The Origin of Dracula (6 page)

We moved downriver, but there was no trail here, so we had to pay close attention to our footing. And that was why we lost sight of the wolf.

“He’s still out there,” Lee said. “When we can see straight across the Potomac we’ll find him.”

Maybe, maybe not
, I thought, but at least the farther south we moved, the narrower the river became and the easier it was to see the riverbank on the other side.

When we made it to the flatlands and got a clear line of sight across the river, Quincy concluded, “I think we lost him.”

“We got plenty of time to find him.” Lee marched forward, following the shoreline but skirting the muddy, rocky bank.

“Maybe he went back into the woods,” I said.

“Then we gotta cross the river.”

That was absurd. One of his classic, crazy exploits. “This isn’t a creek,” I said. “We’re not going to find some rocks to walk across.”

“You think I’m an idiot? Maybe there’s a boat pulled up on the shore.”

“I don’t think there’s gonna be a boat around here,” I said.

“Why not?” He was determined to track down the wolf.

“There aren’t any boat rental places in Cold Falls.”

“What if a camper brought one?”

He had a point, and Quincy laughed. “He got ya.”

“So the plan is to steal a boat?” I said.

Lee didn’t answer, but marched on. Quincy shrugged his shoulders and shot me a smile, as if to say
Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it
.

We hiked in silence, concentrating on avoiding the mud while also checking the other riverbank, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive wolf.

No such luck.

It wasn’t long before a waxing crescent moon brightened the night sky, painting the forest and river with a pale halo. But the halo didn’t illuminate the woods. Instead it bathed them in this unsettling, otherworldly hue. I still remember that abnormal tint, and thinking,
Shouldn’t the light of the moon make the forest brighter, not creepier?
Not only did I feel like I had traveled far from home, I now felt like I’d crossed over into another world.

“Whoa—” Lee said. “Don’t move.” He pointed straight ahead. “There he is.”

Quincy stepped up to Lee. “Where? On
this
side of the river?”

“Yeah, but what did I tell you, you fucking retard: don’t move. He’s right by the water.”

I scanned the edge of the river up ahead and spotted him. He stood as still as a statue, a silhouette of a magnificent and malevolent wolf. His head was held high, but I couldn’t see his eyes this time.

Lee slowly moved forward.

“What are you going to do?” Quincy couldn’t hide the fear in his voice.

“Get a closer look.” Lee pulled out his knife.

“Why?” I said. The only scenario I could imagine was Lee antagonizing the wolf.

The wolf lifted its head toward the crescent moon and unleashed a piercing howl. The threatening wail cut through the night air, dominating the land.

The hair on my neck prickled and my heart started racing.

Suddenly the wolf charged at us—and we took off, sprinting toward the precipice, stumbling over rocks and underbrush. Somehow we managed to keep our balance and press forward. Lee and Quincy were ahead of me, so I glanced back to see if the wolf was about to pounce on me.

I saw shimmering gold and black eyes in the darkness—animal eyes, but somehow human, too—and then I tripped and went down hard on the muddy shore, body first, followed by my head, which skirted off a large rock. An excruciating pain shot through my skull, but I bit down on my lip and clenched my fists, trying to contain it. Then I furiously scrambled back to my feet and lunged forward.

I looked past Lee and Quincy, toward the precipice of boulders, to see how far I had yet to go, and was dumbstruck by what I saw. It had to be some kind of nighttime mirage—weird shadows cast by that eerie halo. Or was it the blow to my head, which throbbed with every breath I took? The raging pain must’ve blurred both my vision and my mind, because the precipice now looked like a medieval castle—as if someone had sculpted all the boulders into a stronghold on a hill. The spectacle made me stumble, but this time I had enough sense to slow down, check the ground, and find my footing.

When I looked back up, the castle was gone.

I raced up toward the precipice, gaining ground on Lee and Quincy, driven by the fear that I was going to hallucinate again. We all made it to the top and veered into the forest, toward the campsite. Running through the woods here was both less of challenge and more. The footing was surer than it had been on the shoreline and cliff, but there were many more obstacles: tree trunks, bushes, and clumps of vegetation. Every few yards we were swerving in one direction or another to avoid them.

