Stoker's Manuscript (15 page)

Arthur directed me to sit with my back to the darkness. “The Master wishes to know the place described.”

“Okay . . .” Caution suggested I pretend only to understand what Arthur wanted as he revealed it, since making copies had been forbidden from the start. Playing dumb, I turned the page.

Arthur cleared his throat. “There is no need to view the other pages.”

I put my hands in my lap and looked up at him. “It might help if I knew some backstory.”

“We seek a singular place.”

I simply stared back, thinking it best to stay mute and wait for clarification. I did not have to wait long. At once I sensed someone standing behind me. My blood rushed, and my nose confirmed it just as the deep voice spoke.

“I am a very patient man.” The voice was without question the one I had heard on my first trip, this time within inches of my right ear, speaking just above a whisper, annunciating each syllable formally. “I have waited many . . . many years for this.” He breathed through his mouth with a detectable hiss. “No longer will I wait, for if you cannot tell me where this is, I have no further use for you.”

“I understand,” I said, not turning to look at him. I didn’t need to be told that “no further use” meant disposal.

“I do not think you do,” he said. “I smell in you . . . hesitation. You know something,
orfan
.” I wanted to speak, but could not. He whispered close enough to my ear that I could feel his breath. “Tell me what you know.”

I pointed to the page. “To be clear, you are looking for the burial site described here.”

“Yes.”

“
Where the Juden await judgement.
Whoever it is is buried in a Jewish cemetery.”

His hand touched my right shoulder and gave a squeeze. “This much is clear.” He patted my shoulder.
“Continua.”
There was no heat to his touch, nor was there cold. My blood pulsed so hard that my ears rang.

“And here,
shading their eyes in the sunrise
, they are facing east.”

“Good. Very good.” His finger traced a line across my shoulders as he stepped around me to the opposite side of the table to sit. The wood did not creak when his weight alighted.

I did not know what to expect in his face, but it was long, very long, with a perfectly rounded lower jaw devoid of the jowls one expects when seeing a man past middle age. A thin, trim mustache covered the area over his lip. His skin was smooth, yet gave no hint of surgical enhancement. He had a straight Roman nose, bony cheekbones, and straight dark hair. No widow’s peak. It might have been the light, since the lantern shone directly down on the paper, but his eyes looked red and were positioned an odd distance away from the bridge of his nose. His skin was pale, most noticeable against a long woolen coat of black with the collar turned up.

“I believe I can do business with you,” he said. “Continue.”

The Book of Isaiah flashed into my brain, and the story of how aspiring prophets were charged with interpreting the king’s dreams, rejects tossed to the potter’s field. I looked back down at the page. “I believe the first couple passages direct the reader to a general area. Then it gets more specific, until finally
tripping over stones
.”

His hands came into view in the lantern light as he placed them on the table. The fingers were long and perfectly manicured. His could have been the hands of an eye surgeon. The nails looked longer than men wear, and appeared to be filed to points.

“Tell me,” he said. “My first tongue is not of English; what is this . . . Ladies River?”

“If the name of a place does not match anything on a map, then look to names in neighboring countries or words that mean the same in the language of the native land.” I thought of words for
ladies
.
“Femei . . . doamne . . .”
I thought of Latin.
“Dominae . . .”

“Da,”
he said, lifting a hand to stop me.
“Rivulus Dominarum.”
He closed his eyes and took a long deep breath through his nostrils. “I know it from my youth. That is original name of—”

“Baia Mare.” My own place of birth. I knew it when he said
Rivulus
and recalled the church’s cornerstone engraved with
Riv Dom
.
“Where the last sweet chestnuts grow . . .”
A five-centuries-old grove of chestnut trees grew near the city, I knew. The trees were locally famous, the farthest north of the Mediterranean these trees grew, and the city even hosted an annual chestnut festival, which I had once attended as a child.

He nodded, no smile. “And what of this Bethany Home?”

I leaned my forehead on my right hand, shading my eyes like a visor, and stared at the paper in thought. If it was a home or a house, it was a structure. What structure was there a century and a half ago that was expected to survive the millennium? Historic buildings . . . variations of
Bethany
 . . . home . . .
heim
 . . .
doma
 . . .
casa
 . . .

“Casa,” I said.
Bethany. Beth?
“Elisabeta.”

The remains of a castle sat across the square from Stephen’s Tower, where I had stood only weeks ago. It was the oldest structure in town, dating to 1440, and the site of a castle some Transylvanian prince built for his wife, Elisabeta. These days the building, Casa Elisabeta, housed art exhibits.

“You have a brain worth keeping,” the Master said. I still did not know his name. “Continue to use it.”

I read the page again, now focusing on the use of the word
sunrise
.
“You can see their fate at sunrise . . .”
I intoned. “Looking east is Stephen’s Tower. Was it ever a prison?”

“It was used as many things over the centuries,” he said, “and most likely a prison at some time.”

