Brian Lumley - Necroscope

So… the old Thing in the ground could wait a little longer on Dragosani's return. He would go first to the library in Pitesti, have lunch later in the town, and only then carry on into the heart of his homeland…

By 11:00 a.m. Dragosani was there, had introduced himself to the librarian on duty, asked to be allowed to see any documents pertaining to boyar families, lands, battles, monuments, ruins and burial grounds, or any records at all for the regions comprising Wallachia and Moldavia — and especially local areas — circa the mid-fifteenth-century. The librarian seemed agreeable enough and only too pleased to assist (despite the fact that he appeared to find Dragosani's request a little amusing, or sufficiently so to cause him to smile) but after he had taken his visitor to the room which housed those old records… then Dragosani had been able to appreciate the funny side of it for himself.

In a room of barnlike dimensions he found shelves containing sufficient of books and documents and records to fill several large army trucks, all of it relating to his inquiry! 'But… isn't it catalogued?' he asked. 'Of course, sir,' the young ^librarian told him, smiling again; and he produced an armful of catalogues whose heading alone — if Dragosani had been willing to contemplate such a task — would have taken several days in itself; and that without taking down one of the listed items from its shelf.

'But it would take a year or more to sift through this lot!' he finally complained.

'It has already taken twenty,' the other told him, 'and that was simply for the purpose of cataloguing — or mainly for that purpose. But that is not the only difficulty. For even if you could afford so much time, still you would not be allowed it. At last the authorities are splitting it up; much is returning to Bucharest, a large amount is scheduled for Budapest, even Moscow has made application. It will be moved, most of it, some time in the next three months.'

'Well you're right,' said Dragosani. 'I haven't years or months but just a few days. So… I wonder if there's some way I might narrow my search down?'

'Ah!' said the other. 'But then there's the question of language. Do you wish to see Turkish language records?… Hungarian?… German? Is your interest purely Slavicist? Is it Christian or Ottoman? Do you have any specific points of reference — landmarks, as it were? All of the material here is at least three hundred years old, but some of it dates back seven centuries and more! As I'm sure you're aware, the central span — which seems to be the seat of your interest — covers many decades of constant flux. Here are the records of foreign conquerors, yes, but we also have the records of those who thrust them out. Are you capable of understanding the texts of these works? They are, after all, half a millennium old. If you can understand them, then you're a scholar indeed! I certainly can't, not with any degree of accuracy — and I've been trained to read them…'

And then, seeing Dragosani's look of helplessness, he had added: 'Sir, perhaps if you could be more specific…?'

Dragosani saw no reason for subterfuge. 'I'm interested in the vampire myth, which seems to have had its roots right here — in Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia — and dates back, so far as is known, to the fifteenth century.'

The librarian took a pace back from him, lost his smile. Suddenly he seemed wary. 'But you are surely not a tourist?'

'No, basically I'm Romanian, now living and working in Moscow. But what's that got to do with it?'

The librarian, perhaps three or four years younger than

Dragosani and obviously a little awed by his almost cosmopolitan appearance, seemed to be giving the matter a deal of consideration. He chewed his lip, frowned and was silent for long moments. But at last he said, 'If you'll take a look at them, you'll note that those catalogues I gave you are mainly hand-written and penned in one uniform hand throughout. And I've already told you that there's at least twenty years of work in them. Well, the man who did that work is still alive and lives not far away, in Titu. That's towards Bucharest, about twenty-five miles.'

'I know the place,' said Dragosani. 'I drove through here not half an hour ago. Do you think he could help me?'

'Oh, yes — if he wanted to.' That sounded cryptic. 'Well, go on — ?'

The librarian seemed unsure, looked away for a moment. 'Oh, I made a mistake two or three years ago, sent a couple of American "researchers" to see him. He wanted no truck with them, threw them out! A bit eccentric, you see? Since that time I'm more careful. We've had a good many requests of this nature, you understand. This "Dracula" thing is something of an industry, apparently, in the West. And it's this commercial aspect that Mr Giresci is anxious to avoid. That's his name, by the way: Ladislau Giresci.' 'Are you telling me that this man is an expert on vampirism?' Dragosani felt his interest quickening. 'Do you mean to say that he's been studying the legends, tracing their history through these documents, for twenty-odd years?'

'Well, among other things, yes, that's what I'm saying. It's been what you might call a hobby — or perhaps an obsession — with him. But a very useful obsession where the library has been concerned.'

Then I have to go and see him! It might save me a great deal of time and wasted energy.'

The librarian shrugged. 'Well, I can give you directions, and his address, but… it will be entirely up to him whether or not he'll see you. It might help if you took him a bottle of whisky. He's a great whisky man, when he can afford it — but the Scottish sort and not that filth they brew in Bulgaria!'

'You just give me his address,' said Dragosani. 'He'll see me, all right. Of that I can assure you.'

Dragosani found the place just as the librarian had described it, on the Bucharest road about a mile outside of Titu. On a small estate of wooden, two-storey houses set back from the road in a few acres of woodland, Ladislau Giresci's place was conspicuous by its comparative isolation. All of the houses had gardens or plots of ground surrounding them and separating them from their neighbours, but Giresci's house stood well away from all others on the rim of the estate, lost in a stand of pines, hedgerows run wild amid untended shrubbery and undergrowth.

The cobbled drive leading to the house itself had been narrowed by burgeoning hedges, where leafy creepers were throwing their tendrils across the cobbles; the gar dens were overgrown and slowly returning to the wilderness; the house was visibly affected by dry rot in a fairly advanced state, and wore an atypical air of almost total neglect. By comparison, the other houses on the estate were in good order and their gardens well maintained. Some small effort had been made at maintenance and repair, however, for here and there at the front of the house an old board had been removed and a new one nailed in place, but even the most recent of these must be all of five years old. The path from the garden gate to the front door was likewise overgrown, but Dragosani persisted and knocked upon panels from which the last flakes of paint were fast falling.

In one hand he carried a string bag containing a bottle of whisky bought from the liquor store in Pitesti, a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, some fruit. The food was for himself (his lunch, if nothing else was available) and the bottle, as advised, for Giresci. If he was at home. As Dragosani waited, that began to seem unlikely; but after knocking again, louder this time, finally he heard movement from within.

The figure which finally opened the door to him was male, perhaps sixty years of age, and fragile as a pressed flower. His hair was white — not grey but white, like a crest of snow upon the hill of his brow — and his skin was even paler than Dragosani's own, with a shine to it as if it were polished. His right leg was wooden, an old peg as opposed to any sort of modern prosthetic device, but he seemed to handle his disability with more than sufficient agility. His back was a little bent and he held one shoulder gingerly and winced when he moved it; but his eyes were keen, brown and sure, and as he enquired as to Dragosani's business his breath was clean and healthy.