Reborn

1

You walk through the moaning forest outside Targoviste and revel in its beauty. Its splendid trees straddle the road that leads to the south, the road on which the Turks will approach. A young forest, only a few days old, yet numbering twenty thousand trees. When you grip the trunk of one of its saplings, the tips of your thumb and middle finger meet on the far side.

The wind does not sigh through the boughs of this forest. It screams.

Twenty thousand saplings, all freshly planted. Never have you experienced such a concentrated dose of agony. It is making you lightheaded, giddy. You lift your gaze to the upper levels of this forest where dear Vlad's impaled enemies—real and imagined, men and women and children, dead and dying, Romanians, Turks, Germans, Bulgarians, and Hungarians— all await Muhammad II.

It is a still forest, this. Although cries of pain fill the air, there is little or no motion among the boughs. For each victim has learned of the agony beyond bearing that attends the slightest movement. In their subjective time the nightmare started an eternity ago, when a long, sharp—but not too sharp—stake was driven deep into an anus or a vagina or down a throat, or simply poked through the abdominal wall, after which the hapless man, woman, or child was hoisted into the air upon that stake, which was then planted along the side of this road.

In the fortunate ones, the point of the stake quickly found a vital organ or artery, and death rescued them. You curse their limp, silent, blissful death. But in so many others, the stake moves more slowly, in short hops, remorselessly forging a path of torture through the innards as the weight of the body pulls it relentlessly downward. Sometimes there is a respite of sorts, as when the point lodges against a bone and its progress is halted. Then every movement, even the slightest shudder of pain, must be avoided. And a breeze is the most dreaded thing of all.

You hear soft whimpering from just above your right shoulder. The pain-mad eyes of a young girl look down at you pleadingly. Evidently the stake within her has run up against something that will not let it pass. The eyes beg for help. You smile. Yes, you will help. You grasp the stake and shake it violently. You are rewarded by hoarse, mindless screeching as her body suddenly slips three inches lower. Blood rushes down the stake and runs over your hand.

You lick your fingers…

Carol awoke and ran to the bathroom, retching uncontrollably. These dreams! Tonight's was the worst, the sickest, the most real of all! What was wrong with her? Please, God! These dreams… when were they going to stop?