That's it. ..I think I'm going insane.

Sola Gratia (1/?)

Masterlist

Summary : A tired, fed-up archaeologist takes a spontaneous trip to Romania, hoping the Wallachian mountains, the nature, and the silence, will help her resource herself. She didn’t expect getting caught in a storm, didn’t expect finding shelter in an old castle, and didn’t expect for it to be inhabited.

Rating / Warnings : General Audiences, no warning.

Fandom : Bram Stoker’s Dracula, BBC’s Dracula, various Dracula and vampire lore.

Part 1/? (1404 words)

Author notes : This is the first part of god knows how many. Ask me if you want to be in the tag list ! Comments, feedback, and sharing are very appreciated, as this is the first thing I’m actually posting :) Hope you enjoy !

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

A streak of silver split the sky open, slithering out along the heavy clouds a moment before fading into darkness. Crouched in a small cavity I could barely fit in, I buried my face further into my scarf. The pouring rain had cut through all my layers of clothes. I wondered if I would ever get any sensations back to my toes. Or my fingers. Would it have killed me to check the weather this morning? It would, wouldn't it? My phone still stubbornly refused to give out any signal, and it was a 7 hour trek back to the nearest village. I was, as we like to call it in academia, royally fucked.

According to my map, there were no man-made structures anywhere close-by, which made sense as the Tourist Office map carefully outlined that the entire zone was restricted. Something about wolf attacks. Or was it bears? If you ask me, some sheep got eaten by a local dog, superstition got there and that was the end of it. Then again, if you tempt me with a quiet, people-less trek in the middle of nowhere, well, of course I'll bite. Even if I could get help, I had no idea what kind of trouble I'd be in for going so far into The Forbidden Mountain. It wasn't like I could sit here forever, at least not if I wanted to finish my life in any other way than hypothermia, or lightning-roasted like a crisp chicken wing. I stood up, only banging my head on the rocky overhang a little, and tried to get back to the path. I mean, if there was a path, there had to be at least some kind of lodge. Right now, I'd go with any kind of creepy little cabin, as long as it had a roof.

Raising my head, I suddenly noticed a flickering red light, through the blinding white of the lightnings. A campfire? Unlikely. Maybe the cabin I hoped for, and with company. Maybe an axe murderer. Who knew? At least, that way of dying would be original. Would make for a sexier news title than “dumbass french tourist dies struck by lightning in mountains she was clearly told to keep out from”.

Struggling not to slip onto the muddy, mossy wet stone as I paced forwards, I couldn't help but shiver under the biting cold wind and the pouring rain, stinging my face like so many needles. Considering the deep darkness the heavy clouds cast on the mountain, it would be a minor miracle if I didn't die, tripping on a murderous root before I reached the salutary orange light.

Rather than sinuous path I had followed all along my trek, I noticed a smooth, very worn path, almost straight through the forest, even though the stones were leveled by trees every once in a while. I figured it had to lead to something, and started following it. After a moment, it came to a clearing that led to a more desolate part of the mountain Even the tall pine tress that already had replaced the tortuous oaks seemed to vanish, if you didn’t account from fallen trunks and dead stumps. Raising my head, I used my hands as a visor to ward off the rain. I noticed what I'd been calling a cabin was way too big to be called that. Perched on a rocky outcrop, it didn't need much protection considering the cliffs surrounding it. It almost looked like one of those optical illusions, with impossible stairs and unlikely architecture. The vacillating light was still there, casting an orange glow through the windows. If there was no axe murderer, there had to be a vengeful spirit of some kind. There, knew I should have taken some salt with me, or a giant cross, or a ouija board.

