Séance for a Vampire Read online

  The figure in white, supposedly that of the drowned girl, was still standing near the curtained French windows. Now she changed her position slightly. Then, speaking in thin, halting tones like one entranced, like one repeating a lesson learned by rote, she recited: "There is a great wrong that must be righted before I can find rest. A stolen treasure that must be found—and given back—"

  Whatever course the recitation might have taken from that point, the speaker was denied the opportunity to complete it. Her words were drowned out by the loud, repeated cries of Madeline Altamont. Despite the urgings of Sarah Kirkaldy, the mother could not or would not be silent, but continued a terrible struggle to force her own questions upon the attention of her daughter.

  Ambrose Altamont, seated between his wife and Sarah, was, of all the people round the table, actually nearest to the apparition when it came in, but with his back turned to it.

  Now Altamont, straining against the pull of those to right and left who gripped his hands, had twisted halfway around to confront this visitor with whom his wife was pleading. Against the background of the westernmost pair of French doors I could see the man's dim shape rising partially from his chair, and I heard him utter a dreadful, hoarse, incoherent cry.

  A moment later the father, wrenching his hands free from the grip of those holding them, stood fully erect and went lurching toward the figure in white. He succeeded—as he reported later—in touching Louisa's hand. At this moment also, he was able to look closely into her face, and to hear her voice, perhaps murmuring words bearing upon some secret that he and his elder daughter alone had shared.

  Altamont called her name, hoarsely, again and again. He was obviously overwhelmed by the conviction that after all, against all his beliefs and expectations, this was truly his daughter, restored to him by some miracle of spiritual power.

  When the voice of the apparition replied to him, I thought that it had changed, become notably less forced and unnatural. "Father, I'm all right, really... except I... I can't..." She added more, but nothing that I could hear distinctly.

  Moments after the circle of clasping hands was broken by Altamont's defection, it had utterly disintegrated. I jumped to my feet, with the final orders given me by Sherlock Holmes still ringing in my ears—we had discussed in advance what ought to be done in the case of some chaotic development like this.

  My first effort was simply to turn on the electric chandelier. I had taken careful note of the position of the switch, on the wall to my left, beside the door leading to the hallway. My original intent, however, proved impossible to achieve in the darkness and confusion. Colliding blindly with other people and stumbling over fallen chairs, I found myself somewhat disoriented, groping over a blank wall after a switch that seemed to have perversely moved itself.

  The night was full of cries and shouts in both men's and women's voices. Martin Armstrong, who had been sitting between Rebecca and Mrs. Altamont, later recounted that he had found himself stunned, confronted with the staggering fact that the woman he loved was not dead after all, but rather that she stood living, here in the same room with him. Martin had drawn his feet under his chair, in preparation for an all-out leap toward Louisa. He was filled with a mighty determination that he would at all costs not allow her to escape—

  In the middle of all this, Abraham Kirkaldy cried out in a changed and terrible voice: "Stop! I see—" His words broke off at that point, his utterance degenerating into a hoarse cry of sheer horror. But a moment later his voice rang out clearly again: "Stop! A thing from hell is here among us!"

  This declamation was followed by sounds from other members of the gathering, groans and protests, and a howl that raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  Next young Kirkaldy shouted that the visitant should "Go back to your grave!"

  I heard Martin Armstrong cry out like a man caught in the grip of a sudden and terrible new emotion, raising a desperate shout that rose clearly above the other confused noises in the room.

  And I could distinguish the voice of Sherlock Holmes, masterful and incisive, urging calm, urging those present to let the figure alone. But alas, none of the others who heard him were paying much attention.

  Armstrong, as he told me later, actually succeeded in reaching the visitant and attempted to prevent her getting away, meanwhile shouting for lights. But with a strength beyond the human, and a determination that Armstrong found inexplicable, the slender girl twisted and pulled herself free.

  By this time, both of Louisa's parents were also clutching at the mysterious intruder, struggling with a terrible earnestness to hold her, as if they would by their own efforts cheat Death of his prize after all.

