In My House of Crafted Cards
By David Thomas Lord
Isaac was the perfect son, the handsome, brilliant apple of his father’s eye. Dr. Ryckman and his wife could not have been happier when their beloved son returned from his travels bringing with him his new fiancée Elizabeth, who had nursed him through a mysterious illness that had laid him low in far Transylvania. But on the eve of their wedding, the good doctor discovers that whatever that dark affliction was, it, too, had returned to Amsterdam with Isaac, hanging like a dark shadow overhead.
© 2004 David Lord
Dread had returned after all these years of joy.Just as it is common for a man to want to see a perfected image of himself in his son, so, too, is it natural that the son would rebel against the constraints of recreating his father’s recalled image of his younger self.Not so with Isaac.
My son was always the perfect child. Clever and studious, athletic and graceful, proud and polite, Isaac excelled in everything and grew to manhood with his mother’s beauty and artistry. Her genteel attributes softened and humanized my more scholastic—would she say pedantic?—traits. He could have become anything he wished, and yet he wished to become just like me. As I had become like my own father, and he his, and my grandfather like his own.
The standing hall clock chimed. My great-grandfather’s. A certain reminder. But, comfort or curse?
Isaac’s foreign university years were difficult on me, I admit. I know I should say, on his mother and I both. I only missed my dearest friend, but she? She had lost her prized escort to Amsterdam’s finer aspects and saw no relief in me.
Isaac had chosen to take instruction during his semester breaks as well and traveled the Continent as far as Asia Minor to learn of the diseases and treatments that fascinated us both so. So, it was not until he returned home for his internship, that we, his parents, learned of the brief, but mysterious illness that sapped his strength and of the delicate English rose who restored it.
He had finally returned to us from his post-scholastic vacation. His tour of the continent—both the light and the dark of it, if I knew his ever-inquisitive mind—concluded with his bringing an unexpected present. Our son, Dr. Isaac Ryckman, came home to Amsterdam, to us, with his new fiancée, Elizabeth Catherine Wilde. When they walked through the front door, my great-grandfather’s hall clock sounded. An omen overlooked.
Tall and lithe with pretty, light brown hair and china-blue eyes, Elizabeth had the look of an aristocratic ballerina. However, it was not so much in her features, but in her temperament, where I noticed that Isaac had chosen as I had. Isaac had chosen a replica of his mother.
All through the holiday caused by Isaac’s return and the impending nuptials, Elizabeth grew beloved of friends and family alike. And Isaac returned to the full strength that befitted his maturity.
Joy blew all through the Ryckman manse the whole summer. Flowers and music and laughter decorated its halls like never before. Even the subtle tightness that sometimes stole away my Sarah’s eyes and mouth and pulled them taut with anticipation—with the expectation of disappointment and ruin—seemed to relax into a sense of fulfillment, of completion. My beloved clock voiced its agreement from the foyer. Ever the sentinel, the interpreter, the commentator.
Naturally, Isaac would join my practice and assist in my work. He always said he would. Naturally, Elizabeth would wear Sarah’s bridal gown, veil and jewels. She had no other daughter to inherit them. Naturally, the newlyweds would make their home with us. We had so much room. It was settled then. Their lives, our lives.
We waited for the autumn to formally announce their engagement. The fête was to have been the highlight of the social season. All of Amsterdam was invited. High-ranking officials, judges, and lawyers of our long acquaintance. Scholars and educators from my still-active ties to the university. Sarah’s darlings of the art world—performers and painters, musicians and poets. Our overlarge and recently overly empty house was filled with life, with intellect, and gaiety.
Precisely as my grandfather clock struck, the young couple made the most impressive entrance down the main staircase into the foyer. Both radiant in their formal dress. I could not imagine how their wedding portrait could possibly compare to the vision of them descending the staircase.
Isaac and Elizabeth welcomed each guest, family and friend, as if no other person existed on the planet. They greeted each trite and tired expression of happiness as pure poetry. Any misplaced overture or snub, they drew into the mean, into a rare state of communion. So that all might feel their joy.
