by Dani Hoots
I nodded and he gave me his bed while he slept on the floor. For once in my life, I felt strong enough to do something by myself.
Twilight came and we went over the plan once more. I was to get to the room with the scroll in it as Radu made a distraction to detain Petru. Easy enough, but I still wasn’t sure what type of spell breaking this curse would involve. Although my mother had taught me a lot, I didn’t think I was strong enough. I didn’t know if it would involve any ingredients that I would need. It wouldn’t be that easy to have to go back out and get those ingredients and then come back. I didn’t have anything with me and I doubted the strigoi would have any of it, especially if they thought it was all part of some concoction to kill them.
I did feel ready for this overall, as if my life up to this point was preparing me for this. It didn’t seem possible and it felt out of place, but the feeling was there, as if someone was whispering just how to feel about the impending battle in my ear. It was strange, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all a preordained plan, and that someone was guiding me along the way. I believed it was the spirits of my ancestors helping me defeat this evil, and that is what gave me the confidence I needed.
The moon was out, bright and full once again. I knew that this was our only night to enter the castle for a month and we would have to get it right. If there was any screw ups, then the castle would never be destroyed, since I was the last in my line with any innate magical potential.
The castle was a lot more eerie than I had remembered. The darkened stone, the broken and cracked windows. A couple of bats flew overhead. It was horrifying.
And almost perfect, in a way.
It felt as if someone had set it up this way to make me afraid, so it would seem like I was going into a place where I might not ever return from. I was a smart girl, at least I thought so, and I felt this strange foreboding, out-of-place feeling, suddenly, about all of this. Where was that heroic stride, of feeling like everything was preordained and that all was going to be fine?
The feeling didn’t matter; I knew I had to do this. I had to get rid of the strigoi once and for all. Even if it meant my demise, I had to try. I had to avenge my camp’s death, if not to seek vengeance for the creature Petru had made me into.
So we entered the castle.
I expected to hear the violin playing, but there was no sound whatsoever, only silence haunting our every step. I looked around for the shadows that I had remembered the night before, but there were none. We seemed to be the only two in the entire place.
“Now, you remember where to go. I will distract him upstairs. Be quick or he will figure out what we are trying to do.”
I nodded and started toward the room, fear making my body want to turn around and leave. But I couldn’t, I had to be brave.
This was my one shot to finally subdue the leader of the strigoi. I couldn’t mess this up.
The room was exactly where Radu said it would be. It was dark throughout the entire castle, but it didn’t matter now. I could see perfectly fine. I was surprised that I hadn’t seen anyone out yet, but I had no idea how many strigoi there were altogether. For all I knew, it could have been just Petru and no one else, while the shadows I thought I saw were simply shadows and not any strigoi skulking the corridors around where the book was to be found.
I looked all over for the book that Radu said would be there. I checked every nook and cranny of the area, but it wasn’t there.
“Looking for something?” I heard a voice ask.
I spun around to find the man of the other night smiling, holding Radu by the throat. His blue eyes were full of satisfaction for he had caught us in the act. His century-old attire seemed perfect, as if he didn’t even have to put up a fight against Radu, whose clothes were torn and ripped now. Even Petru’s hair looked perfect, not a piece out of place.
“I’m sorry,” Radu said.
I gulped. He held up the book. “Seems you were after this, weren’t you?”
I didn’t say a word; I was shocked into silence by the sight of Radu being strangled by this impressively-sized, rather formidable strigoi. Petru was a force to be reckoned with.
He threw the book on the table. “Funny, my son forgot to mention to you that nothing can get past me and your plot to destroy me would fail miserably no matter what you did.”
Son? Did I hear him right?
He raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t mention that part either, did he? This is my son Razvan, and I am his father Petru. We have been living in this castle for centuries, until a curse was placed on us by your kind, one which we have suffered through for all these emotionally-numbing centuries. It was your people who did this to me. I never wanted to be like this.”
“Why?” I squeaked. “Why would they do this to you?”
“Because they didn’t agree with the way we had ruled this land. They didn’t want me as a ruler anymore so they cursed me and my family to roam this land for an eternity. But then they realized their mistake in doing so and trapped me in this castle. It is their fault I am this way, it is their fault that they left me no choice but to live on in this depressing castle.”
I shook my head. “I won’t lift the curse. I won’t let you leave this place.”
He pulled up his son, making his grip tighter around his neck. Razvan started to gag.
“Don’t hurt him!” I exclaimed. He had been the only one to help me through all of this, even though he had lied about who he was, although I could understand. I don’t know if I could have trusted him knowing he was the son of such a horrible man. No, I felt that for once I could trust someone even though he had lied to me.
“Why would you care? He must be punished for defying me.”
“No, please don’t. It isn’t his fault.”
“Oh, I highly doubt that,” he squeezed harder. Razvan looked like he was in so much pain.
“Please stop! I will look at the spell. I will see if there is a way to undo it!”
He stopped and smiled. “You would betray your entire family just to save someone who lied to you?”
“Don’t do it, Amalia. Please, don’t let him out of here,” Razvan gasped.
