by Brian Lumley
“You followed his old tracks, you mean?” said Kyle.
Krakovitch nodded. “When Dragosani have holiday, he always come here, to Romania. No family, no friends, but he come here.”
Quint nodded. “He was born here. Romania was home to him.”
“And he did have one friend here,” Kyle quietly added.
Krakovitch yawned again, peered at Kyle through eyes which were a little red in their corners. “So it would seem. Anyway, he used to call this place Wallachia, not Romania. Wallachia is a country long gone and forgotten, but not by Dragosani.”
“Where exactly are we going?” Kyle asked.
“I was hoping you could tell me!” said Krakovitch. “You said Romania, a place in the foothills where Dragosani was a boy. So that is where we are going. We’ll stay at a little village he liked off the Corabia-Calinesti highway. We should be there in maybe two hours. After that,” he shrugged, “your guess is as good as mine.”
“Oh, we can do better than that,” said Kyle. “How far is Slatina from this place where we’re staying?”
“Slatina? Oh, about—”
“One hundred twenty kilometers,” said Irma Dobresti. Krakovitch had earlier told her the name of the place they were staying—a difficult and meaningless name to the two Englishmen—but she had known it fairly well. A cousin of hers had lived there once. “About an hour and half to travelling.”
“Do you want to go straight to Slatina?” Krakovitch asked. “What’s in Slatina, anyway?”
“Tomorrow will do,” said Kyle. “We can spend tonight making plans. As for what’s in Slatina—”
“Records,” Quint cut in. “There’ll be a local registrar, won’t there?”
“Pardon?” Krakovitch didn’t know the word.
“A person who registers marriages and births,” Kyle explained.
“And deaths,” Quint added.
“Ah! I begin to see,” said Krakovitch. “But you are mistaken if you think a small town’s records will go back five hundred years to Thibor Ferenczy.”
Kyle shook his head. “That’s not it. We have our own vampire, remember? We know he, er, got started out here. And we more or less know how. We want to find out where Ilya Bodescu died. The Bodescus were staying in Slatina when he had some sort of skiing accident in the hills. If we can trace someone who was involved in the recovery of his body, we’ll be within an ace of finding Thibor’s tomb. Where Ilya Bodescu died, that’s where the old vampire was buried.”
“Good!” said Krakovitch. “There should be a police report, statements—perhaps even a coroner’s report.”
“Doubting,” said Irma Dobresti, shaking her head. “How long ago this man die?”
“Eighteen, nineteen years,” Kyle answered.
“Simple death—accident.” Dobresti shrugged. “Not suspicious—no coroner’s report. But police report, yes. Also, ambulance recovery. They make report, too.”
Kyle began to warm towards her. “That’s good reasoning,” he said. “As for getting hold of those reports through the local authorities, that’s your job, Mrs. er—?”
“Not Mrs. Never had time. Just call me Irma, please.” She smiled her yellow-toothed smile.
Her attitude in all of this puzzled Quint a little. “You don’t think it’s a bit odd that we’re here hunting for a vampire, er, Irma?”
She looked at him, raised an eyebrow. “My parents come from the mountains,” she said. “When I am little they sometimes talk about wampir. Up there in Carpatii Meridionali, old people still believe. Once there were great bears up there. And sabretooth tigers. Before that, big lizards—er, dinosaurs? Yes. They are no more—but they were. Later, there was plague that swept the world. All of these things, gone. Now you tell me that my parents were right, there were vampires, too. Odd? No, I not think so. If you want hunt vampires, where better than Romania, eh?”
Krakovitch smiled. “Romania,” he said, “has always been something of an island.”
“True,” Dobresti agreed. “But that not always good. World is big. No strength in being small. Also, being cut off means stagnation. Nothing new ever comes in.”
Kyle nodded, thinking to himself, and some of the old things are things you can well do without …
It had been a rough night for Brenda Keogh.
When Harry Jr. had finished his small hours feed, he hadn’t wanted to go back to sleep again. He wasn’t bad about it, just wouldn’t sleep.
