"A bloodsucking ghost or reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave and wander about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep." That is how one dictionary defines the vampire, probably the most feared yet fascinating nightwalker in the dark universe of demons and devils.
Steeped in centuries-old legend and superstition, this malevolent creature is thought to be active even today. The origins of belief in vampirism go back to primitive man, who was curious about the mysterious relation between body and soul and speculated on life after death. The earliest vampires known are those depicted in engravings upon prehistoric bowls and among Babylonian cylinder seals.
From the writings of ancient philosophers in Greece and Rome we learn of vampiric apparitions. No nation was free of the scourge. However, the reputation remains with Hungary and Slovakia, where the fanged menace was considered most fearsome.
One of the best-attested, detailed histories of vampirism occurred in 1732 in the village of Meduegna near Belgrade. A soldier just returned from military service was known to behave oddly. When questioned by his fiancée, he admitted that while stationed at Kostartsa in Greece he had been "visited" by the walking dead known to torment the people of that community. In terror, he had resigned from the army and returned to his village, fearful of the dire consequence, which might befall him. Soon after his confession, he died mysteriously and was buried in the village churchyard. Some time later reports were circulated that after nightfall he had been seen wandering about and that several persons had succumbed after each tour.
Panic gripped the entire community until it was decided to open his coffin, and they discovered the lips of the corpse were moist with fresh blood. Even the hardened military officials in attendance shuddered at the spectacle of horror. Immediately a stake was driven through the heart and garlic scattered over the remains. It is said that the body gave a piercing shriek as the stake was driven in, blood spurting up in a crimson jet.
With this dreadful ritual performed, it was thought the scourge of vampirism would be over. But even today, the cloaked figure that was the soldier from the village of Meduegna lurks abroad.
It is late evening and you are alone as you read this in your room. The windows are open a bit, and there is a slight movement behind the drapes. Is it the wind, or... ?
Marion Brandon, a contributor to Strange Tales Magazine in the early thirties, remains one of a popular group of writers of those times.
"The Dark Castle" predates the current Gothic fiction craze that began in the 1960s and seems to be a permanent fixture among readers of the Victoria Holt and Mary Stewart stories.
All the classic elements are here: lost and out of gas, a foreboding Gothic castle, a mysterious occupant, something feeding upon the blood of living victims, and graveyard terrors — all laced with a Rumanian flavor. Familiar, yes, but in Marion Brandon's fine hand, we are still held fascinated.
Lost on a mountain road — and out of gas!
That worst possible combination of misfortunes for the tourist had overtaken us; worse than ever, with night now fallen on the unknown countryside around us, wrapping it in darkness, veiling the simplest objects in mystery, and endowing the most commonplace of sounds with sinister meaning. But there was no getting around the fact that the tank was as dry as the proverbial bone and that no matter how Arescu and I cursed our luck our car would never stir again until something could be procured to fill the empty gasoline tank.
Nor was there any telling when that might be, for in the mountain districts of Central Europe sources of supply were few and far between in 1930. Wrong directions had been given us somewhere on the way from the little city which we had left at noon, and instead of reaching the town that was our destination before sundown, here we were, hours later, nowhere — and unable to move.
I was touring these remote regions with but one companion, a most likable young fellow, a Rumanian, who had graduated that June from the college where I was an instructor. We had formed one of the peculiar friendships that sometimes occur between an older man and a younger, and when the time came for him to return to his native country, he had suggested that I accompany him and make up a party of two for a summer of leisurely travel in such unfamiliar countries as Serbia, Bulgaria, and his own Rumania — where we were at the moment when our engine died on that tortuous road.
It was very cold in the high, clear atmosphere, for it was late in August and autumn was approaching. Not a sound to break the silence but the eerie screech of an owl and the faint rustle of the night wind in the undergrowth by the roadside, like the stealthy prowling of some hostile animal. Though the entire day had been heavily overcast and dull, the night was clear and starry, but black as the pit, for the moon had not yet risen, and beyond the small range of our headlights we could see not a thing.
"Well," I said resignedly as I sat down on the running board and filed my pipe, "this may be very romantic, but it's cold, too, and I'd give a good deal at this minute to be on a prosaic, concrete state highway, with a red gas pump sure to turn up within half a mile!" Arescu seated himself beside me. "It's only about an hour till moonrise," he said. "We can perhaps get some idea of where we are then. There must be a village somewhere.... Hear that dog that's just begun to howl? Wonder whose death he's heralding?"
I have never blamed the originator of the superstition that the repeated howling of a dog means impending death, for it is the most depressing and ominous of sounds — doubly so at night — and it was beginning to get on my nerves when Arescu said in surprise, "We're looking for the moon in the wrong direction! I had expected it to come up on the right, behind us.... Look the other way."
I obeyed. To the left, the sky was softly golden, proclaiming the approach of the hidden moon and throwing into bold relief the turrets and peaked roofs of a building.
Not a light in it anywhere, not a sound, not a sign of life. But at least it promised some degree of protection from the penetrating mountain wind which was by this time going through our clothing as if it were made of paper. Releasing the brakes of our useless car, we rolled it backward down the slight decline of the road for the few hundred feet that lay between us and two great gates that rested heavily on their hinges. With a final effort, we pushed it through them so that the headlights might illumine the scene before us.
The building was, as we had already surmised, a ruin of a small castle, or very large house, its paneless windows staring like hostile eyes from the embrasures of the rough stonewalls. Some of its turrets were broken, like jagged teeth, others seemingly intact — all darkly outlined against the rapidly brightening sky. As we gazed, the golden rim of the moon rose above it; the shivering screech of the owl trembled through the chilly air, answered by the dismal howl of the distant dog. A scene of such unearthly desolation may I never behold again!
"Looks pretty solid at the right-hand end," Arescu remarked after we had examined it as fully as was possible from the distance at which we stood. And arming ourselves each with an electric torch, we approached the building.
The huge iron-bound door sagged open like the gate. Passing in, we found ourselves in a great stone-floored hall, roofless and chill and forbidding. At the right, however, a doorway opened, beyond which we discovered a smaller room in fair condition. It was but a single story high. The strong black beams that supported the ceiling were all in place and looked as if they would stay there. Boards had been pushed against the paneless windows, half-burned logs lay in the gaping stone fireplace, and in a corner of the room was a pile of dry wood.
"Not at all bad!" said Arescu, surveying the scene approvingly. "Others have camped here like ourselves. Made arrangements for a longer stay though and apparently changed their minds. But the wood they didn't burn up will come in nicely for us!
"I’ll build up the fire," he went on, "while you start carrying in the rugs and food."
The moon had by this time risen high enough to render a torch unnecessary out of doors, its greenish silver radiance made the world almost as light as day. We were well prepared for camping out with plenty of warm rugs, cans of soup, coffee, bread, bacon, and, fortunately, candles.
As I went out for my last load, I was startled to find, standing by the car and gazing toward me, a woman. She was enveloped in a long, dark, hooded cloak which so shrouded her form and shadowed her face that I could form no idea of her age, though the voice in which she addressed me, in German, had the clear vigorous ring of youth. I could see only that her eyes were very bright and her teeth remarkably fine and white between the scarlet lips that parted with her smile.
"Pardon," she said, "if I have startled you. But I live nearby, and strangers seldom come this way."
I expressed my surprise that people lived near, since I had seen no lights, and suggested that she could perhaps find us a warmer lodging for the night.
"My home is hardly large enough," she replied with that flashing, brilliant smile. "I came only to look — this time; but I shall perhaps see you — later." And as I gathered a few more articles from the back of the car, she wished me good night and hurried away with sure steps down the dark road.
"Fine!" Arescu exclaimed when I reported the encounter. "Perhaps they have a small farm where we can get eggs for breakfast, and something on four legs to hunt gas with!"
Arescu was of a decidedly domestic turn, and he had spread a couple of our heavy traveling rugs on the floor by the roaring fire which he had built, and which was already having an effect upon the chilly atmosphere, stuck a candle at each end of the heavy stone chimney piece, and set our camp coffeepot on a brick to boil — he had found a well just outside — the ruined room looked almost cozy!
Yet, for some reason, I felt nervous and "edgy." I would gladly have strangled the distant owl and the more distant dog, each of which, at irregular intervals, continued to emit its eldritch lament. Just as I would think that they had knocked off for good, one or the other of the eerie sounds would break out through the night. And the miserable dog seemed to be coming gradually nearer! A couple of bats flitted blunderingly about the room, the night wind prowled uneasily outside.
"I've always heard that you Central Europeans were a superstitious lot," I remarked as Arescu, whistling cheerfully, set the finished coffee aside to keep hot and placed over the fire a generous pan of bacon, "but here we are in what might be the setting for all sorts of horrors. It gives even me the creeps, and for all the effect it has on you, you might be fixing up a midnight mess in a college dormitory!"
Arescu sat back on his heels. "I'm just as superstitious as the next person — when I have reason to be," he replied in a perfectly matter-of-fact manner. "But plain 'creepy' surroundings don't disturb me in the least when I know there's nothing wrong."
"How do you know there's nothing wrong with this place?" I asked curiously. "You never saw it before, did you?"
"Never." Arescu placidly arranged the crisp, hot bacon between slices of bread and poured the coffee into enamel cups. "There are many ruined castles in these parts, but there is only one haunted place — a vampire castle — in this entire region, and it's on a road leading out of the other side of Koslo from the direction we took this noon. There's nothing else within a hundred miles that's credited with even the mildest of specters!"
"And you really do believe in the supernatural?" I demanded incredulously. "You wouldn't sleep here if the place were called haunted?"
"My good friend," said Arescu, for the moment unwontedly serious, as he turned his dark eyes on mine. "It seems strange, I know, to a native of the great super-civilized United States that supposedly intelligent people can believe the unbelievable — that is, unbelievable from your point of view. But, after all, the powers of darkness love — the dark; and isn't it only reasonable to think that they shun the more civilized and populous regions and cling to the remote and little-known places? Granted that the idea of a specter or spirit seems preposterous to one sitting comfortable in his modern well-lighted home, or driving along a traveled highway. But, if you were told that this was haunted, would it seem so ridiculous?"
The sinister howl of the dog, nearer beyond all question, answered him.
"Knowing that it isn't," he added, "I'm as happy as I'd be in the finest of hotels. But if this were Archenfels, you may be certain that I shouldn't be here!"
And as we devoured our hot supper, this astonishing young man whose American education had not shaken one whit his belief in supernatural manifestations told me the story of the Vampire Castle.
"It's twenty miles out in the mountains, to the west of Koslo," he said. "Hasn't been lived in for over a century. It had been for hundreds of years the perfectly peaceful home of a noble family who had to abandon it, a hundred and twenty years or so ago, when it suddenly became vampire-haunted for no reason that anyone could think of. First the eldest son and heir was found dead in his bed; then his brothers, one after the other, at considerable intervals. After the original owners got out in despair, a few attempts at living in it were made by others who hoped to get a fine estate at little cost, but it was just the same: a series of mysterious deaths. Always men, too — young men, never a woman. Grin as much as you like," he reproved me, "but in every case, the same little sharp wound was to be found in the throat of the victim!
"Nobody has knowingly spent a night there in over a century, as I have said," he went on. "But now and again a traveler has done so — as we are doing here — and always with the same dire result: the finding of his body, sometimes long afterward, the throat marked by that cruel little wound. No one lives near it any more; its only neighbors are the dead in the churchyard of an old ruined church.
"No, Professor," he finished with his engaging young smile, "if this were Archenfels, I should be running now with a speed that would surprise you! As it is, in our cozy spot, with neighbors not far, I shall sleep soundly, and I wish you the same."
With that, he wrapped himself in one of our extra rugs, lay down by the fire, and with his coat for a pillow, fell asleep almost immediately. I suddenly felt very lonely.
But though I tried my best to follow his example it was of no use. The fire was burning low. The bats, joined by others, still blundered among the wavering shadows; the rising wind moaned outside as it tried one window after another. The last howl of the accursed dog was surely much nearer! I shouldn't have drunk that coffee so late at night, shouldn't let my mind play with the boy's tale of the ruined castle, haunted by those hideous visitants who are said to feed upon the blood of their living victims...
Suddenly, as I lay staring at the dying fire, my heart seemed actually to stop — then to race thundering in my ears. Icy sweat crept out upon my body. Though I had heard nothing, I knew that someone — something — was in the room, advancing soundlessly upon us from the doorway behind me!
With a desperate effort, I fought down the engulfing terror that had laid hold on me and turned my head.
Coming slowly toward me across the room, in the fitful glow of the failing fire, was the woman who had spoken to me at the gate. But how terribly, how awesomely, changed! The long cloak had been cast aside, revealing a white gown of olden fashion; the face, shadowed before by the dark hood, exhibited a strangely bright pink-and-white quality that was not human. The lips, red as blood, were parted in a mocking smile. Her fingers were claw-like and suggested the talons of a bird of prey.
And the eyes! I could not — heaven help me — remove my own from the baleful gaze with which they fixed on me. They fascinated me, like the eyes of some deadly serpent I could neither move nor speak. I lay inert, paralyzed, and cold.
"Welcome to Archenfels!" she said, smiling a terrible smile of derisive triumph. "It has long lain untenanted, and I have had to go far afield."
Archenfels! The castle of dread repute! Paralyzed as my body had become, my brain was clear as I groped frantically for an explanation of the horror.
Archenfels, Arescu had said, was to the west of the city; we had gone east. Impossible!... Yet, as I stared into the narrowed cruel eyes of the scarlet-mouthed creature whose sharp teeth shone white in the flickering Light of the fire, I knew that it was not impossible, knew that there are indeed more terrible things in the world than man dare dream of... Some of the country people of whom we had asked directions had doubtless given wrong ones, and with the sun overcast as it had been all day, it had been easy enough to lose our sense of direction and circle around. Simple enough to understand — now, when it was too late!
Frantically I struggled to break the hold of those awful eyes. Sweat streamed from every pore; yet I lay inert as a log. Not a movement could I make; not a finger could I lift. Nor could I, by the most desperate striving, remove my gaze from hers. If I could do that, something told me, the spell would dissolve. I might attack her and perhaps save our lives... But can the sparrow look away from the beady eyes of the snake gliding toward it?
All this time, Arescu lay sleeping as quietly as a baby, one arm over his heart, the other thrown out upon the coverlet, his slow, regular breathing the only sound in the room. A heavy graveyard odor of damp earth and decay stifled me as the creature came closer — closer! Stepped past me, but always facing me, never taking those terrible eyes from mine... Knelt by Arescu, and, gathering his slumbering form into her arms, bared her shining teeth...
As she paused, still holding me chained by that unwavering gaze, I thought in blind revulsion of a tiger crouching over its prey, glaring jealously lest another beast interfere.
Disturbed from the deep sleep of youth and health, Arescu opened his eyes. For an instant he stared, blankly and uncomprehendingly, as if in a nightmare. Then over his handsome young face swept a look of stark frozen horror that I shall see in my dreams till my last day. Under the very window the dog suddenly howled, long and despairingly.
I think that the boy died at once from shock. I hope he did. For when I realized to the full the appalling thing that was about to occur, a thing which I cannot even now put into words, I felt that I, too, was dying — and merciful unconsciousness overcame me...
After what seemed an eternity of struggling, submerged in blackness, I won back to consciousness, confusedly aware of a white form slipping out through the door. Weak and dizzy, I sat up. The room was still. The fire had sunk to a few sullen embers. Even the wind had died, and I, thank heaven, was no longer in the grip of that nefarious gaze!
Snatching the torch that lay beside me, I turned its beam upon the crumpled young figure by the hearth.
