by E. C. Hibbs
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
He sighed, and straightened his back. “It would make sense if he just killed you there and then, like you said he was going to, for helping her escape. That would most likely have been good enough for revenge. But the fact that he’s gone through all this trouble to turn you, and make you suffer... that just doesn’t add up. No... this has more depth, Bee. We’re missing something.”
I stared at him, anxiously tapping my cane. “Like what?”
He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. But I reckon that on our next day off on Monday, we should pay a visit to the library. Try and find out a bit more about what happened before Lucy.”
CHAPTER XX
Two days later, we took the train to Westminster and spent hours combing through the London Library. Frank hadn’t meant our own local library, no: he took me to one of the largest ones in the world. I had to admit, forget searching any place in Hungary; if we didn’t find anything there, then nowhere would have the information we wanted.
The place was huge, the biggest library I’d ever been in. It put my little sanctuary in Budapest to shame. When we entered, I almost melted into the floor at the amount of books all around me, with that wonderful book-smell heavy in the air. It was like a tiny portion of heaven had fallen down and happened to have landed in Greater London. But then I reminded myself of why we were there, and we set to work.
Frank was better with computers than me, so he sat down with his laptop in a little side room and began hunting his way through the minefield of the internet. My inner student that had been sleeping away the years snapped back into gear, and I headed straight for the theology section. I recognised some books that I’d read at school – albeit under their equivalent English titles and with different covers, but went past them. I knew there would be nothing in their pages.
Eventually, I found two books that looked promising, and shoved them under my arm before returning to Frank. It hadn’t stopped raining for three days, and the steady pitter-patter of the drops bounced off the windows.
“What have you got there?” he asked as I sat down.
I held up the volumes. “The Complete Encyclopaedia of Vampires, and Demonic Entities of Central and Eastern Europe.”
Frank nodded, glancing at the covers. “They look good.”
“Let’s hope so,” I agreed, and opened up the Encyclopaedia at the index page. It was a thick, heavy book, and the pages rolled over with a dull snap. “Have you found anything?”
He shook his head in frustration. “Nothing. It’s hard to know exactly what to search for. What type of demon is it again?”
“Lidérc,” I replied, then spelled it out for him as I found the name in the index and flipped through to its account.
Frank typed it in and hit the enter button, but shook his head again. “No, it’s all just definitions and stuff, probably everything you’ve got there. I’ll try mysterious disappearances in Budapest... Hey!”
I jumped. “What?”
He pointed at the screen. “Lucy Denborough.”
My eyebrows shot up. “There’s something on Lucy?”
“Yeah...” he clicked on the link, only for the excitement to drain out of his eyes. “Oh. It’s all in Hungarian. I can’t read it.”
“Okay,” I said, shoving the books over to him, “you look through them, they’re in English. I’ll read whatever it says.”
Frank nodded and took the open Encyclopaedia, holding one side of the pages down with the other book, and handed me his laptop. I set it down gently, staring at the webpage. There was Lucy’s photo: the one that had blared from posters across the city. Next to it, in the title, was that word again. Hiányzó. Missing.
I swallowed, and forced myself to read on under my breath. “Eighteen-year old student Lucy Rebecca Denborough was reported missing by her parents in the early hours of Saturday 15th January, 2005. She had failed to return to her home in Újbuda. It is believed that she was abducted by an unidentified young man who may have been stalking her.”
Underneath Lucy’s photo, I scrolled down to see a copy of the artist’s impression of the demon. I remembered relaying the description that she had mentioned to me, and stared at the streaks of pencil shaping his face.
“As of November, 2009, she has not been found. The investigation into her disappearance has since been archived due to lack of evidence.”
Nobody said this was going to be easy, but I still felt a lump in my throat as I continued to move down. However, there was nothing else to see, so I returned to the search engine and began to work through the pages. Most were in Hungarian, and I concentrated mainly on them. I had a feeling that whatever information there was, it would be hidden in non-English areas. Time fell away as I looked over a countless number of websites, some showing the same photo of Lucy, accompanied by the drawing. I was relieved to see that there were no similar accounts related to Emily.
