Count On Me Read online

  My heart is in my other hand, the one in his grip.

  Conrad keeps a large iron key under his coat. When he twists it in the lock on the huge doors, something very heavy moves inside the stones and the doors swing open. A chill runs down my spine as he takes me inside.

  It’s damp in here. Vines and leaves peek up through gaps in the stonework and crawl up the inner walls. They have a sickly look to them, the leaves curling up like dead bugs. The petrified tree in the middle of the courtyard is enormous, much bigger than I realized when looking down on it.

  This place is wrong. It’s heavy with a bad air, the foul taste of corruption. I can feel it, like a thin layer of sticky grime on my skin. It grows so intense I look down at my hands to check for something smudging my skin, but I’m still clean. At least I look clean.

  Set in front of the tree, amidst the huge roots, is a stone table. Conrad approaches it, and I follow, hovering behind him, close but not too close.

  I’ve seen this before.

  The rider on the great gaunt horse carried this weapon. Now that I see it up close, I feel a deep chill settling in the center of my body, my blood turning to ice. The four-foot-long blade is wide and heavy. A wide guard juts out from either side, forming sharp scalloped wings, like a dragon or a bat. The grip is more than long enough for two hands, wire wrapped, ending in the brass head of a snarling dragon.

  The thing radiates malevolence. I could swear it’s looking at me, watching me. It is as intense as standing in front of a blazing fire, with the swirling hot flames reaching for you, ready to burn fat and skin from bone. Except cold. I feel it pulling on me.

  There’s one difference. Fires don’t hate you.

  Conrad grabs my wrist. I was reaching for the red steel without even realizing it. He gently, almost gingerly pulls me back and presses my hands to my chest. His fingers nearly brush my breasts but not quite. This close, I can taste his breath. He’s warm in a world of cold.

  He’s enormous. I feel tiny pressed up against him, looking up at him. I have to crane back to meet his gaze with my own.

  “You mustn’t touch it,” he says.

  The way he says the word it, spitting it like a curse, fills me with dread.

  “What is it?”

  “Blüdjager, my father named it,” he says. “The blood hunter.”

  Shuddering, I drop my hands to my side. He stands close, protective, as if he’s afraid the sword will leap up and strike me on its own.

  There is something odd about it. Well, there’s a lot odd about it, but the wrongness in the reflection in the red steel is bothering me. It’s polished to a high, mirror shine, reflecting everything around it like the still surface of a pool of blood. It reminds me more of ice than steel.

  Conrad looks up.

  “The sun will be down in about ten minutes,” he says.

  “What happens when the sun goes down?”

  He doesn’t answer me. He strides to the stone table and takes the sword in one hand, lifting it with a sour look on his face. He picks up the scabbard that lay next to it and sheathes it in a quick motion. Carrying it by the scabbard in his left hand, he steps down from the table to me.

  “Listen to me very carefully,” he says. “I’ll come for you in the morning. Now you will go to the great hall. One of my men will find you and take you to Marta and she will find you quarters. Once you are inside, do not step out again until the morning, when the sun is up and the cocks crow. Do you understand?”

  I nod. “Why? What’s happening?”

  He doesn’t answer. He walks through the open gates, sword in hand, and I scurry to follow him.

  “Go now,” he says, striding through the deserted courtyard to the gatehouse.

  I stop in my tracks and watch him wait for the iron grate to raise and the drawbridge to lower. He strides across.

  The sun is almost down now, and its light has spread along the mountain peaks as it disappears. I rush through the open doors into the great hall.

  The big man with the mustache from before is waiting for me.

  “This way,” he says curtly.

  He leads me through the keep, down a twisting corridor to someplace warm. When we arrive, the smell of warm bread assaults me. Marta, the big woman from before, is covered in flour. A dozen kitchen girls scurry around her, taking direction from an outsized wooden spoon she swings like a general’s baton.

  “Here,” the big guard says. “Find someplace for this one to sleep.”

