by Dacre Stoker
The three of us shook our heads.
“But clearly they were important to her.” He closed the sketchpad and handed it back to Matilda. “The purpose of these maps will present itself in time, as is always the case. Of that I am confident. Until then, keep them safe.”
Vambéry turned to Thornley. “You mentioned a book? Our reason for gathering?”
Bram retrieved the book they had found in Patrick O’Cuiv’s bodiless coffin, placed it in front of Vambéry, and turned to the first page. “Look at this date. The entire book is written in Ellen’s hand.”
“The twelfth of October 1654.” He raised the book to his nose and sniffed the pages, then inspected the binding. “The construction is correct for that period, so the book is at least that old, but there is no way to determine when she actually wrote in it.”
“Can you read it?” Matilda asked.
“Of course; this is written in my native Hungarian. Was your nanny from Hungary?”
“I always assumed she was Irish,” I replied, and as I looked to my brother and sister, it was clear they knew as little about Ellen’s history as I did.
Our blank stares gave Vambéry his answer. “If she was not from Hungary, it is an unusual choice of language for one’s diary. Most would default to German or a tongue closer to their own. Unless, of course, she wanted to keep these writings hidden from someone. Then employing such a language makes perfect sense.”
“Is that what this is?” Matilda asked. “A diary?”
Vambéry pulled a pair of spectacles from his right breast pocket, secured them to the bridge of his nose, and returned his attention to the pages in front of him, reading silently for nearly three minutes before speaking again; when he did speak, he placed his palm upon the book. “This is far more than a diary, my friends—I must read it to you.”
* * *
• • •
AT THIS POINT, the servant returned again and replaced our empty teakettle with a fresh one, then topped off our cups before leaving us. Although the visit probably lasted no more than a minute, it felt as if an hour passed. When we were finally alone, Vambéry turned back to the first page and drew one of the lamps close to the text. “I will do my level best with the translation. If something is unclear to you, please stop me so we can review in more depth.”
Not a breath could be heard as he began to read aloud.
“She lived many years ago in southern Ireland near Waterford. A legendary beauty, with the reddest lips and pale blond hair. Her true name has long since been lost, but at the time her beauty was known far and wide. Men traveled great distances, not only for the chance to gaze upon her but in hope of winning her hand in marriage. It is said her outward beauty was no match for the beauty she held within. She was the brightest of spirits. She lived alone with her father, her mother having passed in childbirth.
“This beautiful, well-natured girl fell in love with a local peasant. His name, too, has been forgotten, but he was a true match for her in all things; he was handsome, kindhearted, a gentleman by any measure, but he lacked the one feature this beautiful girl’s father cared about above all others—money. As it does today, money dictated one’s place in society, and her father knew the only way to elevate the family name was to marry his daughter into a family of wealth. Because the peasant boy would never be rich and therefore could not bring the family the standing her father wished, she was forbidden to marry him.
“The beautiful girl’s father instead arranged for her to marry a far older man, a man who promised the father great riches in exchange for the daughter’s hand. This suitor was known throughout the land for his cruelty and his wicked ways, but these deficits were of no concern to the father; he was blinded by the promise of wealth and the position he could attain amongst the local families. He soon forgot about his poor daughter, and most of the other villagers did, too. Her husband locked her away in his castle, barring contact with the outside world. He thrived on the knowledge that he possessed a treasure so sought after and reveled in keeping it locked away from all. She suffered tremendous abuse, mental and physical, at his relentless hand; he would hurt her for the sheer amusement of it, finding enjoyment in her cries of pain and lamentations of sorrow.
“And even though she was locked away, word of his tortures leaked out on the lips of his servants and visitors. It was said he was fond of bleeding her, inflicting tiny cuts along her perfect alabaster skin. When he finally tired of her, he would lock her away in a tower of his castle where no one would hear her sobs as she cried late into the night, waiting for her only true love, the peasant boy, to come and save her.
