He Comes in the Night Read online

  HE COMES

  IN THE NIGHT

  RICKY FRY

  Copyright © 2020 Ricky Fry

  ASIN: B085HJVHBW

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to

  real places, persons, or events are used fictitiously.

  For Lucian, who held my hand

  while I slept on the bus.

  There was once a time when vampires were as common as leaves of grass, or berries in a pail, and they never kept still, but wandered round at night among the people.

  — A Story from Botoșani

  ONE

  Nancy Hardaway was in bed, propped against a pillow with the latest Vanity Fair clutched in her pencil-thin fingers, when she was startled by a loud thump coming from Baby Nora’s nursery. She lowered the magazine to her lap and nudged her sleeping husband.

  “Byron,” she said, “something isn’t right in the nursery. Go and see what’s happened.”

  Mr. Hardaway groaned and rolled over beneath the heavy comforter. “It’s probably just the nanny, my love. Maybe she dropped something.”

  Whatever the nanny dropped must have been very heavy to make such a terrible noise. Just once, she thought, it would be nice to have a proper night’s sleep. Baby Nora had been nothing but trouble since they brought her home from Massachusetts General Hospital. It had only been six months, but Nancy Hardaway was thoroughly exhausted.

  The nanny was supposed to make life easier. Compared to most first-time mothers, Nancy had taken a decidedly hands-off role in the raising of their daughter. She’d stopped breast-feeding the moment Nora’s first teeth had appeared, pumping milk with an expensive device and switching to formula not long after. It was an easy decision. She couldn’t stand the way Nora chewed and bit her nipples.

  Tonight she was especially tired, and had hoped to get some rest before the charity fundraiser she’d be attending with Mr. Hardaway the following evening. The high society ladies could be so judgmental, and she didn’t dare show her face without at least eight hours of beauty sleep. The years had been kind to her, but still, she wasn’t getting any younger. After nearly a decade of trying with no luck, Baby Nora was a surprise. The last thing Nancy Hardaway had expected was to become a mother on the eve of her thirty-seventh birthday.

  She listened again for any sign of the nanny stirring in the nursery, but there was only silence. She thought there should at least be footsteps, the sound of the young but plump nanny passing through the corridor on the way back to her room. And Nora—there had never been a baby who cried as often as Nora. Such a disturbance would certainly have woken her.

  Thank goodness the sleeping pill she’d taken before settling in with her magazine had yet to work its modern magic. Just a quick check of the nursery and she’d be drifting off to sleep in a matter of minutes. She had an especially big day tomorrow. Though there were few things she loved more than socializing at charity events, they were always so much trouble.

  She felt her way along the corridor in the dark, until she found the switch. The long hall was empty, the nursery to one side and the nanny’s room opposite. The nanny’s door was open. Nancy leaned over the threshold and peered inside. The light beside the bed was still on but there was no sign of the young woman. Perhaps, she thought, she was still in the nursery tending to Nora.

  She stopped to listen outside the nursery door. It was strange, the old house being so quiet. The door creaked as she pushed it open and a chill ran down her spine. In the faint glow of an old table lamp, she saw a plump figure spread on the floor beside the crib. The twisted face of the nanny stared up at her, a look of horror frozen in her motionless eyes.

  Nancy Hardaway screamed. She’d never seen a dead body in real life before, but the young nanny certainly looked very dead. A slight trickle of blood oozed from the lifeless woman’s mouth and pooled on the hardwood floor beneath her.

  “What is it, Nancy?” Mr. Hardaway appeared in the doorway with a golf club in his hand.

  “She’s dead, Byron. She’s dead.” It was the only thing she could think to say.

  “Call 9-1-1.” He knelt beside the bleeding woman and shook her limp body, called her by a first name his wife had never once used during the nanny’s short time in their employ.

  Nancy couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. As she watched her husband pumping up and down on the young woman’s chest, the only thing that filled the panicked space of her mind was the loud thump that had surely been the woman’s body as she keeled over on the hardwood floor.

  And there, in the crib at the center of the room, Baby Nora smiled up at her—a tiny bundle wrapped in swaddling blankets—with a peculiar look of satisfaction on her glowing, angelic face.

  It was only later, long after the flashing lights and siren of the ambulance had pulled away from the Federalist façade of their Beacon Hill townhouse, that the Hardaways learned their daughter’s nanny was indeed quite dead. They’d have to wait for the official report, of course, but the investigator from the medical examiner’s office said it appeared as though she’d died of a sudden brain hemorrhage. “It’s quite rare,” he told them, “for someone of such a young age.”

  “Oh, dear.” Nancy thought it was terrible. She wondered what the other society women would say. As far as she could recall, no one had ever lost a nanny before, with the exception of the McDowell’s nanny, who’d died in her sleep. But the tough old Scottish woman had been seventy-nine, long overdue for retirement. Such things happen, and nobody had faulted Lisa McDowell.

  “We’ve been unable to locate her family,” said the investigator. “Perhaps you have their contact information, or at least something we might find useful?”

