The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  The Count stared him down in obvious distrust. “The warehouse is in very poor condition. The refurbishments alone would cost over three thousand.”

  Herman rubbed his mustache thoughtfully, “I see. Am I to understand my proposition has been taken under consideration? There will always be another waterfront lot available in Manhattan, of that we can be certain!”

  The Count did not appear certain of anything coming from Herman, but neither did he seem willing or able to pay that bill for the option fees. “Yes, I am considering it. If I do this, you take the property as is, for full payment of my obligation.”

  Herman bristled with righteous indignation, when he sat up his rotund belly jutted forward intimidatingly. “But your Grace just explained the condition of the property is in such a state of disrepair? I couldn’t possibly be expected to manage the refurbishment and cover your expenses. Pardon me your Grace, but you are a wealthy man, surely you can cover a few thousand?”

  The Count rubbed his hands over his face, leaned forward with a look of anxiety and spoke low so as not to be overheard. “To confide in you Mr. Goldstein, the war has my country in ruin. The Royal family’s popularity is waning. I fear this may be the last monarchy in Russia. I had so hoped these stock options would prove lucrative. My accounts in New York are limited and my Russian holdings are not in a favorable market for sale. I would incur heavy losses.” The Count leaned even closer to Herman who listened intently to every word. “The smell of smoke is never good for prices. How do you say here in America, a fire sale?”

  Herman nodded with a deep frown. “How very unfortunate indeed.”

  Nadia entered the room with the gray-haired head mistress, both carrying silver serving dishes. Herman’s eyes were instantly drawn to her, flowing over Nadia’s lithe body appreciatively. Again Count Orlov noticed his guest’s undisguised interest in Nadia.

  I could almost see the idea spark in his eyes as he watched Herman’s fascination with Nadia. The servants finished their task and excused themselves. But the Count reached out to take Nadia’s hand. She blushed crimson and gasped in surprise.

  “Come here, Natasha.” It was an order, and she followed without question. She stepped right up, her eyes downturned in reverence of her master, “Look up child, let us see you.”

  He tilted her head up with his hand on her chin. “She has a delicate beauty. It’s too bad she has the Mongol’s look.” He spoke of her as livestock to be examined for market. The Count pulled her next to him with his arm around her in a fatherly gesture.

  “You see her eyes, Mr. Goldstein, and the high cheek bones, notice the slight Asiatic slant?”

  Herman watched Nadia intently, the Count had his full undivided attention with this play. “How very intriguing. Now that you mention I do see it.”

  “That is the mark of her ancestors. The Mongol hordes who invaded Russia, ruled our lands for a time. Her father is fair, blond-haired, blue-eyed, but her mother is of the Mongol’s blood with darker features. We cannot seem to rid our country of their influence though it was so very long ago. The Mongol legacy lives on in Russia, as you can see. Our beautiful Natasha inherited the best of them both, I think with the fair skin, and that wonderful hair color.” The Count touched Nadia’s reddish brown pony tail possessively.

  Herman nodded in agreement, uncertain where this was going, but still entranced with Nadia. She couldn’t stop blushing under their attentions.

  “Mr. Goldstein, did you know that both of Natasha’s parents are my servants and that she was born on my estate in St. Petersburg?”

  “Very interesting.” Herman nodded, still waiting for the punchline. Then realization blossomed on his fat face and he blurted out, “How fascinating your Grace. If I recall, the custom in Russia is that servants are actually considered the property of the gentry they serve, is that no so your Grace?”

  “Yes, Mr. Goldstein that is the law in Russia.”

  The two men were speaking of something Nadia didn’t quite comprehend. She glanced towards the Count with a puzzled expression, and then looked to Herman, who couldn’t stop staring at her.

  Herman burst with excitement. “How delightful! And do you wish to offer this additional property as collateral in exchange for your obligation?”

  “That is precisely what I’m suggesting. Though we are not in Russia, the ways of my country are deeply ingrained in these people. They will honor any arrangements I make on their behalf. I am their master.” The Count spoke with the utmost arrogance and confidence. “You cover my obligations to the stock option fees entirely, and in exchange I will transfer ownership of both properties to you.”

