És ez a szellem van, általában entrópia adunk a káosz.
SINCE THE AUTUMN OF MY GRADUATION FROM THE DREAM SLEEVE TO COGNITION, I have revered the terrible wonder of the world like a child. This is unusual, because the season of my birth was spring, and I am now a man of many years. Yet in all this time, the cycle of loss and renewal still holds a great fascination for me, particularly now that I know that renewal is a fiction. The breath of the universe is entropy, and resistance is a chaotic endeavor.
I write this memoir on the bier of my undeath, as I feel the time has come to molt the shell of mortality that binds me to life’s natural injustice. In this state, no illness can plague my physical body, but the floodgates of my psyche have burst open and devastated the mind I once cultivated. No, it is not that my life has reached a natural conclusion – far from it. I have nothing left to live for, and a soul numb from torment. To the unhappy reader of my grim manifesto, I bequeath unholy knowledge in the hopes that no man dares to endeavor what I have, to transgress against himself in my shadow.
In the seventeenth year of my life, I travelled from the place of my birth to the southern border of this desolate country. I made my home in the Carpathian Mountains, on a low summit overlooking the hamlet of Sibiiu. You see, I was, to the dismay of my agrarian father and forefathers who were descended from monks, a man of science. I was enraptured by the study of flora and, to a lesser extent, fauna. It is for this reason that I situated myself in the teeming green wilderness of the mountains, surrounded by the most brilliant emerald foliage and vibrant blooms – all of which are now gray. I seldom received visitors, and travelled ever less often to Sibiiu for supplies, which suited me quite well. In time, I ploughed my own garden and learned to hunt game, the inedible parts of which I studied intently.
After nearly a decade of reclusiveness, the hamlet of Sibiiu had grown into a sizeable settlement of nearly one thousand inhabitants, and a trade explosion led to the town’s exponential growth. Soon, the borders of Sibiiu were upon me, and I retreated further into the peaks and valleys of the Carpathian range.
It is at that time, my proverbial heir, that I was thrust into a chain of events that veritably bound me to eternal misery. Upon my retreat into the range, I discovered a gothic ruin overrun by morning glory and thick vines. The ground adjacent the charcoal black stonework was rich with vetch and red clover. In the shaded heart of the ruin there was a burgeoning patch of nightshade. Wanting to study this sea of violet more closely, I ventured within the crumbling walls and lowered myself into a pit dense with deep purple blooms. I sat down on a flat rock and began picking specimens with unusual size and shape, variations in hue, twinned petals, and all manner of trivial inconsistency – such was my fancy at the time. As I ruffled through the poisonous groundcover, I discovered that the flat rock I had been sitting on was actually wood, carefully crafted and placed there almost ceremoniously.
I uprooted a wagonload of nightshade before I could make out the structure below me, and what I saw chilled my then warm blood. It was a sort of lid, elongated and hexagonal, inlaid with a golden cross. Peering out at me were two sanguine eyes set like rubies in a porcelain bust. The gossamer visage of a man, still untouched by the decay of the earth, lay motionless beneath me. Instilled with the superstitions of my father which, despite my best efforts, I had not been able to forget, I set to unearthing the coffin so as to properly seal the lid and lay the poor soul to rest. Tales of specters and phantoms rang dully in my mind, wretched ghouls whose spirits could not escape this plane knowing their bodies remained untombed. The excavation was impeded by many gnarled roots, and by the time I had removed enough of them to shift the lid, it had been dusk for a quarter hour. Twilight blanketed the land in earthen gloom, and before I even realized it I was blind. Nothing escaped the cover of darkness that had been left unchecked by the new moon – nothing except the red eyes that now luminesced at me from below. I was at first confused, and then just as quickly seized by a mortal terror left over from my primal ancestors. I opened my mouth in a fearful howl and felt my feeble frame tossed free of the pit. The crimson orbs were the last thing I saw.
