October ‘98

By Gene Lass

They say that before 1900, people could live their entire lives without travelling more than 20 miles from their home, with 20 miles being about as far as one could travel on horseback in a day. Even in modern times, I’ve been shocked to find people who not only have never travelled out of their state, they’ve never left the small town they grew up in to go to the nearest big city much less a big city in a neighboring state.

            By those standards, I had done a decent amount of travel when I was younger, moving to another state and taking a few family trips across the country. For international travel, I had even spent a day in Nogales, Mexico that made me anxious to get back to Phoenix, and an evening in Ontario, Canada, that made me not want to go home at all. But it wasn’t until I went to Wallachia, Romania in October ’98 that I really travelled outside the country for more than a few hours.

            I had just turned 27 and had worked long enough that I could afford a week off, and was young enough that I could still pass as just another American backpacking through Europe on $5 a day, as the guide books liked to say. Being a writer, that actually was about my budget, though I skipped the traditional Birkenstocks and hostels that went along with the stereotype. The narrative I was going with was that I was a young man, travelling on his own, looking for real European flavor in small towns, not tourist destinations. So I was skipping Paris, Rome, Brussels, Berlin, and Vienna in favor of Prague, Bucharest, and Budapest, though I was going to spend more of my time in small, out-of-the-way towns and villages first. I spoke effectively no Romanian, but knew French and a little German. Enough to get me a room and service in a restaurant, and to make me look like a target.

            I flew on Lufthansa from New York to Frankfurt, picked up a connection, then flew in to Bucharest. From there I hopped a train to the region of Wallachia before taking a bus out to a nearby village. To this day I don’t know the name of that village or any of the others nearby, and for all I know, it doesn’t have one. Places there tend to just exist as they have for centuries, with little oversight or administration. People go about their business and the world goes on around them.

            I got off the bus before it entered the village proper and walked in for the last mile or so, arriving mid-day acting as if I had hiked for hours. The village didn’t quite look like an old Universal film, with men smoking pipes and wearing lederhosen, and blonde girls with their hair in braids, carrying steins of beer, but there was still a clear resemblance, with mountains within sight, and buildings all around that looked like they were taken out of an old Swiss Colony catalogue or a program for German Fest.

            I walked through town for a bit, seeing what there was to see, while also being seen, stopped for a beer or two and a bit of lunch, and made my way to an inn at the end of the street. Like the other inns, it had its own bar, and a few rooms. Between my bit of German and French and the innkeeper’s bit of English, I managed to check in, and I was shown to my room, which was really just that – a room with a bed, a small 2-drawer dresser, and a window. There was a shared bathroom out in the hall, but no other guests, since tourists tended to visit Romania in summer, or for skiing in winter, but overall, few tourists visited that little town at all.

            I thanked the innkeeper, who shook my hand as he left, then I closed the door and unpacked, putting only my clothing in the dresser drawers. I kept my more valuable possessions in my bag, which I slid under the bed before going to the bathroom for a quick shower and heading downstairs to mingle with the locals over dinner and more beer.

            That first night there were only three men and a woman there at the inn, aside from the innkeeper, his wife, and their young children. We had a good time, as I answered their questions about life in America. They knew about New York, Hollywood, and Texas, but the places were all jumbled together. I explained that yes, I had been to all three, but they were different places, as far apart and as different as Budapest and London, or Budapest and Cairo. They found this fascinating, but the men were more casual about it. The woman, Helena, paid particular attention, and also paid close attention when I took out my wallet to buy a round. She didn’t quite hang on me that night, but her eyes told me she was interested.

            I went to bed alone that night, as expected. The next evening, when I returned from wandering the area, there were two dozen people in there, ready to meet “the American.” By the time I was done with dinner, there were a good ten more and my glass was never empty, nor did I have to pay for a drink, though I tried, always careful to put my wallet back in my front pocket, as there were now multiple eyes tracking where I had it, as there were multiple arms around my shoulders and neck that night from newfound friends and would-be lovers I’d never met before.

