by David Wood
His eyes snapped open, and another surprise awaited him. There were two women in his bed, but neither was Anneli Wagner. And neither was Gretchen!
Both of the women had long dark hair, and wore gauzy white nightgowns, frayed at the ends. Each gown had a dropping V-neck that stretched all the way to its wearer’s waistline. Fritz recognized the girl massaging his feet. She was a waitress at the tavern in the small village, where he had bought everyone drinks. The other woman, slightly older, now kissing her way down his chest to his navel, was looking up at him with her dark eyes making deep promises.
With each touch of her rich red lips on his stomach, his shock and surprise ebbed away, leaving only the amazing waves of pleasure. He realized he didn’t care who these two raven-haired beauties were, or where they had come from. He was still tired—exhausted to the point of dropping. He tried to move a hand, to touch the woman now exploring below his navel. His hand refused to move.
His eyes felt heavy as the waitress came up from his feet to kiss his throat as the other woman had done. A groan escaped his lips. Or was that only in his mind? He tried to speak to the women, but his voice was far away. As his eyes closed once more, he felt the same pricking sting in his groin, but it felt so very good, and a warmth filled him as he drifted to sleep.
Do with me as you will, ladies. I am in your hands.
Chapter 19
Andreas Wagner was bone tired as he ascended the stairs to take him to Fritz’s room. He had stayed behind and entertained the ladies, and then he suggested they all get to their own beds, telling Gretchen not to worry for her man. Wagner would check on Fritz before he retired to his own chambers. Although Fritz had been the one injured in the fall on the bridge, Wagner was feeling the muscle ache from his rescue with the rope, and sleep was calling to him.
Moving slowly along the long corridor, with his candlelight flickering from the breeze created by his movement down the hall, he made his way toward Fritz’s room, where Petran had strangely made the bed for Fritz. Wagner found it odd that the servant had prepared their rooms so far from his own, when there were perfectly good rooms adjacent to his. Maybe the man assumed wrongly that the four friends would want space from each other. He would speak to the Count about it, or maybe just leave Petran a note asking that their lodgings be moved closer, so that they needn’t traipse around the whole castle just to speak to each other.
As the light from the candle dispelled the shadows at the end of the hallway, Wagner was surprised to see a dark-haired woman leaving Fritz’s room. She wore a floor-length nightgown, but it was sheer, and he could see her large breasts through it clearly. She paused and looked up at him. He recognized her right away as the waitress from the tavern in the town. He had seen her there that first night, when he had stayed in the room in Miklos’s inn. He had spotted her again while eating at the tavern, when Fritz and the others had arrived. The woman seemed not to know him, and she made no kind of greeting, before she simply turned and headed the other way, around the corner and into the darkened next hallway.
Wagner stood still in the corridor. She must work for the Count, he thought. As well as for Miklos. Either that or Fritz had arranged for her to have a clandestine meeting with him here in the castle. Wagner knew his friend’s womanizing ways—at least before he had started seeing Gretchen, anyway—but he found it hard to believe the man would be so brazen as to invite village girls up to the castle. It was far more likely that Fritz would have suggested a solo night in the village after drinking at the tavern with Wagner. He would more likely have found his entertainment that way. Wagner didn’t expect that kind of behavior from his friend for at least a few more weeks, when he had grown tired of the lack of conversation in the castle, and he would be frequently seeking out the tavern for drink and revelry. Wagner had seen the pattern before.
And, he reminded himself, he hadn’t seen that kind of behavior at all since Fritz and Gretchen had become serious. Are things so bad between them that he’s again on the prowl? Wagner moved past Fritz’s door to the end of the corridor and looked around the corner after the waitress, but she was gone. Maybe she had a room of her own somewhere. The candle threw its shimmering light down the side hallway, but the feeble illumination could not penetrate the depths of black at the other end.
Wagner turned and headed back to Fritz’s door. He paused only briefly, then smiled and thought about the waitress’s large breasts. You are amazing, Fritz. He walked on, leaving his friend to slumber after what had surely been a good time.
He headed back to the stairs and went down to the main floor. He would pass Gretchen’s room, then check in on his wife, before finally laying his head on his own pillow. They had already discussed Fritz taking a few days to mend his shoulder. So on the following day, Wagner would work alone again, this time up in the tower from which the stone had dropped that had nearly killed him.
He was paying more attention to his feet than to the corridor and the shadows ahead of him—the light his candle cast only went so far. But something moved up ahead in the dark. He caught the movement with the edge of his eye, and his head snapped up. His nerves were already frayed after the day’s events, and then unexpectedly finding a stranger in the castle. He held the light out and took a few more steps into the corridor. The golden light illuminated the edge of a sheer white dressing gown coming out of a room up ahead. It was Gretchen’s room. He wondered if perhaps she was looking for the kitchen again. They hadn’t been all together in the castle long. She likely didn’t know her way that well yet. He took two more steps toward the door and was about to speak out loud to her, asking if she needed help.
But his words died in his throat before they reached his tongue.
