Part 6 (2/2)

He gave his ma.s.sive head a little shake, smiling all the while, not so much denying the accusation as failing even to understand it yet.

I leaned toward him. ”You stopped her breath with the pouring of the alien blood into her veins.”

”No!” Now understanding came.

”Yes.” He started further protest, which I overrode: ”Now shall I call her forth to testify?”

There was silence in the graveyard, save for a restless owl, and far away the rumbling of a wagonload of freight, and under that the polyphonic voice of distant London, that for a thousand years had not been truly quiet.

Van Helsing stood much as before, still holding me-as he thought-at a safe distance with his golden cross; but, reading his face through the dark night, I saw that my shot had told.

”You have done it before, butcher,” I pressed on, guessing, and seeing that my guess was accurate as his face registered yet another inner blow. ”And with some similar result. Is it not so? Has any victim of your blood-exchanging surgery yet lived?”

His smile was gone, his hands and jaw were trembling as he again brought out the small white folded envelope and raised it toward me with the cross. ”Begone! To h.e.l.l!”

The words exploded from his mouth.

”Nothing wiser than that to say to me, Professor?”

”It shall be-” His voice cracked and he had to begin again. ”It shall be war between us, vampire. War to the death.”

”Let it be peace, I say. Or rather, tolerance. But remember that I have overcome in war a hundred stronger men than you.” And with sad and angry heart I turned my back on that bad man and walked away, half expecting to feel the painful though harmless flick of a silver bullet between my ribs. If he does that, I thought, I shall turn back and insert his bullet, if I can recover it, into his own anatomy at some painful and inconvenient place. But he did nothing, and I betook myself to my newly acquired house to gaze over the moonlit trees of the Green Park toward Victoria's palace and think my foolish thoughts. A war, then, was inevitable. But how was I to fight it?

When Van Helsing rejoined his companions on the following day he told them that he had seen nothing during his dangerous vigil, and let it go at that. Free as he was with words, he was a close-mouthed scoundrel whenever it came to giving out hard facts to people who worked with him or tried to do so. But he must have been wondering how much I actually knew about those failed operations of his on the Continent and in what way I might use my knowledge to embarra.s.s him. Needless to say, I would have done so if I could, but had no specifics to make known nor any way of quickly finding them out.

What Van Helsing did do on that day was gather his troops for another expedition to the Westenra tomb. This time he enlisted not only Seward, but Arthur Holmwood- who had now become Lord G.o.dalming, by reason of his father's recent death-and the American, Quincey Morris. In a pep talk the professor a.s.sured them all-I am not making this up, you will find it in Seward's diary!-that there was a ”grave duty” to be done. And some have called Van Helsing a humorless man! Well, he was, but only when he tried to joke.

Naturally they all agreed to accompany him, though so far only Seward could have had any inkling of just what the ”grave duty” was likely to involve. As far as the others knew, Lucy was simply though unhappily dead.

”I have been curious,” Arthur protested after some discussion in Van Helsing's hotel room, ”as to what you mean. Quincey and I have talked it over; but the more we talked the more puzzled we got, till now I can say for myself that I'm up a tree as to any meaning about anything.”

Nor was he to be rapidly enlightened. The professor strung them all along with earnest pleas for their continued trust, enlivened with hints that Lucy might stand in some vague danger of h.e.l.l-fire-I think Arthur almost hit him at one point-or that she might not have been dead-exactly-when she was buried. It was a masterly performance by a compelling personality, and Van Helsing not only avoided being punched but in a little while had reduced the three younger men to a state that I can only describe as quietly submissive hysteria. Thus he got them out to the graveyard once again, on the night of September twenty-eighth.

After finding Lucy's ravaged coffin empty-again-the four men left what Seward called ”the terror of that vault” for the fresh air outside. There Van Helsing got down to business. As Seward's diary has it: First he took from his bag a ma.s.s of what looked like thin, waferlike biscuit, which were carefully rolled up in a white napkin; next he took out a double handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or putty. He crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it into the ma.s.s between his hands... rolling it into thin strips, he began to lay them into the crevices between the door and its setting in the tomb. I asked him... what he was doing.

He answered: ”I am closing the tomb so that the Un-Dead may not enter.”

”And is that stuff you have got there going to do it?” asked Quincey. ”Great Scott!

Is this a game?”

”It is.”

”What is that which you are using?” This time the question was by Arthur.

Van Helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered: ”The host. I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an indulgence.” It was an answer that appalled the most skeptical of us.

And should have had a similar effect on the most knowledgeable and reverent. The scoundrel! An indulgence, indeed! As if any worthy priest would have pretended to be able to give him such to carry on his superst.i.tious nonsense. At any rate, after an aching wait the men saw amid the gloom of distant trees ”a white figure” carrying a small child. This form at last came close enough to be recognized as: Lucy Westenra, but how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. Van Helsing stepped out...

the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb. Van Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide: by the concentrated light that fell on Lucy's face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood.

Although the child, as Van Helsing later admitted, was ”not much harm.”

When Lucy-I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her shape- saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares; then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy's eyes in form and color, but Lucy's eyes unclean and full of h.e.l.l-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant of my love pa.s.sed into hate and loathing: had she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight.Lucy flung down her victim-her plaything, rather, that she had grabbed up in her addled state-and gazed on Arthur, the lover she still tenderly remembered. Then ”with outstretched arms and a wanton smile” she advanced on him, whereupon ”he fell back and hid his face in his hands.”

