Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories (4 page)

That prince sent off a deputation from Belgrade, half consisting of military officers and half of civil, with the auditor-general of the kingdom, to go to a village where a famous vampire, several years deceased, was making great havoc amongst his kin; for note well, that it is only in their family and amongst their own relations that these blood-suckers delight in destroying our species. This deputation was composed of men and persons well-known for their morality and even their information, of irreproachable character; and there were even some learned men amongst the two orders: they were put to the oath, and accompanied by a lieutenant of the grenadiers of the regiment of Prince Alexander of Wirtemberg, and by twenty-four grenadiers of the said regiment.

All that were most respectable, and the duke himself, who was then at Belgrade, joined this deputation in order to be ocular spectators of the veracious proof about to be made.

When they arrived at the place, they found that in the space of a fortnight the vampire, uncle of five persons, nephews and nieces, had already dispatched three of them and one of his own brothers. He had begun with his fifth victim, the beautiful young daughter of his niece, and had already sucked her twice, when a stop was put to this sad tragedy by the following operations.

They repaired with the deputed commissaries to a village not far from Belgrade, and that publicly, at night-fall, and went to the vampire’s grave. The gentleman could not tell me the time when those who had died had been sucked, nor the particulars of the subject. The persons whose blood had been sucked found themselves in a pitiable state of languor, weakness, and lassitude, so violent is the torment. He had been interred three years, and they saw on this grave a light resembling that of a lamp, but not so bright.

They opened the grave, and found there a man as whole and apparently as sound as any of us who were present; his hair, and the hairs on his body, the nails, teeth, and eyes as firmly fast as they now are in ourselves who exist, and his heart palpitating.

Next they proceeded to draw him out of his grave, the body in truth not being flexible, but wanting neither flesh nor bone; then they pierced his heart with a sort of round, pointed, iron lance; there came out a whitish and fluid matter mixed with blood, but the blood prevailing more than the matter, and all without any bad smell. After that they cut off his head with a hatchet, like what is used in England at executions; there came out also a matter and blood like what I have just described, but more abundantly in proportion to what had flowed from the heart.

And after all this they threw him back again into his grave, with quick-lime to consume him promptly; and thenceforth his niece, who had been twice sucked, grew better. At the place where these persons are sucked a very blue spot is formed; the part whence the blood is drawn is not determinate, sometimes it is in one place and sometimes in another. It is a notorious fact, attested by the most authentic documents, and passed or executed in sight of more than 1,300 persons, all worthy of belief.

But I reserve, to satisfy more fully the curiosity of the learned Abbé dom Calmet, the pleasure of detailing to him more at length what I have seen with my own eyes on this subject.

Singular Instance of a Hungarian Ghost

T
HE MOST REMARKABLE
INSTANCE
cited by Rauff is that of one Peter Plogojovitz, who had been buried ten weeks in a village of Hungary, called Kisolova. This man appeared by night to some of the inhabitants of the village while they were asleep, and grasped their throat so tightly that in four-and-twenty hours it caused their death. Nine persons, young and old, perished thus in the course of eight days.

The widow of the same Plogojovitz declared that her husband since his death had come and asked her for his shoes, which frightened her so much that she left Kisolova to retire to some other spot.

From these circumstances the inhabitants of the village determined upon disinterring the body of Plogojovitz and burning it, to deliver themselves from these visitations. They applied to the emperor’s officer, who commanded in the territory of Gradiska, in Hungary, and even to the curé of the same place, for permission to exhume the body of Peter Plogojovitz. The officer and the curé made much demur in granting this permission, but the peasants declared that if they were refused permission to disinter the body of this man, whom they had no doubt was a true vampire (for so they called these revived corpses), they should be obliged to forsake the village, and go where they could.

The emperor’s officer, who wrote this account, seeing he could hinder them neither by threats nor promises, went with the curé of Gradiska to the village of Kisolova, and having caused Peter Plogojovitz to be exhumed, they found that his body exhaled no bad smell; that he looked as when alive, except the tip of the nose; that his hair and beard had grown, and instead of his nails, which had fallen off, new ones had come; that under his upper skin, which appeared whitish, there appeared a new one, which looked healthy, and of a natural color; his feet and hands were as whole as could be desired in a living man. They remarked also in his mouth some fresh blood, which these people believed that this vampire had sucked from the men whose death he had occasioned.

The emperor’s officer and the curé having diligently examined all these things, and the people who were present feeling their indignation awakened anew, and being more fully persuaded that he was the true cause of the death of their compatriots, ran directly for a sharp-pointed stake, which they thrust into his breast, whence there issued a quantity of fresh and crimson blood, and also from the nose and mouth; something also proceeded from that part of his body which decency does not allow us to mention. After this the peasants placed the body on a pile of wood and saw it reduced to ashes.

