Of Berserkers, Swords and Vampires

by Fred Saberhagen

  Though the moonlight was behind her, I thought that her slight figure threw no shadow on the floor. In spite of that, hers was a most carnal and unspiritual appearance. Plainly I could see her brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of her full lips.

  A tremendous longing strove against a great fear in my heart . . . I knew, as had happened on every previous occasion, a burning desire that she would kiss me with those red lips . . .

  It is difficult for me to note these things down, lest some day this page should fall under the gaze of one I love, and cause great pain. (Florence, forgive me, if you can! Will I ever embrace you again?) But it is the truth, even if only a true account of a strange dream, and I must hope that the truth will set me free.

  I have not yet learned my nocturnal visitor's name—assuming that the woman is real enough to have one. Perhaps I should call her "the girl," for she seems very young. As she approached my bed last night she laughed . . . such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound could never have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water glasses when played on by a cunning hand . . . Overcome by a strange helplessness, I had closed my eyes. The girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.

  I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but could see out perfectly under the lashes. The girl bent over me, and I had the sense that she was fairly gloating. She actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and bearded chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat . . . I could feel the hot breath on my neck, and the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer—nearer . . . the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart.

  Suddenly she straightened, and her head turned as if listening for some distant but all-important sound. As if released from a spell, I moved as if to spring out of the bed, but in the instant before the motion could be completed, she bent over me again. The touch of her fingers on my arm seemed to drain the strength from all my limbs, and I sank back helplessly.

  "So sweet is your blood, my little Irishman. I think there is a drop of something special in it," the apparition murmured. In my confused state, the idea that this diminutive visitor might call my large frame "little" drew from my lips a burst of foolish laughter. In response, the girl laughed again, a sound of ribald coquetry, and bent over me to accomplish her purpose.

  Then the truth, or what seemed the truth, of what was happening overcame me, and I sank down in a delirium of unbearable horror and indescribable delight commingled, until my senses failed me.

  * * *

  Oddly enough, my faint, if such it was, passed seamlessly into a deep and restful sleep, and I slept well until the street sounds of Paris, some cheerful and some angry, below my window, brought me round at almost ten o'clock.

  My awakening this morning was slow and almost painful, and it was difficult to fight free of a persistent heaviness clinging to all my limbs. A single spot of dried blood, half the size of my little finger's nail, stained the pillow, not three as on certain unhappy mornings in the recent past. In London I had independent confirmation (from a hotel maid) that the stains themselves are real, which at the time afforded me inordinate relief.

  This morning, as before, an anxious examination in a mirror disclosed on my throat, just where I felt the pressure of lips and teeth, near the lower border of my full beard, the same ambiguous evidence—two almost imperceptible red spots, so trivial that in ordinary circumstances no one would give them a moment's thought. I cannot say it is impossible that the small hemorrhage had issued from them, but it might as easily have come from nostril, mouth, or ear.

  I take some comfort in the fact that if anyone in the world can help me, it is the physician I have come to Paris to see—JeanMartin Charcot, perhaps the world's foremost authority on locomotor ataxia, as well as hypnotism. Whether he can possibly help me, either in his character as mesmerist, or as expert in neuropathy, is yet to be discovered. If Charcot can help, in one capacity or the other, he must. If he cannot, I tremble for my very life. I have already gone past the point of fearing for my sanity.

  I must force myself to write down what I have been avoiding until now, the evil I fear the most. If the girl has no objective reality, then these mental horrors that I endure are sheer delusion, and the precursor of much worse to come, of an absolute mental and physical ruin. I am in the grip of a loathsome and shameful disease, contracted years ago—if that is so, then what is left of my life will not be worth the living. I only pray God that the source of my agony may not be syphilis. It is only with difficulty that I can force myself to pen the word on this white page—but there, it is done.

  As far as I know, or the world knows, there is no cure. The more advanced physicians admit that the current standard of treatment, with potassium iodide, has been shown to be practically worthless. I know the early symptoms (alas, from my own case) and have seen the full horror of the tertiary stage expressed in the bodies of other men. Delusions are frequently a part of that catastrophe. But the beast takes many forms. The first symptom of the last stage, sometimes appearing decades after the first, local signs of infection have passed away, tends to be a weakening or total loss of the ankle and knee reflex. In succeeding months and years the patient's ability to walk, and even to stand normally, slowly declines. Sometimes in medical description the initials GPI are used, standing for general paralysis of the insane, the most dreaded late manifestation. The effects on the brain are varied, but include delusions, loss of memory, sometimes violent anger. Disorientation, incontinence, and convulsions occur often. Tabes dorsalis (also known as locomotor ataxia) is the commonest symptom of infection in the spinal cord. Others include darting attacks of intense pain in the legs and hips, difficult urination, numbness in hands or feet, a sense of constriction about the waist, an unsteadiness in walking—all capped by a loss of sexual function.

