Night Creatures Page 10

The frail, pale woman smiled at him with bright vermilion lips and long, green, slanting eyes, answering lazily in a throaty caressing voice. Yet there was an indefinable, eery undercurrent to her tones that sent a fresh chill tingling up Ranleigh’s spine, especially when she cast a momentary sidelong glance at him, and her foreign, unintelligible words became more slowly languorous. There was fascination in those long, green, secret eyes: they had a trick of sliding off obliquely from the thing they contemplated to lose themselves beneath the shadows of their long, black, silky lashes. ‘Nichevo,’2 she finally pronounced with a shrug of her sleek shoulders, and silently as if she were a breath of breeze she turned and vanished between the curtains.

  Steadman turned on Ranleigh, eyes ablaze: ‘Anything you’ve seen or heard tonight is under the seal of your profession!’ he cried.

  Ranleigh answered with a mirthless laugh. ‘I haven’t any wish to be shut up in a madhouse. If I told anybody what I’ve just seen——’

  ‘Of course’—something like vindictive glee edged Steadman’s high, sharp laugh—‘you wouldn’t be believed. They’d say you’re crazy——’

  ‘Quite,’ Ranleigh interrupted evenly. ‘Even if the ethics of my calling didn’t make me keep your confidence, it would be hard for me to find a person who’d believe me, but——’ He stopped upon the conjunction. He had remembered something which his lawyer friend let drop one day in the shower room of the country club. Here was a way to force an explanation.

  ‘Yes—but?’ the other smiled sarcastically. ‘You’d better decide your eyes played tricks on you, my friend.’

  ‘I’ve told you I’m bound by professional ethics to respect your confidence,’ repeated Ranleigh, ‘but if I chose to disregard my obligation it might prove awkward. Perhaps you didn’t know it, but the statute against sorcery and witchcraft has never been repealed in this state. It’s a dead-letter, certainly; but if Murray Laboratories’ order sheets were subpoenaed, showing that you ordered canned blood from them today, and the record of your purchases of lady’s wear at Maison Blanche were added to my testimony—don’t you think you owe me something in the way of explanation, Mr Steadman?’

  Steadman shrugged resignedly. It was curious how his shell of bruskness melted, leaving him a tired and prematurely aged man, sitting inert in his chair as though pressed there by an insufferable weight of melancholy. ‘I don’t know why I tell you,’ he answered in a weary voice. ‘You won’t believe it. Nobody would. Sometimes I don’t myself, until——’ He paused, fumbled for a cigar in the silver humidor, then continued as he set it alight:

  ‘You know I was in Harbin when my father died, and that I came home with a Russian wife. You don’t know how I met her, though; I’ve never told before.

  ‘The Japanese invasion of Mongolia and their setting up of Manchukuo marked the end of business for the Western bankers, and I was making ready to come home before I learned of Father’s death. Termination of my work gave me a chance to do some things I’d never had time for. One of these was tiger hunting.

  ‘Word had come of a big brute that terrorized the countryside around Koshan, so I collected a party and set out. Things went well enough for the first few kilometers, but as we neared the tiger country the rumors began to change. By the time we reached Koshan we heard that it was not a natural tiger, but a ch’ing shih, or vampire. D’ye know what a vampire is?’

  ‘You mean like the one in the book—Dracula?’ hazarded Ranleigh.

  ‘That’s near enough. In China and Mongolia the ch’ing shih may be an animated corpse, like Dracula, or an evil spirit which is sometimes disembodied, sometimes as substantial as a natural person. Generally they’re souls or corpses of black sorcerers, or their victims. For instance, a ch’ing shih may be a person who has met his death by sorcery and had a spell put on him by the magician, so that while he seems dead he revives occasionally, issues from his tomb, and nourishes himself on the blood he sucks from the living. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to die at all, but leads a normal life, eating and drinking like everyone else; only he has to have a dose of human blood occasionally. Failing this he starves. In this form the ch’ing shih is relatively harmless, but if he dies what seems to be a natural death, or if he’s killed, he comes back as a full-fledged vampire, savage as a tiger and wicked as a snake. Also, in this second state, he’s capable of shape-shifting, and can take whatever form he pleases, though generally he assumes the shape of a tiger or jackal, or sometimes just a domestic cat.