I was stumped on
wicked men know their destination
. Did it have something to do with the tower as a prison? As I tried to make sense of it, I was reminded of my own insight about the author’s use of action verbs.
You can see.
What do you see when you’re at the casa looking at the tower? It is a simple stone structure topped with a tall steeple and . . . a cross. An Eastern Orthodox cross.

The top crossbar of the Eastern cross is for the head. The second crossbar, the long one, is for the arms, and the bottom crossbar, tilted at an angle, is for the feet. The bottom bar is tilted from upper left to lower right to the viewer, and it is believed that the souls of good men are pointed upward, but the
souls of wicked men
point down.

The next line read
It is but five minutes that way.
So in all likelihood the cross was pointing in a specific direction.

I said, “The cross at the top of Stephen’s—”

He raised his voice: “I do not wish to hear of this cross.”

“It points . . .” I tried to visualize but could not. “I don’t know what direction it points.”

“Enough,” Arthur said. “The object points in some direction from there. Let us continue.”

I continued, “
It is but five minutes
to the Jewish Cemetery.”

“That would be in town,” said Arthur. “One does not get far in five minutes.”

“And it would depend on the mode of transport,” I said. My concentration was interrupted several times as the Master’s smell assaulted my nose. I stood to pace the room.

“I smell repulsion,” the Master said. His demeanor clearly conveyed
Get used to it
.

I tried to focus on the clues again. Five minutes in any direction put you still in the heart of the city, and no cemeteries lay inside that radius, only concrete and buildings and walking areas. Walking . . . walking . . . distance.

“Distance in minutes,” I said, returning to my seat. “Minutes of arc.”

“Da,”
said the Master, betraying his excitement with his speedy response. “One-point-eight-six kilometers per minute.”

“That would be at the Equator,” I said. “That’s the formula for zero degrees north, but it would be less distance at the forty-seventh parallel.” I looked at the map and estimated six miles in any direction from Baia Mare and found it to the east. “Baia Sprie, if the marker points east.”

“Foarte bine.” Well done.

“The rest of these directions are specific to local landmarks,” I said, “and I have not been there.”

“You will,” he said.

And in the time it took to stand, he had disappeared into the dark end of the room.

T
here is something unsettling about meeting a creature not human. Equally disturbing is recognizing that what you experienced belongs to the outliers of acceptable conversation, perhaps more aptly reserved for late-night radio call-in shows. It was hard enough to convince myself of what I had seen. The notion of trying to explain it to another was unthinkable.

This I pondered while sequestered in the castle tower for two days. My thoughts no longer dwelt on contractual acceptability and payment, but instead on how I might survive long enough to escape. And yet my mind and emotions adapted over the long hours to the point where I had, if not a plan, per se, an approach to my precarious situation.

On the third morning, Arthur walked into my room and told me I had ten minutes to get ready.

“Bring your jacket,” he said, “and your device.”

My GPS. Of course.

I followed him down the stairs to the front entrance where the black Suburban waited, and we sped in the direction of
, turning north on Route 1, the main highway—loosely defined to be sure—through the Carpathians. I suspected we were bound for Baia Mare to resume the search for Dracula’s tomb. Clearly on a schedule himself, our driver aggressively covered ground by muscling out lesser vehicles and horse carts, disregarding caution signs. Late afternoon we approached the city. The weather had cleared, still breezy and cool, with only a hint of disturbance hovering north over the Carpathians.

Pulling into the city center, we parked in the square facing Stephen’s Tower. The driver stayed while Arthur and I walked toward Casa Elisabeta. No longer a grand residence, it still retained the impressive air of ancient nobility. I moved to its entrance, the same as where the author would have stood, and turned toward the Tower.

“It is as you thought?” asked Arthur.

Stephen’s Tower was an impressive, lofty, square structure of stone and arched windows, with a tall mansard roofline and four corner turrets, each raising a cross at its peak. In the middle of the roof stood two additional large Eastern crosses. All six crosses faced east–west, with the bottom crossbars tilted upward on the sunset side, downward on the sunrise side.

Wicked men know their way
—east.

“Baia Sprie,” I said.

“How far?”

I consulted the GPS to confirm. “I would say five and a half miles.”

“Good,” he said. “You should make it by nightfall.”

I looked at him, and he gave no expression. “You want me to walk?”

“No,” he said, handing me a flashlight, “but the Master does.”

“Forgive me for asking, but does the Master have a name?”

“Yes,” he answered, and walked back to the Suburban.

At some point, if you’re human, you can’t help but wonder if your hardships are worth it. I glanced at the Suburban, then at the local people in the vicinity, and I thought of my brother and knew what he’d say, even now:
Someone else has got it worse.

I started walking.

Baia Mare spreads across a valley split by the
River in a region that resembles much of West Virginia. Softly sculpted with thick forest cover, Baia Sprie is the next town ascending the hills to the east via the river road, Route 18, as it climbs in elevation, a modern, two-lane, twisting blacktop road with sporadic guardrail protection. As in most of Romania, the alternate parallel route was the original connecting road between towns, barely more than a path, and the route of choice for horse-drawn carts. I knew that if I was looking for an ancient cemetery on an old road, it would connect to the older path and not Route 18.