  The girl's voice in the dark was heartrending. "Mother. Father..."

  Listening, I received the impression that the undead girl was striving in agony to accomplish something. It was not a mere physical effort, but an attempt to convey to her parents that there was something that must be done before the recently undead, she herself in particular, could rest. Something that Louisa's parents must do—for her benefit.

  "There is an ancient wrong which must be righted." And Louisa—increasingly I felt convinced that this was she—as if under some great compulsion, kept repeating a refrain of words to this effect: "What was stolen must be returned..."

  Then suddenly the voice of the spectral figure broke off. And in another moment, surrounded and beset by the very people who had most loved Louisa Altamont during her breathing life, it abruptly turned and tore itself away.

  The object of all tearful outcries and entreaties fled. I saw, in near darkness and yet with a convincing clarity, how her departing form made a ghostly, half-transparent image at the window-doors, white in the delicate illumination which crept in round the edges of the dark drapes. None of the three French doors opened, yet somehow, without so much as stirring one of those heavy folds of cloth, she had in a moment gone past them and was outside the house.

  A moment later, the most easterly set of curtains was ripped aside, as Martin Armstrong, floundering in darkness, in desperate pursuit of his beloved, reached the French windows and found himself stopped there by latches and solid glass.

  I could hear Armstrong, still calling the name of his beloved in an agony of hope, fumbling with the unfamiliar catch to get the window open, but failing to do so.

  For a moment longer, the form that he pursued was clearly visible just outside, where light from other windows in the house cast a partial illumination across the terrace.

  Armstrong, frustrated, turned back from the window with a muttered oath. He picked up one of the chairs from near the table, spun round again and swung it hard, smashing the window open. A second blow was necessary to widen the gap sufficiently; a moment later he had plunged out through the gap thus created, with Louisa's father close on his heels.

  Sherlock Holmes, now shouting loudly but uselessly in a great effort to prevent some terrible mistake, and perhaps hoping to influence the girl by some means other than main force, followed the other men out. There came an additional crashing and shattering of glass.

  Abandoning my effort to find the light switch in the unfamiliar room, I needed another moment or two to reach the broken window, then to stumble out through the enlarged gap and across the terrace after my friend. At the time I did not notice that I had torn my coat sleeve and scratched my arm on a jagged corner of glass.

  But having reached the terrace, I could once more clearly see Louisa—I was now convinced that the visitor was indeed she, though vastly (and to my mind sickeningly) transformed. The girl in white stood near the center of the terrace, surrounded by a small group of struggling people, including her father, her fiancé, and Holmes.

  The large expanse of one of the French doors, still unbroken and still closed, reflected the scene on the terrace brightly, illuminated as it was by sporadic moonlight as well as by light washing out of the house through the windows of other rooms. In that mirror I clearly saw the struggling group reflect
ed—all save the central figure.

  Our blond-haired visitor in white cast no trace of any image in the glass.

  I thrust my hand, as if by instinct, into the pocket where I customarily carried my old service revolver, on the occasions when I went armed. But then I remembered that my revolver was still in London and realized that in any case the time had not come for using deadly force.

  I had not been appointed judge, much less executioner. But whatever hopeful doubts might have persisted in my mind at the beginning of the séance were now gone. The nature of the horror we faced was clear. Beyond all question, the young girl in white was a vampire.

  6

  In the next instant I was bumped violently from behind by Abraham Kirkaldy. No doubt the impact, heavy enough to send me staggering across the terrace, was entirely accidental. The young medium had come stumbling out through the broken window after me, and on recovering my balance I turned to see him groping slowly with outstretched arms, as if in a trance, in the general direction of the figure in white.

  Again and again the youth, his head thrown back, cried out his warnings about a thing from hell. He gestured wildly, emphasizing his unheeded commands that the intruder should go back to the nether regions whence it had come.

