Good morning and Happy Hump Day! If it's Wednesday, then it must be time for more flash fiction from the Wednesday Briefers! We're a group of authors who bring you our finest flash fiction every week, 500 to 1000 words, inspired by one of our prompts.
Things have gone from bad to worse as the villagers have been seen getting ready to converge on the church. Gunther quickly provides a hiding place for Avram and his employer, but Dracula is none too keen on it. See what's going on in this week's chapter of Dracula. Don't forget to visit the other Briefers and see what's happening with them. Their links follow my tale! Enjoy!
To say
that Dracula was not happy with this turn of events would be an understatement.
Under other circumstances, in another place, he would have simply fought his
way out, something he was more than capable of doing. But that was not the best solution here and
now though. Necessity compelled them to make the most rational choice. That
being the case, he saw no sense in taking out his displeasure on Avram. If he
were to be completely honest with himself, this situation was of his own
making. Well, at least some of it. Avram had warned him against continuing his
dalliance, but he’d paid no attention to his advice and did precisely as he
wished. As he invariably did. Even so, there had been no need for the idiot
blacksmith to do what he did. Knowing that the man paid the ultimate price for his
unwarranted cruelty gave Dracula a certain satisfaction.
But this…
He
repressed a shudder and followed Avram without comment as the priest pointed
them down a narrow set of stairs into what felt like the very bowels of the
earth itself. Or maybe this was the
entrance to hell. What was this place? How did he not know of its existence?
More importantly, how long must they remain here? He didn’t entirely trust the
priest, but thus far he’d shown himself to be more honorable than the
villagers. And clearly Avram trusted him and he trusted Avram.
His unease
only continued to grow the further they went. Their descent soon ended, though,
to his relief, as they reached the bottom of the stairs. But his relief was
short-lived when he realized that the space they found themselves in was no
more than about ten feet long and maybe half that distance wide. The room—if
one were to use the term loosely—was completely empty and reeked of disuse and
decay. Dracula wrinkled his sensitive nose in disgust as ancient odors of
unwashed bodies assailed him, permeated with feelings of fear. The rough stone
walls were damp to the touch. How and why they’d been excavated, he couldn’t
say.
“Don’t
make a sound,” the priest admonished them. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”
Before Dracula could protest, the floor was creaking back into place, enclosing
them in darkness. Luckily, he had better eyesight than most—not that there was
anything to see—his senses being rather preternatural. There were other reasons
for his unease.
“Don’t
worry, everything will be all right,” Avram softly assured him. “Why don’t you
set down the trunk so we can sit on it.”
Dracula
thumped the trunk onto the stone floor, perhaps a little harder than necessary,
in order to express his displeasure. But, to his surprise, Avram didn’t bother
to chide him or tell him to be careful with his property. Instead, he took a
seat on the trunk and patted the domed surface beside him, as if inviting him
to sit there. The Baroque style trunk was a recent acquisition—well, it had
been twenty years, but to the vampire that was recent. The domed top overhung
the sides, giving it the appearance of being larger than it was. Molded iron
straps ran from front to back with similar straps along the front of the cherry
oak chest, which was also decorated with various figures that resembled angels.
The vampire had found that to be an amusing touch when he’d first purchased the
piece in Vienna years before.
Dracula considered his options for a moment,
but in the end he decided that standing was something he was not interested in
and so he sat… and silently waited.
They had
barely situated themselves when he became aware of voices from above them. Voices
that were not the priest. Angry voices. Apparently, they had entered this
hiding place not a moment too soon. The villagers—at least some of them—had
arrived.
Dracula
watched as Avram cast a worried glance upward. “He will be fine,” the vampire
assured him before putting one finger to his lips. No rejoinder was necessary. He
needed to listen.
“What has
happened here?” a man’s angry voice demanded to know. Other voices joined in, as
if what had occurred were not obvious, their querulous questions punctuated by
occasional shrieks and screams as others arrived. Was everyone converging on
this one place for some reason? Their number seemed to be swelling, as if someone
was deliberately leading them here where few people ever bothered to come—someone
who did not have either Avram’s or his best interests at heart. He noticed that some of the women of the
village had also arrived, probably agitated by the sudden appearances of their
drunken husbands in their homes, having been whipped into an irrational frenzy by
the old woman, curse her soul. Dracula was fairly sure not all the shrieks he
was hearing came from members of the fairer sex, either.
For a few
moments, a chaos of indistinguishable sounds reigned from above. Dracula
couldn’t help but notice that Avram was disquieted by what even he could hear,
despite their underground location. He wrung his hands together in distress. At
one point, he attempted to rise, but Dracula shook his head and he gave up the
effort. The sounds began to grow fainter and fainter, and Dracula knew the
priest had somehow managed to still their protests… at least for the moment.
“What has
happened is that Bogdan has killed his good wife,” the priest said. “And he has
also brought about his own demise, as you can see.”
How clever
of the priest not to say the blacksmith killed himself. Loosely speaking, he
was telling the truth. Probably to salve his priestly conscience. Dracula
didn’t care what he said, as long as it diverted the attention of the village
away from this place.
“But why?”
“Yes, why?”
A moment
of silence.
“He was
undoubtedly misled by evil voices.”
Now that
was an outright lie.
to be continued
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