Emily Jane Denborough. Aged twenty. Hiányzó.
I pushed the image away; then saw an external link leading off one of the monotonous articles, and clicked it. A list of all unexplained disappearances of young adults in Budapest over the last century bloomed on the screen. As I read it, the past echoed in my mind.
“You can’t get away with this! The police will have you!”
“One hundred and fifteen years ago, they could not care less... I chose her. Just like I chose all of the others.”
I moved the cursor over a picture of a teenage girl. A small bubble appeared; which read: Janka Kováks; aged nineteen; missing in Buda from 2nd March, 1999; never found.
“1999...” I muttered, and clicked on the photo. My heart skipped a beat as I skimmed over the full article. It was alarmingly similar to Lucy’s accounts. Then I looked again at the picture, and did a double take as horror welled in my chest. She looked like Lucy. She had the same shape in her face; the same eyes.
I quickly pulled a notebook out of my bag and scribbled down the information. I paused and wrote Lucy’s name, age and details above it. I looked over more photos until I found another girl – who had the same smile as Lucy – stated as having disappeared in 1993.
I counted on my fingers. “Twelve years.”
Scowling, I moved back to the main screen, beginning to plough through all of the likely-looking pictures. It was a good ten minutes before I came across another, and immediately recognised her with a jolt. She was the girl in the yellow day dress that I’d seen in a dream. I glanced back to the photo of Janka Kováks: she was the tie-dye girl. And both of them shared some of the same facial features of Lucy.
“Ó istenem...” I breathed; so quietly that even Frank didn’t hear me.
Nusi Görög; aged twenty-one; missing in Buda from 11th July, 1946; never found.
Rosa Dohnányi; aged eighteen; missing in Buda from 28th August, 1926; never found.
I carried on, sure I was on the right track. My pen scratched across the paper as the list grew; all I was focusing on seemed to fit perfectly. They had disappeared in the same area of Budapest – at least around the same point along the Danube – all of them were roughly the same age, and their losses were separated by a gap of eleven to thirteen years. None had ever been found: their cases closed due to lack of evidence. And – most disturbing of all – they all looked remarkably similar.
By the time the clock on the wall reached noon, I’d worked back to the earliest account of that type in Budapest: a twenty-one year old named Franciska Varga, who’d gone missing in 1915. She was the first in a line of nine young women – including Lucy – who’d disappeared under mysterious circumstances. I was sure there were more; I’d only found ninety years of the hundred and fifteen that the demon himself had mentioned. There had to be at least one other victim, but whether she hadn’t been documented for some reason, or it had happened in another area, I wasn’t sure.
I closed my eyes and imagined it: twelve years as a host to that monster. There was Lucy’s face, with her bruised e
yes and pale skin, and those two gashes on her arm. I found myself admitting: at least it was only a week that she’d had to bear. At least she hadn’t been trapped in that chamber for a decade. The laugh wracked me and I shuddered, clenching my teeth in quiet fury.
“Hey, Bee,” Frank said suddenly, tapping me on the arm. He moved the book around and pointed at the page he’d been studying. It was the smaller one of the two: on Central Europe. “I think I’ve found something. No...” He cut himself off, and looked me in the eye. “I’ve definitely found something. But... Bee, I think I’ve cracked it. I think I know exactly what’s going on.”
I stared back. “What? What is it?”
He hadn’t moved. “Does the demon know your name? He... he must know it, right?”
I nodded slowly, confused as ever. “Yes, he knows my name. The only time he’s ever addressed me though is by my surname. Why?”
“Your last name,” Frank repeated, more to himself than me. “Then I’m right. I’ve got the answer.”
“What? But what does my name have to do with anything? This is just about Lucy.”
