The Origin of Dracula

by Irving Belateche

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Virginia history display featured a dozen books. While Harry clutched his gun and kept a lookout, wary of another attack, I quickly scoped them out. Each book focused on a different period of Virginia’s history—from colonial times, through the American Revolution, to just after the Civil War.

  When my eyes landed on a slim volume titled The Forest, I considered the connection. Cold Falls and Prince William Forest—both forests, as was Windy Run, which ran all the way down to the Potomac, and we’d been only blocks from Windy Run when Dantès had emerged to kill Lee. But this was a stretch—wasn’t it?—and not enough to lead to any conclusion. And the author’s name, Edna Grayson, didn’t strike me as something to get excited about.

  But when I got to the editor’s name, in small lettering, under the author’s name, my breath caught in my throat. Jonathan Harker. The character in Dracula who had to be convinced he wasn’t hallucinating. And my own namesake in this menacing nightmare.

  I grabbed the book and flipped it open. From the preface, I learned that Jonathan Harker was a history professor at Virginia Tech. While he was working on a restoration project in Williamsburg, he’d come across an unfinished short story written by one of the original settlers of Jamestown. He discovered this previously unknown story among the items stored in the attic of a nineteenth-century plantation home, the centerpiece of the restoration project. The story had been hidden in a desktop Bible, slipped in between the Bible’s pages, one page of the story inserted every fifty pages or so. The Bible was old, but the parchment pages on which the story was written were far older.

  Harker discovered that the parchment and ink were consistent with what had been used at the time of the Jamestown Colony. Also, the parchment had aged at the same rate as other documents from that period. But just to make sure he’d discovered something special, he had a sample from the parchment tested in a lab. The results confirmed his theory. This short story dated back to the Jamestown Colony and, therefore, it was the first story written on American soil.

  Jonathan Harker had unearthed the first American short story.

  Then he went on to explain that some of the parchment pages that made up The Forest were missing—so the story was incomplete, and this greatly disappointed him. At first, he published the incomplete version of The Forest in academic journals, but later, he decided he’d try and fill in the missing pieces.

  His first task was to find out who’d written the story, and this ended up taking years of extensive research. The author turned out to be Edna Grayson—listed as Mrs. Horace Grayson in Jamestown’s official records. She’d arrived in Jamestown with her husband and four children, on the Susan Constant, one of the three ships that had transported the original colonists. Harker learned as much as he could about Edna Grayson and about the Jamestown Colony, and using that research as a guide, in addition to the story pages he had, he completed her story. The result was the book I now held in my hands.

  “This is why we’re here,” I said. “A stripped-down version of U.S. history starts with three colonies. The Plymouth Colony—that’s where we get the Bellington connection. The Roanoke Colony—that’s where we get the connection to Quincy. Dantès killed him on Roanoke Island. And now we have the last of the trifecta—the Jamestown Colony.” And, I thought to myself, we have another story: The Forest.

  A rustling sound started to rise in the library, an expansive soft swooshing, seemingly from all around us. Both Harry and I scanned the room, but there was nothing to see. Yet the sound was becoming more distinct, a wing-like batting of the air.

  “Let’s go,” Harry said, spinning his wheelchair around.

  I handed him The Forest and started pushing him toward the foyer. We looked down each aisle we passed because it was now clear that the swooshing was radiating from the direction of the bookshelves, though the precise source of it still wasn’t evident. Harry had his gun ready.

  We were just a few aisles away from the foyer when the books, en masse, began to rock back and forth ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly.

  “Do you see that?” I said.

  “Yep,” Harry said. “You’re catchin’ on.”

  The books then began to pitch back and forth with greater force, as if they were reacting to an earthquake.

  I picked up my pace, wheeling Harry faster.

  The books, their covers various colors—blue, white, yellow, red—were all changing to one color: dark brown. And there was a new sound—a scratching, like claws clicking for purchase on a ledge.

