by B. L. Morgan
“I’m doing alright,” I told him. “The bite didn’t break the skin. But the top of my head is sore as hell. Getting dragged by the hair doesn’t do your scalp any favors.”
In the front of the wagon Judit and Rozer were holding hands. They spoke in hushed tones like they were sharing secrets.
Something spoken by Judit drifted back to us. It was all that we needed to know.
“I can’t believe the way I feel about you already,” Judit told him. “It’s almost as though I’ve known you somewhere before. Have you ever believed that people could have soul mates?”
Johnny heard them too.
“Would you guys just go back to smooching or something?” He said. “We’ve already seen too much of that shit to want to know any more about it.”
“I know exactly what you’re talking about bro,” I told him. “We’ve seen way too much of that.”
We entered Csejthe Village and found a small town where absolutely no one was out on the streets.
As villages go in the sixteenth century it was average. Most of the buildings were made of a mixture of stone and wood. Only a few of them had three floors. Several were two story business/dwellings but most were just single level buildings that doubled as shops and homes.
We entered the town from the Southwest.
Just like the last village we’d been in, burning torches were set in the ground roughly every hundred feet. These people in the middle ages were fanatical about keeping the night outside their towns.
With us already running into an unfriendly werewolf, a family of friendly werewolves and a graveyard full of hungry dead I guess I really didn’t blame them. All we got back home is crack heads wanting to knock people over the head for whatever they got in their pockets and drug dealers that can’t aim worth shit shooting at each other.
Come to think about it, I guess I do understand why we keep most of our street corners lit up too.
We rode on into the town past all kinds of closed businesses. When dark came, these people quit for the night.
There were very few lights shining out through the closed shutters of these buildings. If there was anyone inside they really didn’t want anyone outside to know.
Rozer turned to us.
“If you wish I will offer you the hospitality of a room. It is warm and dry and this time of year there are not very many bed bugs. It is better than what you have been used to out on the road.”
He stopped his wagon in front of the only business that seemed to be brightly lit inside. He climbed down and helped Judit to the ground. We climbed down out of the back of the wagon and stretched for a moment.
The sign over the door read The Good-Night Inn.
Johnny answered, “Thanks. We’ll take you up on that.”
I pointed at the sign.
“From the way you two are acting I guess you are going to have a good night.”
Rozer eyes flashed.
“Have some respect,” he said sharply. “You will not speak this way in Judit’s presence.
We locked eyes.
“You don’t tell me a fucking thing,” I said.
He started toward me and I started toward him. Both of us had our fists clenched. We were in the mood to bust knuckles.
Johnny grabbed me from behind and pulled me back.
Judit stepped in front of Rozer.
“It is OK,” she told him. “That’s just the way they are. They really don’t mean any harm.”
Johnny whispered in my ear, “God-dam man, the mother fucker just saved our lives. Cut him some slack!”
Rozer looked over Judit’s shoulder at me.
“My uncle is inside,” he told us. “He will give you a key to your room.” He turned and with Judit on his arm marched inside.
Johnny let go of me.
“God-dam,” he said. “You could fuck up a wet dream. You know that.”
“I just got a thing about people telling me how to act,” I answered.
“Then maybe you should learn how to act right.”
In the morning we awoke to the smell of frying bacon and eggs. It smelled so good that I honestly thought I was still asleep and dreaming.
Johnny kicked my bed and shook it.
“Man, get your ass up,” he told me. “That grub is smelling good and it’s been a long time since either one of us had anything that seemed like a real breakfast.”
I could tell Johnny was still ticked off from me wanting to loosen Rozer’s teeth. He’d gone on about it the night before until finally he fell asleep and started snoring.
It was hard for me to drag myself out of that bed. For the sixteen hundreds, Rozer’s motel probably had the softest beds in Eastern Europe. But I did it and got dressed.
There was a bucket of fresh water outside our door. The two of us used that to splash our faces with to wake up a little bit more. In this day and age that was about the extent of what a morning shower was.
We followed the scent of bacon and eggs down stairs and into the main room.
The set up for the dining room looked kind of like a small town bar back home. There was a long wooden counter that business was conducted over and several tables scattered throughout the room.
A few of the tables had people sitting at them who were already eating.
Rozer’s Uncle was behind the counter talking to a man who was dressed like a trapper.
Judit was helping with some customers at one of the tables and Rozer saw us as we were coming down the stairs.
“Good morning to you mother fuckers!” he shouted at us with a large toothy smile. “I am so happy to see you on this son-of-a-bitch morning.”
Me and Johnny looked at each other.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked.
Rozer answered for him.
“Judit talked to me about the way you bastards speak in your fucking homeland. I really like it. God-dam-it, it really opens up the ways that you speak to each other and loosens up your fucking tongue. It makes your statements much more forceful.” He shook a clenched fist in the air.