From the toasts to the appetizers to the dancing to the dinner, the Ryckman house was a frenzy of conviviality. Old quarrels were patched, new romances begun. This was the happiest omen, greatest gift, for a new couple.
After the feast was cleared, we returned to the dancing. I stood aside, up right of the musicians, and picked out my small family in the crowd.
I first noticed Sarah.
All through the engagement fête, she dined and danced and delighted with the young people and left me to my older associates. All evening, Sarah laughed too brightly, danced too recklessly, drank too deeply. Her eyes seemed to grow in her face. Frightened bird eyes that saw dangers inexistent. Her smile stretched into a plaster rictus. A joyless, pained and painted smile of some puppet-master’s creation.
Then, suddenly, she was alone on the edge of our reception room. And just as suddenly, my clock struck from outside the room. And time stopped for me.
The distance between us meant nothing, not in meters or in time. She was neither far enough away in the room, nor in our experiences, that I could not see her turmoil returning. The fine webbing at Sarah’s eyes and mouth tightened into anxious stress and fractured her tentative calm. Why now? Why with everything so right?
I took a moment to determine the best path to her across the large and crowded room. And in that moment, I saw Elizabeth in my visual sweep. Immediately after, I saw Isaac. My son, my ideal, my paragon, began to shrink before my eyes. Or was it from them? He seemed to be caught in some version of tug-of-war between Elizabeth and a man I know I had never seen before.
To see that man once was to know him well. Well enough. But, even then, I knew with instantaneous dismay that this was not Isaac’s first meeting with this man. Nor Elizabeth’s.
It was cruel and torturous, my route through this well-known room. My room. My home. Which way to turn first? To Sarah, who needed me so? Who always did. Or to my Isaac, so strong, so sure? So compromised.
And there were the guests, my dear and well-meaning friends. How gently I tried to accomplish my mission to save my house and stave off destruction so primally comprehended without disturbing their enjoyment. With a murmur here, a nudge or pat there, a smile, a squeeze, a stroke, I traversed the room. I zigged and zagged, careened and cut my way in what must not have been as gentle a swathe as I had meant it to be. I finally met up with Elizabeth. Alone.
That is when I first saw the difference in her. Elizabeth’s patrician reserve cooled, detached, and then froze into haughty solo-ness. The music of her voice became a strident dissonance to my ears. Her earlier glow had become feverish. Her composed carriage, an edifice. All indicating a terrible secret she held too close.
“Where, Elizabeth, did our Isaac go?”
Never turning, never breaking, she answered dully, “With him.”
I knew, of course, which “him” she meant, even if I did not know the gentleman.
“The blond man, Daughter?”
“If blond is what you wish to call it. Dead white is what it seems to me.” And then she turned to face me and I saw before I heard. A more tragic truth.
“And ‘Daughter’ no longer, I fear, good doctor. For the creature that has just taken your Isaac has taken mine away as well.”
Amidst the swelling waltz and the swirling crowd, Elizabeth and I stood as twin islands in a turbulent sea. We held to each other as we held our hopes and devotions, gently and firmly. We each searched the eyes of the other to find sense, to find solution, to find salvation. We each thought of our duties to her mother-to-be and my absent son, to ourselves and to each other.
“The gentleman, Elizabeth. Who is he?”
“No gentleman, kind sir. But a monster from a forgotten time and faded country.”
“No riddles, Daughter, and no ‘kind sirs.’ I will be your father no matter what the impedance or by whom. Now tell me, how do you know this man?”
Whether owing to the din of the crowds and the music or to the tension in her throat, Elizabeth explained in a most discordant tone. This man was the cause of Isaac’s strange illness. The wasting neither wished to describe. This stranger to my house, this uninvited guest, who had stolen away the single source of our hearth’s warmth.
“Quickly, Elizabeth, we shall follow them!”
“It is too late to stop him, father. But he will return Isaac before dawn. That is his way.”
