Stoker's Manuscript

by Royce Prouty

  In the rafters I looked for a place to mount the crossbow frame. It was several feet up to the roof, and that, too, presented a challenge of how to fire the weapon remotely. After climbing down, I shifted the ladder and attached a piece of string from the face of Jesus and let it down to the top of the tombstone, where I snipped it. I rolled the string up and returned to the Gypsy’s shed, where he marked off the distance and placed a hay bale target. The crossbow had a set of iron sights, and at the ten-meter distance there was a little drop in the bolt’s trajectory. Considering this would be fired straight down from the ceiling, I held confidence in the fixed sights.

  Having marked the ceiling spot directly over the tomb, Father Andrew drilled a small hole to see if we could mount the crossbow above that point in the rafters. Although there was uneven space between the studs, the gaps measured wide enough to bolt the crossbow into place with the aid of spacers and shims.

  “Were you planning to be up here?” asked the priest.

  “No,” I said, “he would smell me.”

  The priest nodded. “Then how you fire?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  My best idea, at present, was to run a string and pull it from a remote position, with a lead weight applying the needed pressure to set up a hair trigger.

  Just then Luc entered the church, walked straight to Father Andrew, and presented him an envelope. Luc was not smiling. The priest opened it and read the single page. He handed me the note and said, “You work fast, no?”

  I recognized the handwriting and the stationery, the same personalized stock I had received before. It read:

  To Father Andrew,

  The honor of your presence is requested at a birthday party to be held at the Monastery on the evening of the Rose Moon. Dress is casual, meals will be served . . .

  That was only five days away.

  When I looked at him I saw guilt in the form of eyes averted, for the invitation could only mean that the priest was either one of their slaves or perhaps one of their spies.

  In the church the Gypsy mounted the crossbow in the benchrest, leaving enough play to adjust its aim with a hand crank. I helped lift the weapon to the rafters and bolt it solidly in place. Father Andrew drilled a hole in the painted lower ceiling with just enough clearance to allow the bolt to pass through to its target. I placed a hay bale over the tomb to protect it, then climbed up into the rafters to take the first shot. The arrow grazed the bale and shattered on the slab. After adjusting the aim with the hand crank, the next round found the bale, but not its target. Eight tries, plus three more confirming shots later, all worked with precision, and the bolt tip sunk into the midpoint of the bale each time.

  Next we rigged the remote firing device by running a thin wire from the rafters and outside, through a small hole, alongside a gutter spout. However, when we pulled the wire, the motion over the pivot point jostled the crossbow’s aim and the shot missed its target by more than a foot. Father Andrew looked at me with panic in his eyes.

  I said, “Don’t worry, I’m working on it.”

  As for my own qualms, I envisioned the possibility of repeating my Loreena Braithwaite mistake, not getting a shot at Dalca, and having him lose his patience and attack me. I also considered the possibility that his bride’s remains were there but unusable.

  Sonia touched me on the shoulder and said, “You worry about things you have no control over.”

  I nodded.

  “Work on what you can.”

  “,” I thanked her, and looked around at the others. “Any ideas when you think we might open this up and see what’s inside?”

  No one responded for a moment until the Gypsy posed a question. I did not catch its meaning, so Father Andrew translated: “How far dog smells another in heat?”

  I nodded and gave it careful consideration. If her scent was strong enough, Dalca might be able to smell her the scant distance to Dreptu. But if the smell was modest, I could prove her existence by obtaining her scent on a piece of cloth.

  Sonia warned, You must wait until very last moment to take her scent.

  She was right, but that left no time to notify Radu.

  When he wasn’t praying, Father Andrew fretted nervously, as would anyone with only four days until execution. In the middle of our conversation he interrupted. “I must go make my last confession.”

  It seemed strange at first, but it made sense, for even priests go to confession.

  “I shall go see Father Ionescu in .” And looking my way, he said, “Come with me.”

  Before leaving, I took Sonia aside and said, “You should really come with us and leave the area.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “If this all goes down wrong, Dalca is going to go after you first.”

  “Do you really think there is a place where he cannot find me?”

  “At least you’d have a chance,” I said. Then I reached for my wallet and retrieved the locker key. I pressed it into her hand. “Here’s the locker key, N279 in the train station. There’s some traveling money in there.”

  “I have faith that you will take me there,” she said.

  Then I thought of Alexandru Bena. I had written the telephone number on a piece of paper. “In the pocket of the coat you gave me, there is a phone number. Call it and ask for Alexandru Bena.”

  Again, she reached up to touch my face. “My days will end here. With you.”

  I nodded.

  “Besides,” she said, “Dalca will be looking for me to be home at that hour, as he will pass my house only.” She tapped her nose, indicating that Dalca would be able to smell her presence. “Nothing should appear out of ordinary.”

  “ .” I understand.

  “Don’t forget your red pointer,” she said as I was leaving.

  “Thank you.” We hugged.

