The Keep

  Stale!

  Matei slammed his hand down on the table. He could not take much more of this. With the knife still in his hand he marched into the bedroom and stood over the prone form of his wife still bundled under the covers.

  “The bread’s stale,” he said.

  “Then bake some fresh for yourself,” came the muffled reply.

  “You’re a miserable wife!” he cried in a hoarse voice. The handle of the knife was sweaty in his hand. His temper was reaching the breaking point.

  Ioan threw the covers off and rose to her knees on the bed, hands on hips, her black hair in wild disarray, her face puffy with sleep and fired with a rage that mirrored his own.

  “And you are a poor excuse for a man!”

  Matei stood and stared at his wife in shock. For a heartbeat he seemed to step outside himself to view the scene. It was not like Ioan to say such a thing. She loved him. And he loved her. But right now he wanted to kill her.

  What was happening? It was as if something in the air they breathed was bringing out the worst in them.

  And then he was back behind his own eyes, boiling with insensate rage, driving the knife toward his wife. He felt the impact rattle up his arm as the blade rammed into Ioan’s flesh, heard her scream in fear and pain. And then he turned and walked out, never turning back to see where the knife had struck, or whether Ioan was still alive or dead.

  As Captain Woermann tightened the collar on his tunic before going down to the mess for lunch, he glanced out his window and saw the professor and his daughter approaching the keep on the causeway. He studied the pair, taking a certain grim satisfaction in the knowledge that his decision to make the girl stay at the inn rather than at the keep, and to allow the two of them to meet freely and confer during the day, had been a good one. There had been greater harmony among the men with her out of sight, and she had not bolted despite the fact that she had been left unguarded. He had made the proper assessment of her: loyal and devoted. As he watched, he saw that they were embroiled in a considerably animated discussion.

  Something about the scene struck Woermann as wrong. He scrutinized them until he noticed that the old man’s gloves were off. He had yet to see the professor’s hands uncovered since his arrival. And Cuza seemed to be helping the chair along by pushing against the wheels.

  Woermann shrugged. Perhaps the professor was just having a good day. He trotted down the steps, strapping on his belt and holster as he went. The courtyard was a shambles, a confusion of jeeps, lorries, generators, and granite block torn from the walls. The men on the work detail were in the mess in the rear having lunch. They did not seem to be working so hard today as they had been yesterday; but then, they had no new death to spur them on.

  He heard voices raised from the gate and turned to look. It was the professor and the girl, arguing as the sentry stood by impassively. Woermann did not have to understand Romanian to know that there was contention between them. The girl seemed to be on the defensive but was holding her ground. Good for her. The old man seemed too much of a tyrant to Woermann, using his illness as a weapon against his daughter.

  But he seemed less ill today. His usually frail voice sounded strong and vibrant. The professor must be having a very good day indeed.

  Woermann turned and began walking toward the mess area. After a few firm steps, however, his pace faltered and slowed as his gaze canted to the right where an open arch sat dark and still, giving access via its stone gullet to the cellar and beyond.

  Those boots…those damned muddy boots…

  They haunted him, taunted him…something nasty about them. He had to check them again. Just once.

  He descended the steps quickly and hurried down the cellar hall. No need to prolong this. Just a quick look and then back up to the light. He snatched a lantern from the floor by the break in the wall, lit it, and then made his way down into the cold, silent night of the subcellar.

  At the base of the steps he spotted three large rats sniffing around in the slime and dirt. Grimacing with disgust, Woermann pawed for his Luger while the rats glared at him defiantly. By the time his weapon had been freed and a cartridge chambered, they had scurried away.

  Keeping the pistol raised before him, Woermann hurried over to the row of sheeted cadavers. He saw no more rats on the way. The question of the muddy boots had been blotted from his mind. All he cared about now was the condition of the dead soldiers. If those rats had been at them he would never forgive himself for delaying shipment of the remains.

  Nothing seemed amiss. The sheets were all in place. He lifted the covers one by one to inspect the dead faces, but found no sign that the rats had been gnawing at them. He touched the flesh of one of the faces—cold…icy cold and hard. Probably not at all appetizing to a rat.

  Still, he could take no chances now that he had seen rats here. The bodies would be shipped out first thing tomorrow morning. He had waited long enough. As he straightened and turned to leave, he noticed a hand of one of the corpses sticking out from under its sheet. He bent again to tuck it back under the cover but snatched his hand away as it came in contact with the dead fingertips.

  They were shredded.

  Cursing the rats, he held the lamp closer to see how much damage they had done. A crawling sensation ran down his spine as he inspected the hand. It was filthy. The nails were shattered and caked with dirt, the flesh of each fingertip torn and shredded almost to the bone.

  Woermann felt sick. He had seen hands like this once before. They had belonged to a soldier in the last war who had received a head wound and mistakenly had been pronounced dead. He had been buried alive. After awakening in his coffin he had clawed his way through a pine box and five or six feet of dirt. Despite his superhuman efforts, the poor fellow never made it to the surface. But before his lungs gave out, his hands had broken through to the air.

