Necroscope 4: Deadspeak (7 page)

Of course you won’t, Dumiitruuu. Not even I can make you do that, not against your will. Beguilement has its limits, you see. No, you won’t kill yourself, my son. I shall do that. Indeed—I already have!

Dumitru found his limbs full of a sudden strength, his mind free at last of the Ferenczy’s shackles. Licking his lips, eyes starting out, he looked this way and that. Which way to run? Somewhere up ahead a great wolf waited; but he still had his torch; the wolf would back off before its flaring. And behind him …

From behind him in this previously still place, suddenly the air came rushing like a wind—fanned by a myriad of wings. The bats!

In another moment the crushing claustrophobia of the place crashed down on Dumitru. Even without the bats, whose return seemed imminent, he knew he could never find courage to retrace his steps down the false flue, and then through the castle’s vaults with their graveyard loot, and on up that echoing stone stairwell to the outside world. No, there was only one way: forward to whatever awaited him. And as the first bats came in a rush, so he hurled himself along the stone ledge—

—Which at once tilted under his weight!

And:

Ahaaa!
said the awful voice in his head, full of triumph now.
But even a big wolf weighs much less than a man full grown, Dumiitruuu!

Opposite the spiked pit, the ledge and entire section of wall that backed it—an “L” of hewn stone—tilted through ninety degrees and tossed Dumitru onto the spikes. His single shriek, of realization and the horror it brought combined, was cut off short as he was pierced through skull and spine and most of his vital organs—but not his heart. Still beating, his heart continued to pump his blood—to pump it out through the many lacerations of his impaled, writhing body.

And did I not say it would be an ecstasy, Dumiitruuu? And did I not say I’d kill you?
The monster’s gloating words came floating through all the youth’s agonies, but dimly and fading, as was the agony itself. And that was the last of Janos Ferenczy’s torments, his final taunt; for now Dumitru could no longer hear him.

But Janos was not disappointed. No, for now there was that which was far more important—an ancient thirst to quench. At least until the next time.

Blood coursed down the “V”-shaped channel, spurted from the spout, splashed down into the mouth of the urn to wet whatever was inside. Ancient ashes, salts—the chemicals of a man, of a monster—soaked it up, bubbled and bulked out, smoked and smouldered. Such was the chemical reaction that the obscene lips of the urn seemed almost to belch …

In a little while the great wolf came back. He passed scornfully under the bats where they chittered and formed a ceiling of living fur, stepped timidly where the pivoting floor and wall of the passage had rocked smoothly back into place, and paused to gaze down at the now silent urn. Then … he whined deep in the back of his throat, jumped down into the pit and up onto the runnelled slab above the urn, and crept timidly between the spikes to a clear area at the head of the trench. There he turned about and began to free Dumitru’s drained body from the spikes, lifting the corpse from them bloodied shaft by bloodied shaft.

When this was done he’d jump up out of the pit, which wasn’t deep here, reach down and worry the body out, and drag it to the Place of Many Bones where he could feed at will. It was a routine with which the old wolf was quite familiar. He’d performed this task on several previous occasions.

So had his father before him. And his. And his …

II: Seekers

S
AVIRSIN,
R
OMANIA; EVENING OF THE FIRST
F
RIDAY IN
A
UGUST
1983; the
Gaststube
of an inn perched on the steep mountainside at the eastern extreme of the town, where the road climbs up through many hairpin bends and out of sight into the pines.

Three young Americans, tourists by their looks and rig, sat together at a chipped, ages-blackened, heavily-grained circular wooden table in one corner of the barroom. Their clothes were casual; one of them smoked a cigarette; their drinks were local beers, not especially strong but stinging to the palate and very refreshing.

At the bar itself a pair of gnarled mountain men, hunters complete with rifles so ancient they must surely qualify as antiques, had guffawed and slapped backs and bragged of their prowess—and not only as hunters of beasts—for over an hour before one of them suddenly took on a surprised look, staggered back from the bar, and with a slurred oath aimed himself reeling through the door out into the smoky blue-grey twilight. His rifle lay on the bar where he’d left it; the bartender, not a little gingerly, took it up and put it carefully away out of sight, then continued to wash and dry the day’s used glasses.