  ‘According to the Slavic tradition the only way to lay a vampire is to come on him in daylight when he’s helpless in his tomb and drive an ash stake through his heart before you cut his head off. Such treatment’s unavailing with a ch’ing shih. As long as any part of him remains he can materialize, so you have to track him down and burn him till there’s nothing left.

  ‘Well, the upshot of it was I told the village headman that if they’d help me hunt a tiger, and we found nothing in a week, I’d turn to and help them get rid of their ch’ing shih. It seemed as if the tiger—or the ch’ing shih—heard about our bargain, for they both lay low, and for a solid week there were no killings. Then on a Sunday night all hell broke loose. A peasant girl was caught just outside her hut and so badly mauled and torn that you could hardly recognize her as the remnants of a human being, and almost at the same time a swineherd twenty miles away was slashed to ribbons. The third case happened twenty kilos west of Koshan. It was a woman who was attacked in bed, and not only her body, but her pallet and sleeping-rug were ripped to shreds.

  ‘Suspicion centered in a man known as Ko’en Cheng whose yeaman was some fifteen kilos north and west of Koshan. He’d been noted as a sorcerer—not the white kind—and also as a heartless usurer. Three months or so before he’d been killed in a bandit raid, and left besides an evil reputation a young widow, a White Russian refugee whom he’d married several years before.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know these “refugees”. Taken by and large they’re pretty scabious. Some of ’em, of course, are the genuine article, but a lot more are just off-scum from the jails and slums and brothels who found no tolerance in the new régime and ran away to save their hides and ply their various unsavory trades wherever they could find a refuge. So I was pretty suspicious concerning what I’d find when I set out for Ko’en Cheng’s yeaman.

  ‘I certainly had a surprise in store. The place was small, but exquisite. It was surrounded by a gray-brick wall with yellow tiles set like a gabled roof along its top. The gate was made of cedar and ornamented with carved timbers, and inside the wall was a tiled courtyard with the familiar spirit-screen just beyond the gate. The house was roofed with green tiles and from the eaves hung little bronze bells which rang musically at every gust of breeze. As I walked between the rows of dwarf quince trees to the door I heard somebody singing in the house.

  ‘It was an odd, deep, throaty voice, and the singer evidently sang for her own amusement, a sort of crooning lullaby of contentment:

  The birds have all flown from their trees,

  The last, lost fleecy cloud has drifted by,

  But never shall we tire in our companionship,

  O my belovèd, thou and I.

  ‘A verse from China’s classic poet Li Po, rendered into Russian and set to hauntingly-sad Russian music. The timbre of that deep, sweet, thrilling voice did things to my throat—and heart. I wondered what I’d find when I knocked on the lacquered door.

  ‘The woman was her voice made manifest, the incarnation of the song. I needn’t describe her; you’ve seen her——’ He nodded toward the curtained room; then:

  ‘When I told her what we’d come for she made no objection. Her husband had been buried in a nearby field, and she took us to his grave and told us we might look into his coffin if we wished, but he had been dead three months and the summer had been hot. Then she left us without another word.

  ‘My coolies shoveled the earth off the coffin, but when we’d bared it they balked. I had undertaken to find the
ch’ing shih; it was my place to force the coffin. So I took a crowbar and prized up the lid.

  ‘In your work you must have done the same thing many times. I never had, and when I felt the wooden dowels give and saw the heavy coffin-top come loose I went positively sick. But surprise drove disgust away, for the body in the coffin was as fresh as if it had been dead no more than an hour. Fresher, I’d say, for there was no look of death about it.

  ‘It was an old, old man with thin, straggling gray hair and a wisp of white beard on his chin, but the lips were full and slightly colored and there was a healthy tint in the cheeks. If I hadn’t known that he was dead I’d have sworn he’d crawled into the coffin for a nap, and when I touched his hands and cheeks the flesh was warm.

  ‘Now that I’d taken the odium of grave-robbery on me the coolies’ courage came back with a rush, and they crowded round the coffin, jabbering and pointing. In a few moments they had made a pile of brush and straw around it, and shouted for me to apply the match.

