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The Origin of Dracula

Page 7

by Irving Belateche


  I kneeled down beside him. “You’re going to be spending a couple of days with her.”

  He looked up from the TV show. “What about my birthday party?”

  How stupid could I be? Naturally that’d be his first question, and because I wasn’t prepared for it, I doubled down on my stupidity.

  “You’ll be back for that,” I said, instead of warning him in advance that the party might have to wait until another weekend. Now he’d be even more disappointed if Sunday came and he was still with Jenna, with no party on the horizon, which was the mostly likely scenario.

  He cocked his head, narrowed his eyes, and shot me a curious look. “I know what you’re doing.”

  My pulse quickened. Had he been eavesdropping on Lee and me before turning on the TV? I braced myself.

  “You don’t want me around, so you can get me a surprise for my birthday!” he said. He was so excited that he abandoned the TV show and turned his attention to me. “Tell me what the surprise is!”

  I’d managed to make things even worse. His expectations were now sky high.

  “Please tell me, Dad!” He couldn’t contain himself.

  “Honey, there isn’t a surprise. I just found out that I have to be at work for most of this weekend, and I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  “Okay…” he said, grinning, as if he was still expecting a surprise. “I can hardly wait until my birthday party.”

  I felt awful, but there was no time to fix this. If I had any chance of ensuring he’d have many more birthdays to celebrate and that he’d grow up to lead a full life, I had to focus on the real horror I’d brought into his life: Dantès.

  “Go ahead and finish watching your show,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, and we’ll go home and pick up some of your clothes, then head to Jenna’s.”

  When I walked back into the living room, Lee was just stepping out of the hallway. “Quincy is dead,” he said. “A drowning accident a few days ago.”

  I didn’t quite feel the shock I should’ve, nor sorrow. Probably because I was still reeling from the revelation that Dantès had murdered Lucy. My reaction was cold and analytical. “It’s another clue from Dantès.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.” And I didn’t, but I was sure it was.

  “So, do we go down to North Carolina and check it out?”

  “We need to find out more about it first.” I already had the sense that the web of clues I’d have to follow to uncover Dantès’s real identity would be dense, so no stone could be left unturned. On the other hand, we also didn’t have time for a wild goose chase to North Carolina.

  “While I’m taking Nate to Jenna’s,” I said, “will you find out everything you can about Quincy’s death? I’ll be back in less than an hour, and we can head to Cold Falls.”

  He nodded, and our unlikely partnership was born.

  *

  At the house, I packed some clothes for Nate and asked him to grab a couple of his toys and books. Then we headed to Jenna’s.

  I didn’t take the most direct route in case Dantès was watching us. My circuitous course took us into the parking structure for the Ballston Common Shopping Mall and through a neighborhood that was packed with dead end streets. If you didn’t know the neighborhood well (and I did), even with navigation in your car it was almost impossible not to get to lost.

  But the whole ruse made me feel like a fool. Lee had summed it up best. Did I think I worked for some kind of covert ops outfit? Did I think I could outwit a killer who knew so much about me? And even those thoughts themselves seemed absurd. How could things in my life have changed so much in the course of a couple of hours?

  The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past. That’s how. My long ago transgression had come back to haunt me.

  Nate didn’t say anything about the long and winding route to Jenna’s, and I was glad I didn’t have to explain it. But I wasn’t glad about his demeanor. He seemed lost in thought and didn’t chatter at all. I hoped he hadn’t picked up on the fact that I was in crisis mode again, like I’d been right after Lucy’s death. Of course, I had never really shifted out of crisis mode, had I? Wasn’t that why I’d become a distant father?

  Jenna opened the door to her townhouse and greeted us warmly. In that instant, I knew I’d made the right decision. She was a petite brunette who radiated enough positive energy to light up any room—and Nate would be bathed in that positive energy instead of in the gloom that emanated from me.

