Radu-Chapter XXIII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)

Previous Segments-

Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X

Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
ChapterXVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII

Part Three
Radu-Chapter XXIII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
10 pages approximate

“No one is looking for me, Grace Rodescu”, Marlowe Krovell told his captive in the quiet of the darkened, burned out basement of what had once been Krovell’s Mortuary, now boarded up and condemned in the aftermath of the fire that all but gutted the century old building..

“The only one anyone is looking for is you,” he said as he approached the crypts that held the remians of all the Krovell ancestors, beginning with Vlad and Irenea Krovelescu, who immigrated to America from Romania in the late 1880’s.

Grace looked at him, curiously, wondering if he was attempting to trick her, perhaps toy with her, before he finally put an end to her existence, as he so easily had done to Joseph Karinsky and to Sierra Lawson.

“I have nowhere to go, and nothing to do there if I did,” she said. “You have disrupted my plans to such an extent”-

“Oh, the hell with it,” he said as he suddenly slammed his fist down on one of the old desks, a forty year old office desk that had escaped the recent blaze relatively unharmed.

Marlowe looked around, at the crypts, the only things left relatively unharmed, amused at the irony. He walked toward the one marked with the solitary identification “Radu”.

“You can yet make a new life for yourself,” he continued. “You can have everything you ever dreamed of. I know you have the proof you need against the old priests son-in-law.” “As I said, no one is looking for me. You can go if you please. I no longer care. You can still make a life for yourself.”

Marlowe indeed no longer cared. He rarely spoke over the course of the two weeks in which he held Grace Rodescu, at first as an unwilling captive. Now, she had no desire to leave.

“No, I’m afraid it’s over for me,” she told him gloomily. “Luckily, for you, Father Khoska never saw you at the church. Incredibly, the police are so incompetent they have managed somehow to identify one of the bodies they found here as being your own. I can only guess at how they come to that conclusion.”

“That was a body double,” Marlowe replied impatiently. “They were certainly competent enough to identify Brad Marlowe’s body, as well as Lynette Khoska’s. They correctly identified the seven other bodies that were here awaiting legitimate burial-cremation in two cases. Why would you think-

Grace looked down upon the cold, damp basement floor, morosely reviewing the past few days.

“Voroslav is turning state’s evidence against his Russian mob associates,” Grace explained. “A work associate left word on my e-mail, and on my answering service. When they went to my apartment, and to my safe deposit box, they found all the names, the ones I have worked so hard to collect over the last four years. They confronted him, accused him of complicity in my disappearance. They threatened to charge him with my murder. He folded, like the coward he has always been. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Tell them what you want,” he said. “I will keep you here no longer. You still have your life ahead of you. I have nothing but empty promises, and betrayals.”

Grace lifted her head up and looked at him. She knew he was insane, but she never imagined in her wildest dreams he would be this pessimistic. He seemed to live in a world of fantasy and illusion, and now, finally, seemed to be coming to terms, albeit slowly, with reality. He obviously did not care much for it, to say the least.

“What in the hell is wrong with you?” she asked. “I’ve never known anyone like you. The things you can do are beyond most people’s comprehension, yet now you act as if you do not care. So people think you are dead. What is so bad about that? You don’t have any idea how many times I wish I could be in just that position.”

“You don’t understand,” he explained, as he now turned to face her for the first time this day. “I counted on being able to present myself as alive and well. I planned to explain it as simple luck. I left the hospital in the midst of the confusion of the attack on the hospital. Brad Marlowe should have destroyed the body double, making it feasible that its identification as me was a false one.”

“You mean-he was in on it with you?”

“No! Mircea was manipulating him-or that was supposed to be the case. For some reason that I do not understand, Mircea failed me. Otherwise, he simple betrayed me. I believe that to be the case. He had his own ideas, his own plans, and I was merely a means to an end for him. He had no intention of saving Lynette.”

“She was to be entombed-not cremated. He failed to go through with the way things were supposed to be. My wife, whom I lost centuries ago, was to be united with me. Instead, he dangled her before me like a bauble in front of a child. Then, he pulled her away from me. That is because Mircea hates life. He wants nothing but death, and the grave. Still, he is not content merely to bring death and destruction. He wants to see it manifested among the living, in the form of suffering and despair, amidst the knowledge of hopelessness.

