Dracula's Ghost II - Afterimage

The Complete Novel

If you haven’t read book #1 (and if you haven’t, you really should), start here.

FIVE

I.

London

August 1944

Horace lay awake, unable to sleep in the silence of the old house. At sixty-four, he was the longest serving attendant of the household, and if he was not privy to every secret of the manor (Lord Godalming’s relationship with Jonathan Harker lay buried too deeply even for him), Horace saw more than most, and the knowledge filled him with pride. He knew, for example, that the death of Lord Godalming was suicide rather than accident or, as would be later hinted by Scotland Yard, murder. The death of his first fiancé, five years before his marriage to Kate Reed, had eaten quietly at Lord Godalming’s mind until it snapped completely in 1904.  What is bent will eventually break, he thought. Never a man of great imagination or ambition, Horace became Katherine Holmwood’s most important attendant in the aftermath of her husband’s death.

In 1906, at Katherine Holmwood’s instructions, he had removed a large box from the larder at Carfax Abbey and transported it to the manor, where it was stored in the cellar under lock and key. No one else knew of its existence, and not even Horace understood her strange enchantment with the box, but she visited the cellar at night, and Horace wondered what was behind the locked door.  Her visits to the cellar became more frequent after the death of Jonathan Harker, and Horace found that he could predict the timing her visits, for Lady Godalming became agitated before each visit, and she wore a haggard, haunted expression for days afterward. Horace began to understand that Katherine Holmwood hated and feared the box and that someday, she would ask him to haul the entire thing from the cellar and burn it on the rubbish heap that occupied a far corner of the estate.

And that, I simply could not allow. For as the years elapsed, the locked room and its contents began to take hold of his own mind, and he longed to know its secrets. Horace remained careful to perform his duties with meticulous care, lest the lady suspect his work ethic or find him to be losing vitality in his old age. To be dismissed from the household, with the secret of the box undiscovered, would kill him. As the Allies pressed into France, rockets and flying bombs rained down upon the city center, and London saw it worst carnage in four years. Soon, the voice whispered in his dreams, she will take in refugees from the city, and the whole house will be filled.

Horace woke in a cold sweat and slipped into the lady’s bedroom, and she did not stir as he stole the key to the cellar. He crept downstairs, and as he unlocked the door, the sound of each tumbler falling into place was unbearably loud in the silence of the house. He adjusted the wick on his kerosene lamp and stared into the room. The box lay where he placed it in 1906, its lid covered by a  thick layer of dust, and Horace shook his head in annoyance. Shameful to leave such a precious artifact untended. He lifted the lid and found only dirt, but the odd aroma of the soil made him think of old blood and dusty bones, and he stared into the moldy earth, fascinated.

“Horace? What are you doing here?”

Katherine Holmwood stood directly behind him, her voice thin and reedy as she spoke. A hot flush ran up his cheeks, as if she had caught him in an act of indecency, but the accompanying feeling was not of shame, but excitement. Now I understand.

His hand crept toward his waist, to the carving knife tucked into his belt.

II.

Kremlin Senate, Moscow

1956

Yuri Andropov never wavers, not even when he is sent to the countryside as a volunteer in Comrade Stalin’s grain confiscations. The Party has fired his ambition and filled him with hope for the future, but his optimism is tempered by a healthy dose of dread – his father had served the Tsar, and his mother was descended from a family of merchants. Thus, he is careful to show enthusiasm during each round of grain seizures, but as summer fades into autumn, he wonders whether it would have been better if the Party had found out the truth, if he had been disenfranchised as a lishentsy.  An eerie quiet descends over the countryside as the famine begins to bite.

“Please sit, Comrade Andropov,” the beetle-browed man said. “The General Secretary is indisposed, but the working committee eagerly awaits your report.”

The design of the room was ornate, a remnant of the old Tsarist regime, but the curtains were threadbare and the paneling, once a rich chocolate brown, was beginning to fade.  They had updated the plumbing in the 1930s, but the humidity from a leaking fixture lent a musty air to the room, even in winter. Yuri Andropov, Soviet Ambassador to the Hungarian People’s Republic, took a seat and shuffled his papers nervously. Notwithstanding the equality of all Soviet citizens, he noted that the chairs were arranged in a loose semicircle around him. An interrogation.

