The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast (14 page)

At Shanghai we took up our residence in a small flat in Grange Road, and here for a time life ran smoothly, for I was freed somehow from my irksome duties at the Courts, and I never went to the office any more.

Yet one haunting dread I had, that my kandasie, my precious drug, would run out, and that I would be unable to obtain more. I had brought what seemed an ample supply with me on leaving Fiji, but as my system became slowly inured to its action, I found myself with dismay compelled to consume it in ever-increasing doses before the languorous sensation of beatitude would creep over my spirit. Though physically well enough, mentally I was in a state of constant rebellion at the tawdry, cold
cheerlessness of my surroundings, after the glorious brightness of my visions; finding myself eagerly looking forward to the time when I might lie down to the enjoyment of the entrancing bondage that chained me; ever less able to resist the temptation to advance the hour of my temporary release from dull earth by a few minutes at first, then by half an hour, latterly by leaps of an hour at a time.

And now I come to the part of my history that is stamped upon my brain, every little act of it, in letters of fire, more brilliantly inexpungable than the glowing incandescence of the dream-fires themselves.

Would to God—if God there be—that I could forget something of that awful night — that my memory could slip but one iota, but one little incident of those dread hours of horror, and so lessen, be it by ever so little, the terrible burden of white - glowing recollection that is slowly searing its way into my brain, driving me to madness as certain as the lunacy of these leering curs around me who call themselves " doctors" and " warders!"

But I cannot forget. Not one instant of that time can I shut out from before my burning eyes; not one sound I heard in that fearful charnelhouse of death can I restrain from hammering its way anew, and ever anew, through my ears to my throbbing, bursting brain!

Other things I can forget. Things I have desired
to remember have slid from me into the Cimmerian darkness of oblivion; but the memory of this dread night stays with me, and will stay with me until the angels mercifully wash it from my mind with the lethe of eternal rest.

A cousin of my wife's was coming out to Shanghai, and it was arranged that I should go to meet the boat at Woosung. My wife also would have come; but she did not care to leave the children alone, perhaps for the whole day.

She was to come out by the SS.
Hamburg,
but when we heard of the vessel's departure from Hong-Kong we found that she was not due at Woosung until late in the evening. This would probably mean coming back by the special nighttrain. But to me it would mean infinitely more; it would mean the retardation of the only moments of happiness I now enjoyed, by several hours. The thought was unbearable—to defer the courting of the blissful colour visions by several hours! I could not do it. I shrank from the mere contemplation of such dire hardship, and, wretch that I am, I complained that our coming visitor was a nuisance, that I was not feeling particularly well, and so forth, knowing full well that if I showed any reluctance to going, my wife would be ready to offer to go herself.

Which she did. Of course I demurred. It was my place to go to Woosung, and I could not allow
her to tax herself with the journey, and so I allowed myself reluctantly to yield.

She went down in the early forenoon, lest the boat should arrive unexpectedly; but as by four she had not yet been signalled at Gutzlaff Lighthouse my wife wired to me that she intended to stay at the Woosung Hotel, in order to be upon the spot on the vessel's arrival in the morning.

What cared I, I thought, though she had to stay down there a week, so I were left in company of my kandasie.

Before I went to bed that night—which, in the delights of anticipation, was much earlier than usual—I had the children's little cots moved into my room, so that I might be the better able to keep an eye upon them.

I keep an eye on them forsooth! Sometimes I laugh out wildly at the sheer humour of the thing. Were it not for the pitiable imbecile calling himself "warder," who seems to watch my every movement, I could lay down my pen now and laugh anew.

But I digress. In my anxiety to lose no moment of the precious time, it must have been full three hours earlier than usual that I dismissed the amah and "boys" and lay down, after first swallowing, with placid satisfaction, my accustomed potion.

I remember—ah, how well I remember !—as I lay there waiting for the drug to waft my spirit
away, seeing Cerberus pacing with stealthy step to and fro in the room.

Twice he stopped and raised his head with a savage snarl, so that I wondered much at his conduct, fearing he might awake the little ones who now slumbered so peacefully beside me.

Gradually the sombre tints about the room began to brighten, and I knew that kandasie was catching my spirit up in its alluring power. The gas-jet first caught the glamour of colour as I saw a beautiful halo of deepest purple and vivid scarlet playing round the brilliant golden flame.

