by Peter Spokes
Finally – between us – we lifted the trap and carried it back to the car where we secured the wheel nuts by turning the trap.
I must say we were seriously fatigued by the time we set off for the last few miles to Lepșa.
I drove slowly with some care in case another incident occurred but after a little under half an hour, we saw some lights which after several more minutes revealed a number of wooden buildings and what appeared to be an alehouse.
We passed more and continued until we found ourselves once again in darkness.
I realised that that was the village and I was now exiting it.
I slowed and turned the jeep around but then drew to a sudden halt, as the headlights picked up a small church or chapel and a solitary robed figure standing at its gates – and in the dark.
I looked at Ryker who shrugged. “I’m here if there’s trouble… but is that a child?” he said squinting through the windscreen into the darkness.
I stared at him for a moment before returning my gaze to the dark figure.
Certainly, the figure wasn’t tall.
After a few moments, the shadow slowly approached.
Despite Ryker’s presence, I ensured the doors were locked.
I guessed we were looking at the monastery that Michael had mentioned and the place where the vârcolac, apparently, prowled.
The dark figure stopped at my window and then knocked on it.
Despite some serious reluctance, I lowered the window and looked up at the stranger.
“Bună seara,” I said as best my experience of the Romanian vernacular allowed.
The figure leaned closer and paused for a long time as its head moved slightly from side to side. The figure’s face was in darkness due to the hood and the moon’s light behind it.
My smile was just beginning to falter when I heard an extremely soft cadence.
“Eu sper…” and I realised it was a woman and a rather petite one.
Then in English, “I do hope so. Visitors are… rare… Are you lost?”
I paused trying to penetrate the darkness of her cowl.
I looked at the hands holding gently on to the edge of my lowered window. They were small and her fingers long and delicate.
“Erh, no… I’m looking for Marius Vadoover,” I said making another attempt at the indigenous language.
“That would be ‘Vãduvã’…” she said, and though I could see nothing of her face I felt certain I sensed a smile.
The years I had spent with wolves made one’s senses more… acutely empathetic to external emotions.
I smiled back.
She turned her head looking back down the road. “Vãduvã is at ‘Capul de Lup’,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said looking around and pausing because I quite simply wanted to speak to her some more and was looking for something to say.
“It’s a little dark and isolated here. I don’t mean to pry but…?”
“I understand,” she said.
I so wished I could see the face. I felt certain it was smiling.
“I am Paracliser mănăstirea Lepșa,” she said gesturing to the dark edifice behind her.
I nodded. “You live in a church?” I asked, thinking how much better this might be discussing such things in a warm alehouse in front of a roaring fire.
“It ‘mănăstirea’.”
“Arh… okay,” I said making a mental note. Google’s translator was going to be busy tonight, I thought.
But then the fragile magic broke and I heard a low shout of some urgency, “Lucia! Come now!”
I felt my heart stop for a moment as suddenly I was transported to the wolf reserve and I was calling my favourite wolf. I suddenly felt dizzy and quite nauseous.
For a moment, I wondered and felt angry. Was I being set up?
The woman’s cowl whipped around quickly in the direction of the voice as if suddenly worried. I looked over to gaze upon a very large man standing beside the gate and staring at her.
He was well over six feet – probably closer to seven – and he looked angry.
‘Dănuț’, I figured.
“Lucia!… Now!” he shouted again with more urgency.
The cowl looked back to me and I sensed the face – were I to see it – was worried… or scared; her voice was proof of her sudden heightened anxiety.
“I need to go now!” she said clearly distressed. “There are things that need to be done, but I would like to talk with you… I have a problem,” she said quietly.
I watched the big man approach. I looked over at Ryker. He nodded.
“Sure looks like a problem to me…” he said staring through the windscreen at the big guy.
“Sure…” I said to the dark cowl as it turned and proceeded towards the church gate.
Ryker looked over at me. “Did you notice that big guy’s limp?”
I stared back. “I did notice but it doesn’t mean he’s just been released from a wolf trap; besides he’s a big guy and that wolf was… small.”
“The size of the person is not indicative of the size of its… wolf.”
I shook my head. “That’s bollocks; you just made that up!” I said as we set off down the dark road, peering as best I could through the rapidly forming fog.
I ignored a smiling Ryker.
The lady’s voice was so soft and gentle. I was wondering what she looked like under the hood.
Scene 3: Marius Vãduvã
After a mile, the lights began to appear and I slowed to a halt. We stood outside the inn for several moments. I was lamenting the warmth and luxury of the hotel I could be at this moment habiting.
I looked up to stare at the sign at its entrance – a wolf’s severed head.
“Nice…!” Ryker said.
That was when I heard the howl; but it wasn’t in my head. It echoed through the forest and across the small village. It was different to those on the conservation camp; more primitive and primal.
