by Amy Cross
"I'm flattered," the woman says. "Maybe you should turn that dial back down. She might be in pain."
Pain? I don't feel pain. I don't feel anything. I try to open my mouth, to ask these people who they are and what they are doing to me, but my jaw will not move. It is as if I am not in control of my own body.
"Wait just a moment," the man says. "I want to see if there's any brain function. The figures show a small elevation in the..." His voice trails off.
"A small elevation in the what?" asks the woman.
"She's showing signs of cerebral activity," the man continues, "and generally elevated brain function. Nowhere near normal levels, of course, but far above anything we've ever seen her exhibit in the past. I think she's waking up. Let me try something."
After a moment, I feel the most intense pain, throbbing through my spine and radiating out into the rest of my body. I want to scream, to beg them to stop, but I can't make a sound. Finally, the pain starts to subside, and I suddenly remember being in the forest. I was walking from Devil's Briar, trying to find my way to Florence; my uncle's image appeared to me, and then I found a road, and eventually I had walked so far that I collapsed. I felt the moment of death, and this was followed by a darkness that seemed complete, and I expected to be delivered into the pits of Hell. Instead, I am here in this strange place, being tortured by people I cannot see.
"Anything?" the male voice asks.
I hear movement nearby, and I see that the woman's faint image is walking around me. With great effort, I am able to turn my head and watch as she moves. The pain in my spine is slowly coming back, and I am filled with fear. Is this Florence? Are these people trying to kill me, or to save me? I want more than anything for Albert to appear, and for him to assure me that everything is going to be okay. Perhaps there is still time, if he gets here while I retain at least some of my strength. Then again, why would Albert want to help me? He is probably too busy at Devil's Briar.
"There's definitely some new activity in her frontal lobe," the male voice says. "It's as if she's waking up. Try talking to her."
I manage to open my mouth, but the process is slow and painful. It feels as if I have been asleep and immobile for so long.
"Are you kidding?" the woman asks.
"Do it," the male replies. "Use her name. Try to remind her who she is."
"Hello Victoria," the woman continues after a moment. "My name is Paula Mitchell. I've just returned from Devil's Briar. The year is 2013, and you're at a medical facility in Boston, Massachusetts. You're perfectly safe. The people here are taking good care of you."
I try to take in everything that she is saying. How can I be in Boston, when just a moment ago I was in Colorado? How can the year be 2013, when the last thing I remember is being in the year 1925? I cannot possibly have slept for so long. If I had, I would be an old woman by now, but such a thing is simply impossible. I want to ask questions, to find out the truth, but my attempts to speak are unsuccessful. Panic is filling my body and I am desperate to get out of here, and to find my dear beloved Albert.
"The brain activity is fading," says the male. "Say her name again. Keep going."
"Your name is Victoria Paternoster," the woman continues. "You were found near the town of Florence, in Colorado. We think you'd been to Devil's Briar, possibly with your uncle Thomas Paternoster. We're -"
"She's shutting down again," the male says, as I am filled with horror at the memory of my uncle. Can it be true? Is this really the year 2013? Has my uncle returned, or is he still lost? If the latter is true, I cannot help but think it would be better for all concerned if he stayed that way. The thought of reopening the horrors of Devil's Briar is too much for me to contemplate.
"Victoria," the woman says, a hint of urgency in her voice. "Can you hear me?"
I try once again to speak, but the effort is too much and I am suddenly overcome by a feeling of great tiredness. I want to tell her that she got my name wrong. I am no longer Victoria Paternoster; I am Victoria Caster, wife of Albert Caster. I close my eyes for a moment, and when I open them again I am aware that time has passed. The room is no longer bright, and I hear no voices around me, but the most important change is that I feel stronger, as if I can finally speak. Slowly, I open my mouth.
