Stoker's Manuscript (31 page)

It was long after midnight when I was jolted awake by the sound of pounding on the front door. Quickly I jumped into my clothes and ran to the door, Sonia a hurried step behind, pulling a robe about her nightclothes. She nodded for me to open it, and I saw a man standing back away from the porch in front of a black horse-drawn landau. He had a long coat pulled up at the collar, a tall hat, and his eyes matched the glow of the red lantern running light. Night breezes stirred the two obsidian horses as they stood impatiently pointed into the forest.

He looked at me and spoke:
“Vino cu mine.” Come with me.

I looked at Sonia, and without speaking she said,
Make the right decisions and God will protect your soul.
Then she reached up to caress my cheek.

Just before taking my seat in the carriage, I saw the figure of a man walking back over the bridge, away from me and toward the village. By his stride I could tell it was Luc. He was not looking back.

A last glance at Sonia and the carriage door closed behind me. It was ornately appointed inside, with heavy fabrics of burgundy and black. Two soft bench seats faced each other, and I chose the one looking forward. When the door closed it locked with authority, becoming a cell. I had no windows to view the outside and no door handles to grant escape. The ceiling was made of polished wooden slats, and a single dim bulb glowed with the conviction of a six-volt idiot light. Four leather looped straps attached to the pillars in case the ride turned bumpy. The interior had that smell I’d come to recognize—vampire.

The stallions propelled the vehicle forward, and it bounced and jostled deep into the forest. Branches scraped the sides and top of the coach with several sharp turns, and I gripped the straps. The trip took only a few minutes, and the horses slowed to a walk before halting. I heard the sound of wooden gates opening; the coach inched forward, and the gates closed behind us.

When the stagecoach stopped again the door opened. Stepping out, I was inside Dreptu’s monastery walls facing the large center tower. I dismounted by stepping down onto a gravestone. The driver told me to follow. I trailed him down the winding steps to the floor of the structure and past the spike pit toward the tower’s main door. No other activity stirred, but I smelled vampires. He held the door and I stepped inside.

The entrance led to a large room, an assembly hall, with stone walls and a substantial wooden staircase at the far end ascending to the second floor. When I reached the far end of the room I saw a door behind the staircase entrance. Much like the basement door in Castel Bran, it was heavy oak with a locking mechanism. Except this door was unlocked and sprung. I stopped and awaited instruction, and the driver pointed me toward the door.

Once inside, an earthen smell assaulted my nose. Stairs, much like the stone steps of the castle, curved down into the darkness, with red lanterns mounted on the walls. At about forty steps I arrived at another locked door. Again, the driver opened it. Just as my eyes adjusted to yet a darker room, a shove from behind knocked me to the ground. And ground it was—no floor.

The heavy scent of burnt blood told me I had an audience with Dalca. While my eyesight adjusted to the low lighting, I saw several pairs of red eyes surrounding me and assumed my audience also included dozens of his Commons.

From beyond the row of eyes came Dalca’s voice: “This way, human.”

His guards parted, and I was allowed to approach his great throne of oak wood, with trimmings of gold and a crown of iron spikes with dragons wrapping the poles. His scent was heavier than his subjects’.

Dalca pointed to a small layer of straw in front of me. “I had them lay out new rushes . . . just for you.”

The driver pressed my shoulders down till I knelt on the straw. “Yes . . . Master,” I said.

“Tell me of your progress, human.”

I had rehearsed this during several train trips. “The museum in Belgrade is in disarray, but—”

Dalca interrupted. “That is how humans begin their excuses, by telling of others’ misdeeds.”

“I only meant to say the research has taken longer than I hoped, Master. But I was able to inspect about twenty percent of the archives.”

“Tell me what you found.”

“The material is not labeled or filed by year,” I lied, “but I found several files containing original correspondence from the decade the manuscript was written. There were many vague descriptions in his notes, with crude maps and references to landmarks.”

He drew a long breath through his teeth. “I smell . . . anxiety.”

“Because I have no answer yet, Master. I have only a list of landmarks that the maps indicate where I should try excavating.”

“Look at me,” he said. “Do you think you are the first human to try to buy time?”

“No, Master, but I just don’t have the answer yet.”

Dalca slid down from his throne. “Come.” I followed him out of the room and up the stone stairs to the first level. When we reached the grand staircase, two Regulats grabbed my arms and lifted me, and we ascended the tower quickly. Like an express elevator ride, everything moved past me in a blur. When they finally put me down, I felt unsure of my footing.

