Even in the capital city of Bucharest there had been very little color. Needless to say, there was no neon, and the people’s clothes were black or white. Occasionally there was a little red and blue mixed in.
After I got tired of Romanian cuisine, we did some checking and found a Chinese restaurant. I was delighted to go there, and I saw there were lots of items on the menu. It was in English, so I could basically understand it. I told a man who looked like the manager, “I want this, and this, and this.” Saying nothing, he pointed to two items on the menu. Apparently he meant, “This is all we have.” Well, it was better than nothing.
I told the people at the national travel bureau that I wanted to go to Transylvania, but the middle-aged woman at the counter coldly told me that taxis wouldn’t go outside the city, as I mentioned earlier. Apparently a second, kinder middle-aged woman pitied me, and if she hadn’t got a taxi for me, I probably wouldn’t have made it out there. The interpreter I requested was beautiful and friendly, and the taxi driver was also a cheerful fellow. On straight stretches of highway, he’d get the car up to a hundred miles per hour and take his hands off the wheel to surprise us (my wife was with me). Over two days, our lovely guide showed us Bran Castle, Targoviste, and Transylvania’s Castle Dracula (The same castle where Tepes’s wife throws herself from the battlements in Coppola’s film Bram Stoker’s Dracula).
So, having seen the major sites, my general feeling was, “Oh, not again.” Of course, by nature I dislike traveling, and that may have played a large part in it, too. However, I accepted the offer and flew from Narita to Paris, then from Paris to Bucharest.
The rest of the story will have to wait until the next volume . . .
Hideyuki Kikuchi
November 18, 2009
while watching Bram Stoker’s Dracula
EXECUTION DAY
CHAPTER 1
I
The device that’d been built in the village square for the execution was known as a guillotine. At the top of a fifteen-foot frame a heavy steel blade was set, and when the executioner released the attached rope, the blade dropped onto the neck of the condemned bent over beneath it. It was believed to be named after its inventor, and while it was said that he himself fell victim to the guillotine, the veracity of that claim was unknown.
“I’ve seen them a number of times, but when it comes to be your turn, it’s really pretty creepy,” Juke said from over by the window.
“It sure as hell is,” Sergei agreed, sitting on the edge of the lowest mattress of the triple-decker bunk bed. Gordo was sleeping there. Being a woman, Rosaria was in the cell across from them. They were all in the village jail.
“If I’d known this was gonna happen, I’d have sold a little more of our stock on the side and used the money to really live it up.”
“You seem to know all kinds of weird things. Isn’t there anything you can do?” Juke said to Sergei, giving the bars across the window a good smack.
“Not a blessed thing. The clowns from the village really went through my stuff good and cleaned me out,” Sergei said, showing Juke the palms of both hands. By that, he meant he didn’t have anything.
“What’ll happen to the goods in our wagon?” he asked.
“If these guys don’t pilfer everything, they’ll either deliver it somewhere or have someone come get it. Or they’ll just say we were hit by bandits and make the whole thing disappear.”
“Damn, this is a hell of a mess we’ve gotten into.”
Sergei got up, walked over to the iron bars facing the corridor, and leaned against them.
“Is Rosaria gonna get the ol’ whooosh, ka-chuuung, too?” he said, striking the back of his neck with the side of his hand.
Juke nodded. “On account of they think she’s one of us. If they suspect anyone’s ever had anything to do with the Nobility, then they get no mercy; it don’t matter if they’re injured, a woman, a kid, or what have you.”
“Forget about the Nobility. In a case like this, humans are a lot more savage. At least all they do is drink your blood. I asked a guy who’d been bitten about it, and he said that partway through it, it felt pretty good. Man, I envy that Gordo. If they chop his head off the way he is now, he’ll get an easy death without ever knowing anything about it,” Sergei muttered, and he actually did sound envious right to the core of his being.
