dracula in Transylvania in 2004—that 
there is portentous power in experiencing a writer’s
 work by reading it in the milieu in which it was set.

Nonfiction and
 essays have largely comprised my professional
 writer’s life to date, but I have managed to
 make horror fiction my avocation, not only with my own
horror fiction but with the Queer Fear anthology
 series, the first collections of horror stories to
 have gay protagonists and themes as a matter of
 course. I’m a proud member of both PEN and The
 Horror Writers Association.

Being a queer
 horror writer is a lot like coming out a second time. 
Readers, editors, and friends see you one of two ways: They
 either regard you as a spooky fellow whose 
predilection for things that undulate by moonlight is 
an amusing, endearing jape, or they see a massive
 incongruity between what they think of as your
 “serious” literary work—articles, 
essays, reviews, collections—and this weird shit you seem 
to love. I occasionally feel the pressure to disavow 
my horror work as literarily unserious, as though I
 couldn’t possibly be thought of as a serious
 writer if I didn’t.

Writing is either good writing, or it is
 bad writing. I don’t acknowledge the barriers 
of genre, and neither do the writers I most admire.

Horror, like desire, is a
 visceral emotion. Anything that makes a reader 
“feel” those emotions that society would
 rather leave behind closed doors is bound to make these 
prim worthies uncomfortable.

Back in May 2004
 I was on assignment in Bucharest for Fangoria, the
 American horror film magazine of record, for which I
 have been writing for nearly 20 years. My editor, Tony
Timpone, has become a great friend and confidant over the
 years, and since 1987 he has sent more fun my way than
 any journalist has the right to expect. I was covering
 the filming of Seed of Chucky, written and
 directed by out director Don Mancini and starring two
 gay icons, Jennifer Tilly and John Waters. A group of us
 from the production had chartered a minivan and
 departed from the Bucharest Marriott, an oasis of 
Eastern European luxury that bordered on 
vulgarity, to make the occasionally bumpy day trip 
“deep into the heart of Transylvania,” 
as Roman Polanski wrote in the screenplay of
 1967’s The Fearless Vampire Killers.

My fellow 
travelers were superb company. As difficult as it was to get
 into the “vampire mind-set” with the
 van’s radio playing Blondie’s “Heart
of Glass” and other great hits of decades past while
 we swapped film, travel, and boyfriend anecdotes, we
 did see genuine Transylvanian peasants with goiters,
 driving oxcarts; and gypsies and wild dogs 
everywhere—just like the movies—through the 
windows.

As we left 
metropolitan Bucharest, the land became flatter and more 
sparse, until we began to climb into the mountains. Great
 fields of dark earth gave way to soaring rock and 
black-green pine forests. The air grew cold and clear.
 Here and there we drove through villages where 
humble-looking wooden houses were interspersed with stern, 
rigorous municipal architecture. In the distance every
 now and then, we would catch a glimpse of a monastery
 or a sinister-looking castle jutting out from a
 mountain ledge sometimes—delightfully—shrouded
 in mist.

Given the loathing many Romanians feel for 
the co-opting and casting of their national hero Vlad 
the Impaler as a vampire horror staple, we kept the
 delight largely to ourselves.

Everywhere
 wandered the ubiquitous Romanian street dogs, mute victims
 of Ceausescu’s savage uprooting and forced
 diaspora of their owners.

When the late dictator
 appropriated the homes of ordinary Romanian citizens in
 order to use the land to construct what would later be
 acknowledged as grotesque monuments to his 
megalomania, families were forced to settle in
 government-owned city apartments that forbade pets.


Abandoned, the dogs are Romania’s
 “other” orphans. They interbreed and wander
freely along the treacherous roads by the tens of
 thousands. The ones that survive form a concurrent 
Romanian population to the human one. During my stay in
 Bucharest, a good day was seeing only one dead dog along the 
side of the road as I was chauffeured to the studio. A 
bad day would be nearly unthinkable to the average 
modern North American city dweller, especially a dog
 owner.

Midway thorough
 the journey our driver stopped the van and sauntered over 
to a group of gypsies standing in front of a store to ask
 them directions to Castle Bran. The gypsies suddenly
 became agitated, and an exchange of rapid-fire
Romanian exploded between them and our driver.

As we
 watched, our driver raised his hands and waved them 
away. The gypsies lurched after him, keening and 
wailing and crossing themselves. He jumped into the
driver’s seat of the van and slammed the door, 
locking it. Inserting the key into the ignition, he
 put the van into reverse, gunned the engine, and
 swerved away from the gypsies, who were by now spitting on 
the ground and glaring sullenly at our departure.