  Then the books morphed from their rectangular shapes to oval shapes.

  And the ovals grew fur.

  We were still about ten yards from the foyer when the books completely morphed into bats—thousands of them.

  “Shit!” I took off, pushing Harry—but it was too late.

  The bats flew off the shelves in a massive swarm, covering the room in a dark brown, undulating cloud. An instant later, a platoon of them swooped down on me, but not before I was able to give a final push to Harry’s wheelchair. Hopefully he’d find safety in the foyer.

  Then I desperately swung at the bats, trying to knock them away. But I was outnumbered—they relentlessly charged at me in waves. I lurched my way forward, swatting at the horde, but the attack intensified. They were battering me. Some clung to me with their claws. I swiped at them, but I was met with an unremitting swell of wings and teeth. The blistering pain of dozens of bites and scratches seared through me—I felt like I’d been lit on fire.

  For a fraction of a second, through the cloud of brown, I caught a glimpse of the foyer, which looked clear. I forced myself to stagger toward it, stumbling through the sea of rabid monsters. But the room was so thick with bats that I tripped over the ones swarming at my legs and tumbled to the floor.

  A fresh horde swooped down on me then, going in for the kill. I swung at them wildly, but it was hopeless. They were clawing and biting me and were now so concentrated that I was having a hard time breathing in without sucking parts of them into my mouth. I spat out wing tips and claws and fur and who knew what else, and choked as I did.

  Finally, I whipped my hands up and covered my eyes for fear the creatures would gouge them out. With my eyes shielded, I resorted to willing away the bats as if they were a hallucination. As if I were Jonathan Harker in Dracula, who’d spent many months after his visit to Count Dracula’s castle convincing himself he’d gone temporarily mad and that none of what he’d seen was real.

  But the bats were clawing and biting my hands, ripping my skin raw, trying to force me to uncover my eyes and see just how real they were. They were as real as their thousand bites, each cutting me to my core, the agony so overwhelming that my brain was about to shut down.

  Fact or fiction. It’s all the same.

  I believed it—

  And before I even opened my eyes, I felt that the bats were gone.

  And when I did open my eyes, I saw that, indeed, every one of them had disappeared. The library was silent, and all the books were back on the shelves.

  I sat up, bewildered. Not only was the pain gone, but my hands and arms were healed. Not one bite or scratch anywhere on me, and my clothes were completely intact. Not even one tiny rip.

  Harry rolled up to me. His eyes were wide with surprise. “You stopped it, didn’t ya?”

  “Beginner’s luck.”

  “Nah—it ain’t luck. Like I said, you’re catchin’ on.”

  I wheeled Harry toward the administrative offices, glancing down to make sure he still had the copy of The Forest. It was in his lap. He picked it up and waved it at me. “Mission accomplished, huh?” he said.

  “You’re catching on, too,” I responded.

  *

  We parked in front of one of Arlington’s largest electrical substations, one near a shopping center and major roads. We didn’t have to worry about nosy neighbors here because there were none. The rising sun was starting to lighten the sky, so the main risk now,
other than Dantès, came from the Arlington police. If someone had spotted our car driving away from Lee’s body, police cruisers would be on the lookout for us, and with dawn here, our car would be easy to spot.

  As soon as I cut the engine, I dove into The Forest, picking up where I’d left off in the preface. Every few pages, I filled Harry in.

  After making the case that Edna Grayson’s story was the first piece of fiction written by an English settler in the Americas, Jonathan Harker—the Virginia Tech history professor, not the fictional character from Dracula—launched into a lengthy description of the conditions under which Edna had written the story, explaining that this context would shed light on the story itself.

  The original settlers of Jamestown—the Englishmen who’d arrived on the Susan Constant, Discovery, and Godspeed—had built their settlement in Tsenacommacah, a large swath of land which itself was part of a much larger territory known as the Powhatan Confederacy. The confederacy was made up of Native American tribes, all of Algonquin descent.

