When I brought the book home from the library, I didn’t know I was coming down with simultaneous measles and mumps–or that there was no better way to read Dracula for the first time. Hallucinatory fever dreams, the taste of blood in my mouth, the smell of mildew from the old volume’s pages….I was nine years old, too weak to resist as Bram Stoker’s Undead hovered over my sickbed, very much alive.
I did identify with him. For a period of time after reading the book, I began to sign my name Diane Draculefer. Fourth-grade teacher was not amused.
