Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Harriet
People in Transylvania really lean into the vampire tourism. Castle tours, themed Airbnbs, even a Dracula museum. I guess I can’t blame them; it’s probably a huge economic driver.
But it’s when I cross from Transylvania into Karsovia, headed for “the castelul,” that things get weird.
For one thing, my taxi driver keeps looking at me in his rearview mirror with this wary expression. Just ten minutes ago, at the bottom of a winding, serpentine road, he pointed out—very gravely—that his GPS had gone completely dark. Just a black screen.
I grin. “Okay, then!” Clearly, he’s putting on a little show for me, a naive tourist from the U.S.
Though it seems a bit much here in this rural area, miles from the whole vampire tourism epicenter.
He gives me another dark and foreboding look.
“It’s alright, I’m here on business. We don’t need to do the vampire thing.”
“This is Karsovia.” He lowers his voice to a hushed whisper. “Where some never return.”
Oh-kay.
I pull out my phone. No bars. I lean forward. “Is there some kind of cell service damper in this cab? If so, could you turn it off, please? I’d really love that.”
He scowls at me in the rearview mirror. “No damper.”
I sit back with a sigh.
It’s a seamless experience, I’ll grant that. We’re following literal wooden signs with arrows carved into them, climbing higher and higher into the foggy Carpathian Mountains.
He pulls over at the base of a winding stone path. “Far as I go. Castelul Dracul is there.” He gestures at a looming structure silhouetted against the darkening sky. He makes a sign of the cross, then taps his forehead twice.
“Okay, okay, if we both pretend that I’m super scared and I really think it’s some Dracula castle and that Karsovia is even scarier than Transylvania, then can you drive me all the way?”
He furrows his big brow. “No further.”
I dig around in my wallet and produce a couple of bills. “I promise I’ll emphasize the spookiness in my review of your taxi company. Like, ten stars for the spookiness.”
He twists around and fixes me with an intense stare. “Take heed,” he grates out.
Apparently, you can’t break character here in dark Disneyland. It’s a bit frustrating, but one does what one must.
“I understand.” I give him a nice tip anyway because he really did go all out.
I watch as his taillights disappear down the mountain, leaving me alone with my rolling suitcase. I make a mental note to find a non-vampire tourism cab for the ride back to my hotel.
Maybe I’ll meet some relatives who will know of one.
I might have more relatives.
I gaze up at the castle, silhouetted now by the setting sun.
After my half brother, James, disappeared, it was always just Mom, Granabelle, and me. I love my tiny family, but the idea of aunts and uncles—or more half-siblings—makes my heart sing.
True, my father wasn’t exactly a gem, what with the bug eating, the lack of interest in meeting his daughter, and the whole madness business, but every family has a weird relative, right?
I make my way up medieval cobblestones, which seem to be arranged for maximum trip-ability, thankful for my practical ankle boots and also grateful that the sun hasn’t set entirely behind the mountains because I’m not seeing much in terms of walkway lighting.
Good grief, if this were in the United States, the owners would have so many lawsuits, those craggy turrets would be spinning.
By the time I knock on a castle door the size of a minivan, my boots are scuffed beyond repair.
The enormous man who opens the door isn’t wearing a uniform, exactly, but there’s something…
official about him. His coat is dark green, pressed within an inch of its life, and his shirt is buttoned all the way up to his throat.
His hair is slicked back into a short ponytail, and his boots shine like polished onyx.
His expression is grim, like he stepped straight out of a Victorian period drama—stern, haunted, and entirely out of place in the modern world.
More vampire stuff?
“Okay. I mean, I guess,” I mumble, feeling dismayed that they would hold my father’s funeral or reading of the will or celebration of life or whatever this is in what seemed to be a Dracula-themed Airbnb. But maybe my father loved this place or something. Maybe this is what he wanted.
The butler, or whoever he is, takes my bag, and I follow him through one large, gloomy, torchlit room after another, until we finally end up in a cavernous room with stone walls that must be fifty feet high, the cobwebby corners illuminated by wall sconces like flaming torches.
There are weapons hung on the walls and set into weird nooks.
At the far end, bookshelves stretch up to the ceiling, creating a hellish chaos of books and papers strewn across the floor and piled willy-nilly among candles and papers.
I spot a few people sitting cross-legged in the middle of the mess.
One of them sees me and shoots up to her feet. “Hey!” She comes running toward us, brandishing a sword.