But to my shock, he shook his head. “No. It’s not.” He turned back to the book and began to read.
“A little-known legend surrounding the Lidérc, restricted to one of the most easterly areas of Hungary, states that throughout the 1870s a powerful priest by the name of Alexander Farkas drove the majority of the demons across the country, in an attempt to expel them across the Romanian border. It is said that he hoped this action would result in the deaths of the entities because they would be unable to survive in a country besides their own. This legend is recorded in several accounts from the village of Hattyúpatak, which is generally taken to be the location of what is commonly referred to as ‘the Final Purge’ into Romania, in 1879.”
I stared at Frank. With every word, I felt my eyes growing bigger in my face.
“Wait, there’s more,” he said. “A small number of accounts detail a note of the supposed event, which describes that as Farkas was readying to complete the Final Purge, his niece Mirriam ran forward towards the ‘cloud of demons’. It is written that she was ‘swallowed in a swarm of mist and beating wings, and her screams tore the air so that blood did rain down from the heavens.’”
He put down the book and looked at me, gently resting his elbows on the open pages. I couldn’t move; my head reeled and I was completely rooted to the spot. My grip on my cane tightened under the table – and then I was flying through the air in that time when I couldn’t fly, in the room beneath the earth, where I had found Lucy, and found him. The back of my head hit the stone wall and I plummeted down, surrounded by my own scream. He held my cut thumb to his lips. Our eyes locked: mine in terror, his in disbelief.
I shook my head. “No.”
Frank touched my hand. “Bee, the priest’s name is Farkas. It’s even spelt the same way.”
“Farkas is really common,” I insisted, refusing point blank to believe it. “It can even be a man’s first name. That can’t be.”
“But you’re the only Farkas who’s sitting here, looking for answers,” Frank pointed out. “And here is that answer. Right here.” He motioned to the page again. I threw it a fleeting glance and sucked both of my lips into my mouth. I nibbled them slightly, but then stopped when my teeth accidentally drew blood. I didn’t bother fetching a tissue; it wasn’t too deep, so I just swallowed.
“Bee, listen,” Frank said softly, as though setting up a shield in case I’d hit out at him. “If all this boiled down to just Lucy, then he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to... to take your parents too. They share that name: Farkas.”
Underneath his fingers, my hand curled into a fist, but I turned away. It was like when I’d realised that I was a vampire: I’d tried to convince myself that it wasn’t true until the very word ‘no’ had lost all meaning. Because – deep down – I knew I was only fooling myself. When I’d finally admitted it, everything had taken its rightful place in the puzzle – but this all meant the puzzle was so much bigger than the little self-centred one in my mind.
Whatever I’d been wrenched into hadn’t been set into motion four years ago, when I was sure that life had taken off on its own unreal tangent. If there was a tangent, it had begun over a century ago. In 1879, in Hattyúpatak, this chain of events had been set in motion. The chain that all came down to me.
Nothing will happen that’s not supposed to happen, somehow.
I finally had my answer. However many generations might separate us, the demon wouldn’t have reacted so violently to my name if it wasn’t linked to Alexander Farkas: that priest who tried to drive him to his death. Like Frank had said, why else go after Anya and Apa, when they hadn’t even been involved in my rescue of Lucy? But she had nothing to do with it, after all. It was a simple eye for an eye, and I was the latest in the line. If I died, then the bloodline would end with me.
“It’s true,” I whispered. “It’s all true.”
Frank rubbed the back of my hand comfortingly. “Are you alright?”
I kept my eyes down, but nodded.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Alright,” he said, “I’m just going to go and get a drink. Do you want some? I think they’ve only got water, though; no tea.”
“No, that’d be great.” I replied. “Yes, please.”
Frank gave me one of his small smiles and squeezed my shoulder as he got to his feet, heading away into the bowels of the library. I just sat there, trying to get over the shock. I twiddled my thumbs on the tabletop, flicking my nails against each other, then rested my cane across my lap and stared at the thin lines down the length of the shaft. My hand subconsciously went to my neck, and I clutched the amulet.
