Chapter One
Alexandru muttered what I imagined was a curse word in Romanian as he shouldered the suitcase into his taxi. The boot lid came down with a slam that matched the volume of the man’s grunting and groaning, before he sucked in a long draw of his cigarette, tossed it, and ground it into the pavement with the heel of his shoe. I quickly snatched up the flattened butt. He watched me gingerly holding the tip, and with a shake of his head—and an amused exhale—he continued to watch me throw it into the nearest bin.
I’d been in Brasov less than thirty minutes and already I was about to leave again. I had no desire to face the last leg of my journey, I wanted to sleep, and I found myself staring back at the ground.
“Is that your button?” I asked, pointing to the grey disc near my shoe.
His gaze followed mine to the tarmac and he cursed again. “Yes, that belongs to me.” Then he slapped the fabric bomber jacket he was wearing and shook his head. “This is new! What happened to quality, eh?” He sighed, his greying beard sagging along with his jowls.
“It’s an easy fix. Do you have a needle and thread?” He stared at me as though I had two heads. “That’s okay, I do. It’s in my suitcase though. Could you…?” I gestured to the car.
While he opened the boot, I scooped up the button and kept it safely between finger and thumb. Then I quickly rummaged in the suitcase for my emergency sewing kit.
“I’m not taking that case out again,” he grumbled behind me.
“I’ve found it. Here, give me your coat and I’ll fix it while you drive.”
He removed the jacked and handed it over. “Careful. That is expensive coat. Christmas present from my daughter.”
“Oh, I see. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” I flashed him a reassuring smile. “I once made a tube top out of an old pair of jeans.”
He paused by the open driver’s side door, as though considering whether to ask further questions. Then he climbed in, clearly deciding not to bother.
Before following him into the car I allowed myself one last peek at the town I had no time to explore. Brasov was quiet around us as I hopped into the back seat. At the end of October, the tourist season was dying down. Only the most hardcore Dracula fans wanted to be in Transylvania for Halloween. Brasov, I thought, was far away from the vampiric nightmare of Stoker’s imagination. The trees were heavy with amber leaves, the houses pastel fronted. Yet there was an atmosphere about the narrow roads, with the bruised contours of the mountains in the distance, that was tangible even on a clear, crisp autumn day like today. I imagined the isolation bad weather would bring, and the sweeping mists coming down from those blue peaks, touching the steeples and bulwarks of the Gothic churches.
On wide roads that felt out of place in such timeless scenery, there were tacky billboards for the “Dracula Experience”. I imagined fairground ride attractions covered in fangs and blood, weary local actors donning black capes lined with red velvet, all run by young men with dark eyes that dart suspiciously from tourist to tourist.
But soon those busy roads quietened as Alexandru took us deeper into the Carpathian range, to the smooth winding roads of car adverts, flanked by forests and farms.
I reached into my bag for the welcome pack Irene had sent to me. The Event was printed on the front of the document in a bold font. Inside were photographs of the monastery’s stark exterior—tall stone walls, lancet arches and stained-glass windows. A ruined infirmary built separately to the main abbey. Then there were a few pictures of the renovation. Irene Jobert and her mother, Adele, stood next to builders in hard hats, grinning like Cheshire cats. They were in the centre of the monastery, the open part, with the cloister around them. Above them loomed a tall cherry tree in full candy-floss bloom. I could just make out a separate wing behind them, opposite to the newly refurbished rooms. Its stones and arches were in silhouette; ink-tinged and macabre next to the smiling faces and pink blossom.
“Is it going well?” Alexandru regarded me with his dark eyes beneath bushy, white brows. Framed by the rear-view mirror, most of his mouth was obscured, but I imagined him frowning, unconcerned with such things I found myself troubled by, such as people-pleasing.
“I’ll be honest,” I confessed. “I’m distracted by the view.” I placed the document down on the seat next to me.
There was a faint eye-roll visible through the rear-view mirror. “You here for vampire shit?”
“No,” I replied. “Nothing like that.”
“You are staying at Sfântul Mihail?” he asked. “The monastery?”
“That’s right, yes.”
“You know about the curse? The legend?”
I shook my head. “I don’t.”
He grunted. “Perhaps it’s best you don’t. How long are you staying in Transylvania?”
“A month,” I replied. “Maybe longer.”
His bushy eyebrows shot up. “So long? At the monastery? I did not know it was even…” He paused, searching for the word. “Habitable. It has been ruins for a long time.”
“Not quite ruins,” I corrected. “It’d been empty since the forties, but I believe the company I’ll be working for has bought and renovated part of it.”
“Well,” he said. “The locals will not like that.”
“Aren’t you a local?”
“Yes,” he said. “I mean the villagers. It is isolated around there in the mountains. They don’t like outsiders in these areas. The closest village to the monastery is Butnari. Farmers who keep to themselves. Perhaps don’t bother them too much and it will be fine.”
