But Grandma wasn’t giving up that easily. “What about the police? And Evelyn? What are we going to tell them?”
Lily raised her hand, like at school. “I’ve got an idea,” she said. All eyes turned to her. “I ran away.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I ran away. The main problem is that my mom and the police think our disappearances are connected, right? And that somehow it’s all Sammy’s fault. We just have to separate the two. So we’ll say I ran away.”
“Mind telling us a little more about that?” asked Grandpa warily.
“Let’s say I was really in love with Jennifer’s brother Nelson, and I decided to run away to visit him at summer camp. On the way there, I realized what I was doing was stupid, so I turned around and came home. Nothing to do with my dumb cousin!” She grinned at Sam.
“Running away — you?” asked Grandma, astonished.
“I’m twelve years old, it’s the right age for that sort of thing,” she said firmly. “Besides, it’ll be fun to do a little acting.”
“And what about Sam in all this?”
“Sam goes into hiding long enough to do his research and get his father. When he brings Uncle Allan home, these disappearances won’t seem very important.”
“But where can he hide?” asked Grandpa. “Evelyn will be back here soon, and the police could show up at the bookstore any time, especially after the break-in the other evening.”
Sam raised his hand in turn.
“Um, I think I have an idea too.”
19 Vacation Homework
Was this really a good idea? Sam studied the bedroom walls, which were covered with posters for the Blond Satans, an obscure hard-rock group leaning to Goth metal. Its members favored provocative outfits — leather jackets with lace ruffles — and outrageous eye makeup, but had the cherubic faces of kids just out of high school. Sam dropped his book bag on the bedspread, which was decorated with a large skull, and tried to look pleased.
“Cheerful, isn’t it?” sighed Helena Todds. “Rick is fascinated by all this morbid stuff. I don’t know where it comes from!”
“He’ll get over it,” Sam assured her. “I’ve had lots of friends like him.”
“I’m glad to hear that — it means this won’t seem too weird to you! Anyway, Rick is at his grandmother’s for three weeks, so you’re welcome to use the room.”
Sam silently wished Grandmother Todds good luck, condemned as she was to spend part of her summer listening to the Blond Satans.
“I’ll let you settle in,” she continued. “Alicia probably won’t be back until late this afternoon, but if you need anything, I’ll be downstairs. We eat dinner around eight.”
Sam thanked Mrs. Todds again and even gave her a hug. As soon as she learned that Sam’s father had been missing for two weeks and his relationship with his aunt was getting stormy, Helena had welcomed him with open arms. Sam guessed that she still felt guilty about neglecting him after his mother’s death and was eager to make it up to him. What Alicia would think about his arrival, however, remained to be seen.
Sam cleared away the clutter on Rick’s desk — funny how irritating another person’s mess can be — and set down the stack of books he had checked out of the library: a history of Romania, local maps, a biography of Dracula, and so on. His plan was simple: to lie low for a couple of days, avoiding everybody who was after him, and study up on Vlad Tepes. Didn’t people say that to defeat your enemy, you must know him first? The clearer the picture he had of Vlad, and the more he knew about Vlad’s habits and his life at the castle, the easier it would be for him to rescue his father.
When Sam had pushed the stack of Gothic magazines and bumper stickers aside (“Eternity Is Gothic,” “Doom Metal Is Above Music”), he took out a pen and paper. It was time to get to work.
He quickly discovered that it was difficult to describe Vlad Tepes in a few words, other than the fact that he wasn’t the sort of guy you’d invite for a fun weekend. Vlad’s father, the voivode — or duke — of the Romanian province of Wallachia, was the victim of an unhappy geographical situation: His country lay right where the Christian and Muslim worlds met, at the junction of trade routes linking Europe to Asia. As a result, he spent most of his life waging war before being assassinated by the Hungarians. In the Middle Ages, it was a common practice to force a defeated enemy to leave his sons with the victor, and little Vlad spent his childhood bouncing between Wallachia, Transylvania, and the Turkish sultans court, where he spent four years as a hostage.