I awoke before dawn with a stinging pain in my neck. A puncture wound resided just above my right shoulder, clean of the vital humors I expected to find there. The two fleshy craters were stone cold. I was seized by a fear, then, that contradicted my very nature. During my excursions into Sibiiu market square, I had heard the gossips talk of all manner of supernatural beings roaming the hills, from wisps to witte wieven, to wyrms and wyverns, and every conceivable were-chimera. But now, realizing to which worry-cow I must have fallen victim, I
was filled with dread. Only the legends of the vampyre seemed to correlate to the wound on my neck. It was a bite.
Jumping to my feet, I searched frantically for the monster I had unleashed. He was nowhere to be found, and yet worse, neither were my supplies. I gauged that I could make it back to my camp by noon and set off immediately. While I walked I pondered the nightmare that had realized itself. Foolish man that I was, I could not bring myself to believe that what had transpired was really a vampyre attack. The vampyre was only a myth, and a ridiculous one at that, even more so than the plethora of lycanthropic beings said to manifest themselves in the wilderness. I decided that I must have lost my footing on a crumbling brick at the ruins and abrased my neck on a rock. The vision that ensued could have been no more than a figment. Yet even after consoling myself thus, I was shaken to my core, and this trauma led me to overlook the curious absence of my supplies which even then I worked to remedy.
Upon my arrival at my camp, which I had deserted only the night prior, I discovered that a hunter had taken up residence there. Under any normal circumstances, I would have simply explained myself and retrieved whatever supplies I had left behind, but when the hunter heard my approach and looked up from the carcass he was cleaning, I was seized by a terrible urge.
“Ho there, traveller. You lost?” I did not reply, but felt my mouth begin to water. “You look a bit under the weather, you sure—” Before the poor wretch could say another word, I was upon him. My teeth sank deep into his neck as I felt some ungodly aura overtake me. My movements were not my own as I ripped the very throat from his neck and drank of the red wine that flowed forth for me. I can only hope that when I take my dying breath, whatever God watches it will forgive me this, my very nature. When I had finished my feast, I felt rejuvenated – I was alive again, with warm blood and, as I would eventually discover, my natural eye color. I no longer felt the hunger that had driven me to return. What a petty result for such a damnable price.
I beheld my victim’s eviscerated body with horror as I realized what a contemptible abomination I had become. But I was not ready to accept that it had been my doing. I was then convinced that some evil spirit haunted me, and desperate to rid myself of it, I descended the mountain for Sibiiu. I was not threatened by the bloodthirst again as I entered the city, nor was my appearance the subject of any discourse. I made my way directly to the chapel in search of a healer, but only the vicar was present. I told him of my plight and he offered to perform an exorcism on me, which would not have worked even if it had been completed. I do not think that
he believed I was what I claimed to be – not until he, too, became nothing more than a gruesome dye for the tapestries on the wall. I have often wondered what the congregants thought upon seeing their idols stained with his blood.
On that day I fled into the mountains, never to return to civilization. For then I was still a man, not a monster, and could not allow myself to continue my monstrous acts. I was also a coward, or I would have ended my life then and there to abate any risk of harming another. I used my experience in hunting to capture the creatures native to the mountain, and even managed to domesticate a number of chamois. These creatures I systematically bled to ensure that I had a steady supply of blood to feed on whenever the need arose. I even fashioned a canteen from a deer stomach with which to carry the liquid on my person at all times. I built up a camp at the very ruin where I was first afflicted with this curse, and when I was sure that my resources were renewable into perpetuity, I set to the task of transforming the ruin into a proper shelter.
It may seem an insurmountable task to singlehandedly repair a near ancient building which had gone to rack and ruin long before one’s birth, but as the years droned on I made an incredible discovery: I was not affected by the passage of time. My physical body was insusceptible to the weather and immune to disease. With this knowledge I considered myself invulnerable, completely unaware of the psychological damage inflicted by solitude and aberration.
The solitude that I had once so coveted was now a curse.
