Chapter Text
It was only on the harshest and coldest of nights that she took the rifle out. Looked deep into the scope and scouted the graveyard for any twists or turns : a tree that was not a tree, or a grave that was no longer a grave. With a moon that was no longer there, she trembled even with a fur coat wrapped tight around her neck , fastened against her chest, and nuzzled deep into her hands.
One clothed finger wrapped around the trigger, but it only hung there in reluctance, in a deep, burrowed worry over one single mistake that only quickened pulse. Her face flushed with nerves, excitement , and mind-altering fear.
Fear that made her readjust her position, tighten her finger on the trigger, and focus on the cemetery– an abundance of graves of which she could barely make heads or tails.
A heavy wind troubled the trees and created a haphazard sense of movement as if they had limbs.
But she was used to it. Life wasn’t easy in the Kingdom of Romania, and in the Wallachian countryside, death became a normality, with children succumbing to illness or accidents early in life, elders dying with beer bottles glued to their chests, adults attacked by wolves or something else… It’s almost as if you knew the Reaper himself, and he’s always an uninvited guest.
The moon laid a sallow blanket over the shallow graves, over trees more dead than the actual dead, and over the pointy edges of the gates guarding the cemetery.
“Fato!” She jumped and trembled, the rifle ready to escape at her grandmother’s voice. As fast as lighting, it was seized from her hands and she struggled to explain herself, incomprehensible sounds snivelling late into the night– At her incoherent mumblings, her grandmother sighed in strident disappointment yet already accustomed to the episode, noticed from an inane, idle posture, grasping the rifle in familiarity, visage holding sympathetic melancholy, as if wondering to herself: Why did you have to come out this way?
“How many times have I told you? ” Grandma continued in a face creased by wrinkles, ruddy due to the cold, waxy due to the pigment, “There is no strigoi! None! When I’m telling you to go outside, this isn’t what I mean! Get up! “
The girl rose from her chair, accompanied by Grandma’s lectures, a repetition of fata mea fata mea, ce faci tu fată? , “I don’t want you to use your grandfather’s rifle again– it’s not yours to wield, and you don’t even know how to use it. One day, you’ll shoot your own foot, or worse, your head.”
The girl stared at her feet and interlinked her fingers, nodding mindlessly until Grandma sighed and walked into the house, into the locked bedroom, and shut the door.
Immediately, the girl turned to stare at the cemetery, eyes glazing over the scenery, where a dark figure flashed amidst the graves– but as soon as she blinked, it was no longer there.
“Fata!” A scream bellowed from inside.
In a dejected stride, she opened the door and kept quiet, as from Granny’s words: Nobody believes a liar, even when he’s telling the truth.
In a society coordinated by a strict set of rules, from painting the walls to cleaning the house, in a populace with deeply ingrained superstition who never missed a day of church and remembered saints like acknowledging night and day, the girl often asked herself: Why are you blind to the undead?
Although on the surface, people believed superstitions of the strigoi, moroi, and pricolici, they scowled whenever she mentioned them. Grandma even more. But Grandma never saw the ivory flesh of a strigoi, the lithe limbs, the curved spine bound to escape and sever flesh, the bald scalp that only accentuated a skeletal and hollow face – Grandma never saw the eyes, glowing and glowering like stardust, mindless yet sound, as if aware of everything yet knowing nothing.
But she did.
And she never forgot it.
Missing the call of the rooster, the girl woke up at around nine to a soundless house. She walked to the Orthodox calendar and gulped as she crossed another date away with a pencil: the 10th of November.
‘Twenty more days and the night of the strigoi will come upon us… I would pray to God to save us, but I know deep inside that He won’t help us. If we were created in God’s image, and the strigoi are merely humans who roam after death, they are still a vessel of God’s creation – God’s blemish , God’s slip-up, but if God’s all-knowing, how could He make a mistake? Maybe it’s not a mistake. Maybe it’s revenge.’
She pushed those thoughts aside and ate her breakfast, eggs, cheese and tomatoes that had gotten even colder waiting at the table. As she ate, she wondered how long it took Grandma to prepare them, if it was just another inconvenience to her, like popping a pimple or washing the dishes.
Eventually, her thoughts ceased as she made some tea, but instead of drinking it, she walked over to the locked bedroom, now unlocked.