  So far I have experienced only the delusions—if such they are. Horrible as that fate would be, I believe this current torture of uncertainty is even worse. I will go mad if Heaven does not grant me an answer soon.

  * * *

  (Later)—I find it a source of irritation that I will not be presenting myself, openly and honestly from the beginning, to Charcot as a sufferer in need of help, but only as a visiting "celebrity." In the latter category I of course shine solely by the reflected light of my employer. No one here has shown the least awareness of my own small literary efforts; and I would not be surprised to learn that no Parisian has ever read Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland.

  This concealment of my true purpose is, to a certain extent, dishonesty on my part. But when I consider the unfortunate publicity that might otherwise result, and the risk of harm to others if my condition were widely known, it seems to me the role of honor must include a measure of dishonesty. Desperate though my situation is, I wish to meet Charcot and form my own estimate of the man and his methods (which some denounce, perhaps out of jealousy), before committing myself completely into his hands.

  * * *

  Evening: Today I have seen and heard that which frightened me anew, but also that which gives me hope. Let me set down the events of the afternoon as quickly and calmly as I can, before the memory of even the smallest detail has begun to fade.

  First, let me state my key discovery: The girl is real! Real, and, to my utter astonishment, a patient of Charcot's!

  I wa
s certain, from the moment today when our eyes met in the hospital, that she knew me as instantly and surely as I knew her.

  I suppose I need not try to describe the hideous shock I suffered upon recognizing her among the inmates. There can be no possibility of a mistake, though in the filtered daylight her teeth appeared quite small and ordinary.

  I was certain that she knew me from the moment when our eyes met, and I had the odd impression that she might even have been expecting me.

  We were standing close together in the treatment room, one of the stops on what I suppose must be the regular tour afforded distinguished visitors. Her whisper was so soft that I am certain no one but myself could hear it. But I could read her lips with perfect ease: "It is my little Irishman!" And then she licked them with her soft, pink tongue.

  * * *

  But I should set down the afternoon's events in their proper order. The hospital, La Salpêtrié re, sprawls over several acres of land not far from the botanic gardens, and houses several thousand patients, nearly all women. (The Biceˆ tre, nearby, is reserved for men.)

  The famous doctor is now about sixty years of age, of small stature but imposing appearance. I have heard it said that he is pleased to exaggerate his natural resemblance to Napolé on . . .he is pale, clean-shaven with straight black hair only lightly tinged with grey, a firm mouth, and dark melancholy eyes that seem to remember some ancient loss.

  Our tour began in what seemed routine fashion. Charcot called several patients (by their given names only), and brought them forward one at a time to demonstrate the symptoms of their illness and the means he used to treat it. His comments were terse and to the point. Whatever could not be helped by the power of suggestion must be the result of heredity, and nothing could be done about it.

  I paid little attention to the mysterious girl when she first appeared, as routinely as any of the others, called out of her private room, or perhaps I should say cell. Her long, red hair, which first caught my eye, was bound up in a cap, from which a few strands of bright coppery red escaped, and she was decently clad, like the other patients, in a plain hospital robe. I did not even look closely at her until I heard her voice.

  Charcot was pronouncing his accented English in forceful tones.

  "Lucy, this gentleman has come from England to visit us today. He is a famous man in London, business manager of the Lyceum Theater."

  Lucy—that is the only name by which I have heard her called—responded to the doctor's questions in English bearing almost the same flavor of Ireland as does my own. From Charcot's first remarks regarding her, it was clear that she has been his patient for only a few days. With a casual question I confirmed that she had been admitted on the very day of my own arrival in Paris.

  Stunned by the familiarity of her voice, I gazed intently at her face, and could no longer doubt her identity. There was an impudent presumption in the look she returned to me, and a twinkling in her green eyes that strongly suggested we shared a secret. There followed the whispered words which, though nearly inaudible, seemed to seal her identity as my nocturnal visitor.

  The tour was moving on. I wanted desperately to question Charcot further on the background and history of the girl, but I delayed. I admit I feared to ask such questions in her presence, lest she put forward some convincing claim of having known me in different circumstances.

  Gradually more facts of her case came out. According to the doctor, Lucy displays a positive terror of sunlight, and has a disturbing habit of refusing to eat the standard fare provided for patients—the quality of which, I note in passing, seems higher than one might expect in this large an institution.

  Hers, he said, is a very interesting case. (Ah, if only he knew!) Several days ago Lucy had somehow got hold of a rat—I can well believe that Charcot was livid with anger when he heard of such a creature being found, in what he considered his hospital—and, using her own sharp-pointed teeth as surgical instruments, was delicately draining it of blood, which she appeared to consider a delicacy.

  It is also said that she manifests an intense fear of mirrors—as they are practically nonexistent within the walls of La Salpeˆ trié re, this presents her caretakers with no urgent problem.