  Unfortunately for the settlers, Tsenacommacah was inhabited by one of these tribes, the Paspahegh. Not that this was a problem at first. Far from it: the Paspahegh welcomed the settlers, and the tribe’s hospitality extended well beyond just a cordial embrace. The settlers were poorly prepared for their new environment, and the only reason they survived in this new world was because of the tribe’s help.

  There were regular meetings, both formal and informal, between the Paspahegh leaders and the colony’s leaders. These were men-only affairs, and this is where Edna Grayson’s story really started. She befriended some of the Paspahegh on her own because she was interested in learning as much as she could about her new environment. She wanted her kids to thrive in the new world, and she understood that the Paspahegh could help with that.

  But what she didn’t know was that the colony leaders, including her husband, Mr. Horace Grayson, were secretly plotting to drive the Paspahegh from their land. Mr. Grayson hid this from his wife.

  As it turned out, driving the Paspahegh from Tsenacommacah would have been a far better fate for the tribe than what the settlers actually ended up doing: wiping out the entire Paspahegh population over the course of the next three years.

  The confrontations were small at first—mostly skirmishes over right-of-way—so Edna was able to keep up her friendships with the tribe, even though the settlers who knew about these friendships frowned on them. Unlike the majority of her peers, Edna believed that the English and the Native Americans could share this land and live in peace.

  After about a year of these skirmishes, Edna discovered that the colony’s leaders were purposely provoking the Paspahegh as an excuse to wage an all-out war on the tribe. She tried to convince her husband and some of the colony’s leaders that this was a bad strategy. She told them they were only making life harder for themselves. But because she was a woman, and because many of the leaders believed they had a God-given right to this land, her pleas fell on deaf ears.

  At this point, the colonists escalated the confrontations with the tribe into larger battles. Those battles always ended with the colonists annihilating entire Paspahegh villages. But still, during this period, Edna secretly maintained her friendships with the Paspahegh.

  It was also during this period that she started writing her story. It was based on a Paspahegh legend, one told to her by a couple of her closest Paspahegh friends—friends who were murdered by the colonists when the colonists ambushed their Paspahegh village and slaughtered every last man, woman, and child who lived there. Edna had feared this day would come, prayed to God it wouldn’t—and was devastated when it did.

  Harker concluded his preface by explaining that in addition to applying what he’d learned about Edna and Jamestown, he’d bridged the missing pages as best he could using Edna’s style, language, and voice. He had tried to stay true to what he believed was her intent.

  After finishing the preface, I dove right in to Edna’s story. It quickly became clear that this slim volume was the bible of what was happening to us. The story it told, four hundred years old, would end up bringing order to the chaos and supernatural phenomena that had engulfed us. But just like the real Bible, this bible was going to require some interpretation.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Forest started with an introduction to “Drakho,” a powerful warrior who lived on Tsenacommacah land. The Paspahegh were already sharing their land with him when the settlers arrived. An agreement between Drakho and the Paspahegh had been in place for hundreds, possibly even thousands, of years; many of the Paspahegh believed that Drakho was far older than their own race. And because he was so much older, he had learned and perfected special skills. He had powers no Native Americans possessed.

  Harry and I both recognized these powers.

  Edna wrote that Drakho had the ability to cloud the Paspahegh’s minds. He triggered strange and sometimes terrifying visions that were as real as anything the Paspahegh could see or hear or touch when they weren’t under his spell. He could cloud their minds even if he was at a great distance from them. At times he also had the ability to read their thoughts. He knew the most intimate details of their personal lives.

  And Drakho could transform himself into an animal—a wolf, a dog, or a bat. He’d traverse inhospitable territory in those forms, and he also traveled in the form of mist. Using these forms, he moved with such stealth that he was impossible to track.