I excused Elizabeth to her rooms. She gathered her future mother to her and hurried up the stairs. With a heart heavy with deceit and desperation, I made the excuse to our guests. All the gaiety after so many years of solitude was more than Sarah could abide. The children went up with her to assure her that all was well. Everyone truly understood. Everyone was so kind, so complimentary, so convivial.
When, at last, the invited guests and the hired staff had abandoned our home, I ascended the stairs to hear the whole unfortunate tale and to await the dawn. Even my old friend and companion tolled the hour in a duller, sadder fashion.
I checked on Sarah in our suite of rooms and, satisfied that she was well and goodly ensconced, I proceeded down the hall to the wing that Isaac and Elizabeth were to occupy as man and wife.
Elizabeth had changed from the magnificent, ice-blue gown she had worn all evening to a simple traveling outfit of chestnut brown. I realized, with unfathomable sadness, that this was the first costume I had ever seen her wear. The one she wore upon her arrival. I knew, with unshakeable fatefulness, that this would be the last dress I would ever see on her.
“Doctor Ryckman, please sit.” She had never shifted, never turned from the open French doors at the balcony of her room. Yet, she knew I was there.
“This is all my fault,” she began. I understood it to mean, as lovers do, that the actions of one are visited upon the other. Not that she was in any way an instrument in this catastrophe. “As you know,” she continued, turning slightly in the moonlight so that I could clearly see what Isaac saw in her, “when I met your son, he was still a student at Buda‑Pesth University.”
“Yes, I believe you have both told me as much. It was just before Isaac received his doctorate in medicine.”
And, at that, her face grew hard or wistful, I could not tell. So many emotions in she and I.
“What Isaac never said to you, for my sake, I believe, was that he wanted to come right home after graduation. He wanted to return here to you and your wife. I made him travel with me. And away from you.”
I could easily see the sadness and guilt that held her features. Her shyness and reticence came not from her rearing alone, but also from shouldering the consequences of her determination. A determination gone terribly wrong. And here it was, wrong still.
“Tell me everything, dear Elizabeth. Spare me nothing, child. For your sake and mine and the sakes of those others we love, tell me all.”
And so she began her tale. Through the smallest hours of the earliest morning, she told her story. And throughout her story, my downstairs clock called to me: Tempus fugit. And dread returned.“I convinced Isaac to travel with me out of the Austrian Empire and into Wallachia. . . .”“Into the old Ottoman Empire?” I hoped that had not sounded as incredulous as I felt. Gott in Himmel! What would have possessed Isaac—either of them—to act so foolishly?
“As far as Tirgu-Mures in the Transylvanian region of Roumania.”
She looked so crestfallen, so saddened, that I barely had the courage to ask her to continue, so hard would it be on her. Still, I had to find out if this was indeed the key to my son’s recent sickness and his new disappearance.
“All right, dear Elizabeth. Everything will be all right. Continue your tale and you will have no more interruptions from me.”
She spoke first of their courtship, of Isaac’s last semesters at university. How he often spoke lovingly of Amsterdam and of his parents. He wanted so very badly to return to his home, but would not do so without her approval and consent.
She proposed a journey. A journey of discovery, she called it. They could take a little time after his graduation to explore the world and themselves before settling into the routine of respected doctor and his hausfrau.
Isaac was against it at first. A trip into a strange and foreign land? A waste of time! Paris, Rome, London, he suggested. For their wedding trip, he reasoned. Anywhere but the Carpathian Mountains. But he relented at the sight of her, at the sound of her voice, the touch of her soft caress. He already felt married to her in his heart, if not on paper, nor before God and his parents. And so, they traveled as a married couple down the Danube—away from Amsterdam, away from Buda‑Pesth—and towards the very pit of darkness.
