The Valley

by Annie Graefnitz

  “What exactly did you tell him, Miss?”

  I sighed. “Well, all the stories that I knew. Only, at the time I told him I was under the impression that it was all just that…stories.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, now I know otherwise. And maybe he does, too.”

  He sighed and patted my shoulder. “There has always been something about your friend that had made me keep a close eye on him. I wasn’t sure until just now.”

  He stood and beckoned me to follow. We walked back through the kitchen, down the hall and climbed the grand staircase. We passed several doors and short hallways before he stopped at an unassuming door.

  “It’s probably best to speak of this privately.” He pulled out a long, ornate key and stuck it in the lock. He whispered as he entered. I followed curiously behind.

  He proceeded to the bookshelf that covered the wall to the right. I stepped over the threshold and instantly felt the presence of a thousand eyes on me, causing the hairs on my arm to stand up. But only Tom and I were in the room. As he scanned the bookcase, I took the opportunity to look around.

  The room must have been a library because, aside from the large windows, every inch of wall was covered in ceiling-high ornate oak shelving. The highest of them looked like they contained the most dated books although I couldn’t see them without climbing a ladder that looked like it was older than Tom. I decided to pass on that.

  The occasional shelf that didn’t have any books on it contained a painting or sculpture. The dark wood floor had geometric pattern inlayed around the edges that formed a pathway around the room and ended at the four-step rise near the far end of the room where a large bay window framed the Inn’s back courtyard. Six large, black wingback chairs were arranged on this… stage surrounding a low claw foot table. A thick, bronze helix shaped statue held a massive stone resembling the one in my gift bag rested in the center. I marveled at what had been hidden from me for so many years. The place looked more like a museum than a library. A loud thud startled me. Across the room Tom had lugged a large book and put in on a smaller table. He waved me over.

  “What is this?” I studied the giant book. Its cover was dark green with chewed edges. Old.

  “I can only hope that your mother and father will not be upset that I am showing you this, it should be their place, but under these circumstances, I believe you need to see this. This is your life. Well, the history that has led up to yours,” he said, as if he were about to present a cheesy slide show. Instead he slipped on a pair of gloves and opened the book. He noticed my curiosity about the gloves. “It is a very long history.”

  Under any other circumstances I would not be looking forward to a history lesson, especially if it pertained to my family history. I'd gotten more than enough taunting about it as a child to last a lifetime.

  Tom nodded and turned back to the book. The page he stopped on was rolled up so tightly that when he barely tugged on the clip at the top of the book, it puffed out and rolled to the end of the table and hung off the end. The sepia toned paper struggled to contain a thick, glittering, moss covered trunked tree with sprawling and heavily fruited branches within its borders. I stared in awe at the tree, as it seemed to cast its own light.

  A long passage filled the empty space underneath the magnificent tree’s dangling roots. I brushed my fingers over the page. The leaves fluttered slightly. I jerked my hand back into the sleeve of my sweater and looked up at Tom for an explanation. He simply grinned and nodded to the tree again. I slowly unclenched my hand and let my fingers trace the leaves again. This time I could feel the warmth radiating from the page. The heat caressed my hand until it was a glove fully enveloping my hand, reaching up my arm. I pulled my hand back again.

  He laughed softly. “That's family, Cami. The warmth of your family you feel. Your history.”

  I stared at the tree, trying to believe what my eyes were seeing. “My family? I don't understand. It's just a tree and it’s empty.”

  He pushed the book closer to me. “No, Look again. See your past.”

  I sighed and drew both of my hands this time along the outline of the tree. The fruit branches began to sway. The fruit twisted under my touch. The top of the tree was much fuller than the bottom, stretching the entire width of the page. Near the bottom of the foliage, an image flickered and then came onto view.

  I squinted until it was fully in focus. The painted image brought a gasp to my throat. It was me, or at least an ancestor with strikingly similar features. The vintage girl’s lips were curled into a tiny smile and her eyes held a hint of knowledge in them. Her hair, dark chestnut brown, was swept back into a loose wavy ponytail. Her right hand rested gently over her shoulder revealing a familiar stone attached to her wrist. I thought of the gift from my parents, and looked closer at the painting. The chain was wrapped twice around her wrist with the stone in the middle of it. It’s a bracelet! “That's me!”

  “Indeed it is, Miss. I had no idea.” His fingertips tapped together as he studied the painting.

  I was back in my comfort zone ... completely confused.

  “Oh, I apologize. Only family blood can reveal the tree. I have only seen this from the corners of the room. I’ve never been this close.” He guided my hand over the rest of the tree. Faces appeared, many that I did not know. Some I knew, my father and his only brother who died tragically before I was born and his two sisters. As more of the tree was revealed, the paintings became more dated and the faces lower in the tree disappeared again. My hand rested near the top of the tree.

  A thought stuttered in my mind before I could bring my self to ask. Tom was probably thinking that I’d lost my mind, but I had to ask.

  “This tree, the way it moves on its own. How are you doing that?”