“That was his plan for me all along-to bring about death and suffering. The presence of my wife would have been incongruous with those purposes.”

He turned away from her, and looked upon the crypt containing what he claimed was his former body from centuries past. For a second, he almost forgot she was with him.

Grace knew she had to choose her words carefully. She had long ago given up trying to learn who exactly Mircea was, even though she somehow vaguely remembered him from her own past. He refused to speak of his old life-his supposed life in ancient days-other than in cryptic sentences that made no sense. When she pressed him on this, he insisted he did not want to relive those tragic days. The whole point, he explained, of having a new life was to have just that-a new life.

She decided early on he was suffering from some kind of delusion, and when she brought up the matter of the parents of Marlowe Krovell, she almost knew she was right. He reacted almost violently, a mixture of emotions at the mention of his mother especially almost overwhelming him with shame, anger, hatred, and depression. When she brought this up, he always gave the standard excuse that he possessed Marlowe’s brain, which stored all of Marlowe’s memories, and those memories included all the degrading, humiliating, and painful emotional traumas that Marlowe Krovell succeeded up to a point in burying deep within his subconscious-something he could not do.

All of those emotional traumas now lay bare on the surface of his conscious mind, and he had no control over them.

“Mircea probably planned it that way,” he concluded in disgust. Everything, he blamed on Mircea.

“So, what did you want with me anyway?” she asked him. “Do I not at least have the right to know that much?”

“Your blood,” he said matter-of-factly. “It is compatible with me. In fact, you could enable me to adapt to blood from anyone, not merely those who are pure, or spiritual purified.”

“And how would my blood manage to do that?”

“We have a connection, from the past-from Marlowe’s childhood,” he explained. “Naturally, I would not expect you to remember that. I was merely one among many, although I am fairly positive I was one of the first, if not the very first, that you serviced.”

“You mean-you were a client?” she asked.

He looked at her solemnly, for quite some time, as he obviously looked into the past at the same time. He could remember what she obviously could not or did not want to remember.

“My grandfather brought me to this house, out in the suburbs of Baltimore. It has long since burned down. You might remember that the owners, at least on paper, were a couple by the name of Mikhail and Nadia. There was another man there, a man who seemed to be a hired hand of sorts. I remember someone saying something about an electrical short he was to repair in one of the light switches. I also seem to remember that he was a chauffeur, bodyguard, carpenter, and did almost everything else of importance. After all, the nature of the house would make it impractical to hire outside help, for even the most incidental of matters.”

“Yes, that would have been Grozhny,,” Grace said, as suddenly the memories of those days came flooding back to her.

“Well, it was this Grozhny who took me to the basement, and who called each of the girls by name. I was afraid, as I had no idea what was really going on. I did not even want to look at them. There were a couple of boys there as well. They also looked at me and smiled. All of them looked at me and smiled. You did too in fact.

“Grozhny told me to pick one of the girls, or one of the boys if I preferred. I picked you, because, out of all the others, out of all those smiling faces”-

He stopped and looked at her, to gauge if she remembered. It was growing ever more difficult to read Grace Rodescu. She fascinated him, just as she did that long ago day when she was a girl of twelve, when he was a mere boy of seven.

“You were the only one that seemed to really be happy. That is why I picked you. You did things to me that day I never could have dreamed of. It felt so strange, so abhorrent, and yet, it was the most intensely satisfying feeling I have ever experienced.”

“I was well trained,” she replied. “Are you sure it was me?”

“Was there another Grace?” he asked.

“No, I was the only Grace,” she replied. “There were many little boys brought there, and I serviced quite a few of them. I am sorry I do not remember you, but you see, most of those times I was high on heroin. It would be impossible for me to remember everyone.