– ♦ –
IMMORTALITY ALLOWED ME A NEAR ENDLESS WEALTH OF TIME with which to perform my scientific research. My interest had shifted from plant life to blooded organisms, which were plentiful, and on which I performed countless experiments. I achieved what most men of science would think impossible, from the grafting of reptilian tissues onto field mice to the surgical addition of wings to wild hogs. I once even succeeded in transferring the consciousness of a noctule bat to a European hare via an electrical conduit, causing the hare to squeal and click and the bat to leap through the grass. The only miracle of science I could not perform was to resurrect the dead.
In the twenty-seventh decade of my existence, in which time I had explored every experience I had thought worth doing, scientific or otherwise, I met a creature of astonishing beauty who all but devoured my heart with her eyes. She arrived at my door during a violent tempest, soaked to the very bone. Lifting the hood of her umber cloak she revealed a face as bright as the full moon. I must admit, I was immediately endeared by her when she did not recoil from
my gaunt figure and sallow complexion. I was lovestruck. For the first time in over a century I had the willing company of another breathing soul. Without a word from either of us, I pulled her clear of the downpour and led her to the fireplace. She doffed her cloak and I set it carefully aside. Her body trembled severely, and she did not speak. Her gaze was distant. I feared for a moment that the light of the fire had betrayed my hideous features and she was now paralyzed by fear. Her eyes darted to the door, which I had left open, and through which the torrential rain was slowly ruining my rug. A sharp wind whipped and fluttered through the casement of the door, from which the fire shrank timidly. I hurriedly closed it and locked the door, as if the inclement weather had a mind to try to open it.
Turning ‘round, I was shocked to see my guest standing just behind me. Her emerald eyes flashed in the firelight. “Th… thank… y—” she whispered. Her eyes flitted shut and she collapsed into me. I tried to lift her back to her feet, but she would not wake. I realized that the woman was lucky to have survived the onslaught of the storm. Judging by her waterlogged dress, it was a wonder she hadn’t drowned standing up. She would need to exchange the outfit for something dry, or she would certainly freeze to death. I tried again to wake her, with no success.
I set about procuring her fresh linens, quilted finery, and my own wolfskin bedclothes. I set these aside and relocated the still-shivering woman to the rug in front of the fireplace. She drew steady, slow breath. I wasted no time in removing her clothes, and though her naked figure was something of otherworldly proportion and grace, I hastened to the task of redressing her in dry attire. I must admit, my heart and mind were overwhelmed by the sight of her, and lesser men would have certainly seized the opportunity which had presented itself. But I was no barbarian – not then – and my sole concern was her safety. I dedicated every second of the next hour to readying my chambers for her. I stocked the fireplace, cleaned the flue, and sealed the window casements with candlewax, returning nearly every minute to check her condition. Then, when all was ready, I carried her to my bed. Her slumber went undisturbed.
Her recovery lasted three and thirty days, during which time she slowly regained her energy and speech. She had managed to tell me her name, Silene, and little else. I told her my name, Dragomir, but did not flaunt my antique heritage.
When Silene had fully recovered I feared that she would leave me and continue on her way, but she asked to stay, and over time she came to love me as I loved her. Together we toured the grounds and the countryside and maintained the garden and the livestock. Never once did I suspect
that her affections were due to some dependence, nor that I was simply her beloved savior. When she spoke, I heard her voice curl with a smile. When we bathed in the river, she felt no shame. When we shared a bed, I could hear her heart beating with a passion to rival my own. Yet though we were awash in the happiness of our union, guilt welled inside me. I had deceived her. I had never revealed the nature of my condition to her, and she had never suspected that anything was amiss because, bating the subfusc pallor of my countenance and my sparseness of frame, I was indistinguishable from a mortal man. I did not relish the thought of her reaction when I told her that the man she had fallen in love with was a vampyre.
“Silene, my love,” I said one dead winter’s night, “I have something… difficult to tell you.” Though she had demonstrated quite the proclivity for words after her recovery, she was now silent as the night she first rapped on my door. It was as if she had been gripped by the talons of some colossal vulture and the wind expelled from her breast. Cautiously, I continued, “Have you heard the tales told by the townsfolk? Of unnatural creatures that are fabled to haunt these hallowed hills?”
“You speak of course of the werewolf, yes?” I shook my head. “No, then, not the werecat?”