Not deterred by the sinister appearance of the building, I kept on going through the path, sinuously climbing up the mountain ridge. It finally came to a plateau as my legs were about to give out. Out of the cover of the trees, the rain seemed even worse, and I struggled to even walk. All around, ruined houses of wood and stone had crumbled, as if abandoned for centuries. I usually enjoyed ghost towns, but this one made me fairly uneasy. Was this the actual reason the mountain was restricted? Did I walk into some kind of biohazard situation? Just in case, I raised my scarf to cover my nose, as if it would do any good if I were to catch the plague or something. Except for the howling wind and rain, and the occasional deafening thunder, everything was silent. No one lived there, as far as I could see, except for the light, further up, in the castle. I wondered if I should just take shelter in one of the houses, and call it a day, but the possibility of a warm fire was over any kind of haunting this might involve.

I paced down the street. Some of the buildings seemed like they housed a large variety of artisans, before. Glass bottles full of unidentified, mostly rotten things, or dried herbs, some half faded paint on wooden signs hanging above the main entrances. Felt even more uneasy. Some doors, hanging open. Carts with broken wheels, still loaded with crates. Didn't look like anything was pillaged. What the hell happened here? When? Not like the weather would allow for a newspaper to survive, but… On the ground, near one of the shops, a glint of silver caught my eye. Small coin. Squinting a little, I was able to make out the crest. Local, obviously, maybe 14th, 15th century? Well, that would explain the decrepitude of the place. 

At the end of the “main street”, a gigantic hardwood door was the sole opening of the stone wall defending the castle. It was in a surprisingly in good shape, considering the rest of it. It still looked like it hadn't moved in a while, left ajar, barely enough to let me through. It opened on a vast yard, all but the central path invaded by weeds and saplings, the walls overrun with ivy and moss. My heart thumping hard into my chest, I approached the main entrance, two carved wooden doors standing atop a few stairs. Gathering all my courage, I lifted the bronze hand figure, and knocked down three times on the door. I heard the sound resonate on the other side. I waited a moment, and as I was about to knock, the door clattered loudly, before slowly swinging open in a long, ominous creak. Hesitant, I took a deep breath, and slipped into the hall. Seeing no one, I pushed the door back, and it clicked as it closed. Maybe I had just locked myself in. Well, I was raised to be polite and close the doors not to let in drafts, something that still applied to axe murderers and their homes. Apparently.

“Hello ? Is anyone home?”, I asked in a very approximative romanian.

No response. Someone had to have opened the door, right? Right. The hall was eerily quiet, considering the rain hammering at the windows. Surprisingly enough, everything seemed rather clean. No dust, or overwhelming presence of spider webs, no broken windows as far as I could see. I put down my heavy bag on the floor, against the main door. At the end of the hall, a large corridor ran deeper into the castle, softly lit by the same orange glow that led me here in the first place. I decided, despite my howling preservation instinct, to go toward the light, drawn like a moth to a flame.

I tucked my dripping wet hair behind my ears. Being out of the storm made me realise just how cold I was exactly. My clothes were completely soaked, sticking to my skin like a layer of ice. I didn't bother even looking into my bag for a change. The corridor was long, and the windows on the left wall gave a vertiginous view of the valley and the forest, illuminated only by the intermittent lighting strikes. The trees were so far down below I elected to keep my eyes away from the abyss. My every step echoed on the polished stone tiles as I hesitantly made my way forward. So much for being discreet. I felt watched, but put this on the count of my paranoia.

The corridor ended on a large room, a bit bigger than the main hall. At the end of it, a very large fireplace was lit, which explained the whole thing. From the ceiling, chandeliers made of unusually large deer antlers projected twisted, shifting forms on the walls.

“Is anyone here?”, I asked again, still bound on butchering the romanian language.

No response, again. In front of the fireplace, a terrifyingly large bear pelt was laid on the stone floor, along with a couple of armchairs and sofas. The walls were covered in large tapestries. Above the hearth, a large, bigger than life-size portrait of a man, standing proud, a hint of a smile on his lips. The colors were faded, and the paint had started to crack and chip at the corners. Trusting by his clothes, I would date it somewhere at the turn of the 19th century. The way it was painted made me feel like he was looking straight at me, which made me feel even more uneasy than I already was.