It was a troubled and somewhat sad childhood, but he recovered to seize the throne of Wallachia in a daring coup in 1456, when he was about twenty-eight. The same causes produce the same results, however, and Vlad quickly realized that he was the filet mignon sandwiched between the Turks and the Hungarians. Everybody drooled over Wallachia, and Vlad soon found himself waging war in turn, determined not to be swallowed whole by his ravenous neighbors.
At that point, things started to get weird. To make himself completely inedible, as it were, Vlad imposed a reign of terror on his subjects, mercilessly executing anybody — man, woman, or child — whom he felt might possibly be a threat to him, no matter how remote. Chronicles of the time included bloody accounts of the voivode of Wallachia chopping up relatives, monks, advisers, soldiers, Turks, Hungarians, city dwellers, country dwellers, and every other kind of dweller. Worse, he reveled in torturing people, in ways each more horrible than the next: thieves boiled alive in huge pots, rebels tossed onto enormous bonfires, prisoners given crawfish to eat that had fed on their relatives’ brains, and a thousand other such delights.
But Vlad’s point of pride, so to speak, was unquestionably the stake, which earned him the name “Tepes” or “Impaler.” He apparently liked nothing better than to see forests of stakes — as many as several thousand, according to some records — on which he’d had his enemies skewered, without distinction of age or sex. Even if these descriptions were somewhat exaggerated, Allan had clearly picked one of the crudest jailers in history.
Someone knocked on the door, and Alicia entered without waiting for an answer. She was wearing a tennis outfit and looked wonderful, her skin already tan from the June sun and her blond hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, but she was frowning. She glared at Sam, then went to sit on her brother’s bed with her knees drawn up under her chin and a sulky expression on her face.
Sam turned to her and stammered, “I’m — I’m sorry, Alicia, I should have asked what you thought about it first. But when I came here two days ago, I had no intention of moving in with you, I swear. It’s just that things are pretty bad at home and —”
She gestured to him to be quiet and not pay any attention to her. His cheeks suddenly burning, Sam felt at a loss. He knew he’d acted pretty high-handedly in imposing his presence on her, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but think her gorgeous, more beautiful than beautiful, the ethereal Queen of the Elves lost in a dark cavern. And he, the unattractive, miserable human insect, felt thrilled to be there despite the shame he was feeling. Completely pathetic!
Since Alicia remained stubbornly silent, he tried to go back to work. But the words danced on the page, and he felt incapable of reading a single whole sentence. His heart was beating so hard he had to hold his chest to keep it from bursting out. But none of this mattered, because he was so close to her — not six feet away.
Finally, after what felt like half an hour, Alicia decided to speak. “Mom says that your dad has disappeared. Is that true?” Her tone wasn’t exactly friendly.
“Yes. We haven’t had any word for two weeks. But I promise I’ll only be here for a couple of days, just long enough to —”
“That’s not what I’m angry about,” she interrupted. “Jerry and I had a fight.”
“Oh … I’m sorry.”
“It’s not enough to always be sorry, Sam! We had the fight because of you! Jerry told me he was going to call Monk, and the two of them were going to beat you up if you tr
ied to see me again.”
Paxton and Monk — like great-grandfathers, like great-grandsons!
“They’ve had it in for me ever since I beat them in the judo tournament,” said Sam cautiously.
“This has nothing to do with judo!” Alicia snapped. “It has to do with me! I had to tell Jerry again that there was nothing between us, and I got really angry.”
“That was the right thing to do. If he doesn’t trust you, he doesn’t deserve you.”
“I’m not sure he deserves me, but if he runs into you somewhere —”
“I’m not afraid of Jerry, Alicia,” said Sam forcefully. “Not on the judo mats and not off them. But if he ever hurt you, he’d have to deal with me.”
The words just spilled out without his even thinking, and they happened to be true. Alicia must have appreciated them, because she seemed to relax a little.