She dared not look up into my face. She knew too well that I had realized the implication of the travel arrangements and that her admission forfeited her entitlement to her mother-in-law’s white wedding dress. She spoke hesitantly about the reed banks and the water lilies along the river and the deep, cool forests that bordered it. She spoke only of simple, non-committal things. All of their daytime delights. She spoke then of her lifelong fascination with the gypsies and her desire to see them and their lands. This desire led them down the Danube from Buda‑Pesth to Baja. They traveled by coach from there to Szeged. Then they went again by ship, up the Mures River and deep into Transylvania.
Arriving at the city of Tirgu-Mures, they registered as man and wife at the beautiful, old hotel that capped the Piata Teatruli. They were a couple as much enjoyed for their youth and beauty as for their charm and wit. And Theater Square was the place for the young and adventurous in the Transylvanian basin.
For the first few days, they rose early each morning. They would breakfast in the hotel on fresh-laid eggs and cheese and milk. After breakfast, they would explore the quaint and ancient town or take short trips into the neighboring countryside.
“Isaac is quite the painter, Doctor. Wonderfully talented.”
“Yes, Isaac is much like his mother,” I admitted. But their travel itinerary and leisure activities were not what concerned me. “Please continue, my dear.” An explicit order only brushing the civility of a request.
She lowered her eyes, as if in agreement. Still, Elizabeth could not fully comply.
“After our breakfast, we would hike to the nearby forest. It was principally conifer and beech, with some ash and other species nearer the river. Here, I painted the landscape and wildflowers, while Isaac preferred to represent the wildlife. There were bears and lynx, wild boar and wolves, deer, and other small mammals and reptiles. Isaac was never afraid. And I was always confident in his company. In the open air above, we often saw hawks and buzzards soaring on the lookout for prey. Eagles inhabit the region at several locations, Doctor. Owls live in the forest and migrating storks pass through.”
Elizabeth realized the distant coldness of her recitation. The forced and boring bookishness. I could see the truth of that in her eyes. She needed to stress the dull normalcy of it all. Before she could tell of the terror.
“Where was I? Oh, yes. Our picnics. Our lunch was generally bread and cheese, cold meats, cakes, and fruit. Whatever would keep through the day. We would take along some local wines or beer for Isaac to drink. And, of course, there was plenty of fresh water in the mountain springs. That is how we spent those leisure days, hiking and painting and picnicking.
“We would eventually find our way back to the hotel for some rest before dressing for dinner and our wonderful night out. Did I mention the excellent food the locals prepare?”
“Young love can make anything palatable, dear child.”
“No, Doctor. Not anything!”
Elizabeth seemed to have immediately regretted her outburst and sought to mollify it.
“But I mustn’t get ahead of my story. You should know it all. Perhaps there is a clue I have overlooked. A remedy that your superior mind can foresee.”
The storm clouds dissipated as quickly as they gathered, so I permitted her to continue on with her tale. Her inclusions seemed pointless, so many innocuous details, but I allowed them just the same.
“We began our dinner with soup; a habit we picked up from the locals. Then, we would have our main course, such as peppers stuffed with meat and vegetables, or seasoned minced meat wrapped in cabbage or vine leaves, or spicy meatballs. We followed this by a dessert of cold pudding or fruit and cakes. Isaac would drink the beer that was brewed in the region, while I preferred the excellent local red and white wines. We would finish our meal and begin our evening adventures with the locally distilled, very strong, plum brandy, either tuica or palinka. Brandy and champagne became our evenings, Doctor. Our merriment, our life.
“ Theater Square is surrounded by the gayest nightlife a town can afford. Cafés and music halls and art galleries dot the sidewalks of the square. One need never leave for want of interesting and talented companions.”
“They sound like damn Bohemians, Elizabeth. All mist and no substance.”
“Mist and no substance? How right you are! How clever of you to see what we should have seen. But this is not about the Bohemians, Doctor. Transylvania is ethnically quite mixed. Our village was almost exclusively Roumanian. But it was also inhabited by a group of Ukrainians and a few Poles. There was a German component, I recall, and an extensive Hungarian population, each with their own language and distinctive culture.”
“ Elizabeth! Is all this truly necessary? What is the point, dear?”
