That Which Should Not Be

by Talley, Brett J.

  Trieste was the port-city jewel of mighty Austria-Hungary, the beating heart of an empire, a crossroads between two worlds. There gathered the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Europe, all tossed together, mixed up and splattered across a canvas, like Van Gogh at his wildest. Such was the exuberance of that city I was loath to leave the bustle of Trieste behind.

  We arrived next in Vienna, the imperial city on the shores of the crystal waters of the Danube. It was here I began to doubt Lawrence’s warnings. Vienna was so European, so Western. It was palaces and opera houses, cathedrals and museums. It was the essence of the West. But then to Budapest we went. It was just a little bit darker, a little bit dirtier, a little bit more Gothic. Vienna was the setting sun of Europe, and Budapest was its gloaming. But it could not compare to the unpronounceable little town we came upon in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, Kryvorvni, if memory serves.

  It was a village, if ever a place deserved that moniker. Muddy roads instead of paved streets, thatched roofs on moss-covered stone walls. Proud-faced people, but poor, cautious, quick to suspect and slow to trust. A fog hung over the place and the mountains beyond, an unnatural mist seemed never to lift. And hiding, just beyond its shroud, were mysteries I was none too quick to discover.

  “I will say this, my new friend,” Charles said as he stepped down from the stagecoach into one of the muddy streets, “it is at moments like this I am most pleased I made your acquaintance.”

  “Yes,” I said, as I took my first look around, “I would not want to travel to such a place alone.”

  The stagecoach that brought us from Budapest would take us no farther. As it turned back down the rain-soaked path down which we had just come, it was left to us to find a way over the mountain. We had been assured by the driver that the local tavern owner could provide us with transportation to Czernowitz.

  We found the tavern shortly, a sturdy stone building with thick, wooden beams holding up the roof. Other than the Orthodox Church, it was the only building in the village that showed any indication of permanency. The heavy oaken door provided much resistance to our entrance. But with a hearty shove from Charles’s shoulder it gave way, revealing a sparsely populated hovel. It was dark inside, made darker by the soot-stained windows and low burning lamps hanging in no great number from the ceiling.

  Behind the bar, pouring an unknown liquid from an ancient bottle, stood a large unkempt man, one whose face had not seen a razor for many years past. I looked at Charles and him at me. This was apparently the man we sought.

  Charles strode confidently to the bar, in the way that becomes a person who has always known lordship, and spoke to the man in the broken German by which we had navigated this latter part of our journey. The man simply stared back, unblinking. Charles glanced over at me with some unease, but then the man said, in the thick, guttural accent I had come to know from that region, “You are English, yes?”

  “Why, yes,” Charles replied somewhat giddily, “and you speak English?”

  “I speak enough,” the man replied. “But you should not expect the same from others in the village. We not see many outsiders.”

  “Why no, I wouldn’t expect,” I said. The man looked at me strangely for a moment, and it struck me he had likely never seen or heard an American before.

  “What do you want?” he asked, turning back to Charles.

  “Transport, if it is available, over the Carpathians to Czernowitz.”

  “Czernowitz?” he exclaimed more than asked, changing the pronunciation ever so slightly. He waved his hand in front of his face dismissively. “No Czernowitz. You should ask to go to the moon. You more likely to find someone take you there. No Czernowitz.”

  Charles turned and glanced at me and then said impatiently, “But sir, we have traveled from Budapest for this very purpose. We were told we could acquire transport here to Czernowitz.”

  “No, no, no,” the man said, as one speaking to a child, “You had best go back to Budapest. Take train there south, through Transylvania and Wallachia. Then, go north. That will take you to Czernowitz.”

  Charles chuckled, but without humor. “That would add a good three weeks to our trip. No, sir, if you would just direct us to the local stagecoach man, I am sure we could persuade him.”

  Now, the man laughed. “I drive stagecoach,” he said. “Stagecoach is mine. I no go over mountains. Mountains very dangerous for young gentlemen. Wolves, thieves. If stagecoach break . . .” he said trailing off, raising his right hand in a gesture to indicate he would not complete his thought, but rather leave notions of what atrocities might befall us to our own imagination.

  “We are willing to take that chance,” Charles continued, spreading out a line of gold sovereigns across the counter, “and we will make it in your interest to help us, as well.”

  The man raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. A man should keep his faith, but there are times when it takes gold to move mountains.

  “So be it,” the man said, clearing the coins from the table in one swipe of his hand. “You may stay this night in my inn. We will leave at first light. The journey over the mountains will take two days. We cannot avoid traveling at night, but best to begin in the morning. Whatever we may face, young masters cannot say I led you there unawares.”

  “Then we have an agreement,” Charles said, thrusting out his hand. The man simply looked at it, reached down below the bar, and threw down a skeleton key.

  “Your room will be upstairs, the first door you see. I have only one.”

  “Right,” Charles remarked, pulling back his hand and taking the key with it.

  “We leave tomorrow, first light. If you are late, we no go.”