            Citing exhaustion and the lingering effects of jet lag, I went up to my room around 1 AM. I washed, changed my clothes, turned out all the lights, and crawled in bed, the covers pulled up to my chin.

            When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see the room fairly well by the dim moonlight coming through the curtains over my window. The window was unlocked and open slightly, letting in a slight breeze. The door to my room was locked, but the lock was flimsy and of course the innkeeper had a key.

            I waited, staring in the darkness, in no danger of sleeping. Sure, I had drank plenty of beer, but, coming from Wisconsin, I could drink far more. The only people on Earth who could possibly drink as much as someone from Wisconsin were Russians, and I wasn’t in Russia. The dark bread and potatoes I ate with dinner absorbed a good deal of the alcohol, and the No-Doz I popped when I came upstairs ensured that I might not go to sleep at all.

            I relaxed my body and did some passive meditation, blanking my mind while being keenly aware of the moment, feeling my pulse, feeling my weight against the pillows and mattress, feeling the air move in the room, even the hairs on my head moved by the breeze from the window. I heard chuckles from the bar downstairs, diminishing as people left for the night. Footsteps outside, fading down the street. A couple kissing and the shifting of clothing as they embraced and someone copped a feel. And, finally, the soft tread of a foot on the stair. Fifth stair up, the second to last stair in the case, just after the landing, the one stair I had noticed squeaking in my time there. As I expected, the footsteps paused after the squeak, then continued carefully down the hall, reaching the spot, about 7 feet from my door, where the floorboard also squeaked. There was another pause, longer, and almost imperceptibly, the lock on my door turned, then the knob. If I hadn’t been awake and listening for it, I never would have known.

            Carefully, quietly, I rolled on my side, away from the door, pulling the covers higher on my neck. I closed my eyes and listened.

            At first, I heard nothing. Then the slightest friction of stockinged foot across the floorboards, coming toward the bed, not the dresser across the room, where I had left my wallet in plain view.

            After about 40 seconds, I felt a light touch on the sheet, and sensed someone leaning over me. I kept my breathing even as fetid breath wafted near my face. I felt a slight tug as the sheet was pulled out of my grip and away from my neck. Then I heard a gasp and the thing recoiled.

            I spun around and opened my eyes, seeing the face of the innkeeper’s older son lit by the moonlight. His mouth was twisted in pain, exposing fangs. On the side of his right hand was a small burn, still smoldering.

            I grabbed his right wrist with my left hand and, still turning, thrust the stake in his chest with my right. He gasped, choked, and fell to the floor, shuddering.

            I got out of bed on the other side, came around, and stomped the stake further into his chest, then reached under the covers for the cleaver I had bought in Bucharest. It took a few hacks to remove his head, but it was good German cleaver, it did the job. I stuffed the mouth and the neck stump with garlic from the local framer’s market and wiped my hands clean on the bedsheet.

            It had worked. So simple. A turtleneck shirt with blessed silver crosses stitched into the neck. I packed my things and left through the window to begin the hike down the road. In the morning I’d take the bus out of Walachia, on to Prague for a few days, to wallow in red wine, poetry, and architecture before heading back to the States.

            He was my first vampire.

About the author
Gene Lass is a professional writer and editor, working in all forms of media from books and blogs to newspapers and magazines. He has written, edited, co-written, or contributed to more than a dozen books, and has published 9 books of poetry and two collections of short fiction. His most recent book of poetry, American was one of the Amazon Top 100 Books of American Poetry. His poetry has appeared in Every Day Poems and The Albatross. His fiction has appeared in The Albatross, KSquare, Electric Velocipede, Schlock!, Coffin Bell Journal, Black Petals, and Yellow Mama. His short story, “Fence Sitter” was nominated for Best of the Web in 2020.