The Dead Travel Fast

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  There was much to ponder that long, dreary day, not the least of which was my own part in persuading the count to rise to his duty in banishing the strigoi, a decision I was deeply afraid I should regret before the night’s work was done.

  At the countess’s insistence, Dr. Frankopan had been sent for, and Florian seemed relieved to be given the task of delivering the message from the countess. He wrapped himself in a long coat of oiled leather and took up a wide-brimmed hat, promising to return with the doctor before we dined.

  In fact, it was long after the meal had been served and cleared that they arrived. They had been delayed by an accouchement, then later a rockfall upon the Devil’s Staircase. We had not been a merry party at table in any event. We had picked at our plates, stirring listlessly the bowls of mămăliga and the cold meats Frau Graben had prepared. The count had looked at the food and shuddered, taking only a glass of wine. The countess had pressed her lips together and pushed her plate away, even as she encouraged Cosmina to try a few morsels. I managed a bite or two of cold roasted pork and an apple, nothing more. We moved into the library when Florian arrived with Dr. Frankopan, dripping with rain and bowed with the heaviness of the occasion.

  Hushed greetings were exchanged, and almost immediately a discussion arose regarding what was to be done with the body of the girl.

  “She has been put for now in the crypt with the family,” the countess told Dr. Frankopan. “We did not like to act without speaking to you.”

  He nodded, his jovial smile absent for once. “You would do well to leave her there. If she is buried in the village, the gossip will only fester, and we do not want these stories spread abroad. One must stay out of the range of Vienna,” he said firmly. “One must give them no cause to come looking. The obergespan from Hermannstadt would never understand such things. In his capacity as sheriff, he would launch an investigation, poking and prodding for every evil he could find. He is far enough away that if we can manage matters ourselves, quietly, tales of this may not reach his ears. Bury her with the Dragulescus, give her sister enough gold to stop her mouth, and let the dead bury the dead,” he finished, almost angrily.

  The count said nothing, but the countess cast an anxious eye upon the clock. “You speak wisely, Ferenc. It shall be as you say. It is nearly midnight. That is the hour this thing must be done.”

  The doctor spoke again. “I must ask you if you are certain that this is the only way. This ritual could cause tongues to wag should anyone from the castle speak of it.” He looked from the count, who would not meet his gaze, to the countess. “I am the first to believe in the old ways, Eugenia, but this…to give in to the superstition of the peasants—”

  “Our people,” she corrected sharply. “The Frankopans have been here for two hundred years. The Dragulescus have been here for a thousand years longer. Who are you to say to me this is what must or must not be done? I, too, know the old ways, Ferenc, and they are the ways of these people, my people. I ask you here not as a judge but as a friend, because I am weak and old and I am afraid of this thing we must do.”

  She ended on a little cry—of rage or frustration or sorrow, I could not tell. The doctor bowed his head. “I am sorry, Eugenia. I only thought to speak sense and I have blundered. These are not times for friends to quarrel. Let us move forward as one and banish this evil from the castle together.”

  I said nothing, but I studied him, surprised that a gentleman so entrenched in the rectitude of the Austrian empire would take part in this medieval rite. He might claim to believe in werewolves and vampires in the snuggery of his little cottage in the woods, but if word reached Vienna that he had been present for the dark things we were about to do he would become a laughingstock, a figure of fun for the sophisticated Viennese, acquiescing to the ways of mountain peasants instead of dismissing it as nonsense and sending for the proper authorities.

