The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

by John Polidori

At these words my rage returned; I dashed the man to the ground, and I put my foot upon his breast, and my hand upon his neck, and he struggled for a moment—and was dead! I was startled; and as I looked upon his face I thought it seemed to revive; I thought the cold blue eye fixed upon me, and the vile grin returned to the livid mouth, and the hands which in the death-pang had grasped the sand, stretched themselves out to me. So I stamped on the breast again, and I dug a hole in the shore, and I buried the body. ‘And now,’ said I, ‘I am alone at last!’ And then the sense of loneliness, the vague, vast, comfortless, objectless sense of desolation passed into me. And I shook—shook in every limb of my giant frame, as if I had been a child that trembles in the dark; and my hair rose, and my blood crept, and I would not have stayed in that spot a moment more if I had been made young again for it. I turned away and fled—fled round the whole island; and gnashed my teeth when I came to the sea, and longed to be cast into some illimitable desert, that I might flee on for ever. At sunset I returned to my cave—I sat myself down on one corner of the bed, and covered my face with my hands—I thought I heard a noise; I raised my eyes, and, as I live, I saw on the other end of the bed the man whom I had slain and buried. There he sat, six feet from me, and nodded to me, and looked at me with his wan eyes, and laughed. I rushed from the cave—I entered a wood—I threw myself down—there opposite to me, six feet from my face, was the face of that man again! And my courage rose, and I spoke, but he answered not. I attempted to seize him, he glided from my grasp, and was still opposite, six feet from me as before. I flung myself on the ground, and pressed my face to the sod, and would not look up till the night came on and darkness was over the earth. I then rose and returned to the cave; I laid down on my bed, and the man lay down by me; and I frowned and tried to seize him as before, but I could not, and I closed my eyes, and the man lay by me. Day passed on day and it was the same. At board, at bed, at home and abroad, in my uprising and my down-sitting, by day and at night, there, by my bed-side, six feet from me, and no more, was that ghastly and dead thing. And I said, as I looked upon the beautiful land and the still heavens, and then turned to that fearful comrade, ‘I shall never be alone again!’ And the man laughed.

  At last a ship came, and I hailed it—it took me up, and I thought, as I put my foot on the deck, ‘I shall escape from my tormentor!’ As I thought so, I saw him climb the deck too, and I strove to push him down into the sea, but in vain; he was by my side, and he fed and slept with me as before! I came home to my native land! I forced myself into crowds—I went to the feast, and I heard music—and I made thirty men sit with me, and watch by day and by night. So I had thirty-one companions, and one was more social than all the rest.

  At last I said to myself, ‘This is a delusion, and a cheat of the external senses, and the thing is not, save in my mind. I will consult those skilled in such disorders, and I will be—alone again!’

  I summoned one celebrated in purging from the mind’s eye its films and deceits—I bound him by an oath to secrecy—and I told him my tale. He was a bold man and a learned, and he promised me relief and release.

  ‘Where is the figure now?’ said he, smiling; ‘I see it not.’

  And I answered, ‘It is six feet from us!’

  ‘I see it not,’ said he again; ‘and if it were real, my senses would not receive the image less palpably than yours.’ And he spoke to me as schoolmen speak. I did not argue nor reply, but I ordered the servants to prepare a room, and to cover the floor with a thick layer of sand. When it was done, I bad the Leech follow me into the room, and I barred the door. ‘Where is the figure now?’ repeated he; and I said, ‘Six feet from us as before!’ And the Leech smiled. ‘Look on the floor,’ said I, and I pointed to the spot; ‘what see you?’ And the Leech shuddered, and clung to me that he might not fall. ‘The sand,’ said he, ‘was smooth when we entered, and now I see on that spot the print of human feet!’

  And I laughed, and dragged my living companion on; ‘See,’ said I, ‘where we move what follows us!’

  The Leech gasped for breath; ‘The print,’ said he, ‘of those human feet!’

  ‘Can you not minister to me then?’ cried I, in a sudden and fierce agony, ‘and must I never be alone again?’

  And I saw the feet of the dead thing trace one word upon the sand; and the word was—NEVER.

