A considerable fragment of a roast joint was upon the table, and Schalken immediately began to cut some, but he was anticipated, for no sooner did she see it than she caught it, a more than mortal image of famine, and with her hands, and even with her teeth, she tore off the flesh, and swallowed it. When the paroxysm of hunger had been a little appeased, she appeared on a sudden overcome with shame, or it may have been that other more agitating thoughts overpowered and scared her, for she began to weep bitterly and to wring her hands.
"Oh, send for a minister of God," said she; "I am not safe till he comes; send for him speedily."
Gerard Douw despatched a messenger instantly, and prevailed on his niece to allow him to surrender his bed chamber to her use. He also persuaded her to retire to it at once to rest; her consent was extorted upon the condition that they would not leave her for a moment.
"Oh that the holy man were here," she said; "he can deliver me: the dead and the living can never be one: God has forbidden it."
With these mysterious words she surrendered herself to their guidance, and they proceeded to the chamber which Gerard Douw had assigned to her use.
"Do not, do not leave me for a moment," said she; "I am lost forever if you do."
Gerard Douw's chamber was approached through a spacious apartment, which they were now about to enter. He and Schalken each carried a candle, so that a sufficiency of light was cast upon all surrounding objects. They were now entering the large chamber, which as I have said, communicated with Douw's apartment, when Rose suddenly stopped, and, in a whisper which thrilled them both with horror, she said:-
"Oh, God! He is here! He is here! See, see! There he goes!"
She pointed towards the door of the inner room, and Schalken thought he saw a shadowy and ill-defined form gliding into that apartment. He drew his sword, and, raising the candle so as to throw its light with increased distinctness upon the objects in the room, he entered the chamber into which the shadow had glided. No figure was there - nothing but the furniture which belonged to the room, and yet he could not be deceived as to the fact that something had moved before them into the chamber. A sickening dread came upon him, and the cold perspiration broke out in heavy drops upon his forehead; nor was he more composed, when he heard the increased urgency and agony of entreaty, with which Rose implored them not to leave her for a moment.
"I saw him," said she; "he's here. I cannot be deceived; I know him; he's by me; he is with me; he's in the room. Then, for God's sake, as you would save me, do not stir from beside me."
They at length prevailed upon her to lie down upon the bed, where she continued to urge them to stay by her. She frequently uttered incoherent sentences, repeating, again and again, "the dead and the living cannot be one: God has forbidden it." And then again, "Rest to the wakeful - sleep to the sleepwalkers." These and such mysterious and broken sentences, she continued to utter until the clergyman arrived. Gerard Douw began to fear, naturally enough, that terror or ill-treatment, had unsettled the poor girl's intellect, and he half suspected, by the suddenness of her appearance, the unseasonableness of the hour, and above all, from the wildness and terror of her manner, that she had made her escape from some place of confinement for lunatics, and was in imminent fear of pursuit. He resolved to summon medical advice as soon as the mind of his niece had been in some measure set at rest by the offices of the clergyman whose attendance she had so earnestly desired; and until this object had been attained, he did not venture to put any questions to her, which might possibly, by reviving painful or horrible recollections, increase her agitation. The clergyman soon arrived - a man of ascetic countenance and venerable age - one whom Gerard Douw respected very much, forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic, though one perhaps more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a Christian - of pure morality, subtle brain, and frozen heart. He entered the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined and immediately on his arrival, she requested him to pray for her, as for one who lay in the hands of Satan, and who could hope for deliverance only from heaven.
That you may distinctly understand all the circumstances of the event which I am going to describe, it is necessary to state the relative position of the parties who were engaged in it. The old clergyman and Schalken were in the anteroom of which I have already spoken; Rose lay in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the bed, at her urgent desire, stood her guardian; a candle burned in the bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment. The old man now cleared his voice as if about to commence, but before he had time to begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to illuminate the room in which the poor girl lay, and she, with hurried alarm, exclaimed:-
"Godfrey, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe."
Gerard Douw forgetting for the moment her repeated injunctions, in the immediate impulse, stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order to supply what she desired.
"Oh God! Do not go, dear uncle," shrieked the unhappy girl - and at the same time she sprung from the bed, and darted after him, in order, by her grasp, to detain him. But the warning came too late, for scarcely had he passed the threshold, and hardly had his niece had time to utter the startling exclamation, when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him, as if swung by a strong blast of wind. Schalken and he both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to shake it. Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror. Schalken and Douw applied every nerve to force open the door; but all in vain. There was no sound of struggling from within, but the screams seemed to increase in loudness, and at the same time they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn, and the window itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open. One last shriek, so long and piercing and agonized as to be scarcely human, swelled from the room, and suddenly there followed a death-like silence. A light step was heard crossing the floor, as if from the bed to the window; and almost at the same instant the door gave way, and, yielding to the pressure of the external applicants, nearly precipitated them into the room. It was empty. The window was open, and Schalken sprung to a chair and gazed out upon the street and canal below. He saw no form, but he saw, or thought he saw, the waters of the broad canal beneath settling ring after ring in heavy circles, as if a moment before disturbed by the submission of some ponderous body.