She still came forward, however, saying in ”diabolically sweet” tones: ”Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”

On hearing this appeal Arthur ”seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms. She was leaping for them when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden crucifix.” Angered by this meddling which followed her beyond the grave, and I suppose utterly dismayed by Arthur's meek submission to it, Lucy ”recoiled, and with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter the tomb.” But her wish to gain that shelter was thwarted by Van Helsing's putty, which doubtless contained an admixture of garlic.

She turned, and her face was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which now had no quiver from Van Helsing's iron nerves... the beautiful color became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of h.e.l.l-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the lovely, bloodstained mouth grew to an open square, as in the pa.s.sion masks of the Greeks and j.a.panese. If ever a face meant death-if looks could kill-we saw it at that moment.

Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Arthur ”Answer me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?”

Arthur threw himself on his knees and hid his face in his hands as he answered: ”Do as you will... there can be no horror like this ever anymore.”

This agreement extracted, Van Helsing took some of his paste from the tomb's door.

We all looked on in horrified amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal body as real at that moment as our own, pa.s.s in through the interstice where scarce a knifeblade could have gone. We all felt a glad sense of relief when we saw the professor calmly restoring the strings of putty to the edges of the door.

The professor and his acolytes went home then for a much-needed rest. But next afternoon all were back, and when the churchyard was otherwise deserted they went into the busy tomb-”Arthur trembling like an aspen”-and opened Lucy's coffin for the fifth time since her interment.

Van Helsing, with his usual methodicalness, began taking the various contents from his bag and placing them ready for use. First he took out a soldering iron and some plumbing solder, and then a small oil lamp, which... burned at fierce heat with a blue flame; then his operating knives, which he placed to hand; and last a wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick and about three feet long. One end of it was hardened by charring in the fire and was sharpened to a fine point. With this stake came a heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the coal cellar for breaking the lumps. To me, a doctor's preparations for work of any kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect of these things on both Arthur and Quincey was to cause them a sort of consternation.

His bracing preparations finished, Van Helsing found time for another speech, leading to the conclusion that Lucy's forthcoming impalement was bound to make her ultimately happy, as it meant the termination of her h.e.l.lish vampire life and it would be most intensely joyful for her if accomplished by ”the hand of him that loved her best; the hand of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose... tell me if there be such a one among us.”

All looked at Arthur, who, now thoroughly brainwashed by the old s.a.d.i.s.t, stepped forward bravely. Van Helsing quickly gave directions.

Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with all his might.

The thing in the coffin writhed, and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together until the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered... his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to s.h.i.+ne through it; the sight of it gave us courage so that our voices, reading a prayer for the dead, seemed to ring through the little vault. And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the teeth ceased to chomp, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The terrible task was over.

The hammer fell from Arthur's hand. He reeled and would have fallen had we not caught him.

The men now all perceived, in the face of the dead girl before them, the ”unequaled sweetness and purity” that they remembered as having been Lucy's during her breathing days. It has long been my observation that nothing so improves a human being's character in the eyes of the world as death, final and irreversible. As when Lucy had ”died” before, they marveled at her now un-threatening beauty, which Seward took as ”earthly token and symbol of that calm that was to reign forever.”

This was to have been the day she married Arthur; and now that she was dead beyond a doubt, Van Helsing gave his blessing to such union as could reasonably be achieved between the couple: ”And now, my child, you may kiss her. Kiss her dead lips if you will... for she is not a grinning devil now-not anymore a foul Thing for all eternity...”

Arthur gave her his kiss and left the tomb; whereupon the doctors ”sawed off the top of the stake, leaving the point of it in the body. Then we cut off the head and filled the mouth with garlic...”

Cutting off the head with a metal blade, which is practicable once wood has shattered the vampire heart, serves to interrupt the nervous system, thus preventing the still-active brain from orchestrating a regeneration of damaged heart tissue, which would otherwise be quite possible. Another safety measure for the vampire hunter is to leave the point of the stake in place, at least until the vampire's body as a whole has reached an advanced stage of decomposition. This requires a period of time which varies with the individual, and is usually longest for those who like Lucy have not been long in vampire life. The old, old nosteratu like myself may disintegrate, like Poe's M. Valdemar, almost at once when we are staked.

As for the garlic stuffing, I can only guess that it is used in some confusion of this butchery with culinary art. Though I have never heard of any of the breathing actually trying to eat vampire flesh, I am sufficiently well acquainted with their other habits that I should not be too much surprised.

So, they took away such life as G.o.d had given Lucy, and I in my poor, well- meaning way had tried to help her to retain. When they were done they soldered up her mangled body in its coffin and then went outside and sealed the tomb, and looked about to find ”the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the birds sang, and it seemed as if all nature were tuned to a different pitch. There was gladness and mirth and peace everywhere...” And Arthur bestowed on Van Helsing his profuse thanks.

One bat in the ointment remained, however, and the professor would not let the others leave the graveyard before he had them all formally enlisted in ”a greater task: to find the author of all this our sorrow and to stamp him out... do we not promise to go on to the bitter end?”

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