After a frenzied sprint of zigs and zags, we finally landed in the small clearing that was our campsite. We bent over, hands on thighs, and tried to catch our breaths. My head was still throbbing, but as I caught my breath, the pain lessened. I touched the side of my head and looked at my fingers—there was no blood. That realization was enough to make the pain ease just a little more.

I scanned the woods. They didn’t offer up any clue as to whether the wolf had tracked us—no dark silhouette, no gold or black eyes.

“I think he gave up,” I said.

“He sticks to the river,” Lee responded, as if he was an expert. He was scanning the woods, too, and I saw fear in his eyes, as if he knew the wolf could spring at us at any second. “Let’s get our flashlights,” he added.

We went for our backpacks and started digging through them. It was then that I came closest to asking them if they’d seen the strange vision—the medieval castle on the banks of the Potomac. But with each second that passed, I was more convinced that the mirage had been the result of the blow to my head. I’d been knocked for a loop, and that, mixed with the fear and adrenaline coursing through my body, had resulted in the weird apparition.

We ran our flashlights back and forth across the woods, and after verifying that we were alone, we sat down and ate again. My appetite still hadn’t returned, except when it came to Lee’s offering: he’d bought a box of Oreos, which he agreed to share, though not in a generous way. Instead he sparingly dispensed each cookie as if he were a king who’d been forced to distribute some of his gold bullion.

By the time we’d polished off the box—Lee had scarfed down more than two thirds of the Oreos—the creepy halo painted over the forest had turned into a pale fog that clung to the treetops. Tendrils reached down from the luminescent white shroud into the woods below.

“You guys ready to do a little exploring?” Lee flicked on his flashlight and swept the beam around the forest. The contrast between what we could see in the beam of light and what was hidden outside of it was stark. Where there was no light, obscure shapes of black on black loomed.

Lee flicked off his flashlight, and the darkness engulfed us again. “I got a better idea than exploring,” he said. “Hide ’n’ seek.”

The potential for danger made hide and seek the perfect game for Lee. We’d have to avoid getting lost in the fog, avoid becoming dinner for the wolf, and avoid tumbling down into the Potomac.

Quincy didn’t respond, and my guess was that he thought it wasn’t a great idea.

“You up for it, John?” Lee asked me, probably sensing resistance from Quincy.

“Sure.” I was counting on Quincy to talk Lee out of it.

Lee flicked on his flashlight, shining it right into Quincy’s face. “You in? Or does the big bad wolf scare ya?”

“Shut that off, you fucker.”

Lee did. “You ready to play?”

“Rock, paper, scissors—loser’s it,” Quincy said. Again, if this decision had gone the other way—if Quincy or I had said
no, this is a stupid idea
—maybe my life wouldn’t have been cursed.

“On three.” Lee made a fist.

We all pumped our fists and threw down.

Lee lost. “Goddamn it,” he said.

I didn’t blame him for being pissed. If there was fun to be had, it was in the hiding and not the seeking, which would amount to blundering through the dark.

“I’ll close my eyes and count to a hundred,” Lee said, and proceeded to do just that.

Quincy took off, but I hesitated. My eyes fell on the tent—a great place to hide. Lee would never look there. I took a confident step toward it, then glanced at Lee and changed my mind. Even though he wouldn’t find me, once I revealed myself, he wouldn’t think it was a clever hiding spot. He’d call me a wimpy pussy for hiding there.

I ran into the forest, and was about thirty yards in when I saw Quincy just standing there as if he was lost. He wasn’t attempting to hide.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

“I saw something out there.” He pointed in the direction of the Potomac.

Under the blanket of chirping crickets, I could hear the river gurgling. But I didn’t see anything. “Turn on your flashlight,” I said.

“No—” Quincy leaned forward, straining to pick out something in the dark. “Lee’ll say I’m cheating and force
me
to be it.”

And Lee was another sound I heard loud and clear. He was speeding up his countdown, his impatience kicking into high gear. “It was probably a deer or something,” I said.
Or the wolf
, I thought.

“There—” Quincy pointed in the direction of the precipice. But there was too much forest between it and where I stood to make anything out. Not only was my view obscured by darkness and branches, but also by tendrils of fog, which had now grown thicker and descended closer to the ground.

