The Intuition: Part 13, Dark of Moon

A Horror Story

Sep 20, 2025

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Bucharest’s Gara de Nord station bustled with passengers even as the clock inched toward midnight. The air was thick with coal dust, and the dimly lit platform inspired those who had the time to seek refreshment and warmth in the salons and cafes. Marcu, somber and shuffling, ushered Will and his companions from the Express d’Orient to a smaller waiting train that snorted steam in the shadows.

“Please, Lord Dovedale, board your party here,” he said, his voice hoarse and weak. “This is Prince Grigore’s personal train. It will take us to a village in the mountains. From there, it is only a few hours journey by coach to Stanca Corbului.” He turned away to oversee the transfer of baggage but turned back and put a heavy hand on Will’s arm. “She is here, somewhere close by. Go carefully, sir.”

Will watched Marcu limp away. The man was sadly diminished, and Will caught Tom’s wary eye as he swung aboard the small royal train. Earlier, Tom had stopped him in the Express’s corridor as he returned to his suite, waving him into Borja’s compartment where Marcu had lain like a stone in the bed. Marcu’s face and hands had been scrubbed clean of blood. His gore-spattered clothing had been replaced by a linen night shirt.

“I cleaned him up as best I could,” Tom said in a low voice. “Didn’t seem right, him laying there with his brother’s blood all over. I found something what gave me the cold creeps. Look here and tell me, ain’t that a rum do!”

Tom pulled aside the low-buttoned night shirt to expose Marcu’s hairy breast, and Will bent to scrutinize the wound there. It looked much like an animal bite, and it rested over Marcu’s heart. The skin around the wound was bare and white as the linen shirt he wore, the several puncture marks blue as frost. Fine, dark veinings stretched away from the wound to become lost in the hair that grew over the rest of the man’s chest.

“That’s not all.” Tom turned Marcu’s inner wrists toward the ceiling and showed Will similar marks on each. “What do’ye make of that, Billy? Like something out of a penny dreadful, that is.”

“Indeed. I think, Tom, we need not worry over it just now, but neither shall we forget it. We will arrive in Bucharest in a few hours. I suggest we get some rest.”

“I’m all for that, but I ain’t staying in here with him.” Tom followed Will out of the compartment and closed the door behind him. “I could use a swizzle, what do you say, boy-o?”

The men had retired to the gentlemen’s parlor and availed themselves of the replenished scotch. The night that flowed like a river over the train filled with snow as they crossed into the province of Wallachia.

Now, as Will ascended the stairs of the train that would carry him deeper into the Carpathians, he saw Marcu and the Romanian porters who had joined the Express in Vienna carrying long crates from the royal cars to the rear of the prince’s train. The bodies, he surmised, noting the great braids of garlic draped across the boxes. Marcu followed the grim procession with a smoking censor that he swung in slow arcs. The subdued knots of passengers on the platform parted for them, careful to avoid any contact.

“What are they up to?” Tom met him as he boarded and pushed his way through the narrow door into a warm traveling compartment.

Corbinescu’s train lacked the opulence of the Express and instead presented a rustic masculine comfort. Deerskin rugs dressed the bare planks of the floor. Sturdy walnut chairs and low benches sat around a woodstove. Their leather upholstery, soft and worn, had been draped in thick wool throws and wolf pelts. The air smelled of woodsmoke, tobacco, and wet dog. Indeed, a long-limbed hound curled by the stove, drying the snow from its pale fur.

Will tossed his coat onto a bench and sank into one of the chairs. The hound lifted its lip in a silent snarl but dropped its head and slunk from the compartment at a hard stare from the man.

“They are removing the remains from the Express and loading them in the goods van at the back of the train. There seems to be quite a ritual attached to the removal. Local superstition, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” snorted Tom. “These prince’s men aren’t the full shilling if you ask me. That Marcu cove told me we can expect ‘em to take turns strolling around some platform atop the train and he prays—prays, mind you—they’ll all make it through the night. So, I asks him, what are they watching for? And he looks poked up and says, ‘wolves’. What kind of wolf flies through the air snatching full-grown men off the roof of a moving train? He must think I’m as barmy as he is.”

Will, sprawled in the capacious chair, fingered the wolf pelt that draped it and brooded. The last spark of the Europe he knew had been snuffed as his boot pressed the platform of the Bucharest station. Despite the muted bustle of the city about them, despite the gaslit cafes and the purposeful stir of passengers disembarking and embarking, the shouts of the station masters and the furious labor of porters and train tenders, he had felt the embrace of an ancient darkness. Somehow, they had crossed into a new and unknown territory, an advancement that had nothing to do with geography. He thought of the nightmare he had seen in Madame Elisabeta’s compartment, the winged creature turning its abyssal eyes upon him. See me, wolf.

