unfortunately large chunks of plaster had fallen away, the Jackal headed god Anubis and Osiris were still there, but most of the other detail had long since gone to dust. By one of the walls there was a large Egyptian style cot bed that lay in a filthy condition and by the fireplace a large high backed chair which looked reasonably habitable. The fireplace was exquisitely carved of the blackest of basalt, two great basalt cats sat proud on either side supporting a massive mantelpiece, upon which ghosts of long departed objects crowded the scene with their dusty outlines on the wallpaper. The fire crackled and burned, loosening pieces of slack, which tumbled down the chimney and into the fireplace. Pulsating light from the flames played upon the heavily plastered walls giving their decoration of intertwined vines, life and movement .The old chair was dry and I was soon suitably comfortable, I even managed to make some toast with a little bit of bread I had been carrying on me.
Then from behind I heard the unnerving sound of shuffling footsteps in the passageway, I peered around the side arm of the chair and saw a shabbily dressed old man standing in the doorway, he stared blankly at me and then at the fire, he said nothing but I felt he sought permission, I nodded acceptance and he made his way over to the cot bed, he sat there for a while, taking a crushed pasty from his pocket, he gestured an offer, which I politely declined. After a while he lay down and arranged himself amongst the rags on the bed, and seemed to go to sleep. How cruel is life I thought, that lays waste to its most vulnerable.
As the fire took hold and burned fiercely ,the room was bathed in a golden light; under normal circumstance this would have been a great pleasure for me , but thoughts of the old man and other sufferings of this world, left me drunk with a dismal melancholy that pervaded my spirits .My eye was drawn upward to the ceiling, to those painted gods, how smugly confident they appeared to me, resplendent in their divine order, so that I soon became filled with feelings of envy for the bold confidence of those ancient Egyptians, and their apparent surety in the existence and order of the divine.
The fire soon died down to glowing red embers, and I was warm and tired from the day’s endless walk, so that I soon slipped into a deep if fretful sleep, my own “little piece of death”, intertwined in my dreams with their grand design.
I was dragged into semi-consciousness by the ghastly sounds of sucking and grunting, my eyes strained in the darkness, mad and wide, dark shapes jerked in the corner of the room like some monstrous shadow puppets; through gaps in the boarded up windows, the waxen moon cast a beam of light across my eyes and onto the floor around me. I was experiencing the same paralysis of body that a sleeper feels when suddenly awoken from a night terror. Even when I could feel part of my face was clearly illuminated; I dared not move a muscle, for just as child feels a gossamer bed sheet can provide impenetrable protection against unseen demons, I felt if I did not move I would not be seen. My mouth and throat felt as dry as a desert, I must swallow - I must swallow - but by the action of closing my mouth and gulping, I had broken the spell, and from within the blackness the sound of shuffling from that nameless hideous thing held me paralyzed with fear. My heart fit to burst pounded within at my ribs, as an outstretched arm flopped in front of me upon the floor, caught in the ray of light from the window. Grasping and clawing at the air, as if the body at the end of that arm was drowning. It writhed and convulsed; the body in silent and unseen agonies; stretching - reaching - pleading for this coward’s grasp. For a moment I thought it might be the hand of the old man? - Or was it that of some other fearful thing! - Too late! - For back into the shadows that arm was pulled by something other than its owner. This shadowed thing filled me with a precipitous sense of nausea, as one would get by standing on a high cliff, teetering upon the edge of a chasm; fever like mists of panic flooded my eyes. Clouds shifted, and moonlight passing through a high window displaying a portion of this tragedy as upon a stage, and I alone trapped within this tomb of a house, a prisoner of this grotesque act being played out. My mouth frozen into a silent scream, that seemed to last and eternity. I could not draw my eyes away as the awful carnage unfolded, awful - awful; my heart as if clamped in a vice; the sound of a great rushing of water in my ears, and the tortuous thumping pressure of blood in my temples and behind my eyes.
