by Derek Milman
I don’t say anything. Hugo looks toward the castle, clearly starving and freezing, like me, but I can’t move yet. So Hugo rests a heavy hand on my shoulder and just stands there, as if guarding me, and when I fail to move, he remains; he doesn’t ever take his hand off my shoulder until what feels like hours later, when I finally unstick my butt from the icy metal step and walk silently toward the castle. Hugo follows me at a respectable distance without a word of complaint or so much as an impatient sigh.
“What is . . . effervescence?” says Oren, wincing at his defenseless audience, having lost his train of thought for the eighth time. The room has gotten so hot and stuffy. I rub my eyes. Christ, Oren. It’s the shit they put in soda.
Oren blathers on about our dad’s love of filmmaking, going on tangent after tangent, one tangent splintering off into subtangents, touching on everything from our dad’s childhood in a small Romanian village to Italian horror to seventies-era slasher films, to the world going digital to—for some reason I’ll never know—C86, a little-known British genre of jangly indie music from the mid-eighties.
It’s like Oren barely knew our dad. He’s not memorializing him like a son, he’s celebrating him like a biographer, or worse . . . a fan. Oren is so removed from who our dad was as a human being, his mind so muddled and incapable of sustaining a single line of focused thought, that his eulogy just becomes this flood of mental puking, which is painful to watch. He might as well be reciting our dad’s Wikipedia page.
Finally, mentioning a few of our father’s proudest moments on celluloid (after briefly digressing into Harriet Tubman’s early life, and rising real estate prices in the Bay Area), he gathers his papers, nods to everyone grimly, and leaves the podium.
Since Oren requested he be the only one to speak, the exhausted mourners all stand up as one and hurriedly make their way out of the music room like Oren might at any moment change his mind and realize he never got around to debating the environmental impacts of fracking, or exploring the various conspiracies surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
Chapter Three
The Two-A.M. Succubus
EVERYONE’S ADJOURNED TO THE GREAT DINING ROOM IN THE LUGOSI Wing of the castle, where pastries and other hors d’oeuvres have been set up on a black tablecloth draped over the long oak table. Silver candelabras drip wax. A fire rages in the marble fireplace, flickering moodily off the plum damask walls. There’s a commissary on the basement floor where everyone usually eats, but the main dining room is used for special occasions, like premieres or the occasional birthday party.
And now, of course, the reception for my dad’s live funeral.
I try to avoid everyone awkwardly picking at the food and murmuring condolences to me, and I find the bar toward the back of the room. I grab a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and pour a healthy amount over some ice. I drink it down fast and relish the burning in my gut. Franklin wanders by to tell me that tomorrow morning will be the official reading of the will, and everyone is hoping I’ll spend the night in the castle.
Of course, with everything else going on, I didn’t think about a will, and that there’d be an actual reading of it. But that’s what people do before they die, I guess—leave wills. I obviously won’t be mentioned in it, and everyone hoping I’ll spend the night here—when that was not my original plan, as Jude could tell anyone—seems like Moldavia already trying to exert its influence over me.
And there it is again. As a kid, I always ascribed anthropomorphic qualities to Moldavia itself and all of its inhabitants, as if they were one collective force, tugging at me. The fact that I’m doing this again, and so soon, makes me uncomfortable.
“Look, I should really get back tonight,” I tell Franklin.
“Arrangements have already been made with the orphanage,” he says. “And with your school.”
I crunch down hard on an ice cube and grind it. I like Franklin a whole lot, but what’s up with no one consulting me on spending the night here and missing school?
“I apologize,” says Franklin. “It’s one night. We’ll have you back before noon.”
I’m too drained to make this into a thing. I ask him where exactly I’ll be sleeping, and of course he tells me in my old room, and that it’s already been prepared for me. “Are you all right, Dario?”
I chug the rest of my drink down. “I mean . . . I’ve had better days?”
“Of course.”
