And His Shroud Became a Road...

There is an ancient Transylvanian legend [1] of an old, abandoned house, overlooking a cemetery. Each evening, a woman dressed in the black habit of a nun goes to a little white cross, and bending, raises her fists to heaven, sobbing uncontrollably. Her sobs, though, are not sobs borne of sadness; they are curses.

"Oh Joseph, why? Why did you die and leave me, a poor old woman, alone? You, who lie there in your grave, as useless as the father and brothers who preceded you there! Damn your soul, you have let your sister go off and marry, and yet you promised to one day rise from your grave if needs be, and bring her home. I lay curses, like garlands of flowers, across your rotted brow!"

The woman, it is said, was happy once. Then her husband caught a strange illness, perhaps consumption, and soon sickened and passed away. The old woman was beside herself with grief, but she reasoned she still had her four children, her two strapping sons, her precious little Joseph, "the apple of her eye," and her daughter, Amanda, who must one day marry. All day long the old woman toiled and spun, and soon she got over her grief and thought things must surely return to normal.

Then, the unthinkable happy, first the eldest son, then his next eldest brother, also caught the strange, wasting disease, and one after the other, went to join their father in the cemetery dirt. The woman wailed, and gnashed her teeth, and rent her garment, and tore her hair and said, "Oh curses! Woe unto me, for his thing that I have greatly feared, has come to pass! Oh, whatever shall I do, for I have lost the three greatest men I have ever known in my life!"

Yet, still, she had little Joseph, and Amanda, and so after the great storm clouds of her grief finally cleared, she set about, an older and more bent and more somber crone, but one that was able to continue living.

It was not long before Amanda decided that she must finally marry, as all girls did in those days, and move away, and have her children, and begin her own family. She searched high and low for a suitable beau, but no one was ever good enough for her old, bitter, and lonely mama, who turned up a wrinkled nose and cast a withering glance at every young man Amanda took a fancy to. Finally, after a long search, Amanda did find a man, a greater, more strapping, and powerful man, with a more golden complexion and a more heroic chin, than any she had previously found.

"Yes," her mother finally relented, taking one look at this heroic and awesome figure. "You may marry this fine young man."

And so she did. It was not long after, though, that tragedy, which seemingly stalked the old woman like a hungry wildcat, struck once again. Joseph, the youngest, most beloved of her living children, took ill like his father and brothers and also died. The woman was beside herself with grief, and not a little rage.

She cursed her son in his grave. For, you see, he had promised to go and fetch his sister to be with his mother as he lay dying. "That promised you never made good on!" she wailed, and so I beat my fists against my breast, and curse heaven, and curse the earth that keeps you! For, you have promised to rise from our own grave on a lonely mother's behalf. Yet, this you obviously cannot do.

Upon hearing her sorry imprecations, Joseph, confined to his eternal coffin, rolled over, turned an ear toward the world above ground, and, noting the plight of his mother, struck a bargain with the forces of darkness.

One moonlit night, he rose from his grave.

His grave became a brilliant black steed.

His shroud became a road.

And off he flew!

...

It was not long before he came to the humble village wherein his sister, who had been abandoned to live in poverty and penury by her faithless husband, was starving to death in a hovel.

She cast the eyes of her tear-streaked face upward, to where Joseph sat upon his black stallion of the tomb.

"Come, sister," he said to her. "Our mother is about to pull her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave!"

And so, lifting her to the back of his horse, he flew with her into the night, back to his village, where his mother was mourning madly. She almost looked as if she could be a nun in her black habit.

"Oh sister," asked Amanda. "Why are you weeping so?"

Amanda, not recognizing her mother while her head was covered in her black veil, indeed took her to be one who had taken holy orders. Her mother, though, recognized her daughter instantly. Flying into a rage, she exclaimed, "Oh, curses! For that thing that I have feared the most has come upon me, to quote old job! Your brother, my youngest and dearest Joseph has perished just as his brothers and father did! Now, curse it, I am a lonely old woman, and condemned to die in solitude and grief!"

And she fell upon her knees before the white cross, beneath which the body of Joseph la buried. Amanda, suddenly realizing what had happened, looked around for her nighttime horseman...and found he had disappeared. She then realized, with mounting horror, "I have been with Joseph this very evening, Mother! I sat behind him as he drove his black steed of death, which I know now was his very grave, through the dark forests to this very place! I have ridden tonight with a zmeu, with the UNDEAD!"

And, so saying, she dropped dead from fright. Her mother, now wailing in a torrent of agonized tears, soon went and hanged herself. Death rode on, down the bone-white high road of the BURIAL SHROUD. [2]

Notes:

1. The source of this folktale is the excellent book Ghosts, Vampires and Werewolves: Eerie Tales from Transylvania by Mihai I. Spariosu and Dezsö Benedek (New York: Orchard, 1994).

2. The preceding tale will serve as the preface to a forthcoming short book of gruesome murder stories. These stories are all framed in a historical context. For, as Robert De Niro said in the famous movie Angel Heart (1986): "There's death everywhere these days."