“I made some tea for you,” She opened the door and inhaled a waft of incense, warmed by melting wax on the night table. An even older woman, wrapped in blankets like a cocoon, stared from the bed with dull eyes. She had a pigmented and healthy glow, although she did not leave the bedroom and no longer spoke – an unwavering silence persisted in the air as the younger girl held the cup to Great Grandma’s lips, one she affectionately nicknamed: Buna.
As soon as the cup grazed Buna’s skin, she flinched as if awakened from a daydream.
“...Sorry…” The young girl replied, albeit awkwardly and restlessly, as if walking around bear traps. Her heart tightened, face to face with Buna’s condition, and she couldn’t help but recall younger times– when she was younger and happier, and Buna stronger and healthier.
A sigh bubbled out of her throat as her visioned hazed, and she made quick work of wiping tears away:
” l’ll go now.” She said with a still face, although she could have wept.
She rested on a wooden swing for three, built by her grandfather before he died. The moment she sat, the wooden swing creaked and squeaked awkwardly. Her cheeks flushed in embarrassment although there was no one to hear it. The sound persisted with each push like a broken melody of nails on a chalkboard.
A book rested on a tree stump next to the swing, which served as an efficient alternative to an actual table. She picked it up, Songs of Innocence and of Experience , and started reading:
How sweet is the Shepherd’s sweet lot!
From the morn to the evening he stays;
He shall follow his sheep all the day,
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.
For he hears the lambs’ innocent call,
And he hears the ewes’ tender reply;
He is watching while they are in peace,
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.
An actual shepherd, as if ripped straight from the pages of poetry, passed by the gates. A herd of sheep accompanied him. The girl didn’t raise her head or voice in greeting. Instead, she bit her lip and focused ardently on her book of poems, which she couldn’t understand, but read nonetheless because she had nothing else.
The sun does arise, And make happy the skies;
She saw but couldn’t grasp. She read but couldn’t comprehend. What did people mean when they said they understood poetry? She clenched the book hard and ignored her heart-beat , propelled by desperation to ignore the passing man and focus on the paper.
But she couldn’t help herself– she couldn’t remain indifferent – she wasn’t made out of stone. She raised her head. Turned to face the horde of sheep, marked with different colours to announce ownership, and the man bearing a heavy woollen coat. They met eyes and exchanged a silent conversation , followed by a frown from his part and her grimace in reply.
With shame boiling in the pit of her stomach, she read her poetry which blurred together with her vision. As the pit became bottomless, she shut the book and set it on the make-shift table. In the overreaction of a simple exchange, her mood had been trampled, stepped over, and spat on. Why do I have to be so weak?
And just like that, she rocked on the swing, which cried with her.
“Did you read some more today?” Grandma asked, exhausted and completely drained from work. The old woman didn’t look up once as she peeled potatoes with a sharp knife and dropped the dressing in a bucket, which she’d throw at the chickens later. Her grip faltered as she yawned.
Granddaughter just stared, did not initiate help, only transfixed on the knife sliding against the vegetable. She nodded.
“The ones in English?
“Da…” Even with an intricate vocabulary from native and foreign literature, the girl didn’t insist much on conversation, forced to reply out of obligation rather than convenience. Da…Nu…Bine…Ok ...You'd have a more riveting conversation with a wall, or a toddler that mirrored your words and expressions. Sometimes, Grandma spoke to the dog for company. It was more responsive.
“Look…I appreciate that you care about all of those books and all,” Granny sighed , “But you oughta do something else - you’re no longer a little girl.”
The girl bit her lip at the upcoming lecture.
“You’re nineteen - you need to get married, take care of the house…” the knife slid against the potato , bare and yellow, “ Grow up. Wake up. Să ajungi cu picioarele pe pământ.”
How many times had she heard this phrase? She flinched, as if allergic to the words, or the words themselves were a lethal poison. Wake up from her fantasies and come back to Earth, live on the ground and not in the clouds, drop the book and pick up the shovel.
Since all men in their household were dead (the villagers couldn’t help but pity them–three women, one sick, the other old, and the youngest useless and lazy) they had to carry the burden of all household chores – cooking, cleaning, working in the fields, feeding animals ( dogs, cats, chickens and occasionally, a pig they’d slaughter every winter). Grandma cut the wood alright but overtime, she’d gotten frailer and men or young boys volunteered to come over and cut them in bundles so it’d last them longer. The girl only watched from the window when that happened. She could have asked them to give her a few pointers, as she tried once in the middle of the night with no one around to see her, and almost cut a finger. Shortly afterwards she got cramps out of stress and cried herself to sleep, thinking: Why can’t I do anything right? I can read books alright, and I can write alright in my diary, but what good does that truly do?