“No, my dear, I—”
“The were-crocodile? Those are particularly nasty.”
“My God, Silene, it isn’t a were-bloody-anything!” I said. We laughed a moment, and I thought perhaps to use this as an escape from the issue that weighed on me, but I forced myself to right the conversation. “I speak of the vampyre, the hemophilic creatures of the night. You’ve heard of them?” The smile dropped from her face and she nodded. I braced myself for hellish persecution, and said, “I am one such creature. I have lived ten score in these mountains, exiled from my fellow man. I was a miserable wretch, a thing to be pitied… until I met you.” I wanted to say more, to launch into a passionate disquisition and declare my love and my regret, but the words fell short of my breath. Silene lowered her eyes and we sat there a long time before either of us spoke again; so long, I feared she may have died of fright. But it was she who broke the silence.
“And I have something to tell you, my love,” she said.
“I knew it,” I cried, “you are among the werecat of legend!”
“Alas,” she said with a demure grin, “if only it were something so innocuous as that.”
“Then what, love? What could be so grave as to take hold of you with such a solemn humor? Nothing you say now could ever dissuade me from loving you.”
“I… am a vampyre hunter.” I burst into laughter yet again, relieved that my beloved had taken the news so lightly. But my outburst choked itself when I saw that Silene did not share in my delight.
“Pluto’s kitchen, you’re serious, aren’t you?” It occurred to me then that any vampyre hunter worth his salt would be practiced in identifying them. I recalled one seemingly innocent utterance – “were-crocodiles are particularly nasty” – which was telling of her knowledge and expertise. I had fallen in love with a monster hunter – I, a monster, oh horrors! It made sense – she was a cunning girl, and strong as any soldier. Yet even as she admitted that she was, by profession, my adversary, my heart still beat for her. “Surely you knew,” I said. “So why did you not slay me the moment you regained your strength?”
“I could not kill someone who would permit a stranger as ill as I into their home and pull them back from the door of death,” she said. “Nor could I bear to leave you. Never have I witnessed such kindness from any mortal creature. No, you are not the abomination which I have made a profession of hunting. You are but a man, a noble and kind one, and that does not a monster make you.”
“Then you love me, truly?”
“I do. More than anything this world could ever produce, from now until time’s end.” With that, my heart warmed as if I had just drunk a flask-full of lifeblood.
“If that is so, I should like nothing more than to be with you until then. But years are as poison to you, and nothing at all to me. Please,” I said earnestly, “let me give you the gift that will keep us together forever.” It was then that Silene stood, toppling her chair to the floor behind her.
“I… I’m sorry. But that I cannot allow.” She hurried to the stairwell that led to our chambers but stopped just short with one foot on the step. Still facing away, she continued, “I fear I would not be such a good vampyre as you. I have never met another good one.” She turned again to face me. “I’m sure you’ve wondered why I came to your door those many weeks ago,” she said. I nodded, though I had never spared it more than a passing thought. “I was hunting the vampyre that destroyed me. The very monster that—” Her voice caught and she turned away again. “He was rumored to have lived in these very hills, in a ruin I could never find. That was why I was out in the rain. He killed… mama… damnation, he took my mama and papa from me!”
I could have carved my heart from my chest when I heard those words. How could I tell her that I had been the one to set her demon free so long ago?
– ♦ –
IT HAD BEEN A YEAR SINCE OUR MEETING, AND SILENE WAS WITH CHILD. We considered ourselves married by love only, since we could never be wed in a chapel. The advent of spring brought rain, and with rain came rain-loving creatures. Silene was one such creature. Despite my repeated protests, and though she had once nearly died of exposure, she delighted in lounging under the silver poplar that overlooked the garden. On one such day midway through April, Silene was admiring a particularly cold shower from her seat in the garden. But it wasn’t the chill of the breeze nor the moisture in the air that spelled her demise. I was in my study when I heard it – the shrill, distant shriek like a hawk on the wind. I shot up and hastened to the garden, where I found Silene in a heap at the base of the poplar. She clutched her arm, from which a font of blood had sprung. I quickly tore my shirt into bandages and wrapped the wound, but Silene was pale and faint.