"Help me," I say, immediately shocked by the quality of my own voice. I sound so old and pained, and my throat is dry. I wait for someone to answer, but it seems the people from earlier have left. Finally, I take a moment to gather my strength before carefully sitting up in the bed. There are various wires connecting me to some kind of machine, but I am able to slowly unhook myself until I am eventually free. My bones creak as I force myself to get off the bed. Blinking a few times, I manage to make my vision a little clearer, and I can tell that I am in a small room with a single door. Everything looks so strange, as if the room is made of materials that I do not understand. I see no wood and very little glass; instead, the walls appear to be completely smooth. I walk over to the door and turn the handle, finally emerging in a long, deserted corridor, the likes of which I could never before have imagined.
My body is already starting to struggle, but I am determined to keep going. I have to find the man and the woman from earlier, and find out what has happened at Devil's Briar. If the year is really 2013, almost a century has passed since the night of the fire, which means Albert... I pause for a moment, and my heart fills with sadness at the thought that Albert must surely have died long ago. Then again, if I am still alive, perhaps he too is to be found somewhere. I can only hope that perhaps the woman I heard earlier, if she has any compassion at all, will help me find my dear husband.
"Albert," I whisper as I shuffle along the corridor and finally I come to a small glass door. For a moment, I see my own reflection; I am so old, and my hair has turned gray. Preferring not to examine myself in detail, I push the door open and head out into another corridor. I do not know where I am going, but I am determined to find the people from earlier and make sure they realize that Devil's Briar must be left alone. That place has already brought such heartache and tragedy into the world. My uncle's work should be forgotten, not praised, and I feel it would be better now if he were simply left to sleep for eternity. No-one else should ever make the same mistake that I made.
Finally, I reach a door that opens out to a large field, and I emerge into a light sprinkling of rain. I'm not entirely sure how, but I have a strong feeling that I know where to find the woman whose voice I heard earlier. I feel as if we have some connection, as if we share certain experiences, and I start to walk away from the building. Ahead, I see bright lights burning in the distance under the night sky, and although at first I worry that there are fires raging, I eventually realize that this is what the world looks like in 2013. Above, a couple of small lights move slowly across the night sky. I have clearly been asleep while the world has made huge progress, and I cannot hope to understand everything that I see around me. All I can do is push on, defying my frail and weak body.
I walk for hours, barely encountering a soul in this darkened, desolate city. The rain falls harder and harder, soaking me to the bone, but I no longer feel the cold. My progress is slow, but I am able to draw upon reserves of energy that I never thought I could possess. As I reach the outskirts of the city, I see huge buildings towering up around me, and bright lights all around. In the distance, there are voices shouting at one another. Eventually I reach an intersection, and I know in my heart that the woman is nearby. It takes me just a few minutes to find the right building and then the right window, and finally I see a figure inside, sleeping with a small lamp next to her bed. Reaching up, I tap my fingers on the glass, hoping to get her attention, and eventually she seems to stir. She switches off the lamp and walks over, and I try to speak as I reach down and push what appears to be a latch on the window. After a moment, the woman runs from the window, and I finally feel my weakened body start to break down. Carefully, I ease myself down onto the rain-soaked floor and take a deep b
reath.
"What the hell are you doing here?" shouts the woman as she runs from the house and places a blanket over my shivering frame. "It's freezing. I'm going to go and call an ambulance." She turns to go back inside, but I grab her arm and force her to stay. "You need medical help," she continues. "You're going to freeze to death out here!"
I open my mouth and try to speak, but I can't quite get the words out. My frail heart is pounding in my chest.
"Let me go and get someone to help you," she replies.
"Don't wake him," I manage to say finally, desperate to ensure that my uncle is never disturbed. "You must not wake him."
She stares at me for a moment. "Who?"
"Don't go back there," I say, feeling as if my time is running out. I have to make sure she understands, but I do not know where to begin. I am quite certain that I do not have time to explain everything. Death is surely close, and I can no longer feel the rain on my skin, even though I can see that the weather is getting worse and worse. It is as if parts of my body are shutting down, one by one, although I can still hear my heartbeat. "Don't go back to Devil's Briar," I manage to say. "Don't let anyone go back there. They must not wake him." I try to get flat on the ground, but the woman reaches out and supports me.