  But the more I considered it, the better sense it made for the doctor to participate in the ritual of banishment. It was a small village; it was entirely possible the peasants would begin to speculate about what had happened to Aurelia. I had learned from Frau Graben that the girls had no kin in the little hamlet, but these villagers were like those in any small town anywhere in the world. They gossiped, and clacking tongues could raise unrest. Dr. Frankopan was doubtless right to worry that the story of a strigoi at the castle would spread and fear would infect the peasants. But the deeds of this night could well assuage those fears and put the stories of a revenant to rest. There were few educated folk in the district from what I had gleaned. Once word passed among them that the doctor had sanctified the ceremony with his presence and that the count had cast out the murderous vampire, the valley-dwellers would be calmed and there would be very few to question whether a vampire had actually killed Aurelia. The castle folk seemed to take it as fact that old Count Bogdan had destroyed his paramour, and I realised that, surrounded by such conviction, it would not be long before I, too, was swayed into believing that some supernatural agency had committed this murder. It seemed so impossible that anyone else would have a cause to kill her, I reasoned, but the alternative—that a vampire had attacked her—seemed too fantastical to be believed.

  And yet. People did believe it, I saw, looking about the room. Fear hung there, sour as old sweat, thickening the air. They were afraid, each of them—Florian, his hair still damp from the journey, his cheeks pale and hollow with black crescents shadowing his eyes; Cosmina, her hands twisting a handkerchief until it fell to bits in her fingers, her thumbs bitten and bleeding; the countess, on the verge of collapse, her face a mask of grim determination to do what duty demanded of her even as she worried her rosary beads. And Clara, stoic and dry-eyed next to her mistress, but her knuckles white with strain as she gripped her skirts. Then the good Dr. Frankopan, quietly sorrowful, wishing not to believe and yet conceding as we exchanged silent glances that it was just possible. And the count, his jaw set as he caught his cheek between his teeth, biting it, perhaps so he would not speak out even now.

  Yes, fear was present in that room, and as my gaze fell to the rosary clutched in the countess’s hands, I understood why. The Christian faith, Roman and Orthodox alike, teaches that there are unseen worlds, that good and evil must exist together. If there is heaven and all its joys, must there not also be hell and all its torments? For every angel borne aloft on feathered wings, there must be something else, dark and loathsome, feeding upon fear and gorging itself upon destruction. Light and dark, good and evil, angel and demon. Two halves of a darkling moon. If we believed in the comforts of the one, we must believe in the terrors of the other. Perhaps the only thing that saved me from madness that night was that I did not believe in anything. I carried no faith in my heart, only questions, and in the end, it was the questions that saved me.

  When the three-quarter hour chimed, the countess led the way to the great hall where Frau Graben was waiting. I was not surprised to see that Tereza kept to her room. There was no place for her here. The cook lit candles for each of us, thick church tapers smelling sweetly of beeswax. Gravely, Cosmina gave them out, keeping back one for herself. We stood in a circle, resembling nothing so much as some unholy coven as the candlelight played off our faces, throwing them into sinister half shadows.

  The countess looked around the circle. “My friends, what we do this night is done to save the lives of those present and those not yet in danger. We do not do this lightly or easily, for it is a very old magic and it is a dangerous thing to force a strigoi back into the grave. If any of your hearts are not strong enough for this battle, you must stay behind, for I will not risk the lives of those who are so dear to me.”

  She paused to look around the circle again, lingering on each of our faces, her expression one of sorrowful benediction. “Very well. Then I will pray to the good God who protects us all to lend us His strength and that of His Angels and saints and to help us do this thing that we must. Come now, my friends, and let us hope we will live to see the dawn.”<
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  The words chilled me and the others too, I think, for I saw Cosmina shudder, and Florian crossed himself quickly. The countess led the way to a tapestry hanging upon the wall, a scene of the seductions of Jupiter stitched in silks. Florian stepped forward to wrestle the great panel aside. Behind the tapestry was a stout wooden door, and beyond that descended a stone staircase, wide enough to admit four men walking abreast. As we descended, the air grew quite dank and chill, and I shivered, as much from foreboding as the cold.

  After several turnings, the staircase led us into an antechamber that opened into a wide room. It was fashioned of plain, heavy slabs of grey stone and looked as if it had stood for a thousand years—which it might well have, I thought, remembering the countess’s words to Dr. Frankopan. The ceiling over our heads was vaulted, the ribs ending in stout columns that punctuated the space. At one end was a high stone altar, the family chapel, I realised.