The imprisonments and executions had died with Comrade Stalin, but the inner workings of the Politburo remained cutthroat, and a man could get a feel for his own importance – or the amount of trouble that he might be in – from the faces that sat across the table in committee meetings. Today’s gathering was something of a mixed bag. Mikoyan and Kaganovich had been Stalin’s feared enforcers among the Party’s upper ranks, but they wielded no real power. Khrushchev doesn’t take you seriously if he sends these fossils to greet you. Andropov brightened considerably at the sight of the third face, for Georgy Zhukov, the architect of victory in the Great Patriotic War, carried enormous moral weight not easily measured by Soviet politics. The youngest member of the group, Leonid Brezhnev, intrigued him the most. Perhaps five years older than himself, the candidate member’s eyes moved alertly beneath the heavy brows, and Brezhnev was rumored to have the General Secretary’s ear. A useful ally or a formidable adversary. Brezhnev nodded at him to begin.

“Thank you, Comrades. As you know, the Embassy began a new program last month –”

“Hungary is falling apart, and you’re blathering about generalities,” Mikoyan interrupted. “What the hell is going on in Budapest?”

“My apologies.”  Andropov looked past Mikoyan and gave a penitent nod to Zhukov and Brezhnev. “Comrade Mikoyan is correct, of course. As you are aware, there has been widespread unrest throughout the winter.  The government in Budapest has been working to root out any hostile elements, but since our General Secretary’s speech in January –”

“Comrade,” Kaganovich wagged a finger at him, “That was for internal Party consumption only. If you breathe one fucking word of that speech, the Central Committee will have your head.”

Andropov met his gaze and noted the older man’s red flush with satisfaction. Kaganovich had been at Stalin’s side when the last food disappeared from Ukraine and whole villages died off, and the bald fool had been pleased to watch as the larger society collapsed – churches, schools, police, and courts – and the population descended into savagery. How difficult it must be to fall from such heights.

“If you believe that an impropriety has occurred, that would be a matter for the KGB,” Andropov said. “Regarding what the Hungarians might have heard of the General Secretary’s speech, the peasants believe there has been… a relaxation… within the Soviet Union since 1953, and their rulers in Budapest have not made similar changes.” 

“And what do you believe, Comrade Ambassador?”  Kaganovich stared at him intently. “Has there been… a relaxation?

“No.”  Andropov spoke without hesitation. “There has been a single Party line, which has been followed without deviation since 1917.”  He glanced across the table at Brezhnev, who appeared satisfied with the response, and shuffled through his notes. Zhukov, who had paid little attention to his previous remarks, was watching him closely now.

“Perhaps we could discuss the other issues,” Brezhnev said. “A member of the Embassy staff was attacked recently, correct?” 

“Yes, one of the embassy staff was assaulted last week. The Hungarians and our own security forces are searching for a suspect as we speak.” 

“Of course,” Mikoyan nodded. The receding hairline and mustache, trimmed a little too closely to the corners of his mouth, reminded Andropov of the portraits of Adolf Hitler. “Perhaps it was the English spy, the same man who slipped through your fingers last year. Would you care to enlighten us about that as well?” 

Who have you been talking to, Anastas Ivanovich? Yuri Andropov spoke in a carefully worded monologue as he presented the details to the committee. Yes, he had seen the KGB reports on the English prisoner, and there was no doubt that the British, along with their masters in Washington, were working to undermine the foundations of the Soviet Union. Still, the KGB had found no evidence of overt misdeeds had gone beyond the prisoner’s presence in Budapest (“Then find the evidence,” Kaganovich said in his croaking rasp). In response to a question from Mikoyan, he noted the decadence of the Americans – Andropov had seen images of Elvis Presley on American television and had been duly horrified. Neither the sophisticated interrogation methods of the KGB nor the more brutal approach of the Hungarians had borne fruit, and the prisoner had divulged no information during his stint in captivity.   