  And those hands, both of them, had looked like this. Shuddering, Woermann backed away toward the steps. He did not want to see the dead soldier’s other hand. He did not want to see any more down here. Ever again.

  He turned and ran for daylight.

  Magda returned directly to her room, intending to spend a few hours alone there. So many things to think about; she needed time with herself.

  But she could not think. The room was too full of Glenn and of memories of last night. The rumpled bed in the corner was a continual distraction.

  She wandered to the window, drawn as ever to the sight of the keep. The malaise that had once been confined within its walls now saturated the air she breathed, further frustrating her attempts at coherent thought. The keep sat out there on its stone perch like some slimy sea thing sending out tentacles of evil in all directions.

  As she turned away, the bird’s nest caught her eye. The chicks were strangely silent. After their insistent cheeping all yesterday and into the night, it was odd they should be so quiet now. Unless they had flown the nest. But that couldn’t be. Magda did not know much about birds but she knew those tiny things had been far from ready for flight.

  Concerned, she pulled the stool over to the window and stepped up for a view into the nest. The chicks were there: still, limp, fuzzy forms with open, silent mouths and huge, glassy, sightless eyes. Looking at them, Magda felt an unaccountable sense of loss.

  She jumped down from the stool and leaned against the windowsill, puzzled. No violence had been done to the baby birds. They had simply died. Disease? Or had they starved to death? Had the mother fallen victim to one of the village cats? Or had she deserted them?

  Magda didn’t want to be alone anymore.

  She crossed the hall and knocked on Glenn’s door. When there was no reply she pushed it open and stepped inside. Empty. She went to the window and looked out to see if Glenn might be taking the sun at the rear of the building, but there was no one there.

  Where could he be?

  She went downstairs. The sight of dirty dishes left on the table in the alcove struck her. Magda had always known Lidia to be
an immaculate housekeeper. The dishes reminded her that she had missed breakfast. It was almost lunchtime now and she was hungry.

  Magda stepped through the front door and found Iuliu standing outside, looking toward the other end of the village.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Any chance of lunch being served early?”

  Iuliu swiveled his bulk to look at her. The expression on his stubbly face was aloof and hostile, as if he could not imagine dignifying such a request with a reply. After a while he turned away again.

  Magda followed his gaze down the road to a knot of people outside one of the village huts.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Nothing that would interest an outsider,” Iuliu replied in a surly tone. Then he seemed to change his mind. “But perhaps you should know.” There was a malicious slant to his smile. “Alexandru’s boys have been fighting with each other. One is dead and the other badly hurt.”

  “How awful!” Magda said. She had met Alexandru and his sons, questioned them about the keep a number of times. They had all seemed so close. She was as shocked by the news of the death as she was by the pleasure Iuliu seemed to have taken in telling her.

  “Not awful, Domnisoara Cuza. Alexandru and his family have long thought themselves better than the rest of us. Serves them right!” His eyes narrowed. “And it serves as a lesson to outsiders who come here thinking themselves better than the people who live here.”

  Magda backed away from the threat in Iuliu’s voice. He had always been such a placid fellow. What had gotten into him?

  She turned and walked around the inn. Now more than ever she needed to be with Glenn. But he was nowhere in sight. Nor was he at his usual spot in the brush where he watched the keep.

  Glenn was gone.

  Worried and despondent, Magda walked back to the inn. As she stepped up to the door she saw a hunched figure limping up from the village. It was a woman and she appeared to be hurt.

  “Help me!”

  Magda started toward her but Iuliu appeared at the doorway and pulled her back. “You stay here!” he told Magda gruffly, then turned toward the injured woman. “Go away, Ioan!”

  “I’m hurt!” she cried. “Matei stabbed me!”

  Magda saw that the woman’s left arm hung limp at her side, and her clothing—it looked like a nightgown—was soaked with blood on the left side from shoulder to knee.

  “Don’t bring your troubles here,” Iuliu told her. “We have our own.”

  The woman continued forward. “Help me, please!”

  Iuliu stepped away from the door and picked up an apple-sized rock.

  “No!” Magda cried and reached to stay his arm.

  Iuliu elbowed her aside and threw the rock, grunting with the force he put behind it. Fortunately for the woman his aim was poor and the missile whizzed harmlessly past her head. But its message was not lost on her. With a sob, she turned and began hobbling away.

  Magda started after her. “Wait! I’ll help you!”

  But Iuliu grabbed her roughly by the arm and shoved her through the doorway into the inn. Magda stumbled and fell to the floor.

  “You’ll mind your business!” he shouted. “I don’t need anyone bringing trouble to my house! Now get upstairs and stay there!”

  “You can’t—” Magda began, but then saw Iuliu step forward with bared teeth and a raised arm. Frightened, she leaped to her feet and retreated to the stairs.

  What had come over him? He was a different person! The whole village seemed to have fallen under a vicious spell—stabbings, killings, and no one willing to give the slightest aid to a neighbor in need. What was happening here?

  Once upstairs, Magda went directly to Glenn’s room. It was unlikely he could have returned without her spotting him, but she had to check.

  Still empty. Where was he?

