Written by David de Sola
DAY 5
"We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." - Thomas Jefferson
Gabriel was surprised to see that he was the only one awake at the moment. He stumbled over to the fax machine in the corner of the living room and saw a very long fax emanating from it. He tore it off and read the cover page.
"Dear Gabriel;
Here is everything I have found in the Schattenjager library on the Voynich Manuscript. The passages below are from the journal of your ancestor Ludwig Ritter, who fought in the Fourth Crusade from 1198-1204, and participated in the sack of Constantinople in 1204. I hope this helps your investigation. Let me know if there is something else I can research for you. Take care of yourself Gabriel. You are the last...
-Gerde"
Gabriel continued to read on into the fax. Gerde had typed and translated a copy of each of the relevant passages of the journal.
March 4, 1204
March 9, 1204
March 12, 1204
This is the last entry in Ludwig Ritter's journal. A letter was in the journal which read
April 15, 1204
One of your kin, Ludwig Ritter was brought to our monastery by a peasant who found him lying in the road. He had many wounds scattered across his body, mostly in the neck and upper chest. In spite all our attempts to aid him, he passed on. He told us to send you his possessions and his journal. As a gesture of appreciation, he left us an odd manuscript which none of the abbots here have been able to translate. He died peacefully, his last rites were administered, and he was given a proper Christian burial in our courtyard. The peasant who found him said he appeared to have died in a fight, possibly with one of the many brigands that patrol the area for victims. Please accept our sincerest condolences.
The letter itself was written in Latin, and I translated it from the German translation that was also in the journal. Here's the odd thing...no reference at all is made to the medallion. It disappeared for almost two centuries until it reappeared in the fifteenth century in the Order of the Dragon in Romania, which was headed by Prince Vlad Dracul. You may remember the name...his son was Vlad Dracula ("son of Dracul"), more commonly known as Vlad Tepes (pronounced "Tczepesh") which translates to "Vlad the Impaler". The same Vlad the Impaler that would inspire Bram Stoker's Dracula. The medal was used as a symbol of the order, but apparently, Prince Vlad had the ORIGINAL medallion. Where the medallion went after his death, no one knows. Some say that it was on Vlad's person when he was killed in battle with the Turks. Others say it is buried in the Dracul family tomb. Others say it was left to the Order of the Dragon to Vlad's successor. No concrete evidence. Let me know if there is anything else you want from the archives. -Gerde"
Gabriel's blood froze in his veins. "Sweet Jesus, Vlad the Impaler?" It couldn't be. It was all just a legend by some Irish author with a hyperactive imagination, wasn't it? THEN AGAIN, Gabriel had been a total paranormal skeptic until the Voodoo Murders case and his beliefs were radically changed after his near-damnation after his first (and hopefully last) werewolf transformation. Just as Gabriel had finished pondering this thought, Grace and Mosely appeared and greeted Gabriel.
"Jesus. Guys. I think we're dealing with a damn freak ghost or something. The name Tepes I was telling you about? It's the nickname of Vlad Dracul, aka Vlad Tepes, which means 'Vlad the Impaler'. I don't know what the hell is going on, but if this guy is running around killing people, there's no telling what he wants or how far he's willing to go to get it."
"OK…I'm going to talk to Thornton to see if there's anything new. The minute you have anything proving some sick 600-year old dead guy is killing people, let me know." Mosely replied sarcastically as he left the apartment.
"Grace, I'm going to the hospital to check out the hematology department. I want you to ask Barclay about Vlad the Impaler and look up EVERYTHING you can find about him." Gabriel explained as he prepared to walk out the door.
"Right, Gabriel. Don’t get yourself into too much trouble." She said, her lips twitching a semi-flirtatious grin as she walked away from him. "See you later."
Gabriel was at first shocked at this. He hid his natural reaction from Grace, but the thought kept racking his brain. Had Grace discovered the opposite sex? And if so, was he the guy she was interested in? His already hyperactive imagination reverted back to its teenage fantasy phase, and pondered the possibilities. Gabriel then realized he had to put the feelings aside to solve the case. But he knew this was something that wouldn’t just go away. After all, the dragon in his Schattenjager initiation dream had said that one of the things that redeemed him was that "three women had loved him purely". He knew that Gran was one of them. He was pretty sure Malia was another. That left the third up for grabs…
Gabriel headed into the waiting lounge of the hematology department of the hospital. There was something about hospitals he didn't like. Maybe he was hypochondriac. He just didn't like being in a place where sick people converged. Maybe he thought he would catch something one day. He noticed a folder from the University Psychiatrist's office. He couldn't see the name on the folder, only that it said in really huge letters "PATIENT CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPTS-CONFIDENTIAL". He could read a little edge of the sheet sticking out of the folder. It read "…ranoid schizo-/delusional/ borderline psy..". Gabriel shuddered. He hoped he'd never have a problem like that. The clerk suddenly came to the counter and took the folder.
"How can I help you?"
"Hi. My name is Gabriel Knight. I want to speak to whoever's in charge."