The departed hunter’s drinking companion—and partner in crime or whatever—roared with renewed laughter; he slapped the bar explosively, finished off the other’s plum brandy and threw back his own, then looked around for more sport. And of course he spied the Americans where they sat at their ease, making casual conversation. In fact, and until now, their conversation had centred on him, but he didn’t know that.

He ordered another drink—and whatever they were drinking for them at the table; one for the barman, too—and swayed his way over to them. Before filling the order the barman took his rifle, too, and placed it safely with the other.

“Gogosu,” the old hunter growled, thumbing himself in his leather-clad chest. “Emil Gogosu. And you?
Touristi,
are you?” He spoke Romanian, the dialect of the area, which leaned a little towards Hungarian. All three, they smiled back at him, two of them somewhat warily. But the third translated, and quickly answered: “Tourists, yes. From America, the USA. Sit down, Emil Gogosu, and talk to us.”

Taken by surprise, the hunter said: “Eh? Eh? You have the tongue? You’re a guide for these two, eh? Profitable, is it?”

The younger man laughed. “God, no! I’m with them—I’m one of them—an American!”

“Impossible!” Gogosu declared, taking a seat. “What? Why, J never before heard such a thing! Foreigners speaking the tongue? You’re pulling my leg, right?”

Gogosu was peasant Romanian through and through. He had a brown, weather-beaten face, grey bull-horn moustaches stained yellow in the middle from pipe-smoking, long sideburns curling in towards his upper lip, and penetrating grey eyes under bristling, even greyer brows. He wore a patched leather jacket with a high collar that buttoned up to the neck over a white shirt whose sleeves fitted snug at the wrist. His fur
caciula
cap was held fast under the right epaulet of his jacket; a half-filled bandolier passed under the left epaulet, crossed his chest diagonally, fed itself up under his right arm and across his back. A wide leather belt supported a sheath and hunter’s knife, several pouches, and his coarsely-woven trousers which he wore tucked into his climber’s pigskin calf-boots. A small man, still he looked strong and wiry. All in all, he was a picturesque specimen.

“We were talking about you,” their interpreter told him.

“Eh? Oh?” Gogosu looked from one face to the next all the way round. “About me? So I’m a figure of curiosity, am I?”

“Of admiration,” the wily American answered. “A hunter, by your looks, and good at it—or so we’d guess. You’d know this country, these mountains, well?”

“There isn’t a man knows ‘em better!” Gogosu declared. But he was wily, too, and now his eyes narrowed a little. “You’re looking for a guide, eh?”

“We could be, we could be,” the other slowly nodded. “But there are guides and there are guides. You ask
some
guides to show you a ruined castle on a mountain and they promise you the earth! The very castle of Dracula, they say! And then they take you to a pile of rocks that looks like someone’s pigsty collapsed! Aye, ruins, Emil Gogosu, that’s what we’re interested in. For photographs, for pictures … for mood and atmosphere.”

The barman delivered their drinks and Gogosu tossed his straight back. “Eh? Eh? You’re going to make one of those picture things, right? Moving pictures? The old vampire in his castle, chasing the girls with the wobbling breasts? God, yes, I’ve seen ‘em! The pictures, I mean, down in old Lugoj where there’s a picture-house. Not the girls, no … sod-all wobbly tits round here, I can tell you! Withered paps at best in this neck of the woods, my lads! But I’ve seen the pictures. And that’s what you’re looking for, eh? Ruins

Oddly, and despite the brandy he’d consumed, the old boy seemed to have sobered a little. His eyes focussed more readily, became more fixed in their orbits as he studied the Americans each in his turn. First there was their interpreter. He was a queer one for sure, with his knowledge of the tongue and what all. He was tall, this one, a six-footer with inches to spare, long in the leg, lean in the hip and broad at the shoulders. And now that Gogosu looked closer, he could see that he wasn’t just American. Not all American, anyway.

“What’s your name, eh? What’s your name?” The hunter took the young man’s hand and made to tighten his grip on it … but it was snatched back at once and down out of sight under the table.

“George,” the owner of the refused hand quickly replied, reclaiming Gogosu’s startled-to-flight attention. “George Vulpe.”

“Vulpe?” the hunter laughed out loud and slapped the table, making their drinks dance. “Oh, I’ve known a few Vulpes in my time. But George? What kind of a name is George to go with a name like Vulpe, eh? Now come on, let’s be straight, you and I… you mean
Gheorghe,
don’t you?”