We both stared into the darkness at the end of the road where we had been only a few minutes ago.
It was when it was accompanied by a strange sound not unlike a serpentine hissing, but more… guttural… that appeared to resound along the road, that I hurriedly opened the door and with as much grace and gravitas as my panicking body would allow, stepped over the threshold.
I reached the bar and leaned nonchalantly on it. Ryker – with a far more relaxed attitude – followed.
As I had expected, upon our entrance all became silent; there was some assumption to this as I had no way of knowing how noisy it had been before we had entered.
However, playing cards were held in mid-deal; drinking glasses paused on their journey to eager open mouths; and all faces looked in my direction.
“I have a room reserved,” I said to the man that suddenly hove into view. “The name’s Lowell; Freeman Lowell,” I said.
The man said nothing but within a moment procured a key. Ryker proceeded upstairs; I guessed he was tired.
“Would you know where I could find Marius… Vadoover?”
“He there,” he said pointing to one of the darker recesses of the room; “… and that ‘Vãduvã’,” he finished.
“Thank you,” I said pausing with some irritation from the second verbal correction. I wandered over to the further recesses of the inn. As I made my way between the tables, I thought I could still hear intermittent howls and noticed the clients looking down at their drinks as another occurred.
Their mood was decidedly sombre; there was no raucous laughter or guys clapping each other on the backs with words of innuendoes and lewd conversation – or maybe that was just the sad reflection of the places I had frequented.
Was this normal or was there something wrong here? I wondered.
I pondered on the howling and the…
hissing… and though I had only met ‘Lucia’ a short while ago, I surprised myself with the concern I felt for her – not only because of the beastly howls, which would be cause for worry by itself – but the big guy who looked none too friendly.
I stopped at a table and found myself looking down at a bearded and overweight gentleman.
The man looked up from a frothy ale.
“… Cine esti?” he said.
“Ehm… are you Marius?”
“Who is it you are?” he asked brusquely.
“… I’m Freeman Lowell…” I said offering my hand.
“Ah, you here to kill vârcolac,” he said, suddenly looking interested and shaking my offered appendage.
“Michael find you!” he said.
I sat down and nodded. “He find me,” I said. I didn’t feel that Michael had been entirely honest regarding Marius’ English skills – but then it was vastly superior to my own Romanian ones.
“… And he said you have a problem with a… beast,” I continued.
He shook his head and I wondered if I had got it wrong, but then realised he was simply showing disgust. “Man is put in ground but is…” he made a clawing action with his hands, “… is brought back and eaten…”
“How… is that?” I asked unsure of not only the statement but the grammar too.
“A funeral… a cadavru… dead man go into ground. It should stay but vârcolac dig it up and eats…”
I felt it prudent not to tell him that what he was saying was nonsense, and so…
“Have you seen it? Do you know what it looks like?”
“I not seen it but Michael seen it. Michael injury from. He tells has big teeth and big claws.”
I sat back and thought for a moment but really didn’t know where to go with this absurdity.
But just then, a young and tall woman of about twenty years of age hove into view and it required no translation to know that Marius was being subjected to some serious admonishing.
I watched the two of them argue for a minute or two while the young lady looked at me with dark and aggressive eyes.
Then she stormed off and I saw Marius sigh and shake his head.
I didn’t have to ask.
“My daughter, Natalia,” he said as if all was explained in that name.
He continued, “She think you not be here. She say all things should live… even vârcolac… she no understand.”
He looked down with some awkwardness.
Scene 4: She Walks in the Night
“How do you know Michael?” I asked politely changing the subject.
Marius was still looking in the direction that Natalia had taken.
He sighed again.
“She always been… excitabil…” he said ignoring my question.
“Excitable?” I offered.
“Da… yes… She always close to… sălbatic…”
I shook my head.
“… Sălbatic… natură…” he continued.
“Ah, she’s always been close to nature…” I said feeling a little smug with my understanding, unaided by the iPad.
I was really beginning to feel I was getting a handle on this Romanian vernacular, when I was thrown a curveball…
He paused before leaning forward and whispering, “îi place să meargă noaptea…”
I nodded before shaking my head…
“… Noaptea…” He pointed up and to my left and I looked. Unfortunately, rafters, ceiling, lamps, alehouse, and cobwebs were responded to in the negative.
So, I gave in and fired up the iPad.
“Ah… ‘night’,” I said.
“Da, noaptea…”
I then entered his previously spoken, meargă.
“Ah, she ‘goes’… or ‘walks’… in the night…?”
He nodded.