“It is not wolves they fear, Tom. There is danger here, all the same. Where are Falke and Elke?”

Tom jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You can go through to another car. There’s other compartments there fitted up for sleeping. The doctor gimme a black look and took his lady friend into one of them. Why don’t we leg it before this puffer gets away from the city? I don’t mind telling you, Billy, I’ve got the morbs. I’m not on for a dash into the mountains.”

Will turned a cold gaze on Tom standing near the partially open door. “You are free to go if you can’t stomach it. Either way, do close the door. You are letting out the warmth.”

“You’re hard as nails, you are. We been through it before, my lad. Tom ain’t leaving you.”

Tom closed the door and drew a chair closer to the stove as the train gave a great shudder and hissed to life. Will closed his eyes and let its chuffing rhythm lull him into a dream-raddled doze.

London, East End, 1874

Dr. Algood’s surgery was a night place frequented by night people. While victims of illness or accident made occasional appearances, the clientele consisted mainly of men injured in bar fights or backstreet brawls and women assaulted on the streets or seeking abortions. Will greeted these unfortunates and prepared them for Algood’s ministrations, being sure to secure payment first.

“Never let the importance of fair exchange diminish in your mind, William. These ragged souls would feel poorly done by were I to offer my expertise free of charge, and I should go with empty pockets and an emptier stomach.”

Algood grinned over his shoulder as he gave his instruments a slosh in a solution of carbolic acid. The scrape and ringing of the steel against the porcelain basin was, to Will, like the scrape of a spade in cold earth, the distant ringing of funeral bells. In his time as Algood’s apprentice, he had seen death snatch patients from the anatomist’s talons with fevered ease. If they did not bleed their lives away in a final flood, infection might come for them the next day.

When Algood was sober, he had a deft touch with his instruments, a neat and steady suturing hand. He endeavored to pass this on to Will, who stood in his place when the ‘doctor’ was indisposed. It had been a terrifying weight of responsibility at first, but now Will had grown inured to it, Algood’s own sangfroid inspiring his own. It was not as if their patients had many options. Tonight, the surgeon seemed in possession of his faculties,

“We have a special patient tonight, William. A lady of good family finds herself in an inconvenient situation in need of discreet medical assistance. Her brother is a friend from my life before this squalor in which I find myself. Please prepare our theatre with extra care.”

Will scrubbed the narrow plank table that had come battered and crooked from a morgue. He and Tom had repaired it and scoured away years of blood and effluvia, a resin of the dead. They had affixed the straps and restraints sometimes necessary to immobilize a thrashing patient. He laid a blanket over the table and covered it with oilcloth.

“Will we be using the chloroform,” he asked.

Algood sighed, an uncharacteristic show of weary sorrow. “Not tonight, William. The lady has waited too long, fearing to make her trouble known, but now the infant does not move and she is ill. We will be attending the delivery of lifeless child.” His aspect brightened as his gaze roved the shelves above him. He pulled down a heavy glass jar. “Still, I may find myself repaid with a tantalizing wet specimen.”

Algood hurried away to mix his solution of alcohol, arsenic, and alumina salts. Will fluffed the box of sawdust beneath the table. There would be blood.

A shriek from the platform atop the train dragged Will from his troubled dreams. Tom erupted from his nest of blankets with a curse, and the hound, who had crept back to its place by the stove, lunged to its feet, its fur bristling. Shouts and gunfire layered themselves over the shrill keening of a man being eviscerated—then silence.

Will rose and went to the door of the compartment but found it locked from without. He peered from the windows. Night in the dark of moon, its blank face illuminated by occasional lashings of snow, was all that met his gaze. He turned and studied the quivering hound. Whatever had happened above them seemed to have found its end, and yet the dog strained at fearful attention. Behind him, a thump came from the platform outside the locked door. The knob turned with slow menace, first one way and then the other. The noxious presence there seemed to filter through the keyhole, heavy with lethal intent, asphyxiating the cheery warmth of the room. In an instant, it vanished into the storm. Will looked down to see the hound pressed against his leg, its earlier antipathy forgotten. He stroked its velvety head, glancing at the ornate pendulum clock on the wall.

“We have perhaps six more hours until we reach the village Marcu spoke of. It seems we are meant to pass the time in this compartment.” Will’s voice was silky with suppressed violence. He shrugged. “Whoever met his end above might envy our imprisonment.”

Tom gave an audible gulp. “I’m fair chirky to be boxed in here. It beats the cards that poor sod got dealt.”