‘Oh, heavens above!’ exclaims the bonder.
Stealthily the dead man creeps on, feeling at the beams as he comes; then he stands in the hall, with the firelight on him. A fearful sight; the tall figure distended with the corruption of the grave, the nose fallen off, the wandering, vacant eyes, with the glaze of death on them, the sallow flesh patched with green masses of decay; the wolf-grey hair and beard have grown in the tomb, and hang matted about the shoulders and breast; the nails, too, they have grown. It is a sickening sight – a thing to shudder at, not to see.
Motionless, with no nerve quivering now, Thorhall and Grettir held their breath.
Glámr’s lifeless glance strayed round the chamber; it rested on the shaggy bundle by the high seat. Cautiously he stepped towards it. Grettir felt him groping about the lower lappet and pulling at it. The cloak did not give way. Another jerk; Grettir kept his feet firmly pressed against the posts, so that the rug was not pulled off. The vampire seemed puzzled, he plucked at the upper flap and tugged. Grettir held to the bench and bed board, so that he was not moved, but the cloak was rent in twain, and the corpse staggered back, holding half in its hands, and gazing wonderingly at it. Before it had done examining the shred, Grettir started to his feet, bowed his body, flung his arms about the carcass, and, driving his head into the chest, strove to bend it backward and snap the spine. A vain attempt! The cold hands came down on Grettir’s arms with diabolical force, riving them from their hold. Grettir clasped them about the body again; then the arms closed round him, and began dragging him along. The brave man clung by his feet to benches and posts, but the strength of the vampire was the greater; posts gave way, benches were heaved from their places, and the wrestlers at each moment neared the door. Sharply writhing loose, Grettir flung his hands round a roof beam. He was dragged from his feet; the numbing arms clenched him round the waist, and tore at him; every tendon in his breast was strained; the strain under his shoulders became excruciating, the muscles stood out in knots. Still he held on; his fingers were bloodless; the pulses of his temples throbbed in jerks; the breath came in a whistle through his rigid nostrils. All the while, too, the long nails of the dead man cut into his side, and Grettir could feel them piercing like knives between his ribs. Then at once his hands gave way, and the monster bore him reeling towards the porch, crashing over the broken fragments of the door. Hard as the battle had gone with him indoors, Grettir knew that it would go worse outside, so he gathered up all his remaining strength for one final desperate struggle. The door had been shut with a swivel into a groove; this groove was in a stone, which formed the jamb on one side, and there was a similar block on the other, into which the hinges had been driven. As the wrestlers neared the opening, Grettir planted both his feet against the stone posts, holding Glámr by the middle. He had the advantage now. The dead man writhed in his arms, drove his talons into Grettir’s back, and tore up great ribbons of flesh, but the stone jambs held firm.
‘Now,’ thought Grettir, ‘I can break his back,’ and thrusting his head under the chin, so that the grisly beard covered his eyes, he forced the face from him, and the back was bent as a hazel rod.
‘If I can but hold on,’ thought Grettir, and he tried to shout for Thorhall, but his voice was muffled in the hair of the corpse.
Suddenly one or both of the doorposts gave way. Down crashed the gable trees, ripping beams and rafters from their beds; frozen clods of earth rattled from the roof and thumped into the snow. Glámr fell on his back, and Grettir staggered down on top of him. The moon was at her full; large white clouds chased each other across the sky, and as they swept before her disk she looked through them with a brown halo round her. The snowcap of Jorundarfell, however, glowed like a planet, then the white mountain ridge was kindled, the light ran down the hillside, the bright disk stared out of the veil and flashed at this moment full on the vampire’s face. Grettir’s strength was failing him, his hands quivered in the snow, and he knew that he could not support himself from dropping flat on the dead man’s face, eye to eye, lip to lip. The eyes of the corpse were fixed on him, lit with the cold glare of the moon. His head swam as his heart sent a hot stream to his brain. Then a voice from the grey lips said—
‘Thou hast acted madly in seeking to match thyself with me. Now learn that henceforth ill luck shall constantly attend thee; that thy strength shall never exceed what it now is, and that by night these eyes of mine shall stare at thee through the darkness till thy dying day, so that for very horror thou shalt not endure to be alone.’