  After washing up for our ride into town, we climbed in the priest’s truck, a 1967 International Travelall, green with bench seats that smelled of wet horses. Stopping at the inn, I asked Luc if he wanted to ride into for an errand, and he eagerly washed up, grabbed a jacket, and piled in with us. The ancient SUV protested going to work, but it bounced nobly along the dirt road while the sun set. Up and over the hill the lights of came into sight, and Father Andrew paused to take a nostalgic look at the view.

  After dropping Luc off at an apartment of some acquaintance near the train station, we drove to the part of town where shops sold cell phones and electronic gadgets. After six inquiries I found only one laser pointer, a used one at that, and paid the superstition premium price of fifty dollars US.

  As we drove to the west side of town and out onto a rural road, the priest slowed the truck and said, “Many things I regret in this life, and all involve disobedience to God.”

  Knowing secondhand the loneliness of priesthood, I offered my honest assessment: “You have given much so others will not have such regrets.”

  He looked straight ahead. “My first hundred years I spent breaking His stone tablets. My second hundred I try putting them back together.”

  “That’s confession enough,” I told him, my best attempt to comfort the man.

  He shook his head no and said that the Regulat that had visited him with the moons died in the same war as Sonia’s Regulat. Afterward they both dedicated themselves to keeping secret what lay beneath their houses.

  “I knew this day would come,” he said. “It seems like a long time to get here, but now that it arrives . . . it seems as though it came all too quickly.”

  “ .”

  “Over the decades Sonia and I talked about who would come to defeat the evil.” He looked over at me. “I knew it would be a man of great courage and character.”

  “Instead, I showed up,” I said. “Well, wish me luck anyway.”

  He tried to smile, but it only turned the corners of his mouth down. “Rem
ember Jeremiah, Isaiah, David?”

  “Old Testament, yes.”

  “Ordinary men God gave great strength when needed,” he said, “and He will do same for you.”

  “I will pray for you, Father.”

  “I shall need it.”

  “Why? From what I see you’ve been a good priest. Trust me, I know the difference.”

  A stretch of silence passed when he seemed to want to say something else. Finally he spoke: “I’m not a priest.” He looked straight ahead and not at me. “I just showed up when they needed one. I came to this abandoned church and rebuilt it.”

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “I went to seminary as a young man.”

  “Did you quit?”

  “No . . . expelled.”

  “Oh.” I did not want to ask him how long he had lived his lie.

  “Right after the first Great War—your president was Coolidge—I violated my celibacy vows. Repeatedly.”

  “You did the job of a priest. That makes you a priest.” I hoped.

  He shook his head and looked away. “Please pray for me.”

  We arrived at an old wooden church, another high-steepled, three-centuries-old structure with a single light burning dimly in the rectory window. The grounds were fenced and hosted a large cemetery.

  “I shall be a while,” Father Andrew said. “At least an hour.”

  I nodded and said I would be on the grounds. The night was cool and windy, and as the trees rustled overhead a sense of resolution settled over me, for I knew we were going to confront unbridled evil and hope God guided our arrows, or bolts, as may be. Make that singular—we had but one shot.

  I found another near the cemetery entrance and knelt to pray. I prayed for the priests, both my brother and Father Andrew, and gave thanks for sending Sonia and the Gypsy into my life. I asked forgiveness for breaking promises and destroying the lives of others. Like a man who invents a great explosive device and then is stunned when it’s employed to kill people, I was unworthy to petition for favors, but still I begged for mercy anyway.

  Overhead the trees rustled. I stopped and looked up just as the moon rose over the Carpathians. It was almost full.

  “It will do you no good.” Radu’s low voice startled me, and I jerked my head in his direction. “Over here.” I looked and saw him sitting on a tomb in the cemetery. “I was told you were here.” His eyes glowed red like lanterns. “Come closer.”

  I entered through a creaky wooden gate and stepped within twenty feet. He wore no coat or hat, just dark traveling clothes.

  “Closer.”

  I closed half the distance and heard him sniff heavily through clenched teeth.

  “So you have found something.”

  “Yes.”

  “I smell . . . apprehension . . . but more confidence than our last meeting.”

  “I found a tomb.”

  “Just one?”

  “Just one. No markings.”

  “But you have not unsealed it,” he said. “Not yet.”

  I nodded.

  “Speak, mortal.”

  “Correct, not yet.”

  “And it’s not the tomb of my wife, is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Clearly you fear you have only one chance, and you want me there to keep you off the sharp end of the stick.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me where the tomb is.”

  As I hesitated, a huge cloud of flying things arrived, an assortment of birds and bats.

  “As you can see,” he said, “I cannot travel anywhere without drawing the paparazzi. I must go now, but if you want me there you will have to tell me where it is.”

  When I failed to answer immediately his face moved suddenly to one inch from mine.

  “Now!” He showed his teeth. “Tell me.”

  “The church in Dumitra.” Before I could say anything else he was gone, so I yelled, “This Rose Moon.” The birds and bats all departed with him, traveling north.

