The Keep ac-1

by F. Paul Wilson

  Her eyes roamed the courtyard. All quiet. There were piles of rubble strewn about the rear from the dismantling work, but no one was working now. All at breakfast, no doubt. What was taking so long? They should have let her go get him herself.

  Against her will, her thoughts drifted. She thought of Glenn. He had saved her life last night. If he hadn't held her back when he had, she would have been shot to death by the German sentries. Luckily, he had been strong enough to hold her until she came to her senses. She kept remembering the feel of him as he had pressed her against him. No man had ever done that—had ever been close enough to do that. The memory of it was good. It had stirred something in her that refused to return to its former quiescent state.

  She tried to concentrate on the keep and on Papa, forcing her thoughts away from Glenn...

  ... yet he had been kind to her, soothing her, convincing her to go back to her room and keep her vigil at the window. There was nothing to be done at the edge of the gorge. She had felt so utterly helpless, and he had understood. And when he had left her at her door, there had been a look in his eyes: sad, and something else. Guilt? But why should he feel guilty?

  She noticed a movement within the entrance to the tower and stepped across the threshold. All the light and warmth of the morning drained away from her as she did—like stepping out of a warm house into a blustery winter night. She backed up immediately and felt the chill recede as soon as her feet were back on the causeway. There seemed to be a different set of rules at work within the keep. The soldiers didn't appear to notice; but she was an outsider. She could tell.

  Papa and his wheelchair appeared, propelled from behind by a reluctant sentry who seemed embarrassed by the task. As soon as she saw her father's face, Magda knew something was wrong. Something dreadful had happened last night. She wanted to run forward but knew they would not let her. The soldier pushed the wheelchair to the threshold and then let go, allowing it to roll to Magda unattended. Without letting it come to a complete halt, she swung around behind and pushed her father onto the causeway. When they were halfway across and he had yet to speak to her, even to say good morning, she felt she had to break the silence.

  "What's wrong, Papa?"

  "Nothing and everything."

  "Did he come last night?"

  "Wait until we're over by the inn and I'll tell you everything. We're too close here. Someone might overhear."

  Anxious to learn what had disturbed him so, she hurriedly wheeled him around to the back of the inn where the morning sun shone brightly on the awakening grass and reflected off the white stucco of the building's wall.

  Setting the chair facing north so the sun would warm him without shining in his eyes, she knelt and gripped both his gloved hands with her own. He didn't look well at all; worse than usual; and that caused her a deep pang of concern. He should be home in Bucharest. The strain here was too much for him.

  "What happened, Papa? Tell me everything. He came again, didn't he?"

  His voice was cold when he spoke, his eyes on the keep, not on her: "It's warm here. Not just warm for flesh and bone, but warm for the soul. A soul could wither away over there if it stayed too long."

  "Papa—"

  "His name is Molasar. He claims he was a boyar loyal to Vlad Tepes."

  Magda gasped. "That would make him five hundred years old!"

  "He's older, I'm sure, but he would not let me ask all my questions. He has his own interests, and primary among them is ridding the keep of all trespassers."

  "That includes you."

  "Not necessarily. He seems to think of me as a fellow Romanian—a 'Wallachian,' as he would say—and doesn't appear to be particularly bothered by my presence. It's the Germans—the thought of them in his keep has driven him almost insane with rage. You should have seen his face when he talked about them."

  "His keep?"

  "Yes. He built it to protect himself after Vlad was killed."

  Hesitantly, Magda asked the all-important question: "Is he a vampire?"

  "Yes, I believe so," Papa said, looking at her and nodding. "At least he is whatever the word 'vampire' is going to mean from now on. I doubt very much that many of the old traditions will hold true. We are going to have to redefine the word—no longer in terms of folklore, but in terms of Molasar." He closed his eyes. "So many things will have to be redefined."

  With an effort, Magda pushed aside the primordial revulsion that welled up in her at the thought of vampires and tried to step back and analyze the situation objectively, allowing the long-trained, long-disciplined scholar within her to take over. "A boyar under Vlad Tepes, was he? We should be able to trace that name."