No need to look a second time, to feel the pulseless wrist! The terrible unearthly pallor of the boyish face, the ghastly, drained grayness, was enough. Boiling rage seized upon me. Where had the foul creature gone? To find others of her kind, and tell them that a living man still survived in the accursed castle, material for another grim feast?
Demented and without plan, I rushed out into the night. Across the lawn, plain in the clear green moonlight, a white form was passing through the great gate. I dashed after it in mad pursuit as, realizing that it was followed, it fled, fleet as the wind itself, down the rough mountain road.
Never once did I raise my eyes from the level of its feet as, with bursting lungs, I labored after the flying shape. Not again would I fall a victim to that dread gaze!
I was almost upon it when it suddenly veered to the left. Unable to check myself, I ran past the little gate in the stonewall, thus permitting the monster to gain time. Halting as quickly as possible, I turned and rushed through the gate — into a graveyard... Yes, there were the fluttering robes before me, silver in the moonlight; the streaming golden hair. With a final mighty effort, temples pounding, pulses throbbing, I gained upon my quarry. No more than twenty feet separated us when it suddenly stopped, laid hold upon an ancient slanting tombstone — and vanished into the earth...
Sick with horror, and utterly exhausted, I dropped beside the grave; and for a second time that night — and the second in all my life — a wave of unconsciousness swept over me...
When I came to myself, the stars were paling before the rosy light in the east, cocks crowed in the distance, birds twittered in the trees. Lame and stiff, I struggled to my feet.
I was standing in an old cemetery, disused, apparently, for many years. The aged, lichened tombstones were canted drunkenly this way and that; the ruined little church was half-hidden in overgrown shrubbery. All as poor Arescu had described the fateful region, had we but been able to see!
I drove a little stick into the grave at my feet — her home was indeed small! — and hastened back along the road to the dire castle of Archenfels.
Here I found many people grouped around our car, all talking excitedly but in hushed tones, and pale with fear. Others were within. As I entered the room of death, a tall old priest rose from his knees beside the body of Arescu, now decently arranged, with eyes closed and hands crossed.
We both spoke German, and the priest told his story. A small farmer, living across the valley from Archenfels, had seen our lights in the night and had, at first peep of dawn, hastened to the village to report what could mean but one thing — another tragedy. Practically the entire population had accompanied him to the castle, to find what they had feared, a new victim of the vampire. They had deduced that two people had occupied the room; and upon my explaining where I had been, the priest's dark eyes lighted strangely.
"Sir," he inquired eagerly, "do you know where she disappeared?"
"I do, indeed!" I answered. "I marked the spot."
An incomprehensible look flashed from face to face among the listeners as the priest translated my reply; and one woman, with tears streaming down her cheeks, knelt and kissed my hand.
"I think, sir," said the priest slowly, alter he had given some directions in his own tongue to several of the men present, "that, shocking as this experience has been for you, you have been the instrument for saving the countryside from a great fear. I will explain to you as we return to the graveyard."
The priest's story tallied closely with Arescu's — with a grim addition. The victims of the attacks were, as the boy had said, always men, young men, a fact which doubtless accounted for my own survival. But during the hundred years that the castle had stood untenanted, the number of young men who by chance spent a night there had been insufficient to satisfy the creature's blood-lust; and now and again, some village lad would be found, dead in his bed, a sharp little wound plain in his throat. The last victim, two years before, had been a son of the woman who had kissed my hand; and, as she had two other living sons, her fear had been great.
None but the dead had ever seen the destroyer; no description had ever been given; no theory could be formed as to its sudden origin in so peaceful a district. The village had taken such steps as it could. The few graves of suicides, and others who had died violent deaths, situated outside the graveyard wall beyond the consecrated area, had been opened long ago, for such unfortunates were said sometimes to become vampires. But the rotting coffins had contained nothing suspicious; only the moldering bones that would be natural. And one cannot open all the graves in an old cemetery with no clues to go on!
Long beams of morning sunlight were stretching across the dewy grass when we arrived at the one that I had marked, Helena Barrientos, read the almost-obliterated inscription upon the stone. Died August 5, 1799, aged twenty years.
For a time we waited there with the people behind us, all silent under the solemn spell of impending strange events, until the men to whom the priest had spoken his orders returned, some with picks, shovels and ropes, and one with a long strong stake, sharpened at one end. A lad carried the processional cross from the village church.
Amid a deep strained silence, they set to work, the pile of fresh black clods rising rapidly beside the excavation. Then came the dull wound of blows upon rotting wood. The hole was made wide and deep enough to permit the workers to descend into it, the earth carefully cleared from around the coffin, too frail with age to bear removal from its place. The lid was loosened, lifted off...
Cries of horror rose from those crowding around the grave. As for me, my brain reeled. Even then, I could not believe my own eyes.
Lying before us, in the decayed old coffin, with the fresh rosy coloring and scarlet lips of a child asleep, was the visitant of the night before; but now, everything terrible about her was gone. The eyes, which had exercised their dread power of fascination, were quietly closed, the red lips pressed together... A corpse, fresh and bright as the living, where should lie a heap of disintegrating bones!
"You see!" said the old priest simply.
A little metal box lay beside the body, and this he opened, disclosing a letter written in faded, but still legible, ink. Slowly and solemnly he read it aloud: "I confess to God — but not to man — that this, my daughter, met her death by her own hand. I wish that my child, wronged and mistaken though she has been, shall lie in consecrated ground, for I fear that she will not rest outside. For a day after her death I told others that she was grievously ill; then, that she had died. I prepared her for the grave myself, and none suspect. May God forgive her. She had much provocation, having been heartlessly betrayed by the young lord of Archenfels, though I alone know. May God forgive me, too, her mother."
Amid a profound hush the priest folded up the tragic message from a long-gone day and let himself down into the grave. The sharpened stake was passed to him. Grasping it in his right hand, he received in his left the shining brass cross. Even I, stranger and skeptic though I had been, had heard tales of the grim method of exorcising vampires, and I held my breath with the rest as we watched.
Murmuring a Latin sentence, he raised the sharpened stake.
"May God have mercy on your soul!" he said. And plunged the point into the heart of the body before him.
A gasp of mingled relief and horror rose from all who could see into the grave. In the winking of an eyelid, the corpse vanished. Only a disintegrating skeleton lay in the coffin in a pool of bright red blood that was running rapidly out through the cracks and soaking into the rich black earth.
"May God have mercy!" said the priest once more in the sonorous rolling Latin of the Church, and with infinite compassion in his tone.
"Amen!" answered the people, and went their ways.
That is all.
I remember but little of the trip back to the ancient city of Koslo where I spent nearly a month in the hospital, delirious much of the time.
When I had recovered enough to study a map of the region, it was easy to see how we had wandered into the fatal neighborhood. The road on which Archenfels stood left the city in a westerly direction, it is true, but soon bore decidedly south, while ours, going east at first, also bent south before very long. The wrong direction given us had put us on a road that joined the two, and our own wanderings had done the rest.
If only the sun had not been hidden! If only we had reached the dread spot before night veiled the scene.
The college granted me leave of absence for a year, and I am somewhat better now, but I know that never again shall I have the nervous balance of a normal human being.
The doctors said that it might help me to write it all out — "get it off my mind," in a measure. I feel too that if the recital of my experience brings others to the realization that there are still dark and terrible things to be encountered in this "com monplace" world of today, and restrains them from speaking — or even thinking — lightly of them, I shall at least have accomplished something of good.
Robert Bloch (1917- ), although best known for his classic novel on which Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" was based, has written hundreds of macabre short stories and television and motion picture scripts. Inspired by leading fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft, Bloch often takes a wryly, humorous approach to the supernatural. Of himself he writes, "I nave the heart of a small boy; I keep it in a jar on my desk."
The author here displays his flair for horror-whimsy, a most difficult writing form. He manages to maintain an eerie quotient despite the humorous banter at the Halloween party and the vampires who don't take themselves seriously.
* Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, 580 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10036.
—————
The sun was dying, and its blood spattered the sky as it crept into a sepulcher behind the hills. The keening wind sent the dry, fallen leaves scurrying toward the west, as though hastening them to the funeral of the sun.
"Nuts!" said Henderson to himself and stopped thinking.
The sun was setting in a dingy red sky, and a dirty raw wind was kicking up the half-rotten leaves in a filthy gutter. Why should he waste time with cheap imagery?
"Nuts!" said Henderson, again.
It was probably a mood evoked by the day, he mused. After all, this was the sunset of Halloween. Tonight was the dreaded All Hallows Eve, when spirits walked and skulls cried out from their graves beneath the earth.
Either that, or tonight was just another rotten cold fall day. Henderson sighed. There was a time, he reflected, when the coming of this night meant something. A dark Europe, groaning in superstitious fear, dedicated this Eve to the grinning Unknown. A million doors had once been barred against the evil visitants, a million prayers mumbled, a million candles lit. There was something majestic about the idea, Henderson reflected. Life had been an adventure in those times, and men walked in terror of what the next turn of a midnight road might bring. They had lived in a world of demons and ghouls and elementals who sought their souls — and by Heaven in those days a man's soul meant something. This new skepticism had taken a profound meaning away from life. Men no longer revered their souls.
"Nuts!" said Henderson again, quite automatically. There was something crude and twentieth-century about the coarse expression, which always checked his introspective flights of fancy.
The voice in his brain that said "nuts" took the place of humanity to Henderson — common humanity that would echo the same sentiment upon hearing his secret thoughts. So now Henderson uttered the word and endeavored to forget problems and purple patches alike.
He was walking down this street at sunset to buy a costume for the masquerade party tonight, and he had much better concentrate on finding the costumer's before it closed than waste his time daydreaming about Halloween.
His eyes searched the darkening shadows of the dingy buildings lining the narrow thoroughfare. Once again he peered at the address he had scribbled down after finding it in the phone book.
Why the devil didn't they light up the shops when it got dark? He couldn't make out numbers. This was a poor, run-down neighborhood, but after all —
Abruptly, Henderson spied the place across the street and started over. He passed the window and glanced in. The last rays of the sun slanted over the top of the building across the way and fell directly on the window and its display. Henderson drew a sharp intake of breath.
He was staring at a costumer's window — not looking through a fissure into hell. Then why was it all red fire, lighting the grinning visages of fiends?
"Sunset," Henderson muttered aloud. Of course it was, and the faces were merely clever masks such as would be displayed in this sort of place. Still, it gave the imaginative man a start. He opened the door and entered.
The place was dark and still. There was a smell of loneliness in the air — the smell that haunts all places long undisturbed: tombs, and graves in deep woods, and caverns in the earth, and —
"Nuts."
What the devil was wrong with him, anyway? Henderson smiled apologetically at the empty darkness. This was the smell of the costumer's shop, and it carried him back to college days of amateur theatricals. Henderson had known this smell of mothballs, decayed furs, grease paint, and oils. He had played amateur Hamlet and in his hands he had held a smirking skull that hid all knowledge in its empty eyes — a skull, from the costumer's.
Well, here he was again, and the skull gave him the idea. After all, Halloween night it was. Certainly in this mood of his he didn't want to go as a rajah, or a Turk, or a pirate — they all did that. Why not go as a fiend, or a warlock, or a werewolf? He could see Lindstrom's face when he walked into the elegant penthouse wearing rags of some sort. The fellow would have a fit, with his society crowd wearing their expensive Elsa Maxwell take-offs. Henderson didn't greatly care for Lindstrom's sophisticated friends anyway, a gang of amateur Noel Cowards and horsy women wearing harnesses of jewels. Why not carry out the spirit of Halloween and go as a monster?
Henderson stood there in the dusk, waiting for someone to turn on the lights, come out from the back room, and serve him. After a minute or so he grew impatient and rapped sharply on the counter.
"Say in there! Service!"
Silence. And a shuffling noise from the rear, then — an unpleasant noise to hear in the gloom. There was a banging from downstairs and then the heavy clump of footsteps. Suddenly Henderson gasped. A black bulk was rising from the floor!
It was, of course, only the opening of the trapdoor from the basement. A man shuffled behind the counter, carrying a lamp. In that light his eyes blinked drowsily.
The man's yellowish face crinkled into a smile.
"I was sleeping, I'm afraid," said the man, softly. "Can I serve you, sir?"
"I was looking for a Halloween costume."
"Oh, yes. And what was it you had in mind?"
The voice was weary, infinitely weary. The eyes continued to blink in the flabby yellow face.
"Nothing usual, I'm afraid. You see, I rather fancied some sort of monster getup for a party — don't suppose you carry anything in that line?"
"I could show you masks."
"No. I meant werewolf outfits, something of the sort. More of the authentic."
"So. The authentic"
"Yes." Why did this old dunce stress the word?
"I might — yes. I might have just the thing for you, sir." The eyes blinked, but the thin mouth pursed in a smile. "Just the thing for Halloween."
"What's that?"
"Have you ever considered the possibility of being a vampire?"
"Like Dracula?"
"Ah — yes, I suppose — Dracula."
"Not a bad idea. Do you think I'm the type for that, though?"
The man appraised him with that tight smile. "Vampires are of all types, I understand. You would do nicely."
"Hardly a compliment," Henderson chuckled. "But why not? What's the outfit?"
"Outfit? Merely evening clothes, or what you wear. I will furnish you with the authentic cloak."
"Just a cloak — is that all?"
"Just a cloak. But it is worn like a shroud. It is shroud-cloth, you know. Wait, I'll get it for you."
The shuffling feet carried the man into the rear of the shop again. Down the trapdoor entrance he went, and Henderson waited. There was more banging, and presently the old man reappeared carrying the cloak. He was shaking dust from it in the darkness.
"Here it is — the genuine cloak."
"Genuine?"
"Allow me to adjust it for you — it will work wonders, I'm sure."
The cold, heavy cloth hung draped about Henderson's shoulders. The faint odor rose mustily in his nostrils as he stepped back and surveyed himself in the mirror. The lamp was poor, but Henderson saw that the cloak effected a striking transformation in his appearance. His long face seemed thinner, his eyes were accentuated in the facial pallor heightened by the somber cloak he wore. It was a big, black shroud.
"Genuine," murmured the old man. He must have come up suddenly, for Henderson hadn't noticed him in the glass.
"I'll take it," Henderson said. "How much?"
"You'll find it quite entertaining, I'm sure."
"How much?"
"Oh. Shall we say five dollars?"
"Here."
The old man took the money, blinking, and drew the cloak from Henderson's shoulders. When it slid away he felt suddenly warm again. It must be cold in the basement — the cloth was icy.
The old man wrapped the garment, smiling, and handed it over.
"I'll have it back tomorrow," Henderson promised.
"No need. You purchased it. It is yours."
"But — "
"I am leaving business shortly. Keep it. You will find more use for it than I, surely."
"But — "
"A pleasant evening to you."
Henderson made his way to the door in confusion, then turned to salute the blinking old man in the dimness.
Two eyes were burning at him from across the counter — two eyes that did not blink.
"Good night," said Henderson and closed the door quickly. He wondered if he were going just a trifle mad.
At eight, Henderson nearly called up Lindstrom to tell him he couldn't make it. The cold chills came the minute he put on the cloak, and when he looked at himself in the mirror his blurred eyes could scarcely make out the reflection.
But after a few drinks he felt better about it. He hadn't eaten, and the liquor warmed his blood. He paced the floor, attitudinizing with the cloak — sweeping it about him and scowling in what he thought was a ferocious manner. He was going to be a vampire all right! He called a cab, went down to the lobby. The driver came in, and Henderson was waiting, black cloak furled.
"I wish you to drive me," he said in a low voice.
The cabman took one look at him in the cloak and turned pale.
"Whazzat?"
"I ordered you to come," said Henderson gutturally, while he quaked with inner mirth. He leered ferociously and swept the cloak back.
"Yeah, yeah. O.K."