“I always thought it was a disputable likeness.”

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Tag list : @carydorse @thewondernanazombie @angelicdestieldemon @bloodhon3yx @battocar @moony691 @mjlock

castles in the air 

[peter parker x reader]

author’s note: doing my best not to let this writer’s block get the best of me ahhh

word count: 1,384

He first dreamed of you when he was five. His head hit the pillow and he was out like a light. And he was dreaming he was an astronaut in outer space, his breaths echoing in his helmet, the only noise in the wide expanse. Then you’d floated into view, in a suit of your own, waving enthusiastically with a large grin. You traversed this make-believe universe together, and Peter woke up the next day thinking he’d like to see you again. He told Aunt May and Uncle Ben about you, and they’d smiled and asked him questions and without realizing it he was building you up. He drew you in your space suit with crayons and for years your picture remained on the refrigerator. He truly tried his best to capture the essence of your smile, and he figured he did a good job.

That’s not the last he sees of you. At first you’re only in some of his dreams, sailing the sea like Blackbeard or pretending to be Indiana Jones in some ancient temple with no history except what the two of you come up with. But then you show up more often, until you’re there to greet him every night he passes the threshold into your domain, asking what adventures he’d like to go on this time.

You grow older with him but your smile stays the same. Most of his dreams have mellowed out as of late, shifting from galactic travel to being stuck in a classroom and handed a test he forgot about and failed to study for. Those dreams always make his heart drop down into his stomach. He’s more inclined to call them nightmares. And you’ll be sitting in the corner of the classroom, the only other occupant besides himself and the faceless teacher at the front, trying to quietly stifle giggles because you too vividly remember diving into the Marianas like it was yesterday. How times change.

It’s a calm dream tonight, both of you on the shore bordering a crystal sea with no end in sight. The sunset hasn’t moved the whole time, reds and yellows painted forever over your heads. You teasingly tell him he’s getting so old now and Peter chuckles and tells you that so are you.

“I guess I am…” you concede with a grin, laying back on the warm sand and feeling blood rush to your head as you gaze up at the sky.

Peter leans back and braces himself on his hands. It might be said that you are his soul manifested because you know him like no other. He’s told you all his secrets and all his fears, and there have been plenty in the many years you’ve been together. You listened and hurt when he hurt and felt joy when he did. And it truly occurs to him in this moment you’re not actually real, and his heart squeezes because you’re real to him. He’s never been so sure about anything than he has about your existence. But maybe he’s just fooling himself, not willing to admit to the reality of the situation because he’s scared if he acknowledges it, you’ll fade away.

With a quiet sigh, he glances at you, but you’re already watching him. Your eyes are soft and for once the smile is absent from your face, lips instead set in a thin line which betrays no emotion but he already knows you know what he’s thinking. He asks his question anyway, as if it might change things, and you answer as if your words too have any hold on the universe beyond what Peter conjures in his dreams every night.

“You won’t leave, will you?” The crash of waves fills the silence that follows.

You stare at each other for a few moments, and then you smile slightly. “I’ve been here this long, haven’t I?” But the light in your eyes is already looking the smallest bit dimmer, and Peter’s angry he had entertained the thought in the first place.

The picture on the fridge has moved to the cork board in Peter’s bedroom, on the wall above his desk. He stares at it when he’s doing his homework and he needs to take a break for at least a minute, because if he doesn’t, his brain might melt. He set his head on his propped up hand and smiles tiredly as he looks at the drawing, at your white space suit and what vaguely looks like Saturn behind you, for the first time he met you, you’d been floating past a planet with rings. The longer he stays like this, the sleepier he gets, and his eyelids are drooping. He figures he might as well take a nap since he could actually see you then, rather than just study a drawing of you.

