CHAPTER 1

“My family is from Transylvania.”

“What?”

“Yeah dude.”

“Transylvania’s not a real place.”

“Wait,” Hal thought for a moment, he wasn’t particularly well studied in geography, “are you sure? I’m pretty positive my grandma told me we were literally from Transylvania.”

“No,” said Mac, “ that’s literally like, Dracula. Dracula is from Transylvania. That’s like saying, oh my cousin lives in Gotham.”

Mac was also not particularly well studied in geography, but was generally quite self assured.

Hal and Mac had been best friends since fourth grade when they bonded over an overbearing teacher neither of them liked very much, named Mrs. Moore. This conversation was several years later, on the 4th of July during the summer break before their senior year, and they were reminiscing on how awful Mrs. Moore had been and comparing her to a vampire. That was when Hal mentioned Transylvania, but Mac had so confidently compared Transylvania to Gotham City that Hal, through a volatile mixture of embarrassment and trust, forgot Mac’s track record and believed him. For several weeks after their conversation Hal assumed he’d gotten it wrong and even refused to believe he older brother Hunter (not forgetting Hunter’s track record) when he’d tried to convince him that they really were from Transylvania. It wasn’t until they happened to have a lesson around halloween time from an English teacher that they both quite liked named Mr. Luca, that they both found out definitively that Transylvania was, in fact, a real place.

“Velllcome class,” Mr. Luca started, “velllcome! Come in and sit down, I vant to flunk your grades!! Muahahaha!!!”

Hal tried to hold in a laugh but a stifled chuckle escaped. Mac, who was suppressing a smirk himself, shook his head.

“Don’t encourage him,” Mac said as they took their seats.

“Vun point to whoever knows who I am!”

Mr. Luca was now tiptoeing around the classroom holding a cape up to conceal the bottom half of his face. A student at the back raised his hand.

“How about instead of a point, you can reward us by dropping the accent?” The student asked.

“Vaaaat?” Mr. Luca responded, “you don’t like my accent?? But this is how vee all sound in… TRANSYLVANIA!!!” With this he flicked the light switch up and down, and made noises with his mouth which were clearly intended to imitate thunder.

Mac caught Hal’s eye and nodding his head toward the teacher whispered, “Count ‘Drac-Luca’”

“DRACULA, YESSS!!!” Mr. Luca boomed dramatically, finally letting go of the light switch to point at Mac, “very good Mac!”

“Oh my gosh..” Mac said with a muffled voice, burying his face in his backpack.

Hal, laughed.

“One of the most iconic figures in all of literature,” Mr. Luca continued with less accent but no less enthusiasm, “Count Dracula has informed almost everything we assume about vampires. From the widows peak hair line, to the pale skin, to the melodramatic and shamefully inaccurate Transylvanian accent - though as far as Dracula accents go, not too shabby, right?” He gestured to himself.

“Wait,” Hal raised his hand, “Transylvania isn’t a real place, right? I mean, Romania obviously is, but Transylvania’s just from the story.”

Mr. Luca smiled and pointed at Hal, “Thank you for asking, Hal. You’d be surprised how many people do think that, but Transylvania is actually in fact a real place with a very interesting history.”

Hal shot a very annoyed look at Mac who simply stared back at Hal confused and mouthed, “what?” clearly with no recollection whatsoever of their previous conversation.

“Now,” Mr. Luca continued, “that history does not include a real vampire named Count Dracula, but a lot of places and things in the original book by Bram Stoker are based on Romania’s history, geography and culture.”

Mr. Luca continued on with his lesson, discussing some of the main aspects of Romanian folklore that were included in Dracula and then spent the rest of class on a tangent about how impactful the book was on modern culture and the incredible impact one person can have when they simply set a story in their mind free through writing.

After class, it was lunchtime, and the two friends headed to their usual spot under a tree near the track field.

“I don’t think I told you that,” Mac stated firmly as Hal recapped their previous conversation.

“You definitely told me that,” Hal said, “I fought my brother about it because you told me that.”

Mac responded with a shrug.

“Anyway,” Hal continued, “point is, my family is literally from Transylvania.”

“That’s awesome, man,” Mac said.

“It is awesome,” said Hal, shooting another look at Mac who was busy waving at a girl he didn’t know.

Noticing Hal had stopped talking, Mac tuned back in, “So what do you think you’re gonna write about?” He asked. Mr. Luca had assigned the class to choose one aspect of Romanian folklore they’d discussed in class and write a short creative piece inspired by it.