“I’m not saying this with ill intent.”
“I know.”
“But I can’t help but worry, ” Grandma dropped a potato in the bucket before picking another one, “If something happens to me, who’ll take care of you?”
The girl dug her nails into her thigh.
“You can’t take care of yourself - and If I’m not around, who will…?” Granny lamented as she sliced another potato in two and dropped it in the bucket.
**
After a long day of doing nothing although there was a lot to do, the girl stood on the chair, almost like a nightly ritual. The rifle had been locked away but she held onto a knife anyway– the same blade Grandma used to cut potatoes. It still reeked, faintly, of dirt and the wet smell of a fresh potato.
She stared into the distance, deep into the graveyard, like a hawk assessing its prey although she couldn’t see anything – she had trouble making out graves from trees and shadows from monsters.
Their house was situated on a small hill, giving her a perfect view of the graveyard where her great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were buried. Circled by all the graves stood a church, not comparable to the monuments you’d find in Bucharest, but good enough for a small village. Compact, like a pocket watch, yet fancy, like an astrolabe. Everyone cleaned up for church– washed the backs of their ears and styled their hair, if slightly, to truly enter the house of the Lord.
The girl’s leg wobbled as if malfunctioning and she leaned forward to see better, eyes squinting into the darkness, but nothing changed: each shape was rudimentary in its form, with dots and rectangles and cubes , all coloured in grey and black, the stained glass of the church capturing a rotten glow like dried blood.
It aggravated her. If only she had that rifle. If only Grandma opened the door. If only Grandma trusted her. If only Grandma listened.
The house’s warmth beckoned like a siren, the covers of her bed an irresistible temptation but she only trembled in a night cold enough to freeze veins. Her fingernails turned purple and she had a nose so red she could have been an illustrated reindeer.
“Fato….” Grandma scolded as she opened the door, as if preemptively aware of her granddaughter hunched on the chair, peering deep into absolute nothingness. “Hai, tu! înăuntru! Inside ! Vino și culcă-te!”
The girl sighed but rose from the chair, too easily, too obediently, as if she waited for someone to come over and say: you can stop now, so she’d no longer blame herself whenever she wavered– so she had an excuse to stop, because she couldn’t let it go all on her own.
In the bowels of the house, the graveyard still haunted her. “ You need to…” Grandma’s words died inside her throat, “Nu, nu mai contează. Go to sleep.”
Grandma must have wanted to speak about Radu.
She woke up at nine, drank her tea, read a book, and did nothing else. She didn’t cook, she didn’t clean, she didn’t chop wood, she did absolutely nothing. Like a parasite, she leeched off her remaining family, and each time she attempted to be productive, she failed or did a half-assed job. If it couldn’t be perfect, why try? If she kept failing, why bother?
Grandma gave up on insisting overtime, knowing that the girl wouldn’t do it.
So, the girl expected for her days to continue in the same monotony, only for the main gate to open. Grandma never came home this early. She looked outside the window. A familiar shepherd speeded for the door and cursed at a barking dog.
What if something happened to Granny? What if some dogs jumped her? Or worse…Nu, nu… They don’t come out during the day, do they?
She thought of Radu – it was dark back then, not pitch-black ,but dark.
The door opened without a knock. Heavy footsteps left remnants of mud on the wooden floor. “You.” He walked over to her, “Come with me.”
Ion. It had been a long time since she last heard his voice. It’d gotten deeper, coarser, meaner .
“Did something happen to Granny?” The girl’s face paled.
“She’s fine, it’s not about her- there’s a new man in the village - an Englishman.” He spoke crudely, under the wish to finish the conversation as fast as possible. The faint musk of booze marked his breath.
“Englishman…?”
“Problem is, no one can understand what he’s saying. You know English, don’t you?” So that’s why he was here… That’s why he talked to her - not because he wanted to ,but because he needed to. It didn’t bother her, if anything, it gave her a purpose. This was the one thing only she could do. She was no longer useless. She served a purpose.
“ Da, da…”
And that’s how she met Dr. John Kearns.