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Saliva whipping about its jowls, a scrawny black dog is chasing down the car. Bolting from doorways and ditches, others join him, teeth bared, matted fur bristling. Overwhelmed by pack instinct, they are herding me from their home.

Crawling through Arefu, villagers scurry for the sanctuary of dark rooms, doors slam shut and curtains are drawn. A small child is snatched up by its father and bundled into the back of a cart. As I pull alongside, our eyes meet for a moment and then he turns, blank and ashen.

Bowing the casement of a third floor window, a group of teenage schoolgirls jostle for the ideal position, whistling and giggling over the sound of the engine. Looking up, I catch the glance of a slight, dark-haired creature, china-white skin against dark-red lips.

Her wink is the Devil's work, a Faustian pact, penetrating deep into the car's murky cabin. A bell clangs beyond and suddenly she's vanished, replaced by a burly matron who crashes the windowpanes together with short, thick forearms and yanks a blind down between us.

The evening before, high on the hill behind Arefu, the winter sun shines weakly, its last rays shooting between the sparse branches of birches and the crumbling battlements of Cetatea Poienari. After three days and 1,500 miles, I have arrived.

This is the Arges region of Transylvania, a place utterly unmolested by the whirlwind of the 21st century. Or the 20th come to that. Here, old women till the soil into their nineties and the wealthier households have horse and cart. Smoke still rises from every chimney and pork, potatoes and cabbage remain the dietary staple.

Poienari Citadel was built in 1459, when Vlad Tepes marched a captured community of Turks up the Arges Valley and worked every single one of them to death on its construction. With its bloody legacy behind him, Vlad waged war from here on the invading Turks for a decade, earning his legendary monicker 'The Impaler'.

Although fond of boiling his enemies, or burying them alive, his real signature was to insert a wooden stake into his victim's anus, driving it out just below the shoulder in such a way as to avoid damaging any major organs.

This guaranteed 48 hours of supreme agony before death, a period frequently presided over by Vlad himself, who indulged in elaborate feasts beneath the stakes.

His father, Vlad II, was awarded the chivalric Order of the Dragon in the year of his son's birth. From then on known as Vlad Dracul, meaning dragon, he gave his heir the affectionate nickname 'Son of the dragon', or Draculea.

Making the final ascent to his castle, it becomes clear I am a little late. In 1462, the Turks laid a final siege to Poienari. Dracula's wife flung herself from the battlements rather than be captured, while Vlad managed to escape with the help of his local servants, to whom he bequeathed all the mountains and pastures that now make up Arefu. The castle felt the full force of the siege, and has lain in ruins ever since.