The Dead Travel Fast

has taken to the hills to live as a wolf.”

I stared at him, not even realising I had burnt my hand upon the teacup. I put it down hastily and summoned a polite smile.

“Forgive me, doctor. I must be very dull, for I do not understand. Do you mean he has gone to live in the forest, amongst the animals?”

“No, no, my dear. I mean he has become an animal. It is a failing of the men of his family. Some of them are perfectly normal, and some of them fall victim to this disorder or curse, I hardly know which to call it. On the main, they live as normal men, but once a month, they will take to the mountains to hunt and to howl when the moon rises.”

I started to laugh. Cosmina had told her tales of peasant superstition, but surely this educated gentleman did not profess to believe in werewolves. “Now you are making sport of me.”

But he leaned forward still further, his face deadly earnest. “I assure you, I am not. I am not. This is the way of these men. Many of them make good enough husbands save for the nights of the full moon when they must run with their own kind. But sometimes the lure of the moon is too strong, and they leave their wives and children forever, content to roam the mountains in the shape of wolves.”

I gaped at him. “You are a man of science, Dr. Frankopan. Surely you do not really believe such things.”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “Child, child, do not let your imagination fail you, for this is a place like no other. Perhaps I would not have believed in such things were I not brought up in the shadow of these mountains. The rest of my family live in Vienna, and they have all forgot the old ways, or they pretend to. They say it is nonsense and they will not speak of such things in Vienna lest they be mocked and ridiculed. But I, who have come back to this place and lived here for so long, I know the truth. The first time I was brought to this house I was five years old. My father wanted to hunt the bear and the lynx and the wolf. He gathered a great group of his friends and they went out together in a hunting party. The first night, they hunted by moonlight, knowing the great full moon would light their way. My father was the first to see the wolf, a tremendous, solid creature, high as a man’s waist and with two red eyes glowing in the darkness. He fired, but the shot was a poor one, and it only took off the animal’s paw. He ran off into the night, streaming blood from his wound and howling. The next day, my father saw the village blacksmith, his arm swathed in bandages, his left hand completely missing. It was no accident, my dear. My father had shot the blacksmith, for he too was a Popa, one of these men who ran wolf when the moon was full.”

I strove for kindliness towards the old man and his fanciful tale. “Dr. Frankopan, I am certain your father did hunt a wolf, and that the blacksmith lost his hand. Who is more likely to lose a hand in the course of his work than a smith? But is it not possible that you imagined the link between these two events? You were a small child, such things would have impressed you. And doubtless your nursemaid told you stories of wolves to keep you safe within the house.”

He smiled at me, then rose and took a box from the mantelpiece. It was a pretty thing, a fine example of the Roumanian carver’s art, painted with bright colours. He opened it and withdrew something almost as large as his own hand, but covered in grey-black fur and crusted on end with what looked horribly like dried blood. The other end was spiked with nails, long and curved and black as night.

“A wolf’s paw,” I whispered.

He put it into my hand and I felt then the weight and the gruesomeness of this place.

“My father brought home the wolf’s paw as a trophy. It has stayed in that box ever since, a reminder to us that in Transylvania, that which is impossible becomes possible,” he finished in a darkling voice.

“But this might have been only a coincidence,” I protested, even as I held the paw in my hand. It was heavy and real, but was it real enough to persuade?

Dr. Frankopan’s expression was one of pity. “My dear child, you are a writer, a teller of tales. In this land, that is a sacred thing, for it is the storyteller who passes the legends, the storyteller who makes certain we do not forget. But to tell the tales, the storyteller must believe. Can you not believe, even a little?”

I looked down at the paw, the terrible remains of that long-ago hunting party, and I wondered. Was it possible? Could I allow that such things could happen? I had explained to Charles that the uneducated folk in the Carpathians held such beliefs, but could I? My grandfather had spoken of such things; I had been reared with tales of witches and selkies, mermaids and faery changelings. I knew that some people still believed in them. Even Mrs. Muldoon, with her stolid Irish sense, had put out a cake for the faeries on the garden step on Midsummer Night. How much easier would it be to believe in these wolfen men in a place such as this, where the howling carried on the wind and the forests pressed in about us, thick and black and knowing?

“I suppose,” I said slowly. Suddenly, I remembered the little maid Tereza and the word she had spoken. “Dr. Frankopan, what is strigoi?”

He put down his cup and fixed me with a solemn look. “Where did you hear the word?”

“The maid, Tereza. She seemed to be cautioning me against sleeping with an open window, and she hung basil upon the casement latch. What am I to fear?”

The doctor gave another sigh and settled further into his chair, looking rather older of a sudden. “I presume you know what a vampire is?”

I nodded. “Of course. Cosmina used to talk of them at school, and my grandfather was a scholar of folklore. He wrote a monograph upon the subject of vampires. I cannot recall to mind the details, but I do remember his thesis was that such creatures exist in almost every known civilization.”

“This is true, this is true. And here, the word for such a monster is strigoi. There are two varieties, but the strigoi morti are the dead who will not rest. Death has taken the strigoi mort, only he does not lie easy in his grave. He walks in search of blood, to take it and feed his monstrous need with a bite to the neck or above the heart.” His eyes took on a faraway look, and I was not certain he even saw me as he continued to recite in a dreamy tone. “The strigoi mort comes at night to take the life of those left behind, of those most dear to him. He is immortal so long as he steals blood from the living. He is a monster, risen from the grave to take what does not belong to him.”

“And the other form?” I asked.

“Strigoi vii, living men who have given up their immortal soul, either by choice or happenstance. One might be the seventh child of a seventh child, or perhaps have suffered the bite of a strigoi mort. These living vampires draw sustenance not from blood, but from the life force of those around them. A strigoi viu is doomed to become a strigoi mort after his death.”

It seemed an impossible thing to accept. The stories I had read about these creatures had been unreal to me, no different than any other bit of dark folklore. Somehow even as I had lectured Charles on the subject, I had failed to grasp that these creatures were very real to the folk who believed in them.

“But vampires, Dr. Frankopan,” I told him. “Surely they do not exist.” And even as I said the words I heard the shiver of doubt.

To my astonishment, the doctor leaned forward and covered my hands with his own. “My dear, you are a friend to the Dragulescus, and for this reason, you are dear to me as well. I must care for you as they would in their absence, and you must be warned.”

“Warned against what?” I demanded. I felt a little impatient with him now, and I struggled against it. It was not his fault that he had been brought up with such superstitions; indeed most folk had. Even in Edinburgh, a city that prided itself upon learning and sound common sense, I had heard of the ways of the peculiarities of the country folk and their odd beliefs about unseen things. How much more easily could they thrive here, in this fertile land of myth and magic?

He did not loose his hold upon my hands. “You cannot guard yourself against what you will not believe. There have been troubles here, long ago, but the memory of them is fresh. Should trouble come again, whilst you are here, you must be prepared. The strigoi mort is a creature of revenge, created out of the evil misdeeds of a once-living man. He will repay the slights suffered in life at the hands of his family by attacking them after his death. It is said the strigoi mort first works his evil in small ways, bringing bad dreams and rendering men incapable with their women. Then he begins to feed, first upon cattle, then upon children and youths, draining them of their blood. There is no mistaking the work of the strigoi, either living or dead.”

In spite of myself, I felt chilled at his words.

“But surely there are rational explanations for such things,” I reminded him gently.