I felt my limbs were growing rigid, for my hand was hanging over the side of the bed, and as Cerberus stopped his stealthy pacing and came up to lick it, I tried to remove it from the rasp of his tongue, but could not.

Then, as my brain grew to its accustomed clearness under the stimulating influence of the narcotic, I remembered with a pang of remorse that in my eagerness to attain the summit of my gilded Parnassus I had forgotten to feed the poor brute. It was a task either my wife or myself invariably undertook, for we dared not at such times trust his savage temper with the Chinese boys. Cerberus was getting old and cantankerous, and at the best of times he was a dangerous brute when meals occupied his attention. And I had forgotten to feed him ! I felt sorry for him, for he had but the one meal a day; and now he would get nothing
until the following morning, for the lightest movement was already beyond me.

So Cerberus went on licking my hand, until I felt his rough tongue rasping away the tender skin from a recent wound on its back. But I did not heed it, could not heed it, for I was wrapt in ecstatic contemplation of the iridescent colours playing before my entranced eyes, and every muscle was stiff and immobile.

Suddenly, I know not how long after, I became dimly conscioifs that, through the parti - coloured rings of light, Cerberus was standing on the bed at my little May's feet, his hair bristling, his tail lashing the great black sides in angry, spasmodic strokes! The one green eye was glaring fixedly toward the head of the bed; the blind one, as usual, staring up with its patch of jagged crimson to the ceiling.

While I yet watched, my eyes set immovably in their sockets, the pendulum swing of the tail ceased, and the great black body crouched low on the bed for a spring. I felt a sensation of eerie alarm gripping at my heart, though I did not then realise its meaning. It was a premonition of coming disaster, that subsided ere it could be translated into fear.

What was the matter with Cerberus, I wondered,

and as I wondered I saw, mixed up with the

flashing colours, a huge, shadowy body stretched to

its full length as it launched itself through the air.
Only for an instant, then it alighted full on my little girl's breast, its giant head partly hid under little May's chin. She awoke from her pleasant dreams with a scream of terror, a peculiar, gurgling cry that seemed stifled and compressed in its utterance.

What did it mean ? I asked myself again, lying there in rigid immobility. She had never been afraid of Cerberus's caresses. I could see in the dim light her blue eyes, widely open, staring wildly, protuberantly upwards. f longed to get up and see what was the matter, but I was bound, fettered.

Presently the slight body beneath the sheets quivered and writhed, and the form of the cat, nestling so close above her, rocked, yet its head remained down.

What did it mean ?

Then slowly the little pulse that remained in my inert body stopped, and my eyes grew dim and clouded with horror. Cerberus had his great yellow fangs buried in my child's throat, and was greedily drinking her life's blood!

The dream-colours were growing deeper now on the white coverlet—growing crimson that before had been palest gold; crimson, sprinkled and scattered. No ! no ! no ! This was no vision ! This was real! O God ! O God ! my little May's blood! And I lay there staring, staring

A deep growl recalled me from my swoon of
anguish, and the mists that were gathering before my eyes ran back again into nothingness.

The ghoulish creature was standing erect, its tail swinging again from side to side, the fangs and cruel, snarling lips imbued in gore. Then it stooped its head, and, fixing the terrible claws in her tender flesh, gripped with its teeth the slender throat of my child. And I—I lay there in all the rigidity of death, yet without the merciful oblivion death bestows, watching with appalling clearness this monster deliberately rending and tearing the throat of a human being, and that being — my child!

My reason must have tottered for a moment in its seat, for I began to seek excuses for the grisly deed.

Poor Cerberus! Good Cerberus! He was thirsty and hungry; he had not been fed. Good, gentle Cerberus! Perhaps now he would come and tear open my throat, and dim my eyes again to the horror before them.

But no! He went on rending the white flesh, and there came to my ears the soft rasping of skin and flesh being torn asunder. Presently he raised himself erect once more and looked around. His eye fixed itself on the neighbouring cot, and, with angrily-lashing tail, he sprang across the space that separated the little baby from May, alighting by its side and commencing leisurely to lick the face and throat of the sleeping infant.

My God ! not that! I shrieked, yet shrieking, uttered no sound. I fancied I was wringing my hands in my anguish, yet my limbs were motionless and stiff. Not that! not that! Spare me at least my baby—my little innocent child !