  I stepped towards the altar, marveling at the detail. It was carved into intricate scenes and behind it was hung a triptych of Orthodox icons, heavily gilded and looking mournfully down from thick gilt frames.

  To my surprise, the countess did not stop at the altar but proceeded to an iron door set behind it. In the stone lintel was carved a motto, so faint I could scarcely make it out: Non omnis moriar. I shall not wholly die. A horribly apt sentiment, given what we meant to do.

  The countess paused at the iron door, stepping aside and bowing her head to her son—son no longer, for it was apparent that she honoured him in his role of dhampir. The count moved forward, steeling himself visibly. He opened the iron door, and it swung back silently upon its hinges. I would have expected a groan of protest, but the silence was more unsettling, as if the crypt itself beckoned in mute invitation. The rest of us followed in turn, passing through the door and descending a wide, shallow stone stair.

  Unbidden, the lines of Byron’s poem “The Giaour” sprang to mind, each syllable marking another step as we ventured deeper into the crypt:

  But first, on earth as vampire sent

  Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent;

  Then ghastly haunt thy native place,

  And suck the blood from all thy race.

  The air was thicker here, smelling of mould and wet stone and incense. This chamber had clearly been cut into the heart of the mountain, and at the very back of the room the wall was composed of the living rock of the Carpathians. Into the other walls were recesses of stone shelves, and upon each of these rested a stone coffin, some with elaborately carved effigies, some with simple entablatures. In one discreet spot a body had been placed, wrapped in linen and crowned with a coronet of basil. Aurelia, resting forever amongst the bones of the long-dead Dragulescus.

  I shuddered and turned my attention to the centre of the chamber. There, on a bier of intricately carved stone stood a newer coffin of polished black wood. The lid had been removed, and inside I could see a shroud of white linen, a mouldering wreath of lilies resting atop. Candles had been fixed into iron holders in the walls, and a small table had been laid with a snowy white cloth and a collection of oddments including a sharp-bladed knife and a long wooden stake. A small brazier stood in the corner, sending up puffs of sweet, heady smoke, making the atmosphere close.

  Without design, we circled around the coffin, the count at the head, I at his right hand. The count bowed his head and stood silently for a long moment. I felt the chill of the stone creeping through the thin soles of my shoes, reaching upward along my flesh with cold fingers. At length he lifted his head and said, his voice low and resolute, “We begin with a chant, to force the strigoi back to eternity.”

  He began to chant then and we, one by one, took it up, intoning the words in Roumanian. I did not understand them, but it was simple enough to guess their meaning. It was a charm of banishing, a spell chanted to cast Count Bogdan from this place. We began to chant faster and faster and at a gesture from the count, we moved widdershins, walking three times anticlockwise around the corpse of his father—still lying immobile under its veil of purest white.

  After we had circled the third time, we halted, warmer now and flushed from the movement, our clothes untidy and our hair disheveled. We looked like pagan revelers, and I was struck by the knowledge that we were performing a ceremony that had been unchanged for centuries, conjuring some benign magic to aid our purpose.

  Just then the count reached out and dashed the wreath of lilies from his father’s body. It fell at Cosmina’s hem but she did not look down. Then, pausing only a moment, the count took up the corners of the linen shroud. I half expected him to whisk it aside like a conjurer’s cape, but he did not. He drew it back slowly, the linen folds retreating from the body like some pale sea leaving the shore. Slowly, inch by inch, the body was revealed to us. He was unveiled like a bride, but what lay underneath was no blooming virgin, and neither was it a proper corpse.

  The count pulled the last fold of linen free and someone gasped. Someone else cried out, and at least one person invoked the mercy of God upon us.

  Old Count Bogdan, twelve weeks dead and lying in a damp coffin, who ought to have been reduced to scraps of flesh clinging to ivory bone, was fully intact. His cheeks were plump and rosy, his belly round. And at his mouth were the fresh ruddy drops of blood just like those I had seen at the wounds upon Aurelia’s pale breast.