  “Your Grace is a very shrewd businessman; I predict you will do well in your endeavors here in America. I am sorely tempted. Your Grace exploits my weakness!”

  “I think you will be the one doing the exploiting. Let us not lose sight of the value of my property.” The Count stroked Nadia’s hair softly, paternally. “Precious gems are often considered priceless. Wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Goldstein?”

  Herman had that look again, that lecherous look, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off Nadia. I felt physically sick to my stomach as I watched this ruthless human trafficking unfold right in front of me. I’d heard tales of this stuff in old films, but the reality of it was far more heinous than a sterilized movie production.

  The Count patted Nadia on the knee. “You can go now. Have Mistress Lorna pack your things. You will be traveling tonight.” She looked glad to make her escape as she darted off without a clue about what was happening.

  Herman’s disgusting stare tracked her every move. After Nadia left the room, the Count smiled brightly. “She will be prepared to leave shortly, provided all is agreed in writing.”

  I wanted to scream, to hurl the furniture around the room, to do something, anything, to put a stop to this insanity, but I couldn’t move through these visions. I was just an observer, passing judgment, unable to affect anything.

  The vision abruptly changed again, adding nausea and disorientation to my emotional mess. The scene shifted to a small room crowded with two beds and a dresser drawer, a servant’s quarters. Nadia wore a heavier dress with sturdy boots and a suitcase packed next to her on the bed, ready to travel. Tears streamed down her cheeks, she had never looked more innocent or girlish.

  She was devastated.

  I wanted to reach out to her, to hold her, to tell her it was gonna be alright, to offer safety in my arms and home. I was damn near crying myself.

  A young man entered the room and came straight to Nadia, closing her tiny frame in his embrace. It was Mikhail, my virtual twin. He instantly made me jealous. I should be the one to hold her, comfort her, save her.

  He looked exactly like me in every way, except for the haircut and clothes. It was me, a century ago, dressed as a Russian servant. Felt like looking at a distorted, funhouse mirror image. Super creepy.

  Mikhail spoke rapid-fire Russian to Nadia. I couldn’t understand the words, but I caught the gist of the situation. She had to go, now. She came back at him in heavily accented English. “There must be some way to change his mind!”

  Mikhail cursed. “He sold you to a filthy Jew banker!” Nadia burst into new tears and sobbed into Mikhail’s shoulder.

  He pulled something out of his pocket and put it in Nadia’s hand. “Take this. It is my promise to you. I will come for you tonight. When the driver returns I will come for you. Be ready for me at midnight.”

  Nadia looked at the locket in her hand and asked, “What is this?”

  “It is my promise. It was your gift for our engagement. I had planned to give this to you next year …” Mikhail’s words trailed off. There would be no next year. They had no more time.

  Nadia cried and begged him in broken English, “If you speak to his Grace, tell him we are being married. Beg him, he will change his mind! He is good man!”

  Mikhail shook his head, tears in his eyes, “Nyet! I tried! I told him he could keep all my wage
s to pay the banker! He said the agreement was done and he would not go back on his word. There is no other way. I will come for you tonight and we will escape to the west, Oregon, Washington. No one will ever find us! We will be together forever Natasha, this is my promise!”

  I was torn from this intense scene with another jump-flash. My stomach flopped and my head spun as I arrived at a new setting, a dark room with Nadia curled up in bed, shivering. She was clad in nothing but a white cotton shift. The front of her gown glistened, a wet, reddish-black color barely noticeable in the pale moonlight that streamed through the window. A shadow eclipsed the moon, and Mikhail cupped his hands against the window to better see inside. He spotted Nadia and rapped on the window to get her attention.

  As she stood up I could see what was wrong. Blood. The front of her dress had fresh, wet blood all over. She made her way slowly to the window. She could barely walk. She let him in, but then collapsed on the floor. Then I noticed the blood streaks down her bare legs. Her normally fair complexion was deathly grey. Mikhail started cursing in a stream of Russian, and then he cried like a baby as he inspected her more closely.

