When my mother gave birth to me and saw that I was a boy, she wept. My father buried his head in his hands and cried “Would that I could kill him and save our family from suffering! We are cursed, we are cursed!” My oldest brother told the other five of the creature that I would become. That I was fated to be strigoi mort.

In Romania, there is a superstition that the seventh child of the same sex born to a woman is cursed. He will live a normal life, but he will die at a young age. After he dies, he will rise from the grave and return to his family, living his life as though nothing has happened. As he goes about his life, however, he will unwittingly drain the life force from his family, weakening them until one by one, they drop dead. These creatures are called strigoi mort.

My parents named me Iosif, but when they weren’t around, my brothers would call me ‘Dracul Blestemat’ – “cursed devil.” They never physically attacked me, or even went out of their way to mock me, but they kept their distance from me and rarely spoke to me directly. My parents were kind to me, but they were always tense; not quite afraid, but never at ease. They would ask me about school, make sure my hair was trimmed and tidy, and they would take care of me whenever I was sick. I remember one night when my brothers and I were ill and vomiting, my mother ran her hands softly through my hair. “He’s burning up,” she said to my father, “Be ready, just in case.”

The rest of the night, my father sat next to me, reading me stories and occasionally taking my temperature or checking my pulse. I remember his gaunt, mustachioed face and the way the candlelight never illuminated the bags under his eyes. I remember his rough, calloused hands and the stench of tobacco when he would lean over and touch my forehead. I remember the hammer, the nails and the tiny box that sat next to his chair the whole night. My brother Sorin died in his fever dreams as my father watched me.

As I grew, I became more involved in school. I wanted to be a doctor, because there were never enough available in the small town I lived in. I decided that if I was cursed to harm people in death, then I must help them as much as I could in life. When I announced this to my parents, they were very proud of me. They spoke with my eldest two brothers, who had been hired at the local factory, and my eldest brothers agreed that they would begin putting aside money for my education. They rustled my hair and shook my hand, telling me that I was making the best of my curse. They never once looked me in the eyes as they said this. That same week, my brother Nandru was killed trying to prevent a bar fight.

My teachers took notice of my hard work and spoke with my parents. “Iosif is brilliant,” they said, “He is so dedicated to his work. He comes to school and asks questions we do not know the answer to. When he graduates, we would like to recommend he study in England. The principal has some family that would gladly take him in.”

I was overjoyed, but my parents politely declined. Thoughtfully puffing at his pipe, my father asked me to go to the kitchen and peel potatoes for dinner while they spoke privately with my teachers. The sink filled with potato skins as the excited tones of my teachers’ voices became solemn murmurs. As they left, my homeroom teacher stopped and spoke to me. “Iosif, it is a fantastic thing that you wish to do. We will make sure that you are trained by the local doctor. You are a very bright child, and you will make this village a very happy place.”

I was crestfallen. My parents held me close and apologized profusely. They began many sentences they couldn’t finish. My father patted me on the head before taking me by the shoulders. “We will use the money your brothers have saved up to buy you something nice. My father was the most amazing clarinet player, we will buy you a clarinet for you to learn to play.”

My brother Dumitru was a successful businessman. He had been in Budapest, meeting his fiancee’s family. On his way home through the Carpathian mountains, they were caught in a landslide. He was missing for several days. They found his body trapped under a rock; he had starved to death. I played clarinet at his funeral as my father cradled my mother.

At eighteen, I had grown into a handsome and charismatic young man. The local doctor, Skender Anghelescu, had taken me under his wing and was teaching me about medicine. My remaining brothers had warmed up to me, joking that by the time I died and became strigoi mort, there would be no one left in the family for me to curse. My father smiled softly at these jokes. His hair had grown thin in the last few years, and his face had grown thinner. He coughed louder and more coarsely each week. I asked him if I might bring him to the doctor’s office to perform an X-ray. Dr. Anghelescu put his hand on my shoulder as we looked over the results. I knew what he was about to say. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do.”

My father died of lung cancer within a month. I played clarinet at his funeral as my mother placed flowers on his grave.

My father’s death hung a black cloud over my family. My brothers grew distant from me again, and my mother spent much of her time sitting in a chair by the window, looking out over the mountains. I became a resident at Dr. Anghelescu’s practice and began doing outcalls whenever there were minor emergencies. One day, the telephone rang and Dr. Anghelescu’s face turned pale as he listened to the voice at the other end. “Iosif,” he said, “There has been a disaster and we are needed. Many are injured. We must hurry.”

