They were gone.
Every last man, woman, and child. His daughter. His baby granddaughter. The Barringtons. Gone. His colony had simply vanished into thin air. The buildings remained exactly as they had been (though weather-beaten and overgrown). Tools and supplies were exactly where they belonged. Surrounded by rich soil and abundant wildlife, how could they have starved? If there was some kind of pestilence, where were the mass graves? If there was a battle, where were signs? It didn’t make any sense.
There were only two clues of any note: the word “Croatoan” carved into one of the fence posts of the perimeter wall, and the letters “CRO” carved into the bark of a nearby tree. Had the Croatoan attacked the colony? It seemed unlikely. They would have burned it to the ground, for one thing. And there would be bodies. Evidence.
“I think,” said Henry, “that it is better he never learned the truth.”
Shortly after Governor White’s first return to England, the people of Roanoke were beset by a strange illness, which produced an acute fever in its victims. This fever led to delusions, coma, and eventually death.
“Dr. Crowley thought the disease a native one. He was powerless to curb its effects. In the three months following Governor White’s departure, ten of us succumbed to this plague. In the three months after that, a dozen more. Their bodies were carried a distance into the woods and buried, lest the sickness contaminate the soil near our settlement. We grew ever more fearful that ours would be the next body carried off. A near-constant vigil was kept on the island’s eastern shore, in hopes that sails would soon be spotted there. But none were. It is likely that things would have continued thus, had not the hideous discovery been made.”
Eleanor Dare couldn’t sleep. Not while her husband fought for his life a mere fifty yards away. She dressed, wrapped sleeping baby Virginia in a blanket, and walked through the freezing air to Dr. Crowley’s building, resigned to spending a restless night by her husband’s side in prayer.
“Upon entering, Mrs. Dare was met with the ghastly sight of Crowley with his mouth around her husband’s neck. He withdrew and presented his fangs, drawing screams from her. Thus alerted, several of our men ran into Crowley’s building with their swords and crossbows, only to find the woman slaughtered, and the infant Virginia in the vampire’s claws. Crowley warned the men to retreat. They refused. Having no knowledge of vampires, the men perished at once.”
Their screams woke the rest of the colonists, including Henry.
“I dressed and told Edeva to do the same, thinking it an attack by the natives. I charged into the night with my pistol determined to protect my home to the last. But on reaching the clearing in the center of our village, I was met with an incredible sight. A terrifying sight. Thomas Crowley—his eyes black, a pair of white razors in his mouth—tearing Jack Barrington in half, spilling his innards everywhere. I saw friends scattered on the ground. Some with limbs missing. Some with heads missing. Crowley took notice of me and advanced. I leveled my pistol and fired. The ball found its mark, piercing the center of his chest. But this failed to slow him in the least. He continued to advance. I am not ashamed to admit that all courage left me. I could think only of escape. Only of Edeva, and the unborn child in her belly.”
Henry turned and ran the fifty yards home as fast as he could. Edeva was already waiting in the doorway, and he hardly slowed as he grabbed her hand and continued toward the tree line.
“I could hear him running behind us. Each step breaking the earth. Each one closer than the last. We ran into the trees. Ran until our lungs burned—until Edeva began to slow, and I felt his steps behind us.”
“I remember none of it. Only that I woke on my stomach and knew at once that my wounds were mortal. My body lay shattered—my limbs all but useless. Dried blood over my eyes rendering me half blind. By the sound of Edeva’s labored breath, I knew that she was even closer to the end than I. She lay on her side, her yellow dress stained with blood. Her yellow hair matted with it. I dragged myself to her with two broken arms. Dragged my eyes close to hers—open and distant. I ran my hand through her hair and simply looked at her. Simply watched her breathing slow, all the while whispering, ‘Don’t be afraid, love.’ And then she stopped.”
By sunrise, Crowley had dragged most of his fellow settlers into the woods. He’d been left no alternative. Explaining a plague was easy. Almost as easy as explaining a man falling from a crow’s nest, or a girl jumping overboard, or a fisherman being attacked by savages. But screams in the night, followed by the disappearance of four men, a woman, and an infant? That he couldn’t explain. They would question him. Discover him. And that, he couldn’t have. One by one, he dragged their battered bodies away. Of his 112 fellow settlers, only one had been spared his wrath.
Crowley had hesitated to kill Virginia Dare. A baby that he had personally delivered? The first English soul born in the New World? These things had sentimental value. Besides, she would have no memory of what had happened here, and a young female companion might prove useful in the lonely years to come.
“He returned from the woods with the baby in his arms. I daresay he was surprised to see me alive—though barely so—struggling to keep my feet while I carved the letters ‘CRO’ into a tree with a knife. My dying effort to expose the identity of my murderer. Of my wife and child’s murderer. His shock subsided, Crowley could not help his laughter, for I had unwittingly given him a brilliant idea. Setting the baby down and taking my knife, he carved the word “Croatoan” onto a nearby post, all the while smiling at the thought of John White massacring scores of unsuspecting natives in retaliation.”
Crowley prepared to take Henry’s head. But here he hesitated again.
“He was suddenly struck by the realization that he would then be the only English-speaking man for three thousand miles in any direction—a lonely prospect for one with such a love of jokes. Who, then, to laugh at them? I watched him kneel over me and cut his wrist with a fingernail, letting the blood spill over my face and into my mouth.”
Crowley buried the last of the colonists and headed south toward the Spanish territories, carrying a crying baby in one arm and the half-dead body of a young Henry in the other. Soon, after the sickness and the hallucinations passed—after his bones mended themselves—his companion would open his eyes to a new life in a New World. But first, Thomas Crowley would celebrate by feasting on the first English blood born to it.
He had decided to feast on Virginia Dare.
VI
Twenty-one days after Henry carried him into the house unconscious, Abe was well enough to leave his room and take a tour.
I was astonished to find that my windowless room was, in fact, part of a windowless house. A house dug entirely out of the earth—its walls and floors meticulously lined with stone and clay. A kitchen where he had prepared my food on the woodstove. A library where he had replenished my supply of books. A second bedchamber. All lit by oil light, and all decorated with elegant furnishings and gold-framed paintings, as if Henry thought these his