She seemed quite wounded by my interruption, a fragile soap bubble broken by my crude demand. I wished to apologize, but found that I could not. She seemed to understand and recover. She continued as if I hadn’t spoken. Or, as if she had something more important to convey.
“Our village held an additional surprise. Nearby, a few gypsies practiced metalworking and they often passed through the center of town selling goods from carts. They also helped the locals—milking cows, making cheese, cutting hay, and so on. They converged on the plaza after their daily work, to ply their other trades. The gypsies would set out small rugs on the corners of Theater Square. They truly sold the spells and potions I had heard of as a child. The ancient mothers of the tribe would gaze into their globes of smooth, round crystal and tell fortunes. Or, they would shuffle oddly pictured cards, I never did quite understand what they called them, and reveal your destiny from interpreting them.
“After sunset, the plaza remained well enough lit for the visiting crowds of young intellectuals and artists to gather and find romantic this gypsy culture. Too young and too clever to follow the lead of the older locals, who locked their shutters and stayed inside.”
Elizabeth turned to look at me. I knew all had been a prologue to this moment. Did the downstairs clock strike? I could not breathe or blink or swallow.
“It was on one of these evenings, after dinner and the theater, flitting from café to gallery to tavern, that we encountered a most fascinating Roma.”
“A Roman from Italy?” I interrupted.
“No, Doctor. Let me explain. In Transylvania, the ethnic Roumanians are called ‘Magyars’ and the gypsies belong to the ‘Roma’ clan.”
I nodded to Elizabeth in understanding. And with the intent that she continue. She looked directly into my eyes. My brows were drawn as tight as my jaw. She knew, without my saying, that I thought gypsy fortune-telling was hogwash.
“The Roma I speak of was the man who was your guest here tonight.”
She had gained my attention, as she knew she would. What would cause him to follow them all the way to Amsterdam? I returned to her my reserved thoughts and devoted my full consideration to her tale.
“It was a warm evening, that I remember. Perhaps it was the brandy. We promenaded along the square without intention, without direction. We floated as if on a lazy stream or in a tender breeze. The moon was full, very full. Too full. The streetlamps were lit, but secondary. The town square glowed. It was a magical night.
“We danced in the streets to the sounds of itinerant musicians, some in the taverns or cafés, some on the streets or in the square itself. We danced until we were giddy, until we were exhausted. Until we were isolated. We had danced away from the lights and the noise, and found ourselves at the mouth of a lonely, darkened alley.
“From the crisp blackness and into the gaslight, the moonlight, Dragos appeared.”
“Dragos was the man here this evening?”
“Yes, Doctor. The same. He was like no other man I’d ever seen before.”
“He looked the normal man to me, Elizabeth.”
“Yes, Doctor. And that is the dilemma. He appears as normal as can be.” The hall clock called, startling us both. There was a moment of quiet between us and then she continued without my leave.
“When he stepped from the shadows, the light caught him. It was almost as if he had just materialized then and there. He was taller and leaner than our Isaac, but still, he exuded so much more strength and ferocity. His hair gleamed so remarkably bright.
“No, I can sense what you’re thinking, Doctor, I don’t mean it was like that pale, pale Nordic blond. This was honestly different. It shone.
“It shone like his eyes. These were truly distinctive. Did you not notice yourself? The palest of pale blue. A stained-glass color that should have only been found in a church window, not in the faunlike and slanted eyes of a man.
“His skin of his hands and neck were bone white and he would have seemed dead but for the flush at his cheeks and lips. Those lips! I’ve never seen on man nor woman lips like those. They were full obscenities, so rich and plump and perfect.
“Then he spoke.
“We were already much charmed, Isaac and I, by the delightful speech pattern of the Transylvanians. But, in Octavian Gabriel Dragos, speech became a prayer, a wish envoiced.“When I tell you, Doctor, that Octavian Dragos could charm the lights from the night sky and all manner of bird and beast, I am not being poetic. Dragos has a power not known in other men. None should have it. And it was this power that he used to overcome our reticence and destroy our virtue. And ultimately ruin your son.”“Please, my dear, I am afraid we waste much time on inessentials.”
