Chapter I

It was a Thursday. The phone was ringing loudly. It was not early morning, but it would not have mattered if it were early morning, or the middle of the afternoon on that particular Thursday, for I had spend the previous Wednesday night chucking my sorrows into the deep end of an all night bender, just to see if they would sink or swim. To their credit, they always learn how to tread water -- or Guinness, or bourbon, or gin. 

The phone was shrieking like an angry lover who refused to be ignored. I smacked around in its general direction a few times, but it was clearly not threatened by my feeble and anaemic show of force. I slid my body toward its direction, stabbing with my hand. I smacked the receiver and it knocked off the hook, bouncing on the table, and falling somewhere on the floor. I leaned down and felt the pressure of blood rush into my hungover head. I searched for it with my hand, and realized I would have to take the wild step of opening my eyes. The light in the room was blinding and I cursed loudly as I grabbed the receiver on the floor, pulled it up to my ear, and rolled into the center of my bed onto my back.

“Hello?” I eventually answered in a raspy voice.

“What the hell was that all about?” I heard a voice on the other end. I immediately knew that it was Mitch. We met in grad school and had been friends for a couple of years.

“Hey, what’s up?” I retorted, hoping to express that I was in no mood or condition for anything but the bare facts and purpose for the call.

“Guess what I have,” was his response, his voice was almost a song.

“Man, just tell me. This is the wrong morning to try and gain my enthusiasm.” My head pounded with each beat of my heart, which seemed to be working harder than usual.

“Guess!”

“Mitch, I don’t even know what day it is. 

“Are you still in bed?”

“Yeah, I had a late night last night. What time is it?”

“It’s time for you to wake up and guess what I got.”

“What time is it?” I asked. I tried to look at my clock, but it seemed to have been displaced somewhere during the night, and I did not want to keep my eyes open long enough to search for it.

“It’s 10:45,” Mitch sighed, letting me know he was losing his patience with me. “It’s 10:45 on Thursday morning. You’ve slept the morning away, and now it’s time to wake up, and you can wake up by guessing what I got.”

“I don’t know. Herpes?”

“Ha, ha, very funny. Would you just guess?”

“For Christ’s sake, Mitch, would you just tell me. I don’t know what you got. I only know what I got. I got a pounding in my head and this conversation isn’t helping it. 

“A grant, dumb a*s, I got a grant.”

“A grant?”

“A grant. Well, a grant is putting it mildly. It’s actually a big-a*s giant grant-asaurus rex!”

“How big?”

“Big.”

I had a feeling that this whole conversation was not really happening at all, and was instead a next day hangover dream. There are a lot of times when I am hungover and I have some very realistic dream, only to wake up to discover it was a dream after all. To be fair, the themes of those other dreams usually revolved around getting up to get a drink of water or going to the bathroom because I was too hungover to do it myself. Even though this phone conversation was not the usual plot of the next morning hangover dreams, it was sufficiently mundane enough, and certainly annoying enough to rank high in the dream probability.

Mitch and I chatted some more on the phone about the grant. He wanted to get together and talk about it. It was clear to the both of us that it was not going to happen that day. I chose my flat for its location to a particular Irish Pub of which I was very fond, and the proximity was of use the night before. But the night was now over and my day was dedicated to sleeping this one off, and nursing away this hangover. I hung up the phone and ventured out of my room, hoping that no one was around. We were all students living on a suite, sharing a couple bathrooms and a kitchen. I staggered down the hallway to the kitchen and drank some water. Then I made my way back to my room, literally falling into my bed. The sun was already down when I awoke again and discovered I could probably eat something. 

That was Thursday.

The next day, I met Mitch in the coffee shop across the street from the School of Fine Arts. I still had not recovered fully from my hangover. The walk down St. Mary’s Street to Commonwealth Ave. seemed like it would never end. We bought our coffee and found a seat near the jukebox. Mitch was droning on and on and I was focused on some random girl going through the selection of songs. I had seen her a few times before, and I was sure I could guess what songs she was going to play. 