“I do find it curious that you continually refer to yourself as Marlowe,” she noted. “You insist you are not him, yet you identify strongly with him at the same time. So, what will you do? Marlowe’s supposed fake body is in the morgue, and will probably soon be brought back here for entombment. From what I’ve heard, after this house is torn down, all the bodies entombed here will remain in their crypts. The land will become a private Krovell family mausoleum. It would be a simple matter for you to remove this fake body and destroy it. There is no reason you cannot then pursue your original plans. I don’t see what the problem is.”

“I told you, I no longer care,” he insisted. “You can leave here at any time, as I said. You can say what you wish. It is of no concern to me. As for Marlowe Krovell-not I but the true Marlowe Krovell”-he looked at her firmly when he said this-

“He is leading me in an entirely different direction,” he continued, “from what I had planned. Yet, the more I accede to his old desires, the more I run the chance of allowing him to reassert his will. If he were to come back to life, to take over the consciousness of his old body, he would regret it. He would find out the hard way the life force that now powers this mortal frame would not afford the kind of life he would endear himself to easily.

“Why should you care about that?” Grace asked. “You insist you don’t care anyway, and you act like you would just as soon die as continue. So, why not follow his urges, see where they lead you? What possible harm could it do? Either you maintain your life, or he takes over. At least, you are doing something besides wallowing in depression, worrying about it.”

He walked off, his head down, and she decided to allow him this space. As insane as he was, he was entirely unpredictable. Then, he bowed, down on one knee, as he craned his head up toward the sky, what part of it was now visible through the ravaged floor above his head. Then, he began to groan. It was low, and guttural. There was no way of knowing what state of mind he would be in within the next few minutes, or even seconds. Grace knew all too well of his capacity for violence and murder. He could very easily have been playing with her, for all she knew, to gauge the level of her trustworthiness. On the other hand, she knew full well, he would feel no need to do this. He needed no protection from her. However, he might well have need of her. If he did not, she might well be insignificant to him. The last thing Grace Rodescu could stomach was being insignificant.

“So, why Marlowe?” she asked. “I mean, why him in particular. From what you told me, when you lived before, you were much older than he was. What possible use could you have for a twenty-three year old heroin addict?”

He stopped his groaning, and slowly rose, and turned to her.

“You are still here, I see,” he observed. “Very well, I will tell you. Marlowe is my descendant. I am his ancestor. He is directly descended from me by way of my daughter. He is not descended from me through the Krovelescus, but through a gypsy woman by the name of Magda, whose daughter married into the Krovelescu family.

“I wasn’t entirely truthful with you, by the way. I know what you need now, more than anything else. You yourself are a heroin addict, and you are feeling the need for it now, are you not? Well, so do I. That is another thing Marlowe has given me. I could have done without it, but again, Mircea set the whole thing in motion. I would have as soon possessed Marlowe’s father, who was indeed closer to my own true age at my death years ago. Still, Marlowe’s addiction made him easier to control.

“And really, Grace, what man in his forties would not kill to be a man once more in his early twenties? What would you, yourself, give to be able to be young again, even though you are not that old yet?”

She just looked at him in confusion. She knew well what he meant, and knew it was common, though not with her. She had never had any desire to be anything other than what she was.

“I never really gave that any thought,” she said.

“Go, Grace Rodescu-go and get your heroin,” he said. “You see, that is another reason I wanted you. Despite my addiction, despite my need for heroin, this body cannot process heroin in the manner necessary to curtail the ravages of withdrawal that even now afflict me. I must have you in order to do that. Taking your blood while you are under the influence of heroin will enable me to gain the satisfaction I crave.

“Like I said, I no longer care,” he continued. “You may go, do what you will. Why you would willingly come back here, I have no idea. I have this strange idea though that you will-you will.”

He looked at her when he said this, and then lowered his head. Grace looked toward the open space where a dresser in Marlowe’s parents room had crashed down first to the first floor funeral parlor, and then to the basement, where it shattered on the concrete floor into dozens of pieces. The roof as well had collapsed, along with the old attic floor, which had rotted in spots, weakened by previous years of leaks in the old roof, which went for years without repair.

She knew that the nighttime sky, which even now began to herald the approaching dawn, only held the empty promise of freedom. There was no freedom anywhere. There was only power and control, or slavery and servitude. That, along with wealth and influence, was all there was worth truly living for. That and, of course, the prospect of vengeance.

