The Snow Vampire (4 page)

“They found an old scarf,” I corrected. “It was tattered and torn. Looked as though it had been there for a dozen years. And no one could say it was his.” I was angry now, angry at Grandmamma, though I did not know why.

“Well, come, Ferenc. I am sure you have been to the place many times yourself….” But before Hendrik could even finish his question, the look on my face betrayed my answer. “You have not?” he asked, a wolfish grin covering his handsome visage. “Surely, at least once you and the other boys in town have…. Never?”

“He is wise,” Grandmamma said, sticking up for me and wagging her finger at Hendrik once more. “Any boy who goes there with mischief on his mind…. Heaven help him, I say.”

Hendrik was still looking at me, saying nothing, and when he finally spoke, it was Grandmamma he addressed. “I must say, Mrs. Tichy, that you are an admirable storyteller. I have not enjoyed such a yarn in many years.” He gave her a soft smile. “Thank you.”

Grandmamma’s features softened. Hendrik had a charm about him when he wished to apply it; that was certainly plain to see. To my surprise, Grandmamma opened her arms and enveloped Hendrik in a deep hug. To my even greater surprise, Hendrik returned the embrace, a gesture of spontaneous but sincere affection.

“We are family,” she said quite simply to him, as if by way of explanation. Then she let him go. “Now, you two promise to be good boys,” she directed as she left, tousling Hendrik’s hair one last time as she exited the kitchen and up the narrow back staircase.

“You must take me up the mountain tomorrow, Ferenc,” Hendrik said the second Grandmamma left, a giant grin covering his face. “I cannot come all this way and leave without seeing the ‘lair’ of the
snagov vrolok
.”

“You should not mock that which you do not understand,” I gravely intoned, though I could not prevent myself from smiling as well. Still, the idea of going to the ruins gave me pause, and I leaned my elbows on the kitchen table, hesitating before I would agree to Hendrik’s demand.

Perhaps Hendrik sensed my hesitation, or perhaps he was only determined to have more fun at my expense. But he placed his elbows before mine, and put his face into his hands, an exact replica of me. To be so enticingly close to him, to smell the faint odor of cedar and paprika that seemed to come off him, was more than I could bear.

“Please, Ferenc?” he said in a high-pitched impersonation of a petulant child. “Pretty, pretty please?” I looked into his eyes and laughed. How I longed to make him happy.

“Very well,” I said, smiling as broadly as I could through my unease. “Tomorrow, we go up the mountain.”

W
E
LEFT
after daybreak. Hendrik had prepared as if for an expedition to the South Pole; he even had Mamma pack a lunch. I laughed to see such planning, but I supposed for a city youth, a journey up the mountain was as wild an expedition as Hendrik had ever experienced, so I kindly held my tongue. The day was warm and sunny, and we traveled as swiftly up the mountain as our beating hearts would take us. Still, the journey was long and rough in spots. The trail to the monastery had been reclaimed by the wilderness many decades ago. We had to climb over fallen trees and skirt around small rockslides of dirt and loose shale. Nonetheless, we traveled nimbly. Our banter was lighthearted and relaxed; several times we laughed so hard we had to stop and take extra gulps of air.

I liked this Hendrik, the way he was when the two of us were alone, far away from the rest of the world. I liked the other Hendrik too, the one who was disconsolate and whose face bore the markings of unmistakable sadness. I liked that Hendrik because I felt he needed me. This Hendrik did not need me; in fact this journey, this moment, was nothing about need at all but only about time spent with each other. It was happy to be needed, I decided, but surely it was better to be treasured.

Still, my mood darkened noticeably when we approached the ruins. This was the place of my childhood nightmares; when I acted out or refused to go to bed at night, Grandmamma would always warn me that the
vrolok
would come for me unless I behaved. Though I realized long ago that my fears were unfounded, based on old superstition and villagers’ tales, I still felt them, and they still resonated a palpable sense of trepidation deep within my stomach. Other boys had come up here before on days like today and had come back to brag about their daring to their captivated peers. Yet I had always suspected they had never quite come this far, all the way to the ruins, as far as Hendrik and I had come, to where he and I were standing right now.

“This is it?” Hendrik posed, gazing at the scene around him. There were mostly just walls left. He turned to look at me. “After your grandmother’s story, I had expected something… more.”

