Stoker's Manuscript (18 page)

The guard walked me down the wrapping staircase that hugged the stone wall until we reached the bottom, where he pointed me toward the main table. Dust kicked up with each footstep from a layer of dirt over cobblestone, while above great clutsters of birds flocked and dived about. I smelled the burning torch oil and heard the flames dance in the breeze; it sounded like flags flapping. And I was mistaken about the flagpoles. Closer inspection revealed them to be black wrought iron spikes fifteen feet tall, set a meter apart and planted in a semicircular pattern about the base of the tower a good ten meters, or thirty feet, out. I counted the rows—thirteen. Looking up I could plainly see the spike pit was positioned directly below a balcony some eight stories high. A great cloud of bats blotted out the full moon momentarily, and when the light returned, large double doors opened to the balcony above. It felt like walking into a medieval ritual.

The guard ushered me to the seat closest to the throne, not ten feet from the pit. Of heavy wood construction, the seats at the large rectangular head table and the benches at the smaller subordinate tables all faced the pit, except for the oak throne, which faced the audience.

There I sat for several minutes until a pair of men exited the tower doors and took seats at one of the small tables. I tried not to stare, but it was hard not to when their chins looked to be splashed with blood. Both men were tall and slender, with long straight black hair, thin mustaches, and aquiline noses. They appeared, even allowing for the ambient red lamplight, to be flush-faced.

Soon another pair and then several others much like them moved to their seats. They all looked to be fatigued, red eyes aglow, with stained chins. None looked happy to see me at their table.

Regulats?
I hazarded a silent guess.

From inside the tower modern music from some sort of speaker echoed about the courtyard. I looked up and saw the torchlight glowing from within the open balcony doors.

My wonderings ceased when the Regulats all stood at once and quieted, for their master had arrived, his presence and power preceding him as he entered. Dalca strode by them and gave nods to each table, and though he kept licking his lips like a dog after dining, his face was clean. He approached the head of the table. “Regulats,” he announced, motioning with an open hand in my direction, “my guest, Mr. Joseph Barkeley.”

They nodded, not in approval but grudgingly, at the same time that a conga line of revelers danced out the front doors and snaked their way toward the pit. An ungainly overweight woman led the way, holding a boom box in the air as forty-year-old disco music blared into the night. As the visitors approached the tables, the celebration seemed to turn sober. The music switched off and the revelers formed a reception line facing Dalca at his throne. One by one the partiers solemnly approached the throne, each filing directly past me on their way to offer homage to the Master. All extended their hands to take his and kiss it.

“Master,” each said with a deep bow, and then peeled off to wait behind the tables. When the man who I recognized earlier passed, he made a quick nod in my direction—yes, it was the jeweler from Baia Mare. Another beady-eyed man handed the Master a small envelope and whispered something.

As the last supplicant walked away, Dalca stood and announced, “Lasting memories on all your birthdays.” He waved them away. “Carry on.”

Again the music struck up, the conga line re-formed, and the dancers shook and wiggled past the tables and toward the tower and back in the main doors, their music tailing them inside and up the stairs.

Dalca looked my direction and breathed deeply. “I smell . . . confusion. You wonder what all this means.”

I nodded.

“Our guests, they work for me . . . have for many years. They increase my wealth, and in return they enjoy good health and wealth far in excess of their limited talents, certainly more than they could have done for themselves.” He stood from his throne and moved to the chair next to me at the head table. “As for this, a simple party, a gesture of my gratitude.”

“Master,” I said, “I do not know why I am here.”

“You have proven yourself rather adept at your craft, I might say.” I had not noticed until then that his tongue was red, and pointed. “But do you see these young men here?” He motioned to the four dozen or so Regulats. “These are my children, and there is now an empty table because
you
directed this army to the wrong battleground, and they had to lay their brothers to rest.” Dalca was calm, but I could see several pairs of red eyes burning in my direction. “Your job . . . is to find my wife.”

Dalca stopped speaking when a man approached pulling a cart heaped with containers covered with linen cloths. He stopped at each table and delivered a pair, serving the head table last. The server, a man of Indian descent with a long pointy beard and white gloves, placed a cloth-covered box in front of Dalca, and then slid a silver domed plate in front of me. No utensils.

“Dessert, Master?” the server asked.

Dalca nodded, and the server lifted the linen cloth, revealing a cage, and awaited approval. Inside sat a large, live rat. Dalca nodded his approval, stood, and opened the cage top. The rat hunched; the Regulats groaned approvals. In a blur Dalca grabbed the live rat and attached his mouth to its chest. I turned away . . . just in time to see the Regulats open their cages and do the same.

Feeling queasy, I turned to retch, but with an empty stomach nothing emerged. Overhead the music blared out the tower window.