The girl wanders through the barren fields like a wraith, the remnants of a cotton dress clinging to her body. Andropov guesses her age at twelve, but she could be older, a teenager stunted by poor nutrition. He raises the rifle at her approach, for the orders from Moscow are clear, and a child can also be a class enemy. The girl struggles to find the proper words through the gnawing hunger.

“Help me.”

Yes, he was a loyal servant of the party.

Yes, he wished to continue as Ambassador.

No, he had not conspired with the English. No, he had not conspired with the Americans, either. He would get to the bottom of the assault in Budapest, and if the English spy had not returned to his masters in London, Andropov would find him as well. He agreed with the committee that the British and Americans were behind the recent troubles in the Hungarian People’s Republic.

Two days later, the volunteers search a farmstead for hoarded grain, but where they expected to discover sacks of wheat behind the walls or beneath the floor, they find stew, the best food Andropov has smelled in weeks. The others beat the kulak and his wife (for hoarding meat is also a crime) as Andropov searches the outbuildings. The remains on the butcher’s block are unrecognizable, but he recognizes the cotton dress all too well. Andropov runs into the field to vomit, and the kulak and his wife are shot on the spot.  

“Comrade Andropov?”  Brezhnev spoke up. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”  Kaganovich continued to stare at him, and the subtext behind that stare was clear enough – your lack of vigilance in this matter is troubling. Still, the others appeared satisfied with his show of loyalty, and even Zhukov, who had barely spoken, acknowledged him with a polite nod.

He left the meeting and went outside – the winter had been brutal, but he needed fresh air. Pacing the courtyard, his collar pulled tightly about his throat, Andropov thought until he had the workings of a plan. An hour later, he sent an encrypted cable to Budapest with instructions for an updated on the attack to be on his desk by tomorrow morning. Almost as an afterthought, he ordered the English prisoner’s documentation – arrest record, interrogation reports, personal belongings – to be sent as well. A KGB staff officer assaulted, a missing English spy, and an entire city on the brink of counterrevolution. The Politburo wanted answers, and if he could not provide them, Andropov would find the ground shifting beneath his own feet. And who told Mikoyan about the English spy?   

III.

Cologne

“I don’t see the point of looking at these files,” Cristofor said.

Diels clicked his tongue in agitation. He had traced carefully through each man’s life, searching for parents, wives, brothers and sisters – anyone, for Christ’s sake, that could provide him with a new lead – and the priest was balking at a few reams of paper. He slid the photograph, a blonde, buck-toothed man with listless eyes, across the table.

“That’s Egon Kass. Grew up a peasant in Silesia, served at Verdun during the Great War. Egon was not a Party member, but he became entangled in the kidnapping of Sarah Spencer and vanished with the others.”  Diels shook his head. “I want to find out if any of these men survived, because there has to be some connection between Sarah’s kidnapping in 1933 and her disappearance three years ago. If we find Sarah, perhaps we find what happened to your lady friend.” 

“My lady friend,” Cristofor frowned. “You say that like I had secret wife that I kept hidden from the church. Besides, I thought you already identified a survivor.” 

Yes, Diels thought, but I’d rather avoid him if possible. “Can you tell me how Gabriela was connected to Sarah Spencer?”

“Through her employer.”  Father Cristofor skimmed another file. “As far as I could tell, he was a wealthy landowner who sent donations to the church and asked lots of questions – everything from Greek philosophy to astronomy to canon law.” 

“What was his name?”

“She never told me. Apparently, he was something of a recluse.” 

“Does the name Dracula mean anything to you?”

“The Drăculești were an old family of Wallachian nobility,” Father Cristofor said. “Vlad the Second, the founder of the line was associated with the Order of the Dragon - Vlad Dracul. His son Vlad the Third, was known as Vlad Drăculea, the Son of the Dragon. Vlad the Third was reputed to be especially nasty, according to the historical record.”

“I imagine they were all nasty back then,” Diels said. “What happened to them?”

“Oh, the family line died out about three centuries ago. Why do you ask?”

“Something from the old files, I think.”  Diels had told the priest as much as he dared, but he had glossed over the more fanciful elements of Heydrich’s story. “And it reminds me of your correspondence with Sarah. Don’t you think so?” 