  And with that, the man turned back to his work. Charles and I gathered our things and made our way to the ill-equipped room we had been provided. As he threw himself on the large, lumpy, feather-filled bed, Charles looked up at me.

  “Well, Daniel, I do believe we have found what we were looking for.”

  The no-doubt aged old ropes beneath him groaned under his weight. I wondered if they would simply snap, plunging him and his make-shift mattress to the floor. Given that I would be joining him that night, I hoped they were stronger than I thought.

  “Yes,” I replied, “but I am starting to miss the luxuries of home. What did you make of all that down there?”

  “Ha!” Charles coughed. “That was a ploy for more money, my friend. And as you might have noticed, it worked. I wager these people do not see our kind too often. When they do, they are sure to get their share.”

  I looked out the grime-covered window of our room. In the streets below, nothing moved, save for a lone women pushing a primitive wheelbarrow filled with random trinkets. The fog still hung tightly around the mountains, the very cliffs we would ascend the next day. For the first time, I began to wish we had simply stayed in Venice.

  Chapter

  14

  I awoke early with the rising of the sun. Charles and I gathered our things in silence, and as we did, I began to feel a sense of general foreboding. I was not a superstitious man, but on that day, I felt as if there were a hex on our journey, as if we were doomed to some ill fate before we even departed.

  We descended the stairs to find the inn keeper waiting on us. He was dressed in a heavy brown leather overcoat and black boots. He had a wide-brimmed hat on his head and a black whip in his hand. He struck a frightful figure, but given the fear I held for the journey, a not altogether unwanted one.

  “Well, old man,” Charles said, “you look as though you expect some trouble.”

  “I do not expect it,” the man said as he led us to the door, “but I am ready for it, nonetheless.”

  He held the door open wide, and we exited through it. The stagecoach was waiting outside. I followed behind Charles. He reached up and jerked open the stagecoach door. But then he paused and, cocking his head to the side, said, “Well, hello. How very rude of me to not announce my entrance.”

  I peeked a
round Charles’ shoulder and in the darkness of the cabin saw the figure of a woman, though in the early morning haze I could not make out her features. But the voice that answered Charles was not that of a lady.

  “It is of no concern, sir,” a man’s voice answered, in the deeply accented English common to the few of that land’s people who spoke anything more than their native tongue. “Please, do join us.”

  Charles reached up and pulled himself in. I followed. As I sat down next to Charles, I took a moment to glance at the two people seated across from me. One was a young woman, I would say no older than twenty. She was a strikingly beautiful girl, firm in all the places that required it, but with a softness that immediately soothed me. It was her hair that stood out most to me, though − her long, straight, raven-black hair. Next to her was a man, much older, weathered, like leather that has spent too much time in the sun. I could tell immediately his life had been hard, but his finely tailored dress disclosed it had been a successful one nevertheless.

  “I apologize for startling you. I am Vladimir,” he said, raising his top hat slightly. His hair was as long as the girl’s beside him and had been, at one time long ago perhaps, as black as hers. But now it was streaked white in places, more places, in fact, than it retained its previous luster. “And this is Anna,” he continued, gesturing to his right with a hand on which sat a large gold ring. It was then I noticed in his other he held a thick black cane, the handle of which was molded in the shape of the bowed head of a large wolf.

  “Hello,” Anna said shyly, bowing her head with a blush as she did. She had the lilting voice of an Easterner, though the accent was not one I had previously encountered. She did not look long at me, though. She had eyes for Charles. At about that time the stagecoach shook with the weight of the innkeeper as he ascended to the driver’s box. After only a moment, I heard him cry something in his native language, and I felt the sudden jerk of the coach as the horses began to pull.

  As we began to roll along, Vladimir said, “You must be the two young gentlemen who took the only room in the village last night.”

  Charles chuckled. “I am afraid so,” he said. “A place such as this rarely sees visitors. I doubt it has ever had a lodging shortage before.”

  “Yes,” Vladimir replied with a smile. “So you go to Czernowitz as well?”

  “Briefly,” Charles replied, “on our way to the Black Sea.”

  “Ah, the Black Sea. It will be beautiful,” Vladimir said with a wave of his hand. I glanced out the window and noticed that the houses had ended. We had entered the forest.

  For a moment, there was silence, but then I broke it. “So Anna must be your daughter then?” I asked. Vladimir looked at me for a moment with mouth agape. Then, he began to laugh.

  “No, my young friend,” he said gently. “Anna is my fiancée. We travel to Czernowitz to be married.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly, trying to cover the embarrassment of my social faux pas. I could feel Charles’s disapproving glance. No doubt at some point in his extensive social training he would have learned not to ask such a question unless the answer was sure. I had received no such instruction.

  “Czernowitz must be special to you, then,” Charles said with a smile.

  “Oh, it is. It is my home, or it was, many years past. Before I came over the mountain to seek my future and fortune. My fortune I secured long ago, and now that I have Anna,” he said, turning to stroke the young girl’s cheek, “my future is in hand, as well. So I will return to the place of my birth, and there I shall live until I die.”

  “Wonderful,” Charles said with a smile, pulling out a cigar and lighting it with a match from his pocket.