Before he can close his eyes, the flash of a glittering star falling through the sky outside his window grabs his attention. It’s only in his line of sight for a few seconds before it disappears behind tall buildings. Peter wonders if it made it to the ground or if it burned up before it could get too close. He meets you on a mountaintop later that evening and asks you where you think it landed, and if someone might’ve found it. You smile and tell him it’s landed right where it’s meant to be. He never actually understood what you were getting at with that statement, but you did have a tendency to be rather poetic (a talent, he’d jokingly remarked, he wished he had too).

The subject of the shooting star is forgotten after that, and Peter thinks it’s for good, until you bring it up again a few days later. Did you wish for anything? That’s what you ask, and Peter grins and wants you to guess, but you only laugh. There’s only one obvious answer but it does warm your heart knowing what it is.

“I don’t think you need a star for me stick around forever, Peter,” you say softly. 

Peter shrugs. “Maybe, but it’s the only wish I’ve really ever had.” He hopes you know how special you are, that he should ask the universe to keep you with him. A majority of his life has been spent with you in the passenger seat and he can’t imagine it empty. He needs you. He will always need you. He hasn’t given you his heart because you are his heart, and you cleared all the fears in his head to make room for the dreams where you can be together. Three words sit on the tip of his tongue as they have been for a long while now, but he doesn’t say them. He doesn’t have to.

Instructions for a book report are handed out in English one gloomy Friday, so Peter heads to the bookstore after class to pick up a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He’s been meaning to read that one for a while now.

He asks an employee where he can find it, and she guides him there, sliding the novel off the shelf and handing it to him. With a smile he says thanks, and she nods and says you’re welcome before she returns to the help desk. He stands there looking over the book, turning it to the back so he can read the summary.

Someone enters this aisle from the other side, and he catches the movement in his peripherals. He glances up at the newcomer, and it’s only a second, but then he thinks that side profile seemed familiar, so he looks up again. You turn to him when you feel him staring and smile the smile he’s always seen in his dreams, what he’d missed every time he woke up and what he’d looked forward to each time he laid down at the end of the day. And then he notices the book you’re holding: The Martian by Andy Weir. There’s an astronaut on the cover.

Peter walks over to you, almost feeling like he’s floating, and he’s desperately hoping this isn’t just a dream. But then he introduces himself, and your grin widens, and suddenly there’s no more breath in his lungs. And he knows there is nothing more real than this.

Movie Odyssey Retrospective

Dracula (1931 English-language version)

The 1920s had been an ideal breeding ground for horror films in the West. As cinematic technology improved and daring directors unleashed their magic on nitrate film, audiences found themselves terrorized by titles like Nosferatu (1922, Germany), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and The Unknown (1927). With the introduction of synchronized sound, it was only a matter of time before someone took the genre to the talkies. Tod Browning (frequent collaborator with Lon Chaney, Sr., including The Unknown) would be that director, and the first horror masterpiece after the silent era would be Dracula, based on the 1924 stage play Dracula (itself based on the classic Bram Stoker novel of the same name). Universal Studios – a major studio but not yet considered in the same class of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. at that time – had been considered specialists in horror and further burnished that reputation here. Hungarian-American Béla Lugosi became an overnight sensation, and since 1931 he has always been associated with black flowing capes, a badass accent, and blood-sucking.

Before a brief synopsis, it should be noted that there is a Spanish-language version of this film, Drácula, directed by George Melford and starring Carlos Villarías as the title character. That film, also released by Universal, came at a time when – during the early years of synchronized sound movies – studios frequently released non-English language versions of their movies (almost always European languages like French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Swedish; a burgeoning, but bankruptcy-prone market for films catering to the United States’ numerous ethnicities existed, too). Thought lost to time, Drácula resurfaced in the 1970s and has been restored for public consumption. A third version – a silent film – was released to theaters that had not updated their technology yet. As should be obvious, this write-up on Dracula will be on the English-language version with synchronized sound.