Grettir at this moment noticed that his dirk had slipped from its sheath during the fall, and that it now lay conveniently near his hand. The giddiness which had oppressed him passed away, he clutched at the sword haft, and with a blow severed the vampire’s throat. Then, kneeling on the breast, he hacked till the head came off.
Thorhall appeared now, his face blanched with terror, but when he saw how the fray had terminated he assisted Grettir gleefully to roll the corpse on the top of a pile of faggots, which had been collected for winter fuel. Fire was applied, and soon far down the valley the flames of the pyre startled people, and made them wonder what new horror was being enacted in the upper portion of the Vale of Shadows.
Next day the charred bones were conveyed to a spot remote from the habitations of men, and were there buried.
What Glámr had predicted came to pass. Never after did Grettir dare to be alone in the dark.
THE VAMPIRE NEMESIS
‘Dolly’
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, several British expatriates living and working in China and Hong Kong wrote works of fiction set in East Asia, which often explored the cultural conflicts between British residents and their Chinese subordinates, of which the following story is an interesting example. Although sometimes falsely credited to Mrs Vernon F. Creighton, the author of this story was actually Leonard D’Oliver, who at the time it was written was the Chief Officer on the steamer S.S. Kut Sang, the newest, most up-to-date ship in the fleet of the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company of Hong Kong. In his spare time he wrote short stories, the best of which were collected in The Vampire Nemesis and Other Weird Stories of the China Coast (1905).
IN setting down the train of events that occurred at Ningpo on that horror-filled night of August, 18—, I shall make no attempt to justify or excuse my own conduct, nor that of my friend, the end of whose troubled career I shall here endeavour to portray.
Nor would I wish that any who should scan this page should believe that there was aught supernatural about the occurrence. I make no doubt but that all could be readily explained away on grounds purely natural by one who had been a calm observer of the facts, if facts they were, and not some horrible nightmare on which I look back shuddering – one not possessed of the overwrought mind, in a state of nervous tension, such as at the time was mine.
I set them forth here for what they may be worth, and leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.
My reason for reverting at all to so painful a subject, the bare recollection of which, even now, causes the cold beads of terror to gather, must be that the spirit of my friend and college chum cries to me from the grave that justice be done him; that his memory be cleared of the foul stain of murder, leaving nevertheless that of base treachery and fiendish cruelty.
After years of wavering irresolution, I take up my pen to reopen that chapter of horror.
One word more ere I commence. Those who were at Ningpo at that period, now so many years ago, will doubtless remember some of the incidents which at that time made such a sensation, and should they here, under the assumed names, recognise the actors in the terrible tragedy, let them know that hereby one of them sends greetings.
Fergusson and I had been close friends since those early days at Cambridge when all the world looked rosy and life lay before us. Study had never been our forte, and it was perhaps in a mutual avoidance of lectures that we were thrown so much together.
In a
ll the sports we had stood premier. Fergusson had had the proud distinction of pulling in the college eight, while I had competed, unsuccessfully it is true, for the Diamond Sculls at Henley. At cricket and football we were both adepts, and with the gloves neither of us were to be lightly handled; it was only within the bounds of the lecture room that we allowed our inferiority to any, and these, as I said before, we avoided as religiously as our remaining at college would admit. The very natural result of which was that on our leaving and stepping on to the platform of the world we found, to our chagrin, that it was heads that were required there in the scrimmage, and that arms, be they never so well seasoned, were almost a superfluity, unless one had a fancy for bricklaying or some kindred occupation.