After an hour or two of rocking him, then cradling and crooning to him, she’d finally put the baby down and gone back to bed herself.
But at 6:00 A.M. he’d been right on time again, crying for his change and another feed. And she’d known from the way he twisted his little face and clenched his fists that he was tired: he’d been awake right through the night, from no cause that Brenda could discover. But good? What a good little chap he was! He hadn’t cried at all until he was hungry and uncomfortable, just lay there in his cot through the night doing his own thing—whatever that might be.
Even now his will to stay awake and be a part of the world was strong, but his yawning told his mother that he couldn’t. With dawn an hour away, Harry was going to have to go to sleep. The world would have to wait. No matter how fast your mind grows up, your body goes more slowly …
As his baby son went to sleep, Harry Sr. found himself free and was struck with a thought as strange as any he’d ever had, even in his thoroughly strange existence.
He’s leeching on me! he thought. The little rascal’s into my mind, into my experiences. He can explore my stuff because there’s lots of it, but I can’t touch him because there’s nothing in there—yet!
He put the extraordinary idea to the back of his mind. Now that Harry Jr. had released him he had places to go, people—dead people—to talk to. There were things he knew which he was unique in knowing. He knew, for instance, that the dead inhabit another sphere; also that in their lonely nether-existence they go on doing all the things they’ve done in life.
The writers write masterpieces they can never publish, each line perfectly composed, each paragraph polished, every story a gem. Where time isn’t a problem and deadlines don’t exist, things get done right. The architects plot their cities of the mind, beautiful aerial constructs flung across fantastic worlds and spanning sculpted oceans and continents, each brick and spire and sky-riding highway immaculately positioned, no smallest detail missing or botched. The mathematicians continue to explore the Formulae of the Universe, reducing THE ALL to symbols they can never put on paper, for which men in the corporeal world should be grateful. And the Great Thinkers carry on thinking their great thoughts, which far outweigh any they thought in life.
That had been the way of it with the Great Majority. Then Harry Keogh, Necroscope, had come along.
The dead had taken to Harry at once; he had given their existence new meaning. Before Harry, each one of them had inhabited a world consisting of his own incorporeal thoughts, without contact with the rest. They had been like houses with no doors or windows, no telephones. But Harry had connected them up. It made no difference to the living (who simply weren’t aware) but it made a great deal of difference to the dead.
Möbius had been one such, mathematician and thinker both, and he had shown Harry Keogh how to use his Möbius continuum. He’d done so gladly, for like all of the dead he’d quickly come to love the Necroscope. And the Möbius continuum had given Harry access to times and places and minds beyond the reach of any other intelligence in all of man’s history.
Now Harry knew of a man whose one obsession in life had been the myths and legends and lore of the vampire. His name was Ladislau Giresci. How was it going for him now, Harry wondered, in the aftermath of his murder? Max Batu had killed him with his evil eye, for no good reason other than that Dragosani had ordered it. Killed him, yes, but not Giresci’s life-long penchant for the legend of the vampire. What had been an obsession in life must certainly have continued afterwards.
Harr
y could no longer make any headway with Thibor, and Thibor would not let him get through to Dragosani. His next best bet had to be Ladislau Giresci. How to reach him, however, was a different matter. Harry had never met the Romanian in life; he did not know the ground where Giresci’s spirit lay; he must rely on the dead to supply him with directions, see him on his way.
Across the road from Brenda’s flat—once Harry and Brenda’s flat—there sprawled a graveyard hundreds of years old, containing a large number of Harry’s friends. He knew most of them personally from previous conversations. Now he drifted towards the lines of markers and occasionally leaning tombstones, his mind drawn by the minds of the dead where they lay in their graves communing. They sensed him at once, knew that it was him. Who else could it be?
Harry! said their spokesman, an ex-railway engineer who’d lived all his life in Skeleton, until he died in 1938. It’s good to talk to you again. Nice to know you haven’t forgotten us.
“How are things with you?” Harry inquired. “Still designing your trains?”
The other came aglow in a moment. I have designed the train! he answered. Do you want to hear about it?
