by Royce Prouty
A half hour into my walk, I sat and rested on a roadside rock. The day continued sunny and cool and, being pale-skinned, I was grateful the late afternoon sun was shining on my back and not in my face. I looked back to the west over the valley and saw the giant chimney stack, the city’s tallest structure, a brick cylinder several stories tall, the former site of the old smelter. My father had worked there. Other than his harsh domestic outbursts, that’s about all my memory holds of him.
Another hour’s walk and I saw a and decided to stop for another rest. Picture a weathered ornate crucifix roughly five feet tall, topped with a chalet roof, complete with protective shingles and a place to kneel and leave notes, sometimes light a candle. That’s a . Travelers often leave photos of passed loved ones, or simply pause and pray for safe passage. I knelt and prayed for protection; there would be no one to leave my picture.
The sun had subsided enough in the western sky that only its curved light made it over the trees, and though the weather remained clear, the temperature ratcheted down several degrees in that elevation. No one had passed me on the road in over an hour; as I progressed up the gentle incline, my legs burned.
As shadows followed sundown, I heard the drone of mosquitoes and stopped to look around. They sounded close, but seeing none, I continued hiking. Again I stopped, for it did not sound right. Whereas mosquitoes travel slowly, these sounded like large swift-moving swarms, and the pitch of their sound was clearly female, no males. Males always accompany females, yet I heard none. Eventually the sound passed, but within minutes the skies filled with birds by the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, sufficiently startling to stop and take notice.
When I was almost to my destination and walking along the crest of the old road, a horse-drawn cart sped by westbound. The frantic driver was doing all he could to control his galloping horses, and he called for me to take shelter as he passed: “Adaposti!”
Take shelter? Where? I continued my trek into the dark. According to my GPS, I had not quite reached the five-mile mark when off to the east I heard a few dogs bark. Immediately other dogs responded with howls from all directions, much like the sounds in the hills around the castle. Wolves. I picked up the pace.
Within minutes I reached the point where the old road diverged from its parallel younger sibling and served as the original approach to town. It was time to look for landmarks in earnest.
They took the batter across the first building and beyond the stone bridge.
I looked for any signs of an old structure, any building, or even a rock outcropping resembling a building. The evening was dark enough that I couldn’t see ahead because the moon had not yet breached. More mosquitoes, but none landed. An army of something seemed to be marshaling.
A large haystack stood to my right in a clearing. I paused at the property’s edge. If I was to encounter houses and farms, I would have to determine by age which was the first building. That simply was not going to happen.
My GPS works in decimal points off the degree instead of minutes and seconds, making the device accurate to within a thousand-foot tolerance. That’s the better part of a quarter mile. As my instructions probably needed to be followed to within a couple hundred feet, I was reduced to hunches and guesswork to supplement my gadgetry.
Nearing the haystack, something told me that it looked too tall. I walked into the field, approaching it, when suddenly a great racket sounded all around me. Wolves howled, the mosquito humming increased, and I thought I heard shrieks—one or two at first, then dozens. Armies at war. I looked up just as the first rays of moonlight illuminated the sky, and I saw a flock of small birds flying and diving into the woods. Not just birds, but also bats, more bats than I could count, thousands and thousands of them swarming until the sky blackened above the field where I stood. I unzipped my jacket and lifted it to cover my head as they dived and whirled all around me. One brushed by my arm. Along with the leathery sound of their flittering, they squealed.
They passed on, clearing the sky and letting the moon light the haystack before me. Only it was not a haystack. It was actually an old structure, perhaps part of an old stone wall that had once adjoined a larger building. It just happened to be shaped like one of the tall spun stacks. I smiled despite myself; I had found the first landmark.
Several more shrieks ascended from the woods, sounding similar to bats, except louder and agonized.
Time to look for the batter. They took the batter across . . .
From an old Milton poem I knew that batter was old Gaelic for road, so I looked for the first road across the highway.
