House of Bathory (33 page)

Chapter 98

B
ATHORY
C
ASTLE
C
AVERNS
H
IGH
T
ATRA
M
OUNTAINS,
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 28, 2010

B
etsy shone her light up at the stream of trickling water. The liquid sheen disappeared into a small hole in the rock, past the splintered remains of timbers. There was a cluster of bats roosting at the entrance, rubbery wings crisscrossed around their faces in slumber.

“Here,” the cook whispered. “Way to cave, tunnel. To castle.”

Mathilde was barely able to stand on the slippery rock. Her labored breath sent puffs of vapor, illuminated in the beam of her flashlight.

“Ano,” grunted the cook. “Yes. I think. Maybe. Yes. You go there.” She shook her head. “But I cannot. As child—yes—but now—” She gestured to her wide girth.

“No, it’s OK. I can,” said Betsy.

“Be care. There are holes, different places from dungeon. Down, down, down. You fall, you die. Stay this path. No turn. At end, door. Wood.”

Betsy scanned the rocky walls with her headlamp, looking for footholds. She planned her route up to the hole where the water emerged.

“I think I can do it,” she said.

There were only about five moves to climb the rocky wall before she could reach the opening. She was wearing her winter hiking boots, and she had climbed pitches a lot tougher than this one.

The treacherous part was the slick rock. Not quite ice, but slippery all the same. Her foot slipped twice when she was trying for a toehold, but she always had two hands supporting herself and the other foot squarely positioned.

When she reached the rotten timbers and the narrow opening, she nodded to Mathilde below her, sending a bobbing flash across the cave floor.

Now the entry.

Betsy approached the bats with caution. She had no alternative but to crawl under them. The opening was barely two feet tall, which meant squirming beneath the creatures.

She thought about rabies. She remembered stories about bats entangling in women’s hair.

Were those stories real or only myths? Myths, she told herself. To frighten children and fools.

She snapped off her headlight to avoid startling the bats.

In the darkness, she suddenly felt the weight of the small ledger in her front pocket. It would interfere with her climbing, pulling her weight across the rocky tunnel.

Betsy pulled it out of her pocket, the plastic rustling. She slipped it into a zippered compartment against the small of her back.

She did not know where she was crawling to, or how far she had to go. She did not know what other creatures might inhabit the cave. Snakes? She remembered a story her father had told her about a viper biting a woodcutter in Slovakia. Had he died? Do snakes live so far underground?

Only if there were rats.

Her fingers splayed out tentatively, inching blindly along the wet rock.

Above her she heard the rustle of movement.

Bats used echoes, didn’t they? Did they sense her movement beneath them?

She heard another rustle. She crawled ahead, trying to move past the bats as quickly as possible.

Suddenly there was a high-pitched cheeping sound and a fluttering roar. She snapped on her light to see scores and scores of bats coming toward her, making a mass exodus from the cave.

She ducked flat, her interlaced fingers across her head, her hands clasped tight against her ears.

A few deep breaths later, Betsy inched ahead in the darkness, pushing her fingertips forward, feeling her way through the cold, wet tunnel. Her bare hands tasted the edges of the jutting rocks and ledges.

A faint mineral smell evoked a memory of a tomb she had visited in Egypt many years ago with her father.

Her father.

She could not think of him now. He could not help her. He was dead.

In the tight space, the only trace of life was her own body and the smell of her sweat, sharp and acrid.

She flashed her headlamp on at long intervals, relying on her sense of touch rather than sight. She could not risk anyone seeing the light when she finally reached the dungeon. The passage squeezed her tightly, then widened and released her, then squeezed tight again and tighter yet.
Push your right shoulder through, twist your head, pull your torso on through the hole in the stone,
she told herself over and over. She used muscles long untested, moving more like a serpent than a human.

She flashed on her light, trying to negotiate the impossibly tight tunnel. With her face pressed against the gray-red rock, she could feel the edges of the raised veins that meandered through the stone. She was climbing now, the passage angling upward. She used the deep muscles of her back, shoulders, and arms to pull herself up. She snapped off the light, pushing on.

The blackness enveloped her, a dense velvet hood. The darkness took on a dimension of its own, becoming much more than the absence of light. Texture and depth forced her to look harder—further—into the inky distance.

Her eyes strained to see further.

She saw flashes of colors, drifting twigs and spots ascending and descending, a carnival of motion. She could feel her heart pound against her rib cage.

No. She could hear it.

She saw red. Flowing red. She jerked back her right hand in horror, the slickness of the rock suddenly sinister. She stopped, paralyzed, watching the pulsing tide surround her.

A figure gestured from the corner of her eye. She jerked her head around to see.

Her right foot slipped. The sudden jolt pulled her right hand from its hold. Loose rock rattled down beneath her, echoing through the blackness.

Her left hand and foot strained, as the right side of her body searched blindly for purchase, her knees and hips banging hard against the rock.

She pressed her eyes shut. The colors extinguished, her toe struck a ledge. With her right hand pressed flat against the wall of the cave, she slid her weight up. In her blindness she felt her way.

A vision flashed, of the blind worms and eyeless fish living deep in caves and on the floor of the ocean.

She did not want to open her eyes. Even with her eyes closed, she could still see the contours of rock, the cave itself.

She thought of Jo
hn
and his logic. The way his eyes would open wide as he assessed a problem. She inched her way forward, eyes shut tight.

There were voices. A steady conversation, just beyond her hearing.

No. There were no voices. The murmuring was her mind searching desperately to fill the absolute silence.

