by Brian Lumley
“Well, you’re right,” said Dragosani. “I haven’t years or months but just a few days. So … I wonder if there’s some way I might narrow my search down?”
“Ah!” said the other. “But then there’s the question of language. Do you wish to see Turkish language records?… Hungarian?… German? Is your interest purely Slavicist? Is it Christian or Ottoman? Do you have any specific points of reference—landmarks, as it were? All of the material here is at least three hundred years old, but some of it dates back seven centuries and more! As I’m sure you’re aware, the central span—which seems to be the seat of your interest—covers many decades of constant flux. Here are the records of foreign conquerors, yes, but we also have the records of those who thrust them out. Are you capable of understanding the texts of these works? They are, after all, half a millennium old. If you can understand them, then you’re a scholar indeed! I certainly can’t, not with any degree of accuracy—and I’ve been trained to read them.…”
And then, seeing Dragosani’s look of helplessness, he had added: “Sir, perhaps if you could be more specific…?”
Dragosani saw no reason for subterfuge. “I’m interested in the vampire myth, which seems to have had its roots right here—in Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia—and dates back, so far as is known, to the fifteenth century.”
The librarian took a pace back from him, lost his smile. Suddenly he seemed wary. “But you are surely not a tourist?”
“No, basically I’m Romanian, now living and working in Moscow. But what’s that got to do with it?”
The librarian, perhaps three or four years younger than Dragosani and obviously a little awed by his almost cosmopolitan appearance, seemed to be giving the matter a deal of consideration. He chewed his lip, frowned and was silent for long moments. But at last he said, “If you’ll take a look at them, you’ll note that those catalogues I gave you are mainly handwritten and penned in one uniform hand throughout. And I’ve already told you that there’s at least twenty years of work in them. Well, the man who did that work is still alive and lives not far away, in Titu. That’s towards Bucharest, about twenty-five miles.”
“I know the place,” said Dragosani. “I drove through there not half an hour ago. Do you think he could help me?”
“Oh, yes—if he wanted to.” That sounded cryptic.
“Well, go on—?”
The librarian seemed unsure, looked away for a moment. “Oh, I made a mistake two or three years ago, sent a couple of American “researchers” to see him. He wanted no truck with them, threw them out! A bit eccentric, you see? Since that time I’m more careful. We’ve had a good many requests of this nature, you understand. This ‘Dracula’ thing is something of an industry, apparently, in the West. And it’s this commercial aspect that Mr. Giresci is anxious to avoid. That’s his name, by the way: Ladislau Giresci.”
“Are you telling me that this man is an expert on vampirism?” Dragosani felt his interest quickening. “Do you mean to say that he’s been studying the legends, tracing their history through these documents, for twenty-odd years?”
“Well, among other things, yes, that’s what I’m saying. It’s been what you might call a hobby—or perhaps an obsession—with him. But a very useful obsession where the library has been concerned.”
“Then I have to go and see him! It might save me a great deal of time and wasted energy.”
The librarian shrugged. “Well, I can give you directions, and his address, but … it will be entirely up to him whether or not he’ll see you. It might help if you took him a bottle of whisky. He’s a great whisky man, when he can afford it—but the Scottish sort and not that filth they brew in Bulgaria!”
“You just give me his address,” said Dragosani. “He’ll see me, all right. Of that I can assure you.”
* * *
Dragosani found the place just as the librarian had described it, on the Bucharest road about a mile outside of Titu. On a small estate of wooden, two-storey houses set back from the road in a few acres of woodland, Ladislau Giresci’s place was conspicuous by its comparative isolation. All of the houses had gardens or plots of ground surrounding them and separating them from their neighbours, but Giresci’s house stood well away from all others on the rim of the estate, lost in a stand of pines, hedgerows run wild amid untended shrubbery and undergrowth.