This woman was not Gretchen. She looked a little like the waitress, with long dark hair, and the sheer white gown, but this woman’s hair was straight, where the waitress had looping curls in her tresses. This woman was slightly older, but no less stunning to look at. Her breasts were small, but between the deep V-neck of her gown and the gauzy material, nothing was left to the imagination. Her long red fingernails pulled the handle of Gretchen’s door closed behind her, as she stepped out into the hallway fully.
Wagner frowned and took a step forward, intending to ask the woman her business in Gretchen’s room, but the woman’s head snapped up, with two quick jerks, as if she were a mechanical person, and not well maintained. Her glare fixed itself on Wagner’s face, and he felt his confidence leave him in a rush. He had been willing to accost this woman, but her stare had reversed the tables, as if he were the outsider.
Then she turned and strode to the end of the hall, her long legs slipping out of the gown’s full-length slits with every stride. Wagner’s spell was broken and he took two quick following steps, his tongue finding words in a gush.
“Just a moment! Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The woman reached the corner of the hall and was turning it when two strange things happened. The first was a burst of wind that came from her end of the hall. The gust made his candle light flicker madly. His eyes darted down to the single flame to ensure it would not go out. He raised a hand in front of the flame to stop it flickering. When his eyes returned to the woman rounding the corner into the east wing, he took a faltering step backward.
In the flicker of the dancing light, the woman’s upper torso had bent backward at the waist, almost horizontal to the floor. Her legs and abdomen were rounding the corner of the hallway, but her back made it appear she was climbing up the wall toward the ceiling. Her arms were outstretched, and her fingers were clenched into talon-like claws, pointed upward. Her long straight hair dangled down to the floor, as she jerkily moved her head back to look at Wagner with hatred in her glowing red eyes.
The flame on his candle jumped again, and his eyes darted away from the horrible insect-like posture of the woman. When he looked up again, she was gone. He raced to the corner and leapt into the next hallway, his candle flame sputtering hysterically. The e
ast hallway was as empty as the one he had just left. He twisted violently to look behind him and found only empty hallway. He twisted around again to see if the woman had ghost-like, managed to slip around him somehow. But he was alone.
He stood rooted to the spot for moments, twisting back and forth to ensure nothing could sneak up on him from behind. The small hairs at the base of his neck felt tight and stiff. Gooseflesh the size of peas stood strong up and down his forearms. His heart was pounding so quickly he couldn’t make out distinctive thumps, but rather heard and felt a steady thrum, like a string on a musical instrument plucked hard and left to vibrate.
Finally, he could move again, and he went back to Gretchen’s door and looked around him once more. Then he flung the door open without knocking and went directly in. The room was dark, and Gretchen lay in her bed with the covers pulled up to her neck. She was sound asleep, and snoring softly. Wagner frowned. There was no indication in the room that the strange woman had been in here with Gretchen. He twisted in the room, his candlelight throwing up large shadows in the corners of the large space. He began to feel foolish, and as Gretchen snorted in her sleep, he stepped to the door and went out into the hall, gently pulling the large wooden portal closed.
He stood in front of her door and scowled, turning left and right in the hallway, his eyes attempting to pierce the darkness. The twisted frame of the mysterious woman lingered in his mind. It was so… His mind struggled for the right word. …unnatural. The way she had bent backward reminded him of a praying mantis, even though that wasn’t quite right. The way her hands had resembled claws had been even more disconcerting. He suddenly recalled another painfully clenched figure. The thing that might have been the Count in the library. The thing that couldn’t have been the Count. When he had used the flashlight, and the figure had recoiled from the light. He had forgotten that startling image, but now it sprang fresh into his mind. There was something similar about what he had seen in the library that night and what he had seen just now in the hall outside Gretchen’s door.
A strange woman outside Fritz’s door, then a strange woman outside Gretchen’s—
He broke into a run for Anneli’s room, and the candle’s meager flame winked out.
He knew the way well enough, and all signs of gooseflesh had departed from his arms as he sprinted through the dark twisting hallway for his wife’s room. A stripe of yellow light seeped out from under the edge of her door. He didn’t stop, but threw the door wide and burst into the room.
Anneli was seated at the dressing table, running a brush through her blonde hair. She was wearing the same blue dress she’d had on at dinner, and she turned abruptly to look at him as he came barreling into the room.
The look on her face expressed concern and instant fear.
He instantly regretted his hasty action. Everything was fine, and he had alarmed her for nothing.
“It’s okay, my love. I was just startled in the hallway, and I… Well, I just came to make sure you were alright.” He felt foolish and shrugged his shoulders.
The look of puzzlement and fear had not left her face.
A deep dread took hold of him, and he thought that the insect-woman from the hallway might be behind him. He turned to see nothing behind him but the doorway, and quickly shut the door.
“It’s nothing, Anneli. I’m sorry to have alarmed you. My imagination is getting the best of me in this huge place.”
When he looked up again at his mute wife, she was walking slowly to him, and looking up at the top of his head, instead of in his eyes. She crossed the room and gently touched his face. She looked into his eyes. Her big blue eyes were sad and concerned at the same time. He was about to apologize again for his foolishness, but she took his hand and pulled his arm, leading him across the room to the dressing table where she had sat.
