Apexology: Horror

by Anthology

  The Rat guessed they preferred to keep their journey, and the nature of the soldiery itself, quiet. It was not long ago that Germany had officially invaded Hungary, and there was talk now that the days of the Iron Guard were soon to be over, and that Romania should join the Allies. Dangerous talk, for the moment, but the reality was that the Nazis were becoming less than welcome.

  They did not, however, go far.

  It was late evening the next day. The Rat crouched low behind a boulder, observing the little camp the Wolfkommando had established in the common underneath the castle. Two small fires burned between vehicles and tents, arranged in a protective square. Of all the figures moving in the dark, only one man was clear to his vision. The rest, the werewolves, were blurred, as if light bent itself around them in strange, confusing angles. The man was young and fit-looking, dressed in the uniform of a senior officer. In his hand he held a riding crop which he was tapping methodically against his boots.

  They were, the Rat thought, waiting for something.

  He motioned to Lalo, the Hungarian Resistance's contact person with the Jewish partisans. He had shown up shortly after his delivered note but remained stubbornly reticent with further information.

  The Rat suspected that, in honesty, Lalo simply didn't know. He was there representing the concerns of the Hungarians, whose channels of information were limited. The arrival of the Nazi troops left them worried.

  Understandably.

  "What do you think they're up to?" the Rat asked, nevertheless.

  Lalo spat carefully on the ground and made the sign of the cross in the air. The lines of his face were pronounced, etched in deeper grooves than before.

  The man was afraid.

  "Dracul." He said the word like a curse.

  The Rat grimaced as the man once again spat ritually on the ground and made the sign of the cross. Fucking peasants.

  "Don't be an idiot," he said at last, still watching the Nazis. "No devils, at least not apart from the one right in front of us."

  The German officer was preparing something. Curious tools, medical implements of polished metal, gleamed in the firelight. The wolves were also moving now, checking weapons, talking in low voices that did not carry over to where Lalo and the Rat hid. Nevertheless, the feeling of expectation was tangible.

  They were preparing to move.

  The Rat made his decision. "Lalo, go back to camp," he said. "Bring some of the boys over to keep an eye on them during the night."

  "And you, Rat?" Lalo's face betrayed a mixture of his suspicion and relief. He didn't trust him, the Rat knew, just as he, in turn, did not trust Lalo and his masters. Yet the man's relief at leaving this place was tangible.

  "I'll stay here." His eyes had not left the German officer. "I want to see where they're going."

  He waited until the Hungarian left, disappearing into the dark forest like a wild cat, leaving barely a footprint in his passage. He was good, the Rat had to give him that.

  He waited.

  After fifteen minutes, the Nazis were apparently ready. At the command of their officer they began to march, assuming the same formation they did with their vehicles. From afar, it looked unnatural, the man surrounded on all sides by blurred figures, as if he walked in a circle of darkness. They began to move up the hill, toward the castle.

  Bran Castle stood like a fairy tale mirage, failing completely, in the Rat's opinion, to look the part of a sinister dwelling. It was built by knights of the Teutonic Order over seven centuries before, and its main claim to fame was its temporary occupancy, in the 15th century, by the Impaler. Now, it was supposed to be occupied by members of the royal family. The Queen, it was said, was exiled by her husband King Carol, who had found himself enchanted by a new mistress - a Jewish one, no less. Others said it was Princess Ileana who lived there, fleeing Hungary from the Nazis.

  It didn't, however, appear to be currently occupied.

  The Rat hurried like a shadow along the cliff wall, the light of a near-full moon sending a shiver of apprehension down his spine as he thought of the Wolfkommando ascending to the same place.

  Castle Dracul. Devil's castle.

  The Rat climbed in the shadow of mount Bucegi to the castle. There was a gun-hole there, a narrow shaft through which arrows would have once been shot.

  With distaste, he changed.

  A rat climbed through the narrow shaft and entered the castle.

  A vampire stalked Bran Castle once more.