A path not to miss. That meant take the first one. By the construction of the passage, the warning immediately following the description, it seemed to be an admonition, like Careful, don’t miss it.
Immediately I saw a narrow path angling toward the river, almost directly across from the old stone structure. I crossed the road and entered a single path with woods and underbrush on both sides. About a quarter mile ahead I heard the sound of a river flowing over rocks. Cautiously I approached and saw two short wooden posts with signs warning of an unsafe bridge.
Beyond the stone bridge . . .
As I bent to look at the structure, I heard more mosquitoes pass by. Stone pillars held up the rickety bridge made of wood and metal. This was the bridge from the epilogue.
Only seconds now.
I didn’t know if that meant seconds of the arc or counting on a clock. Regardless, a second’s distance is only a hundred feet, and the cemetery could lie anywhere to the east, or right, side. Cemeteries normally are not placed at the same level as water, especially an old cemetery that had survived the centuries, so I expected to encounter a rise in terrain away from the river.
A loud shriek from the woods nearby frightened me, and I stopped. It sounded like the wounding of an animal and lasted several seconds. After it subsided, I heard the buzz of mosquitoes before a thousand bats descended toward the noise.
I picked up my pace and soon encountered uneven rocks underfoot where the path began its climb.
Tripping over stones.
I was almost there.
At the top of a small rise were traces of a two-lane path leading north off the road and through a dense row of trees to an open field beyond. I knew I was not alone, yet saw no one. I had saved the flashlight for just this part of my search, and I clicked it on.
In the clearing I found a cemetery. No crosses adorned the headstones, and the engravings were clearly in Hebrew.
The Jewish cemetery, awaiting their judgement.
So ended the trail of clues. Was it enough that I had gotten there, or was I supposed to guess which tomb hosted the unholy guest? And were the Master’s people watching as I tried to decide what to do next?
I turned off the flashlight in the hopes of reacquiring my night vision. It appeared the cemetery occupied about an acre of scrubby land, neither flat nor sculpted, boundaried on two sides by a loosely wired fence, with trees lining the roadside to the west and a wall of rocks and stones providing a natural northern barrier.
If I were in a hurry, doing something wrong in a place without welcome, where would I place the casket?
I looked back south, across the river and down into Baia Sprie, where the brightly moonlit twin steeples of the Catholic church rose against the uneven outline of mountains crowning the valley. A noise began to build behind me from the tree line. I clicked on and pointed the flashlight in that direction, only to see the tree limbs and branches filled to capacity, not with the dense foliage as I had assumed, but with perched birds. Past their bedtime, they certainly must have been waiting for something. I tried to refocus on the puzzle.
Would it be unmarked? Or might it have a scrambled name, either a character in Stoker’s book or one I saw in the notes?
My search continued. Something told me I was not using my head. Think, think. If the object
was to get in and out quickly, I would . . . not want to dig. I would use an aboveground sarcophagus. My search narrowed to only elevated crypts. I passed by one because it had a cross at its head, but passing by it a second time, it occurred to me that the cross was exactly what did not belong here.
I returned to the spot and looked it over. The tomb stood by itself, a stone box topped with a large slab about belt height. It had a smooth top, unadorned except for the design of a strap forming the shape of a cross as one looked down upon it. Engraved in the stone was a name—LOREENA BRAITHWAITE. No dates.
Why should I know that name?
Then the light flickered. I checked the flashlight, but it was still strong. The interruption seemed to come from above, and when I looked up, I saw that the moon had been eclipsed. The sky was filled from horizon to horizon with bats, as if every bat in Europe were receiving its calling that night. I pulled my jacket over my head, covering my face as they swarmed and dived all around. They squealed like rats on water, and all at once all the birds lifted from the branches and shrieked a war cry. I peered out from under my coat; it looked like two men were fighting near an oak tree only ten yards from me. Both men appeared to be the same size, lean and quick, grabbing and lunging at each other and making banshee noises as the bats bombed and bounced off of them. They moved so quickly that I could only see a blur in the darkness.
