Bound & Bound – the Curse and the Captives – - 33. Chapter 33: Rising Water

Chapter 33: Rising Water

I stand with my hands heavily down at my sides. Around me, night encases the Knights' Hall from Castle Corvin, but it is far different from the place I visited yesterday. Tapers are lit and burn from iron holders bolted to the wall. There is the commingled smell of sweet and fetid things, and as I glance down to my feet, I see I am standing on some sort of rush or grass carpet laid over the stones of the floor.

A noise interrupts my thoughts. It is like a moan, but a moan of commanding strength though suffering.

I walk towards it.

The niche with the window and built-in seats beckons me.

My sneakers crunch softly on the reeds, and send up more of the all-pervading scent of green grass and decay.

In the floor of this niche is a wooden trapdoor nailed with fancy straps of iron.

The sound repeats. This time it settles into a single word: "Laszlo."

I genuflect and insert a shaky finger through the ringbolt handle of the hatch cover. It comes up with creaky resistance, and from within instantly rises the rank smell of humanity left to rot.

His 'voice' speaks again, and I climb down the ladder into the pit below.

Its bottom rung ends on a torch-lit balcony of sorts. I glance around, and the entire shaft including this shelf, has been cut directly from the living rock of the cliff upon which the castle was built. In front of me is the deeply black edge of precipitous fall. I cautiously crane my neck to peer down into the nothingness and think I can see a bottom about five metres below.

Suddenly I am crouching down on the floor of that pit. My eyes meander up and perceive the half-moon shape of flickering torchlight high up on the 'shelf.'

"Corvin," an authoritative yet frail voice says to me from the oubliette's shadows.

My eyes slowly adjust to the fetid dark, and leaning with his back against the wall, sits a man – the man, Vlad Tepes.

His hair is long and disheveled; his face and hands, grimy; his strength, almost unbearable.

Yet through that gloom, a pair of sharply intelligent eyes seek out and find all the deepest recesses of my being and soul.

It is as if I do not need to ask what he wants of me, or why he has summoned me, his desires are already instilled into me as from birth. His determination is somehow my desperate will to activate his predestinated course.

Suddenly, a trickle of water sounds in the corner near my feet. I rise, and the water begins to fill the pit with a preternatural quiet. Its coolness inundates my ankles, calves, then thighs and waist. In the murky light, I lose perception of the other man.

The water rises to my chest, my neck, and then to my clenched mouth, nose and ears.

My eyes stay open as it floods my vision and wets the top of my head.

As if through goggles of water, I see the chamber wall where Lady Gretza's portrait hangs. Her half-beautiful, half-wicked features again rise complex emotions in me. Feelings of hate, and desire for wrath and carnal engagement with her.

I follow the line of her silk-clad arm down to her hand. The ring on her finger seems to glow ethereally through the simultaneously distorting and clarifying lens of the water around me. The spider on it seems to clutch the living corpse of a fly victim to her swollen belly just as in the molybdomancy vision.

Those fingers move. They stroke the head of her hideous minion – her giant black dog – and that ring seems to be the vehicle through which she can control him.

The beast bares its teeth at me, and the low rumbling torrent of a growl comes muffled by the water to my ears.

Snap. The liquid falls away from my body like gravity acts upon the contents of a burst water balloon.

I stand in the centre of the castle's chapel.

Before me is an altar with a golden cross between straight and tall tapers. Their flame points are at the height of a man and cast an intermittent glow with their flickers.

I glance at my feet again.

The polished slabs of stone that grid the floor are transparent.

Before me, about five metres away, two bodies are buried under this floor.

They begin to rise as if their heels are pinned to the earth and their backs are supported by a board ascending to a 90-degree angle.

They are young men, handsome with darkly-brooding features. Their emotions for one another are clear, and I sense that they are pleased to see me, for an image of Silviu and me holding hands suddenly floods my senses. It is almost as if they are granting us their blessing; their blessing and protection.

The spirits of these two men have shown themselves to me for a reason, and I silently ask them what that benevolent purpose is.