I shrugged my shoulders. Somehow, finding only these bare ruins reassured me. “Perhaps it was mostly destroyed in the fire when the villagers burned the place to the ground,” I said.

Hendrik placed his hand on a gray stone wall in front of him. I did the same. Unsurprisingly, it felt cool to my touch. I moved my hand closer to Hendrik’s.

“There was no fire here,” he said, hastily moving his hand away from mine and pointing to the wall. “See? If there had been, these walls would still bear the marks of it. This is just the neglect of time, and wind and weather, nothing more.” He took a step away from me, surveying the scene around. “Come,” he said, turning toward me once more and indicating the rundown threshold that had once been the massive front door. “Let us go inside.”

The inside proved as disappointing as the exterior, though it felt cooler in here, as the high stone walls blocked the advance of the noonday sun. Still, I did not like this place; Grandmamma’s stories echoed in my mind, and instinctively I drew closer to Hendrik.

“It’s peaceful here, isn’t it?” Hendrik asked. I disagreed but didn’t say so aloud. He drew forward. “Come,” he whispered, stepping forward. I found myself rooted to the spot. “Ferenc,” he whispered again, turning around to fetch me.

I tried hard not to show him my hesitation, my fear, but I was sure he could spot it. Just then, a distinct, unearthly scratching sound came from somewhere to my left, followed by a crashing of brush and tree limbs. The sudden and vehement noise startled me, and I jumped, a small, spontaneous cry passing my lips. I turned, but saw only two fat mountain squirrels at play, one chasing the other merrily over a poplar tree limb and down the stone wall of the monastery again. Frozen with fright, I clutched my hand to my chest, an involuntary gesture suggesting my relief that the
snagov vrolok
had not come to claim me. My fear, however, quickly turned to embarrassment. I had made a fool of myself in front of Hendrik, acted the part of a cowardly child, and over nothing, over squirrels. Still, to his credit, Hendrik did not abuse me for it. Instead, he stretched his fingers out toward mine.

“Come. It is all right,” he said. And without another word, he took my hand in his and drew me forward.

I lost my fear the instant his skin touched mine. His hand felt cool and surprisingly strong. His fingers were slender, and as I returned the pressure from his grip he wrapped them around my hand. Instantly, a panoply of emotions washed over me: joy, anxiety, desire, and fear, yes, but not the fear I had felt just prior, but a deeper, more profound, more thrilling fear. Hendrik led me forward, past the boundaries of the wall and into a more open part of the monastery.

“This must be the courtyard from the legend,” he said, his voice barely above a murmur. I glanced around the cursed place and saw… nothing. The entire area was thankfully empty. There were only a few fallen timbers—remnants of a collapsed roof, perhaps—and a few stray weeds. Largely, the area was just grass and dirt.

“No black altar, I see,” Hendrik said, dropping my hand. “No gushing pools of blood. And certainly no
vrolok
.”

“Well,” I said, a tone of relief etching my voice, “to be fair, Grandmamma did say it was a
snagov vrolok
. And there certainly isn’t any snow today.”

Hendrik smiled appraisingly. “No, I suppose not,” he said. He surveyed the courtyard one more time. “I wonder what really happened here, all those years ago,” he said wistfully. “Were there really any evil monks? Was it just a story? Perhaps it was something the villagers made up, an excuse to come here and rob the place of its valuables.” He turned to look at me. “That seems a more likely version of events.” I could only shrug at this and say nothing in reply. Somehow I did not think my ancestors capable of such treachery, but what did I know of times so very long ago? “I like this place,” Hendrik was saying. “I can see the appeal, being cloistered up here, so far away from the weariness of the world. Even in wintertime, I can understand it.” I only shook my head.
I
could never imagine a life here; tiny Pilsden, with its dull appetites and pettiness and incessant need for gossip was too small, too remote for me. This place? I shook my head again. I could not imagine giving up Budapest—to say nothing of Rome—for this tiny, ruined monastery so far away from the rest of the world.

But a change had come over Hendrik. There was a calm, a tranquility in him that I had not seen before. “Can we stay here, Ferenc?” he said. “Just you and I? Forever?”

“Forever?” I croaked. “Somehow I do not think that quite possible.”

