Maleva

By Ralph Bland

Maleva is a fictional sequel to the Universal film, "House of Dracula."(1945) It features many of the same characters from both that film and the earlier film, "The Wolf Man (1944).The book's premise is that Gwen Conliffe, the former lover of Larry Talbot, returns to Llanwelly in Wales two years after Talbot's death and later supposed "cure" and

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Book Bureau
• Release date: Feb 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9781960548351

Ralph Bland

Ralph Bland is the author of twelve novels and two collections of stories. His work includes Lockhart and Lamb White Days.

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Copyright © 2024 Ralph Bland

All rights reserved. This book is protected by copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including as photocopies or scanned-in or other electronic copies, or utilized by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the copyright owner.

Interior Design by The Book Bureau

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN:   978-1-960548-34-4 (paperback)

             978-1-960548-35-1 (ebook)

Contents

Prologue (Llanwelly, Wales Talbot Estate)

Chapter 1. (Gwen Conliffe Finds Maleva)

Chapter 2. (The Death And Funeral Of Gwen’s Father)

Chapter 3. (In Search Of Larry Talbot)

Chapter 4. (Dublin)

Chapter 5. (Belfast)

Chapter 6. (To Sligo)

Chapter 7. (Galway Bay)

Chapter 8. (Galway)

Chapter 9. (With The Travellers)

Chapter 10. (Full Moon)

Chapter 11. (Werewolf Moon)

Chapter 12. (Bloodlust)

Epilogue (Maleva)

PROLOGUE

Llanwelly, Wales

Talbot Estate

It had been only a year since the last time she’d seen Maleva, but it still came as a shock to Gwen Conliffe when she saw the old gypsy woman in the flesh again. It seemed Maleva had aged even more than that night on the Moors when Gwen had left her father back in the antique shop and ran after Larry Talbot to save him from himself or whatever beast that was stalking him. Maleva had been there in the forest in her wagon in the darkness and the fog, waiting for the inevitable to happen. She had not seemed surprised when Gwen appeared before her breathless and frightened.

Go back, my child, she had said. The woods are dangerous tonight.

I’m looking for Larry Talbot, Gwen said. Have you seen him? I have to find him.

Go back to the village or he will find you. Even in the black pitch of the night, Gwen could feel Maleva’s dark eyes boring into her. The chase is on, she said. They are hunting for the wolf. The wolf has seen the pentagram already this night. The pentagram is on you. It is you the wolf will be hunting.

I don’t believe you, Gwen had said. I must find Larry.

And Larry Talbot had found her, just as Maleva said he would, even though Gwen had not wanted to believe it was Larry who set upon her that night in an all-out attack. She wanted to think it was some beast from the deepest corridors of Hell, but she was not a fool and couldn’t deny the truth. Maleva had told her, the same way Larry had told her himself, that he was the monster she would be looking in the face. It was like the monster that had killed Jenny Williams, and now she was going to be the next one to die.

She heard the guttural growl and saw the eyes of the beast flashing before her in the dark, seeking her out as his prey, and she felt its powerful claws sweep her up unto him, knowing in the next moment those claws would be closing upon her throat drawing the blood out of her, the jagged teeth feasting on the gushing wound, and that moment then would be her last.

That was when Sir John had appeared from somewhere in the fog and began striking the animal with a cane—Larry’s cane, the one she’d sold him from the shop that morning when they’d met, the one with the silver wolf’s head. She had recited the old folklore poem to him then.

Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a werewolf when the wolfbane blooms and the moon is full and bright.

It had seemed so flippant then.

It was over so fast. Larry Talbot lay dead on the ground before her and Frank Andrews was suddenly there with his arms around her. Sir John stood with the cane in his hand, a look of disbelief pasted on his face. She could hear someone say that Larry must had died trying to save her from a wolf.

After that, it was a blur. Gwen hadn’t been able to think straight with all the death and sorrow and inquisitive eyes from everyone in the village of Llanwelly. The gypsy woman Maleva was gone like a vanished star and very soon Frank Andrews was too, rejected by her deep grief over Larry Talbot’s death and off to serve in the War. The next thing Gwen knew she was Mrs. Paul Montford, wedded to Sir John Talbot’s best friend, almost as if by a magic spell or in a deep dream while her mind tried to come to grips with all that had happened. Then she found Paul gone off almost immediately to fight in World War II like most of the men in the village, and she was left alone to gather her thoughts and make plans for the rest of her life. Then the news came that Paul’s plane had been shot down, and as suddenly as she had become a wife she became a widow just as fast.