The other’s dark eyes darkened more yet and seemed to brood a very little, but then they relaxed and exchanged grin for grin with the grey eyes of their inquisitor. “Well, you’re a sharp one, Emil,” their owner finally said. “Sharp-eyed, too! Yes, I was Romanian once. There’s a story to it, but it’s not much …”

The gnarled old hunter returned to studying him. “Tell it anyway,” he said, giving Vulpe a slow once-over. And the young man shrugged and sat back in his chair.

“Well, I was born here, under the mountains,” he said, his voice as soft as his deceptively soft mouth. He smiled and flashed perfect teeth;
so they should be,
Gogosu thought,
in a man only twenty-six or -seven years old.
“Born here,” Vulpe repeated, “yes … but it’s only a dim and distant memory now. My folks were travellers, which accounts for my looks. You recognized me from my tanned skin, right? And my dark eyes?”

“Aye,” Gogosu nodded. “And from the thin lobes of your ears, which would take a nice gold ring. And from your high forehead and wolfish jaw, which aren’t uncommon in the Szgany. Oh, your origins are obvious enough, to a man who can see. So what happened?”

“Happened?” Again Vulpe’s shrug. “My parents moved to the cities, settled down, became “workers” instead of the drones they’d always been.”

“Drones? You believe that?”

“No, but the authorities did. They gave them a flat in Craiova, right next to the new railway. The mortar was rotten and shaky from the trains; the plaster was coming off the walls; someone’s toilet in the flat above leaked on us … but it was good enough for workshy drones, they said. And until I was eleven that’s where I’d play, next to the tracks. Then … one night a train was derailed. It ploughed right into our block, took away a wall, brought the whole place crashing down. I was lucky enough to live through it but my people died. And for a while I thought I’d be better off dead, too, because my spine had been crushed and I was a cripple. But someone heard about me, and there was a scheme on at the time—an exchange of doctors and patients, between American and Romanian rehabilitation clinics—and because I was an orphan I was given priority. Not bad for a drone, eh? So … I went to the USA. And they fixed me up. What’s more, they adopted me, too. Two of them did, anyway. And because I was only a boy and there was no one left back here,” (yet again, his shrug) “why, I was allowed to stay!”

“Ah!” said Gogosu. “And so now you’re an American. Well, I’ll believe you … but it’s strange for Gypsies to leave the open road. Sometimes they get thrown out and go their own ways—disputes and what have you in the camps, usually over a woman or a horse—but rarely to settle in towns. What was it with your folks? Did they cross the Gypsy king or something?”

“I don’t know. I was only a boy,” Vulpe answered. “I think perhaps they feared for me: I was a weak little thing, apparently, a runt. At any rate, they left the night I was born, and covered their tracks, and never went back.”

“A runt?” Gogosu raised an eyebrow, looked Vulpe up and down yet again. “Well, you’d not know it now. But they covered their tracks, you say? That’s it, then. Say no more. There’d been trouble in the camp, for sure. I’ll give you odds your father and mother were secret lovers, and she was promised to another. Then you came along so he stole her away. Oh, it happens.”

“That’s a very romantic notion,” Vulpe said. “And who knows?—you could be right.”

“My God, we’re ignorant!” Gogosu suddenly exploded, beckoning to the barman. “Here’s you and me chatting in this old tongue of ours, and your two friends bewildered and left out entirely. Now let me get you all another drink and then we’ll have some introductions. I want to know why you’re here, and what I can do to help, and how much you’ll pay me to take you to some
real
ruins!”

“The drinks are on us,” said Vulpe. “And no arguments. God, do you expect us to keep up with you, Emil Gogosu? Now slow down or you’ll have us all under the table before we’ve even got things sorted out! As for introductions, that’s easy:”

He clasped the shoulder of the American closest to him. “This great gangly one is Seth Armstrong, from Texas. They build them tall there, Emil, as you can see. But then it’s a big state. Why, your entire Romania would fit into Texas alone three times over!”

Gogosu was suitably impressed. He shook hands with Armstrong and looked him over. The Texan was big and raw-boned, with honest blue eyes in an open face, sparse straw-coloured hair, arms and legs as long and thin as poles. His nose was long over a wide, expressive mouth and a heavy, bristly chin. Just a little short of seventy-eight inches, even seated Armstrong came up head and shoulders above the others.