by Dan Simmons
With the older boyars and their wives still writhing on the stakes, I began marching the able-bodied in the crowd toward my castle on the Argeş River, some fifty miles away. The weakest did not survive the three-day march without provisions, but, then, I had no use for the weakest. The survivors—the strongest—I used to rebuild Castle Dracula.
The castle was old and abandoned, even then, its towers tumbled down and its great hall fallen in. I had found it and sheltered there during my flight from the Sultan and Hunyadi and resolved then and there to rebuild it as Castle Dracula, my eyrie and final retreat.
The location was perfect—high on a remote ridge above the Argeş River, which cut its deep canyon from Wallachia through the Făgăraş Mountains into the south of Transylvania. There was a single road along the Argeş—narrow, dangerous in the best of seasons, and easily defensible once the castle was rebuilt. No enemy, neither Turk nor Christian, could approach me in Castle Dracula without advance warning.
But first it had to be rebuilt.
I had had a kiln built along the river’s banks, and the bricks from that kiln were passed uphill from man to man (or woman to woman) in my human chain of boyar slaves. The local villagers were amazed to see such slaves, dressed as they still were in the rags of their boyar Easter finery.
From horseback, I directed the reconstruction of this ancient Serbian ruin. The five towers were rebuilt, two dominating the highest point on the ridge, the three others lower on the northern slope. The thick walls were made doubly thick with brick and stone so as to repulse even the heaviest Turkish cannonade. The battlements were high, eighty feet and more, and they grew out of the stone of the cliff itself so they appeared to be a sheer thousand-foot wall. The central courtyards and donjons conformed themselves to the space between the great towers, as well as to the rough topography of the ridgetop that was less than one hundred feet wide at its widest. A great earthen ramp was extended out from the southern cliff face, and from that ramp a wooden bridge allowed the only access to the keep. The center of that bridge was always raised, and was designed so that it could not only be lowered to allow entry but could, with the severing of two great cables, be dropped into the chasm below.
In the center of Castle Dracula, I had the few surviving boyar slaves deepen the well so that it fell through solid stone more than a thousand feet to an underground tributary of the Argeş. The subterranean river had carved its own caverns in the mountain, and I directed the construction of an escape passage from that well to the caves that opened onto the Argeş a thousand feet below. Even today, I am told, the caves along the river there are referred to by the villagers as pivniţă, or “cellar.” With its escape routes and deep donjons, its caverns and sunken torture pits, Castle Dracula indeed had its “cellar.”
A few of the boyars survived the four-month reconstruction of my new home. I had them impaled in rows on the cliffs overlooking the village.
In the summer of 1457, I crossed the Carpathians at the pass at Bran. Hunyadi was locked in mortal combat with the Turks at Belgrade, but I had other scores to settle. On the plains near Tîrgovişte, I attacked the retreating army of Vladislav II, my father’s assassin. In single combat I bested him. When he asked for mercy, I ran the point of my short sword up under his jaw, through his brain, and out through the top of his skull. I displayed that skull for the rest of that summer on the top of the highest wall of Tîrgovişte. Songs were sung of it. I drank the Sacrament from Vladislav’s headless corpse.
My enemies were legion. I knew from the outset that I must command respect and fear from everyone if I were to survive.
That winter the Genoese ambassadors to my court doffed their hats but left on the skullcaps they wore underneath. When I politely inquired as to why they remained covered in my presence, one of the ambassadors answered: “This is our custom. We are not obliged to take our skullcaps off under any circumstances, even in an audience with the Sultan or the Holy Roman Emperor himself.”
I remember nodding judiciously. “In all fairness, I wish to recognize your customs,” I said at last. The ambassadors smiled and bowed, their skullcaps still on. “And to strengthen them,” I added.
I called in my guards, chose the longest nails I could find, and had them driven in a circle through the caps and into the skulls of the screaming ambassadors. I drove the first nail into each one, saying as though in a litany, “Witness, this is the manner in which Vlad Dracula will strengthen your customs.”