  At least, if the old stories were in fact true. The Rat remembered Tepes vaguely, a petty tyrant like so many of the ones before him and after. Impaler, yes, but no kind of strigoi the Rat had ever seen.

  He lived, briefly, and he died. And that was that.

  Until now.

  He changed back, hauling his clothes through the narrow gun shaft, dressing in silence.

  He was inside a walled court that was open to the stars. The castle rose above him, looking, he thought, more homey than foreboding, a rather comfortable, solid structure. There were flowers in the courtyard, and a tree.

  He moved cautiously forward, entering a small room that appeared to be a chapel. A basin of holy water stood by the wall, and he dipped his hand in it, flicking the water against the wall, wondering for the hundredth time why some of his kind found the substance–no different from regular water, as far as he could tell–to be so deadly.

  There were sounds coming from above. The Nazis were in the castle.

  The Rat felt suddenly uneasy, as if the presence of the Nazis, somehow, had disturbed the castle, was slowly awaking something old and rather unpleasant.

  Nonsense.

  He followed the source of the noise.

  "We must find the crypt," a voice said sharply in the dark. It was the officer.

  "We will, Herr Mengale," a second voice answered, a hint of amusement in its tone. "We will."

  Mengale. That was Mengale, the butcher of Auschwitz. The name echoed in the Rat's ears. He felt blood thirst consuming him, a burning flame of anger and hate that threatened to take control of him.

  He stilled with an effort, breathing slowly.

  "Search the castle, look for hidden pathways. Be extremely cautious. He must still be alive!" His voice shook in sudden passion. "And he killed one of you, as if Moritz was nothing but a chicken to be plucked." The staccato beat of his riding crop increased. They must think it was Tepes who killed their boy in Brasov! The thought made him grin, and his tongue ran alongside his teeth, like a soldier checking his weapons.

  The Rat climbed cautiously up to the second floor, catching sight of the German in the distance, standing by a suit of armour. "We must find him." Mengale's eyes had an unnatural glow in the dark. "Find him, and bring him over to the Reich."

  "Do you hear that, Dracul?" he suddenly shouted. "I could make you the prince of this little land again!"

  There was no answer, yet the hairs on the Rat's arms stood suddenly, the second time in so many minutes. So this was what the Nazis were about. He should have guessed. Hitler must have found the old Impaler practically inspiring.

  Idiots.

  He slid alongside the walls, giving the German a wide berth. Only two soldiers were in the room with him, and they were occupied. He entered another chapel, a room made up in old-fashioned, gothic architecture. More holy water.

  This place, in a way, had quite high security. He wondered why.

  "Herr Mengale!" The sudden shout echoed, distorted, against the cold stone walls. "We've found a hidden staircase."

  The beat of boots against flagstones sounded rapidly. He followed at a distance. The soldiers, he saw, had hacked away at the wall, exposing a large passage lined with stairs heading upward.

  Mengale's riding crop made rapid rhythms against his boots.

  "See what's up there," he said.

  Two of the soldiers hurried into the passageway. The Rat retreated to his original position and used the stairs.

  Everything was going according to plan.


  He climbed up to the second floor. No sign of the soldiers. Third.

  Fourth.

  He paused.

  As battles went, the Rat later had to admit to himself, this one was something of a farce.

  A room. A darkness that was more than the absence of light. He stepped cautiously, sliding along the wall, his every sense alert.

  And was blinded by the sudden glare of an electric lamp, the powerful projector catching him like a stag in the glare of a jeep.

  Trapped.

  Three shadows, cornering him.

  Blurred.

  Werewolves.

  He lashed out, met no resistance, overbalanced. Blind, he was helpless. He didn't dare to change his shape.

  Not in the presence of three big fucking dogs.

  Still, he made to run.

  It could have worked. A quick dive through the window and he'd be flying down the cliff, away from the castle. It would have hurt, but he would have survived.

  It didn't happen.

  He felt a sharp jab in his back, and the world went black.

  It was some time later.

  "Tell me about...Dracula," Dr. Mengale said patiently.