Paul had taken Gwen to America to live after he enlisted, and had planned for them to live there after the war ended. Almost as soon as he’d settled her there and gone overseas he’d been swiftly killed. Then the word had come that her father was in poor shape and she needed to come home, but it had not been easy making the long trip back to Llanwelly alone, and it would also not be an easy thing to resume her former life in the village. For one thing, she had difficulty sorting through her feelings for the two men now dead in her wake, Larry Talbot and Paul Montford, one her husband and the other an unrequited lover, both gone now with a dual need and a duty to be mourned by her in some way, as a wife and as a lover. And there was Jenny Williams’ strange death she felt a responsibility for too, for Jenny had come to the fortuneteller that night at Gwen’s bidding. All the events and circumstances involving death to those around her needed to somehow be accounted for, but it seemed there was too little time or a place for that to occur in such confused days, and were it not for the failing health of her father Gwen thought she would be better off staying away from Llanwelly for good and trying to begin a new life in another place far away from all her bad memories.

Life stumbled along. After almost two years of managing the antique shop and caring for her father she came to feel the past was finally behind her and there was no such thing as the future. Then her father died in his sleep and she was alone in a place where she felt there was no real reason for her to be present. Everything was as if it was only some watercolor painting resembling a portion of real life. There was no movement or change, and the days and nights existed within a glass that only magnified and made clear the fact that her life was nothing but a void.

Gwen was twenty-six years old, but the way the world appeared to her she was ready for it all to come to an end.

Then Frank Andrews appeared once more.

Frank had loved Gwen from childhood and his teenage years, and even through three years of war and the bitter memory of being jilted by Gwen, first for the strange Lawrence Talbot, then for Paul Montford, still he retained his feelings for Gwen and never forgot her. When he came home he wasted no time attempting to rekindle the relationship. And Gwen, with no prospects in her life and mired in the baggage of her past, soon came to return Frank’s favor and accepted his proposal of marriage. They married and decided to sell the antique business and move to America when the War ended so Frank could enter the burgeoning post-war manufacturing business.

But Gwen had a secret all along that neither Frank or anyone else in the village of Llanwelly knew about. Once she had decided she would tell Sir John, because the secret affected him as much as her, but after his son’s death Sir John was hardly ever present at the Talbot Manor much, choosing instead to travel and engage in intellectual pursuits as a means of coping with the death of Larry.

The secret was that a month before Gwen returned to Llanwelly she had given birth to a son in a hospital several counties away.

The child had not been Paul Montford’s.

Gwen was certain the father was Lawrence Talbot.

So it was, in the fall of 1942, Gwen Conliffe returned to her home in Llanwelly to care for her father and come to terms with the death of a husband and a lover. Her father, despite his failing health, was still cognizant enough to know that his daughter would never be able to recover from all that had happened and be able to come to Llanwelly to face the eyes and tongues of the town with an illegitimate son in her charge. He knew Gwen was too emotionally damaged to be able to care for a new child, so he had used his connections as a long-standing merchant and businessman to make arrangements for the child to be adopted with no record or ties to Gwen. The bottom line was no one would know of the child’s existence and Gwen would never know the child’s fate or whereabouts. Mr. Conliffe thought perhaps this would be the answer to the problem, to sweep it away under a rug where it would never be seen, where it would be as if it had never happened.

Though most of the village referred to her as The Old Gypsy Woman, Maleva was still well-known within the countryside. All the gypsies looked up to her and valued her knowledge and experience, and a goodly portion of Llanwelly’s populace secretly feared her and was cautious not to draw her ire. When she returned from whatever journey she had been on off in the faraway village of Vasaria, she had been provided residence at the Talbot Estate by a secret letter from Larry Talbot, a permanent residence for the remainder of her life, or as long as she wished. Maleva believed the Talbot Estate would be her final stop in her life, for in her heart she knew she was too old to travel anymore. On this last trip away from Llanwelly, she had gone with the resurrected Larry Talbot to find the famous Dr. Frankenstein and see if he could somehow cure Larry of the Werewolf curse, but Frankenstein was deceased by then, and they were forced to cast their fortune with a younger disciple. The lure of the Monster had been too much for the successor to concentrate on Larry Talbot and his curse, and coupled with the town of Vasaria’s hatred for the evil the Frankenstein castle had brought to them in the past, the dam above the castle had been dynamited and the waters had drowned the Monster and Talbot. Maleva had learned that Talbot had been brought back into existence from the dead again some time later, and it was rumored among the gypsy camps that he had been cured. Maleva had not believed the rumors, for she knew how powerful the curse was. She also knew the only way it could be broken, and from what she had heard, none of that cure had been