  He turns and leaves, and here I am standing in this massive kitchen. Everything is wood fired. There’s no gas or electricity. Even the light is from candles.

  The flour-laden Marta approaches me with an expression half glare and half pity.

  I keep getting the sense that there is something going on here. Something really incredibly fucking weird.

  “This way,” Marta says, leaving her spoon to dust off her hands with a series of loud claps.

  We never once go outside as she leads me up a staircase, again lit by candles.

  She comes to a stop and proudly shows me a room that’s not much more than a closet. There’s a narrow bed inside, a wooden chair, and a candle on a table.

  Oh, and a brass bowl that can only be a chamber pot. I pee in a bowl now. That’s just great. I’ve really come up in the world.

  “Stay here,” Marta says, motioning me inside.

  I clutch the ring hanging around my neck and sit on the bed.

  “I’ll bring you a change of clothes for the morning,” she says, then closes the door.

  It booms shut with the finality of a prison cell.

  Well, this is a fine mess I’ve gotten myself into.

  The candle gutters and flickers, casting dancing shadows about the small room. There’s no window to the outside. It’s clean, at least, as is the bed.

  As I lie back on it I realize it’s straw, stuffed into a canvas sack. The pillow might really have feathers in it; it’s soft enough. With a huff, I lie down and close my eyes.

  God, I’m tired. I didn’t get a good sleep lying on the ground last night. Was that only last night? That long ago that I woke up? It feels like a million years.

  Fatigue lies on me like weights of iron on my arms and legs, but for all that I fidget and turn. The straw mattress is strange to get used to. I have to shift myself and push on it to keep the padding under my body if I turn over.

  Still, sleep comes. Lightly at first, a fitful, fidgeting sleep. Every time I wake I feel like I’m poking my head above water and almost sit up, but fall back asleep.

  In time I fall into a deeper dream. Is it a dream? I don’t usually know I’m dreaming, but there are leaves crunching beneath my bare feet. It’s full dark and there is no moon, only the pale light of the stars to see by. I tread on the leaves and twigs without remembering how I started walking or why.

  It’s cold, ice cold. My only protection from it is a thin nightgown, so sheer it’s nearly transparent. It swirls around me in the wind, and the chill sinks through skin and muscle to grip my bones.

  It’s getting colder. Every exhale sends out a streaming puff of fog, and I hear the faint cracking of ice. The remaining leaves on the trees curl up on themselves, thin layers of frost forming on their surfaces.

  There’s something behind me. I take a quick peek over my shoulder and then break into a run. It storms down the road behind me in great strides. The sword in its fist blades red but gives no heat. Instead the world grows so cold the dead leaves stick frozen to my feet, slick under my heels as I try to run.

  No matter how fast I run, the thing behind me walks, and its steady stride outpaces my running. When I turn it reaches with a clawed hand and my name comes from everywhere and nowhere—

  “Roxanne.”

  I bolt awake and skitter back up against the wall with a screech.

  “Saska?”

  She stands in my little room, glancing this way and that.

  “They put you in a closet,” she huffs.

&
nbsp; Taking a seat on my chair, she throws back her hood.

  “I brought you something.”

  She places her small, battered paperback copy of The Hobbit, the German translation, in my hands.

  “Thanks,” I say, clutching it to my chest. “I could use something to read. My nerves are a little jangled.”

  “You want to ask me. Ask me.”

  I look around, as if trying to spot hidden listeners in the walls.

  “What the hell is this place?”

  Saska shrugs. “A castle. Count Conrad’s lands extend all around it, encompassing six villages. The one you found your way to this morning, the largest, is called Rienni.”

  I shrink up against the wall and hug my knees to my chest.

  “He said I can’t leave and the reason makes no sense. Something about those big rocks we saw.”

  Saska gives a sad shake of her head.

  “He spoke the truth.”

  “So what happens if I try to go back?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Ask him to show you.”

  “Where is he now? He took the sword and left.”