“I mean, I feel like werewolves are kinda the coolest one. Like, that’s probably what everybody’s gonna do, but I’ll probably just to that, too.” Hal answered.

“I’m not,” Mac said, pulling a sandwich from his lunch bag, “mine’s about vampires. And I’m already done.”

“What do you mean you’re done?” Hal asked, “he just told us about it.”

Mac cleared his throat and counted syllables on one hand, “Dead and yet alive, do not give me milk just blood, Transylvania’s real.”

Hal stared as Mac took a large bite of his sandwich as if to congratulate himself.

“It’th a haiku.” Mac mumbled through his sandwich.

Hal laughed and shook his head, “you are not gonna graduate high school,” he said, to which Mac just took another big bite of sandwich and bounced his eyebrows.

Hal’s parents usually drove him to and from school, but his house was close enough to Piedmont High that he could walk on days that he needed to. Today was a walking day. Hal’s parents had been out of town over the weekend and would be getting home about an hour or two after school got out. The sun was warm and there was a slight breeze with just a touch of chill in it, the only hint in the weather that fall was really coming. The trees however had all begun to turn golden yellow a few weeks earlier and now many of them had bursts of bright orange and fiery red in their canopies, and as he walked Hal’s feet shuffled through small piles of leaves where the wind had pushed them together. Hal drew a deep breath in through his nose and smiled. Most years, the smell of fall was the first thing Hal would notice as the seasons changed. It wasn’t something specific he could put his finger on, just a fresh, crisp, earthy quality that began to float on the breeze before the leaves started to change. But autumn was in full swing now, and he could smell the damp layers of fallen leaves that had been warmed by the sunshine as he walked through them. He noted that somewhere in the neighborhood someone must not have harvested all the apples off their tree, judging by the sweet, fruity aroma occasionally wafting by. He found it interesting that apples rotting on the ground always smelled so good. The walk today would have been enjoyable if for nothing but the weather, but the interplay of aromas shifting and mixing together as he walked past yards with different types of foliage and houses with wood burning fireplaces made it a particularly pleasant and invigorating experience. By the time Hal got home he was refreshed and full of energy. As he approached the front door, it suddenly opened just in front of him.

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“Hiya, Pup!”

“Holy crap!” Hal blurted with a start.

Hal’s dad laughed.

“Well nice to see you, too, buddy!” He said.

Harry Mutu was an energetic, optimistic, and friendly man. He seemed to laugh at least once in every conversation Hal had ever seen him have, and it wasn’t an accident. Harry loved life, and he valued striving to love life as an important part of a persons mental health. He made an intentional effort to remember the good things, to laugh, and to help others do the same whenever he could. Harry had owned and operated a food truck for as long as Hal could remember, and it was a common request by his friends, whenever they were trying to decide on some food, to go to wherever his dad had the food truck that day. Mutu’s Skewer Truck was almost always somewhere interesting, renaissance fairs, cultural festivals, haunted houses or corn mazes in the fall, even when Harry was just parked around town it was often the older, cool parts of town that Hal and his friends didn’t get to see very often. This, combined with Harry’s “fun dad” personality, and certainly not least of all the free food Hal’s friends never asked for but always got, gave them all plenty of motivation to keep the option top of mind. And Hal didn’t mind. He generally thought his dad’s jokes were at least as funny as anyone else, though of course he had pretended not to in front of his friends from about 14 to 15, but he was far beyond that now and was well aware of how much more fun it was to be laughing with everybody else. Hal was proud to have his dad, and Hal, his older brother Hunter, and Hal’s mom, Lily, were Harry’s whole world.

“I thought you weren’t getting in til tonight” Hal said, greeting his dad with a hug.

“Yeah,” Harry responded, “we actually just made really good time on the drive home, and got a little head start. We were gonna come pick you up from school actually, but mom realized we needed a couple things for dinner so she went to the store to grab some groceries.”

“Ah,” Hal started, he’d grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry and plopped down onto the couch with his backpack still on, “I was wondering where the car was” he said between crunches.

“How was hunting?” Hal asked, offering the chips.

“Great!” Harry responded, also plopping. He grabbed a handful of chips and started eating.

“How’s it been here?” He asked, between crunches, “seems like fall really finally fell, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Hal said, “I’m actually glad you guys didn’t pick me up today. The walk home was super nice. It just has that whole smell and feel and everything outside right now. It was awesome.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it was” Harry said, “Did you smell the Grayson’s apples?”

“Oh, I didn’t realize that’s who it was,” Hal answered, “but yes, I totally did.”