'To show you the seat of her power,' comes back into my mind without the distorting filter of thought.

Slowly, their gazes turn from me and onto one another. Their arms closest together rise and interlock fingers in a warm embrace.

A moment later, their linked forms rise up in a column of white fog.

This cloudy vapour coalesces into a swirling mass and increases in velocity and volume.

Soon the entire chapel is a whirlwind of silvery-white particles growing in size and definition. They swirl and begin to emit a sound not unlike that of a tornado.

The sweep of this vortex's circular motion picks up speed, and this matrix of motions begins to break the chapel walls apart.

It rises with loud whooshing into the dense night air over my head. The whirlwind is now strong enough to pick me up with it. I do not feel afraid, and in fact, within the protective walls of the cyclone, the energy of the two men from the chapel floor comes through to me as protective. They want to help me.

We begin to fly over ramparts, fly over the sleeping countryside with its dark farms and barely-lit country roads.

The edge of a brooding forest passes under my air-borne feet. We move peacefully towards the heart of it.

Deep in the mystical centre of this woodland, a circular clearing emerges. It is several hundred metres round and devoid of any vegetation growing within it, other than a carpet of grass.

As I puzzle in my mind why such a feature should exist in the forest, a notion answers it immediately. 'From here,' it says. 'The heart of darkness draws its power.' Again, somehow I know that the two men who are showing me this, mean to assist Silviu and I in figuring out what to do next.

Suddenly, the self-sustaining power of the silvery-white vortex supporting me safely aloft falters. I fall a few metres closer to the circle before it recharges and holds me back up again. I have a fear of falling, and not until this moment did I even think the 'evil' below my feet could reach up and snag me, but now…now…

From down in the centre of the clearing, an eerie orange column of faint light begins to ascend. I shudder, for although I feel safe within the folds of this cloud of protective forgiveness made by the men in the chapel, this evil power licking at my feet like flame points is strong.

It suddenly shoots up, causing me tremendous pain in my head as it courses though and beyond me.

Now I am afraid. The white vapour dims; the gravity-inducing motions slows; and I start to fall helplessly towards the heart of darkness.

A ringing arises in my ears. This high-pitched cry bellows as if from the sustained echo of a blast, and it sharpens into the sound of steel striking stone near my face.

˚˚˚˚˚

I open my eyes.

High above my head is the five-sided Gothic vaulting of a stone ceiling.

Two walls of the five have slender stained glass windows that let in dim light from the moon glowing outside.

I lift my head; I try to lift my arms. My four limbs are awkwardly pulled down over the object that I am lying on; the thing I am in fact tied naked to. Cold stone chills my back and the underside of my arms and legs.

I look around. Candles form a pentagram on the floor of the Castle Corvin's chapel, and I realize I am bound to the top of Lord Laszlo's sepulcher.

A shadow moves off to my left. Actually two shadows advance on me with black cowls covering their heads and their hands brought to their fronts and buried in sleeves like they are praying. Odd words mumble forth from their lips with slow, monotone deliberation. One steps forward and says:

"O Fortuna,
velut luna
statu variabilis..."

And the other one steps up and replies:

"Egestatem,
potestatem
dissolvit ut glaciem."

Their chanting and slow march continues. I cannot see their faces, but I have no doubt these are the same one who kidnapped me from our wrecked rental car – the ones who wrecked it!

They come to stand on either side of my head. I jerk angrily on my bindings and wind up making them tighter.

The figure to my left raises a hand. To my shock, that hand wears a ring – a ring with a spider on a web. That same hand joins the other at the front edge of that person's hood, and slowly moves it back. Their chanting ceases, and I can see it is Cezar!

I glance to my right. Dida has taken her cowl down too.

"Where is Silviu?!" I demand.

Dida laughs. "Right where you last saw him. We left him for dead."

Intense rage flushes forth through every pore of my body.

Cezar brings his diabolical leer to be only centimeters away from my lips. "Your faggot lover – if he lives – has no idea where you are. Nor will he ever know what became of your corpse."