“As the days turned into weeks and then into months, her hope began to leave her. She would stand at the small slit in the wall, her only window, and watch the countryside for a sign of her beloved. But he never came. In her eleventh month, she refused to eat, throwing the rancid scraps of meat back at the servants who brought it to her, the stale bread, too. She vowed not to allow a single morsel to pass her lips, and she began to fade away to nothing but skin and bones. Two weeks later, she refused water as well, and soon she began to seethe and rage like a lunatic as dehydration worked through what remained of her failing body.
“On the first anniversary of her marriage to the evil tyrant, she pulled the stool from the corner of her room to the window and stood upon it, gazing out over the land, one last hope of seeing her love. When she found no sign, she climbed up onto the ledge. She was so thin now, so like a twig from a tree, she had no trouble fitting into the narrow space. She filled her mind with thoughts of her true love, a recollection of his smile as he gazed upon her, his hand upon hers, then cast herself from the tall tower window to the unforgiving rocks below. Three days would pass before anyone discovered her sorry shattered remains.
“I often wondered where her true love had been. Why had he not come for her? Why had he not rescued her? I later learned the girl’s husband, the evil tyrant, told the boy long before that if he were to step foot near the castle, she would be killed immediately. He dared not approach for fear of causing her death.
“The peasant boy spent all his waking hours, and nearly as many sleepless nights, trying to find a way to get to his beloved without endangering her, but the castle was secluded, perched high above the village on the edge of a great forest and surrounded by open fields and bogs. There was no way to approach without being seen. He wrote letters to her daily, hundreds of them, and put them in a box, hoping to find someone who might deliver them to her. But that day never came; she died a broken soul before he even made the attempt.
“It is said she renounced God as she plunged to her death, blaming Him for cursing her with an unloving father and an evil husband. She vowed a terrible vengeance upon all those who wronged her. Because she committed suicide, her soul was guaranteed never to know rest; she was doomed to spend eternity in torment.”
* * *
• • •
“LIKE THOSE in the suicide graves,” Matilda said.
“Exactly like those in the suicide graves,” said Bram.
“According to this account, she was buried in a suicide grave of sorts,” Vambéry said, before continuing on.
* * *
• • •
“WHEN HER TRUE LOVE learned of her death, he alone went to the base of the tower to retrieve her body and bring her to a final resting place within the village, but they would not permit him to bury her in the cemetery, in holy ground. He was forced to bury her behind the cemetery in a lonely plot of land. Although it was customary to pile rocks high upon the graves of the recently deceased, he could not bring himself to do so. His heart was broken, and he wanted to climb into that grave with her, not distance her further with stones and dirt. Instead, he buried her in the best dress he could procure and placed a single white rose upon her grave, vowing to visit her daily, a promise he could not make to her in life.
“Even in death, her evil husband would not end his torment. He, too, went to her grave, and seeing the rose, tore the petals from the stem. He cut himself on the thorns and cursed her further still as blood dripped from his fingertips to the soil of his wife’s grave. Then he tossed the remains of the flower aside, swearing he would do the same for any gifts he found at her gravesite. He wished her to be as lonely in death as she was in that final year of her life.
“That very night, not long after her husband left, she rose from her grave. Her fingers clawed through the earth and cast it aside, and she pulled herself out and stood there, free for the first time since her father married her away. It is said that the thoughts that had plagued her in her final moments, those twisted thoughts, clouded her mind and obscured the goodness she had always exhibited. Vengeance and hate flowed through her veins. Her beauty remained, though; in fact, when she rose that night, she was physically more beautiful than she had been in life, but with the heart of a monster. By the light of the rising moon, she made her way to her husband’s castle high atop the hill.
