“That was when hell came. As the roof was blasted off and the walls flew outward in ruin and belching fire and smoke, so the road in front of my truck seemed to bend up and back on itself like a wounded snake, whipping cobbles through my windscreen. And after that . . . everything was spinning, and everything was burning!
‘The ambulance was like a toy in some mad child’s fist: picked up, twirled around and hurled aside, off the road, blazing. I was unconscious only for a couple of seconds -maybe not even that, perhaps it was only shock or nausea – but when I came to my senses and crawled from the blazing vehicle it was with only seconds to spare. Mere seconds, and then . . . BOOM!
‘As for my partner, the man in the truck with me: I didn’t even know his name. Or if I ever did, I’ve since forgotten it. I’d met him just that night, and now said goodbye in a holocaust. He had a hook nose, that’s all I remember. I hadn’t seen him in the truck when I got out of there; if he was still in there, well that was the end of him. Anyway, I never saw him again . . .
‘But the bombs were still raining down, and I was shivering, miserable, shocked and vulnerable. You know how vulnerable you really are when you’ve just lost someone, even if you never knew him.
Then I looked towards the house that was hit before the bomb landed on the road in front of me. Amazingly, some of it was still standing. The downstairs room with the bay windows was still there – no windows, just the room – or the shell of the room, anyway. But everything else was gone – or soon would be. The place was burning furiously.
‘And that was when I remembered the angry figure I’d seen silhouetted in that bay window, shaking its arms in fury. If the room was still there, mightn’t the figure -mightn’t he – also be there? It was instinct, the job, the unclimbable mountain. I ran towards the house. Maybe it was self-preservation, too, for one bomb had already landed on the house; it seemed unlikely that another would follow suit. Until the raid was over, I would be as safe there as anywhere. In my dazed condition I hadn’t taken into account the fact that the place was burning, that its fires would be a beacon for the next wave of planes.
‘I got to the house safely, climbed through the shattered bays and into what had been a library, found the angry man – or what was left of him. What should have been left of him was a corpse, but that wasn’t how it was. I mean, the state he was in … well, he should have been dead. But he wasn’t. He was undead!
‘Now Dragosani, I don’t know how much you know about the Wamphyri. If you know a great deal, then the rest of what I have to say may not surprise you greatly. But I knew nothing, not then, and so what I saw – what I heard, the whole experience – was for me simply terrifying. Of course, you aren’t the first to hear this story; I told it afterwards, or rather babbled it, and have told it several times since. But each time I’ve been more reluctant, knowing that if I do tell it, it will only be greeted with scepticism or downright disbelief. However, since my experience was the initial jolt – the shock which set my search, research, and yes, obsession, in motion – it remains the single dominant memory of my entire lifetime, and so must be told. Although I’ve drastically narrowed down my possible audiences over the years, still it must be told. Indeed you, Dragosani, will be the first to have heard it for seven years. The last one was an American who later wanted to re-write it and publish it as a sensational “true story”, and I had to threaten him with a shotgun to change his mind. For obvious reasons I do not wish to draw attention to myself, which is precisely what his scheme would have done!