The woman was brought before me for defying my court edict that each maiden of the kingdom would preserve her virginity until given permission by her Royal Prince to lose it. The stake was five feet long and I had it heated over the fire until it was red hot. As my dinner guests, including ambassadors from six nearby nations, watched, I had the red-hot stake driven through the woman’s vagina, up through her entrails, and continued driving it until it emerged through her screaming mouth.
I fortified the island of Şnagov north of the village of Bucharest, enlarging and adding to the ancient monastery there. In the central hall, I had laid a tiled floor with alternating squares of black and red. To amuse myself I would have a group of courtiers scurry around the floor while the court orchestra played a brief tune and the soldiers held their spears inward around the perimeter, assuring that none would escape. The courtiers would each have to choose a tile.
At the end of the tune I would throw a heavy lever and several of the waxed tiles would drop open, the trapdoors sending the screaming courtiers thirty feet to sharpened stakes in the pit below. Almost five hundred years later, in 1932, an archaeologist friend sent me a photograph from the excavations on Şnagov Island: remnants of the stakes were still visible; the skulls were still stacked in neat rows.
It was three winters after the rebuilding of Castle Dracula that one of my mistresses announced that she was pregnant, thus hoping to gain precedence over my other concubines. Assuming that she was lying, I asked her if she would mind being examined. When she demurred, I had her brought to the main hall while the court was assembled.
She protested her love, her sorrow for her error, but I ordered my bodyguards to proceed They sliced her womb open from vulva to breastbone and peeled back the walls of muscle and flesh while she writhed, still alive.
“Witness this!” I cried to the white faces staring up at me. My words echoed in the stone hall. “Let the whole world see where Vlad Dracula has been!”
Chapter Nineteen
KATE became aware of the pain before she was aware of anything else; she did not know who she was, where she was, or why the world seemed composed of separate stilettos of pure pain, but she knew that she hurt.
She swam up from a great depth, remembering the water above her face at the bottom of…of what?…of the fall that seemed to comprise all that she remembered of her previous life. She remembered lifting her face through that ceiling of water. She remembered beginning the climb, dragging her injured left arm behind her, blinking water and something heavier out of her eyes as she climbed upward through the mud and nettles and crumbling shale and aspen and thorny pìñon…
I remember the flames, I remember the taste of ashes. I remember the other bodies in the light from the ambulances and fire engines…
Kate gasped awake, blinking wildly. White ceiling. White bed. The functional sag of an i.v. bag. White walls and gray medical monitors.
Father O’Rourke leaned closer and touched her uninjured arm just above the plastic hospital bracelet there. “It’s all right,” he whispered.
Kate tried to speak, found her tongue too dry, her lips too swollen. She shook her head violently from side to side.
The priest’s bearded face was lined with worry, his eyes visibly assaulted by sadness. “It’s all right, Kate,” he whispered again.
She shook her head again and licked her lips. It was like speaking with cotton balls in her mouth, but she managed to make sounds. She had to explain something to O’Rourke before the tides of drugs and pain pulled her d
own under the ceiling of consciousness again. “No,” she croaked at long last.
O’Rourke squeezed her good hand with both of his.
“No,” she said again, trying to turn and hearing the i.v. rattle on its stand. She shook her head and felt the bandages thick and heavy on her forehead. “It’s not all right. Not all right.”
O’Rourke squeezed her hand, but he nodded. He understood.
Kate quit struggling and let the currents drag her under.
The young police detective—Lieutenant Peterson, Kate remembered through the shifting curtain of pain and drugs—came in the morning. The older, sad-looking sergeant stood by the door while the lieutenant sat in the empty visitor’s chair.
“Mrs. Neuman?” said the detective. He was moving a breath mint from one cheek to the other and the click of the candy against his teeth made Kate remember the sound her left arm made as she climbed the night before. No, two nights before, she reminded herself, using all of her energy to concentrate. It is Saturday. It was Thursday night that your life ended. It is Saturday now.
“Mrs. Neuman? You awake?”