It was about this time that glowing reports commenced to reach England of the gold that lay beneath the fertile soil of British Guiana, the old El Dorado of Sir Walter Raleigh, and Fergusson and I resolved upon going out to see for ourselves if somewhere at least sinews were not in requisition. As a result we did dig some gold, or rather washed it, for it was all alluvial deposits, but we buried much more silver, and after a year we came away in disgust.
Our next billet was at the other end of the world, where, still together, we each got a berth on the two papers that the tiny town in the Malay States could boast. There, being better hands at satire than the respective editors, we used to write the slashing editorials about each other that was nearly all the papers contained. To an outsider, with a sense of humour, it must have been intensely amusing to see the two who in the columns of their journals had been vilifying each other, seeking among their extensive vocabulary for a name black enough, drinking an amicable glass together later in the day.
However, there being not enough inhabitants able to read to keep one paper going, the two journals, with a praiseworthy pertinacity, choked each other to death, and with their demise Fergusson and I were once more thrown on our own resources. Yet there exists a certain gentleman of much-maligned character who is reported to look after his own, and he now led us to join the Chinese Imperial Custom Service; thus we drifted from port to port until we were finally stationed at Ningpo, with every prospect of it being a permanency; and it is here that my story may be said to commence.
There being then no Customs quarters there, we each rented a small flat by the riverside, on opposite sides of the stone-flagged street, and about fifty yards apart, and, with a Chinese girl as housekeeper, proceeded to make our lives as comfortable as might be.
I have no desire to pose as a model of virtue. We were neither of us married, but those girls were as faithful to us as any European woman firmly tied in the bonds of Western wedlock could have been.
And here, in relating how Fergusson came by his housekeeper, I must paint in the first dark stain that marred his character. Under him was a half-caste watcher who had a lovely young wife, a girl of little more than eighteen, also with an obvious strain of Western blood in her veins, though she affected the Chinese costume and spoke but little better pidgin-English than her pure-blooded sisters.
This man Fergusson pursued with the most implacable hatred I have ever seen him exhibit towards any human being, until the poor fellow, who went by the name of Mathews (God knows where he got it from!) was never out of hot water. Fine after fine was imposed upon him – sometimes with justice, however unmerciful; more often without – until one day I angrily remonstrated with Fergusson on his gross injustice.
His only reply was a curtly-expressed desire that I would mind my own business, and as I did not care to come to an open rupture with him for the sake of a half-caste, nothing more was said.
At last poor Mathews fell into a trap which I firmly believe had been deliberately laid for him at the instigation of Fergusson, and was dismissed from the service.
This misfortune reduced the unhappy pair to the verge of starvation, and it was then that I saw the ghastly malignity of Fergusson’s relentless persecution. He had been paying surreptitious attentions, when chance offered, to the young girl-wife, and now, having so successfully ruined the husband, he offered her a home beneath his own roof, which she accepted with alacrity.
I suppose I must confess that, after the first burst of anger at Fergusson’s treachery to the watcher, I condoned the hideous offence. After all, Fergusson was my old college chum, and perhaps at heart I was as bad myself, lacking but opportunity.
And so for five months everything ran smoothly. ‘May,’ as Fergusson called his partner in guilt, took readily to her altered fortunes and changed manner of living, nor seemed in the least to regret the loss of her legitimate lord. Ibe, we heard, had taken to opium-smoking, and during his few hours of wakefulness sought employment as a coolie in the rice-fields on the opposite side of the river. Ibe had never been more than a barely perceptible step above the surrounding Chinamen, but now, in his degradation, he had sunk to the level of the lowest. Yet Fergusson felt no remorse for what was so obviously his handiwork.
One dark night early in February Fergusson and I returned late from the newly-erected Customs Club, and stopped opposite my door. He had taken to drinking rather deeply, and I had stayed on beyond my usual hour to keep an eye on him and prevent him, if possible, from imbibing to excess.
The flat I occupied was over a Chinese shop, and to reach the staircase one had to go through the small go-down to the side to a little courtyard at the back, and so through the door leading to the stairs.
