The Origin of Dracula

by Irving Belateche

  “If our stories are different,” he said, “it’s not gonna help any of us.”

  “I’m not going to lie about this.”

  “Neither am I,” Lee said.

  “Great. Now get the fuck off of me.” I whipped my arm out of his grip and marched toward the trail. If he wanted to fight me, then that’s what he’d have to do.

  “I’m telling them exactly what I saw,” Lee said. “You pushed that guy over the edge.”

  I whipped around.

  Lee was grinning. “You did it accidentally. You two were horsing around, but still…”

  I looked over at Quincy for support. His mouth was agape—he, like me, couldn’t believe Lee would stoop so low. “Lee—this is real,” Quincy said. His tone had shifted—upset, not angry. “This isn’t like the trouble you usually get into.”

  Lee didn’t even look at Quincy. He stared at me. “That’s why we’re sticking together. You got that?”

  I got it all right. If I wasn’t willing to cover this up, he was going to pin the murder on me. And if I told the truth, it’d be his word against mine. Except there was Quincy’s word, too. His word would tip the balance.

  “Quincy, you’ll tell them what really happened, right?” I said.

  Quincy shifted uneasily. Then his body sagged as if the weight of the world had been dropped on his shoulders.

  “Quincy doesn’t know what happened,” Lee said, “because he didn’t see anything. Right, Quincy?”

  “Why the fuck did you do it in the first place?” Quincy shot back.

  “I told you—the weird motherfucker attacked me!”

  Quincy needed to stand up to Lee now more than ever, but he was more panicked than aggressive, which wasn’t going to help.

  “I’m not going to cover it up,” I said, hoping this would give Quincy the courage to stand up to Lee—and head with me to the ranger station.

  Lee reached out and thumped me hard in the chest. “It’s not up to you, buddy.”

  I didn’t say a word, but I glared at him and stood my ground, which made him angrier than he already was.

  “We could say it was an accident,” Quincy said. “That we saw the guy fall off the cliff. That he must’ve gotten lost in the fog.”

  Lee’s face hardened. “We’re not gonna say anything.”

  “If they find the body tomorrow, they’ll question us,” Quincy said. “But if we go to the ranger now, it’s not so suspicious.”

  “If we go now, we’ll have to answer a ton of questions,” Lee said, his attention now solely on Quincy. “Let’s just camp tonight, like nothing happened, and go home in the morning.”

  “It they find the body tomorrow, they’ll track us down and question us at home.” Quincy was pushing back hard. Of course, I didn’t really know if he was looking for a way to get to the ranger station in peace so he could tell the truth, or if he was negotiating a compromise.

  “So what?” Lee said. “We tell them we don’t know anything and didn’t see anything.”

  Quincy looked over at me as if he wanted my help. But I didn’t want to negotiate a compromise. A compromise was a cover-up. “You’re not going to back me up if I tell the truth?” I asked him.

  He didn’t answer. Instead he looked into the woods in the direction of the Potomac. His eyes betrayed defeat and resignation.

  “Quincy, you’re going to back me up, aren’t you?” Had I lost him?

  “I don’t know what I saw out there.”

  “He admitted he pushed him over!” I blurted out.

  “And he said the guy attacked him!”

  “He’s lying.”

  Quincy turned from the woods to me. “What did you see? Think about it. It was hard to see anything at all, wasn’t it? That’s the truth. And whatever you did see, it didn’t make sense, did it?”

  I knew what he meant—the bizarre texture of the entire incident. Dank, wet, foul, misty—a distorted, creepy nightmare that didn’t quite seem real. And the man’s pallid face. The expression it bore. How was I going to explain any of this to anyone? No doubt Lee’s version, his lie—laying the blame on me—would be straightforward and easy to follow.

  I needed Quincy to back me up, but it was becoming clear that he wouldn’t.

  Lee seized the momentum. “So it’s a done deal. We keep our mouths shut.” Again, he was focused on Quincy. And so was I.