"That would be Dr. Wrenfeld. Have a seat while I call him for you." The clerk said as she rang a buzzer. A short, stocky, black-haired man with a beard and mustache came in looking all scientific and professional in his lab coat.
"Mr. Knight? I'm Dr. Frederick Wrenfeld. I understand you want to see me." He said. His accent was typically New England. Judging from the diplomas and awards hanging in the waiting room, this guy probably had the ego to match his intellect. Gabriel walked into his office and sat in the chair.
"Dr. Wrenfeld. I have a few questions to ask you. I'm investigating the murders that have occurred here on campus and as you know, a card for the hematology department was found at one of the crime scenes. What can you tell me about that?"
"I've already explained to the police. All of these people came here for blood-related services. What the services were, I cannot disclose to you because it would violate the patient-doctor confidentiality rule and cost me my medical license."
"Surely, there must be something you can tell me."
"No Mr. Knight. There isn't. Good bye." The doctor said as he closed the door to his office.
Gabriel looked at the waiting room to see if there was anything lying around. He noticed that the secretary was acting odd.
"Is there a problem miss?" Gabriel asked.
"I'm not feeling very well. Must have been something I ate."
"Do you need some help or something? Want to go to the bathroom?"
"Oh, I would, but I'm on duty, and I can't leave now."
"Don't worry, just go."
The woman scattered out the door and across the hall into the bathroom. Gabriel opened the filing cabinet labeled "PATIENT FILES" and began looking for the names of the victims. "Bishop…Bryant…Gorinson…Hessler" Gabriel muttered to himself as h pulled out each relevant file. As he perused over the files, he noticed that they all were blood type AB. At the bottom of the file, it said that they were all blood donors at Dr. Wrenfeld's office. In a pen scrawling at the bottom of each file, Gabriel could barely read out the phrase "Alpha treatment".
The secretary was just coming back, and Gabriel put all the files in their original positions. Gabriel excused himself and left the office. He wrote down what he had just read in the files "AB blood type…Alpha treatment." Gabriel decided to go to the Beincke Library to have a look at the manuscript.
Grace knocked on Professor Barclay’s door. She heard a faint "Come in!" through the thick wooden door. "Hello Grace. Sit down." Barclay said.
"Hi Professor. I was wandering if you could give me some information on Prince Vlad the Impaler of Romania. Besides the fact that Bram Stoker used him as a source of inspiration for the vampire archetype."
"Hmmm… haven’t looked him up in a while. Let me see what I can find in my library." Barclay said, as he turned around and scanned the titles that decorated the shelves on the wall behind him. "Here we go, Medieval Southeastern Europe." He flipped to the index and found the relevant passages.
"OK, here he is. He was born in 1431 in the town of Sighisoara in Transylvania, now known as northern Romania, in 1431 and later came to rule that area of southern Romania known as Wallachia. His real name was Vlad Tepes, pronounced Tsepesh, which means ‘impaler’, referring to his favorite method of torture and execution. He was also known as ‘Dracula’, which means ‘Son of Dracul’ or to be more precise ‘Son of the Dragon’. The name has nothing to do with vampiric myth, but he is called so because his father was named Vlad Dracul, and was a member of the Order of the Dragon. The Order of the Dragon was an order formed by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund for the express purpose of defeating the Turks. He was overthrown twice. He ruled for a brief period in 1448, again from 1456-1462, and for only a matter of weeks in the year of his death, 1476. Ultimately, Vlad died violently. It says here that according to rumor, at the hands of one of his men who was actually a Turkish spy. He was buried at one of the monasteries he patronized, on the island at Snagov. It also says that contrary to popular belief, his castle was never in Transylvania. Vlad Tepes used Bran Castle as his headquarters for his incursions into Transylvania. The real castle Dracula is in the northern Wallachian town of Tirgoviste, and nothing remains but the ruins."
"Are any of the myths and rumors true though?" Grace asked.
"To some extent, but they have been over exaggerated. Vlad the Impaler was one of the cruelest men who ever lived, equaled only by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Here’s one: an emissary was sent to address Vlad at his castle. Vlad ordered the emissary to remove his turban, to which the emissary declined because he was forbidden to remove it because of his faith. Vlad in his own sick way acknowledged the custom by ordering one of his guards to nail the turban to the emissary’s head."
Grace shuddered at the thought. "All right. Thank you for the information, Professor." She quietly said as she left, feeling nauseous.
Mosely knocked on the door of Thornton’s office. "Come in." Thornton mumbled. Mosely opened the door and greeted his old friend.
"What’s new Jake?" he asked.
"Not a whole lot." Thornton replied, pointing to all the files scattered across his desk. "I keep thinking the connection is right here in front of me and I’m just not seeing it. It’s like in that movie The Usual Suspects, ‘the truth is always in the last place you look’."
"I know the feeling." Mosely added, remembering how initially the voodoo aspects of the Voodoo Murders were originally thought to have been fake, but ended up being the key to solving the entire mystery. "What do you have so far?"
