Stoker's Manuscript (34 page)

“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. “Remember 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. “Until 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.

Suddenly the tomb made a sound—like stone cracking.

“One more,” I said.

We all leaned on our jack handles at once, fearing one or more of them would snap off. Nothing.

“One more, as hard as you can. Now!”

When we put all our weight on the handles, the tomb literally rumbled. We froze. Nothing happened.

“One more time, at once. Now.”

That time the stone sarcophagus cover sounded like it had cracked, and then a rush of air jettisoned from the inside, or perhaps it was an exchange of air, and a short hissing noise followed. Our candles blew out.

I lit the backup lantern and the hole glowed. I saw terror on the faces of the others.

“Go up top,” I said, pointing for the boys to leave the hole just as a compound of smells insulted our noses, the stink so wretched that my eyes watered. It smelled like burnt hair, decaying flesh, and a neglected Dumpster.

The Gypsy and I pumped each jack in turn, again and again, the levers all working freely now, until the stone top lifted completely off its mooring. I bent to see if I could see anything. Nothing. I needed to open it further. Carefully we jacked the slab until it rose a foot off the tomb. I picked up the lantern and moved it toward the opening. The Gypsy would not look inside, but I did.