“Funny,” Louie snorted, “it’d be tragic.”
Strangely enough his reply saddened me. I dozed off thinking about Ellen, wondering what she’d be wearing the next time I saw her.
IT TURNED out to be a backless, white velvet evening gown that transformed her into an ethereal creature, consisting of gold and white mistiness and a glorious smile.
She actually took my breath away as she advanced and took my arm. (I didn’t realize until later how fortunate it was that she did take my breath away.)
“You look positively divine,” I said as I helped her into the car for the second night’s entertainment.
“Thank you,” she said seriously.
I settled myself beside her and then I noticed it.
I couldn’t believe my nose for an instant. I sniffed twice in incredulous horror, and then I frantically rolled down the back windows of the car and let the strong cold wind rush in on us.
“What is it?” Ellen asked apprehensively.
“Garlic!” I gasped. “Can you smell it?”
I scrambled to the side of the car and let the wind blow into my face until my nausea passed. It had been a terrible blow to have the acrid odor of garlic wafted over me that way. For garlic is to the vampire what the silver bullet is to the were-wolf.[2] A stake through the heart would almost be preferable to a steady exposure to the hideous fumes of the loathsome vegetable.
When my senses were under control again I rolled up the window and sank weakly against the cushions of the car.
“That was terrible,” I said faintly, still trembling from the harrowing incident.
“Can’t you stand garlic?” Ellen asked wistfully.
There it was again! Garlic! The odor was everywhere.
I scrambled to the windows again.
“It’s you!” I strangled. “You’ve been eating garlic, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” she said in a small, guilty voice. “I always eat it. I can’t keep away from it. That’s why I have to hire an escort when I want to go out. None of the boys will take me.”
I glared at her accusingly.
“Do you blame them?” I cried bitterly.
She began to cry then. Small sobs shook her body and she burried her nose in her handkerchief.
“You’re just like all the rest,” she wailed.
She looked so piteous as she cried that I started to take her in my arms to comfort her, but I couldn’t force myself to get any nearer to those maddening fumes of garlic.
BY OPENING all of the windows and breathing very cautiously I was able to remain in the back of the car.
“Why do you eat garlic?” I demanded.
She sniffed.
“Can’t help it.”
“I didn’t notice any last night,” I said sternly. “Was this your idea of a pleasant surprise?”
“I wanted to make a good impression,” she blubbered, “so I didn’t eat any all day yesterday. But today I just couldn’t help myself. I ate t-two garlic sandwiches for supper.”
I groaned. Here was a girl who had stirred me as no mortal creature had ever before and she had turned out to be a garlic fiend.
“You can take me home now,” she sobbed.
I squirmed uneasily. I didn’t want to take her home, but what could I do? I was on the point of giving the necessary instructions to the chauffeur when an absurd streak of chivalry reared its illogical head.
“Nonsense,” I said, between gulps of fresh air from the open window, “we won’t let a little garlic interfere with our good time. I—I don’t exactly like the stuff, but I can put up with it if you can.”
She blew her nose and dried her eyes and bestowed a look on me that almost—I say “almost”—made my sacrifice worth while.
The evening passed in a foggy, unbearable daze. Through the blinding mists of garlic I remember kaleidescopic scenes of night clubs, theatres, restaurants, but nothing very clearly.
It is a wonder that I did not suffocate. But it is more wonderful that I stuck the evening out to its slow, painful culmination. Ellen was like a goddess. Never have I seen such sheer, heart-breaking beauty. But that was scant compensation for the agony I was forced to endure in her company.
When the wretched night was finally over I staggered homeward, a dazed, groggy figure. Louie leaped to his feet as I stumbled into the darkened room and collapsed in a chair.
“For goodness sake,” he exclaimed “What is it?”
Then he sniffed, and an expression of horror crossed his normally pleasant features.
“Garlic,” he muttered. “You’re reeking with it.”
I nodded dumbly.
“Don’t desert me,” I begged. “It was the girl. Garlic fiend. Eats it in sandwiches. I’m almost dead.”
Louie hurried to the window and jerked it open.
“Good thing you got out of it alive,” he said. “You aren’t going to see her any more are you?” It was purely a rhetorical question with him, one that demanded no answer.
But I did answer.
“Yes, Louie,” I said dully, “I’m going to see her again tomorrow night and every night this week. I have to. Garlic is devilish stuff, but not seeing her would be worse. I’ve got to see her.”
AND I did. In spite of Louie’s protestations, in spite of my own common sense, the next evening found me in her company, escorting her from one blazing night spot to another and almost killing myself in the attempt.
I couldn’t analyze the madness that made me risk myself, torture myself, to be near her. It was some strange alchemy with which I was unfamiliar. It had transformed me from a cool, calculating vampire into an illogical, pseudoheroic jackass.
Strange as it may sound I was happy in her company even though it required a staunch effort of will to keep from tearing myself from her and spending the rest of my days in an air-conditioned theatre.
And then I discovered the reason for this peculiar state of affairs. I was saying good night to her and suddenly I noticed the light of the moon on her eyes and on her lips and on her slim white throat.