The murmurs continued. She strained to find words.

Her rip-proof jacket—her favorite for skiing in the trees—protected her skin from the rock. A bulge in her zipped back pocket had twisted around, pressing against her side.

She thought about taking it out, leaving it behind. No, this book of girls’ names was somehow important. Her father had hidden it behind his most beloved book. She twisted her jacket around so she didn’t feel the pressure. Now she felt the hard lump of her pocketknife against her upper thigh.

She shifted her jacket again.

She wriggled wormlike through a level passage, an endless journey. Dust from fallen rock made her cough. She could not risk letting anyone hear her approaching.

She tied her bandana over her nose and mouth.

She choked back phlegm, not allowing herself to cough. Her chest tightened with the effort.

The rocks were smoother now, like the polished rocks in a river. To her cut and bruised hands, they felt like jewels.

A smell made her stop. A foul, human stench.

She opened her eyes.

She could see light, only a few feet above through the cracks in a wooden panel. She stopped, listening.

From the other side of the door, she could hear moans.

Chapter 99

B
ATHORY
C
ASTLE
D
UNGEON
H
IGH
T
ATRA
M
OUNTAINS,
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 28, 2010

S
tand up,” said a woman’s voice.

Daisy slumped on the carpet, against the foot of the bed. She struggled to open her eyes, rubbing her arm where the man had inserted the needle.

“I said stand up!” cried a woman with fuchsia hair.

Daisy rolled to her knees. The woman grasped her forearm and yanked her to her feet. She plastered Daisy’s face with cold cream. With a towel, she removed the white makeup with quick, hard strokes.

“You must dress. Put on shift. Put on gown. No sleeping!”

The woman ripped off Daisy’s clothes. Daisy spun clumsily on her feet as her garments were stripped.

“You! Pay attention. Put on shift.”

“Who are you?” Daisy mumbled. “What’s a shift?”

“We no have time. Put on shift. Put on gown, stockings, shoes.”

Daisy stared at the woman, not comprehending. Ona pulled the shift over her head.

“Sit down,” said Ona. “Put on stockings.”

“Stockings?” said Daisy. “I don’t wear stockings.”

Daisy’s eye wandered to a table with fruit arranged on a platter.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“Good,” said Ona. “Put on stockings, you get food. Do not, and I will whip you.”

“Whip me?” said Daisy.

What the fuck?

Ona smiled, her lips stretching a cold thin line across her face.

“I am very good with whip. You shall see. You must dress quickly. Soon you will not be able, when drug begins.”

“OK, OK,” said Daisy. “Whatever. Give me the stockings.”

“Good,” said Ona. “When dressed, meet other girls.”

“Just put her in the corridor,” said a guard. “The Count will want her soon.”

A man supported Daisy by her elbow, steering her toward a barred door. She stumbled, the drug affecting her motor coordination.

He pushed her through the door, swung it closed, and locked it behind her.

“Make some friends,” he called, laughing.

Daisy, dressed in seventeenth-century garments, approached a barred cell in front of her. Her steps were unsteady. She pulled a red apple from her sleeve, looked at it with puzzlement, and handed it to the filthy prisoner’s grasping hands.

“Who are you?” asked Draska, biting savagely into the apple. She shook in spasms as she chewed her first food in days.

Daisy frowned, looking down at her white lace apron. She rubbed the starched linen between her fingertips, shaking her head.

Draska noticed a thin streak of white makeup at the girl’s jawline.

“I—” said Daisy. “I know a way out of here.”

“But you no have key,” said Draska. “How can I follow?”

Daisy stared at her blankly. She gave no reply.

“What is your name?”

“She will kill you if you show terror,” Daisy said. “She feeds on terror. And on blood.”

“Who? She?” said Draska, swallowing the last of the apple.

“Countess Bathory.”

“Count Bathory. Is man!” corrected Draska.

Daisy’s confused look warned Draska that something was not right with the strange girl with the dyed black hair.

Daisy shook her head and walked aimlessly to the next cell.

“How did you get out?” asked a British voice. “Or are you one of them?”

“Get help!” hissed another voice. “You are the girl from the nightclub! It’s me, Lubena. For God’s sake, help us!”

Daisy’s eyes studied the steel bars. She touched them gingerly with her fingertips. “They are different,” she muttered. “The cages—they have changed.”

“She is as crazy as the rest of them,” muttered the English girl, starting to cry. “Look at her eyes.”

Chapter 100

B
ATHORY
C
ASTLE
H
IGH
T
ATRA
M
OUNTAINS,
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 29, 2010

G
o away, now!” commanded the guard. “It is past midnight. I am warning—”

“Stop!” cried the Count’s voice on the intercom. “I am sending a car to the gate to fetch my guest. Miss—?”

“Morgan.”

“
Slecna
Morgan, do you have a surname?”

“Morgan will do,” she snapped. “Do you have my sister in here?”

Silence. Morgan heard the ice crystals pelt the window of the guardhouse, rattling the glass.

“Perhaps you should come and see for yourself, my dear,” he said at last.

“Run,” whispered the guard, his hot breath in her ear. “Run away while you still can. You don’t know—”

A black limousine appeared, its tires crunching the icy crust. Big wet flakes of snow were illuminated in the headlights.

The driver with white hair—but a young face, she noted—opened the door. He bowed, low and stately.

The guard reluctantly opened the gate.

Morgan threw back her hair with a toss of her head, heaving her backpack higher on her shoulder and stepping into the backseat of the limousine as if she had been waiting for it all her life.