  “Oh, it’s magic,” he said with as much care as if I’d asked him how his day was. He was studying the top of the tree. “This is where the tree seems to start. Interesting, the faces before him cannot be revealed,” Tom said. I studied the man’s very familiar face. There was little doubt that he was a distant relative, the family features must have run very strong because – was that a powered wig – this man looked just like my father. But it was the woman next to him that shocked me. Dorothy.

  Her delicate face smiled warmly. A hint of teeth peeked from under her painted lips. I didn't recognize this smile. She was happy. I didn't know this smile, but then, I didn't know this youthful face either. Her hair was pinned in a loose bun, half curled tendrils hung down, framing her face.

  I looked up at Tom, who was now standing over my shoulder scrutinizing the tree as well. He snorted. “Well, now. She is quite breathtaking.”

  Had he seen the same image I did? This was my grandmother next to the gentleman at the top of the tree? It didn’t make any sense. I put both of my hands and forearms on the tree this time so that I could see each branch at the same time. The paintings didn’t seem to be placed in the order of a normal family tree. They now seem simply scattered all about the tree haphazardly. Some had a small scroll underneath their portrait with something, too small for me to read, written. Others were completely faceless and blackened out. But still, my father and his siblings were near each other and seemingly in order of birth near the top of the tree, hanging just beneath Dorothy.

  I half laughed in disbelief. “Tom, you have to help me decipher this because it doesn’t make any sense. Who are all of these people and what is this? Why is Dorothy next to this man? And where is my grandfather?”

  “That is your grandfather.”

  I examined the man again and could see that despite the wig, he matched Dorothy’s youthfulness.

  “That doesn’t make any sense. This man is wearing a wig, so obviously the portrait was painted a long, long time ago. Way before my grandpa’s time.”

  “What do you remember about your grandfather before he died?”

  “Not much, other than his tinkering with anything he could get his hands on,” I said, still studying the
tree. “It’s more of a feeling…and a smell. He had a very distinct smell.”

  “He did enjoy cigars,” Tom added chuckling to himself. “But what do you remember about his appearance?”

  I tried to remember his face, but it was ten years ago when he passed away. I could only picture his smile, always brilliant and always present when I was with him. “I can’t really remember what he looked like.”

  “He looked exactly, like that. Minus the wig.”

  “But-.”

  “Look at him Cami, look at his face. It did not age one day since that painting was added to this tree, nor did it in all the years that I knew him. I have to admit, though. The wig is a different look for him.”

  I looked at the man once more, into his eyes and into his smile – the feeling I’d felt as a little girl washed over me. It was the overwhelming sense of comfort and love. I didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence was staring me in the face. Even with last night’s revelation of my history, I had remained a tiny bit skeptical. This man, who looked no older than my father does now, was my grandfather, the vampire.

  Stunned, I looked at Tom and tried to speak but nothing came out. I didn’t know where to begin questioning.

  “My grandmother told me, but, I thought it was all, I guess I’m still in shock. Tom. I mean, really? It was my grandfather, not some great, great person that settled this town?”

  He nodded. “Quite true.”

  I stared blankly at him before turning back to the tree. What else could he say? After all, it was all right here in this book.

  “There’s nothing you can tell me about the rest of this tree? Where are the rest of these people and why are some of their faces missing?”

  He didn’t seem as if he could understand the tree either. He simply shook his head. “I apologize Camille, but this is not something I know the answers to.”

  Well, he was completely useless. After all these years of hearing the secrets of this place and he didn’t know that?

  He stood back and stroked his chin with his thumb, “But perhaps…yes.” His quiet mumbling sounded more like my own grandfather’s. “Yes. I see it now. It’s marvelous.”

  “What?”

  He collected himself and smiled. “This is not an ordinary tree of pedigree. It appears as if it holds the origins of the town’s forefathers. All beginning with,” he pointed to my grandfather. “Isaiah.”

  I scanned the tree once more. Anyone that I might have recognized had either been blackened out or well disguised by antique fashions.

  “What makes you think that, Tom?”

  He studied the tree. “Because many of the faces closer to your grandfather, I recognize. And here,” His finger rested on one of the missing faces. “Edrin Sully,” he said reading the tiny script underneath it. "He passed through this town the early days. He settled here after reaching an agreement with Isaiah about the treatment of the humans. He resided here for many years, but died tragically.”

  “How can you read that?”

  “It’s in the old language.”

  “Oh,” I whispered. I continued looking over the many faces and skipping over the ones that were no longer there. I assumed that they too had run into an untimely death.

  “Did you know my grandfather well, Tom? You said in all the years you knew him. How long did you know him?”

  He smiled, and looked up from the tree. “I knew Isaiah for the greater part of one hundred years.”

  I couldn’t control the yelp. “Jeez, Tom! How old are you? I mean obviously my grandfather was old, but. You’re not a vampire, are you?”

  His old cackle left him coughing at my astonishment.

  “Oh, no my dear. But I have many years on me. I have known your grandfather my entire life. As well as my father did before me. They were great friends and colleagues. I spent all of my youth looking up to the two of them. And after my own father’s passing, it only seemed natural for me to follow in his footsteps and aid Isaiah in his experiments.”

