by David Wood
In all versions of the dream, the creature with the red eyes, whatever form it took, bent over Britta’s sleeping form and bit the side of her neck. Blood would flow out of the small infant’s veins until a pool of it lay on the floor of the room. Wagner would always be helpless to stop it, even though he knew it was coming.
He would wake to a gasp or sometimes a shriek. He would be tangled in the sheets of his bed, and covered in a cold sweat. At those times he would go to his wife’s room to check on her, and finding her sound asleep, with the covers pulled up around her. He would slip into the bed beside her. She would nearly always wake and wrap her arms around him, the look in her eyes speaking of concern and a love that knew no bounds. Most nights he would fall asleep in her arms, but other times they made love—with desperation and clutching each other hard. He understood that this ritual was healing them both and finally banishing the remains of their shared grief over the loss of their daughter.
He didn’t speak to Anneli about the dreams. He found it odd that they were occurring just as his relationship with his wife was being renewed. Each day he felt more and more over the loss of his child, and he had seen Anneli was finally moving past the loss as well.
But the dream would find him again each night. The result was his current exhaustion, and it was making the work at hand nearly impossible.
He shook his head to clear it, and wiped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.
“Let’s get cleaned up and eat,” Fritz said.
The men swatted at their thick workman’s overalls, raising a large cloud of white dust in the confines of the small room at the top of the tower. Then they began their descent. They had finished with the tower, but Wagner suggested they leave the clean-up and the disassembling of their makeshift chute for the following day. They headed down to their respective rooms, and bathed and dressed for dinner, before meeting each other again, just at the bottom of the stairs that led into the great foyer with its checked marble floor.
When they entered the kitchen, they found Anneli seated at the table, reading a small book. She looked up at the men when they approached. Her look asked a question, but Wagner did not know what she was asking. Instead, Fritz asked a question of his own.
“Where’s Gretchen?”
Anneli only pointed at Wagner and shrugged.
“You thought she was with us?” Wagner said.
Anneli nodded.
“No, we haven’t seen her since lunch,” Fritz said. He turned around as if expecting Gretchen to be just behind them on her way into the kitchen. When he didn’t find her there, he turned back to Wagner, a perplexed look on his face. “Where can she be?”
Wagner saw that Anneli was scribbling on her pad, and he stepped over to read his wife’s note.
“She said she wasn’t feeling well after lunch and went to take a nap,” he paused in his reading aloud, as his wife finished writing. “Anneli went to find her around 3:00, but there was no answer at Gretchen’s door. She thought Gretchen must be with you.” Wagner looked up to his friend.
Sensing, perhaps, the same level of dread that Wagner suddenly felt, Fritz turned and headed for the door back to the foyer. Wagner quickly followed his friend. As they took the stairs, he saw that Anneli had joined them.
When they reached Gretchen’s door, Anneli stepped forward, between the men and the wooden slab. She held her finger up, and the meaning was clear—she wanted to go in first, in case Gretchen was not dressed. The men stopped, as Anneli entered the room. She came back quickly and beckoned them in with a wave of her hand.
Gretchen was in her bed, the covers pulled up to her neck, as they had been the night Wagner had burst into her room. She looked sickly. Her face was covered in a sheen of sweat, but her color was drained. Her normally rosy complexion was nearly as white as Wagner’s hair. None of the three friends had any medical training, but Wagner stepped forward and placed his hand gently on Gretchen’s forehead, expecting her to be burning up with a fever. Instead, Gretchen’s skin, wet though it was, felt cold.
When he pulled his hand back, startled at the unexpected temperature, his mind filled with unbidden thoughts of his daughter’s strange wasting disease, which had manifested in precisely the same way. He glanced to his wife and saw the look of abject horror in her eyes. He knew she was thinking the same thoughts.
“What’s wrong with her?” Fritz asked, taking Gretchen’s hand from under the covers and holding it tightly.
When he moved her arm, the covers fell away from Gretchen’s neck. Wagner saw something he had seen a dozen times in his dreams. Now he questioned himself. Had he ever seen these marks on his daughter’s dying form? He couldn’t remember.
Gretchen’s neck had two small puncture wounds, spaced an inch and a half apart. Blood was crusted around the edge of each hole. Then a lock of her hair fell and hid the holes from view. But Wagner had seen them as clear as day.
“She’s dying,” he announced.
Chapter 21
The three friends took turns caring for Gretchen over the next two days. They tried to feed her broth, but the liquid would dribble down her chin, her mouth not sucking at the fluid. Petran was left a list, asking him to bring basic medicines and a doctor. The medicines came, but no doctor, and Petran had not left a reply to the note as he sometimes did. The Count was nowhere to be seen.
Gretchen’s condition did not appear to be worsening, but neither was it improving. She stayed cold and white, and sweaty. Fritz had become despondent, and the lack of his normal good cheer combined with the dire situation for Gretchen, wiped away any chance Wagner and Anneli had of remaining hopeful for Gretchen. The two had discussed the similarity of Gretchen’s affliction with that of their dying baby—Anneli writing her portion of the conversation on paper for Wagner to read. It was the first time they had openly discussed baby Britta’s death. Although Wagner felt them moving past their shared grief, this new chapter to the story, with Gretchen showing symptoms similar to Britta’s, wasn’t reducing his nightmares.