She hopped off the bed and came over to look at the books on the desk. “Are you doing schoolwork? Aren’t you on vacation?”
“Yeah, but I made a deal with my history teacher. My grades weren’t so great this year, so I have to write an extra paper on the Middle Ages. He picked Vlad Tepes — Dracula, that is.”
“Dracula? Your history teacher is kind of weird, don’t you think?”
Helena Todds called from downstairs just then, saving Sam from having to answer. “Soup’s on, kids!”
They spent most of the evening together, listening to music and talking a little. Alicia was still defensive, and she didn’t miss a chance to boast of Jerry’s boundless good qualities — aside from his obsessive jealousy, of course. But overall, Sam hadn’t felt so happy since … since when, actually?
The next morning, while Alicia was still asleep, Sam returned to his overview of Dracula’s adventures. Like most bloody tyrants, Vlad Tepes came to a bad end. After a cruel six-year reign, he was dethroned by the sultan of Turkey and thrown into prison. But that apparently didn’t stop him from indulging in his taste for torture, catching mice and impaling them on little sticks — definitely a creepy guy. A long period of exile and many intrigues followed. Then just when Vlad was about to reconquer Wallachia, one of his own men attacked him from behind and cut off his head. Strangely enough, his former subjects didn’t turn out in droves to mourn his passing.
Except that the story didn’t end there. Long after his death, Vlad Tepes’s dark legend became embroidered with ever more frightening episodes until it merged with the character of the most feared creature in local folklore: the vampire. Vlad was now being called Dracula, which roughly translates as “Son of the Devil,” but also referred to his father’s membership in the prestigious Order of the Dragon, as draco means dragon in Latin. At the end of the nineteenth century, Bram Stoker used these various elements to create the fictional character Dracula, who would take on mythic dimensions and eclipse the actual story of the voivode of Wallachia.
Sam closed the biography and took out one of the coins with holes that his father had left with their neighbor Max before disappearing. A black snake coiled around the hole, which was obviously no accident: snake = dragon = Dracula. Allan had chosen this means to help his son find him, in case things turned out badly. And thanks to this coin and the Chinese empress’s magic capsule, Sam would soon be at Bran Castle.
If nothing went wrong, for once.
Around ten a.m., he got a call on the cell phone that Grandma had temporarily lent him. It was Lily, with the good news that Evelyn and Rudolf had come home and were so happy to see her they had bought her story about her running away without batting an eyelash. Evelyn had even been more affectionate than ever, promising to spend more time with her daughter. They had barely mentioned Sam, except to again deplore his lack of manners and moral fiber, the result of the disastrous example set by his father. The same old song and dance, in other words. Lily concluded by announcing that Grandpa wanted to stop by the Toddses’ with a present as soon as he could. What was the present? She didn’t know.
Back at his desk, Sam studied the maps of Bran Castle. He was surprised to learn that it wasn’t actually in Wallachia but in Transylvania, a little farther north. From what Sam had read so far, nothing proved that Vlad had actually lived at Bran Castle, but his life was so full of unknowns that anything was possible. Nowadays, the castle was billing itself as Dracula’s home and had made its reputation among tourists who were fascinated with the character. But it presented Sam with one serious obstacle: The fortress had undergone major architectural changes since Vlad’s time, and Sam didn’t have the original plans. Entire sections of the structure could have collapsed and been rebuilt, enlarged, or razed. How would he be able to find his way around the castle under those conditions? He had to find a reliable way to orient himself if he wanted to be sure to reach the dungeon.
“Sam! Look what Rick sent me!” In a delicious gust of flowers and cinnamon, Hurricane Alicia burst into the room, waving her cell phone. Sam leaned over the small color screen and saw a badly framed photo of a painting he knew well: the portrait of Yser, painted in Bruges in 1430!
“Apparently you told Mom about it and she asked Grammy to go look in the attic.”
“Yeah, I saw a TV program about somebody called Baltus. The painting struck me and —”
“Mom thinks it might be one of our ancestors. Do you think she looks like me?”
