When I consented, I was told that I would have to be disguised before attempting escape, just in case we were discovered. My parents knew that the village would give me up to the authorities once they came looking for anomalous persons, so I had to look very different if I were to have any chance of making it out of the country.
Marku explained that there were operatives who would be placed on every ship leaving Europe to find the traitorous individuals in the event they made it past the roadblocks, so the mission was certainly a perilous one! It required that my parents leave the country a different way with a doppelganger of me to give me a chance to cross into Hungary undetected.
Because I don’t look like a boy, my parents decided to conceal me as a girl, and for the next few days, I was given a crash course on how to present myself as an adventurous, wealthy young British lady named Victoria Belcourte, who was on her way to America to experience the Grand Canyon. A fake passport was made for me during my preparation and all the necessary material goods were provided to strengthen the disguise.
I had to learn how to speak with a British accent and comport myself accordingly if I were to pass as a sophisticated maiden with a streak of adventure to her nature.
When all was completed and both parties tearfully parted ways, Marku’s accomplice drove us to within ten miles of the border. We were set out and Marku took me, in full disguise, into the woods. I was not, at all, athletic, and I was in a dress, so I had a difficult time keeping up with him.
Inevitably, I had to stop and rest; there was no going further for me without being carried! Marku displayed remarkable patience with me, however; he knew that I wasn't a soldier like he was, and he never raised his voice to me once for my frailty.
When he knew that I could go no further, he parted a bush for me at the base of a tree so I could crawl inside and get a few minutes’ sleep, and he sat guard at the opening with his rifle laid upon his lap, readied to shoot anyone or anything that emerged from the surrounding trees.
I felt a strange swell of compassion for this man before I drifted off; I knew that he must have been just as afraid as I was in those dark woods.
After letting me sleep for half an hour, he crawled inside and shook me awake, telling me that we had to be in Hungary before sunrise or hope of escape would be lost. I followed him out and stretched myself, thanking him as graciously as I could for letting me rest for a while; he smiled, took my hand and started off at a quick, but more considerate pace.
At some point, however, something occurred in the forest that made him release my hand and take aim into the darkness. He stood in that position for a few minutes, seemingly arguing with himself, or that is how I took it. But, after a certain point, he seemed to stop resisting whatever thought he was struggling with; he lowered his rifle and turned to me to explain what was wrong; he had to leave me! I instantly protested, and grew more vehement in my displeasure when he said that I would have to follow an unseen guide from that point on.
He said that the new guide communicated with him without words and told him that soldiers were ahead and that he would have to distract them so I could get across the border.
He told me to trust my new guide, but not to get close enough to see it! He told me to follow its sound through the forest, but, he warned me, with terrifying urgency, to resist every compulsion to run from the guide or I would trigger its predatory instinct and it would run me down and slaughter me!
I felt more vulnerable than I ever had in that moment as Marku kissed my forehead and moved away from the area slowly to avoid setting the guide into a murderous frenzy, then I heard him sprint away as soon as he left line of sight.
I was alone, with something I couldn't see, something I didn't understand! I felt that my heart would pound its way through my breast as I turned and slowly approached where Marku said my guide was waiting; I could see nothing as I drew near, but once I heard a deep, rumbling growl waft from the darkness ahead of me I knew not to go any further, and I stopped, praying like I've never prayed before!
The creature began to move ahead of me and I followed its sound from a distance; I could tell that it must have been a truly massive beast when I saw trees parting in the forest ahead, but nothing in me wanted to get close enough to see it! I knew that this creature could destroy a pack of lupine if it had to, and that both comforted, and weakened me with dread!
I followed my new guide sobbing with terror and despair. Marku was my only sense of security in that nocturnal forest, and he was no longer with me. Adding to this that my parents were far away, risking their own lives to give me that one narrow chance of making it out of Romania was making the experience all the more miserable!
The cold darkness that encompassed me; the unseen guide that could turn on me at any moment and remove me from this life; I was feeling such unbearable vulnerability! The despair I was in at that point was nearing suicidal! At that moment, I would have gladly faced the wrath of the villagers than suffer so many tormenting uncertainties!
I tearfully recalled making my father promise to shoot me if the lupine managed to break into the loft and overrun us; the look of despair and compassion on my mother's face when the demonic creatures clawed at the wood, looking for a way in; my father's strangely soothing assurance that he would kill me before the lupine could, I feared that I would never see my parents again, and the pain of that thought was crushing me in that dark forest!
