Séance for a Vampire Read online

  The night in general was very quiet, but somewhere in the background, far to the east, thunder and lightning played, a flare and sound too distant to have awakened him.

  "Martin?" Louisa's voice, uttering his name once more, was small and lost, just as he had heard it at the séance. But he had no problem in identifying it as hers.

  He sat up automatically, pushing back the covers, wiping the sleeve of his nightshirt across his eyes, reflexively expressing doubt as to what they showed him. "Oh... my darling. I knew you couldn't be dead. I knew it!" He paused. "Are you all right?"

  Foolish question, because he could see how she was—lovely, fresh, and warm, and still dressed in the cerements of the grave.

  He strained to see her face, but that remained well-nigh impossible.

  "Martin, can you help me? I'm caught in the most hideous nightmare. I can't go to Mother or Father—I don't dare—Becky's room's right next to theirs. If I can't turn to you, then there's no one."

  "Of course, of course, love. You can turn to me, Lou. What's happened?" He was aflame with both fear and fascination, dying to know what had happened to her in the hands of the kidnappers. In the back of Armstrong's mind was the idea that he would have to have second thoughts about marrying a woman who had suffered a fate worse than death.

  And even now, in his first awareness that she had come back to him again, there came a moment of revulsion at the sheer strangeness of this new Louisa. He tried to put the strangeness from his mind, to focus his attention on her beauty—but he could not entirely succeed.

  "Marty," she repeated. "Can you help me?"

  "Of course, Lou. What can I do to help?"

  "I don't know. Help me out of this." And for a moment, Louisa buried her invisible face in her pale hands.

  Armstrong choked, at about this point, and could think of nothing further to say. The only certainty in all the world was the total, unarguable awareness of Louisa's presence in his room, in his bed.

  At last he managed, "You've got free of them now."

  "Got free?" Her hands came down. Now he thought that he could see her eyes. And something about her teeth, as if she were smiling strangely.

  "Free of the villains who took you away," the young man replied. "You're here. Safe. With me." But even as he spoke those words they sounded odd and hollow in his own ears, and he knew with part of his mind that they were not true. Whatever strange and terrible thing had happened to Louisa had not yet been put right; and neither of them were yet anywhere near being truly free.

  "No, Marty, I'm not free. Not free at all. Whenever he calls me, I must go to him..."

  "Who?"

  Her answer sounded like words out of a dream: "I cannot say his name. That's been forbidden me."

  But then she moved, sliding even closer to him, and for the moment none of those objections mattered, because she was here with him. She was genuinely here. In his arms— and, for the first time, in his bed.

  Again Louisa was trying to speak, but his lips crushed hers to silence. Now both of his hands, as if they had escaped from his control and taken on a life of their own, were seeking her warm body under the pale gown. And he discovered with joy, with all the certainty of dreaming, that under the gown she was wearing nothing at all.

  Overpowering delight—the unmatched, unhallowed delight of her sensual embrace! Nothing mattered but this; everything else could be put right, somehow, later...

  Their two bodies rolled over on the bed. To Martin Armstrong the fact seemed unutterably strange, and at the same time irresistibly arousing, that Louisa should be biting at his throat.

  Later—Armstrong having at last convinced himself almost completely that he was fully awake—they were lying side by side on the cool sheets. Louisa was more silent tonight than had ever been her wont before... before...

  He cleared his throat. "Last night—no, only tonight, only a few hours ago—we even went to look at the place where we thought you were buried." Her lover was almost chuckling with amusement at the outrageous idea. "How could we ever have believed that you were dead? Of course the coffin was empty. Whoever it was we thought we had buried there... whoever it was, she had been taken away again."

  "Marty?"

  "Yes?"

  But then, before she said anything more, the young woman stroked the young man's hair for a time in silence. At last she murmured: "I was buried there, Marty."

  That got him to lift his head from the pillow and turn toward her. "I don't understand."