"Perhaps.”  A smile touched the corners of his mouth, but the priest’s eyes remained somber. “There’s an old folk tale, in which a man meets the devil at a crossroads at midnight. ‘Bury my coffin in the churchyard,’ the devil says, ‘so that my spirit can rest.’  The man, wanting to do a good deed for a stranger, agrees, and the coffin goes into the churchyard. The following night, the devil shows up at his door and carries him away, for in desecrating the consecrated ground, he has committed a grave sin.”

“He should have asked for something in return,” Diels said. “I would have demanded riches and an endless string of beautiful women. What’s your point?” 

“My point?”  Cristofor laughed. “I suppose it’s that even a good deed can go horribly wrong. Mostly, it’s that your story reminds me of old superstitions of my childhood. Can you prove any of this?” 

“I photographed everything, but my copies were lost when I was kicked out of the Gestapo.”

“But you still have your survivor.”  The priest closed the file. “Dante says that when he descended into hell, the only way out was to go all the way down. Do you see what I mean?” 

“Jesus.” Diels felt the beginnings of a headache forming behind his eyes. “I guess it’s time to visit an old acquaintance.” 

III.

50 Miles South of Madrid

Otto Skorzeny dined on a late breakfast, and when the sun was high in the sky, he drove south in the big Mercedes. He parked at the edge of the olive grove and rolled down the windows. The heat was sweltering, and Skorzeny gazed stared enviously to the south, where the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada rose from the plain. Snow at the edge of a desert, he thought. The second car pulled up an hour later, and the thin man exited.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Skorzeny said. “I’m surprised that you would risk it.”

“Risk what? I’m just an ordinary German seeking refuge from the oppression of communism and liberalism.”  Acwulf smiled. “Of course, I might have omitted certain details when they questioned me at the border. I need your help.” 

“What do you want?” 

“Do you remember a lovely English lady named Sarah Spencer? I believe the two of you met some years ago. She seems to have vanished, and another old acquaintance named Rudolf Diels is searching for her.” 

“Never met Rudolf Diels,” Skorzeny frowned, “and I would rather forget about Sarah Spencer. What – do you want me to help Diels find her?” 

“Do I want you to help Diels find her?” Acwulf’s chilly grin was out of place in the dry heat. “Of course not – her son is looking for her, and I would like to do a good deed for him. We can’t let a man like Diels take the credit, can we?”   

Skorzeny mulled over Acwulf’s words. They had fought together in Russia, where the younger man had displayed a confidence and ruthlessness that was unnerving, even to the most jaded observer. Acwulf had vanished at the war’s end and was rumored to have gone over to the Communists, but he kept in touch with a few trusted comrades.

“What do you want me to do?” 

Acwulf outlined his plan in a few brief sentences, and Skorzeny committed the details to his memory. It was a simple plan, requiring little effort on his part. Good. In Skorzeny’s experience, things tended to go awry where Sarah Spencer was involved.  

“Of course,” Acwulf said, “Rudolf Diels may appear on your doorstep at some point. If you see him, please extend him every hospitality.” 

“You don’t want me to get rid of him?”  The Spanish tolerated no disorder, but it would be easy enough to make a body disappear.

“No, I think not.”  Acwulf’s voice was soft, almost wistful. “I have a better idea.” 

They talked a little longer, and Skorzeny found himself wondering what Acwulf could possibly want from Sarah Spencer. Diels, he understood well enough – few of Reinhard Heydrich’s acolytes had survived the war, but those who did viewed his old rival with loathing. Diels prospered while so many others died. Sarah Spencer, on the other hand…   

“What is it, Otto?” 

“Do you know where the woman is?” 

“I hear that she is in a safe place and will shortly be reunited with her son. Is there a problem?”

A problem? The last time we tangled with her, ten men ended up dead in a forest. Otto Skorzeny lit a cigarette and inhaled, savoring the taste of smoke.

“Watch out for her. You have no idea what you are getting into.”

IV.