“What were
 they saying?” queried one of my traveling companions, 
turning her head and looking back. The whole spectacle
had been quite dramatic, and we were all by now
 aroused from our travel-induced torpor and quite taken
 with the entire passionate exchange.

“They are
 wanting money,” said our driver, manifesting the
 urban Romanian’s contempt for
 gypsies. “I have not given money. Gypsies 
angry.”

Nonsense, I said 
to myself with a private smile. They were saying,
“For the love of God, stay away from the 
castle!”

After an hour or 
so we parked, turned off the radio, and stepped out into 
the cold wind to stretch our legs. We stood on the edge of a
 desolate stretch of highway. The fields were dead and
 yellow, life not yet returned to them after the savage 
winter, and the Carpathian Mountains in the 
distance seemed cruel and implacable, though no less
 majestic for their cruelty.

I listened to the
 wind, closed my eyes, and tried to dream of Dracula.

For a moment, the
 world as I knew it vanished. I heard Jonathan
 Harker’s calèche clattering along the
 Borgo Pass through spectral blue fire on
 Walpurgisnacht, and the distant baying of wolves.

Then the dream 
vanished as quickly as it had come, reality closing over 
the dark obsidian stone of fantasy as surely as the surface
of a bright green lake.

And yet, later, the moment
 occurred again, this time after our arrival at the
 castle. With a sense of reverent pilgrimage, I split 
off from the group and went to explore the rugged, gloomy 
castle on my own.

Momentarily, blissfully free from tourists, I sat on a rough-hewn wooden bench in the
 courtyard and looked up. I closed my eyes and again
 summoned my waking dream of “the land beyond the
forest,” the Transylvania of myth and legend 
that I’ve carried in my head and heart since I
 was a very young boy.

“5
May.—I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had
 been fully awake I must have noticed the approach to
 such a remarkable place,” wrote Jonathan Harker
 in his journal, describing his arrival at Castle Dracula.
“In the gloom, the courtyard looked of considerable 
size, and as several dark ways led from it under the
 great round arches it perhaps seemed bigger than it 
really is.”

The sudden
 arrival of a clutch of hearty beaming white-legged German
 tourists in black socks and sandals wielding cameras snapped
 me out of my reverie. I opened my journal, made a few 
notes, then gathered up my things and went to join my 
friends.

Ultimately, it
 didn’t matter to me that Bran village had
become something of a mitteleuropa “Dracula 
Disneyland” with peasants and gypsies hawking 
bread and cheese and everything Dracula-related to
tourists who were there to celebrate Stoker’s vampire
 count who never was.

Or that after 
visiting the tomb of Vlad the Impaler on the monastery 
island of Snagov a few days later, the “silver
 crucifix” I'd bought to commemorate the occasion
 began to glow in the dark—and not because of the 
presence of anything unholy.

No, what mattered 
is that, as I gazed across the fields at whose edge the
 brackish marsh water lapped the muddy shores of Snagov 
Island, I was able to remember the island’s
gruesome history, and its legends. Over the centuries 
it had been put to a series of grisly
 purposes—prisons, torture chambers, the site of 
monstrous impalements, many supervised by the
 inhabitant of that elaborate Byzantine crypt beyond the line 
of trees at my back.

I was able to
 close my eyes and see a storm coming in over the water, lightning flickering at the center of boiling, tenebrous 
clouds in a sky gone black and violent. Behind me, in
 my waking dream, loomed the rain-lashed medieval 
monastery that allegedly contained the last earthly 
remains of a fiend who many believed was immortal.

I found that even 
after I opened my eyes and blinked in the sunlight,
 Snagov Island was nowhere I would want the dark to catch me.

Plural identities, plural realities.

Imagination.

For a writer, they’re powerful tools. For a horror writer, they’re the air we breathe.

Before leaving
 Castle Bran that May afternoon, I ran my fingers 
lightly along the stone walls in tribute to the boy I was in
1971. I committed them to memory—again, not
 without a pilgrim’s veneration.

I won’t
 forget the feeling of that rough surface of Dracula’s
 castle beneath my fingers as the sun went down, or my
 rediscovery of the secret doorway in my mind that had
 swung inward with the soft click of memory.

I knew well the
 ancient thing that waited for me inside.

After all, I was
 nourished on blood.