by Royce Prouty
A thin, wiry man whom I had not previously met delivered my dinner. He was malodorous and I hoped he didn’t get any on the food. When he left he locked the door behind him, and despite my unease I ate like a starving man. Two hours passed awaiting Arthur’s return, and I spent the time gazing out the window until all I could see was a dense cloud cover. Then the door lock clicked.
Arthur entered and said, “I trust your stay is pleasant.”
“Of course.” I offered him a chair in the parlor section.
“We cannot stay,” he said. “The Master is reviewing the manuscript.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about concluding the transaction.”
Arthur smiled. Not the most convincing of looks, but a smile. “You need not worry, Mr. Barkeley, you will be taken care of.”
“And the timing?”
“The Master operates . . . let us say, in his own time. Till then you are to here wait. You will receive your meals promptly.”
He left and locked the door. I didn’t like the idea of meals, as in plural. Not long ago I sat at the window in that very room wondering what blessings had been bestowed upon me that I might spend nights in Dracula’s Castle as honored guest, yet now I connived my escape in a room identical to the one where Jonathan Harker was driven mad. Perhaps that account was not fiction.
Sleep came hard, both from the time change and worry. More than a week passed with only my Romanian dictionary and phrase book and a map of the country, the latter delivered with a breakfast. Several more meals came and went, and I looked upon a night so clear, it looked like fresh paint, and with only days before a full moon it appeared as if searchlights looked down into the hills. Worry and dread have a creeping effect and provoke physical responses, so I exercised by walking the room. For excitement I watched occasional rain and lightning roll through the valley and memorized the map.
When you lose your freedom of movement, the cadence of time changes, for it is more deliberate, less relative. You always know what time it is when you are not free. When all else fails . . .
“When all else fails,” my brother used to say, “don’t start praying. You should have been praying a long time ago.”
“I know, Berns, I know.” My mumble crossed the room and echoed back, startling me slightly. That was not the time to pray; that was the time to figure out what had ensnared me.
Here is what I knew: That I was perhaps the only human in the last hundred years or so to see the original epilogue, that the original had made it to first edition printing, and that following the fire it was replaced with a different ending. The epilogue obviously pointed to the burial site of the fictional character, but the deeds of the manuscript buyer suggested strongly that the site was not fictional. If that was in fact true, then the buyer was convinced he could locate the reliquary that held the remains of his ancestor, Dracula. If so, then the bones of Dracula would hold many times more value than the literary treasure. Who knew how much more value? For the buyer, the value would probably not even be measured in dollars.
But why this talk of warring families? Both Mara and Alexandru alluded to it. Could it be that I was helping only one family member over another, or even more, to find the treasure? That would certainly explain the buyer’s insistence of anonymity.
I thought of Berns and wished for his counsel. What would he have been doing at that time? Probably reading Scripture. And then it hit me: The passages in the epilogue were similar to what I had tackled in Bible study, the King James Version. It was written in similar style to what my brother had taught me—that the dates, structure, and form were equally important to understanding the meaning of a passage. So I decided to try to decipher what I could of the directions. The trick to these was not necessarily to start at the beginning, but anywhere you can solve, like a crossword puzzle. Just get one piece of it down on paper and build from there.
Where the Juden await judgement. I noticed that the assistant left out the middle e in judgment in his notes. But Stoker’s spelling, by contrast, always followed British convention, which included the extra vowel. Maybe a clue, maybe not; I filed it away in my head.
Juden is the German word for Jews, and where they awaited judgment would be in a cemetery.
The grave lies in a Jewish cemetery?
Commonly in European history, Christians refused to be buried alongside nonbelievers. One could often find Jews and people of other religions interred down the road from a cross-filled ossuary. Unlike Christian burial grounds, which often encircled their wooden churches, the Jewish cemeteries took the form of a classic potter’s field: no caretaker, and only periodically tended to by volunteers. So it made sense that the workers in the epilogue could perform their task and flee without being seen.
Most directions dictate generalities first, leading the reader to an area, followed by specific directions involving landmarks, such as a natural outcropping or some other geological feature that should last for at least a couple centuries. If the direction-writer wrote in the present tense it referred to something he was looking at, whereas if he wrote in the past tense it normally meant a place that history had landmarked.
I also reminded myself that if the author chose singular he meant singular, and plural meant plural.
Finally, I thought, when the author uses an action verb, it is important to visualize the act.
Shading their eyes in the sunrise. They, plural, are looking east.
I heard the door unlock, and a grim-looking Arthur walked toward me. “The Master is not satisfied.”
“I cannot give the documents a stronger opinion of authenticity than—”
He interrupted. “That it is real is not at issue. That he can use it matters only.”
Having begun the treasure hunt myself, I knew exactly what he meant, and guessed that the buyer was stuck on the directions. I shrugged. “Perhaps I can be of assistance.”
“I shall return,” Arthur said.