  She sighs. “He takes it and leaves every night.”

  “To go where?”

  “You saw him.”

  I flinch back, and it hits me.

  He said, if I saw you. If he saw me. He was there.

  The rider was him. That was Count Conrad.

  Saska watches it dawn on me with a curiously neutral expression, though one side of her mouth curves up just slightly before she controls it.

  “I was wondering when you’d put that together.”

  “He killed those people. With a sword.”

  “Not just any sword. The blood hunter.”

  She leans forward, the chair creaking slightly as she does, and the look on her face betrays a certain amusement.

  “I’ve been to your world. Many times. I’ve even been to America, though that was many years ago. You make your little toys and you forget why men first lit torches to banish the darkness. You have your world lit up so bright, you forget that darkness even exists. Night isn’t real to you, it’s just a different color sky. Here, in my world, the dark is still real. Still close. Still pressing in around the edges where the light barely can reach.”

  She sits back and waits.

  “Your world?” I say. “Please, just tell me what is going on. Where am I?”

  She shrugs. “The world. It’s just a place. Except it’s not. If you tried to pass the standing stones tonight, you would never make it back where you came from. Only on the first night of the new moon can you cross.”

  I nod. I take a deep breath. I try not to sob hysterically.

  “This is completely crazy,” I tell her. “I’m from New Jersey. I have an Instagram and a Social Security number and had my tonsils out. I don’t believe in crazy magic stuff.”

  Saska sighs.

  “It doesn’t matter, Roxanne. It believes in you.”

  I rise to my feet and pace the room, all six feet of it. There’s not much to pace, so I turn around a lot. Saska waits patiently.

  “Just tell me what all this is.”

  “I can’t,” she says. “If you want the answers you seek, you have to learn the right questions. I should get back to my own chamber.”

  She slips through the door partway but stops.

  “Do what he told you. Don’t go out into the castle tonight, and don’t try to leave.”

  I nod, and she closes the door, gently. I am left alone with an old book in a new language and sit down to puzzle out reading it. The task is enough to put me to sleep again after about twenty pages.

  Saska could leave; so can I.

  Lying on my bed, I can’t stop going over and over and over again what I just learned. That was Conrad last night. He cut down those men from horseback.

  Gunshots. I heard gunshots. Did they shoot him?

  That rifle. No one in the world is strong enough to cut through something like that, no matter how sharp the blade is.

  This talk about new moons and standing stones is all crazy. Something is bugging me, something Saska dropped in the middle of a sentence that I should have noticed, but didn’t.

  I try to sleep but I itch instead. It’s not the straw; it’s this place. I toss and turn until my mattress is an unsleepable clumpy lump, then throw myself out of bed.

  Why can’t I go outside? What’s the big deal?

  I grab the little holder and candle and check the door. It’s not locked. It doesn’t even have a lock, which creeps me out, now that I think about it.

  Easing it open, I poke my head outside then bring out the candle. It throws flickering flames down the long, windowless corridor. I just want a peek at what’s going on outside. I take a few exploratory steps out. I don’t explode, I’m not eaten by ghosts, and I don’t fall through a hole in time.

  In fact, there doesn’t seem to be anything here in the dark that isn’t here in the daytime. I tell myself that repeatedly as I creep through the corridor as quiet as a mouse, pressed against the wall, as if that would actually do anything to hide me.

  Let’s have a look around.

  The candle flame flickers every time I move. It barely clings to life, but it serves. It’s full dark now. When I step out into the open air, walking along the wall of the keep, the stars above are so bright and so vibrant I can’t help but stop and stare.

  The moon overhead is dark, a circle of inky black like a hole in the sky. It seems too large, too big. I feel like I could reach up and stick my hand through it.

  The courtyard below is totally deserted, not a single sign of life, just as it was when Conrad led me out of the inner courtyard. It’s like everyone knows that it’s time to tuck in somewhere and hide.