Yaroslavl, Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic

160 miles northeast of Moscow

They crossed the Volga at midday, and in an unusual show of magnanimity, the guards left the boxcar doors open. Plekhanov could see the onion domes of Ascension Church in the distance, a sight that reminded him of the Kremlin. We get nearer to Moscow every day, he thought. Exile for one prisoner and death for another. The sun felt good on his face, and he let his eyes drift closed.

His partisan band hides in a large tract of forest near the Polish border. The prisoners, father and son, will be hanged before dawn, and the others will see the bodies when they scavenge for firewood at sunrise. The man is around forty years old and looks twice his age; the boy has oversize teeth and a thin band of fuzz on his upper lip. The older man begs for his son’s life, but providing food to the enemy is treason, and the whole family must pay the price. They pillaged the house, the father protests, and to resist would have meant their deaths. Plekhanov is aware of this fact, but the orders of the General Secretary are clear – utter resistance to the invaders, regardless of cost. A family that dies at the hands of the Germans dies as loyal Soviet citizens, not trash and traitors.  The boy’s mother will not be hanged, but her name will be given to the NKVD, and they will settle accounts with her in due time.

Plekhanov’s eyes fluttered behind closed lids as he moaned in his sleep. The NKVD had settled accounts all right, and he had been arrested less than a week after the fall of Berlin.

Ten years into his sentence (or so he believes – the years in the Gulag blur with the passage of time), Plekhanov lies on his bunk at midnight. He is thirty-one years old, still a young man, but work in the logging camps is brutal, rations are meager, and he barely recognizes the face that stares at him from the shaving mirror. Plekhanov thinks often of the boy, dangling from a rope in the forests of Belarus. Perhaps they were right to lock him up, he thinks.

A hand touches his arm in the darkness, and Plekhanov jumps. The woman, that strange devil who murdered the thief, stands at the edge of his bunk.

“May I lie down?” 

She speaks in accented Russian, an odd intonation that Plekhanov cannot place. Her eyes catch the starlight that peeps through the windows, the same glittering reflection that he remembers from the forest, as he moves to one side. Another prisoner snores loudly on the bunk above, and Plekhanov wonders if he is dreaming of the war.

“Why are you here?” 

“Are you afraid of me?” 

“It’s impolite to answer a question with a question, and yes – I am afraid of you.” 

“I’m surprised,” she says after a heartbeat of silence. “You killed a man, even at the risk of your own life. Weren’t you afraid then?”

“Keep your voice down!” he whispers through clenched teeth. The camp is filled with informants, and Plekhanov wants to avoid the attention of the guards. “Of course I was afraid, but I’m sick of living like a coward.” 

There is a rustling in the darkness, the noise of fabric against skin. The woman has slipped out of her heavy trousers, and he feels slightly embarrassed. She touches his lips, then eases her hand toward his waist.

“You are the first person who –” she pauses, searching for the correct Russian words “-who risked anything for me.” 

Aleksandr Plekhanov awakened to the drone of metallic wheels and the chill wind blowing through the open door of the boxcar. It was dark outside, and by his best guess, the guards were a good two hours late for the evening ration. The leg irons chafed at his ankles.

“Hey!”  he hissed toward the opposite wall. “Why didn’t the guards feed us?” 

There was no response from the far end of the car. She’s asleep, he thought, though she had barely moved all day. Perhaps the reality of her fate had sapped her vitality, but Plekhanov found this unlikely. Not even death troubles her.

V.

Budapest

1956

When all other possibilities are eliminated, that which remains is the truth.

Vladimir Korzh lay in bed for a week, his body feverish, his legs barely able to support his wasted frame. He had received a good university education before joining the NKVD, but Korzh was a peasant at heart, and he remembered the old wives’ tales of the village. Pale and sickly, his dreams a nightly horror of suffocation and blood – of wolf eyes, he thinks – his reasoning mind grimly acknowledged what he had known since the first night. The upyr – the child thief with teeth of iron.