"Yes!" Dida runs her icy fingertips over my bare chest. "Tonight you will sleep with your relative – here, with him in his tomb."

"You fuckers are bloody crazy."

Cezar pulls out a knife from below his robe. It is decorated with a pentacle on its filigree pommel cap.

He rakes the blade in the candlelight and brings the point to graze my skin gently from pubes to the underside of my chin. "After Dida and I draw your psychic powers to feed our own, we will let out your blood, sick gay boy. Your torrent will flow over these stones to drip through the cracks."

The razor-sharp point of his blade sinks into the delicate flesh of my chin, right behind my lower jaw. I wince in pain as blood flows over his steel.

"This bloodletting is not for us, diseased one. It is for Vlad Tepes. He will mystically drink your sacrificed blood and eat your cursed soul to nourish his eternal life."

I focus my thoughts through my pain. "Who put you up to this?" Ronald Ionescu?"

Cezar pulls his knife away.

I see him exchange an amazed glance with his vamp girlfriend.

She laughs. "He is smart. Ionescu said he would be."

"Smart," Cezar agrees. "But not smart enough to escape his fate."

He repositions and grips the blade with his teeth. The sweaty brow he turns to me looks crazed and pained from a withdrawal of sorts.

He athletically raises a knee and climbs on top of my body. He straddles his ass over my midsection, and positions the tails of his robe to fan out and cover my knees on both sides.

Glancing down, around the blade of the knife locked in place by his jaws, I am surprised to see he is naked under his robe as well. His chest, abdomen and belly are equally glistening as his forehead from some sick-risen sheen of sweat.

I glance at Dida, and that same nasty and jealous look is creeping over her again – she hates to see her man being turned on by a guy.

He sees her, grows resolute to better adjust his mask of heterosexuality, and makes his face blank except for an ever-bitterer regard for me; it's almost as if he's looking in a mirror that cannot lie to him. Cezar stiffens his spine, lifts back slightly, and puts the full weight of his body on my waist.

I have to contract to breathe, which is a bit harder now with the added burden.

Cezar takes the demonic weapon from his grinning lips and licks the tip. My blood, drying and already looking rusty, coats the centre of his tongue.

"Your problem," he says in a slow, hair-raising stream of hate-speech. "Is that you exist. No creature should fuck its own kind, and no creature as debased as you are can justify it with talk of love."

He falls slightly forward. His own self-loathing seeps from his pores, and his growing erection rubs against my belly.

He glances at Dida for 'moral' support. "That," he continues, cocking his head back around to me. "Is bullshit. Men cannot love anyone but women. Men can lust after one another's bodies, and use them to get off. But, to call that 'love' is to insult the purity of what only men and women have, isn't that right, faggot!"

His blade lashes out; it cuts my chest.

I wince in pain, and try to focus on what matters. Maybe Sil is dead – maybe it is selfish of me to still need him. Tears form in my eyes – defiant ones.

"No, Cezar. I'm afraid you are misinformed. Love that must fight to exist is the only love that truly lives."

His erection flares hard against my abdomen. This kid is fucked up.

He slashes at the other side of my chest and I scream in frustration.

Cezar covers my mouth and leans his body on mine. His mouth comes close to my face. "And do not stick that nasty, fairytale concept of 'homophobic' on me! Any conflict I may have which drives me to hate is because you and your kind raise unnatural lusts in my heart – NO! – you and your kind only wind up turning my poor brain feverish. And it must stop." Open beads of sweat now fall from his brow. They land on my face.

He rises up, and some manic wave of energy comes off of Dida. She reaches out her sleeved arm towards her crazed boyfriend. Her tone is more urgent than pleading as she tells him, "Ionescu only wants us to frighten the queer; he said to scare him and then drug him!"

Cezar looks desperate for the young woman to understand him and his torment. "No, no, my love. For the humiliation he makes me feel, he must die. Vlad wants that…" He looks up and around like a schizophrenic. "Can you hear him Dida..? Can you hear him crying out for revenge..?" His eyes rotate back to me with all the coldness of a barn owl. "He hates this one as much as I do, and his blood will appease him, finally. That's what I hear. And besides, he's just a queer – who cares about him, anyway?"