“I’ll be back, probably later tonight, maybe sooner,” she promised. “I promise you have nothing to worry about.”

She turned and made her way toward the stairs, half way expecting him to stop her and end her existence in the space of a heartbeat. Yet, she made it to the steps, and started walking up them carefully, and then more assuredly, as she decided he might well misinterpret caution on her part. She was halfway up when he stopped her.

“By the way, Grace Rodescu,” he said. “Before you leave, there is one thing more you should know.”

She stopped and turned to face him. Now surely to God he is not going to tell me he loves me, she thought.

“What is it, Marlowe?” she asked.

“You are pregnant,” he replied. As he said this, he never turned, but then he did. It was easy to gauge her level of disbelief. For the first time in the roughly two weeks he held her here, she laughed.

“I am incapable of becoming pregnant, or at least I am unable to carry a child full term,” she replied. “I’m afraid you are wrong. Besides, the last person I had sex with was Sierra, and that’s been three moths ago. It’s been more than six months since I had sex with a man. There has been no need to. How could I possibly be pregnant, and who would I be pregnant by?”

He now glared at her in a kind of silent anger that almost withered her.

“You are pregnant by me,” he replied. When he said this, she felt her knees buckle, and she grabbed hold of the banister, fearing as she did so that it might well give with her. She steadied herself, as he looked at her, almost as though to look inside her womb.

“Go get your heroin, Grace,” he told her.

She looked at him, her shocked gaze rooted firmly on his cold, steely eyes, as he maintained an unflinching gaze on her, taking in her reaction, until she nervously turned to leave, slowly, and yet, hastily. She walked through the door, and left without closing it.

He stood firmly to the spot, suddenly shivered, and then almost collapsed. The sun was growing more ominous, and soon, a half light would illuminate the partially exposed basement. He once more approached the crypts, as the shadows began to manifest, along with the voices from the grave. He was alone with them now, all of them, the spirits of the dead that awaited his company. He only knew two of them. The rest were a blur. They mumbled incoherently, in shouted whispers that made his head hurt.

Richard and Mabel walked out from the darkness of the shadows. Richard as always seemed to flicker like a ghostly flame, though more steadily than a flame, as he looked upon the figure of his son with a dismissive attitude of scorn, anger, disappointment, and ridicule, while Mabel looked upon him with her typical flourish of exaggerated and mocking lust. However, they were not alone. They brought someone with them. A girl, a very young girl, stepped up from behind Richard, who viewed her approach with a triumphant sneer, as Marlowe trembled in pained agony.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“You know who I am, Marlowe, you weirdo,” the teenage girl said sarcastically. “You always were a little pervert. I bet you enjoyed looking at my pussy when I lay on your embalming table dead, didn’t you, Marlowe? Did you feel of my pussy, Marlowe? Did you want to stick it in me?”

Linda Bellamy looked at him mockingly, and then laughed, as he trembled. All the others then joined her laughter, including Richard and Mabel. He was growing sicker by the minute. He wanted to throw up, but he could not. He had nothing in him to vomit, and so his body shook. He felt as though something was ripping him apart from the inside out. Soon, he would go through convulsions.

“I hate you Marlowe, you little nerd,” she said. “I always hated you. No one could ever stand you. You are more than a little nerd. You are a perverted little bastard. You always were-just a perverted little motherfucker. What is wrong, Marlowe? Does the truth hurt?”

He tried to steady himself, as he looked at the figures standing around him.

“I am not Marlowe,” he told them all. “I am someone else entirely. I am someone who is going to send you all to the hell where you belong.”

They looked at him now with attitudes of uncertainty, even of dread, though they attempted to hide the concern they felt at his sudden assertion of determination.

“You will never be rid of me, Marlowe,” Mabel said. “You will never want to be rid of me. You could never resist me, could you, Marlowe? You remember what fun we used to have, when your father was not around.”

“Oh, I knew all about it,” Richard then said.

“When the sun is finished rising, it will dispel the darkness, and it will take you away with it, never to return,” Marlowe adamantly declared.