  Then Edna noted one of Drakho’s character traits, a trait that was important to the Paspahegh, because it offered them a way to appease the great warrior. Drakho loved to play games. Complicated games—games based on riddles, quests, and challenges. He’d engage the Paspahegh, as well as other tribes, in elaborate competitions that would last days, weeks, months, years, and even decades. Then he’d award a prize to the winning individual or village. Drakho also liked to stick to the same bloodlines for his games; once he’d chosen a bloodline, he’d forever come back to it, generation after generation.

  After introducing Drakho and the Paspahegh, Edna launched into the meat of her story: Drakho’s response to the arrival of the settlers.

  First, she explained that it wasn’t as if Drakho approved of the Paspahegh—her Paspahegh friends had told her it wasn’t like that at all. They couldn’t read Drakho’s mind, but over the centuries, the tribes had come to understand that above all else Drakho loved the land. His land, which they said stretched across a great swath of the Atlantic coast—a swath that I knew went from North Carolina to Massachusetts.

  The Paspahegh told Edna that Drakho understood that the Native American population would increase, and he understood that with that increase, so would their exploitation of his land. But a crisis point would take centuries, if not millennia, to arrive, and Drakho was patient. He was biding his time until that crisis arrived.

  Edna wrote that Drakho’s reaction to the English colonization of his land was very different. While he’d accepted the Native Americans, at least temporarily, he wasn’t so keen on these new settlers. He’d already had some encounters with the Europeans arriving on his shores, and they had left a negative impression. That impression was reinforced when he saw the settlers betraying the Paspahegh.

  Still, he didn’t get involved until the English began to massacre the Paspahegh. When they did, he intervened on the tribe’s side. But the settlers were relentless in their war against the Paspahegh. They were fiercer and more violent than Drakho had foreseen. So he made a decision. He swore he’d never allow the settlers to get a foothold on his land. To that end, he began an offensive against them.

  Here, Harker had a rather long footnote about the historical context of Edna’s story. A few years after the settlers annihilated the Paspahegh, their own population was also decimated. Eighty percent of the settlers died. Modern historians called this period “the Starving Time” because famine caused the vast majority of the deaths.

  But Edna’s story laid out a different explanation: Drakho kil
led the settlers. He was defending his land.

  Also in this footnote, Harker explained that up to this point in her story, Edna had based her tale on an obscure Native American legend—the legend of Drakho. But now she was weaving her own life into The Forest, including the calamity. She also brought in the tragedy that struck her own family during these dark days. She lost her husband and three of her children to starvation and disease.

  But in Edna’s account, Drakho was the culprit. He had destroyed her family, leaving her with only one son, Benjamin. And here, the drama in her story escalated. Edna knew that Drakho was determined to kill all of the settlers. He was going to clear Tsenacommacah—meaning Jamestown—of every last colonist. But she wasn’t going to let him kill Benjamin, her only remaining child. And the only way to stop Drakho was to kill him.

  But how?

  He appeared unstoppable. The revenge he was meting out on behalf of the Paspahegh proved that he was immune to the settlers’ every weapon. And his unique abilities made him an even more formidable enemy.

  Edna wanted to turn to the Paspahegh for help. Unfortunately, by this time it appeared that the settlers had murdered them all. And if by chance there were any left—and she prayed to God that some had survived—she was sure they’d fled.

  In the end, she clung to one hope. She’d heard that some of the settlers had tortured a Paspahegh, hoping to extract information from him before executing him. The settlers wanted to know how to stop the vicious warrior who was fighting on the side of the tribe. These settlers didn’t have the inside information Edna had about the warrior—that he was an ancient being defending his homeland—but they did have one thing in common with her: they wanted to know how to kill him.

  As it turned out, the settlers had extracted information from their prisoner. Some of which they understood. You could kill the warrior. He had an Achilles’ heel—a weak spot. But they couldn’t understand the most important part of this information because they didn’t understand the Paspahegh language well enough.