Séance for a Vampire, Fred Saberhagen [win 10 ebook reader txt] 📗

he was certain Kulakov must be responsible, that perhaps he had slain the girl himself before somehow making his escape, or perhaps she had been killed by one of Kulakov’s servants, obeying his orders to do so if her discovery should seem likely.

By whatever hand had been accomplished, the killing was going to be difficult to explain, especially to Louisa’s shocked and horrified parents. The official theory, soon developed, was that Louisa had been held for weeks as a drugged kidnap victim in Smithbury Hall, and whatever body had originally been buried in her place had now been destroyed by the villains in an attempt to cover their trail. Louisa’s body, at last truly dead, was soon taken away by a medical examiner who, fortunately or not, had means of discovering the truth.

I foresaw that Holmes and Dracula and I would be spending the rest of the day in clearing up, or concealing, the details of this grim and distasteful business; what I did not foresee was the great shock which awaited us on our return to Norberton House.

The abduction of Rebecca Altamont took place in her own home, in broad daylight, on the same morning as the burial of Abraham Kirkaldy and the police raid on Kulakov’s house.

As we were able to reconstruct the matter later, there sounded a light tap on the door of becky’s sitting room, where she was reading. When the girl opened the door, the man who had tipped the rowboat was standing just outside, rubbing the back of his neck as if it hurt. This time he was fully clothed, and as on the earlier occasion, she had been given only the most fleeting glance. but she had no doubt that the green eyes were the same.

With part of her mind, but only part, she wondered whether she ought to try to scream...

In Kulakov’s place, I should probably have left some gloating sign of triumph behind, some challenging message, boasting of this latest punishment I had inflicted upon my enemies, and threatening to do even worse. Kulakov did nothing of the kind; we were left to realization gradually that becky was now gone, taking with her the clothes she had been wearing and apparently nothing else.

Early Saturday afternoon, with the graveside service for Abraham Kirkaldy some hours over, Martin Armstrong was told of Louisa’s death, and treated to a further serious talk, by Sherlock Holmes, on the subject of vampires.

After dark there was another short lecture on the same subject, this one by Dracula, and accompanied by a demonstration. These coordinated efforts gave Martin a more realistic view of what his own situation would have been, and Louisa’s, had she lived. Then, his mind full of other problems, Armstrong required some little time to understand that Mr. Prince was a vampire too.

On the day after Rebecca’s ominous disappearance from Norberton House the coffin containing her elder sister’s body was–for the second time this summer–on display in the best parlor. Louisa’s parents–for the second time–wore mourning, and held vigil at the dead girl’s side.

It was easy to see that the mother and father had been driven to the brink of madness, if not beyond, by grief and uncertainty. They could hardly avoid the torturing hope that this too might be some mistake, that the girl would yet again come back to them, somehow. Madeline soon collapsed with what her physician diagnosed as brain fever, and Ambrose was reduced to maundering about the construction of this seeming Louisa-body from “psycho-plastic material,” a term then much in vogue with certain mediums.

“This...this is not my daughter, gentlemen,” said he, looking fondly at the body in the coffin, as he might have gazed at a photograph of Louisa, or a sculpture. “This is only a reproduction, created by psychic forces.”

And Martin Armstrong, who had found in a drawer and put on again the black armband he had so recently taken off, was looking at his lover in her coffin–again.

This was the face he had kissed, the body he had embraced and hungered to embrace again. but was this really his Louisa, or was it not? The breathing, laughing, shy girl of boat rides and garden parties in the summer afternoons?

And, above all, whoever this woman was, was she really dead?

Even though Louisa might now be truly dead, Armstrong endured, repeatedly, a horrible nightmare about her being raped and transformed into a vampire. He was beginning to fear that he stood in peril of undergoing the same change, begun much more gradually and pleasurably, but with the same resulting alteration in his very nature.

The fears and doubts that had arisen when the young man was repeatedly visited by his vampire lover at night returned with redoubled force now as he watched her lying in daylight–dead?

Armstrong told me he thought that perhaps never again could he be sure of death.

He was pale and trembling as he gazed at that pale, strangely transformed face. Her beauty had now been enhanced, as sometimes happens in such cases, to a breathtaking perfection.

Going back to his bedroom, where there was a mirror, Armstrong shut the door for privacy and began to examine his reflection, which was still reassuringly visible, in search of any preliminary changes that might signal a coming transformation. He felt encouraged that none were to be found.

For a moment or two, he even forgot the fact that becky was now missing.

Sherlock Holmes, in discussion with his cousin, agreed that Louisa Altamont had been innocent of any serious wrongdoing. She had been only a pawn used by Kulakov, and her death deserved to be avenged as much as that of any breathing victim’s.

Dracula, going into greater detail on the subject of Louisa’s mental state, reiterated his remarks to the effect that folk of his race and hers were even more susceptible to hypnosis than the breathing variety of people were. Indeed, their very existence as vampires depends upon their flesh being held enchanted, as it were, by their own or another’s will. This