He left and returned within an hour, instructing me to follow and bring any reading glasses I might need. Down the long hallway to the wooden door, again descending the stone stairwell with the red lanterns to the earthen basement, I stepped inside and was immediately assaulted by a horrible smell—carrion. The wall sconces again dimly lit three of the room’s boundaries. On one of the large wooden tables lay the original manuscript open to the epilogue. Beside it was a detailed topographical map of Romania and a lantern.
Arthur directed me to sit with my back to the darkness. “The Master wishes to know the place described.”
“Okay . . .” Caution suggested I pretend only to understand what Arthur wanted as he revealed it, since making copies had been forbidden from the start. Playing dumb, I turned the page.
Arthur cleared his throat. “There is no need to view the other pages.”
I put my hands in my lap and looked up at him. “It might help if I knew some backstory.”
“We seek a singular place.”
I simply stared back, thinking it best to stay mute and wait for clarification. I did not have to wait long. At once I sensed someone standing behind me. My blood rushed, and my nose confirmed it just as the deep voice spoke.
“I am a very patient man.” The voice was without question the one I had heard on my first trip, this time within inches of my right ear, speaking just above a whisper, annunciating each syllable formally. “I have waited many . . . many years for this.” He breathed through his mouth with a detectable hiss. “No longer will I wait, for if you cannot tell me where this is, I have no further use for you.”
“I understand,” I said, not turning to look at him. I didn’t need to be told that “no further use” meant disposal.
“I do not think you do,” he said. “I smell in you . . . hesitation. You know something, orfan.” I wanted to speak, but could not. He whispered close enough to my ear that I could feel his breath. “T
ell me what you know.”
I pointed to the page. “To be clear, you are looking for the burial site described here.”
“Yes.”
“Where the Juden await judgement. Whoever it is is buried in a Jewish cemetery.”
His hand touched my right shoulder and gave a squeeze. “This much is clear.” He patted my shoulder. “Continua.” There was no heat to his touch, nor was there cold. My blood pulsed so hard that my ears rang.
“And here, shading their eyes in the sunrise, they are facing east.”
“Good. Very good.” His finger traced a line across my shoulders as he stepped around me to the opposite side of the table to sit. The wood did not creak when his weight alighted.
I did not know what to expect in his face, but it was long, very long, with a perfectly rounded lower jaw devoid of the jowls one expects when seeing a man past middle age. A thin, trim mustache covered the area over his lip. His skin was smooth, yet gave no hint of surgical enhancement. He had a straight Roman nose, bony cheekbones, and straight dark hair. No widow’s peak. It might have been the light, since the lantern shone directly down on the paper, but his eyes looked red and were positioned an odd distance away from the bridge of his nose. His skin was pale, most noticeable against a long woolen coat of black with the collar turned up.
“I believe I can do business with you,” he said. “Continue.”
The Book of Isaiah flashed into my brain, and the story of how aspiring prophets were charged with interpreting the king’s dreams, rejects tossed to the potter’s field. I looked back down at the page. “I believe the first couple passages direct the reader to a general area. Then it gets more specific, until finally tripping over stones.”
His hands came into view in the lantern light as he placed them on the table. The fingers were long and perfectly manicured. His could have been the hands of an eye surgeon. The nails looked longer than men wear, and appeared to be filed to points.
“Tell me,” he said. “My first tongue is not of English; what is this . . . Ladies River?”
“If the name of a place does not match anything on a map, then look to names in neighboring countries or words that mean the same in the language of the native land.” I thought of words for ladies. “Femei . . . doamne . . .” I thought of Latin. “Dominae . . .”
“Da,” he said, lifting a hand to stop me. “Rivulus Dominarum.” He closed his eyes and took a long deep breath through his nostrils. “I know it from my youth. That is original name of—”
“Baia Mare.” My own place of birth. I knew it when he said Rivulus and recalled the church’s cornerstone engraved with Riv Dom. “Where the last sweet chestnuts grow . . .” A five-centuries-old grove of chestnut trees grew near the city, I knew. The trees were locally famous, the farthest north of the Mediterranean these trees grew, and the city even hosted an annual chestnut festival, which I had once attended as a child.
He nodded, no smile. “And what of this Bethany Home?”
I leaned my forehead on my right hand, shading my eyes like a visor, and stared at the paper in thought. If it was a home or a house, it was a structure. What structure was there a century and a half ago that was expected to survive the millennium? Historic buildings . . . variations of Bethany . . . home . . . heim . . . doma . . . casa . . .
“Casa,” I said. Bethany. Beth? “Elisabeta.”
The remains of a castle sat across the square from Stephen’s Tower, where I had stood only weeks ago. It was the oldest structure in town, dating to 1440, and the site of a castle some Transylvanian prince built for his wife, Elisabeta. These days the building, Casa Elisabeta, housed art exhibits.
“You have a brain worth keeping,” the Master said. I still did not know his name. “Continue to use it.”
I read the page again, now focusing on the use of the word sunrise. “You can see their fate at sunrise . . .” I intoned. “Looking east is Stephen’s Tower. Was it ever a prison?”
“It was used as many things over the centuries,” he said, “and most likely a prison at some time.”