Petru squeezed tighter. “Shut up, you fool. Let the girl make up her mind on her own,” he turned to me. “Well, what do you say, darling?”
I glanced at Razvan. He was suffering because of me. And for once in my life, I would be able to end someone’s suffering. Even if I destroyed this castle and all the strigoi in it, it wouldn’t bring back my camp or my family. They were all gone and I had no one left.
Except for Razvan.
“Yes, I will, but I will need to study the writings. May we go somewhere a little better so I can look at them carefully?”
He nodded. “Yes, let us go up to my parlor,” he gestured to the stairs. “After you, my darling.”
I went up the stairs, my heart racing as it had before. I did see shadows this time, racing around me. There were others here; they were just hiding so they could capture us when we were distracted.
We made it to the top of the stairs and entered the parlor. It was exactly how I remembered it, the fireplace was going as it was before, and the furnishings were clean compared to the rest of the castle. I wondered why that was.
“Now,” Petru threw down the scroll with the text of the spell on the table. “Get to reading.” He still had Razvan in his grip.
“Let Razvan go.”
“Not until you undo this spell,” he said.
“I want to know that you won’t hurt him.”
“I won’t unless you don’t hold up your part of the bargain. Now, as I said, get to reading.”
I sighed and unwound the scroll. The spell went into great detail as to what had happened years before. Petru had slaughtered so many innocent lives, and that was before he was a strigoi. After that, he had killed many more, including many in my camp and the cities surrounding it. The more I read, the more I realized I couldn’t let this man live.
> I had to destroy him once and for all. I found the part of the spell that went into detail as how to do that. It was simple enough; I just had to repeat one sentence three times.
That was it? I couldn’t believe it, there had to have been a catch. The method of ultimately freeing him had to be harder than this. To do the spell, I had to gather a candle and a gold candle stick, chant a prayer, and pour the wax on my hand.
“Alright, I am ready,” I said. “I need a candle and a gold candle stick.”
Petru gave me everything needed to work the spell, so I slowly lit the candle, beginning the task of doing my first spell on my own. Although the circumstances were horrible, I did feel a sort of excitement as to see whether or not I could perform such a power spell on my own. I knew I shouldn’t have felt like that, but I couldn’t help myself. The power that was accumulating in the air was overwhelming.
I waited for the wax to start to slowly melt, so I could appear to be getting the spell ready. My plan was to act like I was preparing for the spell to lift the curse when at the last minute I would repeat the words to destroy the strigoi for once and for all. I presumed Petru knew what I needed to do and I had to act like I was doing it until the last moment.
Razvan looked at me sadly, wondering what I had to be thinking in order to actually pursue this. He still thought I was going to bring the barrier down so that his father could hurt the surrounding land, and wreak havoc on the villages. I couldn’t let that happen.
“Cum lumina Lunei pline și Stelelor de noapte, așa peretele nu va mai fii[2] .”
That was the first step. I felt a slight breeze go through the room. Razvan was shaking his head not to do this. I gave him a wink, letting him know I had it all under control.
“[3] Prin voința mea și viața mea, aceste creaturi vor fi praf!”
“No!” Petru shouted. “That is not what you need to be saying! Stop or I will kill him!”
“Prin voința mea și viața mea, aceste creaturi vor fi praf!” I threw the candlestick at him, but he ducked and it shattered into the mirror.
Everything went silent and darkened. I glanced around to find the room darkened with dust and decay. The mirror in front of me was shattered and I didn’t understand what had happened. Nothing in the room seemed the same, but everything was ripped and shredded. The fire was no longer going and the only window in this darkened room had shattered into small pieces of broken glass.
I glanced around the room, looking for Petru and Razvan. I saw a dried carcass on the ground and screamed.
Behind me, I could hear laughter. I turned around and found Razvan standing behind me, laughing. “Well, well, this is a strange development.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand, what is going on?”
He gestured to the broken mirror. “You destroyed my masterpiece of a story. You broke my mirror that I had been using to lead you to believe everything was real.”
I tried to understand what he was getting at. “None of this was real?”
Razvan laughed. “No, no. It was all in your mind. The mirror gave you the illusion of everything that was happening. Just a little trick I picked up over the years. Your grandmother wasn’t the only one who knew magic.”
I couldn’t believe it, yet it answered so many questions that were in my mind. It answered all the doubts I about what had been going on, it was because it wasn’t real. There was only one question that was still going through my mind. “Why?”
“To get you to break this stupid curse. You were supposed to repeat the lines ‘Prin voința mea și viața mea, aceste creaturi vor fi praf’ while holding the candle stick, just like I knew you would, and it would have broken the curse and I could have exacted vengeance on your little camp and throughout all of Romania.”
I shook my head. “But everyone...”
“Is dead? No, that was all part of the trance I had you in. Seemed real didn’t it?”
“So you are saying that I never went back to the camp? I never became a strigoi?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, none of that happened. You have been here for almost three nights now. You aren’t a strigoi, believe me the process is far more painful. You wouldn’t have woken up not knowing.”
“But...” I glanced down at the carcass. “Who is that?”