The cobbled drive leading to the house itself had been narrowed by burgeoning hedges, where leafy creepers were throwing their tendrils across the cobbles; the gardens were overgrown and slowly returning to the wilderness; the house was visibly affected by wet rot in a fairly advanced state, and wore an atypical air of almost total neglect. By comparison, the other houses on the estate were in good order and their gardens well maintained. Some small effort had been made at maintenance and repair, however, for here and there at the front of the house an old board had been removed and a new one nailed in place, but even the most recent of these must be all of five years old. The path from the garden gate to the front door was likewise overgrown, but Dragosani persisted and knocked upon panels from which the last flakes of paint were fast falling.
In one hand he carried a string bag containing a bottle of whisky bought from the liquor store in Pitesti, a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, some fruit. The food was for himself (his lunch, if nothing else was available) and the bottle, as advised, for Giresci. If he was at home. As Dragosani waited, that began to seem unlikely; but after knocking again, louder this time, finally he heard movement from within.
The figure which finally opened the door to him was male, perhaps sixty years of age, and fragile as a pressed flower. His hair was white—not grey but white, like a crest of snow upon the hill of his brow—and his skin was even paler than Dragosani’s own, with a shine to it as if it were polished. His right leg was wooden, an old peg as opposed to any sort of modern prosthetic device, but he seemed to handle his disability with more than sufficient agility. His back was a little bent and he held one shoulder gingerly and winced when he moved it; but his eyes were keen, brown and sure, and as he enquired as to Dragosani’s business his breath was clean and healthy.
“You don’t know me, Mr. Giresci,” said Dragosani, “but I’ve learned something of you, and what I’ve learned has fascinated me. I suppose you could say I’m something of a historian, whose special interest lies way back in old Wallachia. And I’ve been told that no one knows the history of these parts better than you.”
“Hmm!” said Giresci, looking his visitor up and down. “Well, there are professors at the university in Bucharest who’d dispute that—but I wouldn’t!” He stood blocking the way inside, seemingly uncertain, but Dragosani noted that his brown eyes went again to the string bag and the bottle.
“Whisky,” said Dragosani. “I’m partial to a drop and it’s hard stuff to come by in Moscow. Maybe you’ll join me in a glass—while we talk?”
“Oh?” Giresci barked. “And who said we were going to talk?” But again his eyes went to the bottle, and in a softer tone: “Scotch, did you say?”
“Of course. There’s only one real whisky, and that’s—”
“What’s your name, young man?” Giresci cut him off. He still blocked the way into his house, but his eyes held a look of interest now.
“Dragosani. Boris Dragosani. I was born in these parts.”
“And is that why you’re interested in their history? Somehow I don’t think so.” From frank and open scrutiny, now his eyes took on a look of wary suspicion. “You wouldn’t be representing any foreigners, would you? Americans, for example?”
Dragosani smiled. “On the contrary,” he said. “No, for I know you’ve had trouble with strangers before. But I’ll not lie to you, Ladislau Giresci, my interest is probably the same as theirs was. I was given your address by the librarian in Pitesti.”
“Ah?” said Giresci. “Is that so? Well, he knows well enough who I’ll see and who I won’t see, so it seems your credentials must be all right. But let’s hear it fro
m you now—from your own lips—and no holding back: just what is your interest?”
“Very well,” (Dragosani could see no way round it, and little point in hedging the matter anyway), “I want to know about vampires.”
The other stared hard at him, seemed not at all surprised. “Dracula, you mean?”
Dragosani shook his head. “No, I mean real vampires. The vampir of Transylvanian legend—the cult of the Wamphyri!”
At that Giresci gave a start, winced again as his bad shoulder jumped, leaned forward a little and grasped Dragosani’s arm. He breathed heavily for a moment and said: “Oh? The Wamphyri, eh? Well—perhaps I will talk to you. Yes, and certainly I’d appreciate a glass of whisky. But first you tell me something. You said you wanted to know about the real vampire, the legend. Are you sure you don’t mean the myth? Tell me, Dragosani: do you believe in vampires?”
Dragosani looked at him. Giresci was watching him keenly, waiting, almost holding his breath. And something told Dragosani that he had him. “Oh, yes,” he said softly, after a moment. “Indeed I do!”
