Dracula's Ghost - An Update

Title Announcement and Preview #5

I’ve been waiting for this moment since 2022, when I first set pen to paper (or started tapping at the keyboard) for the final installment of the Dracula’s Ghost series. The third, and final book will be titled…

(drum roll…)

Dracula’s Ghost - Apocalypse

Why “Apocalypse”?

For starters, I needed a catchy title.

But the apocalypse (from the Greek, apokálupsis), is the final chapter of the saga, the great story in which all is revealed. When the final curtain comes down, the play is over - and so it will be with a journey that started during COVID lockdowns in 2020, when I started writing as a diversion. It’s been a long journey, and the final leg has, in many ways, been the most difficult.

Dracula’s Ghost - Apocylapse is still undergoing revision, and I expect the final version to be published around the beginning of 2025. Meanwhile, I’ll keep putting out short stories every few weeks as I work out the final bits of the larger story.

Meanwhile, here’s another preview to whet your appetite.

Romania

1989

As a rule, Romanians are no more superstitious than their counterparts in the west, and if any believed in ghosts or ill omens, the terrors of the unseen world paled against the drudgery and suspicion of daily life, for ghosts were no more fearful than the faceless bureaucrats who ruled the nation, and no ghoul struck more fear into the hearts of ordinary citizens than the uniformed thugs of the Securitate. The witch might cast her spell, and the dead might haunt the empty crossroads or quiet graveyards, but the living had other concerns. The children, however, did not share the concerns of the adult world – and they were afraid.

Photo by Cristina G. on Unsplash

In the villages around Râmnicu Vâlcea, they began to whisper of the orphans, feral creatures who had no parents, attended no school, and were never seen in the daylight hours. The sons and daughters of farmers, day laborers, and low-level Party functionaries would peep through their windows and see the shadows outside, moving almost playfully as they wandered the darkness of the empty streets. Sometimes, they knocked on doors or scratched at windows, begging for food or seeking playmates, and the children shut their ears as they huddled under woolen blankets, for they knew that to answer those calls was to accede to a deeper request – join us. The few that did so were found sickly and weak with the rising sun, and their parents took them to state-run hospitals in Pitești or Târgoviște or Bucharest, scraping together their meager resources to move the child as far as possible from Râmnicu Vâlcea. Perhaps the adults knew more than they consciously understood – or understood more than they dared to speak aloud.

Only one adult was attacked, for a pensioner, alone and unmarried, was found one morning by the roadside, the front door of his house standing open. He was taken to the local clinic and questioned by the police at some length. “The schoolgirl. She was searching for her parents, and I let her inside.” They searched the village and confirmed that no children were missing, and when the pensioner died two days later, he was buried in a pauper’s grave at the edge of the village. The next morning, the police made another round through the town, and when they rounded up the local boys, their questions were decidedly harsher. A degree of adolescent foolishness was tolerated, but this was downright disrespectful and hinted at a disturbed mind.

For the pensioner’s grave had been opened, and the body had gone missing.