On Walpurgis Night somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania (present-day Romania), Englishman Renfield (Dwight Frye) is traveling by carriage to reach his client, Count Dracula’s (Lugosi) estate. Count Dracula has expressed his interest in an abbey outside of London. Villagers, warning of the spirit of Nosferatu, are fearful that the Count is a vampire, but Renfield dismisses those concerns. Renfield arrives at the castle, stunned at the immensity of the place and the appearance of a cloaked, slick-haired figure gracefully, slowly making his way down an immense, cobwebbed staircase. After bidding Renfield welcome, something can be heard howling outside. 

“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.”

Renfield becomes Dracula’s first victim and servant – groveling, maniacal, and violent – as the plot shifts to England and characters like Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), sanitarium Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston), his daughter Mina (Helen Chandler), Mina’s fiancée John Harker (David Manners), and Mina’s friend Lucy Weston (Frances Dade) begin investigating their newest acquaintance.

As the vampire Count Orlok in Nosferatu (itself an unauthorized version of Dracula), Max Schreck relied on his physical acting and makeup to frighten audiences. As Count Dracula in this film, Lugosi has a powerful weapon not afforded to Schreck: the sound of his voice. Born in 1882, Lugosi, having appeared in 1927 as Count Dracula in the stage play this movie is based on, arrived in the United States from Hungary in 1920. In that interim, Lugosi became fluent in English (this is disputed, but even if he had to learn his lines phonetically, the results were worth it) yet retained a thick Hungarian accent that prevented him from having a more prolific, diverse movie career. Nevertheless, in Dracula, his dialogue delivery – deliberate, deceptive, sometimes pausing for no apparent reason near the end of sentences – is incredible. Where Schreck’s Orlok angled for removing any semblance of humanity, Lugosi’s Dracula (which, on the basis of subsequent cultural references, has become the preferred prototype on which to create a vampiric character) is sophisticated, in touch with his humanity, all while retaining a threatening sexuality – “I never drink… wine,” he says. To put that in terms of a scenario, meeting Lugosi’s Dracula for dinner in any place outside of his castle might leave you charmed by the Count and just comfortable enough to eat and drink in his presence. That is, until Dracula feeds on you.

Universal did not see Lugosi as their first-choice Dracula; instead, that went to the senior Lon Chaney (1924′s He Who Gets Slapped, The Phantom of the Opera). Chaney died prior to production and, despite Universal’s preference for Paul Muni, relented when Lugosi lobbied relentlessly and said he was willing to accept an exiguous salary of $3,500 (~$56,000 in 2017′s USD). Lugosi declared bankruptcy the year after the film’s release. Having turned down the title role in Frankenstein (1931), Lugosi plodded through years of typecasting as suave horror villains and a British ban on horror films in the mid-1930s. He never became as established a movie star as fellow Universal Monsters star Boris Karloff, and played Count Dracula only twice – the second time in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

Alongside a bevy of forgettable performers, only one other actor stands out. That is Dwight Frye (who would also play Fritz in Frankenstein later that year) as the realtor-turned-slave Renfield. His performance, nowadays, might be dismissed as a relic of the worst of silent-era filmmaking that seems anachronistic even in 1931, but it works. Whether Frye swings into entertaining campiness or unmitigated insanity, he serves the film wonderfully. With eyes wide, veins pulsing from his neck, and not giving a shit about what people think of his behavior, Frye’s Renfield is unpredictable, unstable, and possesses an unsettling laugh – it is not the stereotypical villainous belly/diaphragm laugh – halfway between a sneer and a chuckle. It is not exactly something you want to hear in the darkness.

