Vintage Vampire Stories (33 page)

By some process of unconscious reasoning, I had evolved the idea that Calthorpe, dead though he was, was exerting a hypnotic power over my sisters, thus striking at my father through his loved ones. It may seem strange that I, a hard-headed man of the world, should have given any attention to such occult hypotheses. But I had lost one beloved sister through a most mysterious malady, and now that malady threatened the other.

Having questioned orthodox science in vain, however, in my extremity, I lent an ear to the suggestions of an alleged knowledge of forces lying outside the range of ordinary experience—a knowledge I had hitherto denied and ridiculed, as the pretension of predatory quacks and impostors. The drowning man catches at straws, and every straw seems a plank of safety.

Connie very soon developed all the symptoms which had marked her sister's decline: and she, too, had mysterious dreams, which no argument or persuasion could induce her to disclose, and which evidently filled her with a conviction that she was doomed.

One day she came to me front her father's room, in a state of wild agitation.

“You must watch him,” she said. “He is very near madness. I think he will destroy himself.”

“What has he said?”

“Oh, his talk is very wild—I can make little of it. He is possessed with the idea of some enemy—someone who is dead. ‘I must seek him in his own place,' he keeps on saying; ‘I will find him, and drag him down—down!' Oh, the wildest language! It terrifies me.”

I soothed her as best I could; and then, obeying some impulse, for which I could not account, I went to Thornton's rooms, though not expecting to see him. I found him there, however, and he greeted me with an intense earnestness.

“I am glad you have come,” he said; I have received a communication.”

“From whom?”

“My master. He came to me last night, in his—but you would not understand. Let us call it a dream. He knows our trouble, and will help us. That was impressed upon me beyond all doubt. He will help us! Isn't that glorious, Burford?”

“He has left it pretty late,” I said, grimly; and I spoke of my father's condition.

“He should be pacified. To pass on to the next plane in his present state would be extremely perilous, unless he was specially guarded.”

“I can't follow your ideas, Harry,” I said, with some impatience. “But about your friend, Ravana Dâs. You tell me he is away among the Himalayas. How, then, can he help us?”

“He can easily do so, if he be permitted. Though I have the honour to call him master, he is himself a pupil—the disciple of a still higher teacher. Of course, you don't understand these things. But it was made known to me last night that he will help us, and that he will soon be with us.”

“What do you call soon? Unless be travels in some impossible airship, I don't see how. And poor Connie is evidently following her sister. She herself seems to feel it. Only to-day—”

A fixed and startled expression on my friend's face froze the words on my lips. He seemed to see or bear something which I could not. Suddenly the look turned to one of supreme joy and peace, and he sank back in his chair like one relieved of all anxiety.

Involuntarily I turned, and saw that there was a stranger in the room. He was near the door, and must of course, have entered thereby, though I had not seen it open. One glance told me that it was the Hindu, the pundit, Ravana Dâs. There were the delicate, finely-carved, ascetic features, with their grave, gentle, yet lofty expression, as of one who knew all that philosophy could teach, and had renounced all that the world could give. To conceive of this man having a single evil thought was impossible. I remembered afterwards that he was dressed in ordinary clothes, such as we wore ourselves; but I did not remark this at the time.

“I am with you, as you see,” he said, in a low, musical voice, which seemed just a trifle muffled; “and I will give you what help I can. But time is limited.”

“My dear master,” said Thornton, with the utmost reverence; “you have saved us all. This is my friend, Mr. Burford.”

“Yes.Well? You are troubled about your sister, Mr. Burford; and your father, too? Is it not so?”

His accent was pure enough, but there was a strange intonation or expression difficult to describe. I was completely subdued by the sheer personality of the man, yet I found courage to say -

“You have come here all the way from the Himalayas?”

Yes. But that is not our present business. There was one known to you as Martin Calthorpe, whom you suppose to be in some way connected with the death of your younger sister, and the illness of the one still living. Tell me briefly all you know about this man.”

I told him the little that I knew, and also what I guessed. His chiselled face remained impassive during my speech. He was silent for some moments; then he turned to Thornton.

“The man is not unknown to us,” he said. “He took the darker path many years ago, and developed some powers. By the unbridled use of those powers he finally wrenched away his lower personality from the higher self, and when the time came he passed from earth suddenly. Doubtless he was what you call killed. Being so utterly evil, he found it necessary—you understand.”