The sun was even now filling the basement room with its light, and the spirits of the dead that now waited within started now to groan. Richard, Mabel, and Linda started more than ever before to betray glimpses of anguished dread. Marlowe kept his steel gaze upon them, though all of the time he trembled with ever growing pain.

Not only was the withdrawal putting him in abject misery, but the approaching sunlight, though indirect, heightened his agony. He maintained his balance, as they looked upon him with anticipation. Then, he felt a hand grasp his shoulder. He stayed rooted to the spot. He had no need to turn around. He knew who she was.

“Marlowe, you must stop this,” she said. “You are going to destroy yourself.”

“This is what you wanted, old woman,” he said. “Up until the time you died, you continually exposed your grandchildren to the mists from the accursed trunk that held my remains, hoping one of them would eventually provide the avenue for my reemergence to the land of the living.

“All you accomplished was their deaths. What ones did not die, went insane. Look at them. They are all here, Magda. Do you remember how you exposed the two oldest children, the boy and girl? Do you remember how the girl died of some disease that necessitated her quarantine from everyone, even her parents? Do you recall how the boy then went insane, and set fire to the house, killing the two youngest children, whom he felt were possessed by the same spirit that destroyed his sister? You should remember it well-the entire city was set ablaze. He was so overwhelmed with guilt and despair at his actions, he hung himself.”

“They were not strong enough,” she said. “It had to be done.”

“Yes, and that was not enough for you, was it?” he continued. “You continued when the next child as born, and exposed him as well. When that did not work, you exposed his two sons. When their mother objected, their father ran her off. Do you remember that? You continued, both with Marlowe’s grandfather and with his brother. All you managed to accomplish was their corruption and in the case of the one, his eventual destruction as well.

“Even after you died, you would not relent. You raised your daughter to continue the same rituals, so that when Richard was born, and his brother, she exposed them to the gases as well. Then, she buried my remains beside yours, in the open dirt. That should have been the end of it. You have waited a long time, old woman, and have finally succeeded. My only question to you, is why? What was the reason for this? What could you possibly hope to gain?”

He now turned to face the ancient old woman, now joined by yet another ancient old woman, one even older, the woman who was in fact Magda’s daughter, over a century old at her death.

“Why in the hell could you not let me rest in peace?” he yelled at the two of them.

“You poor ungrateful fool,” Magda replied. “I and my daughter carried on the tradition that was started by your own daughter, do you not see that?”

This shocked him, and he collapsed, as the surrounding spirits now regained their strength, and drew closer to him.

“You could never rest in peace, due to the manner of your death,” Magda insisted. “Had I tried to bring you peace, it would have been a mockery of centuries of tradition. It would have been meaningless and empty. It would have been a betrayal of your daughter’s wishes and demands. Not only would it have brought a curse upon my family and me, it would have been for nothing. Your spirit would have remained locked within that iron trunk, screaming impotently for vengeance, throughout all eternity.”

He now groaned in pain, no longer able to control the degree of his reaction to both the light that filtered in stronger through the floor opening, and to the ever-increasing intensity of heroin withdrawal that racked his fevered body with convulsions. Finally, he doubled over and vomited what appeared to be a mass of bloody tissue.

“Please, Radu, take refuge from this light, before it destroys you,” she begged him. She then tugged at him, trying to draw his attention once more to the wraiths that yet stood watching his every move, curiously and derisively, at times even piteously.

“They are not the problem, Radu,” she said. “You-you are the problem.”

He looked once more upon them, as waves of assurance suddenly drifted over him. He approached the girl, whom he in his childhood naivety imagined once that he loved.

“You are right, Linda,” Marlowe said. “I had a big crush on you. I thought you were something special. I guess every teenage boy that gets a crush on a girl thinks there is nothing like her, huh? Of course, it was nothing but raging hormones. Now, I can see you a little clearer now. There was not anything special about you. You were just another little girl, just another face in the crowd. All the guys you used to like are all married now, for the most part. Not one single one of them so much as gives you a thought now. If they do, they probably think the same thing I do-what the hell was wrong with me?”

