Stoker's Manuscript

by Royce Prouty

  I shook her hand and thanked her. “.”

  Ms. Pope gave me what must have passed, for her, as an empathetic look. “I am not going to tell you that it’s all going to work out or be okay.”

  Like I didn’t know that. I nodded and returned to the vehicle while Arthur concluded his visit with Pope. The driver opened the door for me and I took a seat in the back, next to Luc.

  “So,” he said, “we sit beneath the same old oak tree.”

  There is an old Romanian fable about sitting in the shade of an old oak tree and watching the walls of your coffin grow. Such fatalisms being the staple of Romanian lore, I knew what he meant—that our efforts shared a common end point.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “it’s an old-growth forest.”

  I hoped.

  The drive back to the castle was uneventful, quiet, paranoid. Every vehicle looked suspect, as did the one I was riding in, the only large black American SUV on the road. Certain phrases circled the drain in my mind: death penalty, ritual killing, occult killer, Joliet Joe the Impaler.

  Back in Castel Bran, my escorts led me to my guest quarters in the corner tower, and when Arthur asked if there was anything else I needed, I told him I wished to visit with Dalca to discuss his ultimatum. He replied that if there was a meeting to be called, it would be at the insistence of the Master, and that my wishes were as insignificant as the sânge (blood) of slaves. Further, I was to address Dalca with the title and formal diction befitting a prince.

  “How does he wish to be addressed?” I asked.

  “He does not wish, he insists on Master.”

  Luc remained with me after Arthur departed. His look had not softened the entire day, and he explained why. “Look, Barkeley, you had your itinerary and tickets in hand. When you left me and chose to run personal errands, did it occur to you that I was in charge of getting you to and from the airport?”

  “No,” I said, “it did not. And I paid for the ticket changes myself.”

  “Well, in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, you got me on the wrong side of the Master with your stunt, and now I have to stay with you for as long as you’re here.”

  I knew the consequences of outliving your usefulness to the family, and as long as we were stuck together I thought it wise to apply a little salve. “I’m sorry I didn’t discuss my plans with you. I didn’t know you had anything at stake. I just wanted to see my hometown.”

  Luc did not exactly accept my apology. “I don’t mean I have to stay in the same room, or even the same building. But I have to be able to locate you at all times.”

  “Okay.” That loosened things only slightly.

  “Look,” he said, sitting back in his chair, “not every meeting with the Master is hostile. Some can actually be pleasant . . . even invigorating. He is patient, and sometimes he can be pretty open about things he’s seen over the years. And he can be very, very generous.”

  “Maybe when he wants something. Everyone has it in them to be pleasant then.”

  “My point exactly,” he said, pointing at me. “So as long as he thinks he can get something from you, and you don’t disappear, then I still serve a useful purpose to him.”

  “I got it,” I said. “Your neck is tied to my ankle.”

  “As long as we understand each other.”

  “In the meantime, can you see about getting me out for a few walks around the neighborhood? I need the exercise to stay sharp.”

  Luc shook his head. “It’s not up to me.” And he left.

  A night passed and then a day and another night was in progress when I awoke from a sound sleep just after midnight. Someone had entered the room, and my nose recognized the odor. The strongest link to memory is the sense of smell, and I knew it was Dalca before adjusting my eyes to the shadows and streaming moonlight. A pair of red eyes emerged over in the parlor section of the suite.

  His strong voice reached across the space. “I wish to discuss my proposal.”

  Sitting up in bed, I slipped into a robe and shoes and moved to the seat across from where he sat. I could see no more than his outline and eyes, which shone a lesser shade of red that evening.

  “Yes,” I said. When he did not respond, I added, “Master.”

  “Cover yourself.”

  I looked down to see if I was exposed and realized my crucifix was in full view. I tucked it into my shirt. “-ma.”

  I waited for him to start the conversation, and in a dismissive tone he said, “Pity . . . about your friends.”

  Immediately my blood pressure soared.

  I heard him breathe deeply, his nose in the air and mouth open, a long finger tracing his chin. “I smell . . . fury. It crowds your fearful heart.”

  I took it as something of a compliment. No one was more surprised than I at my newfound ability to harbor such rage. And that anger spawned a sense of calculation, for I instinctively knew that I had to buy time, not just to find his answers, but mine as well. Still, how does one manipulate a man who embodies cold calculation himself? A monster whose heart never entertained empathy or remorse?

  “Know, Christian boy, that your friends’ lives are on your head. When I insisted that you keep your mouth shut, did it not occur to you that it might be for your own good as well as your client’s?”

  “No.” I looked down. “It did not.”

  “And once you knew what you were looking at, did it not occur to you there may be powerful competing forces that would be willing to go to war for it?”

  For a brief moment I wanted to believe what he was implying, that I had been taken for a fool—and my friends’ lives literally taken—by someone else.

  “Here I invite you into my house, even into my sanctuary, extend a financial offer more generous than you could ever attain in your lifetime of work. Yet you fail to adhere to the most rudimentary of demands—simple silence.” He breathed in again. “And now you feel . . . prost.” Foolish.

  He tried to sound convincing, yet he was anything but.