At some point, after following the sound of my guide for what seemed like an hour or two, the creature suddenly burst into a full on run until I could hear it no more, and I instantly stopped in my tracks, sobbing with panic!
After a short time in silence I began hearing the sounds of gunfire and screaming from somewhere ahead and I became aware that some soldiers had remained behind and that the monster had run ahead to clear the way to the border, but me; I was frozen with terror, finding it impossible to restrain myself from crying!
After the cacophony in the distance faded I heard nothing more. But, something told me that the creature that had been guiding me was waiting for me to turn and run; I think I may have been reading its thoughts, as Marku was able to do, because I sensed that it was in the throes of predation!
Everything in me told me to fly for the road as fast as I could, but I remembered Marku’s words, and I knew that the creature was simply too fast to escape, so I stood as still as death, looking breathlessly into the shadows ahead.
Suddenly, the unseen beast snarled deeply and began running toward me, knocking down trees as it approached and shaking the ground; horror overwhelmed me at that moment and I blacked out.
When I awakened I was moving under a lightening sky, watching the trees above me passing slowly to my left. It was getting close to dawn, and I was being carried.
But, as my awareness slowly returned, I realized that I was in the enormous maw of my guide! I felt its massive fangs pressing hard against the back and front of my body; I was horrified and my immediate urge was to thrash myself loose, but I realized that any sudden movement on my part could provoke a deadly bite, so I forced myself, with all my strength, to lay still.
But, the worst of this experience was feeling the monster’s thick, wet, serpentine tongue constantly slithering under my skirt, up and between my legs, tearing away everything it could and tasting everything it exposed. I was completely helpless at that point; agonizing from being suspended between dagger like teeth while being raked again and again with its dripping, probing glossa.
The pain, eventually, became too much for me to endure and I began to wail, but the creature never eased its piercing grip on me and I was weakening with every jarring step it took. At some point, I blacked out again.
When I awakened once more, I was lying on the ground upon my right side and Marku was shaking me. The horrible guide had carried me into Hungary and left me there to be found; I had no idea how long I had been unconscious but my body throbbed and stabbed with pain and I bled in several places from the long, unrelenting bite!
Additionally, my dress was shredded and all my undergarments below the waist were gone.
Marku picked me up and carried me out of the forest to his accomplice’s waiting vehicle.
I didn’t have time to recover from the pain of my injuries because Marku and I needed to get to Southampton in the next few days before we missed our ship.
Nevertheless, after we had driven many miles across Hungary, we eventually stopped and he tended my wounds the remainder of that evening, allowing me to rest until dawn.
What I learned, later, was that the monster that delivered me into Hungary was employed by the Founder to find and bring me safely across the border; that, because of the pervasive nature of the Romanian lupine incursion, the Founder had to deploy all his forces to gather the packs and resettle them.
Marku told me not to begrudge the creature for terrorizing and injuring me, assuring me that the monster was being as gentle with me as its savage nature would allow.
He would not tell me what the monster was, only that it was the most powerful and feared monster in that forest, and that it was the only thing that kept the lupine at bay, because, and I still shake to think of it, I was being stalked by the very pack that was looking to avenge the two my parents had killed.
He assured me that he could not have helped me if the monster had not been there and the pack decided to advance on us; both of us would have perished!
I thought of the moment the monster left me to dispatch the soldiers and how it left me vulnerable to the lupine,
‘You were never vulnerable,' he said. 'The beast that protected you was speaking to the pack the whole time, telling them not to advance on you or they would all be dead before sunrise.'
'But, I felt its burning desire to consume me,' I replied. 'It even charged me to force me to run!'
'Gabriel,' he gently replied. 'It had a momentary lapse of sanity that passed once it came upon your unconscious form; it remembered the Founder's threat, and that was enough to tame its urge to consume you.'
Just before sunrise, he helped me get cleaned up and into a dress that concealed most of the deep bruising I acquired from my guide and he gave me pain-suppressors to help me get moving.
I put on the elegant black hairpiece that I was to wear until I made it to New York; it was composed of long, semi-curly strands descending all the way down to my waist.
Afterwards, I slid on my heels and applied my make up; I looked so different as Victoria that I couldn’t see how anyone would recognize me as Gabriel!
Marku and I then left the lodge, slid into the car and made the long, largely uneventful road trip from Hungary to Austria to Germany and up through France to catch a ferry to England and a train to Southampton where we made our departure from Europe aboard the Titanic."
Mother’s calling me down for dinner, so I’ll have to save that remarkable story for next time.
Gabriel
© 2020
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