I look for a place to put my empty glass down. Every available surface would automatically absorb me into a group conversation I do not want to have right now, and I’m getting more and more irritated that now I’m being forced to spend the night. I think part of me is afraid I won’t be able to escape. “I just wasn’t expecting to spend the night,” I say. “I didn’t bring anything.”
“We’ll take care of that,” he says. Then a caterer grabs his elbow and asks him something stupid about shrimp, and he’s off somewhere else. I take the opportunity to make a beeline out of there. I can’t deal with Oren right now, or anyone else from the Moldavia inner circle. I just want to be very alone.
I put my glass down on an end table and veer down the dark wood–paneled halls, trying to dodge the onslaught of memories, which come faster, in sneakier ways now. It’s like being slapped in the face repeatedly by an unseen force. I stop at the bottom of the red-carpeted grand staircase, in the great hall of the Corman Wing, which leads up to the master bedroom suites that once housed our immediate family and other highly ranked Moldavia staff like Franklin, Mistress Moonshadow, and Hugo and his family.
Hayley stands at the top of the staircase, ten years old, wearing a black dress. She rolls a green marble down the stairs. I watch as it slowly bounces down, like a glass planet ripped from its solar system. When it reaches the bottom, I pick it up and clasp it in my fist. She clambers down and stands in front of me. “My dad loved you,” she says.
“I loved him back,” I tell her. I want to say so much more, say just how sorry I am, but I’m feeling too much, and I can’t express it all. I don’t know how.
Aida, Hayley’s mom, sees us from the top of the staircase and hurries down. She’s so pretty, with her thick mane of strawberry-blonde hair, eyes the color of a spring garden, this sprinkle of freckles around her nose. Her slight, lilting Dublin accent always calms me. She kisses me on the forehead. “Come on, sweetie—we have to go,” she tells her daughter, taking her hand. “Dario’s dad needs him. We’ll see him later.”
Both of them look back at me over their shoulders as they walk off.
My room is barren because I never really had much—no books or toys or video games. And not to be too Oliver Twisty about it, but not much was ever really mine. I never had stuff. I didn’t have model airplanes dangling from the ceiling or rock band posters on the walls—the crap kids always have in movies. What I did have I took to Keenan House. The rest went into storage somewhere deep in the bowels of the castle.
I always liked my room, though. It’s big, yet cozy, and unchanged: same thick scarlet rug, same antique four-poster bed, and spindly lamps, props from old Moldavia movies set in haunted mansions. My worn leather armchair is still here too, in a far corner. The cathedral ceiling is a refreshing change of pace from my claustrophobic dorm room, and so is the walk-in closet, with its wide shelves and lemony light.
An armoire with little doors and drawers is the only other piece of furniture in here. Tall windows overlook the grounds; outside I can see the candles surrounding my dad’s gravesite flickering in the night. For a moment I think maybe my dad didn’t die, or isn’t dead yet, and the wind will carry his screams from below ground, begging to be dug up. I shudder that thought away fast.
A cordless phone sitting on the floor actually works. I call Keenan and get Jude on the phone. He’s out of breath. He was probably boxing. I explain the situation, that I’ll be spending the night. There’s a long silence. But then he says softly: “And how are you doing, are you okay?”
I sit on the edge of the
bed and run a hand through my hair. A tough question, considering all the shades of bedlam I experienced today. “I’m surviving.”
And that’s all I say. I don’t want to get into everything. He’ll get all worked up, protective and shit, which I can’t deal with right now. Plus, I think I am holding up pretty well, all things considered. There are lots of memories here—good ones, bad ones, whatever; it doesn’t matter. Soon I’ll be putting this place behind me again.
“Make sure you get home tomorrow,” says Jude. “Call me if there’s a problem.”
“I will.” There’s a knock at my door. “Okay. I should go.”
I hang up the phone and open the door. A sweaty, nervous little kid is standing in the hall wearing a jacket and tie. “I have your kit, sir.”
I blink at him. “You have my what? Who are you?”