“I apologize, Doctor, but you do need to understand certain things.”
Elizabeth stood from the wing chair with a look that told me she was not aware she occupied it. She moved to the French doors of the balcony and looked out at the moonlit night sky.
“That first night with Dragos was very much like this. Not quite as cool, mind you, but clear and bright. Magical,” she added wistfully. “As this one was.
“So we were stunned by the sight of this beautiful gentleman, tall and polite in his fine evening clothes. His manner gracious, his dress and speech impeccable. He was clever and witty and gay. He knew everything and everyone. He had wealth in his pockets and adventures on his tongue. And here, in this so-called peasant village, with a rural gypsy, we became the hayseeds, the country cousins, the students to the master.”
“Dragos took us further away from the main thoroughfare and deep into hidden corners of Tirgu-Mures. Here in these hovels that stood for taverns, we tasted richer, rawer wines and foods, more crude and more comforting. The music was plainer, but what it lacked in artifice, it more than made up for in soulfulness. The men and women were less genteel and cultured, but it was their very earthiness that gave them life. Real life, true life, not the superficial appliqué that we have made society.”
Elizabeth was fully facing me, her intended father-in-law, at the end of this declaration. Whether she was daring me to contradict or condone, I believe she herself did not know. But the bottle was unstopped, the cask uncorked.
“We took him to our bed.”
Perhaps it was the flatness, the dullness, the very artlessness of the statement that shattered the calm expression on my face. Initially, I do not believe that she thought I understood what she had told me. Then, immediately, she realized I did.
Elizabeth had turned her head in shame. The shame that rooted her body in place. If she did not think that I knew she had already been punished enough, I enlightened her.
“You poor, poor children. How miraculous your love to have survived that!”
Elizabeth Catherine Wilde had never known forgiveness until this moment. Had never before known the complete, unrestricted love of a devoted parent. This I saw.
“Oh, Father, I. . . .”
“No, no. No more of that. Your calling me ‘Father’ means more to me than you can ever imagine. Come, quickly, Daughter. Finish telling me what I need to know so that we may safely bring our Isaac home.”
“In our defense, I will say again that we had been besotted by our adventure. Our first freedom, our first decision-makings, it had made us quite giddy even without the spirits—of alcohol or no.
“We had, at first, just thought to return the kindness and generosity that Dragos had shown us. We invited him back to our rooms for some brandy and conversation. It was late, so no concierge was on duty. When we entered our suite, Isaac slipped off his coat and boots and invited Dragos to do the same. In the soft lamplight, we arranged ourselves on pillows and divans, drank and chatted. And as the drink and conversation mounted, our costumes disheveled. I still do not know quite how.
“Isaac removed his tie, I suppose. Then Dragos did the same. Dragos unbuttoned his shirt; Isaac did the same. It turned into some comical competition between them. I was to be the judge. Isaac asked which of them had the larger biceps, so shirts were removed. Isaac won that round. Dragos insisted that they remove their undershirts to compare pectorals, wherein he was the champion. They rolled their trouser legs up for the competition of the calves. And lowered them for the thighs.
“I was called upon to pass judgment on each part, each muscle. They enjoyed my embarrassment, my reticence. But, as I have already told you, Isaac’s body was not unknown to me by then and the contest was with his approval. With his complicity.
“I pointed out how much more manly the hair of Isaac’s chest appeared. Dragos had me feel his own smooth chest for comparison. I was caught between them. Locked between these young male bodies, I could feel their strength, smell their manliness. Then, Isaac was kissing the nape of my neck; I was caressing Dragos’ smooth, muscular, naked back. Dragos was doing something to Isaac.
“It all happened so quickly. Quickly or slowly, I am no longer certain of many of the events that followed. I remember lifting my face to kiss Isaac and found him kissing Dragos instead. It did not seem at the moment unnatural. I caressed their chests and they both replied to me in kind. We stumbled into the bedroom, onto the bed.”