  I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Hurry, get her to a hospital now!” But they couldn’t hear me.

  My Russian twin finally gathered his wits. He hurriedly wrapped Nadia in the blankets off the bed and carried her out into the night. I followed them as he wandered the streets of New York, lost, Nadia unconscious in his arms.

  He babbled to her in his broken English as he roamed, “I cannot go back to the Count, I took the silverware, it must be valuable. I think it will pay for our trip west, at least as far as the Mississippi.”

  He went on and on about how good their life together would be once they made it to the west, about the home he planned to build for them, and always telling her how much he loved her. Mikhail wasn’t thinking straight. Several times he went in circles around the same block, and he repeated the same promises over and over.

  I screamed in his face. “Wakeup! Do something!” But they could not hear me. I was only an observer.

  Dribbles of Nadia’s blood ran down Mikhail’s arms, dripping from his elbows as he walked the streets of New York aimlessly, struggling not to fall asleep. In the dead of the night, lost in the streets, Mikhail found himself confronted with a man who had been following them for a block or more. I knew immediately there was something very different about this man, something very wrong. But Mikhail was oblivious. This stalker seemed entranced by the sight of Nadia’s half-dead body in Mikhail’s arms, an unnatural and morbid fascination.

  I knew this man was a predator, attracted to Mikhail and Natasha by the overwhelming smell of her blood. A landshark. Mikhail had left an easy trail for the creature to follow. The thing was tall, lanky, with pale white skin, dark eyes, and raven black hair. It was well dressed in a fashionable suit and cloak, and it introduced itself as, “Doctor Hess.”

  Suprisingly, it sounded calm and peaceful when it spoke, yet to me the thing radiated a sense of pending doom. I wanted to shake Mikhail, to scream in his face, to make him wake up and see the obvious.

  The doctor invited them home, “You can bring her to my office, but hurry, she will not last long this night. She has lost too much blood. She could hemorrhage at any moment.”

  Faced with this calm and intelligent sounding man, Mikhail chose the only source of help available. He looked exhausted. They walked quickly down the street to the Doctor’s place. It was an actual doctor’s office storefront, with a sign depicting the painted image of the rod with a serpent wrapped around it. I felt a little better about the arrangement. Maybe this man-creature was bound by the Hippocratic Oath.

  In the office, the doctor instructed Mikhail to lay Nadia on his operating table, and then proceeded to examine her. Mikhail sat down to rest on the nearby bench. I was way too worried to take my eyes off of Nadia, but Mikhail, in his exhaustion, was already nodding off. Before I could see what the Doctor was really up to my vision jump-flashed.

  When I got over the nauseating disorientation of the quick-change of scenery, I found myself in a dark, dank room of moldy bricked-in walls and earthen floor. To one side of the room was a steel cage mortared right into the brick wall. Nadia lie curled up in a fetal position on a small cot inside the cage-cell. She looked filthy, her lank hair hung in greasy clumps across her face. I could actually smell her. She reeked with a rotten, coppery tang of the old blood caked on her filthy cotton shift which hadn’t been changed in who knows how long. On the wall opposite the cage was Mikhail, sitting on a bench, but not exactly relaxed. His arms hung from steel cuffs attached to steel chains bolted to the wall, a prisoner in this dungeon-like place.

  Doctor Hess came into the room descending a set of slimy black brick steps and went directly to the door of the cage with a huge skeleton key. He unlocked it and walked inside to check on Nadia. “Good evening child. The fever seems to have run its course, very well then. You have survived the process of change. It is time.”

  Nadia croaked, “Can I please have a drink, sir?”

  “Yes, in a moment, child.” Doctor Hess seemed kind, caring, but the setting was all wrong, with cages, chains and restraints.

  Their conversation awoke Mikhail. He immediately started in on the doctor, “Stay away from her you bastard! Do not touch her again!”

  The doctor replied tolerantly, “I have not harmed the girl. On the contrary, I have saved her life.” The doctor spoke directly to Nadia, “You are happy to be alive, yes?”

  Nadia nodded her head and asked again, “Can I have a drink now?”