  As it was evident from my repeated questions that I had a strong interest in the patient, Charcot at the end of the tour obliged me by returning to her cell and questioning her at some length while I stood by.

  Lucy's manner as she replied was not particularly shy, but still subdued, and somehow distant.

  What was her present age? She did not know, could not remember—and did not seem to think it was at all important. Had she been born in Paris? No—in Ireland, far across the sea—of that she was certain. How, then, had she come to France? Her parents had brought her when they had come to join the Paris Commune.

  This was interesting news indeed. The doctor frowned. "You must have been only a very small child at that time. How can you remember?"

  "Oh, no sir. I was fifteen years of age when we came to France, and much as you see me now."

  Charcot gave me a significant look: The fierce rebellion of the Commune now lies fully seventeen years in the past, and the girl who stood before us today could hardly be more than eighteen at the most.

  His voice remained gentle, but insistent: "And you have been here, in Paris, ever since?"

  Lucy began to twist her fingers together nervously. "No; the fighting grew terrible in the city, soon after we arrived. My mother was killed, and quite early on I ran away."

  "Indeed? You ran away alone?"

  There was a hesitation. Then, finally: "No, sir. It was then he came to me, and claimed me for his own, and took me away. To be his, forever and ever." As she said this, the girl gave a strange sigh, as of triumph and dread all mingled.

  Charcot gave me another look filled with meaning and picked up on what he evidently thought an important clue. " 'He'? Who is this 'he'?"

  The question produced evident distress. But however Charcot prodded, even threatening the girl with strict confinement if she refused cooperation, there was no answer.

  The doctor's interest in this strange tale, though on his side purely professional, seemed to have become nearly as great as my own. He dispatched an orderly to bring him the girl's dossier, and stood in an attitude of deep thought, chin supported in one hand.

  "And where did this person take you when you fled from Paris?"

  Lucy frowned; her eyes were now closed, and she seemed to be experiencing some type of painful memory. Her answer when it came was long and rambling and unclear, and I do not remember every word. But the gist of it was that her mysterious abductor, who had evidently also become her lover at some point, had carried her to what she called the dark land, "beyond the forest."

  By this time the girl's medical record had been brought to Charcot from the office; on opening, it proved to contain only a single sheet of paper. Turning to me, Charcot read rapidly from it. "She has been telling the same story all along: that she is the child of an Irish-Russian revolutionary couple, brought to Paris by her parents when they came, with others of like mind, to join the Commune in '71. But that is absurd on the face of it, for the girl cannot be more than twenty years old at the very most."

  Another brief notation in the record stated that Lucy on first being admitted to the hospital had been housed in a regular ward. There she had displayed an almost incredible skill at slipping away during the night, but was always to be found in her bed again at dawn, the means of her return as mysterious as that of her disappearance. Irked by this disregard of regulations, the doctor in immediate charge of her case had transferred her to a private cell, in the section set aside for patients who are violent or otherwise present unusual difficulties. Even there she had at least twice somehow managed to leave the locked cell at night, so that a search of the hospital wards and grounds was ordered.

  "Without result, I may add," Charcot informed me. "But each time, in the morning, she was found in her cell again, wanting
to do nothing but sleep through the day. I found it necessary to dismiss two employees for carelessness."

  "She seems a real challenge," was the only comment I could make.

  By then it was obvious that the doctor was growing more and more intrigued. But his voice maintained the same calm, professional tone as he turned back to the girl and asked: "What did you do in the land beyond the forest?"

  The trouble in Lucy's countenance cleared briefly. "I slept and woke . . . feasted and fasted . . . danced and loved . . . in a great house . . . "

  "What sort of a great house?"

  "It was a castle . . . "

  The doctor raised an eyebrow, expressing in a French way considerable doubt. "A castle, you say."

  "Yes." She nodded solemnly. "But later he was cruel to me there . . . so I ran away again."

  "Who was it that was cruel to you? What was his name?"

  At this the girl became quite agitated, displaying a mixture of emotions . . .

  "He who brought me there . . . the prince of that land," she finally got out. Then one more sentence burst forth, after which she seemed relieved. "He made me the dearg-due."

  "I did not understand that word," Charcot complained briskly. But the girl could not be induced to repeat it, and could not or would not explain.

  All this time I said nothing; but I had understood the Gaelic all too well. My hand strayed unconsciously to touch the small marks on my throat.

  The questioning went on. Why had Lucy come back to Paris? She had been "following the little Irishman, who is so sweet." (She said this without looking in my direction; and I was much relieved that neither Charcot nor the attendants standing by imagined "the little Irishman" could possibly mean me.)

  She went on, in a voice increasingly tight with strain: "I am afraid to return to the dark land. And I yearn to go back to blessed Ireland, but I dare not, or he will find me, and take me back to his domain, the land beyond the forest . . . "