  His voice was surprisingly pleasant, yet it was offset disconcertingly by the staccato sound of his riding crop tapping against the dark leather riding boots he wore.

  The Rat grinned through bloodied lips. The Nazis had strapped him into a metal chair that felt cold and strangely slimy against his skin. They had bound him meticulously. Wires, in which iron was woven with fine strands of silver and gold, held his legs and his arms. And through the wires, like a whisper of death, came the faintest touch of raw electricity. It was, for now, only a tingle in his flesh, but the implications were obvious.

  "Dracula?" Dr. Mengale prompted. The riding crop taps went just a fraction faster.

  The Rat mentally shrugged.

  "Well," he said. He adopted the didactic voice the one-before-last Allies Recon officer had often used. In guttural German it sounded strange. "It is essentially a love story, taking its cue from both the travel novel and, to an extent, the English pornographic tradition that starts with Fanny Hill..."

  FLASH.

  The Rat had known pain. Pain, after all, was a part of life, and in a life, or at least an undeath as long as his,—metaphysics wasn't really his field–there was pain in plenitude. The Rat screamed as the current shot through his bloodied body, his figure metamorphosing wildly in the agony as his mind lost control, became subsumed by the all-encompassing pain. The wires, like living, serpentine things, shrunk and expanded along with his changing body, keeping him bound.

  Then it was gone, as if someone simply pressed a button labelled pain.

  Which, he realised when his mind came back to his body, was exactly what happened. It was what he had found most scary about Mengale, he suddenly understood. Every other person would have threatened him with exposure to the sun, with holy symbols, religious iconography, even–as Tepes was fond of doing to his enemies–impaling him through the rear, a particularly unpleasant method that would have kept even a mortal man alive for several hours, and the rat undoubtedly longer. But those methods were not for Mengale. For him, the process had to be clinical and precise, a measured, scientific way of inflicting the most amount of pain with the least amount of mess and fuss.

  The Rat coughed and let blood dribble through his exposed fangs onto his shirt. As much as he wanted to, he wouldn't risk spitting at the Doctor. It was too soon after the pain, and he needed the blood.

  "I concede your point," Mengale said affably. The riding crop was again doling out measured beats. "Dracula is a literary construction. Well done." He smiled and, in the entry to the tent, the two Wolfkommando smiled as well, exposing large, sharp teeth that glinted dull in the electric light.

  "Tell me about Tepes." Mengale's voice changed when he said the name. "Did he... turn you?"

  It was eagerness, the Rat realised. Mengale was fascinated with Tepes, fascinated with the Rat. And he knew, with a cold, hard certainty, that he had to escape, escape quickly, or he would become yet another subject for Mengale's dissections, his research.

  "No," he said at last. Mengale waited. "Vlad Tepes was just a man. Honourable, as far it went, a good Christian. He was no Pricolici."

  FLASH.

  "You lie." Mengale's voice came faint through the torrents of pain racking his body. "Where is Tepes?"

  "Dead," the Rat whispered. He coughed, more blood, dirty blood, seeping into his lap. "Dead."

  FLASH.

  "Where is Tepes?" Dr. Mengale's voice was even. "Where is Herr Dracul?"

  The questioning went long into the night. At times, the Rat was lucky enough to lose consciousness. But it was never for long.

  Sunlight burned against his retinas.

  The Rat groaned, tasting crusted blood on his lips. His skin was burning.

  He tried to move, found himself unable. He was lying on bare earth, by the feel of it, his hands and legs tied by thick ropes.

  The heat was unbearable.

  He turned his head to the side and opened his eyes cautiously, ignoring the sudden pain that shot through his brain.

  Sunrise.

  Over Mount Bucegi the sun was rising, dawn breaking over the Arges valley.

  He was going to die.

  It was the cruellest way to kill a vampire. The stake, the silver bullet, the potent religious symbols (it was said truly old vampires feared the swastika most of all, the powerful old symbol corrupted by the Nazis. Of course, he thought, nowadays everyone, vampire or not, feared the swastika—with reason), all these were relatively quick means, means of fear and urgency. This, though...Mengale chose well. It was as if the Impaler had found himself a spiritual heir in this one, another man who knew how to attenuate pain, to stretch out the agony of his victims, making death seem like a blissful release when at last it came.