  She showed us to a spare bedroom, which Nate immediately liked. The walls were light green, his favorite color. Lucy and I had promised to paint his room green, but we’d never gotten around to it. I unpacked Nate’s suitcase while he laid out his toys and books on a dresser. Then he went on to explore the rest of the townhouse while I filled Jenna in on the one thing that might cause a problem, using another lie to do it.

  “I’m having a hard time getting a flight back from the conference on such short notice,” I said. “So I may not be back by Sunday.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “He can stay here as long as you need him to.”

  “I appreciate it, but it might not be okay with him. His birthday is on Sunday and we planned a big birthday party. If I can’t get a flight back, I’m going to cancel it, and he’s going to be crushed. He’ll be inconsolable.”

  Jenna didn’t hesitate with a solution. “Don’t worry about it. If you can’t make it back in time, I’ll be glad to run the party. Just tell me what needs to be done.” Her gracious offer was given with cheer.

  I was so thankful that I almost said yes before remembering the reason Nate was staying with her. He couldn’t go back to the house for the party on Sunday—he’d be a sitting target for Dantès.

  “Thank you,” I said, “but I can’t impose on you like that. I’m going to try like hell to make it back in time.” And if there was any chance of that happening, I needed to get on the road. It was time to excuse myself and say goodbye to Nate.

  But just then, Jenna’s cheer dimmed. “How are you doing, John?” she said.

  “Okay.” I didn’t want to open up about Lucy, so I just told her the only truth that mattered. “I miss her.” Even with that simple statement, I couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in my eyes.

  She hugged me. “I’m so sorry.”

  I accepted her embrace for a few seconds, but had to pull away for fear of breaking down.

  She had tears in her eyes, too. “Every week since the funeral,” she said, her voice cracking, “I’d tell myself to call you, to see if you needed to talk, but I never did. I guess I didn’t know you well enough and thought I’d be intruding.”

  “Don’t worry. I wasn’t much into talking.” And I still wasn’t. I wanted to change the subject. “Besides, helping me out with Nate means a lot more to me.”

  “I’m glad I can help. But if you ever need to talk, please call me. I’m not a professional counselor, but nurses make pretty good listeners.”

  She was a kind soul. No one—not my colleagues at work, nor my friends, nor my neighbors—had asked me how I was doing after the first couple of months. It was like everyone assumed that after the initial trauma, you stepped right back into your normal life as if nothing had happened. At that moment, I understood more than ever why Jenna was a good nurse. Not only had she thought to ask how I was doing, but the little wrinkles of concern at the corners of her teary eyes revealed she also cared deeply.

  I felt compelled to tell her what was going on—that it had nothing to do with my grief, overwhelming as it was, and everything to do with a sin from my childhood, which, at least according to Lee, had literally risen from the grave.

  But instead I said, “It’s all fine,” and covered up this lie with a feeble grin. Then I added, “I should hit the road.”

  I joined up with Nate in the living room and knelt down in front of him. “So I’m taking off now. You set?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’ll come back before
the party?”

  “That’s right. Give me a big hug.”

  He did, and I hugged him back, tightly, and tried to push away the thought that this might be the last time I’d ever see him. “I love you, honey.”

  “I love you, too,” he said, then smiled. “Tell me what the surprise is.”

  “Sweetie, there is no surprise. It’s just work, really.” I stood up. “I want you to listen to Jenna and do what she says. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be back soon.” I had to kneel down and hug him again. When I pulled away, I took a couple of seconds to take him in. He was smiling, and his blue eyes were sparkling with anticipation—about the surprise.

  In the car, I sent out an email canceling the party. There was no way this was going to be wrapped up by Sunday. I also called the magician and canceled, apologizing for the late notice and offering to pay him for the gig regardless. He refused at first, but I insisted until he accepted.

  When I pulled up to Lee’s house, he stepped outside, ready to go. He’d shaved, combed his hair, and changed into a denim shirt and dark jeans. Whatever battle lay ahead, he wasn’t going to march into it looking defeated.