Thornton act bolt upright, deadly pale.

“Of course,” he stammered: “I—I should have known; but—but these things are so incredible—”

“You were always of the sceptical ones,” said Ravana Dâs, with his gentle smile. “This being is happily one of the last of his kind. We must destroy him.”

“Destroy him?” I repeated. “But you say he has already been killed!”

“He has been what you call killed. That is probable. Words are misleading. Our task now is to put it out of his power to do further harm; and I think that can be done.”

I was silent, pondering these enigmatical words.When I looked up the Hindu had gone. I turned to Thornton, but he grasped my hand, and said, “Come again to-night, Frank. I promise you the end of all this horror.”

I understood that I had to leave, and went away in a confused and dissatisfied state of mind, yet with a growing hope struggling to rise in my heart.

On my return home, I found the house in a commotion. The cause was soon made known to me. My father had shot himself. Connie was prostrated by the shock and could not be seen. A note was handed to me.

“My Dear Frank” it read, “I can bear up no longer. I killed that man's body and now I go to find his black soul. If the wretch's own beliefs are correct, I shall meet him in some sphere of troubled or erring spirits, and there our lifelong war shall he renewed. It is my fate. He and I are bound together. He is striking at me through my loved ones, but the end has not yet come. Farewell!”

A madman's letter? So I should have thought, but for the meeting with the Hindu mystic. Now, to my bewildered mind, all things seemed possible. In some strange realm “out of space, out of time”—I pictured two unhappy, crime stained, earth-bound spirits, grappling with each other, entangled in an awful conflict for a supremacy that should be eternal.

The requirements of the law having been hastily complied with, I tried to pull myself together for the night's appointment. In a few hours Connie had recovered sufficiently to see me, and I found her, though prostrated in body, calm in mind.

“These are cruel things that have come upon us, Frank,” she said, in a tone of gentle resignation, “and I am afraid you will soon be left alone—”

“No, no, Connie!” I said “It's all unutterably strange, but I have a feeling that something is being done for us even now, when all seems at the blackest. My dearest, you must not lose heart!”

She looked at me strangely. My careless, man-of-the-world attitude in religious matters had often pained her devotional nature, and perhaps she took my words as indicating a reviving trust in the mercy of Providence.

“I feel that I would rather be with dear Winnie,” she murmured: “yet I would not like to leave you, Frank.”

“Harry wouldn't like to lose you either, sis,” I replied, with some faint effort at cheerfulness, at which the ghost of a smile appeared on her pallid lips.

As noon as darkness came I hurried away to Thornton's rooms. He was waiting for me.

“There is work for us to-night, Burford,” he said. “My master has traced the whole thing from the beginning.”

“An Indian Sherlock Holmes?” I muttered.

“No, nothing of that sort. These men work on different lines—not, perhaps, so very different, though, If the truth were known. He has only to change his centre of consciousness, and read what we call the akashic records—pictures automatically photographed, as it were, upon the ether by all the events that have ever happened—and—But what's the matter? Anything new?”

He had noticed a change in me. I told him of the tragedy at home. Though greatly shocked, he did not seem very much surprised. He read my father's last words with attention.

“It's a great misfortune, old fellow; but don't let these lines disturb you. The vibrations set up by your father's last thoughts will take him into very unpleasant states of consciousness for a time, no doubt; but he will never meet Calthorpe again—that gentleman goes to his own place to-night. And your father will be helped—there is no doubt of that.”

“You seem to know all about it,” I said wearily. “But where is your master, as you call him?”

“He is here!” said the young man, gravely.

I turned. The Hindu was seated on a chair beside me. This time I was positive that he had not entered by the door, and a moment before the chair had been empty.

“We must go,” said Ravana Dâs, ignoring my amazement. My time is precious.”

“Come!” said Thornton.

We went into the street and boarded a South Yarra tram, just like a trio of ordinary mortals. The Hindu was silent until Domain-road was reached, then he said to me—

“Whatever happens, friend Burford, you must not let your nerve desert you.You have a house in a street called Caroline?”

“Caroline Street—yes. But it is empty.”

“Assuredly there are no ordinary tenants there. Yet we shall find someone. I think it will he necessary to destroy your house.”

“As you please; but it's rather a fine property.”

“Property—wealth—all Illusion!” muttered Ravana Dâs: and he spoke a few words to Thornton which I did not catch.