“A guard was posted at the lair’s gate, but as she approached the hapless sentry was mesmerized by her beauty, unable to speak at the sight of her. If he tried to stop her from passing, there was scant evidence, for no one heard him raise the alarm as he should have done. She just came upon the guard and offered a smile so radiant that he could not turn away; he could do nothing but stand there as she leaned in close and sank her teeth into the fleshy pulp of his neck and drank the life from his body. Eight others died as she made her way through the castle, not only guards but her husband’s cook and two of his servant girls as well, both of whom had observed her suffering over the course of that year without ever uttering a word of protest. She moved from chamber to chamber, taking each life she came upon, until she finally found herself at her husband’s apartments.
“Through all this, he slept. She had brought about all this death without allowing a single warning cry to escape from one of her victims. She crossed his bedchamber to the foot of his bed and glared down upon him, upon the sleeping form of the man who took her life, stripped her of all happiness, the man who drove her to death and brought her back black-hearted. She leaned into him, her breath icy, and whispered at his ear, ‘I missed you, my dearest.’ When he awoke, she smiled. Her once-beautiful dress was now covered in blood, drops of which fell upon him.
“While she had killed all her previous victims quickly, she wished for her husband to suffer as she had. Instead of giving him a swift bite to the neck, she bit him repeatedly, hundreds of bites all over his body until blood poured from him, drenching the sheets and mattress. When he was discovered shortly after dawn, he lived long enough to tell of what happened, then collapsed upon his mattress, his skin gray under the gleaming trails of blood. There was no sign of her, though; she had fled before the rise of the sun.
“The following night, she paid a visit to her father. He had been out at a pub and was quite drunk when he stumbled into his house—a very large house he purchased with the money he received from his daughter’s tyrant of a husband. He shuffled inside, forgetting to close the front door, and fell into a chair in front of the dwindling remains of a fire with a tall glass of aqua vitae in his hand.
“When his daughter appeared at the front door, he stared at her for a long while, so drunk he wasn’t sure what he saw was even real. He didn’t say anything to her, nor was he frightened. He only stared, his drink never far from his lips. When at last someone spoke, it was she: ‘I missed you, Father. I couldn’t bear another day without the sight of you, so I had to come back.’
“The sound of her sweet words startled him. Until that moment, he had thought of her as a mirage, but the voice made her real to him. He tried to stand up, nearly fell to the floor in the attempt, then collapsed back into the soft leather of the armchair with a grunt-filled laugh. ‘My daughter! My beautiful daughter! You have come home to see me!’
“His words were slurred, but she understood him well enough, and a smile graced her ruby lips.
“The blood from the previous night’s kills had vanished, her dress again the purest white, unblemished by death. She was truly a vision. Her flowing blond hair waved in the breeze, the moonlight shone brilliantly on her otherwise waxy skin. Her teeth were as white as her gown. And her eyes glowed. When she spoke again, her father looked up, his eyes bloodshot. ‘Father, it has been so long. And it is so cold and lonely out here. May I come in and warm myself by your fire?’
“Her father must have sensed something was amiss for even in his drunken state her request gave him pause. Studying her as she stood at the threshold of his ill-gotten house, he took another drink of aqua vitae, then replied, ‘Why can you not come in, then? Who is stopping you?’
“She remained at the door, looking in, but did not venture closer. It was then that he noticed something bizarre; even though her dress and hair moved with the breeze, the branches of the tree a few feet behind her did not. It was as if the air found purchase with her and nothing else. He again raised his glass to his lips, but this time he did not drink. Fear began to grow within his breast, and the haze brought on by the alcohol was little match for it. ‘My daughter is dead,’ he spat. ‘She cast herself down upon the rocks rather than service her husband as any good wife should. She is a disgrace upon this family. You are a disgrace upon this family. And you are not welcome here, whatever you may be.’
“His daughter stood there, unable to enter, the look of love upon her face transforming to one of hate, her eyes taking on the red of flaming embers. ‘If you will not welcome me in, I will wait out here for you. I have nothing but time.’
“‘I am a patient man, my daughter, with no reason to leave.’