Killing it would be easy enough, for though Korzh had no sharpened stake, he had a large butcher’s cleaver, and that would suffice to cut off the monster’s head. But how to find it? In the legends, one  could tie a thread to the buttons of its coat and follow it back to its lair, but it visited him in his sleep, and Korzh could no more tie a thread to the upyr’s coat than he could fly out the window. The answer came to him in a flash. Upyrs were the resurrected bodies of those cursed before death, and the only explanation, the scientific explanation, was for its resting place to be in unholy ground. Korzh had rejected the corruption and venality of the orthodox church, but he understood well enough about unholy places – and one site in Budapest fit the description perfectly. He ate a little food – Korzh had no appetite but needed his strength – and struggled into his clothes.

He watched the square for two hours, shivering beneath his coat as unemployed workers and hungry peasants shuffled past the monument. Following the purges and the war, the Soviet Union had found itself with a dearth of technical specialists, and he had spent the better part of 1951 assisting with the demolition of the old church. Part of the cellar had collapsed into a storm sewer, and rather than fill in the cellar (Stalin would be present for its dedication in December, and while Soviet engineering standards could be lax, Soviet timetables were unbending), they had simply enlarged the base and bricked over the cellar wall as best as they could manage. Korzh had taken careful note of that sewer – everyone believed that another war was imminent, and when the American bombers appeared over Budapest, he had planned to shelter in that dark tunnel.

When the last few peasants wandered off, he walked to the rear of the statue. The manhole was located at the intersection of two paved footpaths and (lest its appearance offend the Great Leader, he thought drily) surrounded by a few small trees. Korzh struggled with the lid for several minutes, cursing his weakened body and mashing his fingers, until the cover toppled away with a crash. The sun was low in the sky as he descended into the darkness.

He switched on the torch, and a few rats scattered his approach. A trickle of water ran through the circular tunnel, and the unpleasant smell of decayed matter assaulted his nostrils. Perhaps there was methane as well, and he wondered whether the a pocket of gas would ignite and blow him to pieces. Perhaps it would be better if it did, he thought. The smell grew more offensive as he stumbled forward, but Korzh was careful not to let his pace falter. He had wasted much of the afternoon as he waited for the square to clear, but there was still time to complete his task. A short walk and a few seconds of work, and it will be finished, he thought. He would cut off the upyr’s head and take his cure in the old manner, by partaking of its blood.

As he expected, the bricked-over passage to the cellar had fallen in, and Korzh shined his torch through the gap. A rectangular wooden box lay at the far end of the room. His heart began to beat faster and sweat formed on his brow as Korzh glanced at his pocket watch. Not much time now. When all other possibilities were eliminated, that which remained was the truth, and he had a bare ten minutes to save his own life. The thought of drinking blood revolted him, but he was desperate – anything to restore his weakened limbs and rid his mind of the whispering voice that haunted his dreams. After a moment’s hesitation, he pushed through the passageway.

The bear trap snapped shut on his leg, breaking his ankle.

His knees buckled, and Korzh let out a sharp cry of pain as his injured foot began to swell. Unable to stand, he planted his elbows and tried to crawl, but the trap was firmly affixed to the stone by a short chain. He pried desperately at the bonds that held his ankle, and if he had been healthy and strong, he might have freed himself. Now, his weakened fingers were no match for the iron jaws, and  Korzh cast about the room for something to use as leverage.

You still have the cleaver, Korzh thought as he fumbled for the heavy blade. The next few minutes would be agonizing, but if he worked quickly, he could hobble to the coffin and finish his butcher’s work – if he was willing to lose a foot in the process. He raised the weapon, then hesitated as the blade touched his swollen ankle. There’s no way you can hack through your own leg before the sun sets. Korzh tried to weigh his options, but his mind was fogged by pain.

Far above, the sun passed below the horizon.

Light from the torch illuminated the cellar, but its arrival registered first in his ears, a rasping sound as the wooden lid was drawn aside. The smell that wafted from that box was awful, an aroma of death and decay so potent that he nearly vomited. Finally, in the flickering light, he saw the truth, and Korzh had time for a single mad thought – wolf eyes – before his screams began.

The next morning, a policeman found his body at the base of the statue. His clothes were disheveled and smelly, but his countenance was serene, and the skin lacked the usual pallor of death. The officer stared at the body for another heartbeat and had time for one final thought before alerting the higher authorities. I hope I die peacefully like that.

VI.