"Victoria," she says. "I have to get you inside, and then I have to call an ambulance." She carefully lifts me up into her arms. I have not been held like this since I was a child; my mother used to carry me into the house after I had been outside playing all day.
"My name..." I start to say, before feeling my throat seize shut. I have to make sure she knows my name, and earlier they seemed to have got it wrong. If I am to die, I must at least have a headstone that bears witness to my marriage. "My name is Victoria Caster," I say eventually. "Victoria Paternoster was the name I had before I was married, but then..." I pause, and suddenly my heartbeat, which has been loud in my head, stops. I open my mouth again, but my body is dead.
"Victoria Caster," the woman says.
I want to thank her. I want to tell her that she will be okay, so long as she does not go back to Devil's Briar, but this final effort is too much. I just hope that she understands, and that she leaves that place alone. Devil's Briar must be left to fade from the world, just as I myself am fading away. As the woman sets my body down on a sofa in her home, I look up at her. The last thing I see, as I die, is her kind, gentle face. I would so love to speak to her properly, to understand her world, but for that to happen I would have to be young again, and I can never be young again. Finally, the woman reaches out and closes my eyes, and I fall into darkness. As I die, the last thing I feel is the kindness of her touch.
Epilogue
"So how are you going to tell him?" Ed asks as we sit on the balcony and watch Robert playing on the beach. He's drawing a series of circles in the sand, and he seems so carefree and happy.
"Tell him what?" I reply, sipping from my glass of ice-cold water.
"About his father and -"
"There's nothing to tell him," I say firmly. "His father died, he already knows that. I really don't think I need to start going into the details with him. Not yet, anyway. I just want to try to give him the most normal life possible. The last thing he needs is to get caught up in the whole Devil's Briar thing."
"Five-year-olds are smart," Ed says. "He'll start asking difficult questions some day, and you'll need to have planned what to say."
"There'll be time for that," I reply. "I'm not gonna sit him down and start telling him about..." I pause, realizing that I don't really understand everything that's happened. Over the past few years, I've thought over and over again about what happened at Devil's Briar, and I still haven't managed to understand everything. The only explanation is that I temporarily lost my mind and imagined a lot of the things I saw, though in darker moments I find myself contemplating the possibility that perhaps I got a rare glimpse of something far darker.
As for what happened to Bill, I think I've finally managed to work it all out. I found some papers in the truck that explained the work of a man named Thomas Paternoster, who lived in Devil's Briar many years ago and who appears to have embarked upon some kind of experiment that used the giant cross as a power source. From reading the papers, it's clear that Paternoster was a madman and that his ideas were insane, but for some reason Bill seems to have become obsessed with recreating the man's work. In the end, Bill lost his mind and started to believe that he was this Thomas Paternoster guy. I always knew that Bill was a little unstable, but it's still shocking to have seen how completely deluded he became, and to know that in his final moments he was willing to give up his life in an attempt to prove that he was right. At least I've stopped blaming myself; Bill made his own choices, and I made mine.
One thing's certain: when a rescue team went up to Devil's Briar, they found parts of Bill's body. He was taken back to Boston for a funeral, although by that point I was living in San Francisco and I was too heavily pregnant to fly, so I didn't attend.
"Heller wants you to come back to Boston," Ed says suddenly. "He understands why you might be reluctant, but -"
"Not gonna happen," I reply firmly. "I'm fine in San Francisco. There are too many ghosts in Boston."
Ed nods, but it's as if there's something else on his mind. "I should probably tell you that Heller wants to send a team back to Devil's Briar," he says eventually. "Just to get an idea of the history of the place, and the layout. He doesn't know what really happened, of course, but he thinks it's worth digging into."
"Should I even bother to object?" I ask. "It's not like anyone would ever listen to me."