I jump back out of her way, and she streaks past me, only to slam into the door I’ve just entered through. She casts the sword aside with a loud clang and proceeds to bang on the door. “Let us out, goddamn you!”
It’s now that I realize that the butler is gone… with my bag. And there’s just a door—or actually, not even a door anymore. It’s just a panel in the wall with no knob.
“What the hell?” I knock on the panel that used to be a door. “Hey! My stuff!”
The woman gives up and slumps against the door. “He took all of our stuff, too.” Her accent is Slavic—Czechoslovakian or Yugoslavian, maybe.
I pull my phone from my purse. “At least I still have my...”
Gulp.
Not only are there no bars, but there’s nothing on the screen whatsoever. “My brick.”
She mutters angrily in her language. She’s lovely, with short dark hair and beautiful tattoos on one arm. She also has the same squarish brown glasses as me.
“What’s going on?” My mind is spinning. “Is this the Renfield memorial or whatever?”
Another voice. “This is no memorial; it’s a prison.” I look up to see a young man strolling toward us, also with brown curly hair and glasses. He sounds German. “We cannot get out. Thirty-four point three hours I’ve been here.”
The woman who rushed the door pushes her glasses up her nose. “Twelve and three-quarters for me.”
“Seriously? They won’t let you out? What’s going on? Did the butler guy say anything? What does he want?”
The young man shakes his head. “We have no idea, but we don’t think they’re going to hurt us.”
“Or ransom us.” Another woman, this one in a crisp maroon suit with a crisp English accent to match, strolls up. She, too, has similar hair and glasses. “They would’ve taken photos by now.” She puts out her hand. “I’m Magda. This is Stefan and Irina.”
“Harriet,” I say, taking her hand and greeting the others. I look all around.
“So there’s no way out? Could it be an elaborate memorial thing? Did he like escape rooms?”
“Thirty-four point three hours I have been here,” Stefan says again. “This is no game.”
I look up at the cathedral-like windows above the towering bookcases. “Have you tried stacking stuff and climbing up there?”
“Jah, of course we have. This is first thing we have tried,” Stefan says. “And we tried everything.”
Irina points at the far wall with her tattooed hand. “Somebody delivers food through that slot over there. We try to yell in, but there’s never an answer.”
Magda looks me over. “You’re another one of his kids?”
My heart leaps. “Yes! I’m Mr. Renfield’s daughter. You?”
She nods. They all nod.
In spite of the alarming circumstances, I can barely keep the smile off my face. “So we’re… half-siblings? I mean, we do all look alike. And have similar taste in eyewear.”
Irina smiles a little wistfully. “Oh, the similarities don’t stop at unruly hair and glasses.
All our mothers met Renfield once and only once on the Dacia Express, an overnight train through the Carpathians.
They had sex once—using a mysteriously ineffective condom provided by him, naturally—and then he leapt from the train.
Magda and I had stepfathers for a while, but both died in car crashes when we were five. ”
“Very suspicious ones,” Magda adds, adjusting her suit jacket.
My jaw drops open. My mind reels. “This is... unbelievable.”
“Oh, there is more.” Irina crosses her arms. “We all worked in bakeries in high school. We all got scholarships from the Braydon Institute. And we all got pet rabbits at the age of ten after finding them in baskets on our doorstep.”
“Same with me... including the rabbit!” I say. Bunster showed up on our doorstep in a little cage with a basket of rabbit supplies.
Irina raises one brow. “Four half-siblings, all born same month thirty-two years ago to different mothers who all had sex with the same man on the same train route? The rabbit, the scholarship, the bakery, the single parent, and who knows what else? It’s a manufactured pattern.”
“Agree,” I whisper. The people on my true crime forum would lose their minds.
Stefan asks if I’ve ever seen the movie Boys from Brazil, which I haven’t. He explains that it’s a movie about a bunch of Nazis who clone Hitler and re-create the events of his life in order to help ensure he turns out really Hitlery.
“Somebody was grooming us in the same sick way,” Magda says crisply. “Obviously, Renfield’s involved, and I, for one, hope he’s not dead so I can kill him.”
“Only if you let me torture him first,” Irina says.
“Wait, did any of you have a younger sibling who disappeared?” I ask.
No, as it turns out.
Stefan and Magda have little sisters, and Irina has a younger cousin who lived with their family.
“Losing your brother does not sound like part of the pattern,” Irina says. “I’m sorry you lost him.”
“I’m sorry your stepfathers were taken from you,” I say. “I never had a stepfather.”