The light danced off a sliver cross she wore around her neck on a delicate chain. It nestled in the crook of her bosom, and he found it hard to take his eyes from the symbol as it glittered in the bright room.
At the dressing table, Anneli pushed him to stand in front of the dressing table’s large oval mirror. The wood frame around it was ornately carved with swirls and curves.
In the mirror, he nearly did not recognize himself.
His shoulder-length blonde hair, and even his thick eyebrows and his lashes, had all turned a uniform, stark shade of pure white.
Chapter 20
“I still can’t believe your hair, brother.” Fritz laughed as he hefted the last fallen stone from the tower into a makeshift wooden chute the men had created to get debris down to the waiting wheelbarrow. The stone tumbled and crashed down the slide, thumping and bouncing as it went, until they heard the distant thud three floors below them. It had been a week since the incident. Wagner had worked by himself for a few days while Fritz rested his shoulders, and now they had been together for three days more, but each day, Fritz still commented on his hair.
“I can’t believe it myself,” Wagner said, slapping at the stone dust on his clothes and thinking more of the dinner that would await them than the strange occurrences that led to all his body hair turning pure white.
The others had all been startled when they had seen Wagner’s head. He had explained the apparition outside Gretchen’s room and how he had been momentarily terrified. He left mention of the waitress from his story with the women, but he later asked Fritz privately about it, thinking the two strange women must be connected. But Fritz denied the visitation with the waitress. “I was sound asleep,” he had told Wagner. Normally, Fritz was more than happy to boast of his female conquests, so Wagner had no reason to doubt his friend. What he had reason to begin to doubt was his mind.
First the hideous apparition that could not have been the Count in the library’s darkness, then the two ghostly women—one of whom bent at odd angles. Finally, his hair turning mysteriously white. It was all too much to believe. But then he had to remind himself it wasn’t only him. Fritz had seen the indentation in the courtyard floor, where a sizeable chunk of rock had barely missed sending Wagner and the wheelbarrow to their fates together. Everyone had seen the giant bat on the night Anneli and the others had arrived, and Fritz recalled how it had torn and scratched at Wagner’s throat. Then there was the strange incident with Fritz nearly being knocked off the causeway.
Either Wagner was losing his mind, or the castle was somehow haunted by spectres, or possibly both. In the last few days since his hair had changed color, an event Wagner was coming to think of as the turning, the group of friends had seen no sight of the Count, his grumpy servant, or any serving girls in transparent gowns. It was as if the castle were deserted. The men had worked hard at clearing debris and repairing walls and roofs. They had put in long days and made great progress, somehow both understanding without verbally acknowledging it, that everyone wanted to leave the castle as soon as the work was done.
Anneli had told him in writing—her only way of directly communicating with him—that she was concerned for him. She was also worried that the stress of the place was beginning to tear Gretchen and Fritz apart. Wagner had his own ideas about why that relationship was failing, after having spoken with Fritz on the stone bridge that day, but he kept those reasons from his wife. For her part, Gretchen had been much quieter since the turning. Her gabbing had been cut to a minimum, and she often gazed quietly and smiling—as if in a happy trance—when the four gathered at the table in the kitchen to eat.
Anneli had noted to him on her small paper pad that she was grateful for the quiet but unsure of why her friend had begun to daydream so much. “Perhaps it’s just this place,” Wagner had offered. The castle had taken on an ominous shape in Wagner’s imagination. He felt a slight unease at the thought of the place after the apparitions, and it began to feel like a heavy weight tied around his waist. He felt the burden of needing to perform the work for which the Count had hired him, but also the strain of knowing he was responsible for bringing his wife and his friends to this
bleak place. There were no forms of recreation beyond reading and the conversations they held. The weather was turning, and the notion of journeying into the claustrophobic village did not appeal even to Fritz, whose relationship with Gretchen was almost certainly doomed. All of these things added up to Wagner questioning his decision to come to Transylvania and to attempt a new life here.
And there were the dreams about Britta, his deceased child.
The wasting disease, as the doctors had called it, had come on quickly, and it had ended baby Britta’s life just as abruptly. His daughter had been less than a year old, and it had nearly destroyed Wagner to watch so-called men of medicine poking and prodding his baby with tools and medicines that all led to naught. In the dreams, he saw her again, in her infant pram in his former home back in Munich, before she was sick. The dream was always the same. It was night and the baby slept in the carriage, Anneli asleep in a chair nearby. The window was open and the drapes—long, thin, white shreds of tattered, nearly transparent cloth—blew halfway across the room from the strong gusts of wind fighting their way into the nursery.
Wagner would walk toward the window to close the shutters, but the wind would hold him back. Then something dark would slip into the window, like a shadow. When he tried to focus on it, its shape flowed into something else. Sometimes it appeared in the dream as a wolf with glowing red eyes. Other times, the shape dissolved like smoke and resolved into the giant bat, its eyes aglow like embers in a fireplace. Other times still, the smoke would blur, like rain on the other side of glass in a storm, and it would become the Count, although his face was that of the heinous thing in the library’s dark depths, and his spine would bend backward like the woman-insect Wagner had thought he’d seen.