The driver almost ran outside. Henderson stalked after him.
"Where to, boss — I mean, sir?"
The frightened face didn't turn as Henderson intoned the address and sat back.
The cab started with a lurch that set Henderson to chuckling deeply, in character. At the sound of the laughter the driver got panicky and raced his engine up to the limit set by the governor. Henderson laughed loudly, and the impressionable driver fairly quivered in his seat. It was quite a ride, but Henderson was entirely unprepared to open the door and find it slammed after him as the cabman drove hastily away without collecting a fare.
"I must look the part," he thought complacently, as he took the elevator up to the penthouse apartment.
There were three or four others in the elevator; Henderson had seen them before at other affairs. Lindstrom had invited him to attend, but nobody seemed to recognize him. It rather pleased him to think how his wearing of an unfamiliar cloak and an unfamiliar scowl seemed to change his entire personality and appearance. Here the other guests had donned elaborate disguises — one woman wore the costume of a Watteau shepherdess, another was attired as a Spanish ballerina, a tall man dressed as Pagliacci, and his companion had donned a toreador outfit. Yet Henderson recognized them all, knew that their expensive habiliments were not truly disguises at all, but merely elaborations calculated to enhance their appearance. Most people at costume parties gave vent to suppressed desires. The women showed off their figures, the men either accentuated their masculinity as the toreador did, or clowned it. Such things were pitiful; these conventional fools eagerly doffing their dismal business suits and rushing off to a lodge, or amateur theatrical, or mask ball in order to satisfy their starving imaginations. Why didn't they dress in garish colors on the street? Henderson often pondered the question.
Surely, these society folk in the elevator were fine-looking men and women in their outfits — so healthy, so red-faced, and full of vitality. They had such robust throats and necks. Henderson looked at the plump arms of the woman next to him. He stared, without realizing it, for a long moment. And then he saw that the occupants of the car had drawn away from him. They were standing in the corner, as though they feared his cloak and scowl; and his eyes fixed on the woman. Their chatter had ceased abruptly. The woman looked at him as though she were about to speak, when the elevator doors opened and afforded Henderson a welcome respite.
What the devil was wrong? First the cab driver, and then the woman. Had he drunk too much?
Well, no chance to consider that. Here was Marcus Lindstrom, and he was thrusting a glass into Henderson's hand.
"What have we here? Ah, a bogy-man!" It needed no second glance to perceive that Lindstrom, as usual at such affairs, was already quite bottle-dizzy. The fat host was positively swimming in alcohol.
"Have a drink, Henderson, my lad! I'll take mine from the bottle. That outfit of yours gave me a shock. Where'd you get the make-up?"
"Make-up? I'm not wearing any make-up."
"Oh. So you're not. How... silly of me."
Henderson wondered if he were crazy. Had Lindstrom really drawn back? Were his eyes actually filled with certain dismay? Oh, the man was obviously intoxicated.
"I'll... I'll see you later," babbled Lindstrom, edging away and quickly turning to the other arrivals. Henderson watched the back of Lindstrom's neck. It was fat and white. It bulged over the collar of his costume and there was a vein in it. A vein in Lindstrom's fat neck. Frightened Lindstrom.
Henderson stood alone in the anteroom. From the parlor beyond came the sound of music and laughter, party noises. Henderson hesitated before entering. He drank from the glass in his hand — Bacardi rum, and powerful. On top of his other drinks it almost made the man reel. But he drank, wondering. What was wrong with him and his costume? Why did he frighten people? Was he unconsciously acting his vampire role? That crack of Lindstrom's about make-up now —
Acting on impulse, Henderson stepped over to the long panel mirror in the hall. He lurched a little, and then stood in the harsh light before it. He faced the glass, stared into the mirror, and saw nothing.
He looked at himself in the mirror, and there was no one there!
Henderson began to laugh softly, evilly, deep in his throat. And as he gazed into the empty, unreflecting glass, his laughter rose in black glee.
"I'm drunk," he whispered. "I must be drunk. Mirror in my apartment made me blurred. Now I'm so far gone I can't see straight. Sure I'm drunk. Been acting ridiculously, scaring people. Now I'm seeing hallucinations — or not seeing them, rather. Visions, Angels."
His voice lowered. "Sure, angels. Standing right in back of me, now. Hello, angel." "Hello."
Henderson whirled. There she stood, in the dark cloak, her hair a shimmering halo above her white, proud face, her eyes celestial blue, and her lips infernal red.
"Are you real?" asked Henderson, gently. "Or am I a fool to believe in miracles?"
"This miracle's name is Sheila Darrly, and it would like to powder its nose if you please."
"Kindly use this mirror through the courtesy of Stephen Henderson," replied the cloaked man, with a grin. He stepped back a ways, eyes intent. The girl turned her head and favored him with a slow, impish smile. "Haven't you ever seen powder used before?" she asked.
"Didn't know angels indulged in cosmetics," Henderson replied. "But then there's a lot I don't know about angels. From now on I shall make them a special study of mine. There's so much I want to find out. So you'll probably find me following you around with a notebook all evening." "Notebooks for a vampire?" "Oh, but I'm a very intelligent vampire – not one of those backwoods Transylvanian types. You'll find me charming, I'm sure."
"Yes, you look like the sure type," the girl mocked. "But an angel and a vampire — that's a queer combination."
"We can reform one another," Henderson pointed out. "Besides, I have a suspicion that there's a bit of the devil in you. That dark cloak over your angel costume; dark angel, you know. Instead of heaven you might hail from my home town."
Henderson was flippant, but underneath his banter cyclonic thoughts whirled. He recalled discussions in the past, cynical observations he had made and believed.
Once Henderson had declared that there was no such thing as love at first sight, save in books or plays where such a dramatic device served to speed up action. He asserted that people learned about romance from books and plays and accordingly adopted a belief in love at first sight when all one could possibly feel was desire.
And now this Sheila — this blond angel — had to come along and drive out all thoughts of morbidity, all thoughts of drunkenness and foolish gazings into mirrors, from his mind; had to send him madly plunging into dreams of red lips, ethereal blue eyes, and slim white arms.
Something of his feelings had swept into his eyes, and as the girl gazed up at him she felt the truth.
"Well," she breathed, "I hope the inspection pleases."
"A miracle of understatement, that. But there was something I wanted to find out particularly about divinity. Do angels dance?" "Tactful vampire! The next room?" Arm in arm they entered the parlor. The merry-makers were in full swing. Liquor had already pitched gaiety at its height, but there was no dancing any longer. Boisterous little grouped couples laughed arm in arm about the room. The visual party gagsters were performing their antics in corners. The superficial atmosphere, which Henderson detested, was fully in evidence.
It was reaction, which made Henderson draw himself up to full height and sweep the cloak about his shoulders. Reaction brought the scowl to his pale face, caused him to stalk along in brooding silence. Sheila seemed to regard this as a great joke.
"Pull a vampire act on them," she giggled, clutching his arm. Henderson accordingly scowled at the couples, sneered horrendously at the women. And the turning of heads, the abrupt cessation of chatter, marked his progress. He walked through the long room like Red Death incarnate. Whispers trailed in his wake.
"Who is that man?"
"We came up with him in the elevator, and he — "
"His eyes — "
"Vampire!"
"Hello, Dracula!" It was Marcus Lindstrom and a sullen-looking brunette in Cleopatra costume who lurched toward Henderson. Host Lindstrom could scarcely stand, and his companion in cups was equally at a loss. Henderson liked the man when sober at the club, but his behavior at parties had always irritated him. Lindstrom was particularly objectionable in his present condition — it made him boorish.
"M'dear, I want you t' meet a very dear friend of mine. Yessir, it being Halloween and all, I invited Count Dracula here, t'gether with his daughter."
The woman leered up at Henderson.
"Oooh Dracula, what big eyes you have! Oooh, what big teeth you have! Ooooh — "
"Really, Marcus," Henderson protested. But the host had turned and shouted to the room.
"Folks, meet the real goods — only genuine living vampire in captivity! Dracula Henderson, only existing vampire with false teeth."
In any other circumstance Henderson would have given Lindstrom a quick, efficient punch on the jaw. But Sheila was at his side, it was a public gathering; better to humor the man's clumsy jest. Why not be a vampire?
Smiling quickly at the girl, Henderson drew himself erect, faced the crowd, and frowned. His hands brushed the cloak. Funny, it still felt cold. Looking down he noticed for the first time that it was a little dirty at the edges, muddy or dusty. But the cold silk slid through his fingers as he drew it across his breast with one long hand. The feeling seemed to inspire him. He opened his eyes wide and let them blaze. His mouth opened. A sense of dramatic power filled him. And he looked at Marcus Lindstrom's soft, fat neck with the vein standing in the whiteness. He looked at the neck, saw the crowd watching him, and then the impulse seized him. He turned, eyes on that creasy neck — that wabbling, creasy neck of the fat man. Hands darted out. Lindstrom squeaked like a frightened rat. He was a plump, sleek white rat, bursting with blood. Vampires liked blood. Blood from the rat, from the neck of the rat, from the vein in the neck of the squeaking rat. "Warm blood."
The deep voice was Henderson's own. The hands were Henderson's own. The hands that went around Lindstrom's neck as he spoke, the hands that felt the warmth, that searched out the vein. Henderson's face was bending for the neck and, as Lindstrom struggled, his grip tightened. Lindstrom’s face was turning, turning purple. Blood was rushing to his head. That was good. Blood!
Henderson's mouth opened. He felt the air on his teeth. He bent down toward that fat neck, and then —
"Stop! That's plenty!"
The voice, the cooling voice of Sheila. Her fingers on his arm. Henderson looked up, startled. He released Lindstrom, who sagged with open mouth.
The crowd was staring, and their mouths were all shaped in the instinctive O of amazement.
Sheila whispered, "Bravo! Served him right — but you frightened him!"
Henderson struggled a moment to collect himself. Then he smiled and turned.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I have just given a slight demonstration to prove to you what our host said of me was entirely correct. I am a vampire. Now that you have been given fair warning, I am sure you will be in no further danger. If there is a doctor in the house I can, perhaps, arrange for a blood transfusion."
The O's relaxed and laughter came from startled throats. Hysterical laughter, in part, then genuine. Henderson had carried it off. Marcus Lindstrom alone still stared with eyes that held utter fear. He knew.
And then the moment broke, for one of the gangsters ran into the room from the elevator. He had gone downstairs and borrowed the apron and cap of a newsboy. Now he raced through the crowd with a bundle of papers under his arm.
"Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Big Halloween Horror! Extra!"
Laughing guests purchased papers. A woman approached Sheila, and Henderson watched the girl walk away in a daze,
"See you later," she called, and her glance sent fire through his veins. Still, he could not forget the terrible feeling that came over him when he had seized Lindstrom. Why?
Automatically, he accepted a paper from the shouting pseudo-newsboy. "Big Halloween Horror," he had shouted. What was that?
Blurred eyes searched the paper.
Then Henderson reeled back. That headline! It was an Extra after all. Henderson scanned the column with mourning dread.
"Fire in costumer's... shortly after 8 p.m. firemen were summoned to the shop of... flames beyond control... completely demolished... damage estimated at... peculiarly enough, name of proprietor unknown... skeleton found in — "
"No!" gasped Henderson aloud.
He read, reread that closely. The skeleton had been found in a box of earth in the cellar beneath the shop. The box was a coffin. There had been two other boxes, empty. The skeleton had been wrapped in a cloak, undamaged by the flames —
And in the hastily penned box at the bottom of the column were eyewitness comments, written up under scare-heads of heavy black type. Neighbors had feared the place. Hungarian neighborhood, hints of vampirism, of strangers who entered the shop. One man spoke of a cult believed to have held meetings in the place. Superstition about things sold there — love philters, outlandish charms, and weird disguises.
Weird disguises — Vampires — cloaks — his eyes!
"This is an authentic cloak."
"I will not be using this much longer. Keep it."
Memories of these words screamed through Henderson's brain. He plunged out of the room and rushed to the panel mirror.
A moment, then he flung one arm before his face to shield his eyes from the image that was not there — the missing reflection. Vampires have no reflections.
No wonder he looked strange. No wonder arms and necks invited him. He had wanted Lindstrom. Good God!
The cloak had done that, the dark cloak with the stains. The stains of earth, grave-earth. The wearing of the cloak, the cold cloak, had given him the feelings of a true vampire. It was a garment accursed, a thing that had lain on the body of one undead. The rusty stain along one sleeve was blood.
Blood. It would be nice to see blood. To taste its warmth, its red life, flowing.
No. That was insane. He was drunk, crazy.
"Ah. My pale friend, the vampire."
It was Sheila again. And above all horror rose the beating of Henderson's heart. As he looked at her shining eyes, her warm mouth shaped in red invitation, Henderson felt a wave of warmth. He looked at her white throat rising above her dark, shimmering cloak and another kind of warmth rose. Love, desire, and a — hunger.
She must have seen it in his eyes, but she did not flinch. Instead, her own gaze burned in return.
Sheila loved him, too!
With an impulsive gesture, Henderson ripped the cloak from about bis throat. The icy weight lifted. He was free. Somehow he hadn't wanted to take the cloak off, but he had to. It was a cursed thing, and in another minute he might have taken the girl in his arms, taken her for a kiss and remained to —
But he dared not think of that.
"Tired of masquerading?" she asked. With a similar gesture she, too, removed her cloak and stood revealed in the glory of her angel robe. Her blond, statuesque perfection forced a gasp to Henderson's throat.
"Angel," he whispered.
"Devil," she mocked.
And suddenly they were embracing. Henderson had taken her cloak in his arm with his own. They stood with lips seeking rapture until Lindstrom and a group moved noisily into the anteroom.
At the sight of Henderson the fat host recoiled.
"Just leaving," Henderson smiled. Grasping the girl's arm, he drew her toward the empty elevator. The door shut on Lindstrom's pale, fear-filled face.
"Were we leaving?" Sheila whispered, snuggling against his shoulder.
"We were. But not for earth. We do not go down into my realm, but up — into yours."
"The roof garden?"
"Exactly, my angelic one. I want to talk to you against the background of your own heavens, loss you amidst the clouds, and — "
Her lips found his as the car rose.
"Angel and devil. What a match!"
"I thought so, too," the girl confessed. "Will our children have halos or horns?"
"Both, I'm sure."
They stepped out onto the deserted rooftop. And once again it was Halloween.
Henderson felt it. Downstairs it was Lindstrom and his society friends in a drunken costume party. Here it was night, silence, and gloom. No light, no music, no drinking, no chatter which made one party identical with another, one night like all the rest. This night was individual here.
The sky was not blue but black. Clouds hung like the gray beards of hovering giants peering at the round orange globe of the moon. A cold wind blew from the sea and filled the air with tiny murmurings from afar.
This was the sky that witches flew through to their Sabbath. This was the moon of wizardry, the sable silence of black prayers and whispered invocations. The clouds hid monstrous Presences shambling in summons from afar. It was Halloween.
It was also quite cold.
"Give me my cloak," Sheila whispered. Automatically, Henderson extended the garment, and the girl's body swirled under the dark splendor of the cloth. Her eyes burned up at Henderson with a call he could not resist. He kissed her, trembling.
"You're cold," the girl said. "Put on your cloak."
Yes, Henderson, he thought to himself. Put on your cloak while you stare at her throat. Then the next time you kiss her you will want her throat and she will give it in love and you will take it in — hunger.
"Put it on, darling — I insist," the girl whispered. Her eyes were impatient, burning with an eagerness to match his own.
Henderson trembled.
Put on the cloak of darkness? The cloak of the grave, the cloak of death, the cloak of the vampire? The evil cloak, filled with a cold life of its own that transformed his face, transformed his mind, made his soul instinct with awful hunger?