“You may stop here, Elizabeth. I have heard enough in my practice of both medicine and law to imagine the rest.”
“Naturally, I would never embarrass you, Doctor. But there is more you should know.
“I did not awaken until late morning after that encounter. There was a banging at the door to our suite. The hotelier was concerned that we missed breakfast. I assured him that it was only due to our late night and that we would be down presently for an early luncheon in the dining room.
“I went back to the bedroom and flung open the windows to let in the new day. Dragos had gone, slipped out during the night. Isaac lay akimbo on and off the bed. I had to try, quite stridently, to awaken him. He was as white then as Dragos was in the moonlight. And Isaac’s new paleness emphasized the twin, small wounds at his throat. Two punctures, as if made by a two-tined fork or a sharp pen nib.
“I shook him awake. I feared he would not. I was already convinced I had lost him to the wages of sin. His eyes fluttered. ‘ Elizabeth,’ he begged me, ‘shut the drapes!’ I merely assumed that the drink was taking its revenge upon him. I gave him some rescue, but sent him to his bath.
“He was his old self, my loveable Isaac, when he emerged, bathed and shaven and dressed. We went down to eat and enjoy the day.
“It was overcast, as I recall. It threatened rain all day. Perhaps that is why I failed to notice his sensitivity to the light. Perhaps I did not wish to reflect on the previous evening. We shopped around the village for trinkets and souvenirs to bring home from our journey. It was a lovely day, dispelling the night previous.
“We mutually avoided the bedroom at our return to the hotel. We changed into evening dress and went to our dinner. Octavian Gabriel Dragos was awaiting us at our table. I had no interest in repeating our last night’s performance, but Isaac was powerless in his spell. Neither your son nor I ate much at dinner; Dragos ate nothing. I thought to excuse myself at dinner’s end, and left the men to their own pursuits. I assumed, fool that I was, unworldly, unknowing, that without me as the crux, no mutual act would transpire between them.
“Isaac did not return to me until the twilight before dawn. He was haggard and feverish. He was weak, unto collapsing upon our floor. Your son was dying, Doctor. And I knew that it was as Dragos wished.
“I undressed him and dragged him, half-carrying, into our bed. I rushed to the entrance to our suite and called for help. The hotelier’s wife came up immediately. She hurried past me and into the bedroom. Without shame, she tore the covers from our bed and examined your naked son. She cursed and prayed and cried in words I could not understand. But I did understand that she knew what was wrong and how to help us.
“She fetched her husband and together they moved us and all of our belongings out of the hotel, through a back alley, and into their own home behind! She wrapped Isaac snugly and placed him in their own bed as her husband bedecked the house with crucifixes and plaits of garlic. She placed a beautiful Byzantine pendant around my neck and took me into the kitchen. Here, she taught me to make a local remedy. A thick and pungent garlic soup that, she said, would do as much to cure poor Isaac as to thwart his contaminator. Under her tutelage, I prepared the soup. First, as a broth, until he grew strong enough for the thick potage.
“For three days and nights I fed him this horrible slop. And for three days and nights, it stormed. Great bolts of lightning lit the dark and crowded alleyway; huge peals of thunder shook the humble cottage. And from dusk until dawn, we heard the cry, the howl, of a terrible creature. A creature I did not need to have explained to me.
“Dragos was on the prowl. And he wanted your son!
“We reeked of garlic, Isaac and I. We smelled just like the natives. It wasn’t until Isaac was strong enough to leave that I realized why. They were protecting us from Dragos. If he couldn’t scent us, he couldn’t find us. He had already marked Isaac in his fashion, so the locals took the most sensible measure they could.
“When Isaac finally awakened from what must have been a coma of sorts, he remembered nothing. They lied and told him that there was a mysterious illness that claimed the village and that he was one of the unfortunates taken in its toll. In a few more days, Isaac was ready to leave Tirgu-Mures. The hotelier and his wife made all the arrangements. We were to leave just past dawn. They had provided us with enough food and passage on a boat to Szeged.