George Gordon, Lord Byron

(1788–1824)

D
ESPITE THE SUPERSTITIOUS MANIA
recorded in Augustin Calmet’s
Phantom World
, Europe in the seventeenth century had slowly changed. Philosophers such as Francis Bacon and René Descartes formulated a new approach to what would come to be called science; the Royal Society encouraged attention to the world beyond illuminated manuscripts; Hobbes and Locke and company lay the groundwork for vast political change. In an influential swing of the Western cultural pendulum—the Romantic backlash against the Enlightenment—many people objected to evidence-based thinking as arid and godless, and worried that science was fumigating all the fun out of the world. Not that Romanticism was by any means a rejection of all things scientific; the schoolboy Shelley was notorious for his reckless experiments with electricity and magnetism. But the Romantics definitely tried to restore wonder and mystery to their world, and they enthusiastically welcomed vampire folklore into their moody writings.

In 1815, a volcano called Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Its crown exploded in the largest and most dramatic eruption in history, flinging countless tons of volcanic ash and dust into the air. The particles reached a high enough altitude to travel around the world for months, contributing to dramatic sunsets and stormy weather in places far distant from the site of their origin. “It will ever be remembered by the present generation,” proclaimed one English newspaper, “that the year 1816 was a year in which there was no summer.” Bad weather prevailed over Europe, North America, and other northern regions.

During the rainy summer of 1816, the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, rented the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. His physician and hanger-on, John Polidori, was with him. Staying nearby were poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley’s not-yet-wife Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, their illegitimate baby daughter, and Mary’s stepsister Claire. Byron and Polidori soon met the others, who visited the villa often. The party planned to sail the lake and explore the history-rich region (the villa was named after a former owner, whose friend John Milton had visited him there), but the awful weather kept them off the water and mostly trapped indoors. So they sat before the fire and read ghost stories aloud, especially the supernatural collection
Phantasmagoriana
, which they read in a new French translation.

Finally, as Mary Shelley later told it, “We shall each write a ghost story,” said Byron. It was a historic evening. Percy Shelley made little attempt to meet the challenge, although he was fascinated by ghosts and thought he had encountered them, but Godwin began what grew into
Frankenstein.
Byron wrote a brief tale that he never developed further, which follows. Probably everyone present had read Robert Southey’s long poem
Thalaba
and its extensive notes about vampires, and Byron had already mentioned vampires in his 1816 poem “The Giaour,” so it isn’t surprising that they occurred to him again as a topic. Polidori’s late but powerful contribution was in response to Byron’s and follows immediately after it.

The End of My Journey

J
UNE 17, 1816
I
N
the year 17—, having for some time determined on a journey through countries not hitherto much frequented by travellers, I set out, accompanied by a friend, whom I shall designate by the name of Augustus Darvell. He was a few years my elder, and a man of considerable fortune and ancient family: advantages which an extensive capacity prevented him alike from undervaluing or overrating. Some peculiar circumstances in his private history had rendered him to me an object of attention, of interest, and even of regard, which neither the reserve of his manners, nor occasional indications of an inquietude at times nearly approaching to alienation of mind, could extinguish.

I was yet young in life, which I had begun early; but my intimacy with him was of a recent date: we had been educated at the same schools and university; but his progress through these had preceded mine, and he had been deeply initiated into what is called the world, while I was yet in my novitiate. While thus engaged, I heard much both of his past and present life; and, although in these accounts there were many and irreconcilable contradictions, I could still gather from the whole that he was a being of no common order, and one who, whatever pains he might take to avoid remark, would still be remarkable. I had cultivated his acquaintance subsequently, and endeavoured to obtain his friendship, but this last appeared to be unattainable; whatever affections he might have possessed seemed now, some to have been extinguished, and others to be concentered: that his feelings were acute, I had sufficient opportunities of observing; for, although he could control, he could not altogether disguise them: still he had a power of giving to one passion the appearance of another, in such a manner that it was difficult to define the nature of what was working within him; and the expressions of his features would vary so rapidly, though slightly, that it was useless to trace them to their sources. It was evident that he was a prey to some cureless disquiet; but whether it arose from ambition, love, remorse, grief, from one or all of these, or merely from a morbid temperament akin to disease, I could not discover: there were circumstances alleged which might have justified the application to each of these causes; but, as I have before said, these were so contradictory and contradicted, that none could be fixed upon with accuracy. Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed that there must also be evil: I know not how this may be, but in him there certainly was the one, though I could not ascertain the extent of the other—and felt loath, as far as regarded himself, to believe in its existence. My advances were received with sufficient coldness: but I was young, and not easily discouraged, and at length succeeded in obtaining, to a certain degree, that common-place intercourse and moderate confidence of common and every-day concerns, created and cemented by similarity of pursuit and frequency of meeting, which is called intimacy, or friendship, according to the ideas of him who uses those words to express them.