"It's a valid site for scientific research," he points out. "Even though there's nothing there but a few burned timbers, we can learn some useful things about the place."
I smile. Ed doesn't remember the time he went to Devil's Briar. For him, that reality never happened and the loop ended while I was there with Bill. I doubt there's any way I can get Ed and the others to listen to my warnings; I can only hope that with the cross destroyed, Devil's Briar poses no more danger. Still, Victoria Paternoster's final words continue to haunt me.
"So there's no way you'd go back, I guess," Ed continues. "Is there?"
I smile. The question is so ridiculous, it doesn't even merit an answer. The thought of going back to Devil's Briar fills me with dread. Quite apart from the bad memories, there's also the question of whether the strange occurrences have completely stopped. I feel as if I'm safe as long as I stay away, but going back to Devil's Briar would be a huge risk. I have a new life here, and a new job, and I have to take care of Robert. I'll happily read any reports that are written about Devil's Briar, but there's no way I'd return. Now that I'm finally out, there's no way I'm going back in.
"Mom!" Robert shouts. "Can I go swimming?"
"In a minute!" I call back to him.
"I know this probably sounds crazy," Ed says, "but sometimes Robert really reminds me of Bill."
"Me too," I reply, feeling a slight lump in my throat.
"So how are you going to tell him?" Ed asks as we sit on the balcony and watch Robert playing on the beach. He's drawing a series of circles in the sand, and he seems so carefree and happy.
"Tell him what?" I reply, sipping from my glass of ice-cold water.
"About his father and -"
"There's nothing to tell him," I say firmly. "His father died, he already knows that. I really don't think I need to start going into the details with him. Not yet, anyway. I just want to try to give him the most normal life possible. The last thing he needs is to get caught up in the whole Devil's Briar thing."
The Vampire's Grave
The Journey
Prologue
Having driven all night through the pounding rain, the truck was finally forced to stop just before dawn at a customs checkpoint on the border. A group of bored-looking, heavily-armed men emerged from a small shed and shone torches at the side of the vehicle, as one of them wandered slowly to the driver's-
side window and tapped on the glass. It had been almost a week since the last travelers had passed this way, and the customs team figured they might as well get some practice, even if they had to get soaked in the process.
"Papers," the official barked as soon as the window was wound down.
"I'm from the Raftwood Museum of European Archeology in London!" the driver shouted back at him, his disgruntled voice barely audible over the rain. Glancing back along the side of the truck, he saw that the other officials were casually poking the tarpaulin.
"That's nice," the official replied. "Papers."
"I was told I wouldn't have any trouble!"
"I still need to see your papers," the official said flatly. "You show me your papers, and if everything checks out, you won't have any trouble."
The rain continued to pour down as the driver leaned over to his glove-box. Eventually, he retrieved a clipboard with a bunch of documents attached to the front, and he muttered something under his breath as he held the clipboard up, hoping to keep it from getting soaked. Having spent the past month negotiating with various contacts in the Bulgarian government, he'd thought that finally he might have a clear run out of the country. Now, however, he seemed to be at the mercy of a bunch of puffed-up provincial officials. With a sigh, he realized that he might be in for an argument.
Taking the clipboard, the official wandered over to take shelter under the awning around the side of his shed. He leaned his back against the wall, pointedly displaying a complete lack of urgency.
"I'm in a hurry!" the driver called out. "I have a flight to catch from Bucharest! I can't miss it!"
"We're all in a hurry," the official said, setting the clipboard down on a small plastic table while he reached into his pockets and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He took his time lighting up, while his men continued to shine their torches into the back of the truck. Having been stationed at this back-of-beyond little checkpoint, the official had no patience when it came to busy westerners. They always expected people to speed up and adapt to their timetables, whereas the official preferred to make them slow down and adapt to his needs. In this small way, he figured he might reduce their stress levels and improve their lives. Besides, he didn't need another ulcer.