No trace of Rose was ever after found, nor was anything certain respecting her mysterious wooer discovered or even suspected - no clue whereby to trace the intricacies of the labyrinth and to arrive at its solution, presented itself. But an incident occurred, which, though it will not be received by our rational readers in lieu of evidence, produced nevertheless a strong and a lasting impression upon the mind of Schalken. Many years after the events which we have detailed, Schalken, then residing far away received an intimation of his father's death, and of his intended burial upon a fixed day in the church of Rotterdam. It was necessary that a very considerable journey should be performed by the funeral procession, which as it will be readily believed, was not very numerously attended. Schalken with difficulty arrived in Rotterdam late in the day upon which the funeral was appointed to take place. It had not then arrived. Evening closed in, and still it did not appear.
Schalken strolled down to the church; he found it open; notice of the arrival of the funeral had been given, and the vault in which the body was to be laid had been opened. The sexton, on seeing a well-dressed gentleman, whose object was to attend the expected obsequies, pacing the aisle of the church, hospitably invited him to share with him the comforts of a blazing fire, which, as was his custom in winter time upon such occasions, he had kindled in the hearth of a chamber in which he was accustomed to await the arrival of such grisly guests and which communicated, by a flight of steps, with the vault below. In this chamber, Schalken and his entertainer seated themselves; and the sexton, after some fruitless attempts to engage his gues
t in conversation, was obliged to apply himself to his tobacco-pipe and can, to solace his solitude. In spite of his grief and cares, the fatigues of a rapid journey of nearly forty hours gradually overcame the mind and body of Godfrey Schalken, and he sank into a deep sleep, from which he awakened by someone's shaking him gently by the shoulder. He first thought that the old sexton had called him, but he was no longer in the room. He roused himself, and as soon as he could clearly see what was around him, he perceived a female form, clothed in a kind of light robe of white, part of which was so disposed as to form a veil, and in her hand she carried a lamp. She was moving rather away from him, in the direction of the flight of steps which conducted towards the vaults. Schalken felt a vague alarm at the sight of this figure and at the same time an irresistible impulse to follow its guidance. He followed it towards the vaults, but when it reached the head of the stairs, he paused; the figure paused also, and, turning gently round, displayed, by the light of the lamp it carried, the face and features of his first love, Rose Velderkaust. There was nothing horrible, or even sad, in the countenance. On the contrary, it wore the same arch smile which used to enchant the artist long before in his happy days. A feeling of awe and interest, too intense to be resisted, prompted him to follow the spectre, if spectre it were. She descended the stairs - he followed - and turning to the left, through a narrow passage, she led him, to his infinite surprise, into what appeared to be an old-fashioned Dutch apartment, such as the pictures of Gerard Douw have served to immortalize. Abundance of costly antique furniture was disposed about the room, and in one corner stood a four-post bed, with heavy black cloth curtains around it; the figure frequently turned towards him with the same arch smile; and when she came to the side of the bed, she drew the curtains, and, by the light of the lamp, which she held towards its contents, she disclosed to the horror-stricken painter, sitting bolt upright in the bed, the livid and demoniac form of Vanderhausen. Schalken had hardly seen him, when he fell senseless upon the floor, where he lay until discovered, on the next morning, by persons employed in closing the passages into the vaults. He was lying in a cell of considerable size, which had not been disturbed for a long time, and he had fallen beside a large coffin, which was supported upon small pillars, a security against the attacks of vermin.
To his dying day Schalken was satisfied of the reality of the vision which he had witnessed, and he has left behind him a curious evidence of the impression which it wrought upon his fancy, in a painting executed shortly after the event I have narrated, and which is valuable as exhibiting not only the peculiarities which have made Schalken's pictures sought after, but even more so as presenting a portrait of his early love, Rose Velderkaust, whose mysterious fate must always remain matter of speculation.
17 - David Sutton - Clinically Dead
Russell's mother was seriously ill in intensive care.
The sneaking suspicion was that he should never have been away on holiday when she went in for her operation. At the back of his mind he'd known he was tempting fate, but who ever believed in that? Nevertheless, his one nagging thought, as he lay on hot, gritty beaches, dozing, was that something would inevitably go wrong if he took his vacation rather than cancelling. Because his mother's aneurysm operation was to be performed a mere twelve hours before the 757 deposited him back at the airport, it hardly seemed logical to miss out on two weeks in the sun. But guilt struck any form of rationality stone dead.
He rushed to the hospital dazed, in shock, wondering if the situation could have been avoided by treating himself to a bit of healthy selflessness. To keep lady luck sweet.
Before Russell was allowed in to see his mother, he was spoken to by the senior anaesthetist, having been required to sit for fifteen minutes in a small office adjacent to intensive care.
"The operation went without a hitch," he said without preamble. "The procedure is well established and usually straightforward. In fact, your mother was coming out of surgery as we expected when there were complications." The face of the anaesthetist was alarmingly boyish; Russell thought he looked too young to be responsible for life and death in the operating theatre.