  I glanced from Vladimir to Anna. Vladimir had the look of a man who pursued what he wanted relentlessly and tended to get it. Anna simply looked empty. I wondered what had brought her here, with him. I had come from a place where people married others of their own choosing, where little girls grew up expecting to fall in love. Anna probably never had that dream. She grew up waiting to be sold. And Vladimir had bought her. No doubt a girl of her beauty had fetched quite a price.

  I looked over at Charles. He was listening thoughtfully as Vladimir described his business as a merchant. I wondered what Charles thought of all this. He came from a different world than I, and no doubt such things were common there. Vladimir was just another powerful man in a long line of powerful men he encountered, and his ways were, no doubt, common to them all.

  I turned again to the window of the carriage. Something struck me then, struck me as clearly as a bell ringing at noontime. This was a dying land. While the world moved on, this place remained, falling slowly behind, growing more decadent, more decrepit. Even nature had followed suit, and I knew as I stared out into the dead forest beyond the road with its chalk white trees driven into the ground like the bones of some ancient race of giants, that I should never have come here.

  * * *

  We rolled along like that for several hours, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence. The sun had climbed high in an empty sky when I felt the coach jerk to a halt. The sound of our driver’s heavy footsteps as he exited the box preceded the sudden opening of the door.

  “We stop here,” he said. “We will eat now. The mountain climb begins here. Eat well. We will not stop again until the morning.”

  The driver gathered wood from the edges of the forest and then, with apparently no fear that anyone would be following, built a fire in the middle of the road. Drawing water from a stream that ran just at the road’s edge, he brought a large pot of water to boil. I watched as he added vegetables and slices of meat from the large knapsack he had carried from the tavern. It wasn’t long before we had a thick, hearty soup to eat. It was filling, and it needed to be. If our driver truly did not intend to stop until we had descended the mountain, it would be long before we would eat again.

  As I finished my soup, I noticed our driver standing at the head of the coach, staring up the road. I wondered what was in his mind, what he was considering, what dangers lay ahead. But there was little time for such thoughts, as shortly he had turned back and commanded us to re-enter the coach. Before he closed the door, he handed us a bag.

  “Some bread and some cheese for the journey. Sorry I not have more, but this will do. We climb the mountain now. We will go straight through, up and over. We will not stop until first light. It will be long night for all. Here, take these,” he said, handing two pistols to Charles. “Perhaps we will not need them. But better to have.” Then he slammed the door, and we felt the weight of the stage shift as he once again returned to his perch above.

  Charles handed one pistol to Vladimir and then offered another to me.

  “You should probably hang on to that. I’m a lousy shot,” I offered.

  “Oh, I have two in here,” he said, patting the bag that sat beneath his seat. “I try not to put my trust solely in local hospitality.”

  “So,” Vladimir said as I took the gun from Charles and the horses began to pull again, “what compelled two young gentlemen such as you to come by this way to Czernowitz?”

  “Well,” Charles began with a smile, “we simply pulled out a map and drew a course. You might say we are wandering with a purpose. We have a destination, but no set path by which to get there. The transit over the mountain seemed to be the most logical road.”

  “Ah yes,” Vladimir said, nodding his head knowingly. “I suspected as much. Few who knew this place would have chosen this course willingly. Too much legend, too many superstitions.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Oh, this is a witch-haunted land, my young friend,” Vladimir said solemnly, his dark, hooded eyes reinforcing that this was no idle talk. “This mountain is the source of much fear in this country, and none born here would follow the course you have set. And at this time of the year especially. Walpurgis Night is upon us, a little less than a week away. The stories the people below would no doubt tell of the things that transpire on t
his peak, when the sons of Satan and his servants dance and gibber beneath the Beltane moon. Ah, yes. You are most certainly strangers here.”

  “And what of you, then?” Charles asked with a sly grin. I could see by the fire in his eyes he was both enjoying this and believing none of it. “Why have you come?”

  “Oh,” Vladimir said after a pause, “I am not a superstitious man. Just stories all. And my Anna was eager to reach my homeland. The way over the mountain is fastest, as I am sure you are no doubt aware. I was prepared, obviously, to pay a handsome price for transport. Pay it I did, though I would like to believe that your contribution helped lighten my load a bit.”

  Charles chuckled. “Believe it all you will, then,” he said, “but I doubt that will make it so.”

  Vladimir smiled. “Yes. But I do not begrudge the workman his wages. They are very poor, and I have prospered greatly. And if my eyes did not deceive me when we stopped earlier, he will earn his pay tonight.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “A storm is building,” Vladimir replied. “In here, we will be safe. But not so for our friend.”

  I glanced out the window of our carriage. Vladimir was right; there were dark clouds swirling about. In fact, night was upon us, as the light of a dying sun provided little illumination. We had been gaining altitude for some time, but the air was thick and warmer than I would have expected, even for a late April evening. Then, a rumble in the distance.

  “Does anyone live upon the mountain?” Charles asked. Vladimir chuckled to himself.

  “No, my friend. As I have said, the mountain is bathed in superstition.”