Just then, there was the sound of a door unlocking and the creak of hinges. A number of footsteps could be heard crossing the stone floor and coming their way.
Preceding a couple of sturdy-looking villagers who were apparently the jailers was Mayor Camus. Her pale, aged countenance was in stark contrast to the black satin dress she wore. Needless to say, no one there knew that inside she was actually Dr. Gretchen, poison fiend extraordinaire.
“What a sty!” she said, waving one hand before her nose as she gave Juke and Sergei an icy stare. “Your execution will be conducted precisely at high noon. Just remember: at that exact moment, the guillotine will fall on the neck of one of you.”
Though Juke asked her to spare Rosaria, he was met with a laugh.
Glancing out of the corner of her eye at the young lady who slumbered behind the opposite set of bars, she said, “She’s one of you—and that’s all there is to it.”
“You cruel old bitch!” Sergei shouted. His anger was so great that he rattled the bars violently. “Who gains anything by that girl being beheaded? Let her live. If you don’t, I’ll come back as a ghost and wring the fuck out of that baggy old neck of yours!”
“Such language,” Mayor Camus said, grimacing. She looked at him like he was a lowly savage. “We can arrange to have you alone executed earlier. Wouldn’t you like to live even a little bit longer?”
“Shut your hole, you lousy murderer,” he said, trying to reach through the bars and strangle her.
“Knock it off,” Juke said, pulling Sergei back by the shoulders to stop him.
“What kinda scheme are you cooking?” he then asked the mayor.
“Dear me, what a thing to say! I wonder if you’re suffering some sort of psychosis before your death.”
“You know me, right?” Juke asked the mayor as he stared into her eyes.
“Of course I do.”
“I know you, too. You’re just like I remember. On the outside, at least.”
“Oh, really?”
“You were a hard nut, but you weren’t the kind of monster who’d put an innocent girl in the guillotine without doing any checking at all. Are you the real thing?”
“What utter nonsense!” the mayor spat.
Juke didn’t catch the turbulence that flashed through her eyes.
Turning to the guards behind her, the mayor told them, “I wish to speak to these men alone. Remain outside until I call for you.”
Not surprisingly, the pair of jailers were somewhat bewildered.
“Go!” she asserted coldly, and with that they left.
The door closed. Quickly going over to it, the mayor ran her right hand around its edges, and then touched it to the keyhole. Her right hand then went into her gown and pulled out a small earthenware vessel of a muddy brown hue.
“You mean to tell me—” Juke groaned, guessing from that action alone that something wasn’t right.
“Be silent,” the old woman said as fingers like dead twigs took the lid off the vessel.
A pungent aroma filled the jail—a scent so dense it seemed to pollute each and every particle of air choked Juke and Sergei.
“G . . . g . . . guards!” they shouted, but their cries gave way to pained wheezing.
“My name is Mayor Camus. But my given name is Dr. Gretchen,” the old woman informed them in the alluring voice of a young woman. “I wonder if you might’ve heard of the woman who poisoned fifty thousand Nobles? At present, all my energies are devoted to ridding the world of the Hunter who calls himself D.”
Clinging to the bars, Juke and Sergei had already begun to slide down toward the floor.
Pois
on it wasn’t, but the aroma was that powerful—the scent alone effortlessly pushed their consciousness down into the darkness.
“No matter what you do . . . to us . . . D . . . won’t come,” Juke said, his voice nearly a death rattle.
“Is that what you believe? I’m of a different opinion,” the old woman jeered. The lid was back on the vessel. “I’ve recently become intimately familiar with his actions on the Frontier for the past few years. The details make my hair stand on end. He’s possessed of a cruel and callous mind the like of which isn’t to be found even among the Nobility. He’s even mercilessly stabbed into the chest of a young Noble as the child wept and pleaded to be spared. Ordinarily, he would never come to rescue you.”
Her wrinkled mouth twisted into a grin. Her lips were as glistening red as rubies.