“How did this happen?” I asked frantically. Silene struggled to keep her head upright and formed her lips into various shapes, to no avail. I heard a sharp hushing sound then and lifted my gaze to see a serpent coiled around the bottommost branch of the poplar. It hissed again, as if laughing at me, and disappeared into the upper boughs of the tree. I hoisted Silene and took her to our bed, where I knelt beside her for some time, my head buried in the bedclothes perfumed by her scent. My head swam with the knowledge that I would soon lose her, for the snake that bit her was the meadow viper, whose fangs dripped deadly venin.
I woke in this position several hours later to the rattle of Silene’s breath. “Dragomir… what has happened to me?”
“You were stung by a serpent, my love,” I told her.
“What shall become of me?” I could not bear to see her in this condition, but I had to tell her the morbid truth.
“You will die,” I said. “There is no cure for the sting of the meadow viper. I am sorry.”
“I cannot leave you,” she said. “What of our unborn child?” I had worried about our child from the day she told me of its conception. Silene told me that it would be a dhampyr, the product of a union between a vampyre and a human. It would inherit my immunities to disease and poison and would be unaffected by the venin creeping through Silene’s blood. But it would not survive
without a mother. There was no hope for the child. I did not know the words to soothe my fading wife.
“I cannot leave you,” she repeated, her voice growing faint.
“There is one cure,” I said, though I knew she would never permit me to administer it. “Allow me to give you the gift of undeath.” She did not respond. A single tear fell from her eye. She shook her head almost imperceptibly and fell asleep. I cursed the very earth then, and fled the room in a frenzy. I returned shortly after from my study with the stack of journals I had kept on my countless experiments on plant and animal life. I rifled through the pages in search of any herbaceous extract or biological humor that could act as an antidote – to no avail. I threw the journals to the floor in rage and disgust. But the contempt I felt was not for the faded vellum or the trivial experiments written thereon, no; it was for myself. How could I have never found a cure for such an affliction, in all my accursed years on this miserable plane?
It was during my vicious self-loathing that I chanced to see the page of a discarded journal, on which I had penned my research on the grafting of the minds of animals onto one another. This, I knew, was the only way to save Silene. I set to reproducing the electrical apparatus that I had used in the procedure and affixed it to the bed, then lay down beside her. The light of the moon poured in on us as I waited for the critical moment.
– ♦ –
WHEN THE PROCEDURE WAS COMPLETE, I SAT UP AND CRIED, “Silene, can you hear me?” I heard no reply. I glared at her dead body beside me in despair. It should have worked. Her spiritus should have fled her dying body and traveled along the conduit to my brain… but I felt not her presence. I was alone, just as well as if the venin had run its course in her unhindered.
I had intended my last act to be burying my wife and child. Silene had once told me that only nightshade could kill a vampyre – I resolved to use an elixir made with its extract to rest forever with them. But as I knelt over the grave with the vile draught in my hand, I heard a whisper soft and bright as moonrise. “I am here, love.”
My breath stopped and I keeled over. I could scarcely believe my ears. “Truly?!” I cried. “Is it truly you, Silene?”
“Yes,” she said stolidly. “But until now I wasn’t sure where ‘here’ was. I now dwell within your mind.”
“More than that – you are with me, Silene, in my very soul.” I was overjoyed, and Silene could sense it, for I could sense that she sensed it – and amidst all these senses, I chanced to sense another sense. I was so overwhelmed that I could not parse this third presence, and retired to my chambers where I rested for several hours. I saw Silene in my dreams. She sat with me in our dreamt up home, and we reminisced about the few happy months we had been allowed to share.
In my waking life, I conducted myself much the same as I had before meeting Silene, but I had the added comfort of talking to her while I toiled. Over the next months, I set to work building our home ever higher, despite the absence of one of our physical bodies. All was happy for a time, but it was during these endeavors that Silene grew ever quieter. I entreated her to continue to converse with me, yet she grew solemner still. As I finished construction of a new room, her voice was altogether silent. I had been so enthralled by my occupation that I had not noticed the deafening silence. Instead, I marveled at the empty room I had created, and asked Silene her opinion on my creation. Today her voice did not answer, but a soundless utterance cleansed my brain.