“Jesus Christ!” Johnny told all of us. “I think we’ve created a fucking monster.”
Breakfast was great. We each had four large eggs, a chunk of slab bacon, a big piece of rough textured bread and a huge mug of milk.
The taste was incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a meal that was any better. And the best part of it was that it was free. We were Rozer’s guests so there was no charge for anything.
Judit busied herself helping the other diners at the different tables. She greeted us when we came in with at hurried Good Morning. Then went back to doing what she was doing. It was obvious that Judit had already settled herself into this lifestyle. I could already hear the wedding bells ringing in her future.
During the meal Rozer came out and sat with us.
“We’ll need to get directions to Elizabeth’s castle,” I told him. “And let us know anything else that you can tell us about her that might be helpful.”
Rozer thought for a moment.
“You will need climbing gear,” he told us. “I will get that for you. There is a hill on the Northwest corner of Csejthe Castle that comes right up to the moat.”
Johnny asked, “I thought there were supposed to be soldiers guarding that girl to keep her from getting out.”
“There were in the first few years of her imprisonment,” Rozer said. “But they kept vanishing. After a time the King quit sending them. It was obvious anyway that walling her up had not worked. Villagers also kept vanishing. Some were found drained of blood. Those are the ones we put in the Cemetery of the Tainted. If we do not, when they awaken with the blood hunger the next night they feed on whoever they can.
“The Countess Elizabeth Bathory could somehow come and go freely from her castle. She has become the curse of our land.”
Johnny asked, “Hasn’t anyone else ever attempted to go in and kill that evil bitch.”
“Yes,” Rozer answered. “Many
times men have tried to do just that. None have ever returned.”
Part Two
Castles of the Undead
Chapter Forty-Seven
To The Castle
“Don’t worry about a thing,” I told Rozer. “We’re fearless professional vampire killers.”
“Shit, the way you’re talking,” Johnny said. “I should send you in by yourself.”
We ate the rest of our breakfast and Rozer really didn’t have anything else to tell us about Elizabeth that would help except that he recommended we go after her during the day time.
Hell, I’ve seen enough vampire movies that I could have guessed that little bit of advice.
Rozer had a storage room in the back of his hotel. With our stomachs filled he took me and Johnny back there and outfitted us with a fifty foot rope with a grappling hook tied on one end. Then he took us to his stable and picked out two horses for us.
“When you get to the castle unpack everything you need then turn the horses free,” Rozer said. “They know their way home and will come back.”
Me and Johnny both looked at each other. Then we looked at Rozer.
“You act like you don’t think we’ll be coming back,” I told him.
Rozer’s face took on a grim expression.
“I wish you much luck anyway.”
“We told you no to worry,” Johnny said. “I’ve wiped my ass with worse than this Countess.”
“And believe me,” I added. “You don’t want to see this guy wipe his ass.”
Rozer just shook his head at that one.
We lead the horses around front and loaded our gear onto them.
Just before we were ready to mount up Johnny asked Rozer, “Isn’t there something else we should be taking with us, like maybe Garlic or stakes or something like that?”
“If you like the taste of Garlic I can give you some,” he told us. “But as far as it being an effective weapon against Elizabeth, all of the weapons spoken of in old tales have been used. None have worked. I do not think the Countess is a vampire. She has spawned many different kinds of creatures of the night.
“She has created werewolves, vampires and devil things with glowing red skin that roam the hills at night. We do not know what the Countess Elizabeth Bathory has become. We only know that she brings death and misfortune to our land.”
We were all silent for a long minute thinking about the task that lay ahead of Johnny and me.
This was a morning when storm clouds hovered overhead and the sky threatened to rip open and pour down at any time.
To change the subject and lighten the mood I told Rozer, “You know you have a good woman there in Judit. Treat her good and she’ll be good for you.”
“You can rest assured that I will do that,” he said. “Judit is the woman I have waited my entire life for.”
Right on cue Judit came out of the front door of the Good Night Inn.
We said our good-byes and she gave Johnny and me a hug.
We mounted up and turned away riding toward the edge of town and toward Csejthe Castle.
Just before we left the village Johnny remarked, “Those two make a good couple. They seem like they belong together.”
“Yeah,” I answered. “It’s just like The Little House On The Fucking Prairie. Two boring people, living a boring fucking life, only doing boring fucking shit for the rest of their boring fucking lives.”
Johnny knew me good enough to not continue that conversation. He knew me good enough to practically read my thoughts. He knew that I’d never admit it but deep down inside I wanted exactly what Rozer and Judit had.
But that kind of life just wasn’t in the cards for me.
Following directions that Rozer gave us we rode toward Csejthe Castle. It was roughly five miles from the village to the castle.
About a mile out of town the clouds ripped open and the sky pissed on us. Actually, piss probably would have felt better. At least that would have been warm. The deluge that hit us was ice cold.