I couldn’t see anything, and I was ready to find a hiding place right where we were, when I caught a glimpse of a shape moving swiftly through the night. Whether it was man or animal, I couldn’t tell. It appeared to be traveling low to the ground like the wolf, but then it rose, as if unfolding itself, to the height of a man. Then it blended into the darkness—black into black—and disappeared.

Whatever it was, real or imagined, it left me with the creepy sensation of being unmoored from Cold Falls. It was as if I’d traveled far from the campsite and far from my Virginia home.
Too
far. To a different land. Mysterious Native American land. Glorified land. But glorified with what?

“Did you see it?” Quincy said.

“Yeah… I think so.”
Hadn’t I?

Lee was now counting louder and faster. Quincy went on the move, though he didn’t go far. He crouched down behind some wild berry bushes a few yards away.

I forced myself to move on too, scouting for the closest hiding place. After weaving around a few trees, I spotted a cluster of large boulders, hurried over to it, and crouched down behind it.

Then I scanned the terrain around me, on the lookout for whatever it was I’d just seen.

“Ready or not, here I come!” Lee shouted, sounding angry.

I peered over the boulder, toward the campsite. Lee’s flashlight beam flowed between the tree trunks and flickered off the low-hanging fog.

I slid out of sight, turned my back to the boulder, and sat down. At that very second, staring into the misty darkness, I knew that our adventure was doomed. But I had no idea that our lives were also doomed.

I told myself that my sense of foreboding stemmed from the fall I’d taken, and I tried to focus on my surroundings, not on what I was reading into them. The air was filled with the thick blanket of crickets chirping, and with the rustle of raccoons, opossums, and squirrels scurrying though the brittle underbrush. I could also hear owls hooting in the pale fog.

A few minutes later, I heard a loud and rhythmic crunching of leaves—footsteps. Even though I knew it had to be Lee, I tensed up, fearing it was someone or something else.

Lee shouted out, “I know I’m close, ’cause you pussies are too scared to go far!” He was angry, and I was glad to hear it. It meant things were normal.

A minute later, I saw him about ten yards away, heading toward the Potomac. He was sweeping his flashlight across the woods. At one point, he turned around and flashed the beam in my direction. It skimmed the forest this way and that, but missed me.

He continued on, and when he was out of sight, I considered heading back to the campsite. Waiting here like a sitting duck, for whatever danger the fog and night threatened, seemed stupid. If Lee bitched that I’d cheated by going back to the campsite, I would just tell him I thought we were playing with the home base rule—where a player’s goal is to get back to base without being caught.

A howl pierced the darkness—the same menacing howl we’d heard earlier. When it ended, I noticed that the crickets were no longer chirping and the owls were no longer hooting. I listened for the rustle of raccoons and opossums and squirrels—but those sounds had also been silenced.

A creepy, unnatural stillness had enshrouded the woods.

Then I heard thumping—it was my heart pounding. I wanted to rush back to the campsite, but I couldn’t risk it. The wolf was on the prowl.

After a few more seconds of that deathly stillness, I peered over the boulder. Quincy was walking toward me warily. He flicked on his flashlight.

“We have to see if Lee’s okay,” he said.

I stood up. “He passed me a few minutes ago. He was headed toward the Potomac.”

Quincy pointed his flashlight in that direction. “Is that where the howl came from?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Lee!” Quincy shouted as he scanned the forest with his flashlight. But because the fog had now infiltrated the woods, the light’s beam was dull and diffuse. It couldn’t penetrate the darkness.

I flicked on my own flashlight and took a few steps forward. “Come on, Lee! No jokes!”

Quincy and I slowly walked forward. “It’s like he turned the tables on us,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re ‘it’ now and he’s hiding.” And we fell naturally into our new roles. Without a word, we slowly made our way toward the Potomac, on the lookout for Lee.

The thickets of fog touched my skin, leaving their clammy, dank fingerprints. In the absence of any other sound, my every step seemed unnaturally loud. Every time I stepped on dry leaves, the resulting crunch was amplified, as if the volume had been turned up to ten. Even my breathing was inexplicably loud, resonating with overtones I’d never heard before.