Kate nodded.
“Can you talk? Can you understand me?”
She nodded again.
The lieutenant licked his lips and glanced at the sergeant, whose gaze remained unfocused or turned inward. “Well, Mrs. Neuman, I’ve got a few questions,” said the lieutenant, flipping open a small notebook.
“Doctor,” said Kate.
The lieutenant raised his eyebrows. “You want I should call the doctor? You feeling bad?”
“Doctor,” repeated Kate, gritting her teeth against the pain in her jaw and neck when she spoke. “Doctor Neuman.”
The police lieutenant rolled his eyes slightly and clicked his ballpoint pen. “Okay—Doctor Neuman…you wanna tell me what happened Thursday night?”
“Tell me,” gritted Kate.
The lieutenant stared.
She took a breath. It had been hours since her last shot and everything hurt beyond reason. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “Tom dead? Julie dead? Baby dead?”
The young lieutenant pursed his lips. “Now, Mrs. Neuman…what we have to concentrate on right now is getting some details so we can do our job. Then you concentrate on getting better. Your friend, Father Whatshisname, he’ll be back pretty soon—”
Kate used her good hand to grasp the lieutenant’s wrist with a strength that obviously shocked him. “Tom dead?” she rasped. “Julie dead? Baby dead?”
Lieutenant Peterson had to use his other hand to free his wrist. He sighed and said, “Now look, Mrs.—Doctor Neuman. My job is to get as much—”
“Yes,” said the sergeant. The older man’s gaze had shifted to Kate. “Yes, Doctor Neuman. Your ex-husband is dead. So is Ms. Strickland. And I’m afraid your adopted child also died in the fire.”
Kate closed her eyes. The other bodies on the gurneys as they loaded me aboard the ambulance in the glow of flames…carbon-black skin, blackened lips pulled back, teeth gleaming…the small body in the clear plastic bag made for small bodies… I didn’t dream it.
She opened her eyes in time to catch the glare the lieutenant was giving the older detective. Peterson looked back at her, obviously irritated. “I’m sorry, Doctor Neuman. You have our condolences.” He clicked his pen again. “Now, can you tell us what you remember from Thursday night?”
Fighting to stay afloat on the waves of pain from her arm and skull, fighting the currents that threatened again to pull her down into the dark, welcome depths, Kate formed each word with care while she told him everything she remembered.
She opened her eyes and it was night. Rectangles of reflected white light on the walls and the glow of a night-light on the panel behind her were the only illumination. O’Rourke lowered the book he had been reading in the dim light and scooted his chair closer. He was wearing the sweatshirt he had worn in Bucharest. “Hi,” he whispered.
Kate floated in and out. She concentrated on staying in.
“It’s the smack on your head,” O’Rourke said softly. “The doctor explained about the effects of the concussion, but I don’t think you were really awake when he was explaining.”
Kate formed the words carefully in her mind before allowing her lips to have them. “Not…dead,” she said.
O’Rourke bit his lip, then nodded. “No, you’re not dead,” he said.
She shook her head angrily. “Baby…” she said. For some reason, the “J” in Joshua hurt her jaw and head to say. She said it anyway “Joshua…not dead.”
O’Rourke squeezed her hand.
Kate did not squeeze back. “Not dead,” she said again, whispering in case any of the men in black were beyond the curtain or outside the door. “Joshua…” The pain made her head swim, made the undertow stronger. “Joshua is not dead.”
O’Rourke listened.
“Have to help,” she whispered. “Promise.”
“I promise,” said the priest.
Ken Mauberly came on Sunday morning when Kate was alone. Despite the pain, she could concentrate and speak. But the pain was still very bad.
She knew it would soon be worse as soon as she saw the administrator’s face.
Despite the condolences, Mauberly was all optimism and quiet cheeriness. “Thank God you were spared, Kate,” he said, adjusting his glasses and fiddling with the flowers he had brought. He set them in a vase and fluffed at them. “Thank God you were spared.”