  ‘The fuel burned fiercely, and the coffin, of Mongolian cedar, caught the flames like tinder. As the fire began to eat into the lacquered hollow log that formed the coffin the corpse began to writhe. I don’t mean that it struggled to get out. It didn’t. It seemed unable to raise itself, but it turned from side to side, twisting and contorting as in dreadful agony, and waved its hands and kicked its feet, but even then the face retained its calm, serene expression until, just as the blazing coffin-sides were about to fall in, the mouth gaped open and a sudden geyser of red, bright blood spouted up, six feet at least, I’d say, and spattered with a vicious hiss into the fire. Then the coffin fell like a log burned in two, and the flames licked up around the body, hiding it from us.

  ‘Several of my coolies had been spattered by the blood, and the next day I took them to an Armenian doctor at Koshan, for everywhere the blood had touched them ulcers formed. The lesions seemed like rodent ulcerations, eating right through skin and flesh and bone, and the doctor finally had to amputate in every case.

  ‘Strangely, the old man’s widow not only was not resentful, but seemed actually grateful to me, and as I had to stay at Koshan while my boys were being treated I went to see her several times.

  ‘I think I must have loved her from the moment I first heard her voice. I know I loved her by my third trip to her yeaman. We were married just before I left Koshan for Harbin, and when I got back to my hotel there I found the cable announcing my father’s death.

  ‘I never spoke to Natacha about her life with Ko’en Cheng. One doesn’t do such things. And she never vouchsafed any information, but old Musya her ayah3 was less reticent. If I hadn’t shut her off, she’d have told me everything about their life at Ko’en Cheng’s yeaman. Once, before I forbade her to tell anything about my wife’s past, she declared Ko’en Cheng had “magicked milady to death”, but whether she meant he’d performed tricks of sorcery till Natacha was wearied of them, or that he’d actually killed her I could not determine. She spoke execrable English.

  ‘You remember, of course, Natacha died while I was in Mexico. When I came home I found old Musya had smothered her grave with garlic, and in addition stuck a wild rose bush right where I wanted to set up the headstone.’

  Somewhere in Ranleigh’s inner consciousness a small alarm bell seemed to ring. He knew but little of such things, but vaguely he remembered hearing that a vampire could not stand the touch or smell of garlic, or the nearness of a wild rose thorn or blossom—that it could not pass a place where either was. Who was it told him that, or had he read it somewhere? He gave the matter up, for Steadman was continuing:

  ‘I had the cemetery grub the weeds up and remound the grave. They finished work two days ago.’

  ‘Yes?’ prompted Ranleigh as the other paused.

  ‘Night before last—the night before I called on you—I was reading late in my study when I heard a tapping at the window. I thought it was a wind-blown branch striking the pane at first, but it came again, louder and more insistently, as if someone outside sought admission, and when I looked up, there was Natacha. Her lovely eyes were open wide, looking longingly at me, and she held her hands out imploringly. Of course, I thought it was a dream, but I threw the window open and called her, and she came in.

  ‘It was no ghost or figment of a dream, but my own Natacha in the solid flesh, glowing and vibrant, but as cold as death’s own self. I took her to the fire and wrapped her in a rug, but she grew no warmer; just huddled there and shivered like a frightened, trembling bird. At last she seemed to gain a little strength, and held her hands out to me. “Kiss me!” she implored, as though she starved for a caress.

  ‘I took her in my arms, but instead of putting her lips against mine she put them around them, covering my mouth completely and seeming to draw the very breath out of my lungs. I felt myself grow faint, like a swimmer mauled and pounded by the surf until his lungs are full of water, and my eyes seemed blinded by a sort of mist. I could hear a ringing in my ears; then everything went black as I dropped to my knees. I wasn’t quite unconscious; I could still feel her arms round me, gripping me with a hold which seemed stronger every minute, and it seemed as if she’d transferred her lips to my throat. I kept growing weaker, but I felt no pain nor fear. A sort of languorous ecstasy was spreading through me. Then I went completely out, and the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor before the fire with Natacha bending over me, holding my cheeks between her palms and murmuring Russian love-names to me. She was warm now; warm and glowing with vitality, and, weak as I was, the flame of my love rose to meet the glowing fire of hers.