I turned my flashlight toward them, and when the light hit one set of eyes, the man froze. In his moment of hesitation, the other one bit down on his forearm. The victim let out a howl that sounded half human and half dog. A quick swipe of the aggressor’s hand ripped open the side of the screaming man’s neck, and a second later blood pumped out like a squeezed fountain pen. The victor grabbed the wounded man’s neck with one hand, an arm with the other, and pinned the victim to the tree. A third man joined the fight, also moving as a blur, and grabbed the victim’s other arm. The pair yanked to pin his arms around the tree trunk, exposing the man’s front as he cried in pain, blood now running freely out of his neck.
A fourth man entered the scene from behind me, walking a hunter’s conquering stride. He wore a long black coat with its collar turned up. Two long knives sparkled in the moonlight from his draped sleeves as he stepped to the tree. The defeated man spat at him futilely as the hunter lifted both knives head high and plunged them in the victim’s chest.
One last loud howl drained from the dying man as he slumped forward, head lolling. The hunter then reached deep into the wound on the dead man’s neck and yanked. I heard a sound like a branch snapping, and the victim’s head fell onto the ground. I shone the flashlight down on the man’s grimacing face, revealing two prominent canine teeth and dim red lights in his eyes that were slowly extinguishing.
The hunter turned and walked toward me. It was the Master from Castel Bran. He breathed hard, not from exhaustion, I thought, but from excitement. He grabbed a bat in midair that had bumped into him, snapped its neck, and tossed it to the ground as one would crumple and discard a paper cup. He stood on the other side of the tomb I had been looking at.
“I am Dalca,” he said, “and I have come to reclaim my family.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
He raised his voice. “Tell me what you found.”
I thought a moment. “This tomb is marked Loreena Braithwaite.”
He looked down at the sarcophagus, and when his eyes saw the stone cross standing at its head, he swung his right arm toward it and smashed the crucifix to the ground.
His eyes glowed red. “Explain.”
The directions in Stoker’s original epilogue led to the cemetery, but to no specific tomb. Nor did he write it, for he was never there. I concluded that the assistant picked the name off a headstone, altered it, and gave it to Stoker to insert somewhere else in the novel. Two other chapters in the original manuscript mentioned names on tombs, Dolingen being the most obvious and thus not likely. I recognized the woman’s name as a derivative of another one in the novel.
“A Christian,” I said, referring to the cross, “with a Scottish-Irish name does not belong in this cemetery.” I sensed the Master’s impatience and spoke quickly. “In Stoker’s manuscript, there’s a fictional character in the Whitby cemetery named Braithwaite Lowery.”
He looked at me, looked at the tomb, then reached under the stone cap, and with a great exhale heaved at least two tons of stone from its mooring. It tilted my direction and slid off as I jumped backward. I shone the flashlight toward the open tomb. Inside lay the skeletal remains of a person—a woman, I think—clothed in a wedding dress with hands folded over the midsection holding a candle, a coin, and a rosary, the traditional burial garb of an unmarried woman. Around the neck rested a crucifix on a chain. Dalca reached into the tomb, grabbed a handful of remains, and threw them at me. I ducked, but a bone hit me and knocked me to the ground.
“This is not my wife!” His growling voice was so loud, I plugged my ears while kneeling. Had I not I would surely be deaf today, because he let out a primal scream inhuman in volume lasting a good ten seconds. Birds scattered and bats retreated. Finished, he walked over and yanked me up with one hand and spoke with his coffin breath in my face. “Imbecile. I lost three warriors tonight.” He shook me. “Those are my copii!” Children. He dropped me to the ground and instructed the other two, “Take him.”