  Dalca continued, “You already have the blood of my family flowing through your veins. Once you have completed your mission, I am prepared to offer you my own blood, the Noble blood . . . of eternal life.”

  I felt insulted. Briefly I recalled the Don’s message: “Your soul is the only thing that is yours eternally. Protect it.” With that, I felt the strength of proclaiming my faith and love of God, and reached to my chest and revealed the crucifix. “Only my Savior gives me eternal life.”

  His red eyes flared and he looked away. I returned the cross to its place, and Dalca stood and strolled over to the window. Looking out at the night, he pointed to the valley floor. “My family and I watched your Christian Crusaders march through this very yard on their way to slaughter infidels and sack great cities in the name of this God of yours. Oh yes, they were all dressed up with their painted shields and amulets and pointy sticks, eating their way through the land like locusts and thinking their little crosses would protect them. Just like you there. And for what? A disagreement over whose book was right? Fools. Dead fools.”

  “This crucifix cannot hurt you,” I said, subtly redirecting the conversation to put him on the defensive. “Yet the sight of it repulses you.”

  “That thing holds no power over me.” He dismissed it with a wave.

  “Does the sight of God remind you that you were born with no soul?”

  “Christian!” He spat out the word. “A dead man hung on a cross in shame by humans. You think that is the face of your Creator?”

  “You will never see His face,” I said.

  “What is this God that watches wars and does not lift a finger to stop them?” He drew out God’s name under a heavy breath, as if it pained him. “What is this . . . thing . . . that creates superior mortal sons, then flaunts His new . . . beloved . . . creation? What reaction would you expect, human?”
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br />   “So you resent our Lord.”

  In an instant Dalca was standing behind me, bending toward my ear. “Every sense given you, my kind is superior. You are slow, stupid, pathetic. It takes you years before you can even feed yourself.”

  “But we were given souls.”

  “Only to force you to behave or else suffer eternal torment. I would rather be destroyed.” His voice was just over a whisper, going back and forth behind me to each ear.

  “God grants eternal companionship to those of us who love Him.”

  “And for those who despise Him?”

  “Eternal death,” I said.

  “There are differences, orfan—you are awake in your eternal death, forever tormented. But you . . . you have the opportunity to choose your fate. Not I. What kind of loving God would create life without such a chance?”

  “So you choose to destroy that which He loves.”

  “I hate Him.” He drew out a full-breath h on hate as he breathed on the back of my head, parting my hair. It smelled. “And I hate you, human . . . simply because you exist. I want to hurt Him. I want to know He cries watching His children lured to the other side and dying in torture, freely choosing evil. He spurns my children; I reject His equally.”

  “If you are already condemned, then you are lucky to be mortal.”

  “We were not condemned until your kind came along.”

  I stiffened as he sniffed the back of my neck.

  “I smell . . . pity. I forbid pity.”

  I turned around and looked at him, his eyes glowing a brighter shade of red. “You think you know me. You think you know what I feel. Pity? Not for you. Fear?” I shrugged. “I might fear you, but I don’t fear death. I know God will be just to me.”

  He lifted his lip to show his long sharp teeth and sound a low growl. Through a clenched jaw he hissed, “Don’t threaten me, human. I could force you to not die, to live as my personal slave. Until I choose otherwise. And don’t challenge me, orfan; you have already seen your fate.”

  “It’s only a matter of when,” I said, “and since I don’t want it to be tonight, I accept your ultimatum, but not your offer of blood.”

  “Oh, come now,” his voice soothed, and he ran a hand down the side of my face. “Ultimatum sounds so . . . . Now, let us discuss your progress.”

  I said, “There are notes throughout the manuscript, as you know. Some direct the reader to places where more clues might lie, and then to other places. Whoever assisted Bram Stoker had knowledge of events and did not want them handed off to your family. The paper he used provided as much of a clue as what he wrote.”

  “So what is it you want?”

  In that moment his leash loosened ever so slightly, for it was the first time he ever asked me a question. Up to that point he had only given me statements and directives, and I knew I needed to make it convincing. “My research will take me to where I think those clues are. First to Belgrade. I’m not sure after that.”

  He nodded. “Just remember, I am patient only so much, boy. You will be protected, of course.” Then he pointed to my chest. “As long as you wear your little pagan amulet.”

  With that he walked swiftly and silently toward the door.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He looked at me, then spat on the floor and left.

  Just before sunrise, Luc met me in my room, and with a new, more rigid, comportment, escorted me down to the waiting carriage at the front door. My overnight bags in tow, I climbed aboard and took a seat and watched Arthur mouth last-minute instructions to Luc at the door before releasing him to join me.

  I looked to the east just as the dawn’s first rays illuminated the castle walls, and as we pulled away from Castel Bran I loosely quoted the poet of Luc’s namesake: “At dawn, when the ashes of night are gone, taken by the wind to the west . . .” I offered to let him finish the verse, but his face showed a stolid indifference.