  Quincy stared at me for a couple of beats, resigned, then looked at Lee. “… Okay,” he said, in almost a whisper.

  I should’ve stood my ground, but I was fourteen, easily influenced, and trying to shake off a feeling of foreboding, which had returned with a vengeance. The horrific scene from the precipice—part hallucination, part nightmare, and part brutal reality—replayed itself in my head, unwanted. I just wanted to go home and forget about the entire night.

  Lee laid down the law: if anyone asked us any questions tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or even a year from now, we’d say we hadn’t seen anything or heard anything. And if no one ever came around to ask questions, we’d never bring it up, ever.

  Quincy took it one step further. “We shouldn’t talk to each other again either.”

  “About this?” Lee asked, but I knew what Quincy meant.

  “About anything. After tonight, we go our separate ways.” Quincy was adamant, as if he was sure this was the way to make the murder go away.

  Lee looked taken aback—he’d been in control, exerting his will, but now Quincy was making the rules. “Is that the way you want it?” he said.

  Quincy nodded.

  Lee didn’t ask me if that was the way I wanted it too.

  “Then you got it,” he said, and stormed off into the tent.

  “Quincy—” I said, but he cut me off before I could finish. He must’ve thought I was going to try to talk him into going to the ranger station.

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he said. “Let’s get through the night and get the hell out of here.”

  And that’s what we did. Quincy and I unrolled our sleeping bags, outside the tent, crawled into them, and waited for dawn. We didn’t say a word to each other; we just stared at the crescent moon as it moved through the sky. There was no hint of fog the rest of the night.

  Lee slept in the tent.

  When dawn broke, Quincy was asleep. I quietly rolled up my sleeping bag, grabbed my backpack, and hiked the trail back. The entire way, I was reconsidering the deal we’d made the night before—the unholy pact. But only when I got to the parking lot and saw the ranger station did I make my decision.

  Leaving the trail behind and stepping onto the parking lot’s blacktop was my reentry into a familiar world. That, plus the clear light of day, was more than enough to transform my chaotic, shrouded vision of a man tumbling to his death into a nightmare best forgotten. It was as if I’d awakened from a troubling sleep.

  I went to the bank of pay phones, called my dad, and told him I was feeling sick and wanted to be picked up early. While I was on the phone, the ranger on duty stepped out of the ranger station. I’m sure I’d caught his attention because I was the only living soul around at that early hour.

  I wanted to run, but I knew that would be suspicious, so I wrapped up my call in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner. But when I hung up, I was positive the ranger could see the guilt on my face. Or worse: he already knew about the dead body and suspected me.

  “Everything okay, son?” he said.

  “I feel kind of sick, so I called my dad to pick me up.”

  “What’s wrong?” He moved closer to me.

  For a second I thought he was referring to my guilt, but I caught myself before I confessed. “It’s a stomachache,” I said. The words came out stilted because my throat was constricted with panic.

  “You think you ate something bad?”

  I shook my head, then realized I should’ve just said yes. Too late. “I think maybe it’s the flu,” I said.

  “Any vomiting or fever?” He was doing h
is job, figuring out if I needed immediate medical attention.

  I shook my head again, wanting him to just leave me alone. I couldn’t go on lying without giving myself away. I wasn’t built for it.

  “Did anything happen while you were camping?” he said.

  So he did know. My throat constricted even more, and I weighed whether to confess. Then Lee’s threat reared its ugly head—he’d pin the murder on me if I answered the ranger’s question with anything other than one simple word.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head to emphasize it.

  “You didn’t get bit by a raccoon or anything?”

  With that question, I understood where he was going. He wasn’t trying to connect me to the dead body—he was just focused on my illness. “No,” I said.

  “Good.”