  The gaunt lad was still standing close beside me as he shouted, pointing with an outstretched arm, though not at the figure of Louisa Altamont, but rather into the darkness beyond it. Once more he called out sharply, trying to banish from the house and terrace whatever entity it was that he alone, among us breathing folk, could see.

  It was plain to me that the young man's fear, his attempt to assert authority, were not directed at the vampire girl. But for a moment I thought that she seemed to hesitate, as if on the verge of trying to obey his orders.

  Then something almost invisible sighed softly in the night beside me, and I belatedly became aware—by what senses I am still not sure—of a heavy and forbidding presence. I saw—trying to regain the memory, I can only assert that I thought I saw—the suggestion of a masculine, malignant face, of greenish glaring eyes, their gaze directed not at me but at the young medium.

  The air around me sighed again, and sang. I heard a savage impact—I could distinguish no weapon, but perceived only a dim, rushing movement in the air—and in that moment Abraham Kirkaldy collapsed upon the stones of the terrace without a groan, felled by a single blow that had torn his scalp and partially crushed his skull. Of Kirkaldy's attacker, I retained only the vague perception which I have already tried so inadequately to describe.

  In the next few moments I beheld a sight which made my brain reel in new horror. Swiftly the figure of the girl in white swirled near the medium's fallen body, and bent low over him as if to bestow a kiss. Then she looked up, and in the moonlight I saw, by the dark stains around her fresh young mouth, that she had tasted his blood before she fled— or before she was pulled away, by the same almost-invisible power that had struck him down.

  In the press and urgency of these events, I had momentarily lost sight of Sherlock Holmes, but now I caught a glimpse of my friend again, still endeavoring to keep Altamont and Armstrong away from the figure in white.

  And then, in the next moment, Holmes was gone.

  Quite distinctly I beheld his lean, strong body, legs kicking helplessly, caught up like a child's by some nearly invisible power, and whisked away in the departing rush of the malignant presence which had by now left my side. Let me repeat that at no time on the terrace had I been able to perceive this intruder as a distinctly human form. Rather I was aware only of a dim inhuman horror, which now vanished quickly into the depths of the nighttime garden, carrying Holmes with it.

  Again I wished for my revolver, though even had I been armed I should hardly have dared to fire for fear of hitting Holmes himself. Running as quickly as I could toward the spot where I thought I had seen my friend and his kidnapper vanish, I caught one more glimpse of a shadowy figure—or possibly a pair of figures—darting on, some distance ahead of me.

  Doing my best to keep my speeding quarry in sight, I carried on the chase for another forty yards or so, a distance that took me well down the slope and into the lower garden. Running in the darkness, I stumbled through flower beds and at last came crashing to a halt in the middle of some thick shrubbery. At that point, I was forced to admit to myself I had lost the trail.

  I had succeeded in extricating myself from the bushes, and had just regained the proper path, when from the direction of the terrace I had so recently left, a woman's voice sounded, giving vent to a loud outcry of grief and desperation. Immediately I decided that I had better return to the house.

  At a sound from behind me, I turned my head. My heart rose momentarily at sight of a dim figure walking uphill toward me, its feet crunching with a reassuring, solid hesitancy upon the gravel of the path. But it was only Martin Armstrong, who had left the group gathered just outside the house and followed me in my futile pursuit. Quickly overtaking me on his younger legs, the American had run some distance farther down into the garden, past the point where I had lost the path. But presently he, too, had lost sight of what he pursued and had decided to abandon the chase.

  He came up to me now, out of breath but with an obscure triumph in his voice. "They're gone, Watson. They were too fast for me in the darkness. What did you see?"

  Vaguely I was now aware that I had somehow torn my sleeve and trouser leg, and that I was seriously out of breath. "No more than a dim figure," I gasped. "But Holmes went with it. It carried him away."

  Armstrong's vague outline beside me nodded. "That's very much what it looked like to me. They went in this direction—but there must have been more than one man, wouldn't you say? To abduct Sherlock Holmes in such a fashion?"