  As he climbed into my car, I also noticed that his skin, which had been pasty and lifeless, had gained a little pinkness, as if this mission had revived him. I should’ve guessed that kindling his anger would be a boon to his well-being.

  “I never thought I’d be going back to Cold Falls,” he said.

  “That makes two of us. Did you find out anything more about Quincy?”

  “Yeah—it happened on Roanoke Island. He was vacationing with a girlfriend, and the couple of articles I dug up said that he went out for an early morning swim and disappeared.”

  “I thought you said he drowned.”

  “That’s what they think happened, but they didn’t find the body.”

  “So he disappeared? From Roanoke Island?” I glanced at Lee to see if he’d make the same connection I had.

  “If you’re getting at something, just spill it,” he said.

  “The Roanoke colony—never heard of it?”

  “No.”

  He would have if he’d been a halfway decent student. “It was the first English colony in the New World. And to make a long story short, three years after it was set up, the entire colony—every man, woman, and child—disappeared without trace. It’s called ‘The Lost Colony,’ and there are all sorts of theories about what happened.”

  “The fact that everyone disappeared… you’re saying that’s the connection?”

  “Could be. Quincy disappears without a trace from a place infamous for that, and we’re searching for a body that disappeared.”

  “And how does that help us?”

  I glanced at Lee again. His hollow eyes, like his formerly pasty skin, had also joined the world of the living. They had the weighty look of thought behind them now. Lee was alert.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “At least, not yet. But I have a feeling it’s all going to add up.”

  And it would. But we’d have to follow a long and winding road of clues to find out how.

  Chapter Six

  It was Friday evening, and rush hour traffic was terrible. It took us more than an hour and a half to get to Cold Falls. As soon as I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed the changes. The parking lot had been expanded, and the trees around it had been cut down to make room. Also, land had been cleared to make room for three sprawling picnic areas equipped with tables, barbecue pits, and trashcans. But the picnic areas and the parking lot were practically empty; the park was a daytime attraction.

  I parked near a large, rectangular park map—a map made of wood and meticulously painted and carved, a work of art compared to the paper map under glass from the past. Painted yellow lines represented the trails; swirls of green and brown, in relief, represented the forest; and orange circles represented the campsites. The names of the trails and campsites hadn’t changed—the Gray Owl Trail still led to the Clear River campsite—though judging from the map, it appeared that the trails no longer stretched as far into the forest as they once had. I took that to mean that huge swaths of trees had been razed in the far reaches of this wilderness, just as they had been razed for the picnic areas and parking lot.

  We started hiking to the campsite, and as we got closer, I noticed another change: the trail had been widened to allow for more pedestrian traffic. And when we made it to Clear River, I saw that it, too, had undergone a transformation. There were many more campsites, and they were grouped in clusters, as opposed to many years ago when each individual campsite had been isolated. Again, trees had been cut down for the expansion. There was also now a trail from the Clear River campsites to the Potomac.

  Our first order of duty was to locate the campsite where we had spent that ill-fated night. Very few campsites were being used, and I suspected that since Cold Falls was now in the heart of Virginia’s expansive suburbs, rather than on the edge, the campsites were only in demand during the summer, when they provided a cheap place to stay while visiting D.C.

  We headed over to the cluster closest to the Potomac, the most likely location of our campsite from that night. There were now half a dozen campsites there.

  “Any idea which was ours?” I asked.

  “Hard to tell.” Lee was staring at the one closest to us. “We’re going to have to check each of them out.”

  And that’s what we did. We walked through each campsite—none were occupied—until we got to the smallest one. The one closest to the river.

  “This is it,” Lee said immediately.

  One side of the campsite was connected to the other campsites by a dirt footpath, but the other three sides were surrounded by untamed woods, woods that made my blood run cold. Though other parts of Cold Falls had changed, this part looked exactly the same.

