The Keep

Night came quietly. Woerma

"Where's your partner?" he asked the lone sentry when he reached the courtyard.

The soldier whirled, then began to stammer. "He was tired, sir. I let him take a rest."

An uneasy feeling clawed at Woerma

"In the cab of the first lorry, sir."

Woerma

"Wake up."

The soldier began to lean toward him, slowly at first, then with greater momentum until he was actually falling toward his commanding officer. Woerma

Saturday, 26 April

Woerma

He soon learned that the men were edgy about more than security. Late in the morning a brawl broke out in the courtyard. A corporal tried to pull rank on a private to make him give up a specially blessed crucifix. The private refused and a fight between two men escalated into a brawl involving a dozen. It seemed there had been small talk about vampires after the first death; it had been ridiculed then. But with each new baffling death the idea had gained credence until believers now outnumbered nonbelievers. This was, after all, Romania, the Transylvanian Alps.

Woerma

"And finally," he said, noticing his audience becoming restive, "you must all put aside fear of the supernatural. There is a human agent at work in these deaths and we will find him or them. It is now plain that there must be a number of secret passages within the keep that allows the killer to enter and leave without being seen. We'll spend the rest of the day searching for those passages. And I am assigning half of you to guard duty tonight. We are going to put a stop to this once and for all!"

The men's spirits seemed to be lifted by his words. In fact, he had almost convinced himself.

He moved about the keep constantly during the rest of the day, encouraging the men, watching them measure floors and walls in search of dead spaces, tapping the walls for hollow sounds. But they found nothing. He personally made a quick reco

Woerma

As the sun sank and the fading light forced him to quit, he felt all the dread and foreboding filter back. With the sun overhead he could easily believe it was a human agent killing his men; he could laugh at talk of vampires. But in the growing darkness, the gnawing fear returned along with the memory of the bloody, sodden weight of that dead soldier in his arms last night.

One safe night. One night without a death, and maybe I can beat this thing. With half of the men guarding the other half tonight, I ought to be able to turn this around and start gaining ground tomorrow.

One night. Just one deathless night.

Sunday, 27 April

The morning came as Sunday mornings should—bright and su

Woerma

"Sir!" the man said as he approached. "There's something wrong with Franz—I mean Private Ghent. He's not awake."

Woerma

"No, sir. I—I'm—"

"Lead the way."

He followed the private to the barracks within the south wall. The soldier in question was in his bedroll in a newly made cot with his back to the door.

"Franz!" called his roommate as they entered. "The captain's here!"

Ghent did not stir.

Please, God, let him be sick or even dead of a heart seizure, Woerma

"Private Ghent!" he said. There was no evidence of movement, not even the easy rise and fall of the covers over a sleeping man. Dreading what he would see, Woerma

The bedroll flap was pulled to Ghent's chin. Woerma

"The men are on the verge of panic, sir," Sergeant Oster was saying.

Woerma

"I don't blame them. I suppose they want to go into the village and shoot a few of the locals. But that won't—"

"Begging your pardon, sir, but that's not what they're thinking."

Woerma

"They think that the men who've been killed didn't bleed as much as they should have. They also think Lutz's death was no accident... that he was killed the same as the others."

"Didn't bleed...? Oh, I see. Vampire talk again."

Oster nodded. "Yessir. And they think Lutz let it out when he opened that shaft into the dead space in the cellar."