“Hmmm!” The other nodded—and stood aside. “Then you’d better come in, Mr. Dragosani. Come in, come in—and we’ll talk.”
However dilapidated Giresci’s place might look from outside, inside it was as clean and neat as any cripple living on his own could possibly keep it. Dragosani was pleasantly surprised at the sense of order he felt as he followed his host through rooms panelled in locally crafted oak, where carpets patterned in the old Slavic tradition kept one’s feet from sliding on warmly glowing, age-polished pine boards. However rustic, the place was warm and welcoming—on the one hand. But on the other—
Giresci’s penchant—his all-consuming “hobby” or obsession—was alive and manifest in every room. It saturated the atmosphere of the house in exactly the same way as mummy-cases in a museum inspire a sense of endless aeons of sand and antique mystery—except that here the picture was of bitter mountain passes and fierce pride, of cold wastes and aching loneliness, of a procession of endless wars and blood and incredible cruelties. The rooms were old Romania. This was Wallachia.
The walls of one room were hung with old weapons, swords, pieces of armour. Here was an early sixteenth-century arquebusier, and here a vicious barbed pike. A black, pitted cannonball from a small Turkish cannon held open a door (Giresci had found it on an ancient battlefield near the ruins of a fortress close to Tirgoviste) and a pair of ornate Turkish scimitars decorated the wall over the fireplace. There were terrible axes, maces and flails, and a badly battered and rusty cuirass, with the breastplate hacked almost in half from the top. The wall of the corridor which divided the main living room from the kitchen and bedrooms was hung with framed prints or likenesses of the infamous Vlad princes, and with boyar family genealogies. There were family crests and motifs, too, complicated battle maps, sketches (from Giresci’s own hand) of crumbling fortifications, tumuli, earthworks, ruined castles and keeps.
And books! Shelf upon shelf of them, most of them crumbling—and many quite obviously valuable—but all rescued by Giresci wherever he had found them over the years: in sales, old bookshops and antique shops, or from estates fallen into poverty or ruin along with the once-powerful aristocracy. All in all, the house was a small museum in itself, and Giresci the sole keeper and curator.
“This arquebusier,” Dragosani remarked at one point, “must be worth a small fortune!”
“To a museum or a collector, possibly,” said his host. “I’ve never looked into the question of value. But how’s this for a weapon?” And he handed Dragosani a crossbow.
Dragosani took it, weighed it in his hand, frowned. The weapon was fairly modern, heavy, probably as accurate as a rifle, and very deadly. The interesting thing was that its “bolt” was of wood, possibly lignumvitae, with a tip of polished steel. Also, it was loaded. “It certainly doesn’t fit in with the rest of your stuff,” he said.
Giresci grinned, showing strong square teeth. “Oh but it does! My ‘other stuff,’ as you put it, tells what was, what might still be. This crossbow is my answer to it. A deterrent. A weapon against it.”
Dragosani nodded. “A wooden stake through the heart, eh? And would you really hunt a vampire with this?”
Giresci grinned again, shook his head. “Nothing so foolish,” he said. “Anyone who seeks to hunt down a vampire has to be a madman! I am merely eccentric. Hunt one? Never! But what if a vampire decided to hunt me? Call it self-protection, if you will. Anyway, I feel happier with it in the house.”
“But why would you fear such a thing? I mean—all right, I’m in agreement with you that such creatures have existed and still do, possibly—but why would one of them bother itself with you?”
“If you were a secret agent,” said Giresci (at which Dragosani smiled inside), “would you be happy—would you ever feel safe—knowing that some outsider knew your business, your secrets? Of course you wouldn’t. And what of the Wamphyri? Now … I think that perhaps the risk is a very small one—but twenty years ago when I bought this weapon I wasn’t so sure. I had seen something which would stay with me for the rest of my life. Such creatures really were, yes, and I knew about them. And the more I looked into their legend, their history, the more monstrous they became. In those days I could not sleep for my nightmares. Buying the crossbow was like whistling in the dark, I suppose: it might not keep away the dark forces, but at least it would let them know that I wasn’t afraid of them!”