  He tried, desperately, to shapeshift, trying to shrink to the minute figure of a rat. It was no use. He coughed blood and felt his skin begin to blister.

  It would be a long, painful death. But then, the Rat thought, it was the way all Jews died, nowadays. Compared to Mengale's test subjects in Auschwitz, his death would be brief, merciful.

  He howled in pain and with a sudden anger that threatened to overwhelm him, coursing through his body like fire, like a keg of powder threatening to explode.

  The Rat screamed hate to the skies.

  In the bowels of Bran Castle Dr. Mengale nodded at the sound, as if acknowledging that an experiment result was satisfying. The Wolfkommando digging through the earth in the dank room around him smiled, showing white, elongated teeth.

  And in the membrane of the castle, in the old earth and the brittle bones of stone, in the deep shadows and pure, undiluted dark, something stirred, as if disturbed from slumber.

  And in the shadows of the forest the partisans heard, and at last, wary and afraid, they came to his aid.

  There was nothing, the Rat later thought—lying buried in the damp ground, surrounded by darkness and silence, recuperating—nothing to bind that group of desperate old men to him. They had no reason to feel love or kinship for him, the strigoi, yet they congregated around him, through webs of hate or desperation or shame, and at last they came to him. Those who couldn't save the lives of their loved ones saved his.

  He was burning when they reached him, the flames setting the ropes alight, still screaming defiance at the skies. They covered him in thick, heavy cloths, dampening his fire, and cut his bonds, and silenced his shrieks.

  There were some men amongst them who knew about those things. They carried him deep into the forest and buried him in a shallow grave, where the trees were thickest and let no sunlight through.

  And waited for him.

  Immortally wounded, the Rat slept in the Earth. The partisans raided the farms nearby, procuring chickens and pigs, and lay traps in the forest for hares. When the Rat rose, at last, they fed him, dribbling the
blood into his gaping mouth, each drop like a precious burgundy-coloured stone falling into a chasm.

  The Rat awoke, and he wasn't alone.

  All through his journey through the castle, through his torture, pinned up in the killing sun, buried in the earth, he could feel it. Ancient, angry, not human - not strigoi, either.

  Something had awakened at Castle Bran.

  Tirgoviste, July 1944

  There were rumours of impending change. It was there in the hushed conversations of stall-holders in the market square, and in the eyes of the street children. It was there in the faint, coded radio transmissions from underground cells all across Europe. It was everywhere.

  The Red Army was coming. The tide of war was turning.

  But for the partisans, hope was something that had died long ago, burned away with their families in far away Auschwitz.

  High above the old church, the Rat crouched like a gargoyle, blanketed in darkness. Watching.

  The Butcher of Auschwitz had not yet left Romania. Radio messages insisted he was back in Poland, back at his experiments, back to supervising the ovens. But the Rat knew differently. The Nazis were still there, still searching, in a manner he could only think of as desperate, for the elusive Tepes. The Dracul.

  And they had come, finally, to Tirgoviste, the Impaler's ancient capital, for one last attempt to enlist the help of the Führer's imagined hero.

  The Rat waited.

  Below, Tirgoviste's ancient market square was abandoned. A half-moon, large and misshaped, shone high on the horizon, casting the square in a pale, unearthly light. On the old flagstones, nothing moved.

  He waited.

  Presently there was the sound of engines in the distance, growing louder. Narrow beams of light materialised as the sound intensified, moving frantically as a row of jeeps–and the now familiar truck–entered the square in formation.

  The Rat grinned, tasting the wind with his tongue, running it alongside his elongated fangs. Dogs. They had a special stench. He was looking forward to meeting them again.

  The Wolfkommando moved out of the jeeps and spread out, guns at the ready. Times were changing, and danger was more palpable now, more conceivable than when they first set out into what had been–still was, officially - friendly territory.