  From Bran we traveled by bus to and then by train through Bucharest and on to Serbia, where we took a taxi to the Excelsior Hotel. The next morning, we walked from there to the Tesla Museum at Krunska 51 in central Belgrade. Luc briefed me on the rules I was to obey under his watch—mainly no side trips or changes of plans. I was to meet him at the appointed time to break for lunch and he said he’d return promptly at the museum’s closing hour. Relieved that I would be working alone, I promised there would be no deviation.

  I stood outside the museum and said a silent prayer that what I sought was within its walls. Built in 1929 as a residence in a villa style of arched windows and entryways, with two stories plus a partial underground basement, the building since had been converted to a small, single-themed museum housing only articles of legacy from the prolific inventor.

  I arrived just before opening and was greeted by a doleful-looking attendant who let me in early to browse the open displays. The public viewing portion occupied the main floor, a counterclockwise tour of seven themed areas wrapping a central enclosed stairway and ending back at the entrance foyer. The top floor served as offices, and the basement as archive storage.

  I stepped into the first area, a classically designed room of hardwood plank floors and twelve-foot ceilings. Indirect lighting added an elegant touch, with large life-size photos of Nikola Tesla and his family, some friends, and scenes from his place of birth used as wallpaper. I was struck by the intensity of Tesla’s look, the inventor’s face pointed with the usual Slavic features and a direct stare, as if the cameraman had just posed a challenge.

  In the second room a dozen glass curio cabinets held his personal objects, such as a black hat and traveling bag, tickets to events, invitations and evidence that his social life was as active as his scientific one. Tesla was a man married to greatness, but he bickered with her instruction, and the two remained asymptotic. Correspondence decorated the walls, letters from such luminaries as Mark Twain, George Westinghouse, and Lord Tennyson. A dozen or more small inventions rested in the cases.

  At the far corner of the first floor, in the third room, rested Tesla’s ashes in a golden spherical urn hoisted on a marble pedestal. And at the tour’s completion, near the museum’s entrance, his death mask stared back at his unfinished work from inside a glass case.

  The curator, a man of few words and fewer smiles, pointed toward the stairwell, where I descended past a locked interior door and into the large archive room. Immediately the air temp and humidity told me this was not the proper place to store valuable documents, nor were the contents cataloged or secured in weather-safe containers. The concrete floors spelled moisture. A quick look at the basement windows shook me with the realization that one small flood through the street-level windows would destroy more than a hundred thousand irreplaceable documents. Above the windows were mounted surveillance cameras.

  In broken English the attendant asked if I knew which documents I sought.

  “Laboratory notes and personal journals from the 1890s, including notes taken by assistants.”

  “We try best to organize by dates,” he said, pointing toward the middle stacks. “Most volumes come from last two decades of that century . . . seem to be in these.”

  “Thank you. I’ll return the boxes back precisely.”

  He left with a nod and resumed his duties upstairs, and I paused to look around. Finding myself again in the bowels of a museum, much like the Rosenbach, alone this time, a sense of urgency pushed me toward a strategy of how best to search systematically. Though I wished to inspect each document, there was insufficient time, and turning to the process of elimination I listed what I was not looking for—drawings, accolades, legal correspondence, and anything written in the twentieth century. Things written personally by Tesla were likely not pertinent, except as it established the relationship between the inventor and his assistant, Gheorghe.

  More specifically, I was searching for the lost epilogue and any notes
attached to it.

  I had already seen the southpaw handwriting of the assistant, as well as Abraham Stoker’s, so at least I knew the size and shape of the needle I sought in this haystack. As the attendant had purported, the stacks were loosely arranged by decade, so I began by lifting a box from the nearest stack and carried it to a large working table. The contents of the box had that unmistakable chemical smell of paper’s acidic composting that, if not protected against air’s natural assault, would first discolor, then adhere, and finally lose its absorbency and disintegrate.

  The first batch included correspondence between Tesla and the U.S. War Department in the Woodrow Wilson era, in which he proposed to build remote-controlled submarines and demonstrate them in the Hudson River. The same box also held similar proposals from the Taft Administration.

  Wrong century and subject, as it turned out. To mark what I’d already viewed and rejected, I noted contents on a yellow pad and placed the manifests inside the boxes, scribing the outsides of boxes with small numbers denoting the years covered. Three hours into my task, I had reviewed an entire row of boxes before taking a break. The work was heavy and dusty, but my heart ached for the fate that most certainly awaited these decaying documents, for although they saw the end of the last century, they would not see another. I mentioned this to the curator as the day ended, and he commented that it was a matter of resource priority and his government had a long list above it.

  How offensive, I thought, to lose treasures that belong to the ages because of budget casualties. The very idea of an archive is to preserve, not to set in motion the process of decay.

  Ending the day, I was confident that by the week’s end I could inspect and mark every box. Unfortunately, that first day had yielded nothing on the topic I sought.

  As I left the museum, Luc was waiting for me across the street. He did not say much and did not appear to be fielding questions on his day’s activity. He did, however, seem to sense that I needed to do something more than just return to my hotel room, and we detoured toward Pionirski Park for a lengthy walk. Ours was a brisk pace among the strolling couples and lounging seniors who enjoyed the summery warmth that brought the gardens and trees into full bloom. As sunset approached, we headed back to the Excelsior Hotel for a late and mostly silent dinner.