"Well, we got four impaled victims, one of which weighed over three hundred pounds. All murdered in quiet private places, but in close range of other people. Yet nobody saw or heard anything. We have no profile on a killer or killers. Then, there’s the murder weapons themselves. They’re organic stakes ranging from five to seven feet high. They seem to just sprout up from the ground, because the bottoms were deeply imbedded into the dirt to the point where it would have been impossible to dig, bury it, and cover it back up to commit the murder. The only thing we’ve found so far is a card for the hematology department, but that’s a dead end, since everybody on campus goes for blood tests there. All of the victims have absolutely nothing in common except that….they were all working on…." Thornton explained, until his face suddenly turned white. "Hang on…." He said as he continued searching. "here we go. The Voynich Manuscript, which is a document that is currently owned by the University and is kept at the Beincke Rare Book Library."
"Jesus." Mosely said. "So you think that somebody’s murdering all the people trying to work on that manuscript?"
"Highly unlikely, but until now, that’s the only common denominator that I’ve found." Thornton explained as he reached for the phone. "Sorry, I have to end this conversation right now. I have to find out if anyone else was working on this manuscript."
"Sure." Mosely answered. "See you later." He said, as he stepped out of the office. Mosely headed back to Grace’s apartment
Gabriel arrived at the library. He approached the first librarian. "Hi, my name is Gabriel Knight. I would like to see the Voynich Manuscript please."
"Are you affiliated with the university?" she asked.
"No."
"Do you have a research permit?"
"No."
"Then I’m afraid I’m not allowed to show it to you Mr. Knight. However, I may let you see our books on the manuscript."
"Do they have like pictures and stuff like that?"
"Yes."
"Then lead the way."
The librarian searched the online card catalog and disappeared into the maze of bookshelves in the library. She came back with four books that appeared to weigh a ton. She put them on the table where Gabriel was waiting. "Enjoy, Mr. Knight. When you’re finished, leave them on return cart over there."
Gabriel pulled out the photocopied notes he had gotten from Hessler and Bishop’s offices. He began comparing the sketches and notes to the images in the books. He was able to match some, but for the most part was unsuccessful in making the matches. He carried the heavy books back to the cart and headed back to Grace’s apartment.
Grace and Mosely had already arrived by the time Gabriel got in. After eating dinner, they each swapped stories on everything they had learned. The hematology clinic, the manuscript, Vlad, and the murders.
"So Thornton believes that everybody working on the manuscript is in danger of being the next victim?" Grace asked.
"That’s his only lead so far, and he has to follow it. I’d say he’ll put everybody who came near that thing under 24-hour surveillance and police protection until this whole thing blows over." Mosely explained.
"What about the hematology department at the hospital?" Gabriel asked. "I still don’t see how it fits into the bigger picture."
"Well, the Yale Hematology department is one of the best in the country. It is a leading pioneer in AIDS research and other blood-related conditions. As far as Dr. Wrenfeld, I have no clue as to his background or history or whatever." Grace answered.
"I think that’s a start." Gabriel replied. "Wrenfeld is kinda odd. I saw a psych evaluation file on his secretary’s desk. It didn’t have a name on it, but I did see these phrases sticking out of the file." Gabriel said, showing the notes he had quickly scrawled. "I would bet that whoever’s file this is, just might be our killer. I also was able to look at the files of the victims. They’re all AB blood type and have this phrase ‘alpha treatment’ written in their files."
Grace and Mosely stared at the notes, dumbfounded. "Good work, Knight. How could the cops miss something like this?" Mosely asked.
"Cops are bound by evidence gathering procedure, and I’m not. If a cop had done this, the evidence would be ruled inadmissible in any court of law." Gabriel answered.
"So we start out tomorrow by investigating Wrenfeld, right?" Grace asked.
"Yeah. I’ll try to convince Thornton to look into Wrenfeld. Let’s see if we can find out what this ‘alpha treatment’ is. What about you two?" Mosely asked. "Frankly, I think we’ll have much better luck building a case against a living person than some dead mass murderer."
"Shut up Mosely!" Gabriel and Grace said simultaneously. Not missing a beat, Gabriel continued "Didn’t you see enough after the Voodoo Murders?"
"An existing voodoo practicing crime cartel is one thing, a six hundred year old dead guy is pushing it…"
"Whatever…I’m in no mood to argue with you now. Well, I’ll try to see what more I can learn about the manuscript. As long as we’re checking out Vlad the Impaler, I’ll see what I can find out about vampires. I’ll fax some pictures over to Gerde to see if she can find anything in the library." Grace said.
"I don’t know what else to do. Maybe I should go see the dean or something and talk to her about this." Gabriel began. "I don’t know. When I figure it out, you’ll know."
"OK. Let’s call it a night." Grace said, heading to her bedroom for the night.
Gabriel and Mosely slept on their respective couch and sleeping bag until morning. Gabriel was again in his dream state, and the hand again clutched his throat. "Drop it Knight, or I will show you a new kind of pain you can’t even imagine." The voice said. He was dimly illuminated from behind. His silhouette revealed a tall man with long straight hair, and wearing a very strange outfit. Gabriel suddenly felt himself thrown through the air, before crashing through the stake that impaled his chest.
If you have any comments, you can email David de Sola at ddesola@emerald.tufts.edu.
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