“They smell so good when they rot!” Harry laughed, and Hal agreed.

Hal chatted with his dad for a little while longer until his mom got home. After a hug and a kiss and a hi, Hal went upstairs to shower. Lily was an incredible cook, and lamb, which the grocery store didn’t even always have, happened to be on sale today.

“Is that shepherds pie?!” Hal shouted from the shower, as the unmistakable scent of one of Lily’s famous dishes wafted under the bathroom door. He was able to just make out the sound of his mom laughing.

“YES!!!” He shouted again, and heard both his parents laugh this time.

When Hal came down the stairs to dinner, he was surprised to see his brother, Hunter in the dining room.

“Hey man!” Hunter said, giving Hal a jarringly solid punch in the arm, as usual.

“Jeez!” Hal said, catching his balance.

“Gotta toughen you up, bro!” said Hunter, again as usual.

“You’re a freakin idiot,” Hal laughed, giving his brother a hug. “I didn’t know you were coming over tonight. What’s the occasion?”

Hunter had moved into a house about 45 minutes away with his wife Emily when they got married about four years ago.

“Oh I just wanted to come say hi to mom and dad and hear about their trip” he answered, “plus, you know how mom always cooks after they’ve been out of town.”

“That’s why he really came,” Lily chimed in.

Hunter gave Hal a look and shrugged.

“Emily’s bringing the boys over, too.” Hunter said.

“Sweet!” Said Hal. Hunter had two twin boys who were about a year and half now. They were crazy and Hal loved them. He couldn’t wait to be the cool uncle, as soon as they were old enough to know what an uncle was. They showed up about twenty minutes later and then the twins became the whole family’s primary entertainment until the shepherds pie was ready to come out of the oven. Everybody was ravenous after playing, watching, and a great deal of running after the twins, the house filled with the irresistible scent of the pie all the while. As Lily and Harry brought al the food do the table, the twins were strapped into the matching high chairs Lily had bought to keep at her house and placed on either side of Hunter and Emily. Hal sat down across from them and made faces at the boys until they were ready to bless the food. Hal was chosen to say the blessing, which he kept brief, and they all dove in.

“How was school today, Hal?” Lily asked.

“Uh, it was really good,” Hal responded out of habit, focusing much more on shoveling shepherds pie into one of the rolls his dad had made to go with dinner.

“Well that’s good,” Lily said, “anything interesting happen?”

“Not really,” Hal said, preferring to give short response so as not to delay shoving his new creation into his mouth.

“How’s that?” Lily laughed.

Hal’s mouth was very full at this point, but he came as close as he could to saying, “so good…”

Harry reached over to one of the twins with a piece of lamb he’d been blowing on for a a minute.

“How have my little grand boys been this week?” He asked, narrowly avoiding getting the tip of his finger bitten off.

“Great!” Laughed Emily, “they’re just getting faster, hungrier and cuter all the time!”

Harry had now turned the attempted finger biting into a game.

“Oh yeah, little buddy?” Harry said as Ziz almost got him and laughed, “You wanna go hunt with grandma and grandpa next time, huh? That’s where we were! Grandma and grandpa were out hunting…”

“Dracula!” Hal suddenly blurted out.

Hunter, Harry, and Lily’s attention all suddenly snapped to Hal, and Emily started to choke on her food- which made Pip laugh.

“Sorry,” Hal said, “I just remembered. You were asking about anything interesting at school and I forgot that Mr. Luca was telling us about Dracula today.”

Hunter exhaled and shook his head slightly, looking relieved.

“Sorry,” Hal continued, a little confused, “I didn’t mean to like, surprise you guys.”

“You’re ok, honey,” Lily said, “you just startled us. But that’s great! A lot of fun, interesting stuff in that book!”

Hal continued, “Totally! But actually what I was gonna say is just that, Transylvania is totally a real place!”

“Of course it is!” Harry responded.

“Bro,” Hunter chimed in, “I literally told you that like two months ago. He didn’t believe me that it was a real place,” he said, turning to his parents.

“That’s where your dad’s whole side of the family is from,” Lily said, “you knew that.”

“Well, I thought I did,” Hal responded, “but then someone said it wasn’t real and I thought maybe I just misremembered Mema telling me that or something.”

“Who told you Transylvania wasn’t a real place?” Asked Harry, feeding Ziz some mashed potato.

“Mac,” Hal answered.

Harry and Lilly both laughed, but Hunter gave Hal a blank stare.

“You believed Mac over me?” Hunter said, blinking slowly.

