Dracula.

As a child,

a mere impressionable child,

just a small boy, you understand,

I recall feeling terrified,

truly terrified of the fiend

they called Dracula,

very recently encountered

in the safety of the local cinema.

There I had sat fascinated,

one in the company of many,

too entertained to be afraid.

The terror came later.

In my bed at night,

there in the dark, all alone,

the fear, the pure fear, was very real.

Feeling as soft as any young sweet girl,

my gender proved no protection.

I could picture him in the garden,

just beyond my window,

waiting, his face set in malice,

hungering for my blood.

The thought of that savage mouth

descending upon my exposed neck,

was enough to paralyse me.

Desperate to keep him from me,

to repel his approaching form,

I turned, shivering, to prayer,

imploring divine protection,

the last strategy left to me,

raising my impromptu faith

like a roughly-readied cruciform

in the face of the red-eyed evil.

Whether this was just one night

or a sequence, I do not recall.

I can say that all must have ended,

at last, in being overwhelmed,

not by the fiend, but only by sleep.

Awaking to daylight, he was gone,

my imagination alive to the laws

that governed the ways of the vampire.

(I find myself wondering

just how small I really was then.

I felt the urge to excuse myself

on the grounds of extreme youth,

but perhaps I was somewhat older

than I was willing to admit,

not quite a teenager, you know,

but perhaps not too far off it either.

Yes, I feel embarrassed for myself,

even for my twelve-year-old self,

that I was not more enlightened,

that I could be so spooked by bogeymen.

This seems intolerant, even harsh.

I was still, after all, no more than a child.

Perhaps I suspect that it yet persists,

this streak of primitive fearfulness.

Is it viewed as some form of lasting flaw,

a weakness, even a touch of madness?

Of course madness is too strong a term.

But the child's state of solitary fear

was a from of mental suffering,

something of which, generally speaking,

we don't really wish to be reminded.)

Anyway, a bit older,

I did leave that phantom behind me,

could at least grasp the absurdity

of fearing actual bodily harm

from a purely fictional character.

Indeed, I was then ashamed

of my former susceptibility

and, probably even more so,

of my craven recourse to religion.

The rebel in me was not impressed.

God and devil,

angel and fairy,

ghost and ghoul,

all occupied, at least in some sense,

the same vague misty territory,

the world of the supernatural,

therein supporting each other

in the vital work of preservation,

of defending their romantic realm

against the cold forces of scepticism.

Jesus's ways were surely numbered,

but the debunking of poor Dracula

could only have hastened matters.