Sam angled the phone to reduce the glare. “Yeah, quite a bit.”
“Cool, isn’t it, having an ancestor who looks like you?”
“I’m sure she was really nice,” ventured Sam, who knew exactly what he was talking about.
“When you think this painting was sitting up in an old trunk for fifty years, and that without you …”
As Sam studied the image, Alicia noticed the sheet of paper where he had copied the contents of the small black notebook. “What’s this?”
“Oh, that? It’s another exercise the history teacher gave me. A kind of historical puzzle.”
“A puzzle, eh?” She began reading the elements aloud: “Meriweserre equals O … Xerxes, 484 b.c. … Izmit, around 1400? … Your history teacher isn’t just strange, he’s totally nuts!”
She leaned over and looked Sam full in the face, her blue eyes locked with his. “What are you hiding from me, Sammy?”
He struggled not to look away. “Nothing, Alicia! I’m not hiding anything, I swear.”
Her face was barely eight inches from his, and she was so beautiful he could hardly stand it.
“You forget I know you, Sam. After all these years, I can still tell when you’re lying. What’s going on? Your dad vanishes one day, you move in here because you’re not getting along with anybody, you lock yourself away for hours working on Dracula and some crazy puzzle, and then you see a painting on TV that just happens to be in my grandmother’s attic!”
“It’s a copy,” he stammered. “It must be a copy. Artists often used to copy each other.”
Alicia nodded slowly, then stroked his cheek affectionately. “Too bad,” she murmured. “You don’t really trust me either.”
She picked up her cell phone and took a step toward the door. “I’m going over to Melissa’s this afternoon. We’re planning a camping trip.”
Sam struggled to get his pounding heart under control. “Will you be gone long?”
“The day after tomorrow. Want to come along?”
An invitation … Sam’s brain started to boil. Under any other circumstances, he would have loved to go camping with Alicia — he wouldn’t have liked anything better in the world! But the day after tomorrow meant two days, and two days here meant two more whole weeks in jail for his father. He just couldn’t do it.
“I’m sorry, Alicia,” he said dully. “I already have plans.” “Okay, Mr. I’m Sorry. Have fun with your homework!”
She turned on her heel and went out, leaving Sam feeling shattered. You total idiot! he raged. Sam Faulkner, the village idiot! Why hadn’t he taken the opportunity to talk to her, to admit everything? Maybe she woul
d have understood. Maybe she could even have forgiven him. Maybe they could have … Maybe, maybe, maybe!
After Alicia left, Sam found himself eating lunch alone, as the Toddses were at work. Then he went back to Rick’s room and switched on the computer. This time he planned to use the Internet to do research on Bran Castle. After many false starts — the Net had legions of Dracula nuts, enough to fill several asylums — he began to find information about Transylvania. And link by link, he located a Vlad Tepes discussion group that was about something more than blood-soup recipes and glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth. From an Australian Web surfer he got the URL of a role-playing site that sounded intriguing: Its home page was straight out of Dungeons 6c Dragons, but the site also had detailed maps of the various castles the voivode had occupied. In that way, Sam found a game called Strigoi Night for which the game master — a Romanian student who knew English — had drawn on his university’s archives to re-create the original plans of Bran Castle. Better yet, the young historian claimed there had once existed an underground passage designed to evacuate the castle in case of emergency. This passageway apparently came out in a mill below the fortress and had been sealed up in the eighteenth century because of rockfalls. Sam feverishly wrote all this information down, feeling that he was getting closer to his goal. Vlad Tepes had better watch out!
The afternoon was almost over when Grandpa rang the front doorbell. He looked both relieved and preoccupied, a feat that involved every single wrinkle in his face and made him look like a withered old apple. He was holding a big plastic bag, which he clumsily tried to hide behind his leg.
“It’s been a long time since I was here last,” he said, sitting down on the living room sofa. “The Toddses are wonderful people, aren’t they?”
“They’ve been really nice to me.”
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