  Papa was staring at the keep again. "We may, and we may not. There were hundreds of boyars associated with Vlad throughout his three reigns, some friendly to him, some hostile ... he impaled most of the hostile ones. You know what a chaotic, fragmented mess the records from that period are: If the Turks weren't invading Wallachia, someone else was. And even if we did find evidence of a Molasar who was a contemporary of Vlad's, what would it prove?"

  "Nothing, I guess." She began filtering through her vast learning on the history of this region. A boyar, loyal to Vlad Tepes...

  Magda had always thought of Vlad as a blood-red blot on Romanian history. As son of Vlad Dracul, the Dragon, Prince Vlad was known as Vlad Dracula—Son of the Dragon. But he earned the name Vlad Tepes, which meant Vlad the Impaler, after his favorite method of disposing of prisoners of war, disloyal subjects, treacherous boyars, and virtually anyone else who displeased him. She remembered drawings she had seen depicting Vlad's St. Bartholomew's Day massacre at Amlas when 30,000 citizens of that unfortunate city were impaled on long wooden poles which were then thrust into the ground; the sufferers were left pierced through and suspended in the air until they died. There was occasionally a strategic purpose for impaling: In 1460 the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses of Turkish prisoners rotting in the sun outside Targoviste so horrified an invading army of Turks that they turned back and left Vlad's kingdom alone for a while.

  "Imagine," she mused, "being loyal to Vlad Tepes."

  "Don't forget that the world was very different then," Papa said. "Vlad was a product of his times; Molasar is a product of those same times. Vlad is still considered a national hero in these parts—he was Wallachia's scourge, but he was also its champion against the Turks."

  "I'm sure this Molasar found nothing offensive in Vlad's behavior." Her stomach turned at the thought of all those men, women, and children impaled and left to die, slowly. "He probably found it entertaining."

  "Who is to say? But you can see why one of the undead would gravitate to someone like Vlad: never a shortage of victims. He could slake his thirst on the dying and no one would ever guess that the victims had died from anything other than impalement. With no unexplained deaths around to raise questions, he could feast with no one suspecting his true nature."

  "That does not make him any less a monster," she whispered.

  "How can you judge him, Magda? One should be judged by one's peers. Who is Molasar's peer? Don't you realize what his existence means? Don't you see how many things it changes? How many cherished concepts assumed to be facts are going to wind up as so much garbage?"

  Magda nodded slowly, the enormity of what they had found pressing on her with new weight. "Yes. A form of immortality."

  "More than that! Much more! It's like a new form of life, a new mode of existence! No—that's not right. An old mode—but new as far as historical and scientific knowledge is concerned. And beyond the rational, look at the spiritual implications." His voice faltered. "They're... devastating."

  "But how can it be true? How?" Her mind still balked.

  "I don't know. There's so much to learn and I had so little time with him. He feeds on the blood of the living—that seems self-evident from what I saw of the remains of the soldiers. They had all been exsanguinated through the neck. Last night I learned that he does not reflect in a mi
rror—that part of traditional vampire lore is true. But the fear of garlic and silver, those parts are false. He appears to be a creature of the night—he has struck only at night, and appeared only at night. However, I doubt very much that he spends the daylight hours asleep in anything so melodramatic as a coffin."

  "A vampire," Magda said softly, breathily. "Sitting here with the sun overhead it seems so ludicrous, so—"

  "Was it ludicrous two nights ago when he sucked the light from our room? Was his grip on your arm ludicrous?"

  Magda rose to her feet, rubbing the spot above her right elbow, wondering if the marks were still there. She turned away from her father and pulled the sleeve up. Yes ... still there ... an oblong patch of gray-white, dead-looking skin. As she began to pull the sleeve back down, she noticed the mark begin to fade—the skin was returning to a pink healthy color under the direct light of the sun. As she watched, the mark disappeared completely.