“Dude, you haven’t always been the most reliable source of information in my life, ok?” Hal answered.

“Fair enough” Hunter said, going back to feeding the baby.

“Do you guys know he literally convinced me that aliens were gonna blow up the planet on my 8th birthday?” Hal asked.

“Yes, we remember that” Lily said.

Emily gave Hunter a swat in the arm.

“I actually feel bad about that one,” Hunter said, laughing, “he totally cried.”

“Yeah,” Hal said, “I did. Anyway, so yes, as a reliable source of information, Mr. Luca clarified today that Transylvania is in fact a real place and not just made up for the book. And that’s freakin awesome! We’re from literal Transylvania!”

“Heck yeah, we are!” Harry said, “we have a long, long family history there.”

“Well that’s awesome” Hal said, turning back to his food. “Also, I think Mr. Luca believes in vampires,” he added with a laugh.

None of the family responded for a moment.

“I mean, not like actually,” Hal clarified, “it was just funny the way he was talking about it sometimes. Mac and I were totally joking about it after class.”

“I mean,” Harry jumped in, “who knows, right?”

“What?” Said Hal, “who knows? All of us? Science?”

“Science doesn’t know everything,” Hunter added.

Now it was Hal’s turn to give hunter a blank stare.

“Vampires.” Hal said. Blinking slowly.

Harry jumped back in, “all I meant is that he can believe what he wants, you know? Who are we to judge?”

“It’s not like it’s his religion or something,” Hal said, “it’s literally VAMPIRES. Like, mythological undead monsters.”

“It doesn’t have to be a religion for somebody to believe it,” Lily chimed in.

“Ok,” Hal shrugged, “sure. I guess Mr. Luca can believe in VAMPIRES if he wants to.” Hal laughed.

“Yeah,” Harry laughed, as Lily gave him a subtle look.

As dinner went on they talked more about some of the Mutu family history, and Hal asked plenty of questions. The conversation mostly focused on Nick and Ana Mutu, Hal’s great grandparents who had moved to the united states from Romania, and stories that Mema, Harry’s mother had told him about them. Eventually Hal cleaned up dishes while Emily put together some brownie mix she had brought. They played some games while the brownies baked, and then after dessert Hunter’s family headed home.

That night as Hal laid in bed, he searched through a family history app he had on his phone, trying to track down more information about Nick and Ana. Eventually, as his eyes started to get heavy, he realized he wasn’t getting anywhere by searching half awake and he put his phone away. Hal rolled back over and closed his eyes. As Hal slept, he found himself in a strange and vivid dream. He began to be aware that he was outside and it was night time. It was a cool, clear night, and a bright full moon was just beginning to rise into the night sky. Hal could smell the crisp night air, the damp, fresh smell of the earth and the grass sparkling in a blanket of dew drops, which was cool and invigorating under his feet. He was running. He felt the wind in his face, and as it filled his lungs, he felt alive. The world was like lightning. He was running, and all he wanted was to run, and smell, and breathe. His attention shifted to what he could see around him. As he looked, there was some sort of sharpness, a vibrance to the grasses and the trees around him. He noticed then, as he was looking around, running, something that had been overshadowed by his other senses at first. As he looked, apart from somehow seeing more than he felt he usually saw, the color was also strange. There was a sort of pale orange quality to everything. Hal wondered if there was an orange light somewhere, like a street lamp or something, but as he scanned his surroundings he noticed that the stars were even orange. And then he looked up. He was facing the moon. He was standing now, and he just stood, and stared at the moon. He could hear himself breathing, and felt his heart pounding in his chest. As invigorating as the sensations had been of the wind in his face and the dews beneath his feet, even the smells of the night filling his nose and lungs, they were nothing to what he felt standing there, with his eyes wide open, the beaming orange light of the moon washing over him. He was lost in the feeling, and suddenly found he was running again. Faster. Bounding over the landscape like wind through the trees. He felt the dew, and the earth, and the grasses snapping beneath his hands and feet. Again, he noticed for the first time something he had missed through the flood of sensations. He was running on his hands and feet. He was bounding, and reaching, his hands and feet in a perfect, powerful rhythm. When his hands found the earth, he would pull, and then his feet would find their place and he’d explode forward in a burst of power and speed. How had he ever run before? His whole life he had been running with only half of his body… And now where was he running? He looked again, stretching his gaze out ahead of himself, trying to see. Was he running to something, or from something?… This question began to fill his mind, when suddenly—

“HAL! Let’s go!”

Hal was late for school.