The Renfield Syndrome by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 26

He decided that if he was to study any area of academics, he would have to do so with a clear mind. Considering this, staying on the new medication was mandatory. Caspian began by searching for a college that offered free courses. Although money was not a concern, he believed it was better to pay nothing than to pay anything. With this in mind, he quickly found that Stanford University offered many free courses in a variety of subjects. Once he had completed everything on Eastern European history, he would seek out courses at other colleges. After signing up for the course in general Eastern European history, he began tapping into other online sources. Caspian wanted to learn everything he could in spite of how violent history tends to be. But history is molded by the human species, and people have always had a reputation for committing violence. There was simply no ignoring it.

Caspian quickly discovered that Eastern European history centered around the war with the Persian Empire, and the one figure that stood out was a king noted for his involvement in The Order of The Dragon. In fact, this king was a Crusader fighting to push back the Persians, keeping them from crossing the border into the province of Wallachia. The king’s name was Vlad Dracul, and Caspian quickly learned that this name translated to Vlad the Dragon after the religious order he belonged to. Eventually, Vlad had a son and named him Vlad Dracula, or Vlad, son of the dragon. But as he continued to learn, life for the young prince was not pleasant. As a means of keeping his kingdom safe from the Persians, the king allowed his son to be taken under the threat that should he attack the Persian army, the prince would be executed. His young son was sent to prison for four years, where he witnessed some of the most horrific things one person could bring upon another. By the time those four years had expired, young Vlad had become someone his father no longer knew. He had been shaped by trauma into someone who would carry out the same acts against others he had witnessed while in prison. Vlad Dracula had become a monster.

Reading further, Caspian couldn’t help being horrified by the violence carried out by this once innocent child given up by a man who would rather hand him over to his enemy than continue fighting. As an adult, the violence only escalated, with Vlad’s favorite form of execution being impalement. This was a truly gruesome way to die, and no one was safe from Vlad’s psychopathic urge to put to death as many as possible, lining the road to his castle with hundreds of dead in various states of decomposition. All had been impaled.

But this was not all there was to Eastern European history, and having focused on Romania, Caspian shifted his attention to music. The native instrument of Romania was the duduk, and music experts placed it at roughly five hundred years old. Romanian musicologists, however, estimated its origins to go back fifteen hundred years. It is also believed to be one of the most difficult instruments to play. But searching for videos online, Caspian quickly grew to enjoy its sound. It spoke to him in dark, ancient tones that echoed in his mind, stirring his soul with haunting melodies of ancient times gone by. In his mind, he saw mountainous landscapes and castles, battles being fought by sword-wielding warriors with the ghosts of war fighting alongside. He heard the clatter of steel as men charged at each other—each having heard the call of battle. The music from this intriguing wind instrument brought his imagination to life, but he always seemed to be pulled back to the era of Vlad the Impaler, as the prince was later known. According to one account, Vlad had been seen dabbing bread into the blood of one of his victims and eating it. Historically, there was no evidence to support this event, but as Caspian’s mind ran wild with the events of Vlad’s life, so did it with the act of consuming blood— whether it had actually happened or not.

For the most part, the medication kept Caspian’s mind intact, but having focused on the history of Vlad Dracula caused him to remember the recent event of slaughtering Dorothy’s flock. Seemingly from out of nowhere, the taste of blood assaulted his consciousness as he began to salivate. To his surprise, the memory proved to be more powerful than he had anticipated. If a memory could become an experience all its own, then this was one that served to overwhelm him. As Caspian sat in front of his laptop, he began to feel a change sweep over him. Standing up, he stared at a rendering of what was certainly an innocent man with a broad, sharpened pole being pulled up between his legs. The pole would shortly be pulled up, and the bottom end would be allowed to drop into a hole. Gravity would eventually pull the man down further until the pole exited his back. “Wow,” Caspian said. “This guy was a real asshole.”

But as disgusted as he was, there was something about Vlad’s actions that stirred within him what could only be called primal. He feared that, given his condition, his mind might be overwhelmed by the images that now stormed within him.