by Michael Cox
July 12th. All is over. After the most terrible night of watching and horror one Vampire at least will trouble the world no more. But how thankful should we be to a merciful Providence that that awful tomb was not disturbed by anyone not having the knowledge necessary to deal with its dreadful occupant! I write this with no feelings of self-complacency, but simply with a great gratitude for the years of study I have been able to devote to this special subject.
And now to my tale.
Just before sunset last night the Rector and I locked ourselves into the church, and took up our position in the pulpit. It was one of those pulpits, to be found in some churches, which is entered from the vestry, the preacher appearing at a good height through an arched opening in the wall. This gave us a sense of security (which we felt we needed), a good view of the interior, and direct access to the implements which I had concealed in the vestry.
The sun set and the twilight gradually deepened and faded. There was, so far, no sign of the usual fog, nor any howling of the dogs. At nine o'clock the moon rose, and her pale light gradually flooded the aisles, and still no sign of any kind from the 'Sarah Tomb'. The Rector had asked me several times what he might expect, but I was determined that no words or thought of mine should influence him, and that he should be convinced by his own senses alone.
By half-past ten we were both getting very tired, and I began to think that perhaps after all we should see nothing that night. However, soon after eleven we observed a light mist rising from the 'Sarah Tomb'. It seemed to scintillate and sparkle as it rose, and curled in a sort of pillar or spiral.
I said nothing, but I heard the Rector give a sort of gasp as he clutched my arm feverishly. 'Great Heaven!' he whispered, 'it is taking shape.'
And, true enough, in a very few moments we saw standing erect by the tomb the ghastly figure of the Countess Sarah!
She looked thin and haggard still, and her face was deadly white; but the crimson lips looked like a hideous gash in the pale cheeks, and her eyes glared like red coals in the gloom of the church.
It was a fearful thing to watch as she stepped unsteadily down the aisle, staggering a little as if from weakness and exhaustion. This was perhaps natural, as her body must have suffered much physically from her long incarceration, in spite of the unholy forces which kept it fresh and well.
We watched her to the door, and wondered what would happen; but it appeared to present no difficulty, for she melted through it and disappeared.
'Now, Grant,' I said, 'do you believe?'
'Yes,' he replied, 'I must. Everything is in your hands, and I will obey your commands to the letter, if you can only instruct me how to rid my poor people of this unnameable terror.'
'By God's help I will,' said I; 'but you shall be yet more convinced first, for we have a terrible work to do, and much to answer for in the future, before we leave the church again this morning. And now to work, for in its present weak state the Vampire will not wander far, but may return at any time, and must not find us unprepared.'
We stepped down from the pulpit and, taking dog-roses and garlic from the vestry, proceeded to the tomb. I arrived first and, throwing off the wooden cover, cried, 'Look! it is empty!' There was nothing there! Nothing except the impress of the body in the loose damp mould!
I took the flowers and laid them in a circle round the tomb, for legend teaches us that Vampires will not pass over these particular blossoms if they can avoid it.
Then, eight or ten feet away, I made a circle on the stone pavement, large enough for the Rector and myself to stand in, and within the circle I placed the implements that I had brought into the church with me.
'Now,' I said, 'from this circle, which nothing unholy can step across, you shall see the Vampire face to face, and see her afraid to cross that other circle of garlic and dog-roses to regain her unholy refuge. But on no account step beyond the holy place you stand in, for the Vampire has a fearful strength not her own, and, like a snake, can draw her victim willingly to his own destruction.'
Now so far my work was done, and, calling the Rector, we stepped into the Holy Circle to await the Vampire's return.
Nor was this long delayed. Presently a damp, cold odour seemed to pervade the church, which made our hair bristle and flesh to creep. And then, down the aisle with noiseless feet came That which we watched for.
I heard the Rector mutter a prayer, and I held him tightly by the arm, for he was shivering violently.
Long before we could distinguish the features we saw the glowing eyes and the crimson sensual mouth. She went straight to her tomb, but stopped short when she encountered my flowers. She walked right round the tomb seeking a place to enter, and as she walked she saw us. A spasm of diabolical hate and fury passed over her face; but it quickly vanished, and a smile of love, more devilish still, took its place. She stretched out her arms towards us. Then we saw that round her mouth gathered a bloody froth, and from under her lips long pointed teeth gleamed and champed.
She spoke: a soft soothing voice, a voice that carried a spell with it, and affected us both strangely, particularly the Rector. I wished to test as far as possible, without endangering our lives, the Vampire's power.
Her voice had a soporific effect, which I resisted easily enough, but which seemed to throw the Rector into a sort of trance. More than this: it seemed to compel him to her in spite of his efforts to resist.
'Come!' she said—'come! I give sleep and peace—sleep and peace—sleep and peace.'
She advanced a little towards us; but not far, for I noted that the Sacred Circle seemed to keep her back like an iron hand.