Hendrik’s smile was sad. “Then for today only,” he said. “May we stay here for today?”

He did not need to ask my permission, and of course whatever he asked I would happily grant. So I nodded yes. There was a bright corner of the courtyard, a small mounding rise covered in wispy tendrils of grass that we sat upon. We ate the lunch Mamma had packed, cold chicken covered in paprika and lavishly buttered rolls. We drank water from the canteen Hendrik had carried up the mountain. Sated, we were soon both supine, lying next to each other, enjoying the rays of the sun and the cool tickle of the grass on the back of our necks. I felt I could have died here and been happy, being so close to Hendrik, our bodies nearly touching. This was an intimacy I had never known before, and as we talked and laughed, my ardor for him, my desire, only grew, filing ever more sharply on the knifepoint of my love.

But when he grew silent and pensive, as he often did, that familiar unease overcame me. I loved Hendrik, but I did not like this place. It was an old grudge perhaps, born from my station in life as villager. The woods had never bothered me; I grew up with them all around. But the mountain had always loomed over every aspect of our lives, dominant and implacable. To some, it was a shielding constant, a reassuring presence. To me it mocked, a powerful behemoth forever on the verge of destruction. And this place—this wicked place—was the dark heart of the hills. I imagined malevolence here; I imagined evil. Every stray noise that cut through our moments of silence quickened my pulse, alerting my senses to glance around, to crane my neck and watch for—for whatever may be there. But though I stayed alert, vigilant, I said nothing; Hendrik seemed so happy, so calm, that I was sure, despite my fears, it was all only in my imagination.

We spent the day up the mountain, mostly lying in the courtyard. Hendrik had a vast capacity for getting lost in his own thoughts. I did my best to get lost in him. Finally, when the sun threatened to slip over the monastery wall, I told Hendrik that we had to leave, that we did not wish to attempt the descending trail in darkness. Reluctantly he stood up, brushed off his pants, and followed me out of the courtyard, away from the ruins, and back down the mountain.

It was nearly sunset when we approached home, quieter and more contemplative than when we had left. Hendrik’s father was waiting for us as we opened the door. I could tell by his carriage that he was in a fury; so could Hendrik, whose entire body sagged, already suggesting defeat.

“Would you excuse us, Ferenc?” Hendrik’s father said. His voice tripped with wrath.

“Uncle Sand—” I began. I did not quite know what I was going to say, but Hendrik’s father gave me no opportunity to finish.

“Leave us!” he thundered. Confused and alarmed, I retreated toward the kitchen, where I found my parents and Grandmamma waiting for me.

The sound of a raised voice reached us the instant the door closed. Uncle Sandor. I imagined poor Hendrik standing there, cringing, cowering before his father’s rage. His words were too quick and the sound too muffled for me to make out what he was saying. But it was clear he was furious.

My own father was in a similar state. “What have you been doing?” His voice was an angry hiss. Clearly he did not want to be heard, a concern unshared by Uncle Sandor. Poppa grabbed my shoulders roughly. He did not often get this way, but when he did, I knew it wise to be alarmed.

“Nothing!” I replied, my volume the same low tone as my father’s. “We went up the mountain, that is all!”

“And that took all day?” my father sneered. There was a fury in him I had never seen before.

“I am sorry if we did something wrong,” I said, hastily trying to comprehend where this anger originated. “But I do not understand what it was.”

My father looked me sharply in the eye. “Do you swear to me, Ferenc, that nothing—untoward happened today? That
he
did—nothing to you?” For a full minute I could not comprehend what “untoward” thing my father feared happening to me, or who was supposed to have done it. For a moment I even imagined my father was talking about the
snagov vrolok
, but then I quickly realized that he was referring to Hendrik. “No, Poppa!” I said, shaking my head. “Nothing at all happened.”

There was a loud
crack
from the living room, followed by a small sob, and then another and another, though after the first retort we heard no more cries. My mother looked afraid; she held my father’s arm. My father looked wild, confused.

“The mine, Greta, the mine,” he whispered to my mother, who rubbed his back consolingly. We heard a scuffle, and a door slam. I turned to my Grandmamma.

“I do not understand,” I said again.

“No, child,” Grandmamma said, putting her hand on mine. “I suspect that you do not.”