  THE MASTER OF LOGAN

  Allan Cunningham

  Even in our ashes live our wonted fires.—GRAY*

  ONE summer’s eve, as I passed through a burial-ground on the banks of the Nith,* I saw an old man resting on a broad flat stone which covered a grave. The church itself was gone and but a matter of memory: yet the church-yard was still reverentially preserved, and several families of name and standing continued to inter in the same place with their fathers. Some one had that day been buried, and less care than is usual had been taken in closing up the grave, for, as I went forward, my foot struck the fragment of a bone. I lifted it hastily, and was about to throw it away, when the old man said, ‘Stay, thoughtless boy, that which you touch so carelessly was once part of a living creature, born in pain and nursed tenderly, was beloved, and had a body to rot in the grave, and a soul to ascend into heaven—touch not, therefore, the dust of thy brother rudely.’ So he took the bone, and, lifting a portion of the green sod, which covered the grave, replaced it in the earth. I was very young, and maybe thoughtless, but I was touched with the patriarchal look of the man, and also by his scriptural mode of expressing himself. I remained by him, and was in no haste to be gone.

  ‘My child,’ he said, ‘I have a melancholy kind of pleasure in wandering about this old burial-place. In my youth I have sat with hundreds of the old and young in the church to which this ground belonged—they are all lying here save one whom the sea drowned and two who perished in a foreign battle, and I am the last of the congregation who lives to say it. I am grown sapless, and I am become leafless. There is not one hair on a head ninety years old and odd—look, my child, it was once covered with locks as dark as the back of yon hooded-crow.’ He removed his hat as he spoke, and his bald head shone, in the light of the sun, like that of an apostle in a religious painting. ‘I love to converse,’ he said, ‘with children such as yourself. The young men of this generation mock the words of age; it would be well if they mocked nothing else; but what can we expect of those who doubt all and believe nothing? If you will sit down on this grave-stone and listen patiently, I shall relate a tradition, pertaining to this burial-ground, which has the merit of a beneficial moral:—A tale which you will remember at eighty, as well as I do now, and which will show what befalls those who meddle, unwisely, with the dust of poor mute human nature.’ I sat down as he desired, and he told me the following story.

  ‘In the summer of the last year of the reign of James Stuart,* it happened that John Telfer was making a grave in this burial-ground. The church was standing then, and there were grave-stones in rank succeeding rank—for this is a place of old repute, and Douglases and Maxwells and Morrisons and Logans lie round ye thick and threefold. John, as I said, was digging a grave, and as he shovelled out the black mould, mixed with bones, he muttered, “Ay! Ay! It was a sad and an eerie day when the earth was laid over the fair but sinful body which I put here last. The clouds lowered, the thunder-plump* fell, and the fire flew, and heaven and earth seemed ready to come together. It’s no’ for nought that Nature expresses her wrath—the very gaping ground shuddered as if unwilling to take such sinful dust into its bosom.” I remember the day well, though an old story now. He was a douce* man, John Telfer, and had fought in the great battles which the people waged with the nobles, in the days of Montrose and David Lesley.* He continued to dig till a skull appeared; he looked at it and said, “Thou empty tabernacle, sore art thou changed since I saw thee amongst the splendid Madams of thy day! Where are thy bright eyes, thy long tresses, which even monarchs loved, and the lips which spoke so witchingly and sang so sweet? Thou art become hideous to behold!—How art thou fal
len since the days of thy youth, and how ghastly thou art in the sunny air, amid the church-yard grass!” And he threw it with his shovel among the grass and daisies growing thick around.

  ‘Now there came to the kirk-yard a young man of an ancient kindred, who had blood in his veins of those who had wrought good deeds of old for Scotland. But he was a wild and a dissolute youth, who loved gay dresses and drunken companions: his blood was hot, his hand often on the sword-hilt, and his chief delight was in chambering* and in visits at midnight to the ladies’ bower. Your father and your mother have warned you to beware of the folly of the Master of Logan—his name hath become a proverb and a warning in the land. It is of him I speak.

  ‘And he came, as I said, into the kirk-yard, and as he came he whistled. He touched the fleshless skull with the toe of his Turkey shoe* till the earth fell out of the eye-holes, and he said, “John, whose skull is this?”—“A woman’s Sir,” said John, and wrought away with his shovel; for he was a good man, and disliked to be questioned by one whom he hated. “A woman’s!” said the Master of Logan, “some presser of curd and creamer of milk! yet a dainty one in her day, I’ll warrant.”—“Deed, Sir,” answered John, “the woman was well to look at, and a dainty one was she. I have seen gowd and jewels aboon that brow, and such a pair of een beneath, as would have wiled the bird from the brier or the lark from the sky.”—“O, I can guess the rest,” said the Master of Logan—“an alluring damsel, with sinful black eyes—who excelled in the dance—could sing a merry ballad—had made no captious vow against the company of men—was sometimes visited by the minister, and came to the kirk when the Sessions sat. Am I right?”