“I’m Gavin, I’m an intern, and Franklin wanted me to get you settled.”
“We have interns?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir? My name is Dario.”
“I know, sir. May I?”
Gavin enters, and I follow him into my bathroom. The white-tiled walls are spotless, as is the bottle-green floor. Wow, my very own bathroom that doesn’t smell like days-old urine; honestly, this is probably what I miss most about this place.
Gavin, who can’t be more than ten or eleven years old, has opened this leather shaving kit and is placing each item on a fluffy towel beside the sink: a razor and shaving cream, a bar of soap, a tube of bath gel, a striped wooden toothbrush, a box of toothpaste, a tub of turquoise pomade, a jar of strawberry breath mints—on and on it goes. As I watch this kid arranging everything so fastidiously, I suddenly wonder if I’m supposed to tip him. “Uh. That should do it.”
He looks up at me. “Sorry about your father, sir.”
“Thank you. You don’t need to call me—”
Gavin suddenly puts two hands over his eyes and stifles a sob—literally, a goddamn sob. I take a step back, nearly tripping over the edge of the bathtub. I have no idea what’s going on. Why is this kid crying? I haven’t even cried once today.
“Uh. Are you okay?”
Hands still clapped over his face, Gavin gulps and then starts making these awful heaving sounds: huh, heh, huh, heh, heh, heh, huggghh . . .
I stand there, helpless. I’m five seconds away from walking out and just leaving him in here, when he immediately stops and composes himself. He takes his hands off his face, revealing red eyes filled with overflowing tears.
“If there’s anything else you need, sir, just let me know.”
“How would I—”
But he’s already rushed out of the bathroom. I look at all the luxe grooming products neatly laid out for me by the sink.
What the hell was that?
My bed is soft and so much higher off the ground than I’m used to. It’s strange being in it again. As my eyes get heavy, I have the oddest thought: Why does it feel like I’m somewhere far away and totally unfamiliar, instead of back home? Did this place ever feel like home to me?
Home, Hayley said on the phone. Is that what you still call it?
When I wake up, it feels like minutes later. There’s something in my room.
It takes me a moment to remember where I am and everything that’s happened: There was a funeral. My dad exploded. I’m back in my old bed.
There’s a sifting sound. I roll out of bed, but it’s too dark to see anything. It sounds like a colony of bats is clustering on the ceiling. I really, really hate bats.
I crawl toward the nearest lamp and switch it on; a single one of these things casts only a sliver of the palest light—but just enough to illuminate the outline of the actual succubus suspended from my ceiling. I’ve never screamed so loud in my life.
Every defense mechanism kicks into gear but in the most awkward way possible. I lie flat, stiff as a board, arms clamped to my sides as if trying to camouflage myself into the carpet and disguise all movement. My panicking brain has no idea what predator it’s trying to defend against. But now it’s too late.
She descends from a low-hanging cloud of rippling black smoke, covered in rainstorm-colored strips of decayed skin, her face bone white, her eyes a glaring, sulfurous yellow. Her long black hair streams behind her. When she parts her gangrenous lips, she bares demonic fangs. She hisses, and I feel her acid breath burning my face off. As I prepare to be dragged, faceless and deformed, to the underworld, I spot wires and a harness behind her and finally recognize the pretty sophisticated makeup.
It’s Elena: Mistress Moonshadow.
She lowers down until she’s only an inch away from my face.
“Oh. My. God.”
“Dario,” she purrs as I lie there, petrified. “It’s good to see you home again.”
It takes me five whole minutes of slithering around on my belly to turn on each separate lamp so I can finally see. Then I stand, shakily. “Come out from there.” I wave her out from behind the door, where’s she’s hiding, hissing, still in character, as if even these low-watt bulbs will melt her into oblivion. She peeks her head out.
“You set up a . . . fly system in here while I was asleep?” I ask.