I was ushered through a pair of tall wooden doors into a large ballroom, its walls decorated with colorful fabrics and torches, a floor of wide plank oak, and tall cathedral ceilings. I figured it must be the top story. At one end was a small curtained stage elevated about three feet, and at the other a large fireplace. The room was not well lit, with only a couple wall sconces glowing amber.

My heart skipped several beats when I saw the double doors open to the balcony and the night sky beyond. This was the high-dive platform to the shallow end. I followed Dalca toward the stage with two escorting Regulats, and we climbed the three steps to where a stage curtain draped from the ceiling. From behind the curtain I heard a noise—it sounded like a grunt.

The Master turned to me, and the two escorts grabbed my arms and held me in place. Dalca leaned into my face, his teeth only inches from my eyes. “So you decided to take up arms with my brother.” He breathed on me, eyes glowing lethal red.

In a blur he turned and ripped open the curtain. I froze when I saw a guillotine, its blade poised to drop. It took a moment to see in the dim light before I realized there was someone strapped in. Dalca lit a lantern and lifted it to the face of the prone prisoner. It was Bernhardt! Gagged with a cloth wrapped around his mouth, again Bernhardt grunted and struggled to move.

I panicked and began shaking. “No!”

“Well,” Dalca said, “since you have decided to bring my brother in on this, I thought I would respond in kind.”

“I’m sorry, Berns,” I said, scarcely stifling a sob.

Dalca put down the lantern and walked around me, pressing his mouth toward my ears as he spoke. “Unlike you, who wishes to have my brother annihilate me, I am going to give you a choice.” He lifted the lantern and illuminated my brother’s face. “Tell me.” He lifted the lantern in my face. “Who gets to live? You? Or your brother?”

I thought of Sonia’s parting message—
make the right decision
. But I did not need to ponder the question, for of course I would give myself up for my brother.

“Take me,” I said.

Dalca reached down and removed Bernhardt’s gag.

“No!” Bernhardt shouted. “Don’t do it, Joseph.”

Dalca circled and hissed in my ear again, “Tell me who will live.
Tell
me.”

“Let
him
live,” I said. “Take me.”

Again Bernhardt shouted, “No!”

Dalca looked at me one more time for the answer.

“Let him live,” I said.

“Then forever hold your peace, human.” And with that Dalca walked over and reapplied the gag in Bernhardt’s mouth. He unfastened the guillotine yoke and said, “Now he will live . . . forever.” Then Dalca bent and sank his teeth into Bernhardt’s neck as my brother’s body convulsed and he began to scream.

The two Regulats held me back, one of them holding my head in the direction of the guillotine, forcing me to watch. It was only seconds before Dalca finished and stood. He offered no emotion as he stood over my brother with blood dripping down his chin onto his victim. The muffled sound of Bernhardt’s sobbing echoed across the large room.

Dalca walked over to me and with a shove to my chest knocked me to the floor. In an instant he was on me, dragging me by my feet toward the balcony. I clawed at the floor, looking back at my brother still strapped into the machine. Once on the balcony, Dalca held me out over the ledge by my feet.

“Look down, human,” he said. “Behold your destiny.”

I was not ready to go, but I did not want to face the future, either. I tried not to struggle. He dangled me for a tortured minute, perhaps longer.

Then he turned and threw me back inside on the floor. I slid several feet across the wooden planks and felt my skin burn. A second later Dalca leaned over in my face and said, “I just wanted to remind you what’s at stake here, human.” He lifted me by the neck and held me closer to his face. “Now go find my wife.”

R
eleased to walk back through the forest that night, I saw no sign of my brother, while the wolves howled in the hills and the half-moon blinked through fast-moving clouds. The Regulats were furious when they evicted me from the monastery, spitting on me and shoving me to the ground. If not for Dalca’s orders, I would have been skewered and posted as a warning to potential traitors.

In the woods every buzz sounded like a mosquito squad and every broken branch seemed to portend an ambush. I kept one foot in front of the other, never looking back, in the hopes I’d make it out alive. Even that did not seem to matter as much as before, as fresh visions of my brother brought the shame of knowing that I had sealed his fate in extended torture. Gone were the memories of studying together by flashlight in the convent basement, of watching Bernhardt take his vows and say his first Mass, all replaced by the surety that I was en route to a violent end, just another in the long line of disposable humans placed in the way of that family. Oh, how I wished Dalca would have thrown me out the window and sent my brother home intact.