Now, as we stood talking, Fergusson was pressing me to step round to his place and sample a bottle of particularly good whisky he had obtained from a ship on which he had been stationed. But I firmly declined. It was late, I said, past midnight. Fergusson would take no denial.
‘Come along,’ he said, ‘it isn’t twelve yet. May will have something hot in readiness for us. You need not stay long.’
‘Not twelve?’ I echoed. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting it is past one!’
‘Done for five dollars,’ said Fergusson, smiling.
‘Right; come upstairs and look at the clock.’
We turned and walked through the go-down into the courtyard beyond. But we had no need to ascend the stairs. As we stood there the little clock I kept in my room (‘Bow Bells’ Fergusson called it) chimed out musically, and we both stood still to listen. I thought as we stood there that I heard a faint stir as of someone entering in the go-down beyond, but paid no heed. The little clock ran through its preliminary chime, then struck one.
‘There!’ I cried triumphantly.
But scarcely had the sound died away on the stairs when there came the thunderous report of a revolver, fired point-blank in a confined space, and as the reverberations echoed through the go-down Fergusson staggered, with a stifled cry, to the wall. Another shot followed closely on the other, and locating the marksman by the flash of the weapon in the darkness of the go-down, I made a rush at him, and went sprawling over something soft and yielding lying full across the doorway. I struck a match and bent over it. It was Mathews, or rather the wreck of Mathews, lying there with a tiny stream of blood bubbling out from his temple and trickling across the floor, a smoking pistol – an antiquated ‘bulldog’ – gripped in his hand.
Without waiting to see more, I threw the match away and ran back to see how Fergusson had fared. I found him leaning against the wall, pale but smiling, trying to staunch the flow of blood from a flesh wound in the shoulder.
‘Near thing that, Ward,’ he said coolly, as I inquired anxiously where he was hit. ‘A little lower, and it would have finished me.’
‘Where are you hit?’ I asked again.
‘Left shoulder – mere scratch!’
He sat down on an empty box while I helped him off with his coat.
‘Wonder who was the potter?’ he said presently.
‘Mathews,’ I answered.
‘Damn him!’ cried Fergusson furiously, springing to his feet. ‘The cursed swine! He shall pay for this!’
‘He has paid already,’ I said quietly.
‘He is outside with a bullet in his brain,’ I answered briefly. This night’s work was not to my liking.
‘That’s right,’ Fergusson said brutally. ‘I’m glad he did the job neatly on himself, just as glad as that he bungled it on me.’
‘Fergusson,’ I said sternly, ‘this is your doing.’
‘Pshaw! Nonsense! The girl did not want to stay with him, and one must oblige a lady when it lies in one’s power so to do.’
A crowd was already gathering, attracted by the report; and as Fergusson did not want to be mixed up in the matter, he hastily slipped up to my room and washed and bandaged his arm. Then we sauntered down to where they were gathered round the dead man, leaving it to be inferred that he had simply committed suicide in the street and tumbled into the open doorway.
‘Jolly glad,’ said Fergusson when all was quiet again, ‘that it did not happen at my place – people would have twigged. I suppose he was lying in wait for me at my door, and when he saw us come in here followed with the intention of potting me when I came out.’
Things fell back into their old groove, and months slid by. The only change was that, despite my efforts to keep him straight, Fergusson took to drinking deeper and deeper, and poor May had a hard time of it when he came home drunk, for he ill-used her shamefully. Remonstrance was in vain; when he was in his cups it was utterly useless to attempt to argue with him, and next morning when he was sobered no one was more contrite, as he viewed the bruises on the girl’s tender flesh, than Fergusson himself. Still she stuck to him, doing her best to keep him from the drink, nor ever complaining to him or anyone else of his brutality.
So matters went on until that eventful August night, when began the most frightful series of events it has ever been the lot of mortal man to witness or chronicle.
Dracula’s Brethren Page 36