It was a sensation I had never experienced, at least not that I yet recalled, and one which cannot be sufficiently recorded by ink and pen. Nor even could anyone but an angel succeed at articulating the feeling that had engulfed me – but I shall endeavor to try. I felt as if I had felt nothing before, neither physical nor emotional, but an all-encompassing warmth and security. It was, in some regards, bliss, and in others, a deeply unsettling abyss.
It was then that I realized the nature of the third presence, who was our own child. It’s gender was yet indeterminate, so I know not what to call it, nor would it have been offended by my resolving to leave it nameless. The feeling of contented unknowing that I felt was that of our unborn child. I was at once overjoyed and deeply troubled, as I still fraught over Silene’s reticence.
“Silene,” I cried, “where have you gone? Our child lives on with us! Do you not sense it?”
“I know, Dragomir,” she said after a time.
“Ah! Why had you left me alone so long?” I asked, relieved. Did the dead need sleep, I wondered? Silene did not answer, but I felt her presence. I thought she must have been conversing with the infant with some motherly telepathy, so I took the time to examine the room I had built. It was, I realized, in form and function, a nursery. Empty. Empty not just of a cradle, but of a child to lay to sleep there. All the warmth drained out of me. I no longer felt the presence of my wife and child, but it was more than that – I wondered whether they really were there. Such a flood of solitude had just hollowed me – like a gourd is hollowed of its pulp, its very substance – that I at once doubted whether there had ever been anyone in my head besides myself.
This ponderance climbed my bones like ivy and ensnared my heart. I spent my days slunk in a corner, cast like a lifeless puppet to the floor in my empty room. I searched my mind for voices, desperate to hear a sweet serenade pass over my wife’s lips or the heartbeat of my child. No such melodies came. Instead, I was haunted by the image of Silene’s face, illuminated by the moon as she lay next to me in our bed. Her eyes would steal to me and force me to endure the pain again and again. I relived the moment of her quietus unendingly. For days or years, I do not know, I saw the vibrancy of her eyes drain and wither like the plants in the garden. I saw her soul drain from her eyes time and time again, and would sometimes chance to hear the soft, distant whine of a newborn babe abandoned by its caretaker. Still I pleaded for them to return to me, and still no answer did grace my ear.
When I could stand it no more, I fled the confines of my cell and flung myself prostrate on Silene’s grave, now overgrown with violet and nightshade in full blow. I begged her to appear to me, to tell me that she still loved me as I love her even now.
Instead, I was tormented by the specters of my first victims. The bloodied visage of a middle-aged forester danced arm in arm with a disemboweled priest, singing, “Ho there, traveler. You lost? I can perform an exorcism!” They would chase my vision wherever I turned, repeating this vile cant ad nauseum, and laughing their merry heads off. Soon they were joined by the pale man who had cursed me, whose only words were, “Entropy, chaos.” My unborn child joined the chorus with a newfound voice: “Why did I die, papa? Why is it cold? Why did you kill mama? Why? Why? Why?” The chanting drove me back inside, where I threw myself on my bed and covered myself with every set of bedclothes I could find. The taunts of my victims grew louder still, so much so that I couldn’t hear my own screams. My ears seemed to be fonts of blood, pounding out red-drink to the beat of a mountainous drum. The very earth undulated beneath me, and the final assonant part was added to the quintet of the damned, of which I myself was conductor. “Vampyres have seductive powers,” Silene explained. “All who meet them will become their thrall.”
Then the voices stopped entirely.
On that day I decided I could no longer go on. I began writing this account in the hopes that no one forgets what evil came to pass here. I have already drunk of my medicine, and my vision grows dark. I can hear Silene crying. We will be together soon. My sweet Silene, I hope that you can forgive me what I cannot forgive myself… for I was the snake that bit you.
— Dragomir IV Șarpele Călugărula, House Drăculești