  "I was put there, in the family vault. You, and Father, and Mother, and Becky, buried me. I can remember it, my funeral, and all the rest, like some bad dream. I was aware of what was happening. I just couldn't move."

  "Don't talk like that!"

  But Louisa's voice went on, dully, gently, as if the story she recounted had happened a hundred years ago. "When the boat tipped, Marty, he was there, and he carried me away. Dragging me with him while he swam at great speed underwater. I was under water until I thought I was going to drown—I was still breathing then—but at last he brought me to the surface for a while and let me have air."

  "Don't talk like that, I said!"

  Louisa paused, looking at her lover wistfully. She added: "It was later when I stopped breathing, after he had— How can I tell you what it was like? But when we were far downstream, he took me out of the water, and he drank my blood, again and again—until finally I wanted him to do it. And he gave me his blood to drink—he opened one of his own veins for me—and it was marvelous."

  "Lou!"

  "Then you found me, and said prayers, and put me into the vault—and it was warm and dark and pleasant there. But twice now, he has made me leave the cemetery by night, and go back to the house, and say things to Mother and Father about some treasure."

  Martin breathed twice before he asked: "What treasure?"

  "I don't know! I say only what he orders me to say. I went into Father's safe, and took out some jewels; but he was only angry when I brought them to him, and he threw them all over the cemetery... and then he would not let me go back to my coffin, where it was so nice and dark all day. Now I must spend the day in a place where there are many windows, but no curtains, and light comes through into the place... and it's so hard to sleep. Oh, Marty! Hold me! Love me!

  And Martin Armstrong did his best.

  Ecstatic fainting blurred and prolonged itself, in some manner, into sleep. From a dream of still being embraced tightly in Louisa's arms, Martin Armstrong drifted slowly into wakefulness. Early summer daylight had arrived outside his window, where now all was birdsong and gray light. His body stirred slowly, full wakefulness coming only as he sat up with a jerking start. Louisa was gone, gone as if she had never existed. Martin himself was entirely naked, his nightshirt having been cast aside during the...

  The dream?

  Lurching out of bed, he stumbled to the bureau, where his shaving mirror was propped. It was the need to see his own face that drew him there, the feeling that some essential doubt had been created regarding his own identity.

  And indeed, the reflection of his face looked strange enough, pale and gaunt, but after a single glance he hardly looked at it. What put the seal of reality on Louisa's life, on last night's encounter, were the two painless little marks on his throat. As if they had been magically transferred somehow from her throat to his.

  Becky was right, he realized twenty minutes later, while knotting his tie preparatory to going down to breakfast. (His collar hid one of the little marks at least, and the other was not particularly noticeable.) Louisa still lived— perhaps now more intensely than ever before—but she had been drastically altered. The woman who had come to him last night (however that trick had been managed) was no substitute for Louisa Altamont, but rather Louisa Altamont transformed. The girl to whom he, Martin Armstrong, had once proposed marriage had not become a ghost—but certainly the young woman who had wantoned in his bed last night was not the same one who had accepted his proposal of holy matr
imony. Last night's .. . last night's whore (in the privacy of his own thought, he could try how that word sounded, when applied to his betrothed)... that woman could not be identified with the sunlit figure in a summer dress who last month had smiled at him so lovingly just before the rowboat tipped.

  Armstrong, still staring into the mirror, shivered faintly, uncontrollably. If it were still possible, in this day and age, to believe in demons, or in possession... in, in something that could take the outward likeness of the beloved... but of course such possibilities could not exist in the same world as automobiles of forty horsepower, telephones, and progress.

  Breakfast was an ordeal. Martin Armstrong, desperately seeking an explanation for last night's experience, felt himself unable to say anything to Louisa's parents or sister about her visit.

  Why had she not stayed with him? If not in his room, why had she not remained in the house, her own home, reuniting joyously with Mother, Father, Becky? Obviously it was because something terrible had happened to Louisa, something that compelled her to an awful exile.