“However, he is no Noble. His blood is filthy yet hot, like a human’s. And so long as that drives his flesh, he won’t be able to leave you to your fate. He’s certain to come to your rescue. And this village will be his grave.”
“Like hell . . . he . . . will,” Sergei said, and then he lost consciousness.
“Stay away . . . D,” Juke added. His hands came free of the bars, and he toppled in front of a broken chair.
“I took precautions to keep the smell from spilling outside,” the mayor remarked. “You’ve only begun to serve my purposes.”
The old woman’s unsightly hand reached for the lock; it came free with surprising ease. Catching it so it wouldn’t make a sound, she set it down on the floor and entered the trio’s cell.
Looking down at the slumped forms of Juke and Sergei, she said, “What a vulgar pose!”
They were bent over not unlike men offering up prayers.
In her hand the old woman held three vessels.
“Each has a different effect. If by some chance you should be rescued, D shall find himself forced to fight me on four fronts. And if you aren’t rescued—well, I also have a plan for that contingency.”
And then she took the vessels and poured their contents into the mouths of the three men. Three different aromas mixed in the air, creating a mysterious scent.
After she finished with the sleeping Gordo, the old woman put the lock back where it’d been and went to the opposite side of the corridor—where she entered Rosaria’s cell.
As she took the lid off a fourth vessel, she felt something on the nape of her neck.
“Huh?”
She turned to look, but there was no one there. Although she’d gotten the feeling she was being watched, apparently she’d been mistaken.
“How unfortunate,” said the mayor. “I can’t even spare you, Sleeping Beauty.”
A golden liquid was poured between the young woman’s blood-less lips.
Presently, Mayor Camus grinned like a little girl and called for the guards, but after she’d left, a certain figure appeared without warning in the narrow passageway. It looked for all the world like Rosaria. But wasn’t that Rosaria lying there in one of the prison beds?
Though the figure in the corridor gazed quietly but forlornly at her own sleeping self, her eyes suddenly became clear with intent and she started forward without a sound. Ahead of her lay a stone wall. Moving without hesitation, she was just about to hit that wall when the door in it opened and a guard came in. It was time for his appointed rounds. For an instant the two figures overlapped, then parted again. Rosaria had passed right through the man.
“Huh?” the jailer exclaimed, turning around, but by then Rosaria had already disappeared through the stone wall. Trembling, he slapped himself with both hands. He then went over to Rosaria’s cell with long strides, peered in, and got a relieved look on his face.
“Must’ve drunk too much of those Tudor spirits,” the jailer said, speaking aloud the most common explanation when a brush with the unbelievable threatened to fracture the mind. He then slumped back against the bars and let out a deep breath.
The smell that’d hung in the air had vanished without a trace.
“I don’t know what it is, but I get the feeling this isn’t gonna go off well,” the man said. Like his life up until now, his tone was small and timid, but somehow he had absolute faith in these words.
II
The leaden clouds that covered the sky at dawn still lazed about as noon approached, showing no intention at all of moving on. Thinking of the ceremony to come and the odious tasks in its wake, some of the men and women in the village had dour expressions, and they were busily scolding the children who ran around like mad. The guillotine that they’d worked through the night to erect towered proudly in the square, with a thick, sharp blade sitting at the top of two wooden uprights. In the simple hut beside it, the executioners sat sipping coffee and looking disdainful.
Ten minutes before the execution, Juke and Sergei were led out of the jail. Rosaria and Gordo had jailers on either side of them to hold them up. The road to the square had been packed on both sides with villagers. Their eyes gleamed with excitement—out on the amusement-starved Frontier, even a grisly death was a wonderful show. As the four condemned and their jailers moved, the people moved with them. Some acted up a bit, swinging axes and knives, but the guards carrying firearms soon put an end to that.