“Human,” said Dalca. I looked back and saw he had tried to wipe his chin clean, but splatter remained. “We know you do not eat live animals, so we made yours special.” He pointed to my plate. “Please, eat.”

I looked at the plate, still covered, and did not comply.

“Human,” he said again, lifting the dome off my plate, “I said . . .” It was a dead rat, quite uncooked, and he shoved it toward my face. “. . . eat.”

A moment later I heard a loud thump and felt the spray of warm liquid. I looked up to see, not fifteen feet in front of me, someone impaled on a pair of spikes. It looked like a man, body limp, shoved halfway down two stakes, one of them sticking out of his back and another through his lower pelvic area. He had a fresh pair of puncture wounds on his neck. Apparently the revelers had donated some blood to their hosts, but enough remained to make a mess of the spikes.

I looked at my arm and saw a splash of blood and some other chunky substances. Instinctively I wiped at it, but my efforts only served to soil the back of my hand—same when wiping my other hand across my face.

Dalca looked at me and pointed to my face. “I see you are getting into the spirit of things.”

A scream came from above as a woman plunged into the pit, her legs kicking all the way down. It looked like the obese woman. She fell onto a different set of spikes, and one of them caught her throat and silenced her. The impact left her head to dangle until falling off seconds later, a last spurt of blood shooting from her neck.

The Regulats murmured approval.

Next, a couple flew out the window and down to their deaths. The impalement ripped the woman in half, while the man landed backward and with his last breath arched his back with a spike sticking out of his torso as his body shook. Captive to the spectacle, I continued catching the spray of blood and bits as reveler after reveler descended to his death.

“Come now, Mr. Barkeley,” Dalca said as he slid an envelope in my direction. “Go ahead, look.”

While the sounds of screams and bodily impacts continued, I opened the envelope. Inside were a half dozen photos taken by an instamatic camera.
Thump.
More spray, some of it landing on the photo in my hand. I stared at the picture of Doug Carli draped over a railing with a fence post sticking out of his back. A second photo was taken from ground level looking up at his contorted face. Both appeared to have been taken at night.

The next three photos showed Mara in a tree in her backyard. She looked to be sitting upright, but upon closer look the whittled trunk had impaled her, blood everywhere. She wore the yoke about her shoulders, her wrists tied to make her look as if mounted on a cross. Her head hung limp. In another picture a ground-level shot captured the agony on her face. Seeing those photos invoked sadness in me matched only by kneeling beside my mother’s grave.

“That one”—Dalca pointed to an impaled man—“delivered those photos. So feel no pity, human.”

I looked at the man and felt nothing.

Periodically the Regulats pulled bodies off the spikes to make room for others. Piled with the rat carcasses on pull carts, they were taken outside the monastery walls like trash and fed to the wolves.

Another screaming woman landed on the closest row of spikes and sprayed blood on us, the last of the revelers. Overhead the balcony doors closed. Dalca looked at his right bloodied index finger and licked it clean. “Now you know what’s at stake, Mr. Barkeley.” He licked his other fingers. “Pun intended.”

O
ne finds shelter in the cloistered world of the cloth. The priest gives his life over to his parishioners’ welfare in hopes that his efforts point them and him toward eternal peace. He has faith that the other side of the great curtain holds not only just judgment, but also something that will reward those who have shed earthly pursuits and suppressed their natural desires, in essence serving mankind at life’s buffet table while starving themselves. Underwriting such convictions is the assumption that God is always there, always watching.

Sustenance for the servers comes from daily routine, for as the Don used to say, “The grateful heart, sure of its fate, invites contentment.” She stressed that with material pursuit comes restless discontent, and when one relegates God to part-time, one invites calamity. Such is the difference between those who serve and those seated at the table.

It is perhaps human nature—designed and given by God, mind you—that enables us to believe that if we do our best, project good thoughts, and pursue only that which God approves, then His protective grasp will keep us safe, so long as God is the overseer.

But God was not out there in that forest. No, like the other side of the Acheron, it was a place where the dark one rules and God’s hands do not shape events. Oh, what a skein of events had I spun to invite such calamity into my life.

Trying to stumble my way back to this side of sanity, I bent to wash in the Dreptu River, but could only clean my exterior. Slowly I came to realize that my stained clothes would announce a murderer’s arrival back in civilization, so at daybreak I walked out of the woods and, recalling Sonia’s last message to return to her, approached her house. I knocked softly, and she opened the door with neither surprise nor hesitation. She was already dressed for the day.

I greeted her in the formal way.
“
mâna.”

“
rog.” Please.
She walked me to the back of the house to the bathing tub and patted a small stack of towels. She left me a change of clothing and pointed to a basket on the floor and said, “Clothes.” The clothes fit, just as the others had, and I joined Sonia in her living room.