  “Experiments? You were like his Igor or something.”

  He chuckled again. “Or something. He had always been something of a scientific mind. But then he met Dorothy, and boy did he work harder than ever.”

  “For what?”

  Tom stepped back from the table and began folding the tree. “For a cure, Camille. He was trying to cure himself, turn him back into a human. He knew from the second he met your grandmother that he wanted to grow old with her.”

  “He never found it,” I pushed.

  “No, but he came very close.”

  The last of the faces faded as Tom folded the rest of the tree back into the book.

  “Where are the others? I’ve always been told there were more. Are there any left?”

  His hand waved slowly across the entire upper row. “There may be some somewhere around here, I suppose. None that I have seen in many years. Maybe spread out further into the valley. Those volumes up there are more than likely theirs. It might also be safe to assume that you are the last direct descendant left.”

  A shiver ran down my spine as I looked in awe at the dozens of thick, leather bound books that lined the upper rows of shelves. “Will asked me if I knew how many there were, but I couldn’t answer. I didn’t believe. But I guess I could answer that now.”

  Tom’s mouth tightened as he gazed at the books. “Ah yes, William,” he said, bringing the conversation back to why I was there in the first place. “There is more to that young man than you or anyone else knows.”

  “I know, Tom,” I laughed. “He didn’t miss your concerned eye. You creeped him out a bit, you know.”

  He snorted. “That would be because he knew that I knew. I watched him from the moment he arrived. It makes sense now. I showed you this book for a reason, Miss Fisher. You needed to see your history and understand the importance of your role. Only you can help them now.”

  As if my head hadn’t been spinning already, that remark pushed the spin faster. “Them? What do you mean by them? My parents? Isn’t that where my grandmother and those other people went, to find them?”

  He shook his small, white-haired head slowly while turning the first few pages of the book. “I'm afraid they will not be successful. There's been no contact with them for a few months and now they’ve gone without any plan of how to find Mark and Jillian.”

  “A few months! Dorothy said it's only been a few days.”

  “It's only been a few days since she lost sight of them. But they hadn't actually spoken or heard from them since late August and up until recently, she has known that they have been in the midst of several small battles, but safe.”

  I almost corrected him. I did hear from them. The package. Was this the last form of communication they had?

  “Last night that man, Petre, was angry with my grandmother. He said that she should have seen. Did he mean that she should have seen the disappearance? Because she said that there was something, but it was so unclear.”

  Tom nodded once. “I believe it was unclear because she was searching too far from home.”

  “Where should she have been looking?”

  “She should have been looking here, at you.”

  “Me?” My voice shrieked louder than I’d intended, but then I remembered what Tom had said a moment earlier. “Will?”

  “He was so instantly attracted to you and I’m afraid to say you weren’t too hard for him to lure in.”

  “Lure me in? You think he planned to... be with me?”

  He shook his wrinkled head. “Oh no, Miss. I don’t believe he planned anything. His infatuation with you was genuinely innocent. That is probably why he found it impossible to resist leaving you after learning of your family.”

  “Kelsey.” My blood instantly began to boil.

  “I’m afraid not. Someone else. Mrs. Fisher knew someone was here recently. It would seem that perhaps your grandmother saw the danger around William, and mistook it for your parents.”

  “Tom. Who told Wi
ll if he already knew as you say?”

  I locked my eyes on a knothole in the floorboard for grounding. If I looked up, the room would start spinning.

  “I can only assume it was the assassins.”

  “Assassins!”

  “Yes, like him. Hunters, if you will, of vampires.”

  “Will?”

  “Yes.”

  I managed to choke and laugh at the same time. “You’re joking right. There’s no way. No...way. You have the wrong person. I don’t know what Dorothy saw. But she didn’t see him.” I stopped short of saying it was probably dementia setting in, but then I remembered the park and the chilling creatures Will and I had run from. He said they were punks, but then in his frantic babble the next day he said they were looking for me. I had completely forgotten about until now. Oh, no. They were the ones that told him about us. That was why he told me to leave. He was concerned about my safety or more likely, he didn't want me to find out about him. And now he was gone again. My throat tightened as I spoke.

  “How do you know these people are real?” If I had actually used the word assassins, I might have fallen completely apart.

  “They are real. Very real. In the old days, they were assassins for hire. They were hired by both sides of the war to infiltrate and then eliminate the enemy.

  But somewhere along the way that changed. They realized the power they held and decided they wanted to control each side instead of work for them. Now they had to be paid not to kill. For many years they were very blatant about their activities, murdering any vampire that crossed their path.

  But these days, they seem to be more strategic in their killing and do not claim victory for their kill as they used to. They’ve become much more organized and skilled, which makes them all the more difficult to locate. No one knows how to find them or when they will appear. I believe that they have found this place and now it is no longer safe.”

  “Did I lead them right to my mom and dad, Tom?”

  “I believe they would have been found eventually, with or without your help,” he said.