“And he did not leave. He remained in that house; food was brought to him. And he dared not venture out even when he realized she only came during the hours of night. When daylight came, and she was nowhere to be seen, he supposed it was a trick to lure him outside.
“They continued this game for a full month. Each night he would open his front door and sit himself in front of the fire and wait for her, but he would never invite her in. They would speak only through the open door as he drank and cursed her in death with as much contempt as he had held for her in life. On the thirty-first night, something changed, and she did not appear. He opened the door as he always did and stared out into the night, but she never came. In the morning, he learned why: She had killed the boy who had been delivering food to him. His body was discovered in the middle of the street, drained of all blood.
“Still unwilling to leave the house even in daylight hours, her father shouted from his doorstep, ‘A gold piece to anyone who brings me food!’ A local farmer heard him in passing and agreed to the proposition. He went to the market, retrieved a bushel of fruit and vegetables, and returned with it not an hour later. The father promptly paid the farmer and instructed him to return every two days with the same produce, and the farmer happily agreed. He did not return, though; that night, the daughter killed the farmer, his wife, both their children, and the cattle that grazed on his land, leaving them all as bloodless husks. Upon the side of her father’s house, she wrote the words HE STARVES in blood. Word quickly spread. Anyone who aids this man would be brutally murdered by the ghost of his dead daughter, the Dearg-Due.
“As before, she returned to his open door each night and waited for him at the threshold, vowing to end his suffering if he invited her inside, but he would not. The townspeople gathered, too, standing at a distance, watching this phantom watching her father until she began to take them as well, one at a time, one each night, blaming everyone for abandoning her in that castle. Three more weeks went by, more than two dozen dead, and her father wasted away from the portly fellow he had become with his newfound wealth to nothing but skin and bones, yet he didn’t come out. Nor would he invite her in.
“The town slowly died around him. Fe
w people were willing to venture out even during the daylight hours, for though she was seen at her father’s house only during the lonely hours of the night, some swore they spotted her during the daylight hours, too, pacing atop the high battlements of the castle, and no one was willing to risk an encounter.
“On the fifty-eighth night, she was spotted crossing the threshold of her father’s house and stepping inside. A moment later, the most horrendous scream came from inside as she stared down at the dead body of her father. He had succumbed to starvation and passed. At his feet, she found a note scrawled in the shaking hand of a dying man. It read I SHOULD HAVE DROWNED YOU AT BIRTH, RIGHT AFTER YOU KILLED YOUR MOTHER.
“It was then she realized why her father hated her so—he blamed her for the death of his wife. He carried that hatred with him his entire life. It only grew as she got older and came into her beauty, a beauty matched only by her mother’s all those years earlier, a beauty that reminded him daily of the woman he lost at childbirth.
“When the Dearg-Due realized this truth, the anger which had burned within her so strong, the anger which snuffed out the beautiful light within her, began to fade as guilt took its place. Both her parents were dead at her hand, along with dozens of others victims, and none of this revenge filled the hole she felt in her heart. For the first time since rising from the dead, she thought of the peasant boy, she thought of her true love, and longed to be at his side. She wished for nothing more than to be held in his arms and whisked away from all this death. She left her father’s house, crossed the town square, and started across the fields to the peasant boy’s little hovel in the woods as the few remaining townsfolk watched her through the slits of closed shutters and from behind doors.
“She arrived at his cabin shortly after midnight. The moon was high and full in the night sky, casting a pale yellow light over the little clearing in which he lived. She found him sitting on the porch of his small home wrapped in a blanket to fend off the cool night air. Because she had killed just the previous night, drinking the blood of her victim, her cheeks were flushed and her skin warm. Her hair fluttered behind her, draped over her shoulders, over the flowing white gown he had dressed her in before burying her broken body. She was breathtaking, more stunning even than he remembered her in life. He watched as she approached, then motioned for her to sit on the bench at his side. ‘I knew you would come; it was only a matter of time before you came for me, too. I do not fear death, not if it will bring me closer to you.’