  “Ah yes, now we come to the purpose of this exercise. I have brought you here together for a little experiment. The object of the experiment is to determine how long the subject can abstain from feeding before her bloodlust overrules her reason. What is your name?”

  “Natasha,” she croaked.

  “Good, Natasha, come with me now.”

  Mikhail argued all the way, “Do nothing he tells you! He is evil, do not listen to him!”

  The Doctor replied with an unmistakable tenor of authority, “Shut up!”

  Nadia followed the Doctor out of the cage to stand before Mikhail. She finally became aware that her fiancée was imprisoned. “What are you doing with him?”

  Doctor Hess reached out with a quick flick of his left hand and sliced Mikhail’s right shoulder with his long, wicked fingernails, leaving a one inch cut that welled up with blood. Mikhail spat at him, “Bastard.”

  Nadia realized the implications and started to beg, “Please sir. Please do not hurt him. We leave and never return. We not cause problems!” Her English worsened in her anxiety.

  “Silence, child!” The doctor snapped and Nadia was silenced, as if he held some strange power to command obedience. He wetted his finger in Mikhail’s blood and held it up to Nadia’s nose. She attempted to turn away, but the scent caught and her attention focused unerringly on the Doctor’s red-tipped finger. Nadia was entranced by that one digit, her little pink tongue flicked out once-twice-three times to clean every last drop off the Doctor’s finger. She obviously liked it. Her eyes took on a feral, hungry gleam, darting back and forth between the Doctor and Mikhail. Her eyes lingered on the open cut across Mikhail’s shoulder.

  Nadia took a step towards Mikhail, but he spoke up to caution her, “Nyet! Fight him! You must not let him turn you into a monster! You are strong enough to fight him! Ja teb’a l’ubl’u.” I had heard him say that to her so many times as he carried her, I knew he meant I love you.

  The doctor gestured towards Mikhail, “There is your drink, warm and fresh. Go to him, a little taste will not hurt.”

  I could see how bad she wanted it. “A little taste?” She licked her lips.

  As she advanced, her fiancé started in again, “Do not listen to him! He will turn you into a monster! Strigoi!”

  With Mikhail’s words, she backed off. “I am not strigoi!”

  That was some kind of serious word for th
em. I recalled hearing it before, a Russian vampire. Nadia’s superstition and abhorrence was strong enough to give her pause.

  She shook her head and backed even further away from Mikhail, denying herself what she obviously wanted.

  The doctor sighed in resignation. “Get in the cage!” He clearly held some power over her, because she moved immediately, doing precisely as commanded. The doctor locked the cage door.

  “Until tomorrow night.” He exited up the slippery brick stairway.

  The scene jump-shifted to the same exact place, only sometime later. Since there was no real change of location, I didn’t feel the nausea-vertigo so bad.

  Looking around, things were pretty much the same. Nadia lay on the cot in the cage, and Mikhail was still sitting on the bench chained up. The Doctor came down the steps like the last time, unlocked the cage door, and spoke to Nadia, “Three nights without feeding, are you ready to give in to your needs?”

  The filthy girl launched at the Doctor, moving faster than the eye could see. He moved just as fast, slamming the cage door in her face. She hit it hard, rattling the steel. Then this dainty little girl growled and snarled like a beast, speaking in a guttural voice that had no business coming from her mouth, “Let me go, now!”

  The doctor remained calm and collected. “Of course, as soon as you feed from the young man you can go wherever you wish.”

  The Doctor swung the cage door open again, sidestepping as Nadia flew past him in a blur. In an instant she was there in front of Mikhail, reaching for him, grabbing his arm to pull it to her mouth.

  Mikhail yelled in her face, “Nyet Natasha! Nyet! You must not let him do this! You must fight him!”

  He reached some part of her that was still the girl that he loved and cherished, his plea stopped her just before she bit into his flesh. Nadia dropped to the floor mewling and crying, a miserable sound that wasn’t quite human in tenor. She crawled on hands and knees to the doctor to beg at his feet in a hoarse whiny voice, “Please sir! Please no! I will do anything you want, please no hurt Misha!”