  ‘John looked at him for half-a-minute’s space, and then answered, “Ay! right—wool sellers, ken wool buyers—wha would have thought, now, that the living could look on a sample of gross dust and claim relationship in spirit? It’s e’en a true tale, Master of Logan—so go home and repent. Dust is what ye maun come to; some unhallowed foot will yet kick your skull, and cry, ‘Here was a man who had wit in his day, but what is he now?’”—“Why, John, ye can preach nearly as well as the parson”—“Preach!” said John; “I have preached, Sir, in my day—it was during the times of the Godly Covenant, and I behoved to speak; for one of Cromwell’s troopers pulled that hen-hearted body, Bryce Bornagain, out of the pulpit, and set up his southern crest.* I trow I sobered him—I trow I sobered him—what I couldna do with the word I accomplished with anither weapon,” and John threw the earth into the air, out of the bottom of a ten-foot deep grave, with an energy which those days of double controversy recalled.—“Ye would like to have those days back again, I think, John?” inquired the other. “Back again! na troth, no,” said he, “I would have nought back again that’s anes awa—the days of Cromwell are weel away, if they bide—and so is Phemie Morison there, whase skull ye’re handling—she’s well awa, too, if she bide.”—“Bonnie Phemie Morison!” replied the Master of Logan, “and is this her!—she seems fairly enough away. What should bring her back again?”—“Oh just love of evil,” said the conqueror of Cromwell’s preaching dragoon,—“to visit the haunts of early joys, maybe—or of unrepented sins. It’s said her spirit finds a pleasure of its own in coming back to the good green earth. We’re no dead when we are dust, Master of Logan.” And he laid his hand on the brink of the lowly dwelling he had prepared, and leaped out with an avidity which seemed to arise from an apprehension that the dust on which he trode was ready to be re-animated.

  ‘The Master of Logan placed the skull on the tomb-stone of one of his ancestors, and said, “Now, John, between you and me, do you really think that our fair friend, here, takes a walk in the spirit occasionally—saunters, as she did of old, in the cool of the summer twilight—stalks round the grave of some unhappy youth, whom her charms consigned to early rest, and enjoys again, in idea, the love which she inspired?”—“Ha’ done,” said John, “ha’ done, Master of Logan, now but ye talk fearfully. Look an’ yere wild words be not inspiring that crumbling bone as if with life. I could maist take my oath that it looked at me.” John’s brow grew moist, and he said, “I wish the corpse would come, for this is an unsonsie* place.”—“Particularly,” said the other, “when Phemie Morison, here, walks about and pays visits.”—“O heart-hardened creature!” cried John, “yere folly will get a sobering.—I have kenned as bold lads as your honour made humble enough in spirit about the middle watches of the night. There was Frank Wamfray, a soldier, who neither feared God nor man. A spirit, in likeness of a woman, came to him in the dead hour of the night, and caroused with him out of his canteen, at the gates of Proud Preston*—I could go blindfold to the spot—and what came of him? He lived and died demented—he was a humbling spectacle.” Loud laughed the Master of Logan, and cried “Here’s fair Phemie Morison. I wish she would come and sup with me to-night!” He was observed to change colour, he turned to walk away, and the old man exclaimed, “See! there is an unearthly light in the sockets. Sir, repent and pray, else ye will sup with an evil spirit.”

  ‘The Master went away, and as he spurred his horse he could not prevent his thoughts from returning to the scene which he had just witnessed. He imagined that he saw the old man, the open grave, and the mouldering skull placed on the tombstone. He slackened the rein of his horse, and after a fit of unusual moodiness, muttered, “I am as mad as Cromwell’s old adversary, John the Bedrell, himself—there can be no life in a rotten bone, nor light in the eyes of an empty skull”—he galloped away, and his mind was soon occupied with gayer subjects, and looks of another kind than those of death and the grave.