“Oh him?” he nudged the body with his foot. “That was my father, at least that part was true. We haven’t had a human come in here for a very long time. I got lucky with you. Had to devour my entire family. I am the one the story in the scroll talks about, not him,” he let out a slight chuckle. “Funny how I can get you to read it however I please.”
We stood there in silence for a moment. So I was still human, my family was still alive, and they probably all thought I was dead, which was probably going to happen soon. After everything, I didn’t know what to do. I thought I could trust him; he made me believe I could trust him. I wanted to slap him but I knew he was much stronger than me.
“What now?” I asked.
“You are going to finish breaking the curse and let me out of this prison.”
“I’d rather die than help you,” I shot back.
He smirked. “I’m not going to kill you. No, I have a better plan than that,” he grabbed me by the throat. “If you don’t help me get out of here, I will turn you into a strigoi for real this time. Then we will wait and see when you will break this curse. So, what is it? Will you save me the trouble and break it now? Or do you want to suffer my fate?”
“I won’t betray my people,” I gasped.
He shrugged. “If you insist,” Razvan bit down into my throat. I let out a shrill scream. The pain was unbearable. Tears were running out of my eyes and down my face. I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was feel the pain and feel as my body began to die, yet I was conscious for all of it. My body was dying but my spirit stayed. I screamed out more and more, but it didn’t help. The pain was still there and it wasn’t going away.
Finally, he let me go, and I fell down to the ground. I tried to move, but couldn’t. I simply lay there, conscious of everything, but not able to do anything about the pain that still coursed through my body. I felt my heart stop, the air from my lungs go away. Blood stopped moving through my body and everything was shutting down slowly.
I was dying and I could feel it all.
Razvan sat down on his half ripped-up cushioned chair. “Gets worse as time goes by. Takes a day or two for the pain to go numb but then the body starts to get hungry and there is only one thing to satisfy it. Blood. Nothing else, not all the food in the world, nor any drink to numb the effects. That is what it is like to live with this curse every day for a hundred years. Now, you and I, we get to live through this together. Until you decide to end it. The longer you wait, the more it will hurt. So really, you are the only one who can save yourself now.”
One last tear fell from my eye that night. The last tear I would ever shed. He was right, the pain would numb after a while, but it didn’t make the hunger go away. Do you know what it is like to starve for hundreds of years? Slowly, not being able to die from it, but not being able to live with it either? It’s pain beyond your wildest dreams.
Time came to pass when the world began to develop around us, but no one ever noticed the castle that came out at night. We were still deep in the woods, and the only people who came by were those traveling through the area. They never stopped or took notice. Razvan played his violin every night, but none ever came to listen. None were ever anywhere as entranced as I was on that not-so fateful day.
My camp left the area centuries ago, probably moving to some new woods. I saw them search for me, but there was nothing I could do. I didn’t want them to find me in fear of what I might do to them, and what they would do to me. Of course, after years as this damned creature, I got to know more about Razvan. He was the bastard that the scroll had made him out to be. I had found so many drained strigoi through the castle; it made me sick to think that for even a moment that I felt clo
se to him, even though it was the mirror that persuaded me. I am still surprised he hasn’t killed me.
I can’t imagine what he would do if I broke the curse now. There are so many people in the world now, and I don’t think any of them could stop him. He is an intelligent man, even if he is beyond evil. He would figure out a way to never get caught, to never see the day of his own death. I thought about trying to kill him myself, but I would never be strong enough and I had this urge not to die. It is an internal instinct that I don’t quite understand. I hate it, really.
So here I am, looking out into the world that doesn’t believe we exist. A world of science and destruction, a world where people think what they don’t know can’t hurt them. Well, believe me, what you don’t know can hurt you, and it is I who stands between you and him.
And I am beginning to think that even the smallest drop of blood would be worth leaving this place for.
An inch of time is an inch of gold, but an inch of time cannot be purchased for an inch of gold. It was an old Chinese saying and, at one time, I believed that time was worth more than gold, I planned on spending what limited time that I had with my wife, my two children, and my brother, as we traveled across the seas in search of a better a life. Our adventure was supposed to bring us happiness, if not some kind of viable fortune. But to my wife and I, all that mattered was each other. She didn’t care about money, just that our family could have the possibility of surviving in a new country. In that way, I had ultimately failed her. I had failed everything, leaving me to suffer for it all in the end. This all happened over a hundred and fifty years ago, and now I just wish that time would run out for good to destroy whatever guilt-ridden memories I had of what I had done to betray my wife’s dreams.
I hear the rumors in the night, passing over me, that speak of people who want to become immortal, who want to become this... thing... this jiangshi that feasts on the qi, the very life force believed to occupy another living being. It makes me sick that such people can even dream of doing such things to each other, although I’m not one to talk. Greed and wrath were the cause of this curse unleashed upon me and I would never forget that one tragic choice that led to my demise. How I wish those demons were easier to battle, then maybe I could have lived a peaceful life, with a headstone saying “Hui Zhang, who lived a happy life with his family” and be buried peacefully in the grave next to my wife and kids. And my brother.