"Here."
The girl's slim arms were about him, pushing the cloak onto his shoulders. Her fingers brushed his neck, caressingly, as she linked the cloak about his throat.
Henderson shivered.
Then he felt it — through him — that icy coldness turning to a more dreadful heat. He felt himself expand, felt the sneer cross his face. This was Power!
And the girl before him, her eyes taunting, inviting. He saw her ivory neck, her warm slim neck, waiting. It was waiting for him, for his lips.
For his teeth.
No — it couldn't be. He loved her. His love must conquer this madness. Yes, wear the cloak, defy its power, and take her in his arms as a man, not as a fiend. He must. It was the test.
"Sheila." Funny, how his voice deepened.
"Yes, dear."
"Sheila, I must tell you this."
Her eyes — so alluring. It would be easy! "Sheila, please. You read the paper tonight." "Yes."
"I... I got my cloak there. I can't explain it. You saw how I took Lindstrom. I wanted to go through with it. Do you understand me? I meant to... to bite him. Wearing this thing makes me feel like one of those creatures."
Why didn't her stare change? Why didn't she recoil in horror? Such trusting innocence! Didn't she understand? Why didn't she run? Any moment now he might lose control, seize her.
"I love you, Sheila. Believe that. I love you."
"I know." Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight.
"I want to test it. I want to kiss you, wearing this cloak. I want to feel that my love is stronger than this — thing. If I weaken, promise me you'll break away and run, quickly. But don't misunderstand. I must face this feeling and fight it; I want my love for you to be that pure, that secure. Are you afraid?"
"No." Still she stared at him, just as he stared at her throat. If she knew what was in his mind!
"You don't think I'm crazy? I went to this costumer's — he was a horrible little old man — and he gave me the cloak. Actually told me it was a real vampire's. I thought he was joking, but tonight I didn't see myself in the mirror, and I wanted Lindstrom's neck, and I want you. But I must test it."
"You're not crazy. I know. I'm not afraid."
"Then — "
The girl's face mocked. Henderson summoned his strength. He bent forward, his impulses battling. For a moment he stood there under the ghastly orange moon, and his face was twisted in struggle.
And the girl lured.
Her odd, incredibly red lips parted in a silvery, chuckly laugh as her white arms rose from the black cloak she wore to circle his neck gently. "I know — I knew when I looked in the mirror. I knew you had a cloak like mine — got yours where I got mine — "
Queerly, her lips seemed to elude his as he stood frozen for an instant of shock. Then he felt the icy hardness of her sharp little teeth on his throat, a strangely soothing sting, and an engulfing blackness rising over him.
Joseph Payne Brennan (1918- ) is a poet and prose writer who has spent most of his We in New Haven, Connecticut, where he works at the Yale Library. He edits Macabre and Essence, two publications dealing with poems and stories of the unusual.
Brennan has won awards from the Poetry Society of America, Kaleidograph, the Wisconsin Poetry Magazine and others. His works in the macabre have been published by Arkham House.
The classic chase story is presented by Brennan in this tale, set in such prosaic sounding places as Porthaven and Newbridge. Although the fate of the victim appears sealed, he is offered opportunities to escape, but doesn't. The moth is inevitably drawn toward the flame in this hair-raiser.
* Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, 580 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10036.
—————
As he entered the cold, dimly lighted waiting room of the railroad station at Newbridge, Mr. Oricto decided it was the most desolate place in the world. Everything depressed him: the harsh overhead lights, the cold stone floor, and the blackened uncomfortable benches.
Except for himself, the station appeared to be deserted. Frowning, he set his bag on the floor and sat down. He was late and his train was late. He would have to make the best of an hour's delay. It was a dismal prospect.
Small of frame, nervous and middle-aged, he experienced a disquieting sensation of isolation, of vulnerability, as he glanced around the big barren room. Ordinarily his rather large ears and pendulous cheeks gave him a comical appearance, but now he looked merely pathetic.
He was aware of an inexplicable feeling of apprehension. He could not account for it. Newbridge was a reasonably large town, there must be people moving about in the station area.
But it was quite late and — Suddenly he froze. Someone standing in the shadows at the far end of the room was watching him. This person was leaning against the back of one of the benches, head on arms, and he appeared to be examining Mr. Oricto with curious intensity.
Mr. Oricto's heart began pounding between his frail ribs. He stared back fearfully, repelled yet fascinated.
Although his eyes started to water, he was unable to withdraw his gaze. As he watched, the object of his unwilling scrutiny moved along the bench and drifted into the light.
For some reason, which he dared not analyze, Mr. Oricto was seized with near panic. To a casual observer there might have been little in the other's appearance to warrant such a reaction. The man was neatly groomed. He was even smaller in frame than Mr. Oricto. A disinterested party would have concluded there was nothing at all remarkable or noteworthy about him. He might even be called nondescript.
But Mr. Oricto found him appalling. The stranger's questing eyes, his look of lean muscularity, and his restless, head-lifting mannerism were alarming in themselves. His quick, concentrated interest in Mr. Oricto was scarcely short of terrifying.
Without thinking, without even waiting to weigh the result of his action, Mr. Oricto grabbed his bag and hustled toward the platform door. He almost, but not quite, ran.
Hurrying to the very end of the platform, he set down his bag and looked back. He saw no one.
His heart gradually slowed in its beat. He expelled a long shaken sigh. How timid and jittery he had suddenly become! He really must get a grip on himself. He had lost sleep lately; his nerves must be a bit frayed. The stranger had probably wanted to strike up a conversation, nothing more.
But while he reasoned with himself, some secret part of him remained chilled and frightened. He could not bring himself to leave the far end of the platform.
A few drops of rain struck his face. Staring around, he saw that there was no one in sight in any direction. The station might as well have been located in the middle of a wilderness. Glancing at his watch, he realized that he still had forty minutes to wait.
Rain came down harder, drumming against the wooden walk boards. A skimpy length of roof covered that portion of the platform adjacent to the waiting room, but it ended yards from the place where Mr. Oricto was standing.
As the rain increased he began inching back toward this roof. He was almost under its sheltering edge when he saw the stranger standing just outside the waiting room doors. Mr. Oricto had not seen him come out; he had not noticed the doors swing open. But there he was, nevertheless.
Mr. Oricto stopped instantly, stricken with renewed trepidation. The lean stranger made no move toward him, but Mr. Oricto was convinced that he was being subjected to a sly and inimical scrutiny.
In spite of cold sheets of rain flung by a rising wind, he hurried once again to the far end of the station platform.
The rain came down in torrents, soaking through his clothes, running down his face in rivulets. He felt sure that the stranger, standing dry under the platform roof, was vastly entertained by his predicament. Once he thought he heard a soft chuckle, but perhaps it was only the wind.
He could not reason with himself. His unwelcome platform companion had not actually made a single overt and hostile move or comment, yet his mere presence imbued Mr. Oricto with marrow-deep dread. The bone-chilling fear could not be analyzed away; it seemed tangible, a pregnant menace that filled the station platform like a black pall.
At intervals the rain slackened. In these brief periods of respite, Mr. Oricto shook his soaked hat, mopped the water from his face, and generally attempted to regain some small measure of dignity.
In one of these intervals, as he drew his handkerchief from his face, he was horrified to observe that the stranger had left his post near the waiting room doors and advanced halfway down the platform toward him.
He stood petrified with fear. The stranger inched forward, moving his feet very slowly, very deliberately. His small head, thrust forward on a rather long neck, was pointed at Mr. Oricto like an arrow. His eyes held Mr. Oricto's in an unwavering stare.
Mr. Oricto wanted to bolt away, to leap from the platform and run blindly down the railroad tracks. That was one thing he had always been good at — running. But his legs might as well have been jelly, they could not respond to the panicky prompting of his will.
He opened his mouth to scream. Just then there was a sudden sweep of lights, a subdued roaring, and his train rushed into view around a curve.
The stranger hesitated. For one nightmare instant he seemed about to lunge forward. Then he straightened up, turned, and strolled back toward the waiting room.
Never in his life had Mr. Oricto been so overjoyed to see a train arrive. He ran toward the track, grateful, inexpressibly relieved, blessing the steel behemoth sent out of the night to save him.
As he swung aboard, he shot a quick look in both directions. With immense relief, he saw that no one else appeared to be getting on.
The train did not stop long in Newbridge. It was a virtual express to Porthaven, and Newbridge was an unimportant stop along the way, the last stop, in fact, before Porthaven. By the time Mr. Oricto got his bag in the overhead rack, the train was once again rushing through the rainy night.
He sprawled in his seat, feeling weak, chilled, and exhausted. Never before had he experienced such nameless fear, such acute and overpowering apprehension. He did not dare to think what might have happened if the train had not arrived when it did.
The conductor came through the otherwise empty car, took his ticket to Porthaven, gave him a lingering, puzzled look, and passed through to the next car.
The relative warmth of the train coupled with his sense of escape lulled him a little. He lay back with his eyes closed. Gradually his heart stopped hammering, he began to breathe normally again.
Rain cascaded against the train windows, blurring the few lights that cut the outside darkness.
Mr. Oricto roused himself. Probably get the devil of a cold, he reflected. Well, he'd read that one should drink a lot of water for a cold. He got up, shakily, and stood in the aisle, appalled at his weakness. Making his uneven way to the water cooler, he filled a paper cup with water. After drinking three cupfuls, he swung around to return to his seat.
He stopped in his tracks. The lean stranger was lounging in a seat halfway down the car. His countenance bore an amused expression but his eyes drilled into Mr. Oricto's like needles of steel.
For a panic-filled second Mr. Oricto almost yielded to an urgent impulse. He wanted to whirl about and rush through the forward cars until he had put as much distance as possible between himself and his pursuer.
A few unaffected cells of his frightened brain assured him that he would look ridiculous. What would the conductors think? The other passengers? And what about his bag lying there in the rack? It held some of his treasured possessions. Was he going to abandon it because an unpleasant stranger was rude enough to keep staring at him?
Reluctantly, crowding down his panic, he returned to his seat. Part of his brain was still screaming at him to run, to flee while there was time; but once back in the seat, he could not bring himself to move.
Rain sluiced against the windows. Colored lights made occasional brief kaleidoscopes, and then solid darkness closed in again.
Mr. Oricto sat as if paralyzed. He dared not turn his head, but he could feel the probing gaze of the other on the back of his neck. A cold shudder corkscrewed down his spine.
If only the conductor would return!
Fighting off a feeling of hypnotic helplessness, which seemed to be seeping into every fiber of him, he tried to plan ahead.
When the train neared Porthaven, he would quickly take his bag and hurry to the door. He would leap off the train as soon as it entered the station, perhaps even before it stopped. Then he would run. He had no qualms about it now. He would run, furiously, unashamedly, through the station, across the street, and around the corner where a taxi should be waiting. Once inside the taxi, he would be safe. He would offer the driver extra money to speed away at a fast rate. A few minutes later he would be secure in his rooms.
Once his plans were formulated, he felt better. Then a new idea struck him and fear returned. Did he imagine it, or was the other actually reading his thoughts? Was everything going on in his head quite apparent? Were those unwavering eyes drilling right through his skull into the secret area of his mental processes?
Mr. Oricto felt that they were. Growing fear harried him, yet he could think of no alternate plan. He would have to depend on his speed, on his fleetness afoot. There was a good chance that he would make it.
As the train neared Porthaven, he got up and lifted his bag from the rack. He stood trembling as the express shot toward the station. He knew the other's eyes were fastened on him. A wave of panic, of terrifying weakness, swept over him.
Will power alone drove him on rubbery legs to the train door. The station slid into view. He was down the metal steps. He leaped. The inertia of the moving train spun him around. Fighting to hold his bag and maintain his balance, he did a grotesque little jig.
Straightening out of it, he glanced fearfully up the platform. The lean stranger had already left the train. He was coming swiftly down the boardwalk.
If Mr. Oricto had previously entertained any desperately cherished doubts as to the stranger's interest in his own person, they were now instantly dispelled.
He bounded toward the platform stairs.
Hurtling down the steps four and five at a time, he reached the bottom and whirled into the long feebly lighted tunnel, which connected the platform with the station proper.
Pure terror tore at him. Rushing down the tunnel, he burst through the end doors into the station. It appeared to be entirely deserted. Not even a late sweeper was in sight, half the lights were off. There could be no sanctuary here.
Bolting toward the street doors, he heard the tunnel doors crash open behind him.
He reached the street, slippery with rain, and sprinted for the corner where a taxi should be waiting. As he neared the corner, a great dread took possession of him. This one tune there would be no taxi! He would round the corner and find nothing!
He had to take the chance now. He ran, wildly.
Skidding around the corner, he saw the taxi. Groaning with relief, he shot toward it. A twist of the door handle and he was inside.
The driver sat squinting at a racing form. He appeared not to have noticed that Mr. Oricto had entered the cab.
Mr. Oricto gasped out his destination. "573 Bishop Street, driver! And please hurry!"
The driver looked up from his racing form. He turned a morose, lantern-jawed face toward Mr. Oricto. There was an unspoken rebuke in his glance.
Mr. Oricto was about to make his offer of money when the door on the opposite side of the cab was yanked open.
The lean stranger slid inside, slammed the door, and spoke softly to the driver.
The driver nodded, turning toward Mr. Oricto. "You mind another fare, buddy? Only cab around this late. And it's rainin'."
Mr. Oricto sat speechless, rigid, naked fear like a knife thrust in his heart.
The driver mistook his silence for reluctant acquiescence. Muttering to himself, he thrust his racing form into the glove compartment and started the cab.
As the taxi splashed through the dark deserted streets, Mr. Oricto sat staring straight ahead. He dared not move even his eyes so much as a fraction of an inch. For blocks he sat motionless, feeling the other's eyes inspecting him, gloating, triumphant.
Finally coherent thought returned. Could he tell the driver to take him to the police station? He felt convinced that for some reason of his own the driver would not do so. What pretext could he give? And suppose the driver did bring him to the police? What could he say? That he was being followed? Would they believe him? It would seem absurd. He could prove nothing. The stranger, he was sure, would suavely sidestep any such situation. He himself would become an object of suspicion. They might even hold him as a mental case.
Despair overcame him. But as the darkened, rain-swept shop fronts moved in and out of his range of vision, one thought became uppermost: at all costs he could not let the stranger know where he lived.
Once his decision was made, he knew he would have to force himself to act immediately. Otherwise what little strength he had left would slip away.
Scrabbling for his wallet, he told the driver to stop. His voice came out so weak, nearly a block rolled past before the driver heard his desperately repeated commands and steered toward the curb.
The driver's morose, accusing face turned toward him questioningly.
"I — changed my mind," Mr. Oricto explained in a whisper. He handed the driver a bill. "Keep the change." He wrenched open the door and ran. Not once had he dared look toward the lean stranger.
The rain had stopped. A heavy mist was settling over the streets. It lifted from die pavements like wet smoke, obscuring vision.
As he raced through the mist, Mr. Oricto remembered that he had left his bag in the cab. He hardly cared now; he could run faster without it.
He had planned to enter a bar or restaurant which was still open, but now he saw with a fresh throb of fear that it was far later than he had realized. Every establishment was closed. The streets were utterly forsaken.
When he finally slowed to a walk, he was gasping. Out of condition. Why, that was strange. All his life he had been able to run, run effortlessly almost. Almost —
He stopped to listen. Behind him in the mist he heard the swift pad of approaching feet. They were running.
He bounded forward, sprinting faster than before. Pure terror drove him on. His legs worked like pistons.
But he was already out of breath; even stark terror could supply only so much animal energy.
He knew that his pursuer was gaining. As he rushed toward an intersection, he decided to turn at right angles. Perhaps, if he wasn't seen...
