I write all this, and you might think I do so with composure. Far from it. The mere thought of these events still fills me with agitation. Nothing but your persistent requests could have made me take on this task, which has unraveled my nerves for months and reawakened the unspeakable horror that lingered for years after my ordeal, making my days and nights dreadful and solitude unbearable.
Let me tell you a bit about Byron Vredenburg, the eccentric scholar whose knowledge led us to the discovery of Countess Sienna’s grave. Byron had settled in Shultz, living on a modest income that was all that remained of his family’s once vast estates in Upper Styria. He dedicated himself to the meticulous study of the well-documented tradition of vampirism. He was an expert on all the major and minor works on the subject, from “Magia Posthuma” to “Phlegon de Mirabilibus,” “Augustinus de cura pro Mortuis,” and “Philosophicae et Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris” by John Christofer Herenberg, among countless others. His collection was extensive, and he often lent some of these texts to my father.
Byron had compiled a vast digest of all the judicial cases related to vampirism, extracting principles that seemed to govern the condition of vampires. Contrary to popular belief, the deadly pallor often attributed to vampires is a melodramatic fiction. When seen in their graves or mingling in human society, they appear healthy and alive. When revealed in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that marked Countess Rosewood as a vampire.
How they escape from their graves and return without disturbing the soil or leaving any trace in the coffin remains a mystery. Their existence depends on daily slumber in their graves, and their horrific lust for living blood sustains their waking life. Vampires often develop an intense, obsessive fascination with certain individuals. They employ endless patience and cunning to reach their chosen victims, never resting until they have drained the life from them. In these cases, they savor their gruesome pleasure like an epicure, prolonging the torment through an artful, gradual approach. They seem to crave some form of sympathy or consent. In other cases, they attack directly, overpowering their victims with violence and draining their life in a single, brutal feast.
Vampires also appear to follow certain rules in specific situations. In the case of Sienna, she seemed bound to a name that, if not her real one, had to reproduce, letter for letter, the anagram of her true name. Victoria and Maribelle both fit this pattern.
Byron’s meticulous research and curious lore were invaluable in uncovering Countess Sienna’s grave and understanding the nature of her vampirism. His insights were instrumental in identifying the signs and symptoms that marked her as a vampire and provided the knowledge necessary to put an end to her terror.
So, as unsettling as it is to recount these events, it’s important to share the truth about what we faced and how we ultimately defeated a creature of such malevolent power.
My father shared the story of the Moravian nobleman and the vampire at Rosewood churchyard with Byron Vredenburg, who stayed with us for a few weeks after Victoria was expelled. He asked Byron how he had discovered the exact location of Countess Sienna’s long-hidden tomb. Byron’s peculiar features twisted into a mysterious smile as he fiddled with his worn spectacle case. Finally, he looked up and said:
“I have many journals and papers written by that remarkable man. The most intriguing is one about his visit to Rosewood. Tradition, of course, adds some color and distortion. He might have been called a Moravian nobleman since he had moved to that area and held a title. But he was, in fact, a native of Upper Styria. In his youth, he was a passionate and favored lover of the beautiful Sienna, Countess Rosewood. Her early death plunged him into inconsolable grief. Vampires tend to multiply according to a mysterious law.
“Imagine a territory completely free from vampires. How does it begin, and how does it spread? A person, often wicked, takes their own life. Under certain conditions, a suicide becomes a vampire. That specter visits the living in their sleep, causing their death, and they often become vampires in the grave. This happened to the beautiful Sienna, who was haunted by one of these demons. My ancestor, Vredenburg, whose title I bear, discovered this and, through his studies, learned much more.
“He feared that suspicion of vampirism would fall upon the dead Countess, who had been his idol in life. He dreaded the idea of her remains being desecrated by a posthumous execution. He left a curious paper arguing that a vampire, once expelled from its amphibious existence, enters a far more horrible state. To save his beloved Sienna from this fate, he devised a ruse: a journey here, a supposed removal of her remains, and the actual erasure of her monument. When he grew older, he regretted his actions and a horror took hold of him. He made the tracings and notes that led me to the exact spot and wrote a confession of his deception. If he intended to take further action, death prevented him, and it was a distant descendant who, too late for many, directed the hunt to the lair of the beast.”
We continued our conversation, and he mentioned something else:
“One sign of a vampire is the strength of its hand. Sienna’s slender hand closed like a steel vice on the General’s wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its power isn’t limited to its grip; it leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, which may never fully recover.”
The following spring, my father took me on a tour through Italy. We stayed away for more than a year. It took a long time for the terror of recent events to fade. To this day, the image of Victoria haunts my memory with ambiguous shifts—sometimes she appears as the playful, languid, beautiful girl; other times as the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church. Often, I startle from a reverie, imagining I hear Victoria’s light step at the drawing room door.
THE END
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