Work had pretty much ceased on the restorations as Fritz and Wagner helped Anneli care for the ailing Gretchen. One of the three of them was always by her bedside. Earlier in the afternoon the men had left Anneli with her; tonight, Fritz would stand vigil.
All thoughts of strange women in hallways had left Wagner’s head. Instead, his days were filled with worry, and now the time for a decision had come. Wagner stood, leaning against the dresser in Fritz’s room, as his friend paced back and forth.
“We are too remote here,” Wagner said, “I fear that no doctor is coming. I’ve searched but can’t find Petran. It’s possible that he isn’t even in the castle.”
“That weasel!” Fritz shouted. “We should just wait in the damn kitchen in ambush for him when he comes to make the meals—he never misses one of those.”
“I’ve considered that,” Wagner said softly, trying to calm his friend with outstretched palms, “but he always knows, somehow. If he becomes suspicious, he won’t come, and then we won’t have any food. I’d rather the supply of food keep coming, especially as we can only get so little of it into Gretchen at each meal.”
Fritz saw the reason in that. “Yes, I suppose you are right. But there must be some way we can get a doctor to her. Or her to a doctor.”
“I’m going to make a trip into the village on foot to see Herr Brandt, the shopkeeper I told you about. He will know where to find a doctor, and he has little love for the Count or Petran.”
“I’m not sure I can stand to just sit here and wait. Why don’t I go?” Fritz was pacing back and forth again. Wagner crossed the room and sat on the edge of Fritz’s bed as they made their plan.
“Henning knows me. Besides, I need you to work on our backup plan, while I’m gone.”
“And what is that?” Fritz’s eyes came alive at the thought that plans were now being made. His depression was vanishing at the thought of taking action.
“The narrow coach. We don’t need Petran to dri
ve it. We can drive it ourselves. If there’s no doctor in that blasted village, then we take the Count’s coach and get Gretchen out—as far as Dorna-Watra up north, if need be, but we get her to help. We can always apologize to the Count later and recompense him for the loss of his coach. But if we can’t find that skinny ghoul to drive for us, I say we take the damned thing.”
“So you need me to prepare the coach, for your return from the village?” Fritz asked, clearly liking the plan.
“Yes—actually, I’ll take one of the horses bareback into town. You get the other one ready, and as soon as I’m back, if I’ve no doctor with me, we’ll hook my horse back up to the traces and load Gretchen into the carriage.” Wagner stood. With the decision made, he was ready to act. “Let’s go inform Anneli, so she can get Gretchen ready for either outcome.”
The men left Fritz’s room in a rush and made their way down to Gretchen’s room. When they stepped inside the door, Gretchen was asleep in her usual place in the bed, some of her color having returned. She looked better than she had in days, and no sweat stood on her face.
But of Anneli, there was no sign.
Anneli Wagner could not remember leaving Gretchen’s side, or why she had done it. She was having a hard time thinking about anything. It was as if she were walking in a dream. She was in a room in the castle she could not place. She wasn’t sure she had been here before, even though her husband had showed her the whole building.
She was in a sitting room of some sort. There were very nice plush sofas and wingback chairs. Small tables were here and there, some stacked with books, others holding crystal candelabra filled with dark red wax candles. The room had no windows, but long faded tapestries adorned most of the walls, and the far wall was covered in long velvet drapes—a deep burgundy, like the candles around the room.
She took a few steps into the room, her legs seeming to float more than walk. She hadn’t made any conscious decision to move further into the strange room. She had still been wondering where she was. That she found herself moving, and that she had not made the decision to do so, was disorienting. A wave of vertigo washed over her; she felt nauseous and she thought she might lose her balance and fall over on her face. Yet her legs continued to glide across the room, bringing her toward the dark velvet drapes.
She paused in front of the thick material, as if she were unsure what to do next, but her mind was still grappling with why she was doing any of this at all. It all felt slightly off, as if she were in a dream. Then, unknown to her, her own arms had moved and grasped the curtains. She quickly flung them apart, and they slid silently on their runners.
On the other side of the curtains was another drawing room, with more sofas. It was an extension of the room she had just left. But this room had fewer candles lighting it, so the shadows crept and played at the recesses of the room. She took a half step into the room, her hands still not under her control. She stopped.
In the middle of the room stood a man.
His eyes burned like twin winter suns, the small glowing coals at the center making the whites around them glow with a misty radiance.
His dark hair fell down his forehead, and his lips were drawn tight across his face. Those lips held no expression, a crack in a wall of alabaster pale skin.
The man was dressed in a dark suit of some kind, but Anneli found it hard to look at any part of the man but his eyes. Those glowing eyes. As if they commanded her to look directly at them. She once again tried to move of her own volition and found that she could not. Something else was controlling her movements, like she was a marionette. She no longer thought she was in a dream. That feeling was wrong. It was this man’s doing. Somehow, in some way, he was moving her limbs for her. She knew that, but her mind could not examine the idea, as if it were covered in slippery grease, and each time she tried to touch the thought, it slid away from her.