Just as he pivoted to turn, he shot a frenzied glance backwards.
The face of the lean stranger arrowed through the mist. He was running smoothly, head thrust forward. With a thrill of absolute horror, Mr. Oricto thought of a weasel he had once seen streaking through the woods in pursuit of some small animal.
Even as he turned the corner, he felt his maneuver had been detected. The sight of his fearful follower, however, impelled him to a new burst of speed.
The area he had turned into was more deserted and desolate than the previous one. Dark, rubbish-littered alleys opened on every side. Warehouses and abandoned windowless tenements lined the narrow street
Mr. Oricto's blood was pounding in his head. He felt dizzy, weak. He knew he would drop if he kept on running.
There was one last, desperate chance. Without daring to look around, he darted into a black alleyway. Halfway down he slammed into an empty crate, jagged with protruding wires, and skidded to his knees. Instead of getting up, he hopped on hands and knees and hid behind the crate.
The quick pad of footsteps approached, paused for a terror-filled instant and passed.
Mr. Oricto was just beginning to hope when they returned. They came softly down the alley toward the crate. He crouched helplessly against the wall while his heart thundered and all hope drained out of him.
The lean stranger bent above him, head thrust forward and down, eyes shining.
Even in his despair, a question nagged at Mr. Oricto. He could not put it into detailed words. All he managed was a faint whisper: "Why?"
The stranger looked down at him with something like mild surprise.
"Why?" he repeated. "Why?" He lifted his small neat head and chuckled with glee. His teeth gleamed.
"Why?" he said again, lowering his head. "Because you're a rabbit — and I was born to hunt rabbits?"
Mr. Oricto tried to scream but only a thin bleat of terror came out of his mouth.
An instant later the stranger's pointed teeth flashed toward his jugular.
Bram Stoker (1847-1912) who created Count Dracula, is listed in reference works throughout the world; but little is known of the Dublin-born author. Stoker was better known in his lifetime as the business manager of celebrated actor Henry Irving at London's Lyceum Theatre.
Writing was a hobby for Stoker, and he authored several novels before creating the most famous vampire in fiction. "Dracula's Guest" was excised from the original Dracula because of the length of the book.
The superstition-haunted rustic setting of Middle Europe is Stoker's canvas. In later chapters ominous and forbidding events befall Jonathan Harker, Professor Van Helsing, Lucy Westerna, and Renfield at the hands of their brooding host, Count Dracula.
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When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbruck (the maitre d'hotel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down bareheaded to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door, "Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be late." Here he smiled and added, "for you know what night it is."
Johann answered with an emphatic, "Ja, mein Hen," and, touching his hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after signaling to him to stop:
"Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?" He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: "Walpurgis nacht." Then he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing as big as a turnip and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered together and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders. I realized that this was his way of respectfully protesting against the unnecessary delay and sank back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. He started off rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. Every now and then the horses seemed to throw up their heads and sniff the air suspiciously. On such occasions I often looked round in alarm. The road was pretty bleak, for we were traversing a sort of high windswept plateau. As we drove, I saw a road that looked but little used and which seemed to dip through a little winding valley. It looked so inviting that, even at the risk of offending him, I called Johann to stop — and when he had pulled up, I told him I would like to drive down that road. He made all sorts of excuses and frequently crossed himself as he spoke. This somewhat piqued my curiosity, so I asked him various questions. He answered fencingly and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest.
Finally I said, "Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not ask you to come unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is all I ask." For answer he seemed to throw himself off the box, so quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands appealingly to me and implored me not to go. There was just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something — the very idea of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled himself up saying, "Walpurgis nacht!"
I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know his language. The advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native tongue — and every time he did so, he looked at his watch. Then the "horses became restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by the bridles, and led them on some twenty feet. I followed and asked why he had done this. For answer he crossed himself, pointed to the spot we had left, and drew his carriage in the direction of the other road, indicating a cross, and said, first in German, then in English, "Buried him — him what killed themselves."
I remembered the old custom of burying suicides at cross roads: "Ah! I see, a suicide. How interesting!" But for the life of me I could not make out why the horses were frightened.
Whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a bark. It was far away; but the horses got very restless, and it took Johann all his time to quiet them. He was pale and said, "It sounds like a wolf — but yet there are no wolves here now."
"No?" I said, questioning him. "Isn't it long since the wolves were so near the city?"
"Long, long," he answered, "in the spring and summer; but with the snow the wolves have been here not so long."
Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath of cold wind seemed to drift past us. It was only a breath, however, and more of a warning than a fact, for the sun came out brightly again.
Johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and said, "The storm of snow, he comes before long time." Then he looked at his watch again, and, straightway holding his reins firmly — for the horses were still pawing the ground restlessly and shaking their heads — he climbed to his box as though the time had come for proceeding on our journey.
I felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage.
"Tell me," I said, "about this place where the road leads," and I pointed down.
Again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer before he answered, "It is unholy."
"What is unholy?" I enquired.
"The village."
"Then there is a village?"
"No, no. No one lives there hundreds of years."
My curiosity was piqued, "But you said there was a village."
"There was."
"Where is it now?"
Whereupon he burst out into a long story in German and English, so mixed up that I could not quite understand exactly what he said. Roughly I gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died there and been buried in their graves; but sounds were heard under the clay, and when the graves were opened, men and women were found rosy with life and their mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save their lives (aye, and their souls! — and here he crossed himself) those who were left fled away to other places, where the living lived and the dead were dead and not — not something. He was evidently afraid to speak the last words. As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and more excited. It seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and he ended in a perfect paroxysm of fear — white-faced, perspiring, trembling, and looking round him as if expecting that some dreadful presence would manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open plain.
Finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried, "Walpurgis nacht!" and pointed to the carriage for me to get in.
All my English blood rose at this, and standing back I said, "You are afraid, Johann — you are afraid. Go home, I shall return alone, the walk will do me good." The carriage door was open. I took from the seat my oak walking stick — which I always carry on my holiday excursions — and closed the door, pointing back to Munich, and said, "Go home, Johann — Walpurgis nacht doesn't concern Englishmen."
The horses were now more restive than ever, and Johann was trying to hold them in, while excitedly imploring me not to do anything so foolish. I pitied the poor fellow, he was so deeply in earnest; but all the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native German. It began to be a little tedious. After giving the direction, "Home!" I turned to go down the cross road into the valley.
With a despairing gesture, Johann turned his horses towards Munich. I leaned on my stick and looked after him. He went slowly along the road for a while, and then there came over the crest of the hill a man tall and thin. I could see so much in the distance. When he drew near the horses, they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror. Johann could not hold them in; they bolted down the road, running away madly. I watched them out of sight, and then looked for the stranger; but I found that he, too, was gone.
With a light heart I turned down the side road through the deepening valley to which Johann had objected. There was not the slightest reason, that I could see, for his objection; and I daresay I tramped for a couple of hours without thinking of time or distance and certainly without seeing a person or a house. So far as the place was concerned, it was desolation itself. But I did not notice this particularly till, on turning a bend in the road, I came upon a scattered fringe of wood; then I recognized that I had been impressed unconsciously by the desolation of the region through which I had passed.
I sat down to rest myself and began to look around. It struck me that it was considerably colder than it had been at the commencement of my walk — a sort of sighing sound seemed to be around me with, now and then, high overhead, a sort of muffled roar. Looking upwards I noticed that great thick clouds were drafting rapidly across the sky from north to south at a great height. There were signs of a coming storm in some lofty stratum of the air. I was a little chilly, and, thinking that it was the sitting still after the exercise of walking, I resumed my journey.
The ground I passed over was now much more picturesque. There were no striking objects that the eye might single out, but in all there was a charm of beauty. I took little heed of time, and it was only when the deepening twilight forced itself upon me that I began to think of how I should find my way home. The brightness of the day had gone. The air was cold, and the drifting of clouds high overhead was more marked. They were accompanied by a sort of far away rushing sound; through which seemed to come at intervals that mysterious cry which the driver had said came from a wolf. For a while I hesitated. I had said I would see the deserted village, so on I went and presently came on a wide stretch of open country, shut in by hills all around. Their sides were covered with trees, which spread down to the plain, dotting in clumps the gentler slopes, and hollows, which showed here and there. I followed with my eye the winding of the road and saw that it curved close to one of the densest of these clumps and was lost behind it.
As I looked there came a cold shiver in the air, and the snow began to fall. I thought of the miles and miles of bleak country I had passed, and then hurried on to seek the shelter of the wood in front. Darker and darker grew the sky, and faster and heavier fell the snow, till the earth before and around me was a glistening white carpet the further edge of which was lost in misty vagueness. The road was here but crude, and when on the level its boundaries were not so marked as when it passed through the cuttings; and in a little while I found that I must have strayed from it, for I missed underfoot the hard surface, and my feet sank deeper in the grass and moss. Then the wind grew stronger and blew with ever increasing force, till I was fain to run before it. The air became icy-cold, and in spite of my exercise I began to suffer. The snow was now falling so thickly and whirling around me in such rapid eddies mat I could hardly keep my eyes open. Every now and then the heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning, and in the flashes I could see ahead of me a great mass of trees, chiefly yew and cypress all heavily coated with snow.
I was soon amongst the shelter of the trees, and there in comparative silence I could hear the rush of the wind high overhead. Presently the blackness of the storm had become merged in the darkness of the night. By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away, it now only came in fierce puffs or blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the wolf appeared to be echoed by many similar sounds around me.
Now and again, through the black mass of drifting cloud, came a straggling ray of moonlight, which lit up the expanse and showed me that I was at the edge of a dense mass of cypress and yew trees. As the snow had ceased to fall, I walked out from the shelter and began to investigate more closely. It appeared to me that, amongst so many old foundations as I had passed, there might be still standing a house in which, though in ruins, I could find some sort of shelter for a while. As I skirted the edge of the copse, I found that a low wall encircled it, and following this I presently found an opening. Here the cypresses formed an alley leading up to a square mass of some kind of building. Just as I caught sight of this, however, the drifting clouds obscured the moon, and I passed up the path in darkness. The wind must have grown colder, for I felt myself shiver as I walked; but there was hope of shelter, and I groped my way blindly on.
I stopped, for there was a sudden stillness. The storm had passed; and, perhaps in sympathy with nature's silence, my heart seemed to cease to beat. But this was only momentarily; for suddenly the moonlight broke though the clouds showing me that I was in a graveyard and that the square object before me was a great massive tomb of marble, as white as the snow that lay on and all around it. With the moonlight there came a fierce sigh of the storm, which appeared to resume its course with a long, low howl, as of many dogs or wolves. I was awed and shocked, and I felt the cold perceptibly grow upon me till it seemed to grip me by the heart. Then while the flood of moonlight still fell on the marble tomb, the storm gave further evidence of renewing, as though it were returning on its track. Impelled by some sort of fascination, I approached the sepulchre to see what it was and why such a thing stood alone in such a place. I walked around it and read, over the Doric door, in German –
COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF
GHATZ
IN STYRIA
SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH.
1801
On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble — for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone — was a great iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters: "The dead travel fast"
There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. I began to wish, for the first time, that I had taken Johann's advice. Here a thought struck me, which came under almost mysterious circumstances and with a terrible shock. This was Walpurgis Night!
Walpurgis Night was when, according to the belief of millions of people, the devil was abroad — when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel. This very place the driver had specially shunned. This was the depopulated village of centuries ago. This was where the suicide lay; and this was the place where I was alone — unmanned, shivering with cold in a shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again upon me! It took all my philosophy, all the religion I had been taught, and all my courage, not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.
And now a perfect tornado burst upon me. The ground shook as though thousands of horses thundered across it; and this time the storm bore on its icy wings, not snow, but great hailstones which drove with such violence that they might have come from the thongs of Balearic slingers — hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the shelter of the cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were standing corn. At the first I had rushed to the nearest tree; but I was soon fain to leave it and seek the only spot that seemed to afford refuge, the deep Doric doorway of the marble tomb. There, crouching against the massive bronze door, I gained a certain amount of protection from the beating of the hailstones, for now they only drove against me as they ricocheted from the ground and the side of the marble.
As I leaned against the door, it moved slightly and opened inwards. The shelter of even a tomb was welcome in that pitiless tempest and I was about to enter it when there came a flash of forked lightning that lit up the whole expanse of the heavens. In the instant, as I am a living man, I saw, as my eyes were turned into the darkness of the tomb, a beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier. As the thunder broke overhead, I was grasped as by the hand of a giant and hurled out into the storm. The whole thing was so sudden that, before I could realize the shock, moral as well as physical, I found the hailstones beating me down. At the same time I had a strange, dominating feeling that I was not alone. I looked towards the tomb. Just then there came another blinding flash, which seemed to strike the iron stake that surmounted the tomb and to pour through to the earth, blasting and crumbling the marble, as in a burst of flame. The dead woman rose for a moment of agony while she was lapped in the flame, and her bitter scream of pain was drowned in the thunder crash. The last thing I heard was this mingling of dreadful sound, as again I was seized in the giant grasp and dragged away, while the hailstones beat on me and the air around seemed reverberant with the howling of wolves. The last sight that I remembered was a vague, white, moving mass, as if all the graves around me had sent out the phantoms of their sheeted dead, and that they were closing in on me through the white cloudiness of the driving hail.
Gradually there came a sort of vague beginning of consciousness, then a sense of weariness that was dreadful. For a time I remembered nothing, but slowly my senses returned. My feet seemed positively racked with pain, yet I could not move them. They seemed to be numbed. There was an icy feeling at the back of my neck and all down my spine, and my ears, like my feet, were dead yet in torment; but there was in my breast a sense of warmth which was by comparison delicious. It was as a nightmare — a physical nightmare, if one may use such an expression; for some heavy weight on my chest made it difficult for me to breathe.
This period of semi-lethargy seemed to remain a long time, and as it faded away I must have slept or swooned. Then came a sort of loathing, like the first stage of seasickness, and a wild desire to be free from something — I knew not what. A vast stillness enveloped me, as though all the world were asleep or dead — only broken by the low panting as of some animal close to me. I felt a warm rasping at my throat, and then came a consciousness of the awful truth, which chilled me to the heart and sent the blood surging up through my brain. Some great animal was lying on me and now licking my throat. I feared to stir, for some instinct of prudence bade me lie still; but the brute seemed to realize that there was now some change in me, for it raised its head. Through my eyelashes I saw above me the two great flaming eyes of a gigantic wolf. Its sharp white teeth gleamed in the gaping red mouth, and I could feel its hot breath fierce and acrid upon me.
For another spell of time I remembered no more. Then I became conscious of a low growl, followed by a yelp, renewed again and again. Then, seemingly very far away, I heard a "Holloa! holloa!" as of many voices calling in unison. Cautiously I raised my head and looked in the direction whence the sound came, but the cemetery blocked my view. The wolf still continued to yelp in a strange way, and a red glare began to move round the grove of cypresses, as though following the sound. As the voices drew closer, the wolf yelped faster and louder. I feared to make either sound or motion. Nearer came the red glow over the white pall which stretched into the darkness around me. Then all at once from beyond the trees there came at a trot a troop of horsemen bearing torches. The wolf rose from my breast and made for the cemetery. I saw one of the horsemen (soldiers by their caps and their long military cloaks) raise his carbine and take aim. A companion knocked up his arm, and I heard the ball whiz over my head. He had evidently taken my body for that of the wolf. Another sighted the animal as it slunk away, and a shot followed. Then, at a gallop, the troop rode forward — some towards me, others following the wolf as it disappeared amongst the snow-clad cypresses.
As they drew nearer I tried to move but was powerless, although I could see and hear all that went on around me. Two or three of the soldiers jumped from their horses and knelt beside me. One of them raised my head and placed his hand over my heart
"Good news, comrades!" he cried. "His heart still beats!"