By the time she completely faded away in the light, he had already turned his back upon her, and faced his father, who yet flashed on and off again, repeatedly, though now his facial features revealed not a phantasmagoria of concurrent critical appraisals, but the single emotion of dread. Marlowe steadied himself with some effort as he addressed him.

“You are worthless. I am almost sorry I killed you, because you certainly were not worth the effort, or the expense and time of your funeral, which, by the way, your own father and mother could not be bothered to attend. You know, we almost had to beg your fellow country club members to come. Oh, a small number of them did come, though it took some doing on Uncle Brad’s part to convince them to do so.

“Once they realized there was no bequest to any of their pet charities coming their way, they could not leave quickly enough. Had any less people come, Uncle Brad and I would have had to endure the humiliation of hiring pallbearers. Go on and leave here. No one wanted you when you lived, and no one wants you here now.”

His father’s wraith flickered ever slower, until it suddenly stopped, and he appeared almost as a still picture from a projector, his aspect one of abject humiliation, as Marlowe turned, at which point he simply vanished. Marlowe now turned towards his mother, Mabel, who seem now terrified, and desperate, as she slowly backed away from him.

“Where are you going mother?” he asked. “Don’t you want to have sex with me? You always wanted to before. I used to be ashamed of it. Well, not anymore. I admit, a part of me always enjoyed it, and now that you have gone, I think I am going to miss it from time to time. That is all right, though. I’m sure I will find others, which you can no longer do, of course, now that you are dead and gone.

“And you are gone, you know. Oh, your spirit is here, for now, but not for long. When you get to wherever it is you are going, I hope you think about me all the time, mom. You see, I know you will. You will miss all the good times we used to have, and will wish to have them back more and more as each second passes. Of course, you will never have those times back, mother. I do not really care, of course. Well, you know that old saying-it was fun while it lasted.”

“You can’t do this to me!” she shouted desperately. “You can’t send me away. You will always remember me. You will never forget me.”

“Oh, you are probably right, mother,” he said as he unzipped his trousers. He soon produced his penis, now partially erect, as he looked at her with a scathingly violent and derisive lust.

“After all, I am sure you will never forget me. Here, do you want to suck my dick just one more time before you go-just for old time’s sake? Who in the hell needs a bedtime story anyway, when they have a mother that will swallow? What more could any innocent, trusting child ask for?”

Mabel suddenly seemed to mirror Marlowe’s own convulsive state, as she shook, trembled uncontrollably, her face going through such contortions as to make it distorted almost beyond recognition. Then, with a final shriek, she vanished.

By now, however, Marlowe was too sick to feel any kind of triumph. He felt a quick death would be a blessing, as he was by now too weak to remove himself from the ever growing penetration of the sun’s rays. Were he in direct sunlight, he realized, he would be a mass of ulcerated sores.

Suddenly, it grew darker, as the sky above seemed suddenly overcast. It might be a brief reprieve, he realized. Unfortunately, he still felt too weak to remove himself from this area. He might seek refuge in one of the broom closets, but he doubted he had even that much strength. He wanted Cynthia, and gazed up toward the opening. She could save him, and in fact, she might well be his only hope.

“Cynthia sleeps,” he heard the voice of the old gypsy woman say. “She may only come to you at night. You may not be strong enough to last until then. You are stubborn, Radu. You were always stubborn. That was always your downfall.”

“Shut the fuck up!” he commanded her. “Why in the hell did you bring me here anyway? Why did you take me from my homeland, to this vile country? I do not belong here in this land, or in this time. If I die this day, I do not care, it is just as well. If I do live, I will find a way to go home, I promise you that.”

“You do not want to go there,” he heard another voice say, the voice of a man. He turned to see the wraith of the man who had been Marlowe’s uncle George, his form the appearance of a decomposed corpse, his face as well as his body half-eaten by rats, which yet crawled all over him. As Marlowe gazed at him in horror, one of them popped his head out of his stomach, held his head up in the air as he sniffed in Marlowe’s direction. Then, just as suddenly as he appeared, he vanished inside the gruesome cadaver, as another followed behind him.