My companion seemed to become demoralized and spellbound. He tried to step forward and, finding me detain him, whispered, 'Harry, let go! I must go! She is calling me! I must! I must! Oh, help me! help me!' And he began to struggle.
It was time to finish.
'Grant!' I cried, in a loud, firm voice, 'in the name of all that you hold sacred, have done and play the man!' He shuddered violently and gasped, 'Where am I?' Then he remembered, and clung to me convulsively for a moment.
At this a look of damnable hate changed the smiling face before us, and with a sort of shriek she staggered back.
'Back!' I cried: 'back to your unholy tomb! No longer shall you molest the suffering world! Your end is near.'
It was fear that now showed itself in her beautiful face (for it was beautiful in spite of its horror) as she shrank back, back and over the circlet of flowers, shivering as she did so. At last, with a low mournful cry, she appeared to melt back again into her tomb.
As she did so the first gleams of the rising sun lit up the world, and I knew all danger was over for the day.
Taking Grant by the arm, I drew him with me out of the circle and led him to the tomb. There lay the Vampire once more, still in her living death as we had a moment before seen her in her devilish life. But in the eyes remained that awful expression of hate, and cringing, appalling fear.
Grant was pulling himself together.
'Now,' I said, 'will you dare the last terrible act and rid the world for ever of this horror?'
'By God!' he said solemnly, 'I will. Tell me what to do.'
'Help me to lift her out of her tomb. She can harm us no more,' I replied.
With averted faces we set to our terrible task, and laid her out upon the flags.
'Now,' I said, 'read the Burial Service over the poor body, and then let us give it its release from this living hell that holds it.'
Reverently the Rector read the beautiful words, and reverently I made the necessary responses. When it was over I took the stake and, without giving myself time to think, plunged it with all my strength through the heart.
As though really alive, the body for a moment writhed and kicked convulsively, and an awful heart-rending shriek woke the silent church; then all was still.
Then we lifted the poor body back; and, thank God! the consolation that legend tells is never denied to those who have to do s
uch awful work as ours came at last. Over the face stole a great and solemn peace; the lips lost their crimson hue, the prominent sharp teeth sank back into the mouth, and for a moment we saw before us the calm, pale face of a most beautiful woman, who smiled as she slept. A few minutes more, and she faded away to dust before our eyes as we watched. We set to work and cleaned up every trace of our work, and then departed for the rectory. Most thankful were we to step out of the church, with its horrible associations, into the rosy warmth of the summer morning.
With the above end the notes in my father's diary, though a few days later this further entry occurs:
July 1$th. Since the 12th everything has been quiet and as usual. We replaced and sealed up the 'Sarah Tomb' this morning. The workmen were surprised to find the body had disappeared, but took it to be the natural result of exposing it to the air.
One odd thing came to my ears today. It appears that the child of one of the villagers strayed from home the night of the nth inst., and was found asleep in a coppice near the church, very pale and quite exhausted. There were two small marks on her throat, which have since disappeared.
What does this mean? I have, however, kept it to myself, as, now that the Vampire is no more, no further danger either to that child or any other Is to be apprehended. It is only those who die of the Vampire's embrace that become Vampires at death in their turn.
The Case of Vincent Pyrwhit
BARRY PAIN
The death of Vincent Pyrwhit, JP, of Ellerdon House, in the county of Buckinghamshire, would in the ordinary way have received no more attention than the death of any other simple country gentleman. The circumstances of his death, however, though now long since forgotten, were sensational, and attracted some notice at the time. It was one of those cases which is easily forgotten within a year, except just in the locality where it occurred. The most sensational circumstances of the case never came before the public at all. I give them here simply and plainly. The psychical people may make what they like of them.
Pyrwhit himself was a very ordinary country gentleman, a good fellow, but in no way brilliant. He was devoted to his wife, who was some fifteen years younger than himself, and remarkably beautiful. She was quite a good woman, but she had her faults. She was fond of admiration, and she was an abominable flirt. She misled men very cleverly, and was then sincerely angry with them for having been misled. Her husband never troubled his head about these flirtations, being assured quite rightly that she was a good woman. He was not jealous; she, on the other hand was possessed of a jealousy amounting almost to insanity. This might have caused trouble if he had ever provided her with the slightest basis on which her jealousy could work, but he never did. With the exception of his wife, women bored him. I believe she did once or twice try to make a scene for some preposterous reason which was no reason at all; but nothing serious came of it, and there was never a real quarrel between them.
On the death of his wife, after a prolonged illness, Pyrwhit wrote and asked me to come down to Ellerdon for the funeral, and to remain at least a few days with him. He would be quite alone, and I was his oldest friend. I hate attending funerals, but I was his oldest friend, and I was, moreover, a distant relation of his wife. I had no choice and I went down.