Unable to maintain eye contact, Russell stared at the man's shoes. Unexpectedly, they were white leather mules with thick wooden soles, the sort of shoes which are supposed, somehow, to do your feet good. The leather was spotted with dried blood.
"Is she -?" Russell could not finish what he wanted to ask. He'd never had to face precisely this situation before. His father had died ten years ago, at work. His death was a fait accompli. Having his mother halfway between this world and the next was proving to be altogether more difficult to handle. He wished that his mother and father had not had him so late, then he wouldn't have had to cope with aged parents whilst he was still relatively young.
"Your mother is, what age?" the anaesthetist asked, as if deliberately trying to avoid answering the question he must have known Russell was trying to ask.
"Sixty-six," Russell replied.
"She smoked?" There was an indifferent callousness in his tone of voice that Russell could not comprehend the need for. Nobody's perfect, after all.
Looking up, Russell nodded. "But not for the last few years," he qualified.
"Well, her age and the state of her arteries are against her, you must understand that. However, we're hopeful she'll recover, I can say that."
For a few seconds Russell's heart leaped. He could feel the beat in his chest stagger into another gear. Maybe taking his holiday and enjoying it had not, after all, destroyed his mother's life.
"But don't get me wrong," the anaesthetist continued, "she is very poorly indeed. And we expect her to be in intensive therapy for some time."
Only the next day would Russell be able to remember what else the man had told him in the little cluttered office that threatened to suffocate its visitants. All he could concern himself with now was the sight of his mother when he was finally allowed to briefly see her, his body trembling with the fear of death.
She was unconscious, her long, grey hair in disarray, her face absent of colour. The bed seemed huge, swamping her diminutive body, and it was raised up as if she was being offered to some malignant god on a steel framed altar. The space around her was dimly illuminated. The continuous, quiet bleeping from a computer monitor was the only sound which accompanied her agonized, open-mouthed breathing, drawn in and exhaled with wheezing rapidity.
Russell watched the monitor high on the wall behind the bed. Red, yellow, blue and purple lines zig-zagged across it. Numbers tripped higher and lower, instantaneous calculations, forever updated. To the side of the bed were the drips, the syringe pumps and the intravenous pumps which were filling her arteries with painkillers and blood, and her stomach with food. A clear plastic tube taped to her nose was draining from her lungs a filthy brown liquid that kept hesitating in the U-bend, before being pushed on by more of the same.
A nurse appeared and emptied a urethral catheter bag, making a note of the quantity extracted. She smiled at Russell and the simple gesture reassured him more than had the anaesthetist. These people were dedicated. They were making sure his mother had every chance of survival, every chance for her own defences, her own will to live, to triumph. Her recovery was as much their concern as his.
At work the next day, he finally recalled what had been explained to him about his mother's condition. Russell was lifting and tipping what felt like the thousandth sack of the day, a bulk mailing of magazines, when a nylon strap holding the pack together split, and the magazines separated, slithering into the sorting trolley, their slippery, clear plastic envelopes helping them on their way. The bright red logo of the periodical repeated itself as the pile cascaded out of the sack. Corpuscles was dripping printed blood down the cover of the horror film magazine, Sissy Spacek's eyes glaring out as if shocked that the logo could do what it was doing to her face.
Russell looked away, towards the high ceiling. A haze of dust hung in the air of the sorting office, fluoresce
nt lights glinting off specks in the middle distance. The faint sounds of radio muzak came from somewhere to his right, but the speaker could barely cope over the thump and rattle of conveyor belts and other machinery.
Then he remembered. His mother had been coming round from the first operation, but had lapsed back into unconsciousness unexpectedly. The circulation to her legs had ceased. She was rushed back to theatre as it was deemed that blood clots were preventing the circulation to the lower parts of her limbs. In a second lengthy, five hour operation, the surgeon had inserted arterial lines into both her legs, down from inner thighs to ankles. However, no blood clotting had been discovered. Instead the problem was… What was it Russell had been told? He couldn't really understand it. A condition called trashing, where fine crystals of blood block the capillaries. It was hoped the second operation would solve the problem in any event.
Time would tell.
On Thursday Russell wondered what had happened to all his time. He pressed the intercom button at the entrance to ITU. He was allowed through right away; some nights he had been forced to wait for up to twenty minutes while they did things: washing, physiotherapy, blood tests. As he approached the bed he was led aside by one of the sisters.
He could still see his mother wrapped in a sheet and trailed with twitching tubes. A mask covered her nose and mouth.
"As you know," the sister was saying, "Mary has had difficulty breathing and the infection on her chest has worsened. Mr Hastone considered it necessary to do something to alleviate what's becoming a life threatening condition."
Russell blinked at the sister. She was rather tall and beautiful, her lips wide, her blue eyes bright with life and intelligence. Her forehead wore a frown, as if to ensure he meekly accept the diagnosis and its necessary treatment. For a moment, with dread upon him, Russell could only see her as part of the machinery, a fleshy cog in the whirr of ITU's vast array of equipment and plastic piping.
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