Then some brandy was poured down my throat; it put vigor into me, and I was able to open my eyes fully and look around. Lights and shadows were moving among the trees, and I heard men call to one another. They drew together, uttering frightened exclamations; and the lights flashed as the others came pouring out of the cemetery pell-mell, like men possessed. When the further ones came close to us, those who were around me asked them eagerly, "Well, have you found him?"
The reply rang out hurriedly, "No! No! Come away quick — quick! This is no place to stay, and on this of all nights!"
"What was it?" was the question, asked in all manner of keys. The answer came variously and all indefinitely as though the men were moved by some common impulse to speak yet were restrained by some common fear from giving their thoughts.
"It — it — indeed!" gibbered one, whose wits had plainly given out for the moment.
"A wolf — and yet not a wolf!" another put in shudderingly.
"No use trying for him without the sacred bullet," a third remarked in a more ordinary mariner.
"Serve us right for coming out on this night! Truly we have earned our thousand marks!" were the ejaculations of a fourth.
"There was blood on the broken marble," another said after a pause, "the lightning never brought that there. And for him — is he safe? Look at his throat! See comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his blood warm."
The officer looked at my throat and replied, "He is all right, and the skin is not pierced. What does it all mean? We should never have found him but for the yelping of the wolf."
"What became of it?" asked the man who was holding up my head and who seemed the least panic-stricken of the party, for his hands were steady and without tremor. On his sleeve was the chevron of a petty officer.
"It went to its home," answered the man, whose long face was pallid and who actually shook with terror as he glanced around him fearfully. "There are graves enough there in which it may lie. Come, comrades — come quickly! Let us leave this cursed spot."
The officer raised me to a sitting posture, as he uttered a word of command; then several men placed me upon a horse. He sprang to the saddle behind me, took me in his arms, gave the word to advance; and, turning our faces away from the cypresses, we rode away in swift, military order.
As yet my tongue refused its office, and I was perforce silent. I must have fallen asleep; for the next thing I remembered was finding myself standing up, supported by a soldier on each side of me. It was almost broad daylight, and to the north a red streak of sunlight was reflected like a path of blood over the waste of snow. The officer was telling the men to say nothing of what they had seen, except that they found an English stranger, guarded by a large dog.
"Dog! That was no dog," cut in the man who had exhibited such fear. "I think I know a wolf when I see one."
The young officer answered calmly, "I said a dog."
"Dog!" reiterated the other ironically. It was evident that his courage was rising with the sun; and, pointing to me, he said, "Look at his throat. Is that the work of a dog, master?"
Instinctively I raised my hand to my throat, and as I touched it I cried out in pain. The men crowded round to look, some stooping down from their saddles; and again there came the calm voice of the young officer, "A dog, as I said. If aught else were said we should only be laughed at,"
I was then mounted behind a trooper, and we rode on into the suburbs of Munich. Here we came across a stray carriage into which I was lifted, and it was driven off to the Quatre Saisons — the young officer accompanying me, whilst a trooper followed with his horse, and the others rode off to their barracks.
When we arrived, Herr Delbruck rushed so quickly down the steps to meet me, that it was apparent he had been watching within. Taking me by both hands he solicitously led me in. The officer saluted me and was turning to withdraw, when I recognized his purpose and insisted that he should come to my rooms. Over a glass of wine I warmly thanked him and his brave comrades for saving me. He replied simply that he was more than glad, and that Herr Delbruck had at the first taken steps to make all the searching party pleased; at which ambiguous utterance the maitre d'hotel smiled, while the officer pleaded duty and withdrew.
"But Herr Delbruck," I enquired, "how and why was it that the soldiers searched for me?" He shrugged his shoulders, as if in depreciation of his own deed, as he replied, "I was so fortunate as to obtain leave from the commander of the regiment in which I served, to ask for volunteers."
"But how did you know I was lost?" I asked.
"The driver came hither with the remains of his carriage, which had been upset when the horses ran away."
"But surely you would not send a search party of soldiers merely on this account?"
"Oh, no!" he answered, "but even before the coachman arrived, I had this telegram from the Boyar whose guest you are," and he took from his pocket a telegram which he handed to me, and I read:
BISTRITZ.
Be careful of my guest — his safety is most precious to me. Should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you suspect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune. — Dracula.
As I held the telegram in my hand, the room seemed to whirl around me; and, if the attentive maitre d'hotel had not caught me, I think I should have fallen. There was something so strange in all this, something so weird and impossible to imagine, that there grew on me a sense of my being in some way the sport of opposite forces — the mere vague idea of which seemed in a way to paralyze me. I was certainly under some form of mysterious protection. From a distant country had come, in the very nick of time, a message that took me out of the danger of the snow sleep and the jaws of the wolf.
August Derleth (1909-1971) was born in Sauk City, Wisconsin and began writing at the age of 13. With over 150 books to his credit as well as countless pieces in prose and poetry, he was the founder and publisher of Arkham House, oldest publishing firm for macabre fiction.
"Bat's Belfry" was Derleth's first published story, written at the age of 15. It appears to have been written as the imaginative teenager's answer to Bram Stoker's Dracula. Note the copy of that novel found by the main character.
Like Stoker, Derleth used the letter and diary technique to allow the reader a closer identification with the protagonist. Derleth's story also shows his interest in the leading authorities or the occult, fact and fictional.
* Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, 580 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 1003a
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The following letter was found among the papers of the late Sir Harry Everett Barclay of Charing Cross, London.
June 10, 1925
My dear Marc, Having received no answer to my card, I can only surmise that it did not reach you. I am writing from my summer home here on the moor, a very secluded place. I hope that you will give me a pleasant surprise by dropping in on me soon (as you hinted you might), for this is just the kind of house that would intrigue you. It is very similar to the Baskerville home, which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes in his Hound of the Baskervilles. Vague rumors have it that the place is the abode of evil spirits, which idea I promptly and emphatically pooh-poohed. You know that in the spiritual world I am but slightly interested, and that it is in wizardry that I delight. The thought that this quiet little building in the heart of England's peaceful moors should be the home of a multitude of evil spirits seems very foolish to me. However, the surroundings are exceedingly healthful and the house itself is partly an antique, which arouses my interest in archeology. So you see there is enough to divert my attention from these foolish rumors. Leon, my valet, is here with me and so is old Mortimer. You remember Mortimer, who always prepared such excellent bachelor dinners for us?
I have been here just twelve days, and I have explored this old house from cellar to garret. In the latter I brought to light an aged trunk, which I searched and in which I found nine old books, several of whose title pages were torn away. One of the books, which I took to the small garret window, I finally distinguished as Dracula by Bram Stoker, and this I at once decided was one of the first editions of the book ever printed.
At the cessation of the first three days, a typical English fog descended with a vengeance upon the moor. At the first indication of this prank of the elements, which threatened completely to obscure the beautiful weather of the past, I had hauled out all the discoveries I had made in the garret of this building. Bram Stoker's Dracula I have already mentioned. There is also a book on the Black Art by De Rochas. Three books, by Orfilo, Swedenborg, and Cagliostro, I have laid temporarily aside. Then there are also Strindberg's The Inferno, Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, Poe's Eureka, and Flammarion's Atmosphere. You, my dear friend, may well imagine with what excitement these books filled me, for you know I am inclined toward sorcery. Orfilo, you know, was but a chemist and physiologist; Swedenborg and Strindberg, two who might be called mystics; Poe, whose Eureka did not aid me much in the path, of witchcraft, nevertheless fascinated me; but the remaining five were as gold to me. Cagliostro, court magician of France; Madame Blavatsky, the priestess of Isis and of the Occult Doctrine; Dracula, with all its vampires; Flammarion's Atmosphere, with its diagnosis of the Gods of peoples; and De Rochas, of whom all I can say is to quote from August Strindberg's The Inferno, the following: "I do not excuse myself, and only ask the reader to remember this fact, in case he should ever feel inclined to practice magic, especially those forms of it called wizardry, or more properly witchcraft: that its reality has been placed beyond all doubt by De Rochas."
Truly, my friend, I wondered, for I had good reason to do so, what manner of man had resided here before my coming, who should be so fascinated by Poe, Orfilo, Strindberg, and De Rochas — four different types of authors. Fog or no fog, I determined to find out. There is not another dwelling near here and the nearest source of information is a village some miles away. This is rather odd, for this moor does not seem an undesirable place for a summer home. I stored the books away, and after informing my valet of my intentions to walk some miles to the village, I started out. I had not gone far when Leon decided to accompany me, leaving Mortimer alone in the fog-surrounded house.
Leon and I established very little in the town. After a conversation with one of the grocers in the village, the only communicative person that we accosted, we found that the man who had last occupied the house was a Baronet Lohrville. It seemed that the people held the late baronet in awe, for they hesitated to speak of him. This grocer related a tale concerning the disappearance of four girls one dark night some years ago. Popular belief had and still has it that the baronet kidnapped them. This idea seems utterly ludicrous to me, for the superstitious villagers cannot substantiate their suspicions. By the way, this merchant also informed us that the Lohrville home is called the "Bat's Belfry." Personally I can see no connection between the residence and the ascribed title, as I have not noticed any bats around during my sojourn here.
Mortimer, who complained of bats in the cellar — a rather queer coincidence, rudely interrupted my meditations on this matter. He said that he continually felt them brushing against his cheeks and that he feared they would become entangled in his hair. Of course Leon and I went down to look for them, but we could not see any of them. However Leon stated that one struck him, which I doubt. It is just possible that sudden draughts of air may have been the cause of the delusions.
This incident, Marc, was just the forerunner of the odd things that have been occurring since then. I am about to enumerate the most important of these incidents to you, and I hope you will be able to explain them.
Three days ago activities started in earnest. At that date Mortimer came to me and breathlessly informed me that no light could be kept in the cellar. Leon and I investigated and found that under no circumstances could a lamp or match be kept lit in the cellar, just as Mortimer had said. My only explanation of this is that it is due to the air currents in the cellar, which seemed disturbed. It is true a flashlight could be kept alight, but even that seemed dimmed. I cannot attempt to explain the latter fact.
Yesterday Leon, who is a devout Catholic, took a few drops from a flask of holy water, which he continually carries with him, and descended into the cellar with the firm intention of driving out, if there were therein ensconced, any evil spirits. On the bottom of the steps I noticed some time ago a large stone tablet. As Leon came down the steps a large drop of the blessed fluid fell on this tablet. The drop of water actually sizzled while Leon muttered some incantations, in the midst of which he suddenly stopped and fled precipitantly, mumbling that the cellar was incontestably the very entrance to hell, guarded by the fiend incarnate himself! I confess to you, my dear Marc, that I was astounded at this remarkable occurrence.
Last night, while the three of us sat together in the spacious drawing room of this building, the lamp was blown out. I say blown out because there is no doubt that it was, and by some superhuman agency. There was not a breath of air stirring outside, yet I, who was sitting just across from the lamp, felt a cool draught. No one else noticed this draught. It was just as if someone directly opposite me had blown forcibly at the lamp or as if the wing of a powerful bird had passed by it.
There can be no doubt there is something radically wrong in this house, and I am determined to find out what it is, regardless of consequences.
(Here the letter terminates abruptly, as if it were to be completed at a later date.)
The two doctors bending over the body of Sir Harry Barclay in Lohrville Manor at last ceased their examinations.
"I cannot account for this astounding loss of blood, Dr. Mordaunt."
"Neither can I, Dr. Greene. He is so devoid of blood that some supernatural agency must have kept him alive!" He laughed lightly.
"About this loss of blood — I was figuring on internal hemorrhages as the cause, but there are absolutely no signs of anything of the sort According to the expression of his features, which is too horrible for even me to gaze at — "
"And me."
" — he died from some terrible fear of something, or else he witnessed some horrifying scene."
"Most likely the latter."
"I think we had better pronounce death due to internal hemorrhage and apoplexy."
"I agree."
"Then we shall do so."
The physicians bent over the open book on the table. Suddenly Dr. Greene straightened up and his hand delved into his pocket and came out with a match.
"Here is a match, Dr. Mordaunt. Scratch it and apply the flame to that book and say nothing to anyone."
"It is for the best,"
Excerpts from the journal of Sir Harry E. Barclay, found beside his body in Lohrville Manor on July 17,1925.
June 25 — Last night I had a curious nightmare. I dreamed that I met a beautiful girl in the wood around my father's castle in Lancaster. Without knowing why, we embraced, our lips meeting and remaining in the position for at least half an hour! Queer dream that! I must have had another nightmare of a different nature, although I cannot recall it; for, upon looking in the mirror this morning, I found my face devoid of all colour – rather drawn.
Later — Leon has told me that he had a similar dream, and as he is a confirmed misogynist, I cannot interpret it. Strange that it should be so parallel to mine in every way.
June 29 — Mortimer came to me early this morning and said he would not stay another instant, for he had certainly seen a ghost last night. A handsome old man, he said. He seemed horrified that the old man had kissed him. He must have dreamed it. I persuaded him to stay on these grounds and solemnly told him to say nothing about it. Leon remarked that the dream had returned in every particular to him the preceding night, and that he was not feeling well. I advised him to see a doctor, but he roundly refused to do so. He said, referring to the horrible nightmare (as he termed it), that tonight he would sprinkle a few drops of holy water on himself and that (he stated) would drive away any evil influence, if there were any, connected with his dreams. Strange that he should attribute everything to evil entities!
Later — I made some inquiries today and I find that the description of the Baronet Lohrville fits to every detail the "ghost" of Mortimer's dream. I also learned that several small children disappeared from the countryside during the life of the last of the Lohrvilles — not that they should be connected, but it seems the ignorant people ascribe their vanishing to the baronet.
June 30 — Leon claims he did not have the dream (which, by the way, revisited me last night), because of the potent effect of the holy water.
July 1 — Mortimer has left. He says he cannot live in the same house with the devil. It seems he must have actually seen the ghost of old Lohrville, although Leon scoffs at the idea.
July 4 — I had the same dream again last night. I felt very ill this morning, but was able to dispel the feeling easily during the day. Leon has used all the holy water, but as tomorrow is Sunday he will get some at the village parish when he attends mass.
July 5 — I tried to procure the services of another chef this morning in the village, but I am all at sea. No one in the town will enter the house, not even for one hundred pounds a week, they declare! I shall be forced to get along without one or send to London.
Leon experienced a misfortune today. Riding home after mass, his holy water spilled almost all from the bottle, and later the bottle, containing the remainder of it, fell to the ground and broke. Leon, nonplussed, remarked that he would get another as soon as possible from the parish priest.
July 6 — Both of us had the dream again last night. I feel rather weak, and Leon does, too. Leon went to a doctor, who asked him whether he had been cut, or severely injured so as to cause a heavy loss of blood, or if he had suffered from internal hemorrhages. Leon said no, and the doctor prescribed raw onions and some other things for Leon to eat. Leon forgot his holy water.
July 9 — The dream again. Leon had a different nightmare — about an old man, who, he said, bit him. I asked him to show me where the man had bitten him in his dream, and when he loosened his collar to show me, sure enough, there were two tiny punctures on his throat. He and I are both feeling miserably weak.