“Romania is a hell of a place,” he said. “Here is where the action is.”

“All you need is a good woman,” another of the wraiths said, as Marlowe turned to behold the beaten and battered corpse of Raymond Krovell.

“American women are fucking sluts, but European women are just too old fashioned. All women are whores, but why should you have to marry one just to get a piece of ass, boy? Take my advice-fuck ‘em and forget ‘em.”

He chuckled, a mirthless laugh all the while his brains seeped out from his crushed skull.

“That’s where my wife went, back to Romania, and good fucking riddance,” observed the pale, corpulent wraith of Marlowe’s great-grandfather. “She probably spent the rest of her life passed around from first one commie thug to another. She probably fucked every man in the country for a pack of cigarettes or a cheap bottle of booze, the bitch.”

As the bitter old spirit railed, Marlowe saw the impression of blood pounding through a throbbing vein at the temple of his balding head, as his face contorted while turning purple with rage. Then, another spirit stepped up, a spirit dressed in the uniform of an American lieutenant, the corpse as well as its nearly century old uniform riddled with bullet holes.

“I went to Romania,” he said. “You see what it got me, don’t you? I’m just another dead and forgotten hero.”

Marlowe was now dizzy, and growing weaker by the minute, as the most ancient of the old women now started humming a nonsensical tune that seemed disjointed, as she swayed back and forth, her head nodding as she closed her eyes, and Magda, the old gypsy woman, once more approached him.

“You can never go back there, Radu,” she told him. “There is nothing for you there. It is an insignificant place now, and has been for centuries. It becomes more like here every day, only not so much in the ways that really matter. Believe me, in time you will understand, this is where you need to be. I came here for a reason.”

As Marlowe tried desperately to understand the words of the old gypsy woman, he was approached by yet another of the shadowy wraiths, one who became clearer upon his approach. He now looked upon the form of a young teenage boy, a boy whose broken neck forced his head to slant over to one side, almost completely over on his right shoulder. His eyes bulged out as his swollen tongue protruded though his lips.

“You have to help us, sir,” he said. “Please, stay and help. Make it all right.”

Marlowe then felt a slight tugging at his shirt, and looked to see the hand of a child, and then the badly burned body of the little girl who gazed up at him, her face a mass of burns.

“You should really stay here mister,” she said. “We need you here.”

“We really do need your help,” yet another child said, a boy that looked to be maybe a couple of years older, as badly burned as the little girl. “We’ve been waiting for a long, long time.”

“But what do you expect me to do?” Marlowe said, his confusion only serving to heighten his agony. “I have no way to help you.”

At this point, the older of the two old women started wailing, crying frantically, as an old man suddenly joined her in her tears, and reached out to her, holding her in his arms, whispering to her. Yet, the old woman seemed not to hear anything, as Marlowe looked around, at them, the two young children, and all the others who stood all around him, gazing at him with hopelessness and yet, some kind of faith. It was a faith instilled in them all from their earliest days, a faith that remained with them throughout their lives, a faith they took with them to their graves-and a faith that manifested itself on this day, a day in which the overcast clouds now blocked out completely the light of the sun.

Marlow felt his strength return, and yet he hungered more, and was weak, so famished was he.

Marlowe looked past the two horribly burned children, to see the form of what appeared to be a young teenage girl, over in the corner, moaning and crying in despair. Marlowe walked towards her as the others cleared a path for him.

“Why do you cry?” he asked the girl as he felt himself becoming very sad, and at the same time, very angry.

She looked up at him, and Marlowe could not help but react in horror at the sight of the young girl, racked with fever, her face a mass of swollen knots and boils, pus draining from them, as her swollen eyes gazed steadily up toward his, with a gaze of approaching death manifested in her visage and demeanor. He knew that look very well, for it had led to his own death, and his eventual curse. He realized as well where this girl had, while living, contracted the fatal disease, and it caused his heart to burn like molten lava.

“If you do not help us,” she said. “It will make all our deaths meaningless.”

As he said this, the old man that previously attempted vainly to comfort the older of the two old women now stood beside the distraught young girl, who collapsed her head upon his calve and held tightly, as he now glared at Marlowe in a mixture of disappointment and anger.