  ‘We counted every minute of that night as misers count their gold. I heaped logs upon the fire until the flames leaped up the chimney like a holocaust, but in a little while she began to be chilled again, and presently she gasped for air until I let her put her mouth to mine and draw breath from me. That revived her somewhat, and when she’d sucked a little more blood from my throat she seemed herself once more, though I could not feel the movement of her heart against mine as she lay in my arms.

  ‘Before the morning came she told me. Old Musya had not spoken figuratively when she said Ko’en Cheng “magicked Natacha to death”. He’d done just that—kept her bound and starved her for days in a cellar, reciting charms and incantations over her until she died, or seemed to. Then he revived her by his magic arts, and after that she lived normally, except that every once in a while she had a sudden inordinate craving for warm human blood. Then he’d go out with a small silver vase and bring it back filled to the brim with blood. She’d drink it, almost at a draft, and the craving passed away, sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes for months together.

  ‘But the whole point was this: Ko’en Cheng had infected her as a ch’ing shih. As yet she was in the primary stage, being able to subsist on ordinary food and drink, and only needing human blood occasionally, but when she fell ill here and seemed to die again she really passed into the tertiary stage of vampirism. She is now a true ch’ing shih, a complete vampire, able to support existence only by repeated drafts of human blood, unable to draw breath from the air for any considerable time, and forced to steal her breath from living people.

  ‘Not only that: Her appetite increases constantly. The little blood she drew from me night before last will be inadequate to nourish her in a short time. Within a week she’ll need a pint of blood a day, and after that a quart; in a month or two a gallon will be scarcely adequate to sustain her from one day to the next.

  ‘Like Ko’en Cheng when I found him in his grave, she lies in pseudo-death from cock-crow to sunset, and during that time she must rest in her coffin, either that in which she was originally buried, or one substantially like it, and some earth from her original grave must be in it, or she cannot find rest.

  ‘Natacha was my first and only love. Women never had meant much to me until I met her, and the thought of having her with me again, on any terms—in any way—was like the offer of a cool drink to a man who dies of thirst.
She had to go back to her grave at sunrise yesterday, but I determined to make preparations to enable her to stay here with me. First I came to you and bought a casket; then I ordered clothes for her at Maison Blanche, and a supply of blood—enough for several days at her present appetite—from the Murray Laboratories. On my way home I visited the cemetery and took a shovelful of earth from her grave. Now everything has been arranged. She need never leave me, day or night.’

  He turned defiantly on Ranleigh. ‘You think I’m crazy, of course. You don’t believe a word of this——’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Steadman, but I do,’ the funeral director denied. ‘I only wish that I could think you’re crazy and this whole thing the illusion of a deranged mind, but—I know that body—Mrs Steadman, I mean. I can identify it—her—positively. But would you mind explaining one thing more?’

  ‘I will if I can.’

  ‘I noticed that there are no mirrors in the room where you had me take the casket. It’s furnished like a lady’s powder room, but——’

  Steadman nodded sadly as his interrogator paused. ‘A mirror would be useless there. Substantial as they are in every other way, vampires cannot cast a shadow in the sun or strike back reflections from a mirror. She has to make her toilet without looking-glasses, or depend on me to help her.

  ‘Of course, in the circumstances, I don’t dare keep the servants here after sundown. I have them come at ten o’clock in the morning, and leave by four in the afternoon. During daylight I shall keep the door to my wife’s room locked.’

  Ranleigh rose and held his hand out. ‘Only two men in America, you and I, know about this,’ he declared. ‘I think that we’re the only ones who would believe it, too. You won’t tell; I can’t. Your secret is safe——’

  ‘For the present, yes,’ his host broke in, ‘but there’s something else I want you to do for me, Mr Ranleigh. I’m not a well man. Only last week Dr Draper warned me I might drop off any minute with a heart attack. I’d like to know that when I die you’ll take charge of my body and inter it in Natacha’s grave. Also, I want you to make sure she’s cremated. As long as I live I can see her wants are supplied, but with my death she’ll have no one to procure blood for her, and when that happens she’ll go raging through the countryside, exactly as Ko’en Cheng did in Mongolia, killing anyone she comes on for his breath and blood. . . . You can arrange it, can’t you?’