There were many visitors in the house for the funeral, which took place in the village churchyard, but they left immediately afterwards. The air of heavy gloom which had hung over the house seemed to lift a little. The servants (servants are always emotional) continued to break down at intervals, noticeably Pyrwhit's man, Williams, but Pyrwhit himself was self-possessed. He spoke of his wife with great affection and regret, but still he could speak of her and not unsteadily. At dinner he also spoke of one or two other subjects, of politics and of his duties as a magistrate, and of course he made the requisite fuss about his gratitude to me for coming down to Ellerdon at that time. After dinner we sat in the library, a room well and expensively furnished, but without the least attempt at taste. There were a few oil paintings on the walls, a presentation portrait of himself, and a landscape or two—all more or less bad, as far as I remember. He had eaten next to nothing at dinner, but he had drunk a good deal; the wine, however, did not seem to have the least effect upon him. I had got the conversation definitely off the subject of his wife when I made a blunder. I noticed an Erichsen's extension standing on his writing-table. I said: 'I didn't know that telephones had penetrated into the villages yet.'
'Yes,' he said, 'I believe they are common enough now. I had that one fitted up during my wife's illness to communicate with her bedroom on the floor above us on the other side of the house.'
At that moment the bell of the telephone rang sharply.
We both looked at each other. I said with the stupid affectation of calmness one always puts on when one is a little bit frightened:
'Probably a servant in that room wishes to speak to you.'
He got up, walked over to the machine, and swung the green cord towards me. The end of it was loose.
'I had it disconnected this morning,' he said; 'also the door of that room is locked, and no one can possibly be in it.'
He had turned the colour of grey blotting-paper; so probably had I.
The bell rang again—a prolonged, rattling ring.
'Are you going to answer it?' I said.
'I am not,' he answered firmly.
'Then,' I said, 'I shall answer it myself. It is some stupid trick, a joke not in the best of taste, for which you will probably have to sack one or other of your domestics.'
'My servants,' he answered, 'would not have done that. Besides, don't you see it is impossible? The instrument is disconnected.'
'The bell rang all the same. I shall try it.'
I picked up the receiver.
'Are you there?' I called.
The voice which answered me was unmistakably the rather high staccato voice of Mrs. Pyrwhit.
'I want you,' it said, 'to tell my husband that he will be with me tomorrow.'
I still listened. Nothing more was said.
I repeated, 'Are you there?' and still there was no answer.
I turned to Pyrwhit.
'There is no one there,' I said. 'Possibly there is thunder in the air affecting the bell in some mysterious way. There must be some simple explanation, and I'll find it all out tomorrow.'
He went to bed early that night. All the following day I was with him. We rode together, and I expected an accident every minute, but none happened. All the evening I expected him to turn suddenly faint and ill, but that also did not happen. When at about ten o'clock he excused himself and said goodnight, I felt distinctly relieved. He went up to his room and rang for Williams.
The rest is, of course, well known. The servant's reason had broken down, possibly the immediate cause being the death of Mrs. Pyrwhit. On entering his master's bedroom, without the least hesitation, he raised a loaded revolver which he carried in his hand, and shot Pyrwhit through the heart. I believe the case is mentioned in some of the textbooks on homicidal mania.
'Henry had words with Edward in the study the night before Edward died,' said Caroline Glynn.
She was elderly, tall, and harshly thin, with a hard colourlessness of face. She spoke not with acrimony, but with grave severity. Rebecca Ann Glynn, younger, stouter, and rosy of face between her crinkling puffs of grey hair, gasped, by way of assent. She sat in a wide flounce of black silk in the corner of the sofa, and rolled terrified eyes from her sister Caroline to her sister Mrs Stephen Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the one beauty of the family. She was beautiful still, with a large, splendid, full-blown beauty; she filled a great rocking-chair with her superb bulk of femininity, and swayed gently back and forth, her black silks whispering and her black frills fluttering. Even the shock of death (for her brother Edward lay dead in the house), could not disturb her outward serenity of demeanour. She was grieved over the loss of her brother: he had been the youngest, and she had been fond of him, but never had Emma Brigham los
t sight of her own importance amidst the waters of tribulation. She was always awake to the consciousness of her own stability in the midst of vicissitudes and the splendour of her permanent bearing.
But even her expression of masterly placidity changed before her sister Caroline's announcement and her sister Rebecca Ann's gasp of terror and distress in response.
'I think Henry might have controlled his temper, when poor Edward was so near his end,' said she with an asperity which disturbed slightly the roseate curves of her beautiful mouth.
'Of course he did not know,'1 murmured Rebecca Ann in a faint tone strangely out of keeping with her appearance.
One involuntarily looked again to be sure that such a feeble pipe came from that full-swelling chest.
'Of course he did not know it,' said Caroline quickly. She turned on her sister with a strange sharp look of suspicion. 'How could he have known it?' said she. Then she shrank as if from the other's possible answer. 'Of course you and I both know he could not,' said she conclusively, but her pale face was paler than it had been before.