  Feeling suddenly weak, Magda staggered and had to clutch at the back of the wheelchair to steady herself. Struggling to maintain a neutral expression, she turned back to Papa.

  She needn't have bothered—he was again staring at the keep, unaware that she had turned away.

  "He's somewhere in there now," he was saying, "waiting for tonight. I must speak to him again."

  "Is he really a vampire, Papa? Could he really have been a boyar five hundred years ago? How do we know this isn't all a trick? Can he prove anything?"

  "Prove?" he said, anger tingeing his voice. "Why should he prove anything? What does he care what you or I believe? He has his own concerns and he thinks I may be of use to him. 'An ally against the oulanders,' he said."

  "You mustn't let him use you!"

  "And why not? If he has need of an ally against the Germans who have invaded his keep, I just might go along with him—although I can't see what use I'd be. That's why I've told the Germans nothing."

  Magda sensed that the Germans might not be the only ones; he was holding back from her as well. And that wasn't like him.

  " Papa, you can't be serious!"

  "We share a common enemy, Molasar and I, do we not?"

  "For now, perhaps. But what about later?"

  He ignored her question. "And don't forget that he can be of great use to me in my work. I must learn all about him. I must talk to him again. I must!" His gaze drifted back to the keep. "So much is changed now ... have to rethink so many things..."

  Magda tried but could not comprehend his mood.

  "What's bothering you, Papa? For years you've said you thought there might be something to the vampire myth. You risked ridicule. Now that you're vindicated, you seem upset. You should be elated."

  "Don't you understand anything? That was an intellectual exercise. It pleased me to play with the idea, to use it for self-stimulation and to stir up all those rock-bound minds in the History Department!"

  "It was more than that and don't deny it."

  "All right ... but I never dreamed such a creature still existed. And I never thought I would actually meet him face to face!" His voice sank to a whisper. "And I in no way considered the possibility that he might really fear..."

  Magda waited for him to finish, but he did not. He had turned inward, his right hand absently reaching into the breast pocket of his coat.

  "Fear what, Papa? What does he fear?"

  But he was rambling. His eyes had strayed again to the keep while his hand fumbled in his pocket. "He is patently evil, Magda. A parasite with supranormal powers feeding on human blood. Evil in the flesh. Evil made tangible. So if that is so, where then does good reside?"

  "What are you talking about?" His disjointed thoughts were frightening her. "You're not making sense!"

  He pulled his hand from his pocket and thrust something toward her face. "This! This is what I'm talking about!"

  It was the silver cross she had borrowed from the captain. What did Papa mean? Why did he look that way, with his eyes so bright? "I don't understand."

  "Molasar is terrified of it!"

  What was wrong with Papa? "So? By tradition a vampire is supposed to—"

  "By tradition! This is no tradition! This is real! And it terrified him! It nearly drove him from the room! A cross!"

  Suddenly, Magda knew what had been so sorely troubling Papa all morning.

  "Ah! Now you see, don't you," he said, nodding and smiling a small sad smile.

  Poor Papa! To have spent all night with all that uncertainty. Magda's mind recoiled, refusing to accept the meaning of what she had been told.

  "But you can't really mean—"

  "We can't hide from a fact, Magda." He held up the cross, watching the light glint off its worn, shiny surface. "It is part of our belief, our tradition, that Christ was not the Messiah. That the Messiah is yet to come. That Christ was merely a man and that his followers were generally goodhearted people but misguided. If that is true..." He seemed to be hypnotized by the cross. "If that is true ... if Christ were just a man ... why should a cross, the instrument of his death, so terrify a vampire? Why?"

  "Papa, you're leaping to conclusions. There has to be more to this!"

  "I'm sure there is. But think: It's been with us all along, in all the folk tales, the novels, and the moving pictures derived from those folk tales. Yet who of us has ever given it a second thought? The vampire fears the cross. Why? Because it's the symbol of human salvation. You see what that implies? It never even occurred to me until last night."

  Can it be? she asked herself as Papa paused. Can it really be?