Her front door was closed. Where Eastern Orthodox Christianity reigns, so does the Middle Ages superstition that evil spirits ride the breezes. Those prone to such fear live behind closed doors, even in summer’s heat. But Orthodoxy allows no closed-door privacy between unmarrieds, so I stood before the door.

“Would you like the front door open?” I asked, unsure of which would be best.

“No. We speak with no audience,” she said aloud.

I sat on a wooden bench across a table from her where a Bible separated the space between us, the English King James Version.

“You have questions,” she said. I must have looked surprised. “Many years ago, I speak your tongue. Go ahead, ask your questions.”

“Îmi pare
.”

“Apologize not to me.” She pointed upward. “To Him.”

I made the sign of the cross and kissed my crucifix. “I should have listened to you the first time.”

She smiled and shrugged.
“Tu
 . . . om.” You are a man.

I pointed toward the woods. “What are those creatures out there?”

She nodded and turned the Bible in my direction. “Read.”

I opened it and noticed its age, all handmade pages of Euro stock predating 1830, and handled the old book delicately. “Which book?”

“Start at beginning.”

To Genesis, the story of creation. “‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’”

“Is first man there yet?” she asked.

“No.”

“Continue.”

“‘. . . and God said, Let there be light, and there was light.’”

Again she asked, “Is first man there yet?”

“No. Day and night is day one.”

“And day two?”

“Firmament,” I said. “On day two He was preparing a place for man to live. On day three, heaven and earth and all that the earth bears. Day four, the sun and stars.”

“And all these things good,” she said.

“On the fifth day He creates animals.”

“And all these things good.”

I nodded. “On the sixth day He creates man and woman—Adam and Eve.”

“No,” she said. “Read per words.”

“Verse twenty-seven: ‘So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He man; male and female created He them.’”

“He gave them dominion over earth and living creatures,” she said. “Read last verse in chapter.”

“Verse thirty-one: ‘And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.’”

“Where is first man . . . Adam? Read on.”

She was right, for the sixth day of creation did not mention Adam and Eve by name. I looked ahead. “Chapter two, verse seven: ‘And all things were in place, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’”

She stopped me. “So Our Lord plants garden and places first man there, from whom first woman formed. On day six He make male and female creature referred to as man, and saw it was very good, then rested.”

“So it’s all good up to this point.”

She nodded and smiled, as if I was starting to get it. “All these things in six days were mere thoughts, and they came to be.”

“He made it so just by thinking it . . . thus creation . . . something from nothing.”

Again she nodded. “But first man”—she motioned as if kneading dough to form bread—“
formed
from dust and breathed into life.”

“The living soul!”

“
After
creation,” she said. “Formed.”

“So chapter two is not a detail of what happened on day six of creation.”

She pointed to the page. “Read again.”

I did, and clearly Adam and Eve followed the day of rest. The Bible stated that man and woman were part of creation, but then after creation man was formed from existing material and got a living soul breathed into him. “So who are this man and woman back on day six?”

“Another creature in His image.”

I looked at her. “Just not one with a living soul,” I said. “Why would he make a manlike creature and not give it a soul?”

“Perhaps He wanted first to see how they behave.”

“So these creatures might have been a test of sorts, to see if He wanted to make more?”

“Perhaps.” She pointed to the book. “Move to chapter six.”

“The descendents of Adam and Eve are multiplying, and . . . verse four: ‘There were giants on the earth in those days—’”

“Giants,” she interrupted, and paused before continuing. “Creatures look like men with great skills. Do things humans cannot. Read next two verses.”

“Verse five: ‘And God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.’ Verse six: ‘And the Lord repented that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.’”

“So soon?” she asked. It was more like a leading comment.

I closed the book and laid it facing her. “Which man was wicked, the giants or the living souls?”

“If it was important, it says so. But point is it grieved Him.”

“He’s sorry He made mankind.”

She stopped me with a gesture, then placed her own thought in my head:
He regrets making the living souls while the original creatures remained.

“Femeie
,”
I said.
Wise woman.
“How is it you can read my thoughts and project yours?”

She covered my hands with hers and patted them twice. “Like you, Mr. Joseph, I was given a gift . . . soothsay . . . How you say English?”

“Soothsayer? A fortune teller?”

She nodded. “My gift was to receive thought, to perceive.” She pointed from her ear down to her stomach.

“To hear thoughts in your head?”

“Close.” She looked away to find the words. “First in head, then below stomach to . . . seal.” She motioned like closing an envelope.

“So you hear thoughts in your head . . . then a certain feeling comes to confirm.”

“Confirm, yes.” She tapped her temple, then pointed to my eyes. “Must have eye contact or be close to person to receive thoughts.”

“And you project your thoughts only if your feelings are confirmed.”