  Please leave me alone, I thought, suddenly overcome with the fear that Lee was racing up the trail and would catch me talking to the ranger. His impatience would kick in, not to mention his anger, and he’d think I was spilling my guts. That would be enough for him to run up to the ranger and carry out his awful threat—blaming the murder on me.

  I tried to think of a way to extricate myself from the ranger’s questions. “I’m going to sit down and wait for my dad,” was the best I could come up with.

  “You can wait inside,” the ranger said.

  No, I can’t. If Lee saw me heading inside, it would be an invitation for him to ruin my life. “I’m okay out here,” I said, and pointed to the picnic table nearest the parking lot. “I’ll wait over there where my dad can see me.”

  “All right, son. I’ll keep an eye out for you in case you feel any worse,” he said. Then he headed back into the cabin.

  I started toward the picnic table at a fast clip, but quickly slowed down—I didn’t want the ranger to think I was well enough to hurry anywhere. At the picnic table, my fears continued unabated. First, that the ranger would get a report about a dead body that had just been fished out of the Potomac and would rush out of the cabin to question me. And second, that Lee would appear and interpret my early departure as evidence that I’d ratted him out.

  Neither happened.

  My dad picked me up, and I told him that I was already feeling better, which was true. I was feeling better because I was leaving Cold Falls forever. Or so I hoped. But that would turn out not to be the case. In two decades, I’d return to the scene of the crime, and maybe in the back of my mind, or in my gut, where a dull ache had started to grow, I knew those woods and that night would draw me back in.

  In the days that followed, I could’ve told my dad the truth about Cold Falls and gotten his advice about going to the police and combating Lee’s version of the story. My dad and I had a close relationship, so confiding in him wouldn’t have been as hard for me as it might have been for some kids.

  But I didn’t confide in him. Instead, I watched the local news every night, flipping between stations, expecting to land on a story about a man who’d recently disappeared, or about a man who’d been fished out of the Potomac, or about a man who’d washed up on the riverbank with his head cracked open. In the mornings, I’d search the Washington Post looking for a headline about a man who’d drowned in the Potomac, or about a man who’d been found bruised and battered in Cold Falls State Park.

  Days turned into weeks, and I never saw or heard anything about any such man. And when weeks turned into months, not only did it seem foolish to confess, I also became more convinced that the incident hadn’t unfolded the way I’d originally thought. I replayed it over and over again, in great detail, to confirm that, indeed, it had been a nightmare of shadows, fog, and fear.

  But there was a huge kink in that interpretation. Lee had admitted to pushing the man over the cliff. And obsessively reliving that night didn’t wipe out that kink. More times than not, when I was caught up in that loop of creepy, unsettling images, it triggered a clawing guilt, accompanied by a physical reaction. My skin felt clammy and dank, as if the fog were touching it again, reaching out from Cold Falls to haunt me. It took me a long time to stop reliving that night. Only when months turned into years was I able to bury it in a hard-to-reach corner of my psyche.

  Chapter Five

  “I remember it all,” I said. The dreadful images from that night may have been buried deep in my psyche, but they were perfectly preserved, ready to be recalled at a moment’s notice.

  Lee was looking at the mantelpiece as if he was studying the vases of dead flowers. “But you never believed me,” he said. “That that guy was hunting me down.”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it?” There was no point in debating the past. And there was no time. This was all about saving Nate’s life.

  “If you really remember that night,” he said, “you’d remember it was fucked up.”

  That much we agreed on, but I still wasn’t sure if he was referring to the surreal elements. “So?”

  “No one reported the man missing,” he said. “It was like he disappeared.”

  “We got lucky.”

  “And now you think our luck finally ran out?” His question dripped with disdain, as if he was daring me to agree with something absurd.

  “Someone discovered what we did and is getting revenge.”

  “No one found out.”

  Anger suddenly boiled up inside me. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s him.”

  “Him? You mean the guy you killed?”