  Papa spoke again, his voice dull and mechanical. "If a creature such as Molasar finds the symbol of Christianity so repulsive, the logical conclusion is that Christ must have been more than a man. If that is true, then our people, our traditions, our beliefs for two thousand years, have all been misguided. The Messiah did come and we failed to recognize him!"

  "You can't say that! I refuse to believe it! There has to be another answer!"

  "You weren't there. You didn't see the loathing on his face when I pulled out the cross. You didn't see how he shrank away in terror and cowered until I returned it to the box. It has power over him!"

  It had to be true. It went against the most basic tenets of Magda's learning. But if Papa had said it, seen it, then it must be true. She yearned for something to say, something soothing, reassuring. But all that came out was a sad, simple, "Papa."

  He smiled ruefully. "Don't worry, child. I'm not about to throw away my Torah and seek out a monastery. My faith goes deep. But this does give one pause, doesn't it? It does raise the question that we could be wrong ... we all could have missed a boat that sailed twenty centuries ago."

  He was trying to make light of it for her sake, but Magda knew he was being flayed alive in his mind.

  She sank to the grass to think. And as she moved, she caught a flash of motion at the open window above. A glimpse of rust-colored hair. She clenched her fists as she realized that the window opened into Glenn's room. He must have heard everything.

  Magda kept watch for the next few minutes, hoping to catch him eavesdropping, but saw nothing. She was about to give up when a voice startled her.

  "Good morning!"

  It was Glenn, rounding the southern corner of the inn, a small wooden ladderback chair in each hand.

  "Who's there?" Papa asked, unable to twist around in his seat to see behind him.

  "Someone I met yesterday. His name is Glenn. He has the room across the hall from me."

  Glenn nodded cheerily to Magda as he walked around her and stood before Papa, towering over him like a giant. He wore woolen pants, climbing boots, and a loose-fitting shirt open at the neck. He set the two chairs down and thrust his hand toward her father.

  "And good morning to you, sir. I've already met your daughter."

  "Theodor Cuza," Papa replied hesitantly, with poorly veiled suspicion. He placed his gloved hand, stiff and gnarled, inside Glenn's. There followed a parody of a handshake, then Glenn indic
ated one of the chairs to Magda.

  "Try this. The ground's still too damp to sit on."

  Magda rose. "I'll stand, thank you," she said with all the haughtiness she could manage. She resented his eavesdropping, and she resented his intrusion into their company even more. "My father and I were just leaving anyway."

  As Magda moved toward the back of the wheelchair, Glenn laid a gentle hand on her arm.

  "Please don't go yet. I awoke to the sound of two voices drifting through my window, discussing the keep and something about a vampire. Let's talk about it, shall we?" He smiled.

  Magda found herself speechless, furious with the boldness of his intrusion and the casual presumption of his touching her. Yet she did not snatch her arm away. His touch made her tingle. It felt good.

  Papa, however, had nothing to hold him back: "You must not mention one word of what you just heard to anyone! It could mean our lives!"

  "Don't give yourself a moment's worry over that," Glenn said, his smile fading. "The Germans and I have nothing to say to each other." He looked back to Magda. "Won't you sit? I brought the chair for you."

  She looked at her father. "Papa?"

  He nodded resignedly. "I don't think we have too much choice."

  Glenn's hand slipped away as Magda moved to seat herself, and she felt a small, unaccountable void within her. She watched him swing the other chair around and seat himself on it backwards, straddling the ladderback and resting his elbows on the top rung.

  "Magda told me last night about the vampire in the keep," he said, "but I'm not sure I caught the name he gave you."

  "Molasar," Papa said.

  "Molasar," Glenn said slowly, rolling the name over on his tongue, his expression puzzled. "Mo ... la ... sar." Then he brightened, as if he had solved a puzzle. "Yes—Molasar. An odd name, don't you think?"

  "Unfamiliar," Papa said, "but not so odd."

  "And that," Glenn, said, gesturing to the cross still clutched in the twisted fingers. "Did I overhear you say that Molasar feared it?"