We got into his car and drove across town. I already knew where the disaster was, but that didn’t prevent a knot from forming in my stomach as we pulled up to the factory where my brothers worked. I ran to the foreman, who was pressing a bloodied towel against his head. “Where are my brothers?” I cried.

“They were working on the line,” the foreman said, “Somewhere over there.”

I ran in the direction he pointed and began sifting through the rubble. I skinned my hands tearing through the clutter until I felt soft, wet skin under my fingers. I began to dig in a frenzy, throwing bricks and scraps of metal in every direction. My brother Cezar arm protruded from the mess. I grabbed his arm and began pulling him, kicking dirt out of the way. I heard him groaning, and for a moment, I had hope. I had faith that he would be alive. I pulled him forward and I saw his face. He was deathly pale, but he was blinking and moaning. He was alive. I cried with joy and pulled harder. He cried out in pain, screaming curses and prayers to the heavens. His torso finally came free of the wreckage, but it left nothing behind it save a trail of blood. He had been torn in half just above the navel. I held him in my arms as he gurgled and sputtered blood. He said nothing as he died, staring into the heavens. My eldest brother, Decebal, was never found. I played clarinet at their funeral. Cezar was buried next to my father, and a plaque was made for Decebal.

My last brother, Liviu, came and spoke to me after the funeral. “Iosif,” he said firmly, “I have had enough of this place. I have seen too much of my family die here, and I must leave all of this suffering behind me. I have booked a trip to America on a boat, and I will not be coming back. While you are still alive, you must take care of our mother until she dies. You have been confined to this village because you are fated to become strigoi mort, and if you were to die without our knowing, you would return here and we would have suffered. But when our mother is dead and I have vanished, you may travel the world without fear, for there will be no one in our family left for you to harm. I know we have joked about this before, but please, brother, remain here for mother until she passes.”

I sadly agreed and shook my brother’s hand. That evening, Liviu boarded a train bound for Bulgaria, where he would board a ship set for America. A month later, we received word that the ship had sunk in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. There were no survivors.

I continued learning medicine under Dr. Anghelescu and eventually, he took me on as a full-fledged doctor at his practice. My mother had become a recluse, and I brought her groceries and books as her health gradually faded away. One night, she weakly beckoned me to her bed and put her hand on my shoulder. “My son. Iosif,” she whispered weakly, “I have been such a fool all these years. We had been so caught in superstition, so afraid of what you would do to us after death, that we couldn’t appreciate you in life. And look at what has happened. We have all died before you. My son, you were not cursed, we were. We were cursed by foolishness, and belief in a false prophecy. Oh, Iosif, I’m so sorry. Please forgive us. Please forgive us all.”

My mother repeated these words as she drifted into her final slumber, and I held her hand and wept as it grew cold. I played clarinet for her at her funeral. She looked so small in the casket, so at peace. As I shut the lid, I spoke to her one last time. “Of course I forgive you, mama. Of course I do.”

The following summer, I was preparing to finally travel the world when Dr. Anghelescu called me at my home. A woman in labour had just come into the practice and he needed my help delivering the child as it looked to be a breech birth. I rushed to the clinic and donned my surgical scrubs. Dr. Anghelescu greeted me and we began performing a cesarean section on the woman.

As we pulled the child from the womb, I felt a twisting in my stomach. The baby was still and motionless. As I checked for a heartbeat, I called to Dr. Anghelescu. He pushed me to the side and pressed his fingers against the child’s chest. As he pressed rhythmically against the limp body, he muttered a prayer under his breath. The moment he had finished the prayer, as if by some miracle, the child began kicking and screaming. Dr. Anghelescu smiled and held the child up. He brought the baby over to the incubator and hooked her up to the breathing apparatus. “The child will be fine,” he told me, “You know, I prayed when I delivered you.”

“You delivered me?” I asked him incredulously.

“Oh, yes,” he said, remembering the moment fondly, “You were born with the umbilical cord wrapped around your neck. You weren’t breathing, you had no pulse – we thought you were dead. I immediately began trying to resuscitate you, and when it looked like nothing was working, I began praying. It was a miracle; you began wriggling and screaming, though I’d brought you back from the dead. I must go see to the mother, would you go out to the waiting room and tell the family that they have a new beautiful baby daughter?”

I stood motionless for a moment and felt all of the blood drain out of my face. As though in a haze, I slowly opened the door to the waiting room. The father sat nervously wringing his hat in his hands and running his fingers through his sandy blonde hair. He looked up at me with dread in his deep-set, hazel eyes.

Sitting next to him were six little girls with sandy blonde hair and deep-set, hazel eyes.