A half hour into my walk, I sat and rested on a roadside rock. The day continued sunny and cool and, being pale-skinned, I was grateful the late afternoon sun was shining on my back and not in my face. I looked back to the west over the valley and saw the giant chimney stack, the city’s tallest structure, a brick cylinder several stories tall, the former site of the old smelter. My father had worked there. Other than his harsh domestic outbursts, that’s about all my memory holds of him.

Another hour’s walk and I saw a
and decided to stop for another rest. Picture a weathered ornate crucifix roughly five feet tall, topped with a chalet roof, complete with protective shingles and a place to kneel and leave notes, sometimes light a candle. That’s a
. Travelers often leave photos of passed loved ones, or simply pause and pray for safe passage. I knelt and prayed for protection; there would be no one to leave my picture.

The sun had subsided enough in the western sky that only its curved light made it over the trees, and though the weather remained clear, the temperature ratcheted down several degrees in that elevation. No one had passed me on the road in over an hour; as I progressed up the gentle incline, my legs burned.

As shadows followed sundown, I heard the drone of mosquitoes and stopped to look around. They sounded close, but seeing none, I continued hiking. Again I stopped, for it did not sound right. Whereas mosquitoes travel slowly, these sounded like large swift-moving swarms, and the pitch of their sound was clearly female, no males. Males always accompany females, yet I heard none. Eventually the sound passed, but within minutes the skies filled with birds by the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, sufficiently startling to stop and take notice.

When I was almost to my destination and walking along the crest of the old road, a horse-drawn cart sped by westbound. The frantic driver was doing all he could to control his galloping horses, and he called for me to take shelter as he passed:
“Adaposti!”

Take shelter? Where? I continued my trek into the dark. According to my GPS, I had not quite reached the five-mile mark when off to the east I heard a few dogs bark. Immediately other dogs responded with howls from all directions, much like the sounds in the hills around the castle.
Wolves.
I picked up the pace.

Within minutes I reached the point where the old road diverged from its parallel younger sibling and served as the original approach to town. It was time to look for landmarks in earnest.

They took the batter across the first building and beyond the stone bridge.

I looked for any signs of an old structure, any building, or even a rock outcropping resembling a building. The evening was dark enough that I couldn’t see ahead because the moon had not yet breached. More mosquitoes, but none landed. An army of something seemed to be marshaling.

A large haystack stood to my right in a clearing. I paused at the property’s edge. If I was to encounter houses and farms, I would have to determine by age which was the first building. That simply was not going to happen.

My GPS works in decimal points off the degree instead of minutes and seconds, making the device accurate to within a thousand-foot tolerance. That’s the better part of a quarter mile. As my instructions probably needed to be followed to within a couple hundred feet, I was reduced to hunches and guesswork to supplement my gadgetry.

Nearing the haystack, something told me that it looked too tall. I walked into the field, approaching it, when suddenly a great racket sounded all around me. Wolves howled, the mosquito humming increased, and I thought I heard shrieks—one or two at first, then dozens. Armies at war. I looked up just as the first rays of moonlight illuminated the sky, and I saw a flock of small birds flying and diving into the woods. Not just birds, but also bats, more bats than I could count, thousands and thousands of them swarming until the sky blackened above the field where I stood. I unzipped my jacket and lifted it to cover my head as they dived and whirled all around me. One brushed by my arm. Along with the leathery sound of their flittering, they squealed.

They passed on, clearing the sky and letting the moon light the haystack before me. Only it was not a haystack. It was actually an old structure, perhaps part of an old stone wall that had once adjoined a larger building. It just happened to be shaped like one of the tall spun stacks. I smiled despite myself; I had found the first landmark.

Several more shrieks ascended from the woods, sounding similar to bats, except louder and agonized.

Time to look for the batter.
They took the batter across . . .

From an old Milton poem I knew that
batter
was old Gaelic for
road
, so I looked for the first road across the highway.

A path not to miss.
That meant take the first one. By the construction of the passage, the warning immediately following the description, it seemed to be an admonition, like
Careful, don’t miss it
.

Immediately I saw a narrow path angling toward the river, almost directly across from the old stone structure. I crossed the road and entered a single path with woods and underbrush on both sides. About a quarter mile ahead I heard the sound of a river flowing over rocks. Cautiously I approached and saw two short wooden posts with signs warning of an unsafe bridge.

Beyond the stone bridge . . .

As I bent to look at the structure, I heard more mosquitoes pass by. Stone pillars held up the rickety bridge made of wood and metal. This was the bridge from the epilogue.

Only seconds now.

I didn’t know if that meant seconds of the arc or counting on a clock. Regardless, a second’s distance is only a hundred feet, and the cemetery could lie anywhere to the east, or right, side. Cemeteries normally are not placed at the same level as water, especially an old cemetery that had survived the centuries, so I expected to encounter a rise in terrain away from the river.