“Have you no shame, sir?” he asked. “Do you know who she is? She is my child, but she is also your own. All of these others here are, in fact, sir, your children. Will you just abandon them, after they died on your behalf, every single one of them, in the most miserable ways imaginable?

Marlowe turned from the old man in shame, hurt at the accusation. Magda walked up to him, and looked steadily at him.

“What would you have me do?” he asked.

“Follow your destiny, the way it was meant to unfold,” she answered. “That is all you have to do, Radu. It is more than merely Romania. It is more even than this one place, and this one time. The whole world has what is coming to it, and deserves to suffer. It has been a long time coming.”

“I don’t really care about the world,” Marlowe objected weakly.

“Good, very good,” she replied with a sudden cackle. “You are not supposed to care.”

“There are things though that I care about,” Marlowe said. “There are things that have been taken from me.”

“You will see to all of it, in time,” Magda replied. “You have only a little time left, and all will be made right. You know what you have to do next. In time, it will all be made clear to you.”

Marlowe looked at her, suddenly strong, though the hunger yet afflicted him. The pain he felt from the light of the sun now was gone. The old room with its ancient, vengeful spirits now once more prevailed in darkness. The clouds that now blocked out the sun seemed to make their way into what remained of the basement, and the spirits one by one began to fade away, until only the old gypsy woman remained.

“You will see me and all of us again soon,” she said. “Never forget us, Radu. Our spirits will yet give you the strength you need when the time comes. You must be strong.”

In one brief instant, as Magda faded from view, Marlowe Krovelescu could see the world’s masses, groaning in agony, the alleys and streets lined with corpses left to the rats and other vermin, while gangs of roving thugs viciously attacked the weak and the helpless. He saw children fall prey to their parents, and parents to their children, while the sanctity of marriage transformed into a brothel of violence and rape. The elderly as well were without hope, without comfort, with no promise of security, as the entire world gave way to chaos and hatred. All attempts to restore order became futile, as suicide and even infanticide became an accepted means of hastening the relief of death for both young and old.

Marlowe Krovell saw the entire world in flames, with the sky over the entire world blocked from any light from the sun. He saw what was left of the world, what was left of those who yet lived, succumb daily to a dreaded disease for which there was no cure, for which there was no relief from suffering.

Marlowe Krovell saw all these things, and he collapsed to the floor in anguish. For the first time, in a long, long time, he cried, as through the dark gray smoke, two giant ruby red eyes peered into him, while a figure suddenly walked towards him. As it got closer, he could see clearly, through the clouds, the figure of a young girl, naked and bloody, battered and raped, as she walked painfully, yet with a calm assurance, towards him.

“I never really gave it any thought before now,” she said. “Death is within me, and is my world, and my only hope. Death is the greatest of all powers, and is in fact the only power that matters. Without death, there can be no purification. Without purification, there can be no healing. Without healing, there can be no life. Without life, there can only be peace, and peace is an abomination. That is why the dead must make way for the newborn. That is why the world must die, Marlowe. The world has grown old and stagnant. It has to end.”

He turned briefly, staggered at the intensity of the young girl who looked upon him with baleful eyes that danced and shimmered of hatred and hope. Suddenly, he feared her, for her purpose was to strengthen him, to reassure him. He did not want that reassurance, however.

“Why must I do this?” he asked. “Why was I chosen? I did not want this. I only wanted another chance to make things right.”

“The world has to end before a new one can begin,” she said as he turned from her in despair. “That means everything has to end. You can end it, or you can end with it. It will end regardless-that is fate.”

“Why did you return?” he demanded. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see the fully-grown Grace Rodescu, naked and swaying, as the heroin now coursed through her veins, her pupils dilated with the power that swarmed through her innermost being. He could feel its power flowing through her as he took her by the back of the neck. She smiled at him lasciviously.

“I never really left,” she said, as he now felt entranced, drawn irresistibly to the dreamlike state she now manifested within herself.

He pulled her head back by her hair, and baring his fangs, sunk them deep within her jugular vein.