“Even if you were?” said Dragosani.
Giresci’s keen eyes looked deep into his own. “Of course I was,” he finally answered. “What? Here in Romania? Here under these mountains? In this house, where I’ve amassed and studied the evidence? I was frightened, yes. But now.…”
“Now?”
The other pulled a half-disappointed face. “Well I’m still here, alive after all these years. Nothing has ‘happened’ to me, has it? And so now … now I think that maybe they are, after all, extinct. Oh, they existed—if anyone knows that, I do—but perhaps the last of them has gone forever. I hope so, anyway. But what about you? What do you say, Dragosani?”
Dragosani gave the weapon back. “I say keep your crossbow, Ladislau Giresci. And I say look to its maintenance. Also, I say be careful who you invite into your house!”
He reached into his inside pocket for a packet of cigarettes, froze as Giresci aimed the crossbow directly at his heart across a distance of only six or seven feet and took off the safety catch. “But I am careful,” said the other, still staring directly into his eyes. “We apparently know so much, you and I. I know why I believe, but what of you?”
“Me?” inside his jacket, Dragosani slipped his issue pistol from its underarm holster.
“A stranger in search of a legend, apparently. But such a knowing stranger!”
Dragosani shrugged, palmed the grip of his gun, began to turn its muzzle towards Giresci. At the same time he turned slightly to the right. Perhaps Giresci was insane. A pity. Also a pity that there would be a hole right through Dragosani’s jacket and powder burns on the lining, but—
Giresci put on the crossbow’s safety, set it down on a small table. “Too cool by far,” he laughed, “for a vampire faced with a wooden stake! And you know: the pressure on that wooden bolt is set to transfix a man but not pass right through him and out the back. That would be no good. Only when the stake is in place is the creature truly immobilized, and—” His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped.
Grey as death, Dragosani had taken out his gun, applied the safety, placed it beside the crossbow on the table. “The pressure on that,” he rasped, “is sufficient to blow your heart right out through your backbone! I also saw the mirrors on the walls of the corridor … and the way you looked into them as I passed. Too many mirrors by far, I thought. And the crucifix on the door, and doubtless another around your neck—for all the good they’d be. Well, and am I a vampire then, old man?”
“I’m not sure what you are.” The other shook
his head. “But a vampire? No, not you. You came in out of the sun, after all. But think: a man, seeking me out, specifically desiring to know about the Wamphyri—even knowing that name: Wamphyri, which few if any others in the whole world know! Why, wouldn’t you be cautious?”
Dragosani breathed deeply, relaxed a little. “Well, your ‘caution’ nearly cost you your life!” he said bluntly. “So before we go any further, are there any more tricks up your sleeve?”
Giresci gave a shaky laugh. “No, no,” he said. “No, I think we understand each other now. Come, let’s leave it at that for the moment. And here, let’s see what else you have in that bag of yours.” He took the string bag from Dragosani and directed him to sit at a dining table close to an open window. “It’s shady there,” he explained. “Cooler.”
“The whisky’s yours,” said Dragosani. “The rest was for my lunch—except I’m not sure now that I feel like eating! That crossbow of yours is a bloody thing!”
“Of course you can eat, of course you can! What? Cheese for lunch? No, I wouldn’t hear of it. I’ve woodcocks in the oven, done to a turn by now. A Greek recipe. Delicious. Whisky as an aperitif; bread to soak up the fat of the birds; cheese for afterwards. Good! An excellent lunch. And while we eat, I’ll tell you my story, Dragosani.”
The younger man allowed himself to be placated, accepted a glass which the other produced from an old oak cabinet, allowed him to pour him a liberal whisky. Then Giresci hobbled off for a moment to the kitchen, and soon Dragosani began to sniff the air as the sweet odour of roasting meat slowly filled it. And Giresci had been right, it was delicious. Another moment and he was back with a smoking oven tray, directing Dragosani to get plates from a drawer. He tipped a brace of small birds on to his guest’s plate, one on to his own. There were baked potatoes, too, and again Dragosani got the lion’s share.