London

1935

The worst part was not her physical symptoms, for those waxed and waned over time, or even the emotional burden that she bore. The worst part was simply that it (whatever it was, for she had no words to describe the subsuming of her persona into pure Id) continued – one day was like unto another, and she had years of life remaining. Let me heal or let me die, she prayed silently to whatever gods listened, but the illness continued with no relief. Sarah grew distant from her husband, and though her love for her son was as deep as ever, her affections took on a forced quality, of an actress playing a role.

She made her first trip to Vienna in September, a thin, somewhat frail-looking woman of thirty-one. She laid a few flowers at the gravesite as a pair of bearded men watched her cautiously. Sarah could hardly blame them, for old the refugees from Poland and Galicia were now joined by those fleeing eastward from the Third Reich. Enemies on every side, she thought. On the banks of the Danube, she stared at the flowing water and tried to understand why something as ordinary as a river made her so afraid. She had enjoyed the water as a child (a memory of swimming with John Quincy, and squealing as he dunked her beneath the water, brought a smile to her face), but now, that ribbon of liquid repulsed her, and her stomach turned at the sight. There’s death in there. Moving against intuition, Sarah approached the riverbank. Her fingers skimmed the surface, and she jumped away, as if a mild shock had passed through her hand. She removed her shoes and, with a final glance to either side to ensure that no one was watching, plunged her feet into the current.

The sensation was immediate, and she cried aloud as the chill spread upward from her feet and ankles. A haze of red swam before her eyes, and Sarah’s ears rang with the buzzing of a hundred angry wasps. From a great distance, she heard her mother’s voice, words of encouragement – or perhaps warning – that remained just beyond the range of her hearing. A long eternity later, the pain subsided, and Sarah lay at the water’s edge, breathing in great heaving gasps. I’m still alive. Cautiously, she lifted her head, pushed herself upright, and put on her shoes, aware that for the first time in a year, the voices that whispered murder in her ears had receded.

VII.

Romania

1956

“What brings you into the mountains?”  The peasant jumped as a dark shape emerged from the shadows. He had seen no one all evening, and other than the owl that hooted from a distant tree, the forest had been quiet.

“I live here.”

“Not up here you don’t – no one lives here. I’ve seen you in the village, haven’t I?” 

“Perhaps.”  The peasant said as little as possible, for the more he held his tongue, the less could be reported to the Securitate.

“Not many people from the village come at night.” 

The man emerged from the shadows, and the peasant took stock of his new companion. He wore a dark coat and wide-brimmed hat, and though his build was not the muscular physique of a blacksmith, he moved with the easy grace of one accustomed to good food and strenuous labor. The impression was offset by his coloration, which appeared pallid in the twilight, and something more, which the peasant struggled to identify. Perhaps it was the subtle merging of the black coat and surrounding shadows, which lent an insubstantial, somewhat menacing, air to his appearance. He smoothed the fabric of the coat like a great bird preening its feathers, and the peasant caught a glimpse of a pistol in the man’s waistband.

“I’m searching for mistletoe. My daughter has a fever.”

“And the garlic around your neck?”

“My wife asked me to wear it.” 

“Interesting. Not many folks know the old ways. I would say that your wife is very wise, although mistletoe is not the proper remedy for a child’s fever.”

“There’s no medicine at the clinic –” 

“Not that. You need a poultice of valerian and spearmint, preferably mixed with some of that garlic that you’re wearing. I can bring you what you need – if you want it.”

Yes, the peasant thought, but he was hesitant to speak. Perhaps the stranger would ask him to become an informant for the Securitate, to betray a friend or relative.

“Of course, I would ask for something in return. It would be illegal and perhaps dangerous, but I can’t do it on my own, and I can pay you well – well enough to buy medicine on the black market, or to smuggle your family across the border to Turkey.”

“And my daughter will get better?” 

“Yes, if the fever is not too bad.”     

He opened his mouth to answer, then paused. “You’re not Romanian, are you?” 

“No, but I’ve lived here for a long time, courtesy of one of your fellow countrymen.”

“A friend of yours?” 

“No.”  The stranger’s grin made him shiver. “An old enemy.”