  ‘He had a cup of wine to drink with a companion, a fair dame to visit, and when he reached the gate of his own tower the clock was striking ten. He threw his rein to his servant and entered—rang his bell violently, as was his wont when angry, and said, “Lockerbie, how is this?—here is a table covered and dishes set for two—fool! I sup alone—how comes this?”—“Even so as was ordered,” replied Lockerbie; “between light and dark, a messenger rode to the gate, rang the porch bell, and said, ‘A lady sups with the Master to-night, so let a table be spread for two.’ This, as your honour knows, is a message neither sae startling nor uncommon, sae I gied orders, and moreover I said, ladies love music, nor do they hate wine, let both be had, and”—“Lockerbie,” said his young master, “what manner of person was this messenger?”—“Oh, a pleasant man, with a red face,” replied the servant, “but he merely delivered the message, and rode. I wish he had stopped, had it only been to eschew the thunder-plump which fell when the loud clap was. And that’s weel minded—there’s Dick Sorbie swears through the castle wa’, and yere honour kens it’s twelve feet thick, that the messenger was a braw bouncing lass, with a scarlet cloak on and een like elf candles—but I say a man, a pleasant man, with a ruddy countenance.”

  ‘The Master, when he heard this, wore a serious brow—he paced up and down the room—looked at the covered table—gazed out into the night—the moon was there with all her stars; the stream was running its course—the owl was hooting on the castle wall, and the relics of the thundercloud were melting slowly away on the hills of Tinwold. “A wild delusion!” he muttered to himself—“my ear was poisoned by weak old Martha who nursed me. See! nature continues her course—the moon shines—the stars are all abroad—the stream runs—and how can I imagine that a wild word, said in jest, should change the common course of nature. I cannot, shall not believe it!”

  ‘He threw himself on a settee of carved oak, and looked on the walls and on the ceiling of the apartment. On the former hung the arms and the portraits of his ancestors—and grim and stately they looked. On the latter was painted a rude representation of the Day of Judgment—from which this room had, in early days, acquired the name of the Judgment-hall. Graves were opening and giving up their dead, and some were ascending to a sad and some to a saving sentence. He had never looked seriously on this composition before—nor did he desire to peruse it now; but he could not keep his eyes off i
t. From one of the graves which opened on the left-hand of the Great Judge, he saw a skull ascend—and he thought there was a wild light in its eyeless sockets, resembling what he had seen that afternoon in the burial-ground.

  ‘The Master of Logan went to a cabinet of ebony and took out a Bible with clasps of gold—he touched it now for the second time, and opened it for the first—it had belonged to his mother—but of his mother he seldom thought, and if he remembered his fathers, it was but to recall their deeds in battle and dwell on those actions which had more affinity to violence than to virtue. He opened the Bible, but he did not read:—the sight of his mother’s writing, and the entry of his own birth and baptism, in her small and elegant hand, made his eyes moist, though no tears fell:—as he sat with it open on his knee, he thought there was more light in the chamber than the candles shed, and lifting his head, he imagined that a female form, shadowy and pure, dissolved away into air as he looked. “That was, at least, a real phantom of the imagination,” he said mentally—“the remembrance of my mother created her shape—and it is thus that our affections fool us.” He closed and clasped the Bible, and lifting a small silver bell from the table rang it twice. A venerable and gray-headed man came tottering in, saying, “What is your will?”

  ‘“I rang for you, Rodan, to ask your advice,” said he,—“sit down and listen.”—“Alas! Sir, it’s lang lang now since ony body asked it,” said the other, with a shake of his silvery hairs, “though I have given advice, as your good and gallant father, rest his soul, experienced, both in the house and on the edge of battle.”—“But this,” said the Master, “is neither matters of worldly wisdom, nor pertaining to battle.”—“Then,” said the old man, rising, “it’s no’ for me, it’s no’ for me. If it’s a question of folly, ask yere sworn companion, young Darisdeer—if it be a matter of salvation, whilk I rather hope than expect, ask the minister, godly Gabriel Burgess—he’ll make darkness clear t’ ye, he’ll rid up the mystery of death and the grave, and for laying spirits!—but we’re no fashed* with spirits, I trow, and am no’ sure that I ever saw ane, unless I might call the corpse light of old Nanse Kennedy a spirit. I would rather trust my cause with Gabriel Burgess than with ony dozen divines of these dancing and fiddling days.”—“Bid Sorbie saddle a horse, a quiet one and quick-footed,” said the Master, “and lead it over the hill, to Kirk-Logan, and bring the minister to me. He will show this Bible, and say the owner desires to see him as fast as speed can bring him.” The old man bowed, and retired.