Old Tavern Tales Part III

 

     “Effective,” nodded a tall, gaunt woman.  "Mine was rather trickier still.  And my solution was quite sublime.”  The little bent man faded back into the Mob, knowing his moment was over.

     “I was living in Romania at the time.  I was just a girl really.”  The traveler sized her up, unable to determine an age.  Her black hair curtained down to her knees.  The hollows of her face suggested age but hinted at something else.

     “There were just the three of us, myself and two other women, working for the Count.  I myself served as a maid, but I spent most of my time trying to keep that wretched castle warm, in fact, warm would be a generous word.  The castle was high in the Transylvanian Alps.  It was always cold and damp, even in what was supposed to be the Summer. 

     “The other two girls cooked and helped me with the cleaning.  But our biggest effort was to clean up after the Master, get him to bed after one of his binges, and to stay out of striking range of his cane when he was in a mood, which was all the time.  Alcohol, and who knows what other narcotics were involved. 

     “He would sometimes go into the village.  Now that got ugly.  The only blessing was that the people were too afraid of him to make any effort to prosecute, not that it would have helped considering all of his money.  Of course, that only emboldened him in his abuses.  The three of us just tried to keep him contained.

     “But then came the real estate man from London.  I guess the Count had sent for him.  There was much talk about moving his entire household to some old abbey church on the outskirts of the great city.  Well, we just had to put a stop to that.  There was no way we were going to let this madman loose on the English.  The real estate man had to go.  It was easy, and fun, to mess with him.  We had him convinced of the most outrageous things you could imagine.

     “Once we had the plan worked out, I was the first to act.  Two shallow gashes in my neck did the job.  I only had to wait for the Master to awaken from one of his spells.  When I heard him stirring, I artfully draped myself across the arms of his chair.  Unfortunately, it took much longer than I thought.  I didn’t dare move or open my eyes.  But finally, I could hear him drawing closer, and then he gasped at the sight of me.  I then slowly arose from my position, as rigid as I could.  I am a fabulous actress, in all modesty, but that was not acting.  My back was killing me.  He could see my bloodless face for the first time, and then I did my ‘eye thing.’” 

     “So, what spell did you do to make your skin white?” asked the toothless woman.

     “No spell,” she responded.  “In that cold, dark castle we rarely ever saw the sun.  After all, the Master was unconscious all day, sleeping off whatever he had been taking, so we had to match his schedule to be ready for whatever he needed.  We were all quite pale, not that he had noticed until that moment.”

     “I want to know what the ‘eye thing’ was,” announced the old man.

     The tall, gaunt woman laughed quietly to herself.  “I’m not sure you could handle it.”

     “You gotta do it now,” encouraged the little bent man.  “Come on.  Do it.”

     She smiled wickedly and then let them have it.  The traveler gasped in shock as he fell backwards off his chair.  The mob cheered in delight.  Her eyes!  Enormous, cavernous, and black.  Oh, so black!

     “Are you going to be all right?” asked the old man as he gave the traveler a helping hand and a comforting pat.  After a moment, the traveler gave a jerking nod but continued to tremble.

     “He’s going to be fine.  Please, go on with your story.”

     The tall woman smiled at the traveler until he had himself fully composed.  He gave her a nod of approval.  And then she did the “eye thing” again.

     “Now you behave yourself!” lectured the old man.  He then signaled for Mabel to bring the traveler a drink.  It took close to a half hour for the traveler to calm down and for the mob to stop laughing.  They would get themselves under control and then just lose it again.  The pathetic family in the corner continued to stare into the void.

     “So, can we trust you to finish your story without any tricks?” asked the old man.

     “I will try,” replied the tall woman.  She stuck a dramatic stance and continued.  “I walked slowly towards the Count until I stood just in front of him.  ‘Maaasssterrr,’ I greeted him.  You know, he was absolutely stunned.  He just stared at me for the longest time and then ran out the door.  We didn’t find him until the next night.

     “A couple nights later, he was at the sauce again.  So, it was time for one of the others to do the same act with the blood on the neck.  Nearly the same thing happened, except she didn’t quite have my same gift with her eyes.” 

     The traveler plunged his face into his lap.  “Please don’t!" he moaned.

     “Don’t you dare,” commanded the old man.

     “You can trust me,” she proclaimed with a leer.  “Within a week, we were all his ‘brides.’  The trickiest thing was dealing with the mirrors.  One of the other women was quite the artist.  While the master was sleeping, she beautifully reproduced the reflection of the entire room in the two mirrors of the house in perfect detail.  It was as if each mirror were still doing their jobs, but without the reflection of anyone who should stand before them.  Any flaws were obscured by the dim lighting.  There was another mirror, much larger, but the other bride was tired of painting and made sure that it met with an accident of gravity.”

     “Why didn’t you just cast a non-reflective spell?” asked the heckler.  “That’s what I would have done.”

     “A what?” replied the tall woman as she shifted her weight and crossed her arms in contempt.  “I have never heard of such a thing.  Pray tell, how does that one go?” she asked with skepticism.

     All the mob looked to the heckler for the answer, considering that none of them knew of any such spell.  He shrank back into the shadows and was silent for a time.

     “For a time, we feared that we had made a miscalculation.  After the master’s initial disgust that he was apparently drinking blood, he grew bolder, even triumphant.  He prepared to go down to the village one night, determined to indulge in an orgy of vampirism.  We had to coordinate quickly with the villagers to turn it around.”

     “’Come my brides!’ he called us.  ‘Let us shout and kill and revel and enjoy ourselves!’ 

     “The four of us swept down to the village, and thank the Lord that they were ready for us; almost too ready.  They had the torches going already.”

     “Yes!” shouted the old man as he stood up.  “Doesn’t that take you back?  Have all the rest of you been part of an angry mob?  What a rush!  Such nostalgia!  It makes me think of mother!”

     “May I continue?” asked the tall woman in irritation.  The chastened old man sat back down, somewhat ashamed, but continued basking in his memories.

     The tall woman threw out her arms in a flourish.  “In the lead were five men; each carrying their ‘dead’ child in their arms.  Each child’s throat was mangled, caked with blood.  Their eyes were rolled back and their head gyrated with each step their fathers took.  I’m glad the Count wasn’t watching too closely, because two of the children kept smiling. 

     “They surged towards us like an angry wave.  The master fell backwards, tangling in the folds of his cape.  He crabbed his way backwards up the hill with the most pitiable expression of horror.  I kind of felt bad for him.

     “Once we made it back to the castle, he just rocked back and forth for close to an hour with his face pressed into his hands.  All the while he moaned, ‘Not what I wanted, not what I wanted.’ 

     “Once he had calmed enough, we guided him towards a life dedicated to a more productive legacy.  Until he died, many years later, he continued to use his ‘vampiric gift’ of moving unobserved through the night to preform anonymous acts of charity on the village that he had formerly torment in his drunken rages.”

     “Good,” said the old man.  “But where was the magic?”

     “We didn’t use any!”

     “You didn’t use any spells?” he asked in disbelief.  “Not even the ‘eye thing’?” 

     “Not even that,” she said in triumph.