  Cosmina had closed her eyes tightly, clutching at Florian’s hand, but I looked over the corpse carefully, taking in the gruesome details. His features were not unlike his son’s, strongly marked and with a certain symmetry that even Praxiteles would have admired. Even in death he was not entirely uncomely, although his condition was clearly degraded from the handsomeness he must have enjoyed in life. His cheeks, at one time apparently clean-shaven, were roughened with a fresh growth of whiskers, and his nails were long and sharp. The mouth was pulled into a horrible rictus of amusement.

  Just then, the countess gave a wheezing gasp and I looked to where her glance fell, just below the count’s waist.

  “Impossible,” I heard Clara Amsel whisper in horror. But the sign of arousal was unmistakable. The dead count bore all the traces of a man not only alive in some fashion, but subject to the baser passions.

  Count Andrei’s complexion was flushed, the blood beating in his cheeks, and I realised he was deeply angry. “Let us proceed,” he commanded harshly.

  Frau Graben stepped forward and gathered up an armful of basil, handing the branches round as Frau Amsel followed with a bowl of holy water. One by one we dipped our branches in the water, holding them for a sign from the count.

  When Frau Graben and Frau Amsel had resumed their places, he raised his own branch high and we did the same, as if he were a priest presiding over his congregants. We shook the holy water onto the corpse, sacred rain to banish the evil.

  Cosmina was weeping openly now, and Florian stood at her side, murmuring words of comfort as we continued to sprinkle the corpse with our makeshift aspergilla. Some of the water fell upon the brazier, and the room filled with hissing as if from a hundred snakes.

  When the blessing was concluded, we each put our basil upon the little fire on the brazier, piling them up until the sweet-smelling smoke filled the chamber.

  The count hesitated then, looking sharply at his mother. She gave him a slow, sober nod of assent and he took up a knife from the little table. I realised with a quickening of my pulses that the terrible thing he had alluded to in the library was upon us.

  With a swift motion of the sharp blade he flicked aside his father’s clothes, cutting easily through waistcoat, shirt and undershirt. The belly of the revenant was taut and round as if he had just fed, the flesh pale but seemingly flushed with life.

  The count put the tip of his knife to his father’s breastbone and began to cut. As soon as the blade pierced the flesh, Cosmina, overcome by the horror, crumpled to the floor.

  At once, the solemnity of the ceremony was broken as she was attended to. Frau Amsel loosened her bodic
e, Florian fanned her with a handkerchief, and the doctor retrieved a flask of brandy from his coat pocket to revive her.

  I looked to the count, his hand still poised atop his blade, his father’s flesh gaping in the small wound he had made.

  “No more,” he said in disgust, flinging the knife down into the coffin. He retrieved the linen shroud and covered his father’s body. Cosmina had regained her senses and was sitting upon the floor, resting her head against Frau Amsel’s breast.

  The countess started forward towards the count, brandishing her walking stick. “You cannot stop now. You must finish. The ceremony is not complete.”

  The count put up a hand in a gesture as commanding as any warlord in battle. “I am done with this. It is barbaric and medieval and I will not do it.”

  Her eyes were wide and piercing in the gloom of the crypt, her skin ghostly pale in the shifting shadows. “You must. If you do not finish it, he will kill us all. Is that what you want?”

  The count fixed her with an anguished stare, imploring, and when he spoke it was as her son and not the dhampir. “I will not do it.”

  She took up the great wooden stake that had been prepared. “If you will not remove his heart, at least ensure he cannot rise again,” she begged. “It may save us yet, my son.”

  The count hesitated, his reason clearly warring with his sense of obligation. His eyes dropped to the shrouded figure in the coffin. Perhaps the thought of the fresh blood at the lips convinced him. Perhaps it was nothing more than a desire to keep the peace. Whatever moved him, he said nothing.

  He took the stake from her and the mallet from the table. Standing over his father’s corpse, he drew back the veil once more. He poised the point of the stake just where the knife had opened the flesh of the chest. With one great stroke, he penetrated the ribs, spreading them apart and puncturing the heart. As he did so, a deep, rattling groan sounded from the body, echoing through the crypt.