Mayor Camus stood before the guillotine. In her heart of hearts, she didn’t really know if D would show up. There’d been no way to let him know for certain the day and time of the execution, and despite what she’d told Juke and Sergei the previous night, she wasn’t entirely convinced he would come to their rescue. She’d intentionally postponed the execution one day so that D might learn about it. She couldn’t say for sure that this would work . . . which meant that these four would be decapitated for no reason at all, but this terrifying woman wasn’t concerned by that. If that came to pass, slaying D by her own hand would become problematic, but she possessed overwhelming self-confidence.
The Duke of Xenon and Grand Duke Mehmet were, of course, thickheaded men who’d attained their positions through brute strength alone. They lacked intellect; this was no longer an era when muscle was pitted against muscle. And the way Dr. Gretchen saw it, D was the same as those two, in which case her own wisdom would more than suffice for slaying him. All that remained was to cross paths with him. She’d think of another way to take care of him when she did.
The four prisoners reached the bottom of the scaffold. The hue of the clouds seemed to grow a good deal duller and heavier.
“There’s no point in a whole lot of useless chatter. Let’s get right to it,” declared Mayor Camus. “First will be—”
“Me,” Juke said, puffing his chest.
“We’ll start with the girl.”
“You bitch—what are you, a Noble?” Juke shouted as he tried to grab hold of the old woman, but the jailers promptly wrestled him down. “Kill me first! Do the woman later.”
“This is hardly the place for a display of manly compassion,” Mayor Camus said frostily, taking the chin of the limp Rosaria in hand and raising her face. “Fast asleep. It would be best for her if we got this over quickly, while she remains so. Set her up.”
“Stop!”
Juke and Sergei continued to protest, but they were held hand and foot, and there was nothing they could do as Rosaria went up the wooden stairs, supported by a man on either side. There were thirteen stairs.
On reaching the top, one of the jailers lifted the upper lunette, a wooden bar that had an opening in the center of its lower side. An eight-inch-thick log that’d been brought out expressly for this purpose was set in the hollow in the lower beam, and then the upper one was lowered again. After locking both halves in place, the jailer quickly made his way over to a wooden lever.
A stir went through the crowd like a wave, and it brought a silence that spread across the square.
Well aware of the spectators’ gaze, the jailer waited a moment before pulling the lever. The sound of the falling blade mixed with that of friction from the rope. When the protruding section of the lo
g was cleanly bisected and fell into the basket below, a cry of excitement went up from the crowd, which was clearly impressed.
Raising one hand to acknowledge the throng, the jailer went over to his partner—who’d been drilling him with an envious stare—and with his help bent Rosaria over before the lunettes. The entire process of setting her in place in the same manner as the log was carried out in an extremely professional manner.
Once more, silence returned to the square. Nothing had disrupted the event yet, and everyone hoped the same could be said for the rest of it.
Needless to say, lookouts had been posted around the village, their eyes agleam to keep from missing even the smallest thing. Not so much as an insect was to get through.
The jailer’s hand grabbed hold of the lever. He gave it a rough pull. An atrocious whine dropped from heaven toward the earth.
This was the moment.
The guillotine floated up into the air, scaffold and all. Even the supports that were sunk in the ground pulled free with ease, and the soil they sent flying followed right along after them. A black hole had suddenly appeared in the sky fifteen feet above the guillotine. Before the villagers had even noticed it, the hole began sucking up everything in the area: the guillotine, its blade, Rosaria, and even the jailers on the platform. Still not knowing what was happening, Juke and Sergei also floated up into the air. Unwilling to relent, their jailers started after the men.
Mayor Camus alone saw what was really happening.
“A space eater?” she muttered.
Grand Duke Mehmet alone could control them. Was he interfering with the execution?
“Don’t let them—” the mayor began to shout, but she gave up before she got to the word escape.
Not even the space eater in question knew where its hole would lead. The end of time or the bowels of the earth—wherever it went, anything sucked into it now would be lost forever.
Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Parts One and Two Page 28