The wind howled around us and lightning crackled in the distance.
We rode forward getting soaked to the bone.
“Does this fucked up weather remind you of an old Vincent Price movie?” Johnny shouted to me over the pounding of the rain.
“Yeah, but I can’t remember which one,” I answered. “And I wish you hadn’t reminded me of that.”
The trees were next to non-existent on the country side between the village and the castle. It was almost like nothing alive could easily survive there.
We rode on. We had to take it slow because the rain was so heavy it was hard as hell to see what was ahead.
Hills rose in front of us.
We climbed them, and then went down the other side.
Then in the distance a dark shape appeared out of the wet grayness.
Reaching up toward the sky with steep walls on all sides, and five towers pointing up to the storm clouds like stone knives, colored a dark decaying slate gray, Csejthe Castle looked down.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Dark Castle
Coming on Csejthe Castle as we did while climbing a hill and having it revealed rising out of the Earth gave the place a supernatural feel right from the beginning. It was like the castle was hidden by black magic and could not be seen until you were too close to escape from its grasp.
The horses became visibly agitated.
We had to rein them in and force them to go forward.
Johnny remarked, “I think these boys are ready to go home already.”
Taking a good look at the cold stone structure growing like a cancer out of the top of the next hill I had to say, “I don’t blame them one bit.”
The place was huge. It was impossible for me to estimate the actual size. But I’d have to say that it was at least as big around as Busch Stadium back in St. Louis.
The walls were roughly one hundred feet high.
We rode to the hill that Rozer told us about on the Northwest corner of the castle. The side of the hill that faced the castle was a sheer cliff that dropped straight down and into a murky moat that ran completely around the entire structure.
While still on horseback I pulled the rope with the grappling hook loose and dropped it beside me.
I dismounted.
Johnny dismounted.
In the pouring rain at the top of the hill we looked across a drop of probably fifty feet. It was a design flaw in the defenses of Csejthe Castle that left the wall opposite where we stood within reach of a thrown rope.
“Well, this is it,” I told Johnny and as an answer thunder rumbled in the angry dark skies and lightning flashed. A blinding white flash lit all around us as electricity crashed into the ground and the two of us were knocked from our feet.
The horses reared in panic. The lightning bolt struck not ten feet from where we stood.
The horses bucked and ran like hell off the hill and away into the storm leaving us lying in the mud stunned but unhurt.
I climbed to my feet.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked Johnny who was getting up at the same time as I was wiping mud from his eyes.
“Random chance, I hope,” he said.
We looked at the wall then looked at each other.
The horses were long gone. Well hell, Rozer said they could find their way home. I hope he was right.
I picked the rope up, played out some length so I could get a good swing.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“Just throw the son of a bitch,” Johnny said.
I swung then threw it ... and missed the wall.
On the third try I managed to get the rope to loop up and over the wall but it came loose when I tried to pull and snag the thing.
“God dam!” Johnny yelled. “You take any more fucking time we won’t have to kill the bitch! She’ll die of old age.”
“She doesn’t age,” I told Johnny as I slung the rope the fourth time, this time looping it over the top of the castle wall.
“She’ll be old before you get done.”
This time I pulled the rope slowly, feeling through the line as the grappling hook scraped over stones and stairs, feeling the tension as it scratched the bricks as the sharp points touched the mortared rock.
The hook scraped and slid, scratched, and then slid some more then ... the hook caught. I couldn’t see what the grapple was caught on but it was caught.
At first I pulled gingerly, not wanting to jerk it loose but the hook held. I slowly increased the pressure on the rope until I was completely leaning all my weight backward and it didn’t come loose.
“Jerk on it a few times,” Johnny told me.
“Shit! It might come loose,” I said.
“Better now that when we’re hanging from that bastard.”
Johnny had a point.
“It comes loose you throw the mother fucker for awhile,” I told him.
“You dam right I will.”
I jerked on the rope.
It held.
I jerked on it twice more.
It didn’t give an inch.
The rope wasn’t long enough for us to be able to climb it one by one. There was nothing to tie it to and with it hanging straight down the second man could never get to the rope. So after testing it with both our body weights tugging on it we decided we’d both go at the same time.
I grabbed the rope up as high as I could with a death grip and Johnny grabbed it further down. Then we both swung straight over and landed against the wall with our feet.
We did that so well it was almost like we were experienced mountain climbers.
Then we climbed the rope, shimmying up it like two monkeys. We went up the rope real fast because it was as slick as hell from being wet and one slip would put us in the water. The longer we were out there hanging the more chance we had of that happening.
At the top of the wall I grasped the edge and pulled myself over dropping down onto a narrow stone walkway.
I could tell that this was where the guards used to make their rounds. Now the whole place looked deserted and dead.