  Along the wall, I make my way to one of the towers. There are four squat ones, one at each corner of the keep. The other buildings are all lower, with tile or thatched roofs. There’s a stable, though it’s all closed up now, a smithy where fire still glows in the forge even though it’s unattended, and other buildings. An armory, probably.

  The tower itself isn’t very big. The stairs lead up to the top; I think that’s called a parapet. Like all stairs, they also go down, so I follow them.

  I am at once as lost as I’ve ever been, and weirdly confident I know where I’m going. I descend, winding ’round, until I’ve reached the ground floor, but the stairs head farther down still. I loop around and dip beneath the earth.

  The walls are warm down here, and dripping with moisture. I feel beads of sweat on my forehead and back as I reach the bottom.

  I know where I am now. This is where the baths are. I was here before.

  The candle nearly gutters out. I stop to let it recover its strength then walk on, past the bathhouse.

  Another level. A staircase winds down, into the earth, into the dark. The air is still hot but feels more dry down here, as I reach the bottom. Shouldn’t it be cooler below ground? A faint memory bubbles back into my head. People used to cool their food by keeping it in root cellars, because it’s always about fifty degrees when you get far enough down into the ground.

  Not here. It’s warm enough that my chill has passed. I stand a little straighter, even though the ceiling is less than a foot over my head, and stride down the hall, looking for a door.

  I find one. The wood is heavy, made heavier still by iron bands riveted to the planks. It groans as I swing it open and step inside.

  The small chamber within is packed with stuff. All kinds of stuff. Some kind of collection, though there’s no rhyme or reason to it, no logic in how it’s laid out or what has been gathered. The room, I realize, is much bigger than I thought. It seemed small because shelves crowd the entrance.

  “I’m in the medieval special episode of Hoarders,” I joke to myself, wincing at the sound of my voice in the dark. The room is dry and a little musty and cooler than the outside.

  On a table near the door there’s a stack of baseball ca
rds. I didn’t know people still collected these, or that they even continue to be made. I set the candle down gently in an empty space and pick up one stack of the cards, tenderly holding each one as I flip through them.

  The dates. These are all old, like, very old, but they look brand new. One still has a piece of gum stuck to it. I peel it off and look at it, think about tempting fate by chewing it. It’s new, that’s for sure. I leave the gum on the table and neatly stack the cards up.

  Another deep shelf holds long cardboard boxes filled with something in thin paper bags. I tug one loose and find a comic book in my hands. It’s dated September but there’s no year. Again, it looks brand new, but it’s old, really old, printed on newsprint.

  There’s more. A baseball in a glass case with a little plaque saying it was signed by the 1982 Philadelphia Phillies. I pick up the acrylic cube and smile at the ball. It feels like a little bit of home. My grandpa was a big Phillies fan and took me to a dozen games when I was a kid. I find the sport interminably boring, but he stuffed me full of hot dogs and bought me things and doted on me the entire time. He even let me have sips of his beer. I can taste it now, sharp and acid on my tongue from the can it was poured from.

  Replacing the baseball, I weave through the labyrinth of stuff. There’s a Red Ryder BB Gun, like in that Christmas movie, new in the box.

  This is very strange. One shelf has nothing but old lunch boxes. The oldest is made of tin and has the Lone Ranger painted on the front; the newest, green plastic, has Ninja Turtles. They’re all used but look new. Another shelf has a collection of lava lamps.

  There’s a tube TV, one of the little ones they used to call “portable,” and a VCR and a stack of tapes. I don’t know where the hell anyone would plug it in around here, but there it is. Next to it, still in the wrapper, is a three-tape set of the original Star Wars movies, the unedited ones.

  It was sitting on a plastic case. It’s brown plastic and pebbled. I pick it up and suck in a deep breath. I remember these. When I was really little, five or six, I used to watch tapes like this at my grandpa’s house when I’d stay over. This is the exact same case the video rental place he always went to had. I pop it open and gasp.

  Debbie Does Dallas.