Darvell had already travelled extensively; and to him I had applied for information with regard to the conduct of my intended journey. It was my secret wish that he might be prevailed on to accompany me; it was also a probable hope, founded upon the shadowy restlessness which I observed in him, and to which the animation which he appeared to feel on such subjects, and his apparent indifference to all by which he was more immediately surrounded, gave fresh strength. This wish I first hinted, and then expressed: his answer, though I had partly expected it, gave me all the pleasure of surprise—he consented; and, after the requisite arrangement, we commenced our voyages. After journeying through various countries of the south of Europe, our attention was turned towards the East, according to our original destination; and it was in my progress through these regions that the incident occurred upon which will turn what I may have to relate.

The constitution of Darvell, which must from his appearance have been in early life more than usually robust, had been for some time gradually giving away, without the intervention of any apparent disease: he had neither cough nor hectic, yet he became daily more enfeebled; his habits were temperate, and he neither declined nor complained of fatigue; yet he was evidently wasting away: he became more and more silent and sleepless, and at length so seriously altered, that my alarm grew proportionate to what I conceived to be his danger.

We had determined, on our arrival at Smyrna, on an excursion to the ruins of Ephesus and Sardis, from which I endeavoured to dissuade him in his present state of indisposition—but in vain: there appeared to be an oppression on his mind, and a solemnity in his manner, which ill corresponded with his eagerness to proceed on what I regarded as a mere party of pleasure little suited to a valetudinarian; but I opposed him no longer—and in a few days we set off together, accompanied only by a serrugee and a single janissary.

We had passed halfway towards the remains of Ephesus, leaving behind us the more fertile environs of Smyrna, and were entering upon that wild and tenantless tract through the marshes and defiles which lead to the few huts yet lingering over the broken columns of Diana—the roofless walls of expelled Christianity, and the still more recent but complete desolation of abandoned mosques—when the sudden and rapid illness of my companion obliged us to halt at a Turkish cemetery, the turbaned tombstones of which were the sole indication that human life had ever been a sojourner in this wilderness. The only caravanserai we had seen was left some hours behind us, not a vestige of a town or even cottage was within sight or hope, and this “city of the dead” appeared to be the sole refuge of my unfortunate friend, who seemed on the verge of becoming the last of its inhabitants.

In this situation, I looked round for a place where he might most conveniently repose: contrary to the usual aspect of Mahometan burial-grounds, the cypresses were in this few in number, and these thinly scattered over its extent; the tombstones were mostly fallen, and worn with age: upon one of the most considerable of these, and beneath one of the most spreading trees, Darvell supported himself, in a half-reclining posture, with great difficulty. He asked for water. I had some doubts of our being able to find any, and prepared to go in search of it with hesitating despondency: but he desired me to remain; and turning to Suleiman, our janissary, who stood by us smoking with great tranquillity he said, “Suleiman, verbana su” (i.e., “bring some water”), and went on describing the spot where it was to be found with great minuteness, at a small well for camels, a few hundred yards to the right: the janissary obeyed. I said to Darvell, “How did you know this?” He replied, “From our situation; you must perceive that this place was once inhabited, and could not have been so without springs: I have also been here before.”

“You have been here before! How came you never to mention this to me? and what could you be doing in a place where no one would remain a moment longer than they could help it?”

To this question I received no answer. In the meantime Suleiman returned with the water, leaving the serrugee and the horses at the fountain. The quenching of his thirst had the appearance of reviving him for a moment; and I conceived hopes of his being able to proceed, or at least to return, and I urged the attempt. He was silent—and appeared to be collecting his spirits for an effort to speak. He began—

“This is the end of my journey, and of my life; I came here to die; but I have a request to make, a command—for such my last words must be.—You will observe it?”

“Most certainly; but I have better hopes.”

“I have no hopes, nor wishes, but this—conceal my death from every human being.”

“I hope there will be no occasion; that you will recover, and—”

“Peace! It must be so: promise this.”

“I do.”

“Swear it, by all that—” He here dictated an oath of great solemnity.

“There is no occasion for this. I will observe your request; and to doubt me is—”

“It cannot be helped, you must swear.”

I took the oath, it appeared to relieve him. He removed a seal ring from his finger, on which were some Arabic characters, and presented it to me. He proceeded—

“On the ninth day of the month, at noon precisely (what month you please, but this must be the day), you must fling this ring into the salt springs which run into the Bay of Eleusis; the day after, at the same hour, you must repair to the ruins of the temple of Ceres, and wait one hour.”

“Why?”

“You will see.”

“The ninth day of the month, you say?”

“The ninth.”

As I observed that the present was the ninth day of the month, his countenance changed, and he paused. As he sat, evidently becoming more feeble, a stork, with a snake in her beak, perched upon a tombstone near us; and, without devouring her prey, appeared to be steadfastly regarding us. I know not what impelled me to drive it away, but the attempt was useless; she made a few circles in the air, and returned exactly to the same spot. Darvell pointed to it, and smiled—he spoke—I know not whether to himself or to me—but the words were only “’Tis well!”