When Bernhardt and I were kids tossing on cots in the convent, I used to worry at night, not so much fearing the dark but distressed that the next day might bring a new set of parents or, worse yet, parents for only one of us. I felt responsible for Berns; I always sought to answer his questions as comfortingly as possible, to assure him that the next day would be like the previous, to set an example of stable behavior. It led to my lifelong dedication to order, never wanting to give the nuns any reason to search for adoptive parents. Despite our admittedly unusual living situation, I did not wish to roll the dice on possibly worse conditions. It’s not that we felt loved, or even happy, but we lived in a safe holding pattern. Yes, we knew even then that things could always get worse, as they’d been in the Romanian orphanage. What would become of him, and the nuns, now?

Sonia and Father Andrew had kept a vigil that night and were still praying when I came through the door. Their first response was to thank God for my deliverance, and their second was a hearty welcome home. Sitting across the table from Sonia, I mentally conveyed images of what had happened, including my suspension over the ledge. She swallowed hard and told me,
Dalca will send your brother back to America and keep an eye on him.

And if they go after him again?

Like anyone who knows too much, they will just kill him there.

As they did George,
I thought.

Yes, as they did my husband.

“Is there no limit to their evil?” I asked aloud, rhetorically.

Father Andrew responded, “They pay no price before God.”

“So all their misery is here,” I said. “Might as well spread it around.”

Sonia pointed to the priest. “I told him what you have planned.”

“When do we start?” Father Andrew asked without hesitation.

“Right now,” I said.

“It would be wise,” Sonia said, “to wait until sunlight.”

We all retired, but I failed to chase away violent images featuring my brother, and with every wind gust and creak of the old house I jerked awake. Then, just as I fell into sleep, I dreamed I was falling, falling. I looked up and saw my brother had thrown me out the tower balcony, and my eyes snapped open. But the dream kept returning.

In the morning, the three of us met at the church and locked the doors behind us. Kneeling before the altar, the priest led a prayer: “Forgive us, Lord, for what we are about to do. We vow to rebuild this blessed house once the evil beneath it is destroyed. Please send us your strength and wisdom to defeat this evil, in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ.”

“Amen.”

I made the sign of the cross, stood, and looked up at the ceiling, and studied the face of Jesus. The artist had successfully married sorrow and judgment into His expression, and the Lord’s eyes followed the observer about the room. The innocent might find comfort, but for the guilty, such as me, the urge rose to flee His omnipresent gaze.

“I was not here for this church’s christening,” the priest said, “but look at this.”

He pointed to a spot on the floor directly in line with the front door, centering the altar. Embossed into the wooden floor was the image of a Western-style cross with its singular crossbar, as if burned in and stained over. It measured exactly six feet by three feet wide, the length pointing toward the altar. If one were to draw a rectangle defined by those dimensions, it would roughly equal the size of a casket. I looked up; it lay centered beneath the fixed stare of Jesus.

Without saying a word, the priest pointed to a square peg in the wooden floor. It looked like a large dowel pin. He pointed to a second on the other side of the cross, seven feet apart. Stepping to the bottom of the cross, he pointed to two more floor pegs, and if you drew connecting straight lines to all four they formed a rectangle around the casket, allowing two feet to spare on all sides. It was almost instructing where to dig to allow two feet of buffer space.

The priest looked at me and asked, “What is your plan?”

“Well,” I said, “the first thing is to excavate. We’ll dig down till we find the tomb. Then we’ll find out what’s in it. When . . . if we establish that it is his wife, then we convince Dalca to come here. Lure him down in the hole. Ambush him while he’s . . . distracted. Then treat the body in such a way that he cannot come back.”

Both nodded gravely, and Sonia spoke first. “It can be done. The key is to convince him there is no danger.”

“Go on,” I said.

“He will be looking for ambush from the time you tell him until the moment he sees his wife. There is only one moment when he is vulnerable enough for your attack.”

“So when he fully turns his attention to his wife is when we attack.”

Father Andrew spoke. “He cannot be allowed to take her and get out of the hole.”

Sonia pointed at me. “And you cannot be in the church—he will smell you.”

“Or see my body heat.” I thought a moment, trying to picture his movements in the church. “Will he look up?”

Sonia answered, “Perhaps quickly, and then down.”

Then the attack should come from above, as I had envisioned, since he would spend his time in the hole looking down. But it would have to be precise and swift, because vampires move quickly enough to dodge shots and evade bomb blasts.