July 15 — Leon left me today. I am firmly convinced that he went suddenly mad, for this morning he evinced an intense desire to invade the cellar again. He said that something seemed to draw him. I did not stop him, and some time later, as I was engrossed in a volume of Wells, he came shrieking up the cellar steps and dashed madly through the room in which I sat. I ran after him and, cornering him in his room, forcibly detained him. I asked for an explanation and all he could do was moan over and over. "Mon Dieu, Monsieur, leave this accursed place at once. Leave it, Monsieur, I beg of you. Le diable — le diabler At length he dashed away from me and ran at top speed from the house, I after him. In the road I shouted after him, and all I could catch of the words wafted back to me by the wind, were: "Lamais — le diable — Mon — Dieu -tablet — Book of Thoth." All very significant words, "Le diable" and "Mon Dieu" — "the devil" and "my God" — I paid little attention to. But Lamais was a species of female vampire known intimately to a few select sorcerers only, and the Book of Thoth was the Egyptian book of magic. For a few minutes I entertained the rather wild fancy that the Book of Thoth was ensconced somewhere in this building, and as I racked my brains for a suitable connection between "tablet" and Book of Thoth I at last became convinced that the book lay beneath the tablet at the foot of the cellar steps. I am going down to investigate.
July 16 — I have it! The Book of Thoth! It was below the stone tablet as I thought. The spirits guarding it evidently did not wish me to disturb its resting place, for they roused the air currents to a semblance of a gale while I worked to get the stone away. A heavy lock of antique pattern secures the book.
I had the dream again last night, but in addition I could almost swear that I saw the ghosts of old Lohrville and four beautiful girls. What a coincidence! I am very weak today, hardly able to walk around. There is no doubt that this house is infested, not by bats, but by vampires! Lamais! If I could only find their corpses I would drive sharp stakes through them.
Later — I made a new and shocking discovery today. I went down to the place where the tablet lay, and another rock below the cavity wherein the Book of Thoth had lain gave way below me and I found myself in a vault with about a score of skeletons — all of little children! If vampires inhabit this house, it is only too obvious that these skeletons are those of their unfortunate victims. However, I firmly believe that there is another cavern somewhere below, wherein the bodies of the vampires are hidden.
Later — I have been looking over the book by De Rochas and I have hit upon an excellent plan to discover the bodies of the vampiresl I shall use the Book of Thoth to summon the vampires before me and force them to reveal the hiding place of their voluptuous bodies! De Rochas says that it can be done.
Nine o'clock — As the conditions are excellent at this time I am going to start to summon the vampires. Someone is passing and I hope he or she does not interrupt me in my work or tell anyone in the town to look in here. The book, as I mentioned before, is secured by a heavy seal, and I had trouble to loosen it. At last I succeeded in breaking it and I opened the book to find the place I need in my work of conjuring up the vampires. I found it and I am beginning my incantations. The atmosphere in the room is changing slowly and it is becoming intolerably dark. The air currents in the room are swirling angrily, and the lamp has gone out... I am confident that the vampires will appear soon.
I am correct. There are some shades materializing in the room. They are becoming more distinct... there are five or them, four females and one male. Their features are very distinct.... They are casting covert glances in my direction.... Now they are glaring malevolently at me.
Good God! I have forgotten to place myself in a magic circle and I greatly fear the vampires will attack me! I am only too correct. They are moving in my direction. My God!... But stay! They are halting! The old baronet is gazing at me with his glittering eyes fiery with hate. The four female vampires smile voluptuously upon me.
Now, if ever, is my chance to break their evil spell. Prayer? But I cannot pray! I am forever banished from the sight of God for calling upon Satan to aid me. But even for that I cannot pray... I am hypnotized by the malefic leer disfiguring the countenance of the baronet. There is a sinister gleam in the eyes of the four beautiful ghouls. They glide toward me, arms outstretched. Their sinuous, obnoxious forms are before me; their crimson lips curved in a diabolically triumphant smile. I cannot bear to see the soft caress of their tongues on their red lips. I am resisting with all the power of my will, but what is one mere will against an infernal horde of ghouls?
God! Their foul presence taints my very soul! The baronet is moving forward. His mordacious propinquity casts a reviling sensation of obscenity about me. If I cannot appeal to God I must implore Satan to grant me time to construct the magic circle.
I cannot tolerate their virulence... I endeavor to rise but I cannot do so... I am no longer master of my own will! The vampires are leering demoniacally at me... I am doomed to die... and yet to live forever in the ranks of the Undead.
Their faces are approaching closer to mine and soon I shall sink into oblivion... but anything is better than this... to see the malignant Undead around me... A sharp stinging sensation in my throat... My God!... it is —...
Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909), the Italian-born American historian and novelist, was a true cosmopolite. He was educated at Concord, New Hampshire, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Karlsruhe and Heidelberg in Germany. Crawford studied Sanskrit in Rome, edited the Indian Herald in Allahabad, revisited America for two years (1881-1883), and returned to Italy for the rest of his life.
"For the Blood Is the Life" is one of Crawford's rare excursions from romantic and historical works to stories of the supernatural. The story is set in Italy, and unorthodoxly features a vampiric twist. The female is tormentor; the male, victim. Observe the word "vamp" and its meaning: "a woman who uses her attraction to bring her lover to an impoverished condition."
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We had dined at sunset on the broad roof of the old tower, because it was cooler there during the great heat of summer. Besides, the little kitchen was built at one corner of the great square platform, which made it more convenient than if the dishes had to be carried down the steep stone steps, broken in places and everywhere worn with age. The tower was one of those built all down the west coast of Calabria by the Emperor Charles V early in the sixteenth century to keep off the Barbary pirates, when the unbelievers were allied with Francis I against the Emperor and the Church. They have gone to ruin, a few still stand intact, and mine is one of the largest. How it came into my possession ten years ago, and why I spend a part of each year in it, are matters, which do not concern this tale. The tower stands in one of the loneliest spots in Southern Italy, at the extremity of a curving rocky promontory, which forms a small but sate natural harbor at the southern extremity of the Gulf of Policastro, and just north of Cape Scalea, the birthplace of Judas Iscariot, according to the old local legend. The tower stands alone on this hooked spur of the rock, and there is not a house to be seen within three miles of it. When I go there I take a couple of sailors, one of whom is a fair cook; and when I am away it is in the charge of a gnomelike little being who was once a miner and who attached himself to me long ago.
My friend, who sometimes visits me in my summer solitude, is an artist by profession, a Scandinavian by birth, and a cosmopolitan by force of circumstances. We had dined at sunset; the sunset glow had reddened and faded again, and the evening purple steeped the vast chain of the mountains that embrace the deep gulf to eastward and rear themselves higher and higher toward the south. It was hot, and we sat at the landward corner of the platform, waiting for the night breeze to come down from the lower hills. The color sank out of the air; there was a little interval of deep gray twilight, and a lamp sent a yellow streak from the open door of the kitchen where the men were getting their supper.
Then the moon rose suddenly above the crest of the promontory, flooding the platform and lighting up every little spur of rock and knoll of grass below us, down to the edge of the motionless water. My friend lighted his pipe and sat looking at a spot on the hillside. I knew that he was looking at it, and for a long time past I had wondered whether he would ever see anything there that would fix his attention. I knew that spot well. It was clear that he was interested at last, though it was a long time before he spoke. Like most painters, he trusts to his own eyesight as a lion trusts his strength and a stag his speed; and he is always disturbed when he cannot reconcile what he sees with what he believes that he ought to see.
"It's strange," he said. "Do you see that little mound just on this side of the boulder?"
"Yes," I said, and I guessed what was coming.
"It looks like a grave," observed Holger.
"Very true. It does look like a grave."
"Yes," continued my friend, his eyes still fixed on the spot. "But the strange thing is that I see the body lying on the top of it. Of course," continued Holger, turning his head on one side as artists do, "it must be an effect of light. In the first place, it is not a grave at all. Secondly, if it were, the body would be inside and not outside. Therefore, it's an effect of the moonlight. Don't you see it?"
"Perfectly; I always see it on moonlight nights."
"It doesn't seem to interest you much," said Holger.
"On the contrary, it does interest me, though I am used to it. You're not so far wrong, either. The mound is really a grave."
"Nonsense!" cried Holger, incredulously. "I suppose you'll tell me what I see lying on it is really a corpse!"
"No," I answered, "it's not. I know, because I have taken the trouble to go down and see."
"Then what is it?" asked Holger.
"It's nothing."
"You mean that it's an effect of light, I suppose?"
"Perhaps it is. But the inexplicable part of the matter is that it makes no difference whether the moon is rising or setting, or waxing or waning. If there's any moonlight at all, from east or west or overhead, so long as it shines on the grave you can see the outline of the body on top."
Holger stirred up his pipe with the point of his knife, and then used his finger for a stopper. When the tobacco burned well he rose from his chair. "If you don't mind," he said, "I'll go down and take a look at it."
He left me, crossed the roof, and disappeared down the dark steps. I did not move, but sat looking down until he came out of the tower below. I heard him humming an Old Danish song as he crossed the open space in the bright moonlight, going straight to the mysterious mound. When Holger was ten paces from it, he stopped short, made two steps forward, and then three or four backward, and then stopped again. I know what that meant. He had reached the spot where the Thing ceased to be visible — where, as he would have said, the effect of light changed.
Then he went on till he reached the mound and stood upon it. I could see the Thing still, but it was no longer lying down; it was on its knees now, winding its white arms round Holger's body and looking up into his face. A cool breeze stirred my hair at that moment, as the night wind began to come down from the hills, but it felt like a breath from another world.
The Thing seemed to be trying to climb to its feet, helping itself up by Holger's body while he stood upright, quite unconscious of it and apparently looking toward the tower, which is very picturesque when the moonlight falls upon it on that side.
"Come along!" I shouted. "Don't stay there all night!"
It seemed to me that he moved reluctantly as he stepped from the mound, or else with difficulty. That was it. The Thing's arms were still round his waist, but its feet could not leave the grave. As he came slowly forward it was drawn and lengthened like a wreath of mist, thin and white, till I saw distinctly that Holger shook himself, as a man does who feels a chill. At the same instant a little wail of pain came to me on the breeze — it might have been the cry of the small owl that lives among the rocks — and the misty presence floated swiftly back from Holger's advancing figure and lay once more at its length upon the mound.
Again I felt the cool breeze in my hair, and this time an icy thrill of dread ran down my spine. I remembered very well that I had once gone down there alone in the moonlight; that presently, being near, I had seen nothing; that, like Holger, I had gone and had stood upon the mound; and I remembered how, when I came back, sure that there was nothing there, I had felt the sudden conviction that there was something after all if I would only look behind me. I remembered the strong temptation to look back, a temptation I had resisted as unworthy of a man of sense, until, to get rid of it, I had shaken myself just as Holger did.
And now I knew that those white, misty arms had been round me too; I knew it in a flash, and I shuddered as I remembered that I had heard the night owl then too. But it had not been the night owl. It was the cry of the Thing.
I refilled my pipe and poured out a cup of strong southern wine; in less than a minute Holger was seated beside me again.
"Of course there's nothing there," he said, "but it's creepy, all the same. Do you know, when I was coming back I was so sure that there was something behind me that I wanted to turn round and look? It was an effort not to."
He laughed a little, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and poured himself out some wine. For a while neither of us spoke, and the moon rose higher, and we both looked at the Tiling that lay on the mound.
"You might make a story about that," said Holger after a long time.
"There is one," I answered. "If you're not sleepy, I'll tell it to you."
"Go ahead," said Holger, who likes stories.
Old Alario was dying up there in the village behind the hill. You remember him, I have no doubt. They say that he made his money by selling sham jewelry in South America and escaped with his gains when he was found out. Like all those fellows, if they bring anything back with them, he at once set to work to enlarge his house, and as there are no masons here, he sent all the way to Paola for two workmen. They were a rough-looking pair of scoundrels — a Neapolitan who had lost one eye and a Sicilian with an old scar half an inch deep across his left cheek. I often saw them, for on Sundays they used to come down here and fish off the rocks. When Alario caught the fever that killed him the masons were still at work. As he had agreed that part of their pay should be their board and lodging, he made them sleep in the house. His wife was dead, and he had an only son called Angelo, who was a much better sort than himself. Angelo was to marry the daughter of the richest man in the village, and, strange to say, though their parents arranged the marriage, the young people were said to be in love with each other.
For that matter, the whole village was in love with Angelo, and among the rest a wild, good-looking creature called Cristina, who was more like a gipsy than any girl I ever saw about here. She had very red lips and very black eyes; she was built like a greyhound and had the tongue of the devil. But Angelo did not care a straw for her. He was rather a simple-minded fellow, quite different from his old scoundrel of a father; and under what I should call normal circumstances I really believe that he would never have looked at any girl except the nice plump little creature, with a fat dowry, whom his father meant him to marry. But things turned up which were neither normal nor natural. On the other hand, a very handsome young shepherd from the hills above Maratea was in love with Cristina, who seems to have been quite indifferent to him. Cristina had no regular means of subsistence, but she was a good girl and willing to do any work or go on errands to any distance for the sake of a loaf of bread or a mess of beans and permission to sleep under cover. She was especially glad when she could get something to do about the house of Angelo's father. There is no doctor in the village, and when the neighbors saw that old Alario was dying they sent Cristina to Scalea to fetch one. That was late in the afternoon, and if they had waited so long, it was because the dying miser refused to allow any such extravagance while he was able to speak. But while Cristina was gone matters grew rapidly worse. The priest was brought to the bedside; and when he had done what he could he gave it as his opinion to the bystanders that the old man was dead, and left the house.
You know these people. They have a physical horror of death. Until the priest spoke, the room had been full of people. The words were hardly out of his mouth before it was empty. It was night now. They hurried down the dark steps and out into the street.
Angelo, as I have said, was away, Cristina had not come back — the simple woman-servant who had nursed the sick man fled with the rest, and the body was left alone in the flickering light of the earthen oil lamp.
Five minutes later two men looked in cautiously and crept forward toward the bed. They were the one-eyed Neapolitan mason and his Sicilian companion. They knew what they wanted. In a moment they had dragged from under the bed a small but heavy iron-bound box, and long before anyone thought of coming back to the dead man they had left the house and the village under cover of the darkness. It was easy enough, for Alario's house is the last toward the gorge which leads down here; and the thieves merely went out by the back door, got over the stone wall, and had nothing to risk after that except the possibility of meeting some belated countryman, which was very small indeed, since few of the people use that path. They had a mattock and shovel, and they made their way here without accident.
I am telling you this story, as it must have happened, for, of course, there were no witnesses to this part of it. The men brought the box down by the gorge, intending to bury it until they should be able to come back and take it away in a boat. They must have been clever enough to guess that some of the money would be in paper notes, for they would otherwise have buried it on the beach in the wet sand, where it would have been much safer. But the paper would have rotted if they had been obliged to leave it there long, so they dug their hole down there, close to that boulder. Yes, just where the mound is now.
Cristina did not find the doctor in Scalea, for he had been sent for from a place up the valley, half way to San Domenico. If she had found him, he would have come on his mule by the upper road, which is smoother but much longer. But Cristina took the short cut by the rocks, which passes about fifty feet above the mound and goes round that corner. The men were digging when she passed, and she heard them at work. It would not have been like her to go by without finding out what the noise was, for she was never afraid of anything in her life, and, besides, the fishermen sometimes come ashore here at night to get a stone for an anchor or to gather sticks to make a little fire. The night was dark, and Cristina probably came close to the two men before she could see what they were doing. She knew them, of course, and they knew her and understood instantly that they were in her power. There was only one thing to be done for their safety, and they did it They knocked her on the head, they dug the hole deep, and they buried her quickly with the iron-bound chest. They must have understood that their only chance of escaping suspicion lay in getting back to the village before their absence was noticed, for they returned immediately and were found half an hour later gossiping quietly with the man who was making Alario's coffin. He was a crony of theirs and had been working at the repairs in the old man's house. So far as I have been able to make out, the only persons who were supposed to know where Alario kept his treasure were Angelo and the one woman-servant I have mentioned. Angelo was away; it was the woman who discovered the theft.