Director Tod Browning – an expert in horror films – assembles a team of craftspersons of envying pedigree.  Production designers Herman Rosse and John Hoffman and art director Charles D. Hall (1930′s All Quiet on the Western Front, Frankenstein) outdo themselves with Dracula’s castle. It is everything you want from a decrepit fortress – cobwebs (one eighteen-foot spiderweb was created by rubber cement shot out of a rotary machine gun), an enormous fireplace (one fire made so much noise that the primitive microphones then being used picked up that sound rather than the dialogue; production halted as the fire winded down) ruined windows and columns, and tangled vines intruding from the outside. The enormity of the set lands with chilling impact, assisted with the costume design by Ed Ware and Vera West and cinematography by Karl Freund (1927′s Metropolis, 1937′s The Good Earth, I Love Lucy) inspired by German expressionism – a silent film-era movement which emphasized exaggerated geometries, shadows, and high-contrast lights and darks. Freund’s camera is often static but, unlike many films the early 1930s, slowly floats across the set when needed. This creates an impending sense of terror, lending Dracula a thick atmosphere that has kept it watchable even though the movie itself may no longer be scary to most. However, this focus on the production design is mostly abandoned after twenty-five minutes as Dracula finds himself in London. Lugosi and Frye’s performances grab the film by the scruff, and further solidified themselves into Hollywood lore.

The sets themselves impressed Universal’s art department and directorial contractees so much that they remained standing for at least a decade longer for subsequent films for the studio; the finale of Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) holding its finale within what used to be Dracula’s walls, for example. These same sets also appeared in the Spanish-language Drácula –when the English-language production completed its shooting during the daytime, the Spanish-language production commenced at night using much of the same resources. The cast and crew of the Spanish-language production might even have had an advantage, as they had access to the English-language Dracula’s dailies/rushes (raw, unedited footage of the day’s shooting on a movie), to tinker with their own performances and handiwork.

Other than Tchaikovsky’s most famous theme from his ballet Swan Lake playing over the opening credits and a brief snippet of Wagner and Schubert, there is zero music in Dracula. In scenes as Dracula is approaching someone with ill intentions, this increases the dread. In transition scenes where the audience is reading the text of some publication or when characters are traveling, this might not work with impatient viewers. This almost-complete lack of music is because – with synchronized sound introduced just four years earlier – filmmakers believed that movie audiences could not accept music in a film unless there was a source of music within the film (diegetic music; one of those instances is when an orchestral performance is featured in Dracula). Considering that silent films were never truly silent – movie theaters during the time had resident musicians (typically pianists, organists, or small ensembles) – and that movie music has become a genre all its own, that idea might seem quaint to modern audiences. Watch enough post-Jazz Singer 1920s and early 1930s movies and one will notice that lack of music is widespread.

In other aural developments, depending on the quality of the print that you watch, a crackling image noise may be heard throughout the film. That is due to the age of the film print and the quality of the sound recording available in 1931; the newest restorations of Dracula should minimize the sound.

Though a relic of early Hollywood horror, it is a film energized by a star-making performance from Lugosi, which has since altered audience conceptions of what a vampire looks like, talks like, moves like. Okay, we never see Dracula’s blood-sucking fangs, but credit Lugosi, Browning, and screenwriter Garrett Fort for devising a character that is essentially the origin of anything that even references vampirism.

Dracula shows its age as it approaches its ninetieth anniversary. Wooden acting from almost all of the supporting cast, its rough editing, and pacing issues may not be accommodating for those accustomed to older movies and are watching the film without knowing the limits of cinematic technology in 1931 (again, Dracula may have terrified viewers upon release, but it is no longer “scary” in the modern sense). It is an essential piece of the horror genre, as well as cinema. The dedication to which those behind the camera applied to this film is remarkable, diffusing a frightful feeling that could only have been produced in its own time.

My rating: 9/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

This is the tenth Movie Odyssey Retrospective. Movie Odyssey Retrospectives are write-ups on films I had seen in their entirety before this blog’s creation or films I failed to give a full-length write-up to following the blog’s creation. Previous Retrospectives include A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), and The Wizard of Oz (1939).