“So I’m getting a team together and I need someone who not only knows mythology, but I also need a historian,” I heard him say over my thoughts.

“You need AN historian,” I rebutted.

“What?” he replied..

“You need AN historian. The grammar, believe it or not, is actually an “an” there.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he queried.

“I’m just telling you the proper grammar for what you said. I would think that someone who spent so much time studying language would appreciate the proper way to say something.”

“Fine,” he snapped, “I need AN historian.”

“No one,” I laughed, “ever needs a historian.”

“Okay, I’d like to have a and/or an historian on board, and quite frankly, I’d like it to be you. I have this big-a*s grant-asaurus rex and I’m going to Europe. I want you to come along.”

“Europe?” I responded.

“Europe,“ he confirmed.

“I’ve learned in my short, but ever expanding existence,” I said, “that whenever someone says ‘Europe’ unqualified like that, rather than the particular country of Europe, it usually turns out to be an extraordinarily crappy location, often with extraordinarily crappy accommodations.”

“I don’t know how you got to be so cynical so young.”

“It’s a gift. Where would I be going?”

“Does it matter? C’mon! It’s Europe!”

“Where?”

“I don’t understand your reluctance, I mean, it’s a free trip to Europe.”

“I’ve also learned in my short, but ever expanding existence, that whenever I tell someone my theory about saying “Europe” rather than a country of Europe usually turning out to be a crappy location with crappy accommodations, and they still don’t tell me where, then it is not only crappy, but it is the Kingdom of Crappy. So again, where?”

“It’s not that bad,” Mitch said as if he did not even believe himself.

“Where?”

Mitch became pensive for a moment. He started to speak a couple of times but nothing came of it. Finally he confessed “Well, that’s just it. You know how the Soviet Union collapsed?”

“Yeah,” I said sarcastically, “I remember hearing something about that.”

“Well, remember how everyday there seemed to be a new country popping up that didn’t seem to exist the day before?”

“Yeah.”

“This country is a new country that was once a part of one of the countries that used to be a part of the Soviet Union ... but ... I don’t believe that the country has a name just yet.”

“Doesn’t have a name yet?” I asked incredulously, “It’s only been, ya know, like ten years since the Soviet Union fell. Are you really trying to tell me that there is actually a place in Europe, that has become independent since the collapse of the Soviet Union, that has never gotten around to naming itself?”

“Well, yeah,” Mitch retorted, “I actually think that it hasn’t been named yet; and the locals seem to be nervous about its former name, which is something like Krajiny Slairvonia, but I’m not good with the Slavic tongue so that’s just an approximation. ” 

“Well that sounds more like a sneeze than a country.” I made a feeble attempt to parrot the name that Mitch said, but I failed drastically in my attempt. 

“Exactly,” Mitch joked after my botched endeavor, mimicking me ironically. “It roughly translates as ‘The Land of Slairva.’ The truth is that I never heard of the region that we’ll be going to until about three months ago. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that it is slightly larger than a postage stamp, and for all I know it consists of nothing more than an inn and the inbred family that runs it. But it is a country and it has the sole possession of the Zrúcanina Slairva.”

“Oh, of course. I mean, why wouldn’t it? And what is the Zruckyuk whatever?”

“Well as I said, I’m not that great with Slavic, but it translates to something like ‘The Ruins of the Slairva’ or possibly, ‘The remains of the Slairva.”

“The Ruin of the Slair-what?” I felt the need to take a sip of coffee,

“‘The Slairva’ is something like the Dracula family in Romania. And just like the Dracula family, there is one particular Slairva that is infamous in the region, to the point that people still fear his name. He is called Melekim Slairva.”

“Melekim Slairva?” I echoed.

“Yeah,” Mitch confirmed.

“But that’s not Slavic, or Russian, or anything ... it’s Hebrew ... it means ‘king.’ Actually it’s plural, so it means ‘kings.’”