  She was almost ashamed to admit she knew so little of the woman who’d spent the previous three months sleeping under their roof. “I’m sorry. I was never very good about those things.”

  “I see.” He scratched his chin and scribbled notes in a little pad. “Did she ever mention anything to you about her state of health?”

  “What do you mean?” Nancy had always just assumed the young woman was perfectly normal, if not slightly overweight.

  “Was she unwell? Did she say anything or visit a doctor?” He’d already searched the nanny’s room for any signs of a health condition and had found nothing, not even a bottle of aspirin.

  Nancy still wasn’t thinking clearly after such a distressing incident, but she recalled a conversation they’d had in the kitchen one morning while Inez, the Hardaway’s long-time housekeeper, prepared breakfast. It was difficult to forget the look of fear that had gripped the young woman’s face.

  “She’d complained of having frequent nightmares—such terrible nightmares.”

  The investigator didn’t look up as he continued writing in his notepad. “What sort of nightmares?”

  “She wouldn’t mention specifics.” It was true. The nanny had been reluctant to describe the nature of her terrifying nighttime visions. “She’d wake in a fright. I heard her screaming from our bedroom down the hall.”

  “Interesting.” He scratched his chin again. “I’m not sure it has anything to do with a brain hemorrhage, but we appreciate any details you can provide.”

  “Of course.” She’d considered firing the nanny on more than one occasion—on the nights when she’d been woken by the woman’s screams. Nora’s frequent crying was bad enough. Her husband had convinced her otherwise, if only to save themselves the trouble of finding a new nanny. But a new nanny was now exactly what they needed.

  The investigator finished taking notes and they were left alone in the quiet space of the house. Nora was sound asleep. Nancy, whose sleeping pill had finally taken effect, was utterly exhausted from their ordeal.

  It was nearly
morning. The high society ladies of Boston would surely notice her absence at the charity event, but it would be even worse to explain the sudden death of their nanny. She imagined their faces—wrinkles smoothed over by Botox injections—as they feigned sympathy, each secretly delighted it hadn’t happened to them.

  “Oh, Byron.” She rested a hand on her husband’s broad shoulder. “This has all been so dreadful. What am I going to tell the ladies?”

  “It could be worse.”

  “How could things possibly be worse than this?”

  “Just think,” he said. “At least you’re not the nanny.”

  TWO

  The forest had always been there, stretching out in all directions and encircling the village like the mountains that encircled the forest. The trees were old, older than the most distant memories of the village elders. Each held a forgotten secret, stories of pain and suffering, blood and tears.

  The tiny village, with its collection of cobbled stone houses, was the only home Bogdan had ever known. He sat alone on a fallen tree at the edge of the forest clearing and watched the others—men and women in their finest clothes, preparing for the annual sacrifice that ensured their safety from the darkness beyond. Young girls busied themselves with baskets, heavy and overflowing with food, while the older boys, many the same age as him, built a large pyre of dry logs in the center of the village. Everyone had a role to play in what would come. Soon it would be his turn.

  That night he ate like a prince. The finest foods, fresh fruit from the orchards and the roasted meat of a young goat, were served to him by the most beautiful girls of the village. The men told stories of his bravery. The women sang songs in his honor. He would be remembered as a hero, they said, for a thousand years.

  Maybe it was true. But as the night grew long, he felt less like a hero and more like a martyr. It was his family’s turn to make the ritual sacrifice, and as the oldest among his brothers and sisters, his fate had been sealed at the very moment of his birth. He’d long ago come to accept it, never bothering with plans or dreams of the future. Often, when he’d gone for one of his long, rambling walks deep in the forest, he’d even considered it a blessing. For him there would be no uncertainty, no growing old, no illness to eat away at him slowly until there was nothing left but a dusty bag of bones. Nobody sang songs about old men.

  Still, he couldn’t help feeling afraid. He wondered if it would be painful. He wondered if it was true, what the priest had said, that God would take his soul to live forever in heaven. He wondered if he would ever see his family again.

  He filled his cup with dark, sweet wine and drank. It was little comfort. The hour of his death was almost upon him. But first, the wedding, in which he would be joined in eternal union with the oldest daughter of another family.

  It was their way, a custom as old as the sacrifice—a holy union that strengthened the bonds within their fragile community.

  The crowd cheered as she was presented, beautiful and trembling and resplendent in her white gown, the edges embroidered with bright red designs of flowers and eagles and dragons. A crown of knotted wildflowers adorned her long blonde hair—white and pure as fresh snow. Like him, she too would make a sacrifice, destined to spend the rest of her life as a widow in mourning, unable to remarry.

  When it was time, the village priest led them both to the altar—it had been carried outside the little wooden church for the occasion—and bound their hands with a thin strip of white cloth. He read from the Bible until, one after the other, they repeated the sacred vows of marriage. Again the crowd cheered, as husband and wife were led together to the house and the fur-lined bed that had been prepared for the final consecration of their sacred marriage. And then they were alone.