“Many night she leave house and I see her walk in… pădure… trees…”
I briefly thought of the times I had enjoyed night walks with Lucia. I had so savoured those walks – away from time and reality – as we meandered through the misty vales and then the woodland area of the park where the wooden boughs shone a silver glow from the moon creating a rather unreal façade on the world that only Lucia and I were party to. Lucia would howl as she called out – maybe to no one but likely back to those others at the reserve.
I liked walking at night but it didn’t make me a werewolf.
Marius returned me to the less joyous – but real – present. I realised he was answering the question I had asked several minutes ago.
“About one year, Michael come here. He was… bolnav… sick… he come from forest…
He was… weak… we cared to him and he good again.”
I wasn’t surprised. I smiled. Michael was always going off the grid and he made it no secret that he liked to avoid the ‘cancer of civilisation’.
I was, however, becoming tired; it had been a very long day.
And so, I tried to summarise or otherwise wrap things up.
I asked, “Does anyone know – or think they know – who the vârcolac is?”
He shook his head. “No. We try trap it but it… it clever. That how we know it vârcolac; it think like man; normal wolf be hunted, trapped… killed… and hung up. We try all but it lives.”
If an expression could give an ‘I’m not warming to you’ look, I was most certainly giving it to Marius Vadoover, Vãduvã or whatever the fuck, now.
I smiled, took a deep breath and took a big jump into the pool of lunacy.
“So how many has it killed?” I asked jovially.
The man looked confused. “It killed nobody…”
“So, it’s been killing livestock…?” I nodded like some investigator.
“No. It not killed any things.”
I paused. “So just digging up corpses?”
“Arh, at cimitir…” he looked up, “where the dead go.”
“The cemetery?” I asked.
He nodded. “Da, we got many dead but dig up and eaten by vârcolac.”
“Could it be other beasts – foxes…” I tapped into my iPad “… vulpi?” I said.
“No vulpi or lup. It is a mancator de morți.”
I once again consulted the iPad. No fox or wolf but an eater of the dead.
“It digs for cadavru and rips and tears and eats,” he continued.
“Why are there so many burials?” I asked intrigued.
“Only cimitir near so… ocupat… lots.”
He looked down. “The copii and femeie afraid,” he said but then, “You kill it?” he said excited.
Though my mind screamed, but there is nothing to kill; you are a deluded old man! I smiled and spoke as if to a child.
“Of course,” I said, “… or at least my friend Ryker can.”
“Arh; Ryker!” he said excited.
I guessed Michael had mentioned him.
“But it fierce… it does not scared… and is… intelligence.”
I felt my ‘going with it’ reaction was being seriously overly utilised but still I nodded sagely and continued.
“What makes you say it is not scared and intelligence – intelligent?… in so many words,” I said.
“I say, we have traps but it no get caught. We thought it caught soon today… but no.
Tomorrow we go to cimitir and see the cadavru that go into ground near now.”
A recent burial, I thought and though I nodded my head, I felt no eagerness or enthusiasm in it.
“When did these… mutilations begin?” I asked.
“Four month…” he said.
“About eight months after Michael arrived,” I whispered.
He looked up and laughed. “If he vârcolac, why tell you to be here to kill it? And why wait eight month?”
; “Fair point,” I said.
“What do you know of the lady at the monastery… the… mănăstirea?” I asked.
He smiled. “She nice, no? She come four month ago.”
“So, close to the time the… the vârcolac appeared.”
He laughed again.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“Because she person of… Dumnezeu… and protector to us.”
“Dum… what?” I asked.
He pointed upwards and I looked up again at the old wooden rafters.
I shook my head. I was sure I could figure this without the iPad.
He put his palms together as if in prayer.
“Of course, she is a priest – or priestess or something?”
He nodded.
“A ‘paracliser’?” I said remembering what she had told me – this time reaching for the iPad.
He nodded. “She strong and fight vârcolac.”
I remembered her petite form beside my car and seriously felt there was little that she could do against a vârcolac or any wolf – or even an angry puppy.
I looked down at the iPad’s translation.
‘Verger’ it said.
I thought it best to keep it to myself as rather than some position of exalted religious status, she was someone who simply looked after the church – or monastery – and its contents… and the graveyard.
But perhaps convenient – I thought – for a creature to be close to its food.
I then shook my head in the hope of a return to sanity. Maybe it was the surroundings or strange wolf-thing we had experienced earlier, but I was beginning to see how when one is enmeshed in the environment of a Gothic tale you can be taken in by suggestions and inferences of the whole nonsense.
Chapter 3: The Graveyard
Scene 1: Early Morning
The following morning was hell. But then 4.30 am was always likely to be so – wherever one is.
I had had a busy night. When I wasn’t trying to move my backbone into a more anatomically traditional position, I was dreaming of a pretty young girl surrounded by beasts with large bloody teeth while a large and aggressive man kept shouting at her.
Then I heard the familiar howl and I shook myself awake.