“I know,” Mitch smiled, “Don’t you find that the least bit interesting?”

“Okay,” I confirmed, “I’m interested. Though I’m certain that it represents nothing more than a deeply ingrained Jewish community, either in actuality, or in memory of that particular region.”

“According to legend,” Mitch began, “ Melekim Slairva was a despotic count or nobleman. There are local rumors dating from at least the Seventeenth century saying that he terrorized the peasants under his domain. Ya know, things like taking their infant children in the night, and defiling innocent girls, who soon afterward succumbed to sudden death and who were said to haunt their families and associates, corrupting them until the contagion was eventually suppressed. That sort of thing. It’s most likely that he was the mythical means of explaining infant mortality and accidents that took the life of children in the region, Tuberculosis or various forms of illnesses and cancers, as well as explaining the source of any illicit behavior and loose morals in the region. Nevertheless, most legends do have some basis in fact. And that’s where you come in. I need you to research the history of the legend. Do you think that you could handle that?”

“You want me to track down a ‘Dracula’ legend for a country that may or may not exist?”

“Well, yeah, when you put it that way, that’s exactly what I want.”

“You want an historian so you can chase after a myth? Sounds to me like you need a Crypto-historian, if such a thing exists.”

“You know mythology better than anyone I know. And I’ve heard you lecture to the undergrad students about how ‘myth’ does not mean lie. How do you always explain it? ‘Mythology is simply a narrative that is used to provide meaning and to stave off chaos. We all employ mythology on a social to a personal level...”

“I’m familiar with my own work on the subject,” I said, cutting him off. “But come on! This is a vampire legend. You got a grant to go search for a vampire?”

“Melekim Slairva was an historical person. I’m certain of that. I want you to find out all you can about him. I also need you to tell me about the Soviet occupation of the region.”

“Why would you possibly need me to tell you about the defunct Soviet Union’s occupation of an unnamed nation for which you have somehow conned somebody into giving you a grant?”

“Because,” Mitch said in a way that actually frightened me, and I should point out that I am not in the habit of becoming frightened by legends or myths, “there are Melekim Slairva legends dating from the Fifteenth Century until the late Nineteen-forties. The Soviets, when they arrived in the area became genuinely afraid of the legends and then took actions to stop him. It seems that the Soviets were successful, but for the last few years, since the Soviets left, the people have been worried. Well, I guess worried isn’t the right word " they’re legitimately terrified that Melekim Slairva is going to return. I want you to tell me what the Soviets did to stop him.”

“You want me to tell you how the Soviet Union silenced a vampire legend in one of their occupied territories during the Cold War? I can tell you that right now. Propaganda. That and the threat of brute force.”

“I know, but the Soviet soldiers were apparently sincerely frightened by the legend.”

“So? People are afraid of superstitions all the time. I was in the campus bookstore the other day and a person refused to grab a book because it was under a ladder. The Soviets, at best, were a third-world country masquerading as a first-world power. The fact that there were superstitious people serving as superstitious soldiers in your unnamed country does not surprise me in the least.”

“The Soviets took immediate steps to quell the myth. I need you to tell me what they were. It’s a free trip ...” he coughed slightly, “... to Europe ... Hell, you can even bring a date.”

“Bring a date,” I rebutted sarcastically, “to a European country that doesn’t really exist, to look for a mythical ‘Dracula’ figure that scared the hell out of the Soviets in the forties? That’s what you are suggesting, is it?” I felt smug in my analysis.

“I guess,” Mitch simply replied, “Why don’t you bring that undergraduate that you’re always going on about. I’m certain that she’d be happy to come along. After all, it is Europe, crappy country or not. A free trip to Europe is a free trip to Europe.”

“You want me to bring Tara?” I asked as I sipped a now icy cup of coffee.

“Yeah,” he asserted, “Tara. Bring her. I’m certain she’d be thrilled to come along.

“Well, at least one of us will be,” I sighed.