At the edge of her vision, she could see the space around them, and the shadows reaching out from the corners and wrapping themselves around the man, to blend into the dark shoulders of his suit. For this man, the shadows were alive.
Anneli Wagner stood transfixed by the curtains, her blue eyes glazed over and her breath coming in bursts. His eyes took up the greater portion of her vision, and she felt herself attracted to those eyes, while at the same time repulsed from them. She wanted to look away, but she also wanted to look deeper. To fall away inside the fiery pits in the center of this man’s glowing orbs. She felt his desire, a tangible thing, looming and full of jagged spikes and thorns. This man—this creature—would devour her. It would consume her completely.
She lifted her head higher, standing as erect as possible, again, the movement not her own. As she stretched, she could feel the tiny silver cross between her breasts being pulled up from its hiding spot in her yellow evening gown, as it was tugged by the thin silver necklace.
The movement caught the man’s attention and he turned his glowing coal eyes away from hers for just a second. The spell was broken.
He shrieked and recoiled from the sight of the necklace, the shadows around him moving into a dancing frenzy. His body swept back into the darkness at the far end of the room, as if a strong gale wind had just blown him aloft on its currents.
“Anneli!” someone was calling, far in the distance.
The man’s eyes snapped up again, this time catching her own so forcefully, that she felt her soul wrenched inside her body. The eyes were burning now with a mixture of pain, desire, and seething anger. Farther away she heard her name being called once again.
Then the eyes snapped shut, and she felt herself released entirely from the grasp of the man’s powers. Her body slumped downward to the floor. She realized that she had not been standing erect, but rather, her feet had not even been touching the ground! She had been floating off the floor by at least a few inches. Her mind was her own again, and her thoughts, feelings, and movements were completely back in her control.
She looked up from the floor to the far wall, but the shadows and the man were both gone.
“ANNELI!” Her husband was near and calling desperately for her.
Filled with an energy she had not known since before her deceased daughter’s birth, she sprang to her feet and rushed back through the curtains and out of the sitting room into a hallway. Andreas was at the far end of it, and she called out to him. He whirled and came running to her. They embraced, and he pulled her away from him to look in her eyes. She saw only love and concern in his.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“I saw him,” she spoke aloud.
Chapter 22
Andreas Wagner was so stunned that his wife had used her voice that he hardly registered what she had said.
“You spoke!” His smile stretched across his face until it hurt.
“I saw him, Andreas. Count Dracula. He… He is not a good man,” she said. She looked scared and confused.
“Did he hurt you? Are you alright?” Wagner was suddenly angry, his elation at his wife learning to speak forgotten, and he stepped into the room from which she had just come, looking for the Count. It was too much. All the strange occurrences, then Gretchen’s sickness, and now to hear that there really was something wrong with his absentee host.
“No, no. He didn’t touch me. He has left. The room is empty,” she told Wagner, as he came back out into the hallway. “Still, he is very frightening. I think we should leave.”
“We are just about to. Come, we need to get back to Fritz and Gretchen,” he said, pulling her with him as he strode down the hallway. But she was moving faster and broke into a run for the stairs. He sped up to keep pace with her, and they both ran to Gretchen’s room without another word between them.
When they reached Gretchen’s chamber, Fritz was beside the bed, holding her hand. She was awake, but she looked weak. She smiled slowly when they came into the room. “Hello,” she said, but it sounded as if the simple word had taken most of her energy to mutter.
“You are a
wake,” Wagner began, some small sliver of hope returning. But then Fritz turned to look at him, and the hope was dashed. He looked grave, and the set of the man’s jaw indicated that although Gretchen seemed well, she really was not. Plus, Fritz was beginning to look a little pale himself.
Anneli stepped ahead to greet Gretchen, and Fritz got up from his chair to come over to Wagner.
“We need to move. Now. She is very ill,” Fritz spoke softly, so that only Wagner could hear. “I think she is trying to appear strong, but I can see it. I know her. She’s still getting worse.”
“I’ll go now. You aren’t looking well either, Fritz.” Wagner patted his friend on the shoulder.
“I’m quite tired. But I need to come and get the carriage ready. Let’s go.”
The men raced out into the hall and down the stairs to the main foyer. They went straight to the massive front door with its dark banded wood. But when Wagner pulled at the latch, the door refused to budge. He was so used to flinging that door open, throwing some of his strength into doing so because it was heavy, that he nearly hurt himself jerking on the thing, only to not have it move an inch.
He pulled a second time.
“What is it?” Fritz asked.
“The door… It’s locked. It’s never been locked before.” Wagner said, as he pulled out his ring of keys. He had marked several of them with colored string, so he knew which keys went where, but he had never discovered the purpose of all of them—he had more keys than he had found doors. But he also didn’t know which key fit the front door to the castle. It had always been unlocked, and he had never thought to test his unmarked keys on it.