“During the long trip home, to your home, we never mentioned any of the days in the company of Dragos or in the hotelier’s home. Perhaps Isaac forgot in his fever. And I put it aside in my shame.”
I looked at Elizabeth for some time before I spoke. Even a man as old as I knows that what she did, she did for love. And she more than demonstrated the greatness of her love for Isaac.
“Get a little rest, Daughter. We shall have much to do when Isaac returns.”
I left her alone in her study, checked on my wife and descended the stairs to the library. Sarah was not asleep, this I knew by virtue of our years together. Old married couples may not tell each other everything, yet they hide nothing. She was allowing me to manage the circumstances—whatever they were—as the head of the house.
I lit my desk lamp and pulled down some old volumes from my library shelf. These books were no longer mere curiosity. They contained valuable information. I did not possess all that I might require on such short notice, but I could make do. I took the lamp and traversed the house gathering this and that. This evil would stop tonight!
I returned to the library and shut the door. I heard the hour tone and, in agreement with my old clock’s new warnings, I started to make my preparations.
My wakefulness, my industry, and my small lamp all prevented me from noticing the subtle graying of the black, night sky. I never even heard the chiming admonitions of my most reliable counsel. Like an ill-prepared actor, I missed my cue and was forcibly reminded of the seriousness of my role.
An enormous crash and renting brought me to myself. I scooped the improvised tools from my desktop and flew up the stairs. Unless I missed my guess, the French doors of Elizabeth’s room had been scattered upon her floor.
I tore open her door to find a fiend at her throat.Their shared passion had brought the scent of her to his nose. That scent drew him to return. Her blood brought him back and now they shared that as well. He had torn at her neck, a crude gesture, and soaked them both with the surfeit vitality he could not contain. I was horrified, I admit. I could not move. I understood, finally, what Elizabeth had meant when she said she was powerless to resist.She slumped and I knew she was dead.
The creature—not a man—pulled away slowly, relishing her dying drop.
“Stand, devil! Stand and face me!” I found my voice.
The demon crouched lower over the inert body of dear Elizabeth, as if she would give him some protection from my wrath.
“Stand, I say, and meet you doom.” And still he moved not.
Finally, I demanded, “Stand, Isaac! Face your father and your fate!”
And the devil with my features confronted me. My beautiful son. All of my hopes and dreams and aspirations covered with the blood of his murdered fiancée. The last of her life’s blood dripped from his twin, sharp fangs.
“Gott in Himmel! No!”
We both turned to the source of the scream. Sarah stood in the doorway, horror clutching her face as tightly as she clutched her dressing gown. In that brief moment, a mere blink, I watched her fragile features crack. And gone with her composure, her mind. She stretched out her hands and threw herself towards him. He who had been her son.
And he to her.
I flung myself between them at the very last moment. And with Sarah gripping and tearing at my back and Isaac at my front, I maneuvered the whittled leg of my favorite library chair and plunged it directly into my only son’s chest.
Isaac rolled away, unable to remove the improvised stake from his sternum. I could get no nearer to him for the stranglehold his mother had on me. We together, his parents, watched as Isaac achieved the transition that takes the vampire from this world and into his damned next. Sarah paralleled her son’s change and locked into her own paralysis. Her features grew slack, her mind remote. And in his death, something in her died as well.
I shut them away that very week. My beloved son, Isaac, with his beautiful and devoted fiancée, Elizabeth, sealed in a tomb constructed for they two. The single inscription, “Ryckman,” accorded to my dear daughter-in-law the title she never truly held in life, but deserved all the more in her death.
Sarah, I shut away as well. I thought to keep her at home with me. A reminder of my failure. But I could not long contend with the curses and the screams. Not if I was to be about my new vocation. The hunting of Octavian Gabriel Dragos. And all like him.
I was alone with only dread for a companion. And the damned hall clock that chimed again and again. A former friend, now it mocked me. Its very sound reminded me of all I have lost to time. And how little of it I had left.