I leaned forward unable to help myself—and kissed her!
When my head stopped spinning deliriously I thought pityingly of all the poor vampires skulking through the world, scaring children and boring themselves, completely unaware of this great thing called love. The decades I had wasted frightening peasants suddenly loomed before me, an acute reminder of what I had been missing.
I kissed her again.
“I love you,” she said softly.
“And I love you, too,” I said, kissing her again.
After several more introductions to this great game called love, I bade Ellen a fond and tender good night, and took my departure happily and hopefully.
I walked on air until I reached the boarding house, but when I saw Louie’s gloomy face the realities of the situation were forced upon me.
“Louie,” I said, “I have fallen in love. I am happier than I can ever remember. What do you think of it?”
“Love?” Louie cried scornfully. “You’re mad. Love’s a lot of nonsense.”
“As an expert speaking to a rank novice,” I said with pardonable superiority, “I can inform you that there is lots more to love than meets the eye. It has—er—unexplored possibilities I’m sure.”
“It won’t work,” Louie said, shaking his head emphatically. “You are a vampire. You can’t exist in the daylight, you don’t reflect in mirrors, you have strange ideas and cravings, you can’t stand garlic and dozens of other things. What kind of a husband do you think you’d make?”
I slumped into a chair. I had forgotten a number of things.
“But she loves me,” I said dolefully. “And I love her.”
“She eats garlic,” Louie said bluntly. “You couldn’t live with her. Will you stop talking sheer nonsense! You’re a vampire! You should never have left your castle in Austria.”
“Ellen’s father has a castle in Florida,” I said defensively. “Modern plumbing, too,”
I added.
“It won’t work,” Louie said again. He was pacing the floor in his agitation. “We shouldn’t have left Austria. Look at me!”
He pressed a button and the RED-DRIP tomato sign flared startlingly across his shirt.
“Is that a respectable occupation for a vampire?” he demanded bitterly.
“Still class conscious, aren’t you?” I said scathingly. “Still all puffed up with pride in family and position, I see.” I was a trifle angry because his arguments had baffled me.
“Well my grandfather doesn’t still sleep in a coffin,” Louie retorted hotly. “Not in the living room, anyway.”
“That makes you quite an aristocrat, doesn’t it?” I said sarcastically. “But whose great-grandfather was it who was actually caught drinking you-know-what?”
“That’s rather a low blow, I think,” Louie said stiffly. “Anyway he was only my great-grandfather by marriage.” More verbal blows were struck until we finally both retired to our beds in an injured silence. If one must live with a vampire, I thought as I dropped off to sleep, it would be well to find one who was not family conscious, nor so logical.
THAT night I saw Ellen again and she was more beautiful and desirable than ever before. I didn’t even mind the garlic so much. Except for a few instances when I almost strangled, it had little effect on me. But in spite of this, Louie’s gloomy words cast a pall over the evening.
Ellen was sweetly affectionate, but it was difficult for me to match her gay mood. More and more forcibly I was realizing the gap between us was one that nothing could bridge.
It was as we were saying good night that I finally realized the utter hopelessness of the situation.
“Darling,” Ellen said sweetly. “I’ve written father all about you and he’s wild to meet you. He’s in Florida now and can’t get away, but he just insists that we come down there for a few days so he can get to know you. You will come, won’t you?”
“Well, h—how nice,” I managed to gasp. “Florida, you say?”
“You’ll love it,” Ellen cried enthusiastically. “Bathing, tennis, golf, surf board riding, and best of all the beautiful hot Florida sun just shining all the time. Why in three days there you’ll be as brown as an Indian. It’s just what you need too. You’re so pale Ivan, that it worries me.”
“Sun,” I echoed hollowly.
“Yes,” Ellen chattered on, “we’ll spend fourteen hours a day in the sun. Lying on the beach, playing tennis, swimming, it’ll be wonderful.”
“No night clubs,” I said wistfully. “No theatres?”
“Of course not, silly. You wouldn’t want to miss the sun, would you?”
It was then I realized how hopeless and impossible had been my dream of marrying this beautiful girl.
“I can’t go,” I said desperately. “I—I can’t get away.”
“You don’t love me,” Ellen said, starting to cry. This was my first experience with female logic and it was slightly terrifying.
I invented excuses by the gross, but it was no good.
“If you aren’t on the nine o’clock train tomorrow morning,” she wailed, “I’ll know you don’t care about me. G—good night!”
With that she turned and slipped through the door.
I WALKED home despondently. Everything was lost. For it was absolutely unthinkable that I go to Florida. Sun, beautijul hot sun. I shuddered and hurried on. Five minutes in the daylight would finish me for good. The next time you envy a vampire, remember that there are certain drawbacks to the situation.
I did not sleep that morning. I tossed from side to side and cursed the fate that made me what I was. When the rays of the morning sun filtered faintly through our closely shuttered windows I got up.
Louie was already up, but we were not speaking to each other.
Therefore it was somewhat of a surprise when he leaped to his feet and stared at me as if he were seeing a ghost.
“What’s happened to you?” he cried.
I glanced down at myself and then back at him inquiringly.