  Was it conceivable—a new and hideous idea dawned, and grew with terrible force and swiftness—could it be possible that Louisa had been stricken with some loathsome disease? But no, she had come so willingly to his bed... Louisa wouldn't infect him deliberately, whatever else was going on. That fear declined, as rapidly as it had burgeoned.

  But was it possible that she was mad?

  After breakfast he announced that he was going out. Secretly he had decided that he would turn to Sherlock Holmes.

  Once more, let Dr. Watson speak...

  On Friday morning, Holmes and I were discussing, over bacon and eggs in our rooms at the inn, what our next move should be. At dawn, Prince Dracula, exhausted by long exposure to daylight on Thursday, had retired to his own bedroom and the occult solace of his native earth.

  Ever alert against the possibility of eavesdroppers, Holmes and I conversed in low voices; bright sun and bird-song outside our window seemed to mock the terrors of the night with which we had to deal.

  One subject of our discussion was the deliberate countermove made by the Russian vampire, in getting Louisa Altamont out of her original tomb and into hiding elsewhere.

  Before retiring, Dracula had advised us: "Of course her new sanctuary need not be a grave in the ordinary sense. Anyplace underground, or any sheltered vessel above-ground, containing earth, will do. A buried lair need not even be connected by a clear passage to the atmosphere. Between sunset and sunrise, the solid ground is generally permeable to members of my race moving in mist-form."

  Holmes and I, in planning our efforts to discover the new hiding place where Kulakov must have commanded or forced his fledgling vampire to make her nest, began with the assumption that Louisa's new place of concealment was almost certainly somewhere on the extensive grounds of the house Count Kulakov now occupied. Such an arrangement would give the master vampire a large degree of control over access to the site.

  We had not got far in our planning before we were joined by young Martin Armstrong.

  "Did you sleep well?" my friend inquired, looking probingly at the young man as he gestured for him to take a chair.

  "Not very well, actually." Armstrong cleared his throat and tugged at his collar as if it bothered him. "I thought, Mr. Holmes... I thought that I saw Louisa last night."

  Holmes leaned forward, galvanized. "Where?"

  "When?" I demanded at the same time.

  Armstrong seemed startled at our readiness to believe that he had really encountered his former fiancée. He needed a moment or two to confess, rather awkwardly, that Louisa seemed to have come to him in his bedroom.

  Again he was startled when I immediately asked to see his neck. There were the two fang marks, small and painless; I made sure that Holmes got a look at them as well.

  Under our probing questions, the story of Louisa's visit to Armstrong came out in some detail.

  My friend's interrogation was incisive. "Did she let fall any clue as to where she is now spending the hours of daylight?"

  "No... yes. She said something about there being 'many windows,' which struck me as strange."

  "How very odd. Anything else?"

  "She said: 'many windows... but no curtains. And the light comes through.' Something like that."

  Holmes and I looked at each other, but neither of us could make anything of this at the moment.

  Holmes insisted that Armstrong accompany us on our new search. My friend considered it of vital importance now that the young man be brought to a full understanding of his own situation, and Louisa's.

  Before we started out, I gave orders to the innkeeper that Mr. Prince was not under any circumstances to be disturbed; then, going into the room where Dracula was sleeping, I looked at him with the idea of making sure that all was well with our colleague. I was also fascinated as a medical man and a mere spectator. Dracula, tired by days of exposure to indirect daylight, lay flat on his back upon the bed, fully clothed and with a flattish bag or parcel of some silk-like fabric, containing his earth, unfolded between his body and the coverlet. He was obviously in deep trance. I looked into his open eyes, sought to find a reflex, and tried to take a pulse. I should have thought him dead, had I not known better.