She glides into the center of my room, right over to me, her gaze hungry and intense enough to keep my blood pumping. “It’s a basic pendulum system. I’m playing Silvana the Succubus in No Chance in Hell, which we’re finishing production on. I wanted to see how effective her getup was.”
“Uh, pretty effective. And don’t worry, I didn’t really want those ten extra years of my life.”
She flashes me a fangy grin, but it lacks its usual bite. Her outfit looks like someone’s weird destroyed shower curtain. Shine a bright light on anything around here and it’ll crumble before your eyes; I always have to remind myself of that. “I’m sorry about your father, Dario,” she says, a tremor creeping into her voice. She takes my chin in her hand, appraising. “You’re a handsome young man,” she says. “You turned out well. You look just like Lucien.”
She sits on my leather armchair, removing her wig. The sexy dark gleam is gone, turned off. Just like that. Now she just kind of looks like a sad, middle-aged Goth who’s wearing too much makeup, which she removes, mirror-free, in circular swipes with a pink cloth. It’s like she’s getting older and erasing herself at the same time. “I don’t know what to do,” she says, with a sigh. She rests the cloth against her knee. “Honestly, Dario, I’m a little afraid.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.” Her vulnerability seems so unnatural.
“Actors are superstitious creatures. I’ve only been Mistress Moonshadow through your father’s lens, through his eyes.”
“Yeah, but you created what you are.”
I remember a review of a movie Elena was in called Death Every Morning, where she played a bloodsucking femme fatale. The reviewer said she was the only actress in modern cinema “with the true and absolute ability to creep like a cat—making us rejoice in feeling equally delicious and in mortal danger at the same time.”
“Everything at Moldavia was a collaboration with Lucien,” she explains. “We’re used to being directed, told where to stand, how we’ll be lit, how we’ll live, how we’ll die—until we’re all resurrected, and do it again for the next film. Do you think we know how to function without him here, guiding us?”
That hadn’t occurred to me. With my dad gone, people might not even know how to exist here. The actors, at least, have spent their whole lives as these wacky characters. Do they even know who they are as real people anymore?
I walk around the room, turning off a few lights, because it suddenly seems too bright in here, which seems an affront to Mistress Moonshadow. Then I plop down on the floor, in the middle of the room, rubbing my lower back. “Who is going to be directing the films now that my dad is gone?”
“You should talk to your brother about that,” she replies.
I nod, picking at the carpet. “Okay. But you still managed to scare the crap
out of me. I literally almost had a heart attack and died right there on the floor.”
She stands, examining her shiny long black fingernails. “That means a lot.” She sighs. “I think I’ll head to bed. Would you be a gentleman and escort me to my room?”
“It would be my pleasure.” I jump to my feet, link her arm, and lead her to the door. When I open it, I scream even louder than before.
Gavin is standing there, right outside my door, all still and intense.
I’m literally clutching my chest like an old lady. “What are you doing out here?”
“To see if you needed anything, sir.”
“Have you been standing outside my room all night?”
He looks down at his feet.
“You don’t need to stand out here,” I say. “Don’t you have your own room?”
“Down the hall, sir,” he says meekly.
“Stop calling me sir. And go to bed. I’m fine.”
“But Franklin said I should see if you needed anything.”
“He didn’t mean for you to just stand there all night! That’s creepy, dude.”
The kid looks sheepish; he really wants to please.
I frown. “Didn’t you hear me screaming?”
“Yes. But I didn’t want to bother you.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Right. Well, just go to bed,” I tell him. “Really. I’ll find you if I need you.” He still doesn’t move. “Shoo. Shoo!” I wave him away, and keep waving, until he finally retreats down the hall.
I walk Mistress Moonshadow to her suite. The front room is bathed in a peachy glow from vintage tripod movie lights standing in the corners. Everything is draped in shimmering, gunmetal-gray fabric, hanging from the ceiling like sails, and wrapped around several white mannequins scattered around the room. Pieces of black, purple, and gold costuming hang from brass hooks on the walls. I laugh a little, ’cause c’mon.