The baby awoke at the touch of his tongue, and smiled confidingly up into the blood-smeared face above, crowing with infant delight, whilst I lay in that frightful nightmare existence watching— watching, with stilled pulses, for the time when, tired of his play, the fiend would

Suddenly I saw the shoulder-blades project from his back as he set himself against the pull. Then the same insistent, ripping sound, the same raw, nauseating odour of fresh blood as he tore causelessly at the tiny throat—causelessly, from sheer ferocity and lust of blood, for he was long surfeited with the holocaust.

Little spots of chameleon hue, tinted by the rainbow-vision colours, were appearing silently on the floor; I knew not whence they came, for I saw them only as they showed forth on the boards. Then the colours faded swiftly away, faded, all but one; that one was crimson. I saw their origin— it was the spurting blood of my babe. I could detect it now in its crimson stream as it rose from the bed and fell in gory fountain through the air. The spots on the floor had run together and formed a pool, and still I gazed wide-eyed and could not stir.

I prayed madly, frantically to God. Ah, how I prayed for but one moment of that glad, free movement that hitherto I had despised, that I might tear the monster from my little one's throat! And when He would not hear me, when He in callous apathy turned His back upon me, I prayed to the demons, the fiends beneath whose bondage I groaned, to grant me, their slave, one minute's respite from the fetters that shackled my limbs in utter helplessness. I prayed that it might at least be given me to close my eyes, to shut out the sight of the ghastly tragedy that was being enacted before them. Oblivion, blindness, death itself, I cared not what so I should not be compelled to gaze upon this foul harpie of Eblis in its horrible carnage.

O God! how joyously I would have welcomed death at that moment! How I would have smiled and striven to kiss the hand that dealt me the stroke of mercy. I tried in my anguish to imagine that I felt the stilly langour of death stealing over my spirit, that to my failing sight the room was growing dim and indistinct, but I could not; every object, every little spurt and splash of blood shone out bright and clear.

There was but one tint, all pervading, the hue of my children's blood. Revolving rings within rings, fires that leapt and flashed around my babes' bodies, all were red, red !

Suddenly something within my brain snapped;
there was a loud report, that reverberated through and through my being, and on its fading echoes, amid a whirring of grinding, tearing wheels, I sank away into

I was crouching by the bedside, beside the stiffened corpses of my little children, laughing low as I dabbled my hands in the rapidly-clotting gore, raising great strings of it between my fingers to the light, when next morning the boy came into the room and retreated again in terror to the flat below.

Cerberus was lying curled at the foot of May's bed, glutted and content, purring loudly as he drifted off into a sleep of satiety. Very gently I caressed him, coaxed him to the other end of the bed, laughing softly the while.

At last I had lured him on to May's still breast, and he lay there purring forth his satisfaction, the gory head resting on her smooth, blood-stained forehead.

Very gently, ever laughing, I disengaged from either side the child's head a thick tress of goldenbright hair, now stained so deeply, and rank with the reeking odour of earth and rawness.

Very gently, laughing still, I knotted them loosely over the great cat's neck, retaining the two ends in my hands. Then, with a last exultant shriek of triumph, I threw my whole strength into the effort, and drew the insidious strands of curly hair tight about the ghoul's throat.

It was then that I received the fearful scratches that now disfigure my arms and breast. But I never for an instant released my hold, never relaxed so glorious a game, but drew the strands ever tighter and tighter, until gradually the wildlyclawing paws were stilled, as with a last spasmodic struggle and a violent shivering the hideous fiend stretched his sombre body in death above the corpses of my children.

My blood was flowing freely now, mingling on the bed with the clotted gore of the little ones, but I heeded it not. I laughed in glee to see the glassy green eye protruding so far from the monster's head, as far, or farther, than the sightless white one with the crimson splash.

I think then several persons burst into the room; I cannot remember. I think there was a scuffle as they tried to drag me from the bedside. It is all so long ago now, months or perhaps years, I must be forgetting.

But every few nights that ghoulish black thing comes creeping stealthily through the closed door, through the wall, anywhere, and, clambering upon my bed, lies a dead weight across my breast and throat, half-suffocating me as I stare in terror up at the hideously-deformed head, with its one protruding orb of blank, red-splashed tissue and malignant green eye.

And in its fulsome breath, as it purrs loudly into my face, I smell again the reeking blood of my
little children, and though I shriek in horror and cry out piteously to them to come in God's name and take the frightful thing away, they only stand at my bedside leering at me with a smile of bitter mockery, and tell me I am mad.