“First things first,” the priest said, interrupting my thoughts. “First to dig hole.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Do you have any ideas on how to excavate down to that tomb?”

Father Andrew produced a piece of paper from his pocket and spread it on the floor. “I draw last night.” We all knelt to look. It was a rectangle with four square pegs in the corner, just like the wooden floor. “I was in
Ias¸i in 1941—”

“The pogroms,” I interrupted.

“Yes. When roundups begin, several families hide neighbors under wooden floors.” He pointed to the drawing. He used a pencil to indicate sawing along the rectangle’s lines. “They dig deep enough space for storage and brace up at pegs.” He drew a picture of four bedposts supporting the pegs under the floor.

I said, “That’s how they reinforce tunnels when they build them.”

“Yes,” the priest said. “If we can break through foundation, we haul out material.”

Sonia added, “Carve out the wood rectangle and re-cover each day.”

Father Andrew nodded. “No interrupting service.”

“Why not just tell the congregation you have a plumbing leak or something and close it down for a couple weeks?”

The priest gave a weak smile. “My son, over half this town is unemployed. They would show up every day with shovels. Try to help.”

Sonia asked, “What about your
?”
Guard.

“I’ll tell him something . . . maybe that we’ll be excavating a reliquary or some such thing.”

Father Andrew asked, “Do you trust him?”

I gave a look and shrug that suggested I had my doubts. After all, that was Luc coming out of the woods when my carriage driver arrived. Up to this point, Luc’s actions suggested he both wanted me to succeed and him to stay alive long enough to see it. Still, he was the one charged with feeding Dalca information, or disinformation, as it was.

“Trust him or not, you need him.”

“I don’t know how long it will take to excavate,” I said. “Do we have a pick and shovel?”

“No,” said Father Andrew. “I will have to borrow tools for digging, but I can do wood work.”

That was good, I thought, because I had never worked with wood and feared I would butcher it.

He said, “The Gypsy digs the graves.” He was referring to the cemetery just outside the village.

He would also be, I hoped, the source of my weapon. “Can he be trusted?”

The silence suggested he would be a gamble, and considering the stature the Roma held in that part of Europe, odds favored the house of Dreptu. But when I looked at Sonia, she appeared disappointed.

“What?” I asked.

“It is not
he
we should question,” she said. “It is
us
he will have to trust.”

“She is right,” Father Andrew said. “He risk everything for no return.”

“What would we have to offer him?” I asked.

Another stretch of silence followed before the priest said, “I speak with him this morning.”

“I’ll compile a supplies list,” I said.

I wrote the list, plus a second in Romanian and placed the items in order of need, then handed it to Father Andrew as he went to enlist the Gypsy’s help. While he was gone, I measured the floor and looked at the chalk marks, trying to picture the space below. If the outer measurements of the tomb were six by three, then that two-foot buffer looked snug at best. “It looks tight,” I said to Sonia. “What do you think?”

“I think you trust person who put in pegs.”

Just then the side door opened and the priest returned, followed by the Gypsy in his driving clothes. He removed his hat and crossed himself before entering. We thanked him for coming. The Gypsy looked at the three of us and saw the floor. The priest told him we needed to excavate under the foundation to get to a reliquary, and the Gypsy eyed each of us before looking at the supplies list.

“Cât de mult?”
he asked.
How much?

“
Doi metri,”
I said.
Two meters.

The Gypsy took measure of us before looking around the church at the crucifixes and paintings. He looked up at the ceiling, crossed himself again, and said,
“Te vei lupta cu satana.” You will fight Satan.
Then he left.

As we stood around looking at one another, a voice sounded from the back of the church. “What are you going to do now?”

It was Luc, and the three of us jerked our heads toward him.

“How long have you been there?” I asked.

“Since the prayer.” So he’d heard everything. He must have arrived early for my daily briefings and hidden in the back row. I should have looked for him. Luc left as abruptly as he’d spoken without saying anything else.

For the rest of the day, we looked through the priest’s woodworking tools and garden supplies and tried not to tally the odds against us or all potential dangers, including the possibility that Luc was already recounting our discussion to Dalca. We volleyed different ideas, including hiring an outsider to excavate through the foundation and I would dig the rest, but each new thought fell victim to the obstacles of reality, some financial and some practical. By the day’s end we sat at Sonia’s kitchen table, eating soup and bread while sipping strong coffee in silence. No one dared say we could not do it, but it was obvious we needed help from the great invisible hand.