Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty Page B

direction.
    “Her studio is down the street from my place.”
    “Here’s to her last show.” He smiled and lifted his coffee in a toast. “So, where you go from here?”
    Lifting my GPS, I said, “I’m looking for Dreptu.”
    The hospitality left his eyes. A moment passed before he asked, “The river?”
    “The town. My device says it’s Dumitra-Dreptu.”
    “That is the Dreptu River.” He pointed toward the water I had crossed to his property. “But there is no . . . place. Not anymore.”
    “Was there ever such a place?”
    “Mister . . . ?”
    “Barkeley, Joseph Barkeley.”
    “Herr Barkeley.” He turned to see if anyone else was on the porch. “Who sent you to this place?”
    “No one. I just . . . chose it on a map.” I hoped he didn’t know I was lying.
    He spoke slowly, carefully forming his words. “This Dreptu River, it flows down from the, and then to the Danube, this way.”
Zees way.
He pointed south and west. “There is . . .”
    Pausing, he rubbed his chin.
    “What?”
    “There is . . .
was
a place called Dreptu upriver.” He pointed toward the mountains to the east. “But is now only ruins.”
Eez now only rueenz.
    “What was it?”
    “An old monastery. Hundreds of years
nicht arbeit
.”
Not in service.
    The storm had cleared and a late afternoon fog descended to the valley, crawling down the hillside from the north.
    “How far?”
    “A few kilometers.”
    “Can I get there by walking the river?”
    “This is not a place to go, Herr Barkeley. It is upriver, yes, but much danger. There are wolves, boars, and great bears in this forest.”
Zis forest.
    I was perhaps the only human in the last century to have seen Stoker’s references to Dreptu buried in his notes. Even Internet search engines failed to unearth any such place, not even a legend, just a note on a GPS reading. Yet that was where the original phone call came from. I wondered,
If Luc’s right and the old man heads the oldest, wealthiest family in Europe, then why place a call from a nonexistent Dreptu? An elaborate precaution in the name of anonymity?
No, I was convinced otherwise.
    I was certain there was something to the place, and recalling the words of Doug Carli, “You don’t leave things like this to chance. You wanna do big deals, you don’t leave the small stuff on the table. That’s why it’s called due diligence.”
    Besides, to fall two miles short after having journeyed six thousand seemed cowardly to me. What would I think when I was back in Chicago, regretting that I was too timid to follow the central clue to understanding the missing chapter? This was going to be my only chance, perhaps in a lifetime, to see the place. I had several hours before nightfall. I went to pack for the walk.
    “Herr Barkeley.” My host shook a finger at me. “Beware the dark.”
    “I’ll be careful.”
    “
Die Todten reiten schnell . . .
faster than you.”
The dead travel fast.

A s I walked through the village, fog rolled along the ground as if being swept, and I did my best to avoid shoe-hungry mud puddles by walking atop long wooden planks that served as sidewalks in springtime. Droplets fell from spring’s early leaves as I passed under branches. The rain had cooled an already chilly day.
    Dolls, the only life signs in some places, were displayed in windows to show potential suitors that an eligible girl lived there. Everywhere the smell of burning wood and cooking reminded me of my early childhood. And just as in my childhood, dogs barked and snarled and cats recoiled. Parents called their children and pets and hustled to close their gates at the sight of me. Another group of children bowed their heads and made signs of the cross as I passed. An elderly woman saw me and dropped the buckets she carried and began praying. I recall somewhere in the litany of my childhood superstitions that it was unlucky to be photographed holding empty buckets, and rural villagers associated strangers with