Kate set her hand on the mass of bandages that was her right temple. It seemed to steady things a bit when she spoke. “Ken,” she said, surprised to note that her voice belonged to her again, “what is it?”
He froze with his hands still on the flowers.
“What is it, Ken? It’s something else. Tell me. Please.”
Mauberly sagged. He pulled a chair over and collapsed into it. There were tears behind his glasses when he spoke. “Kate, someone broke into the lab on the same night that…on the same night. They started fires in the biolab section, smashed seals, burned papers, trashed the computers, stole the floppy disks…”
Kate waited. He would never cry over vandalism.
“Chandra…” he began.
“They killed her,” said Kate. It was not a question.
Mauberly nodded and removed his glasses. “The FBI…oh, God, Kate, I’m sorry. The doctor and the staff psychologist said it was way too early to tell you and—”
“Who else?” demanded Kate. Her hand was on his forearm.
Mauberly took a breath. “Charlie Tate. He and Susan were working late when the intruders got in past security.”
“J-virus cultures?” asked Kate, wincing at the extra pain the “J” caused her. “Joshua’s blood samples?”
“Destroyed,” said Mauberly. “The FBI thinks that they were flushed down the disposal sink before the fire began.”
“Cloned copies?” said Kate. Her eyes were closed and she could see Susan McKay Chandra bent over an electron microscope eyepiece, Charlie Tate saying something with a laugh behind her. “Did they get the cloned copies in the Class-VI lab?”
“They’re all gone,” said Mauberly. “No one thought of sending cultures out of the building at this stage. If I’d only…” His voice caught on a high note of anguish. He touched Kate’s good arm with his soft fingers. “Kate, I’m sorry. You’ve been through hell and this is only making it worse. Concentrate on getting better. The FBI will find these people…whoever did this, the FBI will find them…”
“No,” whispered Kate.
“What was that?” Mauberly scooted closer with a screech of chairlegs on tile. “What, Kate?”
But she had closed her eyes and pretended to be gone.
The FBI had come and gone, the two doctors and half a dozen friends and another half-dozen co-workers had arrived and been shooed out by the red-haired nurse, and only Father O’Rourke was there when the last bands of late-September light painted the east wall orange. Kate opened her eyes and looked out the wi
ndow past the silhouette of the priest He seemed lost in thought as he leaned on the radiator at the window. The sunset was sending low bands of light directly down Sunshine Canyon into the west wing of the hospital. It was not quite seven P.M. and the hospital had a Sunday-evening quiet to it.
“O’Rourke?”
The priest turned away from the window and came to the chair by her bedside.
“Will you do something for me?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Help me find the people who killed Tom and Julie…” Blackened corpses, flesh scaled like the ashes of a log. Their bodies smaller, shrunken by flame. Brittle arms raised in a boxer’s stance. The gleam of teeth in a lipless smile.
“Yes,” said O’Rourke.
“More,” whispered Kate, grasping his large hand with her good right hand and the cast of her left hand. “Help me find Joshua.”
She felt his hesitation.
“No,” she said, her voice rising above a whisper but still in control, not hysterical. “The burned baby corpse wasn’t Josh’s…too big. Believe me. Will you help me find him?”
The priest hesitated only another few seconds before squeezing her hand again. “Yes,” he said. And then, after a minute when the sunlight faded from the east wall and the view outside the window grew suddenly darker, “Yes, I’ll help.”
Kate fell asleep holding his hand.
Chapter Twenty
KATE left the hospital on Monday, September 30, although her head still ached abominably, her left arm was in a temporary cast, and the doctors wanted her to stay at least another twenty-four hours. She did not feel that she had another twenty-four hours to spend in bed.
Because the part of the house that had not burned had been damaged by smoke and water, and because she would not have returned to that house under any circumstances, Kate took a room at the Harvest House hotel, not far from CDC. O’Rourke and other friends had retrieved some of her clothes from the undamaged bedroom of the house and Kate’s secretary, Arleen, had bought some new things for her. Kate wore the new things.