“We’ll be very respectful,” I said, but I had to admit that a shiver ran down my spine.
Placing the button over the remnants of the snapped thread, I quickly sewed it in place and went back to staring out the window. The taxi wound along the serpentine road surrounded by tall spruces, thin silver birches, and the occasional high-reaching oak. They blurred at the edges. Green and gold like Christmas.
“The forest is beautiful.”
“Yes,” he said. “But they are cutting it down.”
“Who?”
“Loggers.” He shrugged. “They take too much.”
“Your jacket is fixed now,” I said, passing it through the gap between the front seats, placing it carefully down on the passenger side.
“Thank you,” he said.
“How old is your daughter?” I asked.
“Twenty.” His clipped tone made me decide not to ask any further questions.
For a time we fell into silence, while all around us the last dying light of the day set over the spectacular vista. Unfortunately, I’d arrived later than expected in Brasov, after an airport luggage-handlers strike had resulted in flight delays, which in turn resulted in me missing my connection from Bucharest. When I called ahead to inform Irene, which—because of her fame—was surreal to me in many ways, she’d sighed dramatically and told me to get to the monastery as soon as I could because the roads would be tricky at night.
Now that the light was fading, her words were on my mind, but Alexandru kept the car in control, not too fast, confident with the bends. Each road was a thinner echo of the road before. Soon the car had to work harder on the steep incline.
This was nothing like home. It was wilder. The forest sprawled and fought through the dark, roots and branches reaching their fingers and toes towards the road. But nothing like home had been exactly what I wanted. Hadn’t it? A place as far away from home as I could find. An opportunity for change, to be a different person for a while. To leave the empty terraced house behind. My mind drifted back to it, to the room I now kept locked, imagining the dust collecting, the heavy air I’d longed to escape. My chest tightened with fear.
Alexandru broke the silence, pulling me from those thoughts. “You are not here for holiday?”
“No,” I said.
“Then what will you be doing?”
“Writing. I’m meeting other creatives for a retreat that we’re filming and streaming on the internet. We all have a social media following and those followers are also patrons, so they can pay for exclusive content.”
Alexandru shook his head as though the concept seemed nutty to him. To be fair, I understood why. The strange world of social media influencing is not entirely accessible or easily understood by older generations.
“This is what you do for a living?”
I laughed. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
“And your parents approve of this… trip?”
There was no way for me to answer his questions without lengthy explanations, so I simply made an mmhmm sound.
We were on a narrow road with a steep drop, but his eyes found me in the mirror for a brief glance. There was both warmth and hardness in his expression that reminded me of a father either about to scold his daughter or give her a life lesson. “What is your name?”
“Cath.”
“Okay, Cath, I will tell you about the curse because you should know. But remember, it is a story, a legend. Truth and fiction combine in this story. A lot of it is not real. Do not let it frighten you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
I saw his shoulders relax and decided that Alexandru was a decent man. “Good. Sfântul Mihail is an old building. At least two hundred years old but I forget the date. Lived in right up until the unfortunate event in 1946, just before the socialist republic began. The true part is, almost everyone in the monastery died one night. There was one survivor—the abbess. This place is not what you would call a monastery. You call it a nunnery, but we have no distinction between the two in the Orthodox Church. But all of the victims were women.”
“That’s tragic,” I said, sitting up straight, one hand clenched around my emergency sewing kit. My eyes darted from the bouncing headlights of the car, to Alexandru’s reflection in the mirror. Out there the darkness closed in, blocking out the precipitous drop. Enveloped in the night, we existed on our own plane, away from the world.
“Yes. Great tragedy.” He glanced at me again, but I could tell he was mostly concentrating on the difficult drive. “Since then, villagers say the building is cursed. That the souls of the nuns roam Sfântul Mihail. But it is nonsense.”
“Of course,” I replied unsteadily. “Ghosts don’t exist.”
“You’re not a believer. Good. Best to keep sceptical. The other part of the legend is a little… strange. Well, not so strange considering where we are.” He hesitated again, and I saw the question in his eyes as he wondered whether to tell me the rest.
“Go on,” I prompted. I almost wanted to add “I can take it” but I didn’t.
“They say the bodies were bloodless with wounds at the neck. They say an argument ensued among the villagers. There were those who wanted them to be staked, or have their heads removed, because the old stories of the strigoi are still told in remote places.”
“Strigoi is the Romanian word for vampire, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. Again, his eyes appeared in the mirror, and again there was a hesitation, a warning. “You must understand that most Romanians are not this superstitious.”
I nodded to show I understood.
“Well, I do not know whether the bodies were decapitated, but I know there are those who claim the ghosts walking the corridors are not ghosts at all.”
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