“Me?” I said. “Everything bad that’s possible, but do you notice some fresh calamity?”
“I’ll say I do!” he cried.
He hurried to my side, reached his hand up to my head and plucked a hair loose. He held it in front of my nose in horror.
“It’s a gray hair,” he cried in horror. “You’ve got at least three more in your scalp.”
I glanced over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and sure enough there were three gray hairs, standing out plainly against the glossy blackness of my scalp.
Then my knees filled with water.
For the first time in two centuries I was viewing my reflection in a mirror!
“Look!” I shrieked. “In the mirror! It’s me.”
I was not too excited to notice that the features that were, staring back at me were extremely handsome, in an aristocratic sort of way.
LOUIE stared from the image in the mirror to the gray hair he still held in his trembling fingers. A look of horrified realization spread over his face.
“It’s happened,” he whispered, “it’s happened. The garlic did it. You’ve gone too far, Ivan. There is no hope for you. The garlic has robbed you of your vampire powers. That is why our ancestors taught us the great fear of the vile vegetable. For it has the power to change a vampire completely, to rob him of his eternal life, to destroy his irresistibility to mirrors. It robs a vampire of everything. It has done it to you. You are no longer a vampire, Ivan. Oh it is good your poor father does not know of this humiliation.”
“Well,” I said breathlessly. “Isn’t this a situation.”
“Wait,” Louie cried imperatively. “There may be still time to save you. If you abhor the garlic like the fiends themselves you might still have a chance. As long as you are constantly exposed to its vile influence you will always be deprived of your vampire nature.”
“What time is it Louie?” I demanded suddenly.
“W—what?” be spluttered. Then he glanced at his watch. “It’s eight fifty. What difference does that make?”
“Just enough,” I shouted, “for me to catch the Dixie Flyer. I’m no longer a vampire, and if the United States can continue to import garlic for my future wife, I’ll stay this way. Cheerio!”
I plunged out of the room and down the steps—into the glorious sunshine. A cab got me to the station at eight fifty-nine, and as I sprinted down the ramp alongside the Dixie Flyer I saw Ellen standing in front of the club car steps ordering the porter to take her luggage off the train.
“Hold it!” I yelled.
She saw me and yelled hysterically, then ordered the porter to put her luggage back on the train.
“I couldn’t go without you,” she sobbed as I wrapped my arms around her.
We climbed on board, but before the doors were slammed a Western Union boy dashed up and shoved a message into my hands. Then the train chugged out of the station.
The message was from Louie. It said:
“Goodbye old friend. I’m going back to Austria. If I meet Adolf, I will forget my good breeding and refinement and do you-know-what. There is no place here for me. May your children take after their mother.
Yours,
Louie.”
“What is it?” Ellen asked, when I finished it.
“Just a note of congratulations,” I said, “from an old drinking companion. Have you had breakfast?”
“I’m starved,” she said, leading me to the dining car.
I studied the menu over the gleaming white napery.
“A steak,” I said to the hovering waiter, “very, very well done and smothered with garlic.”
“Garlic, sir?”
“Garlic! Lots of it.”
Then I leaned over and kissed Ellen.
[1] According to all accepted vampire authorities, these creatures in human form cannot emerge into the daylight, being in a comatose slate during the hours between sunrise and sunset; the
y cannot face a mirror, or allow themselves to be near one when others are present because no image is reflected, and to do so would be a dead giveaway as to their true identity.
[2] It is a well-known fact that the strong, bitter odor of garlic is one of the few things that render a vampire practically helpless. Since the earliest days, when the existence of vampires was just becoming known, this method has been employed to immunize homes against the nightly marauding of vampires.
DOUBLE IN DEATH
First published in the April 1942 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Colegrave was that phenomenon known as a dual personality—two egos in one body. Then he found a way to separate them!
THE resident head of the New York State Insane asylum glanced from the release papers on his desk to the tall, middle-aged, intelligent looking man standing before him.
“Yours has been a most interesting case, Colegrave,” he said thoughtfully. “Six months ago I would have staked my professional reputation on the fact that you were an incurable inmate.
“Now,” the gray-haired alienist shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly, “I find myself in the position of signing your release papers and offering you my congratulations on your extremely remarkable recovery.”
The tall, distinguished man facing the alienist bowed slightly, and smiled.
“Thank you doctor,” he said quietly. “You’ve done a great deal for me I know. Now that I am ready again to take my place in a normal world I find myself somewhat apprehensive. Are you quite sure that I am completely cured?”
The alienist stood up, chuckling.
“The fact that you can ask a question like that is the best indication that you are cured. I can say now, Colegrave, that when you first came into this sanitarium, you were the most advanced schizophrenic[1] I have ever observed. Your cleavage in personality and ego was almost absolute. Mentally, you were two persons. Each segment of your psyche was complete and whole as far as will, memory and temperament were concerned. As a rule when a person is a victim of schizophrenia the eventual result is terrible insanity. The two natures, the two persons you might almost say, are constantly warring for supremacy, and the outcome of such mental civil war is usually mental anarchy. By some miracle you escaped that fate.”
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 76