  He didn’t answer my question, but he held my eyes, resolutely and confidently, meaning “yes” and also calling me out as a fool for not believing him.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You’re the one who doesn’t remember that night. He couldn’t have survived that fall. I heard his body hit the boulders.”

  “But what did you see? Actually see?”

  “Just because I didn’t see him hit the rocks and float on downriver, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean what did you actually see?”

  If he wanted me to talk about the dank, foul fog, or the wolf, or the castle, or the unearthly pallid shade of the man’s face and the strangely satisfied expression it bore, he was barking up the wrong tree. When it came to covering up the murder—now that it might cost the life of my son—that creepy, otherworldly vibe from that night didn’t matter. Lee had killed a man, and someone was getting revenge for that sin.

  “I didn’t see anything else,” I declared without disguising my anger.

  “You know what? It doesn’t really matter,” Lee said. “We’re both after the same guy, no matter who the hell you think it is.”

  There was no question about that. We had to make the connection between that night and the murder of our wives if we were going to find Dantès.

  Lee reached for the letter. “Let me take a look at that again.”

  I handed it to him, and as he scanned it, he said, “Why didn’t Dantès send me the letter?”

  Lee was clever to probe in this direction. He was analyzing our dilemma with precision, getting to know our enemy. If I had thought to ask him more questions—and if I had believed at least some of his answers—he might have opened up right then about what he knew, rather than later. There was more going on than what the letter implied, and he knew it. But he also knew that I wouldn’t buy it. Not yet.

  “Is there a connection between your wife’s death and Cold Falls—anything from our camping trip?” Lee said. “I’ll tell you this, it’d be tough to make a connection to what happened to Grace.”

  “Nothing jumps out at me. Not anything from the police report. But I think I know where we should start.” My suggestion came straight from the letter. “‘The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even the past.’ Cold Falls.”

  “You want to head to Cold Falls?” Lee wasn’t bothering to disguise his doubt.

  “You have a better idea?”

  He looked down at the letter, scanned it for a minute or so, then conceded.
“No. But there’s one person we should talk to first.”

  “Quincy,” I said.

  “Did you track him down already?”

  “Just his address and phone number.”

  “You want me to call him, or do you want to?”

  “You call him while I talk to Nate.” I gave him Quincy’s phone number.

  “Are you going to send Nate to his grandmother’s?” Lee said, and I thought I heard concern in his voice.

  “I can’t. You’re right. Dantès knows too much about us.”

  “Take it for what it’s worth, which isn’t much. Don’t send him to any relative. The guy behind all this is gonna track him down. Send him to someone who’s not too connected to you.” This time the concern in his voice was evident, and I liked him for it.

  I nodded, acknowledging his good advice, and immediately thought of Jenna Corcoran. A few years ago, Lucy had helped Jenna. She’d taken on Jenna’s case, pro bono, and saved her from doing time for a minor drug offense. Afterward, Jenna had turned her life around, gone back to school, and earned a nursing degree. She had been eternally grateful for Lucy’s help.

  Nate would be safe with Jenna. At least, that was my thinking then.

  But it wouldn’t take me more than a day to realize that Nate wasn’t safe with anyone.

  Lee ducked into another room to call Quincy while I called Jenna on my cell. I lied to her, telling her I’d been asked to go to a conference at the last minute as a replacement for a sick colleague, so I needed someone to take care of Nate. She was more than happy to help out. Within minutes, it was all arranged. I’d drop Nate off at her place and he’d spend the weekend with her.

  In the kitchen, Nate had finished his sandwich and chips and had the TV on. He was watching another Nickelodeon animated show.

  “Do you remember Jenna?” I said.

  He smiled, which made me feel good about my decision. “Yeah. Mom was proud of her.”

  “That’s right.” I was surprised he’d understood that. Jenna had come over for dinner a few times, and Lucy had praised her dedication. Jenna had gotten her nursing degree in record time, landed a good job, and received a promotion. I had assumed Nate was too young to have picked up on how proud Lucy had been of Jenna.