  I murmured something.

  During this brief exchange both of us had been trudging steadily uphill, and within a minute or so of our departure we were back on the terrace, where confusion and excitement reigned. Armstrong and I rejoined an uncertain number of dim figures that were still moving about in almost complete bewilderment, though now in relative quiet. Realizing that under the circumstances, very little could be accomplished without more light, I reentered the library through the broken window and went immediately to switch on the electric chandelier.

  Inside the house, the impact of servants' fists could now be heard through both of the library's locked doors, as well as their muffled voices demanding to be answered, pleading for reassurance against the overwhelming evidence that something had gone terribly wrong.

  Again, as in my earlier attempt, my progress toward the electric switch was impeded by disarranged furniture, and by collisions with one or more other people who were still moving about at cross-purposes in the darkened room.

  When at last my fingers closed on the switch, and the lights in the library chandelier came on again, the sudden glare revealed Louisa's mother, sitting near the library table in one of the few chairs which remained upright, the flowers on her gay dress now sadly crushed and torn. With the impact of the dazzling light, Mrs. Altamont screamed. Her outcry was promptly repeated, became a dirge of renewed loss that went on and on. It was echoed by a fresh scream from out on the terrace, in the voice of young Sarah Kirkaldy.

  Meanwhile both the father and the fiancé of Louisa Altamont had followed me back into the house. The older man and the younger alike were joyfully stunned—but the two of them were not, as I was soon to discover, rejoicing for exactly the same reason.

  It was Altamont who spoke to me first. "She came back... I touched her, Dr. Watson. Twice I touched her hand, her arm." Extending his own trembling fingers, Louisa's father went on to tell me, in a halting, altered voice, of how he had held his daughter's hand and had been able to see her at very close range in the darkness. They had exchanged some words of mutual recognition. "She came back!" he repeated, softly marveling.

  We now drew back the draperies from the windows, so that the electric light fell out strongly through the glass up
on the terrace just outside. Asking a pale-faced Rebecca Altamont to see that my medical bag was brought down to me at once, I went out on the terrace again. My chief concern was for Abraham Kirkaldy. He was still lying almost exactly where I had seen him fall, although his sister, adding her lamentations to the noise, had lifted the young man's gory head into her lap.

  Both of the elder Altamonts, as well as Martin Armstrong, had suffered minor injuries from broken glass and collisions in the dark, but none requiring my immediate attention. Hurrying to the side of the fallen youth, I bent over him and made an examination with the aid of the glaring electric chandelier inside. Immediately it was obvious that young Kirkaldy had suffered a severely torn scalp, and almost certainly serious injury to the skull beneath. The wound had the appearance of having been made by a hard blow with some sharp and heavy weapon. As usual with a serious laceration of the scalp, there was considerable bleeding. But at the moment, the victim still breathed.

  While I was examining the young man, someone else, I believe it was Armstrong, at last went to unbolt and open the room's interior doors, admitting the servants who had been pounding on them and demanding to know whether their master and mistress were all right.

  Altamont now had a joyous answer for the clamoring servants, who now poured into the library bearing lights and a variety of improvised weapons. "She came to us! To her old parents—and I had doubted, but I shall never doubt again!" He went to try to comfort his wife, who, rather than rejoicing in Louisa's return, was bemoaning her renewed loss. Neither had really taken any notice as yet of the new tragedy on the terrace—or of the kidnapping which had seemingly just occurred.

  Looking around in the confusion, the fact struck me again, with even more ominous force than before, that Sherlock Holmes was still nowhere to be seen.

  One of the servants had now brought my bag. Having done my best to stanch the bleeding of young Kirkaldy's scalp wound—there was nothing else I could do for him at the moment—I quickly descended once more into the garden a few yards west of the terrace and shouted Holmes's name repeatedly. But there was no reply. It seemed to me that he had been made to vanish into a darkness whose ominous silence swallowed violence and death alike.