The Vampire Megapack. Nina Kiriki Hoffman

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СКАЧАТЬ boy is suffering from at Peshawar, and her husband died of it. Number two: Mrs. Amworth protested against my moving the boy to my house. Number three: she, or the demon that inhabits her body, a creature powerful and deadly, tries to gain admittance. And add this, too: in medieval times there was an epidemic of vampirism here at Maxley. The vampire, so the accounts run, was found to be Elizabeth Chaston…I see you remember Mrs. Amworth’s maiden name. Finally, the boy is stronger this morning. He would certainly not have been alive if he had been visited again. And what do you make of it?”

      There was a long silence, during which I found this incredible horror assuming the hues of reality.

      “I have something to add,” I said, “which may or may not bear on it. You say that the—the spectre went away shortly before dawn.”

      “Yes.”

      I told him of my dream, and he smiled grimly.

      “Yes, you did well to awake,” he said. “That warning came from your subconscious self, which never wholly slumbers, and cried out to you of deadly danger. For two reasons, then, you must help me: one to save others, the second to save yourself.”

      “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

      “I want you first of all to help me in watching this boy, and ensuring that she does not come near him. Eventually I want you to help me in tracking the thing down, in exposing and destroying it. It is not human: it is an incarnate fiend. What steps we shall have to take I don’t yet know.”

      It was now eleven of the forenoon, and presently I went across to his house for a twelve-hour vigil while he slept, to come on duty again that night, so that for the next twenty-four hours either Urcombe or myself was always in the room where the boy, now getting stronger every hour, was lying.

      The day following was Saturday and a morning of brilliant, pellucid weather, and already when I went across to his house to resume my duty the stream of motors down to Brighton had begun. Simultaneously I saw Urcombe with a cheerful face, which boded good news of his patient, coming out of his house, and Mrs. Amworth, with a gesture of salutation to me and a basket in her hand, walking up the broad strip of grass which bordered the road. There we all three met. I noticed (and saw that Urcombe noticed it too) that one finger of her left hand was bandaged.

      “Good morning to you both,” said she. “And I hear your patient is doing well, Mr. Urcombe. I have come to bring him a bowl of jelly, and to sit with him for an hour. He and I are great friends. I am overjoyed at his recovery.”

      Urcombe paused a moment, as if making up his mind, and then shot out a pointing finger at her.

      “I forbid that,” he said. “You shall not sit with him or see him. And you know the reason as well as I do.”

      I have never seen so horrible a change pass over a human face as that which now blanched hers to the colour of a grey mist. She put up her hand as if to shield herself from that pointing finger, which drew the sign of the cross in the air, and shrank back cowering onto the road. There was a wild hoot from a horn, a grinding of brakes, a shout—too late—from a passing car, and one long scream suddenly cut short. Her body rebounded from the roadway after the first wheel had gone over it, and the second followed. It lay there, quivering and twitching, and was still.

      * * * *

      She was buried three days afterwards in the cemetery outside Maxley, in accordance with the wishes she had told me that she had devised about her interment, and the shock which her sudden and awful death had caused to the little community began by degrees to pass off. To two people only, Urcombe and myself, the horror of it was mitigated from the first by the nature of the relief that her death brought; but, naturally enough, we kept our own counsel, and no hint of what greater horror had been thus averted was ever let slip. But, oddly enough, so it seemed to me, he was still not satisfied about something in connection with her and would give no answer to my questions on the subject.

      Then as the days of a tranquil mellow September and the October that followed began to drop away like the leaves of the yellowing trees, his uneasiness relaxed. But before the entry of November the seeming tranquillity broke into hurricane.

      I had been dining one night at the far end of the village and about eleven o’clock was walking home again. The moon was of an unusual brilliance, rendering all that it shone on as distinct as in some etching. I had just come opposite the house which Mrs. Amworth had occupied, where there was a board up telling that it was to let, when I heard the click of her front gate, and next moment I saw, with a sudden chill and quaking of my very spirit, that she stood there. Her profile, vividly illuminated, was turned to me, and I could not be mistaken in my identification of her. She appeared not to see me (indeed the shadow of the yew hedge in front of her garden enveloped me in its blackness) and she went swiftly across the road and entered the gate of the house directly opposite. There I lost sight of her completely.

      My breath was coming in short pants as if I had been running—and now indeed I ran, with fearful backward glances, along the hundred yards that separated me from my house and Urcombe’s. It was to his that my flying steps took me, and next minute I was within.

      “What have you come to tell me?” he asked. “Or shall I guess?”

      “You can’t guess,” said I.

      “No; it’s no guess. She has come back, and you have seen her. Tell me about it.”

      I gave him my story.

      “That’s Major Pearsall’s house,” he said. “Come back with me there at once.”

      “But what can we do?” I asked.

      “I’ve no idea. That’s what we have got to find out.”

      A minute later, we were opposite the house. When I had passed it before, it was all dark; now lights gleamed from a couple of windows upstairs. Even as we faced it, the front door opened, and next moment Major Pearsall emerged from the gate. He saw us and stopped.

      “I’m on my way to Dr. Ross,” he said quickly, “My wife has been taken suddenly ill. She had been in bed an hour when I came upstairs, and I found her white as a ghost and utterly exhausted. She had been to sleep, it seemed—but you will excuse me.”

      “One moment, Major,” said Urcombe. “Was there any mark on her throat?”

      “How did you guess that?” said he. “There was: one of those beastly gnats must have bitten her twice there. She was streaming with blood.”

      “And there’s someone with her?” asked Urcombe.

      “Yes, I roused her maid.”

      He went off, and Urcombe turned to me. “I know now what we have to do,” he said. “Change your clothes, and I’ll join you at your house.”

      “What is it?” I asked.

      “I’ll tell you on our way. We’re going to the cemetery.”

      * * * *

      He carried a pick, a shovel, and a screwdriver when he rejoined me, and he wore ’round his shoulders a long coil of rope. As we walked, he gave me the outlines of the ghastly hour that lay before us.

      “What I have to tell you,” he said, “will seem to you now too fantastic for credence, but before dawn we СКАЧАТЬ