  I didn’t want to be here.

  Lee began walking the perimeter of the site, checking it out more closely. “What do we do now?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then tell me again why you wanted to come here?”

  He was already agitated, so reminding him that we were here because of a Faulkner quote wasn’t going to help. He’d blow a gasket if I told him I’d resorted to a failed strategy to deal with this crisis—that even though novel therapy had failed me after Lucy’s death, I had latched on to a Faulkner quote as my lifeline.

  Just then, the crackling underbrush caught my attention. Soft footsteps, measured in even strides, were approaching us from the woods, not the trail. The footsteps sounded like those of a lithe animal.

  Both Lee and I turned. A beautiful woman was gliding through the woods toward us. Her stride was graceful and confident, and her beauty was striking: long and lush blond hair, radiant ivory sky with a touch of rose, and emerald eyes so vibrant I was mesmerized. She stepped into our campsite.

  Neither Lee nor I said anything, and from the knowing smile that flickered across her lips, it was obvious that she knew how her beauty affected those who saw her for the first time. She was wearing slim-fitting blue jeans and a thin black T-shirt, both of which showed off her figure. Her thong sandals, which featured fiery red toenails, were a clue that she wasn’t a hiker.

  “You’re clever,” she said, looking at me. “You followed the breadcrumbs like—”

  Without warning Lee reached into his jacket and whipped out a gun. I was stunned, though I shouldn’t have been. Not only should I have suspected that he owned a gun, I should have also suspected that he’d bring it with him and would use it the first chance he got.

  The woman wasn’t stunned in the least. She flicked her blond hair away from her face and shot him a sneer. “Your anger isn’t going to help. But it never does, does it?”

  “It’ll help me end your goddamn life.” Lee trained the gun on her.

  “You shoot me, and you’ll never find out who murdered the only good thing in your life.”

  “Fuck you.”
Lee started to squeeze the trigger.

  “No!” I lunged at him. “We need her!” She was my only lead to Dantès’s identity—the only way to save Nate.

  “That’s right,” she said calmly, then stepped up to Lee. “Listen to John. After all, isn’t he the one who got you this far? Isn’t he the one who followed the breadcrumbs? Isn’t he the one who discovered Grace was murdered?”

  I couldn’t tell if Lee was convinced, but for the moment he wasn’t pulling the trigger.

  The woman turned from him to me. Even with the gun trained on her, she was in control. Her captivating green eyes were pools of self-assurance.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “Otranto.”

  “That’s not a name,” Lee said.

  “Oh, I think it is,” she said to me, not him. “What do you think, John? Does it sound like a name to you?”

  It did. It was another clue, another breadcrumb. The Castle of Otranto was a novel from the 1700s, the first Gothic horror novel and the first modern work of supernatural fiction. She’d pulled her name from its title, and by using that name had immediately tied tonight to my first night here so many years ago. She’d tied herself to my unsettling apparition, the castle that had appeared on the precipice in the glow of the crescent moon.

  “Are you Dantès?” I said.

  “Is that what you think?”

  Absolutely not. She was the messenger. “Tell me why he’s playing this game.”

  She nodded toward Lee. “He chose the game.”

  Lee still had his gun trained on her, but the urge to shoot her had passed. “I didn’t choose anything. You’re a goddamn nut job.”

  “Hide and seek,” I said. Again she’d gone back to that night. We were still playing the game. And this time I was “it.” I had to find where Dantès was hiding.

  She looked pleased with my deduction. “And the stakes are life and death. The only kind of game worth playing.”

  Her knowing smile pranced over her lips again. She turned back to Lee and faced his gun with no fear. “Can you stay the course long enough to play the game? The guy who’s never held a job for more than two years? The guy who got a fresh start, a lucky break, when Duncan, his buddy, asked him to help run a new burger place? You did well for a little while, the place did great, and how did you repay Duncan? By skimming some of the profit off the top—”

 

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