  Smithbury Hall, the country house rented by Count Kulakov, was, as Mycroft had reported, some twelve miles from Amberley, an hour and a half by horse-drawn carriage. Holmes declined Armstrong's offer to drive us there in his motorcar, wishing to avoid the inevitable attention the noisy vehicle would draw in the quiet country.

  Meanwhile a decision had to be made as to how and exactly where we were to begin our search. The mention of "many windows" had suggested to me that Louisa Altamont's new daytime quarters were inside Kulakov's country house. But, as Holmes pointed out, "no curtains" would seem to argue against that interpretation.

  Having stopped in the nearest village to make local inquiries, the three of us reached the grounds of Kulakov's rented estate, which were guarded by a high fence. After circling the estate cautiously on narrow, lightly traveled roads at a considerable distance, we left our carriage in a quiet lane. Crossing the fence, we began a circuitous approach on foot, a cautious process of observing the house from a distance. Now and then we spotted a servant or two moving about, but until the afternoon there was no one else.

  At about two o'clock, peering toward the house through gaps in a hedgerow, we saw two men who, even at a distance, wore the indefinable look of official plainclothesmen. They were going, on some business or pretext, to the front door. After a discussion, conducted through the open door with someone inside, they were turned away.

  "Merivale," I suggested, "may be taking action."

  "He may be right to do so." Holmes's attitude was gloomy, with little evidence of the wry humor he often displayed when things were not going well. "So far I can claim no progress at all worth mentioning."

  It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Prince Dracula would have been of inestimable help to us in the last stages of our search for the new resting place of Louisa Altamont; but our ally was not available, and we could not depend upon him for everything.

  It was late in the day when Holmes, Armstrong, and I came upon an abandoned greenhouse, standing isolated and hidden in a grove of trees at least half a mile from any inhabited dwelling. Though the sun was lowering, it was still bright, and we calculated there would be time to investigate before the fall of night made our presence here prohibitively hazardous.

  As we approached the derelict structure, Holmes pointed with satisfaction at the rows of glass panes, many of them shattered, which formed a roof and walls supported by pillars of brick and wood.

  "Had it not been for the mention of windows, I should have concentrated my efforts on finding an old grave, somewhere in another vault or churchyard. Maybe an antique barrow, with some Druid tinge about it, or an abandoned boat shed. But as matters stand, this looks promising."

  Armstrong, who
seemed to have given up hours ago trying to make sense of the search in which we were engaged, only nodded. "What now?"

  "We must get in, and quickly."

  Both doors to the abandoned-looking structure were locked, and the quickest way in was to break yet another pane of glass.

  Inside, cobwebs and rust only confirmed the idea of long abandonment. Digging and poking around in search of a hiding place, we came upon a large wooden toolchest, suitable for the storage of shovels and similar implements, and on lifting the lid of this, I uncovered Louisa.

  Martin Armstrong, who had been looking over my shoulder, recoiled with an audible gasp.

  There were no satin pillows here, nor even a nest of blankets, but only leaves and earth and mold in the crude wooden box, and the poor girl lying among them, looking as dead as Dracula had looked when we left him in the inn.

  Holmes came to stand beside us, and we all three silently regarded our discovery. Louisa Altamont was still clad in her burial gown—now sadly soiled and torn, lacking the unnatural powers of preservation of the body that it covered. Her body showed a convincingly lifelike appearance, a startling absence of decay—and there was also some blood, recently dried, around the red-lipped mouth, even spotting the pink cheeks. The hair, in contrast to the once-white gown, seemed fine and clean, as if newly washed. As a medical man, I was of course amazed, though intellectually I had been aware that our explorations were almost certain to lead to some discovery of the kind.

  My instincts on seeing Louisa Altamont lying in such deathly stillness were (as they had been in the case of Dracula) to seek for pulse and breath and heartbeat, and actually I did so, of course with no result. But Holmes laid a hand upon my arm and assured me that the young woman's condition was in itself perfectly safe and natural, for one in her new mode of existence.