  Father Andrew concluded his business, and we picked up Luc at his friend’s apartment. It was a quiet ride back to Dumitra, and I could tell the sight of the moon unnerved the priest, so I offered to drive. He shook his head and drove on. It was bumpy.

  The next morning I walked to the Gypsy’s and found him working in his smithing shop. He directed me to a seat to wait while he finished a delicate task, that of weighing the crossbow ammunition, as each bolt must weigh the same to achieve consistent trajectory, given a set string tension. He lifted the last arrow and handed it to me for inspection. It was not copper-tipped like the others.

  With a proud but grim smile, he said, “Argint.”

  “I can never repay you,” I said.

  He gripped my shoulder and shook me. “Hai mergem.” Let’s go.

  We walked toward his driveway with the bolt wrapped in cloth under my arm, and as he lifted the horseshoe magnet to open the gate, it seemed as if we simultaneously discovered the solution to our remote firing issue.

  “How does this work?” I asked, indicating the magnetic device.

  He explained mostly with hand signals, but basically the gate operated like a garage door at the end of an electromechanical event chain. His magnetized horseshoe passed over the fence post and briefly broke the electrical connection, causing a hook to fall at the gate latch. An opposing spring tension pulled the gate open until it reached the end, then ratcheted to reverse, and the spring tension pulled the gate closed. By the time it swung closed the electrical connection was reestablished and the hook was in the up position to receive the latch and close the gate. Same principles as modern garage door openers, except his was operated with copper wires, a couple connections, and a dry-cell battery mounted in the center post. He said he had to adjust the spring tensions with the various seasons of the year, and intermittently recharged the dry-cell with a coil mounted on a stationary bicycle.

  For our crossbow application, the most important issue was that the string tension not pull around the pivot, but rather lift the hook straight up like a finger would, and thus not jostle the weapon. It was roughly the same design that keeps a garage door opener from derailing.

  The Gypsy retrieved materials from his work shed to make a garage door opener—a set of springs, a small hook, wire, connectors, string, and the dry-cell battery. By the end of the day the mechanism was in place, the springs attached to the rafters just above the crossbow with a string looped through the hook, gripping the trigger like a finger. We dry fired the bow to test the mechanism, and although there was a delay from activation to firing, the weapon remained on target after the trigger pull.

  Our next issue was one of distance and how far remote we could be with flimsy hard wire strung from the rafters, out a side window, down the side of a drainpipe, and lying in plain sight on the ground. We ran the wire toward the rectory and over the short stone fence, but with that much length the wire failed to conduct enough charge to make connection and initiate firing.

  Where the wire traveled into the wall we then placed a tiny red lightbulb to indicate the charge had reached its destination. Next we shortened the wire to just the over the fence, but it still would not fire. Again we shortened, and again and again, until the wire was just at the bottom of the drainpipe. Only then did the red light glow.

  Because Dalca’s vision would detect my body heat, I had to stay on the other side of something he could not see through, like the stone fence, meaning that when it was time to fire I would have to jump over the fence and run to the drainpipe to make the connection, a forty-yard dash or so.

  We were short on weapons, ammo, and time, and as the day of the Rose Moon arrived we found Father Andrew praying in the church and sprinkling holy water in the hole.

  “Someone will come to escort me this evening after sunset,” the priest said. “Un
til that time this should be covered.”

  We moved the wooden slab back into place on the floor and spent most of the day listening to Father Andrew sob and give instructions on what to do in his absence. We were to announce to the village that he had died during the night and the church was to be closed until a replacement priest arrived. The day passed as quickly as any I had lived, and as he ate his last meal of bread and water, he passed it around and asked us to remember him in our prayers. It was like comforting a death row inmate.

  He waited outside the front door in his black raiment with its prominent white collar. Luc walked up to the church steps and informed us that a bus was approaching. Father Andrew addressed each of us, offering a last blessing and the sign of the cross and asked that we pray for his soul’s safe delivery. He quietly took a seat on the bus and did not look back.

  After the bus disappeared into the woods, Sonia slowly walked to her house. I could see by how her shoulders shook that she was crying.

  Luc looked at us and said, “You don’t have much time.”

  We went to work while Luc watched the door. First the Gypsy and I removed the flooring and climbed into the hole, where we had four automobile jacks stationed at the four corners of the tombstone. With the help of two of the Gypsy’s teenage sons, we pumped the jacks until they secured the overhanging corners of the sarcophagus stone cover. In unison we pumped the jacks once, then again, then again. All we accomplished, however, was to press the jacks deeper into the dirt.

  We burned candles in the darkened church hole to keep the village curious from inquiring why the building might be lit up. I worked on the upper right side, leaning on one of the tomb’s strange, hilt-like handles. The jacks’ bottoms were now underlain with flat stones to provide a firmer base, and we resumed our pumping efforts, but this only worked for a moment, the resistance quickly becoming too great to continue. I looked at the Gypsy, and his candlelit face told me not to show concern. We continued trying to pump the levers.