Is it a case of when your number’s up, your number’s up? But doesn’t that mean in turn that surely, I will die at the Lidérc’s hands? Would I have ever met Frank if that was the case? Frank, who can save me?
I decided to distract myself in some way and went back to the laptop, wiggling my finger on the mouse pad to snap away from the screensaver. I returned to the search engine, and – glancing at the open book – typed Hattyúpatak final purge. Not much appeared – and again, the majority of what did was in Hungarian – but when I selected the first link, I didn’t even read anything at first. As soon as the page loaded, my eyes snapped to a painting at the side, depicting the legend.
Under a dark red sky and against the backdrop of a few small houses, a crowd of men, women and children were cowering and screaming: looking on at a huge dark cloud-like mass of distorted devilish faces. Between the two stood a bearded man in full priest garb, his arms held high in the air as though banishing. But his face was full of shock and horror, because in front of him was a young woman on her knees. And there was a horned, scaly creature on her shoulders, with its head buried in her neck and huge flames leaping off its back.
“You look busy.”
My head shot up and I saw Frank coming over, two cups of water in his hands. He smiled. “Busy as a bee, I could say.”
I blinked, and focused my eyes on a knot in the wood beside the book. I tried to keep a straight face, but something must have dropped, like a stone into a pool. I almost felt Frank’s own smile disappear.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
I said it too quickly, and knew it. I could have kicked myself. I’d always been a terrible liar. Apa always used to say he could tell when I was telling him white lies, no matter how small, even over the phone. And it could be so small, like a time when I was messing around in the study, and had ended up somehow managing to kick his printer off the desk. It hadn’t broken – and I’d put it back in the same place – but even so, that night when he came home from work, he’d looked at me and asked, “have you done something in here?”. He knew right away.
“That doesn’t look like a ‘nothing’ face,” Frank said cautiously. “Are you sure you’re alright, Bee?”
&nb
sp; His eyes didn’t leave. I felt them searching for mine and glanced up quickly to appease him, but my lips were pressed tightly together. “I’m fine,” I replied, sharper than I’d meant to as tears welled up. I swallowed them back forcefully and stood. “Just give me a moment.”
I didn’t go far, only outside. It was still raining, so I stayed under the shelter of the building. Drops bounced off the pavement. The sky was grey and the whole street looked like a graphite drawing, waiting to be smudged. Just like it had on my eighteenth birthday.
In the back of my mind, I wondered if coming to London had been a huge mistake. In my attempt to escape from one thing, I’d tried to find refuge in something else that could be just as painful – if not more so. There was the rest of England who spoke English, and Scotland and Wales and Ireland. Of all the places I could have gone to, I had chosen with the least logic.
No matter where I turned my eyes, her starlit ones gazed back. I made myself concentrate on Frank, but that didn’t do much to sidetrack my angry thoughts. In my mind, he’d sounded exactly like her. When I’d looked up, I’d almost seen a flash of auburn hair walking towards me. In his English voice, speaking in English, and wearing that black jacket – which to my eyes, in that moment, was surely a thick pea coat.
I stared blindly into the rain. My silent snarling was as loud as thunder in my head, loud enough to bring the whole city to a standstill. My teeth clenched; I thought of how I should be grateful that they were still normal-sized, from the amount of times I’d ground them. They should have been blunt stumps by now.
I recognised Frank’s footsteps behind me before he was close enough to speak.
“You forgot your coat.” It was draped over his arm. “It’s cold out; I thought you might want it.”
I glanced at him; then gave a small smile. I went to reach out for the coat, but he quickly unfolded it and held it open for me. I slipped my arms into the sleeves before beginning to close the buttons at the front. “Thanks.”
He looked at me, concern in his eyes. “Are you okay?”