Cezar raises himself up on his knees and elevates his blade in harrowing slow motion. The only thing lacking is the down thrust to kill me.

In the cold glint from the stained glass window, the steel takes on shades of blue and yellow. It flashes red hot, and in that light, I find the strength to remember what matters. That in a moment or two it will all be over, and I can be reunited with Silviu. Yes, maybe then it will have been worth it, and the curse will die with me.

With one last glance to Dida, Cezar speaks above me with cold malice. "Good night, gay-boy faggot."

I watch the blade go higher, and then puzzle.

The blue and yellow light is back, but stronger. It is strobing off of the flickering steel with a mechanical rhythm. I let my head fall back over the edge of the tomb to gaze up at the window.

Flashing lights are coming from outside.

The door bursts open. Strobing beams of bright white light circle the room in every direction. Dida lets out a small scream, as an in-rush of husky male voices shout in a commanding Romanian. Cezar blinks, his hands go placidly up in the air.

In another second, two uniformed policemen with pointed guns roughly yank Cezar off of me and hurl him the floor.

A third officer lands a knee in the centre of his back, and makes the vamp boy scream as his face is scraped over the chapel floor.

I glance to my right and see another cop lock arms behind Dida and begins to lead her away.

I lift my head.

Our castle tour guide is standing in her dressing gown, pyjamas, and hair curlers. A disgusted look is plastered on her face. She starts to curse out the vamp kids in an ireful stream of Romanian, and then, tears form instantly in my eyes, for pushing his way to me from behind her is Silviu.

As he rushes to me, his arms and shoulders work in unison to slough off his leather jacket. He drapes it over my mid section, and brings his face right next to mine.

He kisses me with all the force of love under attack, and I begin to sob from relief.

"Don’t cry, baby." He kisses me desperately, stroking my hair. "You're safe."

"Silviu, I thought they had killed you."

"I can't die, not yet."

My fiancé falls to his knees and scrambles over the floor. I crane my neck to see what he is doing. He grabs the vamp kids' blade and slashes at my bindings.

My left arm and leg loosen, and I tug on them while he goes and cuts the other side too. He lets the blade fall and undoes all the ropes.

He sits me up, pulls off the last of the lashings and hugs me. He squeezes me so tight, I can feel his pounding heart against my own chest.

I push back on his ribs and wipe his tears with my fingers.

I smile and joke. "My man. Every time I'm in trouble, you come to rescue me. You truly are my big, strong, Romani protector."

Sil chuckles. "What kind of Batman would I be to your Robin if I didn't know when you were in trouble?"

"Right. Like the good to my day, if you are there…oh, Sil! I thought I had lost you."

He taps my gold coin, and drives its circle of cool metal into my chest for a moment. It's his way of reconfirming that he and I are linked in more than just one way.

Silviu says with slow deliberation, showing me some of the lower whites of his blue peepers, "You thought you had lost me, and how did that make you feel?"

"It made me feel dead, Silviu. Hopeless and dead. But, no more words; let me show you how I feel."

I launch myself into his arms and drive my kisses deep into his receptive mouth.

His arms embrace me and one slips smoothly under the back of my knees.

Still kissing, I feel myself be swept up like a bride into my husband's commanding embrace.

He carries me like that, and as our lips part and my eyes finally open again, I see he's headed towards the chapel door.

I lay my hand on his chest, sighing and only half-joking, "God, how I love airbags!"

"You and me both, but – I love you more."

I loll my head on his shoulder, wrap my arms more tightly around him, and whisper softly in his neck, "I love you too, and I was wondering something."

"What's that, sweetheart?"

"I was just wondering if they do weddings here?"

"You card. You're a piece of work, you know that?"

He kisses me again as we head out the door of the Castle Corvin chapel and into the fully moonlit courtyard just beyond its door.

I could never feel at home here, but in Sil's arms, I knew I was home wherever in the world we wound up.