  She wandered about the tiny room. She checked the closet and found everything as it had been yesterday—the clothes, the case with the hiltless sword blade in it, the mirror. The mirror bothered her. She looked over to the space above the bureau. The nail was still in the wall there. She reached behind the mirror and found the wire still intact. Which meant it hadn’t fallen from the wall; someone had taken it down. Glenn? Why would he do that?

  Uneasy, she closed the closet door and left the room. Papa’s cruel words of the morning and Glenn’s unexplained disappearance were combining to make her suspicious of everything. She had to hold herself together. She had to believe that Papa would be all right, that Glenn would come back to her soon, and that the people in the village would return to their former gentle selves.

  Glenn…where could he have gone? And why? Yesterday had been a time of complete togetherness for the two of them, and today she couldn’t even find him. Had he used her? Had he taken his pleasure with her and now abandoned her? No, she couldn’t believe that.

  He had seemed greatly disturbed by what Papa had told him this morning. Glenn’s absence might have something to do with that. Still, she felt he had deserted her.

  As the sun sank closer to the mountaintops, Magda became almost frantic. She checked his room again—no change. Disconsolately, she wandered back to her own room and to the window facing the keep. Avoiding the silent nest, her eyes ranged the brush along the edge of the gorge, looking for something, anything that might lead her to Glenn.

  And then she saw movement within the brush to the right of the causeway. Without waiting for a second look to be sure, Magda ran for the stairs. It had to be Glenn! It had to be!

  Iuliu was nowhere about and she left the inn without any trouble. As she approached the brush, she spied his red hair among the leaves. Her heart leaped. Joy and relief flooded through her—along with a hint of resentment for the torment she had been through all day.

  She found him perched on a rock, watching the keep from the cover of the branches. She wanted to throw her arms around him and laugh because he was safe, and she wanted to scream at him for disappearing without a word.

  “Where have you been all day?” Magda asked as she came up behind him, trying her best to keep her voice calm.

  He answered without turning around. “Walking. I had some thinking to do, so I took a walk along the floor of the pass. A long walk.”

  “I missed you.”

  “And I you.” He turned and held out his arm. “There’s room enough here for two.” His smile was not as wide or as reassuring as it could have been. He seemed strangely subdued, preoccupied.

  Magda ducked under his arm and hugged against him. Good…it felt good within the carapace of that arm.

  “What’s worrying you?”

  “A number of things. These leaves for instance.” He grabbed a handful from the branches nearest him and crumbled them in his fist. “They’re drying out. Dying. And it’s only May. And the villagers…”

  “It’s the keep, isn’t it?” Magda said.

  “It seems that way, doesn’t it? The longer the Germans stay in there, the more they chip away at the interior of the structure, the further the evil within spreads. Or so it seems.”

  “Or so it seems,” Magda echoed him.

  “And then there’s your father…”

  “He worries me, too. I don’t want Molasar to turn on him and leave him”—she could not say it; her mind refused to picture it—“like the others.”

  “Worse things can happen to a man than having his blood drained.”

  The solemnity of Glenn’s tone struck her. “You said that once before, on the first morning you met Papa. But what could be worse?”

  “He could lose his self.”

  “Himself?”

  “No. Self. His own self. What he is, what he has struggled all his life to be. That can be lost.”

  “Glenn, I don’t understand.”

  And she didn’t. Or perhaps didn’t want to. There was a faraway look in Glenn’s eyes that disturbed her.

  “Let’s suppose something,” he said. “Let’s suppose that the vampire, or moroi, or
undead, as he exists in legend—a spirit confined to the grave by day, rising at night to feed on the blood of the living—is nothing more than the legend you always thought it to be. Suppose instead that the vampire myth is the result of ancient taletellers’ attempts to conceptualize something beyond their understanding; that the real basis for the legend is a being who thirsts for nothing so simple as blood, but who feeds instead on human weakness, who thrives on madness and pain, who steadily gains strength and power from human misery, fear, and degradation.”

  His voice, his tone, made her uncomfortable.

  “Glenn, don’t talk like that. That’s awful. How could anything feed on pain and misery? You’re not saying that Molasar—”

  “I’m just supposing.”

  “Well, you’re wrong,” she said with true conviction. “I know Molasar is evil, and perhaps insane. That’s because of what he is. But he’s not evil in the way you describe. He can’t be! Before we arrived he saved the villagers the major had taken prisoner. And remember what he did for me when those two soldiers attacked me.” Magda shivered with the awful memory. “He saved me. And what could be more degrading than rape at the hands of two Nazis? Something that feeds on degradation could have had a small feast at my expense. But Molasar pulled them off me and killed them.”

  “Yes. Rather brutally, I believe, from what you told me.”

  Queasily, Magda remembered the soldiers’ gurgling death rattles, the grinding of the bones in their necks as Molasar shook them.

  “So?”

  “So he did not go completely unappeased.”

  “But he could have killed me, too, if that would have given him pleasure. But he didn’t. He returned me to my father.”

  Glenn’s eyes pierced her. “Exactly!”

  Puzzled by Glenn’s response, Magda faltered, then hurried on.