Imagine a corpse alive but no mortal corpse that I have ever seen or ever imagined. Hideous beyond belief; could this thing have once been human, for it appeared human only by vague design, its deformed features more kindred with the beasts of hell than to creatures of this world. The skin of the face appeared sallow and shrunken like that of a dried corpse, pulling the mouth into a hideous gape. Its limbs and torso were gaunt and angular in the extreme casting shadows of dark purpose around and across the body of the old man. As it saw me it let out a low tortured cry filled with the deepest of melancholy, and I saw within its face a ragged hole of a mouth filled with ghastly teeth, and gazed with horror into its sunken eyes eclipsed by black. My throat closed up; I choked on the smell of damp earth and rotted wet wood, bits and pieces from what ever fearful place this creature had crawled from. For some unknown wrong doing, the fates had taken me up and cast me headlong into the open jaws of hell. The creature halted in its stagger towards me, as if caught short mid stride by some invisible barrier, an age seemed to pass, strange as it may seem all terrors were lifted and in turn replaced inexplicably by a nervous excited delirium. The creature seemed to be avoiding the light that cut past me - but no! The shaft of light that cut past me marked out upon the floor an unearthly phosphorescent glow, which marked out a segment of a great mandala I appeared to be seated within; the creature made no attempt to come any closer than its outer edge.
The creature stood very close, and I was drawn to the edge, by what power I know not, as I was unaware of having moved; my thoughts became addled; a queer drugged swirling of the senses, I gazed into the creatures face that was now partially obscured by shadow, all the surrounding pools of light became slowly eclipsed - all the light of this world - extinguished. And my mind became possessed by images and thoughts not my own, and I appeared to see into the future and into the past, and into the places only the angels of heaven and hell should look. And by close proximity to Unas, I have become privy to these scenes. For yes! - I know the creature’s name! - As if by some strange magick, his name is Unas!
And then within my fevered vision I stood before a statue within a darkened tomb, whose vast form rose off into the blackness, and from between the feet of this great statue appeared a solitary jackal, which spoke to me and said….
“I curse with rot and eternal pestilence defilers of my grave, who dare to steal graven offerings, and gaze upon the face of this once living god. Know my name and despair-for I am Unas the devourer of souls, and the drinker of blood!”
My world dropped away and I fell deep into his abyss of nothing, my head swam in the vertiginous spiralling descent of my fall - down - down as though a leaf caught within a wind sprite. Down I plunged into a decent of unimaginable ferocity finally to be overcome by a feeling of absolute loneliness and desolation; followed mercifully by oblivion…..
I awoke in the morning prostrate upon the floor, and suffering from immense fatigue, all was quiet, and the orb of the rising sun cast a warm glow into the room.
My mind struggled to invent reasons for my night of torment, a dream perhaps brought on by the vapours of decay or fever from damp, but alas no! From the corner of my eye I saw an outstretched hand upon the floor in my direction, its claw like twisted grasp frozen in the agony of its owner’s demise. Sick in the pit of my stomach, I could not bear to look upon his face, but I saw it none the less, in my minds eye, and in the quietness of that room, I heard those gurgled cries again! I cast my eyes low upon the ground, and summoned all my strength, to pull the ragged bedding across the corpse as though a shroud.
And of that hideous thing there was none, I was alone, safe and filled with a perverse sense of fevered excitement; I wished to cry out - to laugh. I was victorious over d
eath, I had looked upon the Gorgon and survived; How foolish!, and how too soon I was overcome with feelings of self loathing and remorse, for what an ignoble act to sing the joys of my own salvation in the presence of someone so cruelly undone.
My eye was drawn to the chair in which I had been seated, and then onto those strange markings on the floor. I could clearly see that the drawing was made with nothing more complicated than a piece of chalk. This magick circle was round in construction, chalk rays flew out from the centre marking each segment, and I quickly set about drawing each and all of the markings, which my feet had unfortunately scuffed. Strange pictures and symbols filled each of the segments but easily recognisable within was the figure of Anubis; I then folded the paper and placed it in my pocket for safekeeping. For I instinctively knew that it was by some power of that drawing Unas had been halted in his projected assault upon my living flesh.
From that moment on for at least one month I was visited nightly, for it was a journey into the underworld I must make when Unas called, and it was only by the power
The Vampires of London Page 2