“Unfortunately I can’t.” Harry was genuinely sorry. “My visit is purely business, I’m afraid.”
Well, spit it out, Harry! someone else exclaimed, an ex-bobby of Harry’s acquaintance, late of Sir Robert Peel’s time. How can we help you, sir?
“There are some hundreds of you here,” Harry answered. “But is there anyone from Romania? I want to go there, and I need directions and an introduction. The only people I know there are … bad people.”
Voices rose in something of a babble, but one of them cut through, speaking directly to Harry. It was a girl’s voice, sweet and small. I know Romania, it said. Something of it, anyway. I came here from Romania after the war. There were troubles and oppressions, and so my elder brothers sent me away to an aunt who lived here. Strange, but I came all this way, then caught a cold and died! I was very young.
“And do you know someone I can seek out, who can perhaps help me on my way?” Harry didn’t like to seem too eager to be off, but he really couldn’t help himself. “It’s very important, I assure you.”
But my brothers will be delighted to guide you, Harry! she said at once. It’s only since you came that we’ve all been able to … well, get together again. We all owe you so much … .
“If I may,” Harry answered, “I’ll come back and talk to you again some time. Meanwhile, I’m afraid I’ve no time to spare. What are your brothers called?”
They are Jahn and Democrat Syzestu, she said. Wait and I’ll call them for you. She called, and in a moment her brothers answered. They were very faint, like voices on a telephone from the other side of the world. Harry was introduced.
“Just keep talking to me,” he told the brothers, “and I’ll find my way to you.”
He excused himself from the company of his friends in the Hartlepool cemetery, found a space-time door and passed through it into the Möbius continuum. “Jahn, Dmitri? Are you still there?”
We’re here, Harry, and we’re honoured to be able to help you like this.
He homed in on them, emerged through another door into the grey Romanian dawn. He found himself in a field of grass beside a pock-marked wall fast crumbling into ruins. There were ponies in the field but of course they couldn’t see him; they just stood still, shivering a little, their coats shining with drops of dew. Plumes of warm air came snorting from their nostrils like smoke. In the distance, the last lights of a town were blinking out as the sun rose on the eastern horizon.
“Where is this place?” Harry asked the brothers Syzestu.
The town is Cluj, said Jahn, who was the oldest. This place is just a field. We were in prison—political prisoners—and we ran away. They came after us with guns and caught us here, trying to climb this wall. Now tell us, Harry Keogh, how we can help you?
“Cluj?” said Harry, a little disappointed. “I need to be south, I think, and east—across the mountains.”
This is easy! The younger brother, Dmitri, was excited. Our father and mother lie side by side in the graveyard in Pitesti. Only a little while ago we were talking to them!
Indeed they were, a deeper, sterner voice joined in, from some distance away. You’re welcome to come and visit, Harry, if you can find your way here.
Harry excused himself—a little hastily but with many apologies—and re-entered the Möbius continuum. In a little while he was in a misted graveyard in Pitesti. Who is it you’re seeking? inquired Franz Syzestu.
“His name is Ladislau Giresci,” said Harry. “All I can tell you is that he died some little time ago at his home near a town called Titu.”
Titu? Anna Syzestu repeated. Why that’s nought but fifty kilometres or so away! What’s more, we’ve friends buried there! She was plainly proud to be of assistance to the Necroscope. Greta, can you hear?
Indeed I can! A new voice, sharp and shrewish, answered. And I’ve the very man right here.
There you are! said Anna Syzestu, in a told-you-so tone. If you want to meet someone in Titu, ask Greta Mirnosti. She knows everyone!
Harry Keogh? A male voice now came to the fore. I’m Ladislau Giresci. Do you want to come closer or will this do?
“I’m on my way!” said Harry. He thanked the Syzestus and went to Giresci’s plot in Titu. And finally, at last in the presence of the vampire expert himself, he asked, “Sir, I believe you can help me—if you will?”
Young man, said Giresci, unless I’m very much mistaken I know why you’re here. Last time someone came to me inquiring about vampires, it cost me my life! But if there’s any way I can help you, Harry Keogh, any way at all, just ask it!