  The vows had come easily. He’d always loved her, ever since that distant summer day when he’d tied a dandelion stem into a ring and placed it upon her finger. They were only children then, playing together in a muddy field. She’d slipped and fallen in the wet mud, and when he bent down to offer help she leaned forward and kissed him.

  “Bogdan?” She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand, a delicate touch that slowed his racing heart. “Are you afraid?”

  He stared back at her with matching blue eyes. It hurt, the sight of her beauty. She would be the last, and the most beautiful thing he’d ever see. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid of losing you.”

  “You can never lose me,” she said. “I’m yours forever.”

  They lowered themselves together to the bed and embraced. It was the first time, in all those years spent together attending to the needs of daily life in the village, that they’d touched each other that way.

  He slid the embroidered gown gently from her shoulders and looked to her once more for approval.

  She nodded silently.

  They moved together in the dark, their bodies joining as one to form two halves made whole. There was no past and no tomorrow, no hopeless thoughts of what would come. There was only the infinite space of the present moment, perfect and complete.

  He left something of himself inside of her—a seed which might one day carry his name into the future. When it was over, they remained together, locked in tight embrace, each listening to the gentle sound of the other’s breath. Then a knock came upon the door, and they knew it was time for him to go.

  “Remember,” she said, “I’m with you, my love.”

  “And I with you.”

  The men of the village led him to edge of the forest, near the place where he’d sat earlier in the day, while the women consoled her. He was tied to a tree just beyond the clearing, his arms secured at his sides with thick leather cords that left him unable to move.

  The priest anointed his forehead with holy water and made the sign of the cross. “I deliver your soul, dear Bogdan, son of Bogdan, into the waiting arms of the Holy Spirit.”

  The man in the black robe turned to address the villagers who had gathered to witness the ceremony. “Three hundred years ago, in a great castle in the mountains to the south, lived a prince whose story would be told throughout the centuries. His heart was as black as the blackest night. His soul was damned. His unspeakable acts of cruelty were known throughout the land. This most unholy of princes desired, like all evil men desire, to defy our Lord God and live forever.”

  A murmur erupted from the crowd, expressions of deep disapproval.

  The priest raised his hands in order to silence them. “To achieve his ends, the prince ordered the first-born son of each family brought to the castle, where they were slaughtered one-by-one. He ate their meat and drank their blood. He bathed in it night after night. But still he grew older. And so he summoned their youngest sons to the castle, with the hope of stealing their youth and virility.

  “But the people, still mourning their terrible loss, refused to send their youngest sons to die for the evil prince. They sent word among themselves and raised a militia. When the prince learned of their resistance, he ordered his soldiers into the fields to burn their villages. Many good lives were lost. But the villagers, depleted as they were, prevailed, and stormed the castle with pitchforks and torches.

  “They found him hiding beneath his bed, and hanged him by a long rope from the parapets. His head was severed and burned, his body buried in a lead-lined casket deep within the earth. But the prince’s soul, so evil as it was, could pass neither to Heaven nor to Hell. It roamed the lands untethered to its mortal body, attacking them as they slept. And so the prince, who had sought eternal life among the living, found it in death.”

  A heavy silence had fallen over everything. The only sound Bogdan heard was his own blood, beating in his ears like a deafening thunder. Almost, he thought, the moment had almost come.

  “For a hundred years,” said the priest, “he terrorized the land that had once been his princely estate. Men who were healthy fell suddenly ill and died. Woman and children succumbed to his evil spirit. Villages perished in a single night, until one day, a deal was struck. The
y would offer willingly, on the same night each year, a first-born son to feed the spirit’s hunger. And so it has come to pass that we offer our dearest Bogdan—a sacrifice so that others may live.”

  He could see her now among the crowd. A single tear glistened in the light of the moon as it rolled down her cheek. It comforted him, as he drew his final breaths, to know that she, at least, might grow old. If not beside her, he would live in her memories as a face that remained forever young.

  Only a year before, he’d attended the previous sacrifice—another boy from another family. There was little mystery about what would happen next. In the morning, the villagers would return to collect his corpse, and it would be burned, along with his few possessions, upon the pyre. His name would be inscribed on a stone with the names of the others—the hundreds who had gone before him. And then he would be forgotten. Fields would be sown and crops harvested. Children would play and mothers would fret. The years would come and go the same way they’d come and gone since the beginning of time.

  They left him there, tied fast to the tree and alone. He had waited his whole life for this moment. It was the waiting, he thought, that was the worst part.

  He didn’t have to wait long. No sooner than the priest and the last of the villagers had retreated to the shelter of their little homes, did a dark presence emerge from the forest. A scent filled his nose—death and decay and the rot of centuries. And as a shadowy hand wrapped itself around his throat, he saw a pair of eyes, burning red and bright, staring back at him through the night.

  THREE

  The autopsy report was woefully inclusive. ‘Natural death,’ it read. It had not, as the investigator initially suspected, been a brain hemorrhage. The small amount of blood which had pooled on the floor beneath the poor woman was caused by nothing more remarkable than a self-inflicted bite to the tongue as she collapsed.