I was stumped on wicked men know their destination. Did it have something to do with the tower as a prison? As I tried to make sense of it, I was reminded of my own insight about the author’s use of action verbs. You can see. What do you see when you’re at the casa looking at the tower? It is a simple stone structure topped with a tall steeple and . . . a cross. An Eastern Orthodox cross.
The top crossbar of the Eastern cross is for the head. The second crossbar, the long one, is for the arms, and the bottom crossbar, tilted at an angle, is for the feet. The bottom bar is tilted from upper left to lower right to the viewer, and it is believed that the souls of good men are pointed upward, but the souls of wicked men point down.
The next line read It is but five minutes that way. So in all likelihood the cross was pointing in a specific direction.
I said, “The cross at the top of Stephen’s—”
He raised his voice: “I do not wish to hear of this cross.”
“It points . . .” I tried to visualize but could not. “I don’t know what direction it points.”
“Enough,” Arthur said. “The object points in some direction from there. Let us continue.”
I continued, “It is but five minutes to the Jewish Cemetery.”
“That would be in town,” said Arthur. “One does not get far in five minutes.”
“And it would depend on the mode of transport,” I said. My concentration was interrupted several times as the Master’s smell assaulted my nose. I stood to pace the room.
“I smell repulsion,” the Master said. His demeanor clearly conveyed Get used to it.
I tried to focus on the clues again. Five minutes in any direction put you still in the heart of the city, and no cemeteries lay inside that radius, only concrete and buildings and walking areas. Walking . . . walking . . . distance.
“Distance in minutes,” I said, returning to my seat. “Minutes of arc.”
“Da,” said the Master, betraying his excitement with his speedy response. “One-point-eight-six kilometers per minute.”
“That would be at the Equator,” I said. “That’s the formula for zero degrees north, but it would be less distance at the forty-seventh parallel.” I looked at the map and estimated six miles in any direction from Baia Mare and found it to the east. “Baia Sprie, if the marker points east.”
“Foarte bine.” Well done.
“The rest of these directions are specific to local landmarks,” I said, “and I have not been there.”
“You will,” he said.
And in the time it took to stand, he had disappeared into the dark end of the room.
There is something unsettling about meeting a creature not human. Equally disturbing is recognizing that what you experienced belongs to the outliers of acceptable conversation, perhaps more aptly reserved for late-night radio call-in shows. It was hard enough to convince myself of what I had seen. The notion of trying to explain it to another was unthinkable.
This I pondered while sequestered in the castle tower for two days. My thoughts no longer dwelt on contractual acceptability and payment, but instead on how I might survive long enough to escape. And yet my mind and emotions adapted over the long hours to the point where I had, if not a plan, per se, an approach to my precarious situation.
On the third morning, Arthur walked into my room and told me I had ten minutes to get ready.
“Bring your jacket,” he said, “and your device.”
My GPS. Of course.
I followed him down the stairs to the front entrance where the black Suburban waited, and we sped in the direction of , turning north on Route 1, the main highway—loosely defined to be sure—through the Carpathians. I suspected we were bound for Baia Mare to resume the search for Dracula’s tomb. Clearly on a schedule himself, our driver aggressi
vely covered ground by muscling out lesser vehicles and horse carts, disregarding caution signs. Late afternoon we approached the city. The weather had cleared, still breezy and cool, with only a hint of disturbance hovering north over the Carpathians.
Pulling into the city center, we parked in the square facing Stephen’s Tower. The driver stayed while Arthur and I walked toward Casa Elisabeta. No longer a grand residence, it still retained the impressive air of ancient nobility. I moved to its entrance, the same as where the author would have stood, and turned toward the Tower.
“It is as you thought?” asked Arthur.
Stephen’s Tower was an impressive, lofty, square structure of stone and arched windows, with a tall mansard roofline and four corner turrets, each raising a cross at its peak. In the middle of the roof stood two additional large Eastern crosses. All six crosses faced east–west, with the bottom crossbars tilted upward on the sunset side, downward on the sunrise side.
Wicked men know their way—east.
“Baia Sprie,” I said.
“How far?”
I consulted the GPS to confirm. “I would say five and a half miles.”
“Good,” he said. “You should make it by nightfall.”
I looked at him, and he gave no expression. “You want me to walk?”
“No,” he said, handing me a flashlight, “but the Master does.”
“Forgive me for asking, but does the Master have a name?”
“Yes,” he answered, and walked back to the Suburban.
At some point, if you’re human, you can’t help but wonder if your hardships are worth it. I glanced at the Suburban, then at the local people in the vicinity, and I thought of my brother and knew what he’d say, even now: Someone else has got it worse.
I started walking.
Baia Mare spreads across a valley split by the River in a region that resembles much of West Virginia. Softly sculpted with thick forest cover, Baia Sprie is the next town ascending the hills to the east via the river road, Route 18, as it climbs in elevation, a modern, two-lane, twisting blacktop road with sporadic guardrail protection. As in most of Romania, the alternate parallel route was the original connecting road between towns, barely more than a path, and the route of choice for horse-drawn carts. I knew that if I was looking for an ancient cemetery on an old road, it would connect to the older path and not Route 18.