“That was Boris Dragosani who came to see you, right?” said Harry. He sensed the other’s shudder. Giresci might have no body, but at the mention of Dragosani’s name he shuddered.
That one, yes, Giresci answered at last. Dragosani. When first I met him I didn’t know it, but he was already one of them. Or as good as. He didn’t know it himself, not quite, but the evil was in him.
“He sent Max Batu to kill you with his evil eye.”
Yes, because by then I knew what he was. That’s the thing a vampire fears most: that people will discover what he is. Anyone who suspects … he has to die. So the little Mongol killed me, and he stole my crossbow.
“That was for Dragosani. He used it to kill Thibor Ferenczy in the cruciform hills.”
Then at least it was put to good use! Ah, but when you talk about Thibor, you’re talking about a real vampires said Giresci. If Dragosani, with all of his potential for evil, had lived—alive or undead—as long as that one, then the world would have an incurable illness!
“I’m sorry,” said Harry, “but I can find nothing to admire in such monsters. And in any case, there was one greater than Thibor, who came before him, and outlasted him. His name was Faethor, and Thibor took his second name from him. Rightly so, for it was Faethor who made him a vampire. I’m speaking of Faethor Ferenczy, of course.”
Ladislau Giresci’s voice was the merest whisper now as he answered: Indeed, and that was where my interest in the undead really began. For I was with Faethor when he died. Imagine that, and him a creature at least thirteen hundred years old!
“These are the ones I want to know about.” Harry was eager. “Thibor and Faethor. In your life you were a vampire expert; however people might scorn your obsession or look upon you as an eccentric, you studied the vampire’s myths, his legends, his lore. You were still studying them when you died, and it’s my guess that dying didn’t stop you. So where’s your research led you now, Ladislau? How did Thibor end up buried there on the cruciform hills? And what of Faethor between the tenth and twentieth centuries? It’s important that I know these things, for they relate to what I’m doing now. And what I’m doing relates to the safety and sanity of the whole world.”
I understand, said Giresci, soberly. But Harry, don’t you think
you should speak to someone with even more authority? I believe it can be arranged …
“What?” Harry was taken aback. “Someone with more authority than you? Is there such a person?”
Ahhh! said a new voice, a powerful voice. It was black as the night itself and deep as the roots of hell, and it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Oh, yesss, Haarrry, there is—or was—just such a one. And I am he. No one knows as much about the Wamphyri as I do, for no one has or ever will live so long. So very long, indeed, that when I died I was ready for it. Oh, I fought against it, be sure, but in the end it was for the best. Now I have peace. And I have Ladislau Giresci to thank for giving me that final, merciful release. Since he obviously holds you in the greatest esteem—as do all the dead, apparently—then so must I. So come to me, Harry Keogh, and let a real expert answer your questions.
It was an offer Harry couldn’t refuse. He knew who it must be at once, of course, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it himself. It was, after all, the obvious answer.
“I’m coming, Faethor,” he said. “Just give me a moment and I’ll be right there …”
Chapter Eleven
TO THIS DAY, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF PLOIESTI, TOWARDS Bucharest, there stand gutted ruins, reminders of the mundane horrors of war. The burned-out shells lie like half-buried stony corpses in open countryside, strangely gorgeous in the summer when the old bomb craters are full of flowers and brambles and wildlife, and ivy climbs shattered walls to turn them green. But it takes the winter and the snow to make the devastation visible, to bring into monochrome perspective the gaunt reality of the region. The Romanians have never rebuilt in or near these ruins.
This was where Faethor Ferenczy had finally met his death at the hands of Ladislau Giresci during a Second World War bombing raid on Bucharest and Ploiesti. Pinned to the floor of his study by a splintered ceiling beam when his home was hit, he had feared the encroaching flames because alive, vampires burn very slowly. Giresci, working for the Civil Defence, had seen the house bombed, entered the blazing ruin and tried to free Faethor—to no avail. It was hopeless.