Each of the pair took an arm and roughly led me toward the road from which I had come. They walked faster than I could run, my feet skipping along the dirt road, across the flimsy stone bridge, and into the black Suburban. They threw me inside and pinned me to the floor as the vehicle sped off.
Only minutes later the vehicle stopped and the door opened; roughly was I lifted and set on the ground. Outside the city where no lights burned, it took several seconds to recognize the wooden church lit only by moonlight—All Saints. Dalca was there waiting and instructed his two guards to bring me. At his command they grabbed my shoulders and dragged me at running speed toward the gate. The Master didn’t bother to open it, but kicked it off its meager hinges and walked directly toward the Paddock of the Damned. He stopped at the side of my mother’s tomb while the guards shoved me next to him. Dalca reached under the lip of the lid, just as he had with Braithwaite’s tomb, and lifted the cap off the crypt, sliding it onto the grass.
“Look,” he said. Grabbing the nape of my neck, he shoved my face toward the vault. “Look!”
In the dim light, I saw a shriveled, headless, unrecognizable corpse draped in ragged, burnt-blackened clothing. A shard of wood stuck out of my mother’s chest. Her head, detached, lay at her feet.
“I should put you in there.” He adjusted his grip to my neck and lifted me, pulling me within inches of his face. “She belonged to us, until your took her.” Father. He shook me. “How do you think you got your eye for paper, orfan? You think it is your gift. It is from me. My blood . . . to her . . . to you. You owe me, you and your brother owe me.”
He threw me to the ground and ordered his guards to take me back.
Days passed back in internment in the confines of my room in Castel Bran, silent room service my only interruptions. Now I knew what acceptance meant and needed no imagination to know how this would all end. What was it that swung this normally God-fearing man to one who plots the demise and destruction of another? When Dalca announced that both I and my brother owed him, I knew he meant to splatter the blood of one of us so the other would see.
There were other realities, as well—my injuries throbbed, it took five days before I could retain any food, and my vision jittered as if I had consumed too much coffee. At times I fantasized that I had been drugged or infected.
But most of all, a single question pulsed in my mind: Could that have really been our mother?
She had been murdered—correct that, destroyed by way of the centuries-old disposal of the undead. My father was either deranged enough to b
elieve she belonged to them or he had witnessed something that spurred his attack. When I peeled away the horror surrounding the truth, certain things became clear, like why dogs and cats reacted toward us the way they do, and why mosquitoes think I’m one of them. It was because of the smell of our blood.
Certain questions stirred about: Why did my father do it? Did he have sufficient reason? And most of all, if my mother was involved with the undead, why did they have children? I kept hearing Dalca’s words invading my mind: my blood . . . to yours. As much as I wished not to be so, I did have an inhuman gift of sight, one that could not be explained away by mere science.
Further, I questioned if my brother had found out, and if it was the source of his stern warnings. I did not know how I would broach the subject.
Rummaging through the bottom of my suitcase for a clean set of clothes, I found a small book, Mara’s journal, which I had packed and forgotten. Lifting the protective crucifix to my lips, I kissed it in gratitude, for I knew that every time I had been in real need, God had always sent me a tool. I prayed now that some answers lay therein.
The page fell open to the jaw structure Mara had shown me, and instantly I recognized what I had seen at the monastery and cemetery. Another page had a three-tiered pyramid of boxes, similar to a corporate org chart, with two boxes at the top of the pyramid labeled Nobles. The middle row showed several boxes with solid lines up to the Nobles, labeled Regulats, the Romanian word for common, and must be how the offspring came to be known as Common Vampires. Below that the bottom row, labeled H Slave, was connected to the Commons boxes. To the side of the Nobles were several H Slaves, plural, perhaps denoting a harem arrangement. This helped clarify for me what Mara mentioned—that the Nobles were the breeders, and that their children were either other Nobles or Commons, the latter born without reproductive parts. The Commons served as protective forces around the Nobles, thus Dalca’s reason for scolding me for the loss of his children in battle.