It is easy enough to understand why no one else knew where the money was. The old man kept his door locked and the key in his pocket when he was out and did not let the woman enter to clean the place unless he was there himself. The whole village knew that he had money somewhere, however, and the masons had probably discovered the whereabouts of the chest by climbing in at the window in his absence. If the old man had not been delirious until he lost consciousness, he would have been in frightful agony of mind for his riches. The faithful woman-servant forgot their existence only for a few moments when she fled with the rest, overcome by the horror of death. Twenty minutes had not passed before she returned with the two hideous old hags who are always called in to prepare the dead for burial. Even then she had not at first the courage to go near the bed with them; but she made a pretence of dropping something, went down on her knees as if to find it, and looked under the bedstead. The walls of the room were newly whitewashed down to the floor, and she saw at a glance that the chest was gone. It had been there in the afternoon, it had therefore been stolen in the short interval since she had left the room.
There are no carabineers stationed in the village; there is not so much as a municipal watchman, for there is no municipality. There never was such a place, I believe. Scalea is supposed to look after it in some mysterious way, and it takes a couple of hours to get anybody from there. As the old woman had lived in the village all her life, it did not even occur to her to apply to any civil authority for help. She simply set up a howl and ran through the village in the dark, screaming out that her dead master's house had been robbed. Many of the people looked out, but at first no one seemed inclined to help her. Most of them, judging her by themselves, whispered to each other that she had probably stolen the money herself. The first man to move was the father of the girl whom Angelo was to marry; having collected his household, all of whom felt a personal interest in the wealth which was to have come into the family, he declared it to be his opinion that the chest had been stolen by the two journeyman masons who lodged in the house. He headed a search for them, which naturally began in Alario's house and ended in the carpenter's workshop, where the thieves were found discussing a measure of wine with the carpenter over the half-finished coffin, by the light of one earthen lamp filled with oil and tallow. The search party at once accused the delinquents of the crime and threatened to lock them up in the cellar till the carabineers could be fetched from Scalea. The two men looked at each other for one moment, and then without the slightest hesitation they put out the single light, seized the unfinished coffin between them, and using it as a sort of battering ram, dashed upon their assailants in the dark. In a few moments they were beyond pursuit.
That is the end of the first part of the story. The treasure had disappeared, and as no trace of it could be found the people naturally supposed that the thieves had succeeded in carrying it off. The old man was buried, and when Angelo came back at last he had to borrow money to pay for the miserable funeral and had some difficulty in doing so. He hardly needed to be told that in losing his inheritance he had lost his bride. In this part of the world marriages are made on strictly business principles, and if the promised cash is not forthcoming on the appointed day the bride or the bridegroom whose parents have failed to produce it may as well take themselves off, for there will be no wedding. Poor Angelo knew that well enough. His father had been possessed of hardly any land; and now that the hard cash, which he had brought from South America, was gone, there was nothing left but debts for the building materials that were to have been used for enlarging and improving the old house. Angelo was beggared, and the nice plump little creature, who was to have been his turned up her nose at him in the most approved fashion. As for Cristina, it was several days before she was missed, for no one remembered that she had been sent to Scalea for the doctor, who had never come. She often disappeared in the same way for days together, when she could find a little work here and there at the distant farms among the hills. But when she did not come back at all, people began to wonder, and at last made up their minds that she had connived with the masons and had escaped with them.
I paused and emptied my gloss. "That sort of thing could not happen anywhere else," observed Holger, filing his everlasting pipe again. "It is wonderful what a natural charm there is about murder and sudden death in a romantic country like this. Deeds that would be simply brutal and disgusting anywhere else become dramatic and mysterious because this is Italy and we are living in a genuine tower of Charles V built against genuine Barbary pirates."
"There's something in that," I admitted. Holger is the most romantic man in the world inside of himself, but he always thinks it necessary to explain why he feels anything.
"I suppose they found the poor girl's body with the box," he said presently.
"As it seems to interest you," I answered, "I'll tell you the rest of the story."
The moon had risen high by this time; the outline of the Thing on the mound was clearer to our eyes than before.
The village very soon settled down to its small, dull life. No one missed old Alario, who had been away so much on his voyages to South America that he had never been a familiar figure in his native place. Angelo lived in the half-finished house, and because he had no money to pay the old woman-servant she would not stay with him; but once in a long time she would come and wash a shirt for him for old acquaintance' sake. Besides the house, he had inherited a small patch of ground at some distance from the village; he tried to cultivate it, but he had no heart in the work, for he knew he could never pay the taxes on it and on the house, which would certainly be confiscated by the Government or seized for the debt of the building material, which the man who had supplied it refused to take back.
Angelo was very unhappy. So long as his father had been alive and rich, every girl in the village had been in love with him; but that was all changed now. It had been pleasant to be admired and courted and invited to drink wine by fathers who had girls to marry. It was hard to be stared at coldly and sometimes laughed at because he had been robbed of his inheritance. He cooked his miserable meals for himself and from being sad became melancholy and morose.
At twilight, when the day's work was done, instead of hanging about in the. open space before the church with young fellows of his own age, he took to wandering in lonely places on the outskirts of the village till it was quite dark. Then he slunk home and went to bed to save the expense of a light. But in those lonely twilight hours he began to have strange waking dreams. He was not always alone, for often when he sat on the stump of a tree, where the narrow path turns down the gorge, he was sure that a woman came up noiselessly over the rough stones, as if her feet were bare; and she stood under a clump of chestnut trees only half a dozen yards down the path and beckoned to him without speaking. Though she was in the shadow he knew that her lips were red and that when they parted a little and smiled at him she showed two small sharp teeth. He knew this at first rather than saw it, and he knew that it was Cristina and that she was dead. Yet he was not afraid; he only wondered whether it was a dream, for he thought that if he had been awake he should have been frightened.
Besides, the dead woman had red lips, and that could only happen in a dream. Whenever he went near the gorge after sunset she was already there waiting for him, or else she very soon appeared, and he began to be sure that she came a little nearer to him every day. At first he had only been sure of her blood-red mouth, but now each feature grew distinct, and the pale face looked at him with deep and hungry eyes.
It was the eyes that grew dim. Little by little he came to know that some day the dream would not end when he turned away to go home, but would lead him down the gorge out of which the vision rose. She was nearer now when she beckoned to him. Her cheeks were not livid like those of the dead, but pale with starvation, with the furious and unappeased physical hunger of her eyes that devoured him. They feasted on his soul and cast a spell over him, and at last they were close to his own and held him. He could not tell whether her breath was as hot as fire or as cold as ice; he could not tell whether her red lips burned his or froze them, or whether her five fingers on his wrists seared scorching scars or bit his flesh like frost; he could not tell whether he was awake or asleep, whether she was alive or dead, but he knew that she loved him, she alone of all creatures, earthly or unearthly, and her spell had power over him.
When the moon rose high that night, the shadow of that Thing was not alone down there upon the mound.
Angelo awoke in the cool dawn, drenched with dew and chilled through, flesh and blood and bone. He opened his eyes to the faint gray light and saw the stars still shining overhead. He was very weak, and his heart was beating so slowly that he was almost like a man faulting. Slowly he turned his head on the mound, as on a pillow, but the other face was not there. Fear seized him suddenly, a fear unspeakable and unknown; he sprang to his feet and fled up the gorge, and he never looked behind him until he reached the door of the house on the outskirts of the village. Drearily he went to his work that day, and wearily the hours dragged themselves after the sun, till at last it touched the sea and sank, and the great sharp hills above Maratea turned purple against the dove-colored eastern sky.
Angelo shouldered his heavy hoe and left the field. He felt less tired now than in the morning when he had begun to work, but he promised himself that he would go home without lingering by the gorge, and eat the best supper he could get himself, and sleep all night in his bed like a Christian man. Not again would he be tempted down the narrow way by a shadow with red lips and icy breath, not again would he dream that dream of terror and delight. He was near the village now; it was half an hour since the sun had set, and the cracked church bell sent little discordant echoes across the rocks and ravines to tell all good people that the day was done. Angelo stood still a moment where the path forked, where it led toward the village on the left and down to the gorge on the right, where a clump of chestnut trees overhung the narrow way. He stood still a minute, lifting his battered hat from his head and gazing at the fast-fading sea westward; and his lips moved as he silently repeated the familiar evening prayer. His lips moved, but the words that followed them in his brain lost their meaning and turned into others and ended in a name that he spoke aloud — Cristina! With the name, the tension of his will relaxed suddenly, reality went out and the dream took him again and bore him on swiftly and surely like a man walking in his sleep, down, down, by the steep path in the gathering darkness. And as she glided beside him, Cristina whispered strange, sweet things in his ear, which somehow, if he had been awake, he knew that he could not quite have understood; but now they were the most wonderful words he had ever heard in his life. And she kissed him also, but not upon his mouth. He felt her sharp kisses upon his white throat, and he knew that her lips were red. So the wild dream sped on through twilight and darkness and moonrise, and all the glory of the summer's night. But in the chilly dawn he lay as one half dead upon the mound down there, recalling and not recalling, drained of his blood, yet strangely longing to give those red lips more. Then came the fear, the awful nameless panic, the mortal horror that guards the confines of the world we see not, neither know of as we know of other things, but which we feel when its icy chill freezes our bones and stirs our hair with the touch of a ghostly hand. Once more Angelo sprang from the mound and fled up the gorge in the breaking day; but his step was less sure this time, and he panted for breath as he ran. And when he came to the bright spring of water that rises halfway up the hillside, he dropped upon his knees and hands and plunged his whole face in and drank as he had never drunk before — for it was the thirst of the wounded man who has lain bleeding all night long upon the battlefield.
She had him fast now; and he could not escape her, but would come to her every evening at dusk until she had drained him of his last drop of blood. It was in vain that when the day was done he tried to take another turning and to go home by a path that did not lead near the gorge. It was in vain that he made promises to himself each morning at dawn when he climbed the lonely way up from the shore to the village. It was all in vain, for when the sun sank burning into the sea, and the coolness of the evening stole out as from a hiding place to delight the weary world, his feet turned toward the old way; and she was waiting for him in the shadow under the chestnut trees. And then all happened as before, and she fell to kissing his white throat even as she flitted lightly down the way, winding one arm about him. And as his blood failed, she grew hungrier and thirstier every day; and every day when he awoke in the early dawn it was harder to rouse himself to the effort of climbing the steep path to the village. When he went to his work his feet dragged painfully, and there was hardly strength in his arms to wield the heavy hoe. He scarcely spoke to anyone now, but the people said he was "consuming himself" for love of the girl he was to have married when he lost his inheritance; and they laughed heartily at the thought, for this is not a very romantic country. At this time, Antonio, the man who stays here to look after the tower, returned from a visit to his people, who live near Salerno. He had been away all the time since before Alario's death and knew nothing of what had happened. He has told me that he came back late in the afternoon and shut himself up in the tower to eat and sleep, for he was very tired. It was past midnight when he awoke, and when he looked out the waning moon was rising over the shoulder of the hill. He looked out toward the mound, and he saw something, and he did not sleep again that night. When he went out again in the morning it was broad daylight, and there was nothing to be seen on the mound but loose stones and driven sand. Yet he did not go very near it; he went straight up the path to the village and directly to the house of the old priest.
"I have seen an evil thing this night," he said; "I have seen how the dead drink the blood of the living. And the blood is the life."
"Tell me what you have seen," said the priest in reply.
Antonio told him everything he had seen.
"You must bring your book and your holy water tonight," he added. "I will be here before sunset to go down with you, and if it pleases your reverence to sup with me while we wait, I will make ready."
"I will come," the priest answered, "for I have read in old books of these strange beings which are neither quick nor dead, and which lie ever fresh in their graves, stealing out in the dusk to taste We and blood."
Antonio cannot read, but he was glad to see that the priest understood the business; for, of course, the books must have instructed him as to the best means of quieting the half-living Thing forever.
So Antonio went away to his work, which consists largely in sitting on the shady side of the tower, when he is not perched upon a rock with a fishing line catching nothing. But on that day he went twice to look at the mound in the bright sunlight, and he searched round and round it for some hole through which the being might get in and out; but he found none. When the sun began to sink and the air was cooler in the shadows, he went up to fetch the old priest, carrying a little wicker basket with him; and in this they placed a bottle of holy water, and the basin, and sprinkler, and the stole which the priest would need; and they came down and waited in the door of the tower till it should be dark. But while the light still lingered very gray and faint, they saw something moving, just there, two figures, a man's that walked, and a woman's that flitted beside him, and while her head lay on his shoulder she kissed his throat. The priest has told me that, too, and that his teeth chattered and he grasped Antonio's arm. The vision passed and disappeared into the shadow. Then Antonio got the leathern flask of strong liquor, which he kept for great occasions, and poured such a draught as made the old man feel almost young again; and he got the lantern and his pick and shovel, and gave the priest his stole to put on and the holy water to carry, and they went out together toward the spot where the work was to be done. Antonio says that in spite of the rum his own knees shook together, and the priest stumbled over his Latin. For when they were yet a few yards from the mound the flickering light of the lantern fell upon Angelo's white face, unconscious as if in sleep, and on his upturned throat, over which a very thin red line of blood trickled down into his collar; and the flickering light of the lantern played upon another face that looked up from the feast — upon two deep, dead eyes that saw in spite of death — upon parted lips redder than life itself — upon two gleaming teeth on which glistened a rosy drop. Then the priest, good old man, shut his eyes tight and showered holy water before him, and his cracked voice rose almost to a scream; and then Antonio, who is no coward after all, raised his pick in one hand and the lantern in the other, as he sprang forward, not knowing what the end should be. Then he swears that he heard a woman's cry, and the Thing was gone; and Angelo lay alone on the mound unconscious, with the red line on his throat and the beads of deathly sweat on his cold forehead. They lifted him, half-dead as he was, and laid him on the ground close by; then Antonio went to work, and the priest helped him, though he was old and could not do much. They dug deep, and at last Antonio, standing in the grave, stooped down with his lantern to see what he might see.
His hair used to be dark brown, with grizzled streaks about the temples; in less than a month from that day he was as gray as a badger. He was a miner when he was young, and most of these fellows have seen ugly sights now and then, when accidents have happened; but he had never seen what he saw that night — that Thing which is neither alive nor dead, that Tiling that will abide neither above ground nor in the grave. Antonio had brought something with him, which the priest had not noticed. He had made it that afternoon — a sharp stake shaped from a piece of tough old driftwood. He had it with him now, and he had his heavy pick, and he had taken the lantern down into the grave. I don't think any power on earth could make him speak of what happened then, and the old priest was too frightened to look in. He says he heard Antonio breathing like a wild beast, and moving as if he were fighting with something almost as strong as himself; and he heard an evil sound also, with blows, as of something violently driven through flesh and bone. And then the most awful sound of all — a woman's shriek, the unearthly scream of a woman neither dead nor alive, but buried deep for many days. And he, the poor old priest, could only rock himself as he knelt there in the sand, crying aloud his prayers and exorcisms to drown these dreadful sounds. Then suddenly a small iron-bound chest was thrown up and rolled over against the old man's knee; and in a moment more Antonio was beside him, his face as white as tallow in the flickering light of the lantern, shoveling the sand and pebbles into the grave with furious haste, and looking over the edge till the pit was half full; and the priest said that there was much fresh blood on Antonio's hands and on his clothes.
I had come to the end of my story; Holger finished his wine and leaned back in his chair.
"So Angela got his own again," he said. "Did he marry the prim and plump young person to whom he had been betrothed?"
"No; he had been badly frightened. He went to South America and has not been heard of since."
"And that poor thing's body is there still, I suppose," said Holger, "Is it quite dead yet, I wonder?"
I wonder, too. But whether it be dead or alive, I should hardly care to see it, even in broad daylight. Antonio is as gray as a badger, and he has never been quite the same man since that night.