We alighted at Park Street, near the gates of the Botanical Gardens, and walked thence to the street in which the house stood. Together we entered the empty house.Thornton produced an electric torch, and we passed along a passage and reached a store-room or pantry, from which we descended some steps into a cellar, the Hindu guiding us. Except for some lumber, the cellar was quite empty.

“Whatever you see,” whispered Thornton, “be silent until he speaks!”

The Hindu stood with folded arms gazing intently at the wall opposite the entrance. Several minutes passed in profound silence. Suddenly a brick fell to the floor. It seemed to come from near the top. It was followed by others in quick succession, till in a few moments an opening was made revealing a small, inner cell, from which came the acrid odour of cement mingled with that of long pent-up air. The Hindu, of whom I now stood in the utmost awe, but in nowise feared, signed us to enter.

Raising aloft his torch, Thornton went first, and I followed. There was but one object in the cell, and that was the dead body of a man; and there needed no ghost from the grave to tell me that it was the mortal remains of Martin Calthorpe. It was stretched upon the earthen floor, and stared with glassy eyes at the low, cemented ceiling.

The body was that of a man in the prime of life—a portly, well-nourished body that might have been merely asleep, but for the staring eyes and a bullet-hole in the centre of the forehead. There was not the least appearance of decay—no more than if the man had just been killed. There was even colour in the cheeks. I thought of another corpse lying at my almost desolated home, and a dull, deadly rage began to swell up within my heart.

Then wonder and horror possessed me. How could this body have been preserved so long? Had Calthorpe met his rate so recently? Or had the walling-up of the cell -

“He has been thus a year or more,” said Ravana Dâs, answering my thoughts. “But to your work, “he added, taking the torch from Harry.

Signing to me, Thornton took the body by the shoulders, a hand under each; I took the ankles, and we essayed to lift it. Harry is an athlete, and my own strength is above the average, but our utmost efforts quite failed to move the corpse.

“It's no use,” said the young man, with a gasp, and we fell back, I in a state of speechless amazement.

“Use your blade, then!” said the Hindu.

Thornton drew from under his coat a heavy Goorkha sword, and approached the body, as though that lifeless clay were a living toe. My feeling of hatred had returned, and I set my teeth.

Thornton bent his knee, and aimed a powerful blow at the dead man's neck. To my unutterable horror the blade stopped within a few inches of its mark and flew from the striker's hand. He retreated, dazed.

The Hindu turned to me.

“Take the weapon,” he said, calmly. “After all, it is the son who should avenge his father.” He gave the torch to Harry, and stood at the feet of the corpse. One glimpse I caught of bin bronze features, and it was no longer a living man I saw. It was incarnate Will!

Nerved with a power not my own, I grasped the sword and aimed a deadly blow. It was stopped as before, and my arm tingled an though I had struck a log of wood.

“Again!” cried the Hindu, raising his two hands, and thrusting them forward over the body.

It was like an order to the soldier in battle. I struck; and this time the heavy blade met with no resistance. The head rolled aside, and there gushed from the trunk torrents of rich, red blood, until the body seemed literally to swim in it.

“It is done!” said the voice of Ravana Dâs.“You know the rest. Farewell!”

He was gone.

The work of carrying the corpse (which was easily lifted now) to one of the upper rooms was accomplished in silence. Fifteen minutes later we stood amongst a rapidly increasing crowd of people, watching a dense mass of flames spurting from all quarters of the wooden house.The roof fell in, and when it became certain that no part of the building could be saved, we left.

It was not yet very late, though it seemed to me that ages had passed since I left home. We returned to Harry's rooms, for I was thirsting for some explanation of the things I had seen

I was feverish with excitement, but Thornton seemed to have acquired something of his master's self-control; and when we were comfortably seated in his little den, with the pictured, palebronze features of the Indian occultist gazing benignantly down upon us, my friend entered into an explanation which, I must confess, only increased my amazement.

“This Calthorpe,” he began,“was a man who had given himself up entirely to evil.”

“That much seems to be abundantly evident,” I interjected.

“You must try and realise, however, what to meant by the absolute rejection of the good in every shape and form. Ordinarily, evil is relative, not absolute—we seldom meet the aristocrat of crime. The fatal grandeur, the awful eminence of a ‘Satan' is rarely revealed to us. Had this man been gifted with intellect in proportion to his wickedness, he could easily have made himself a national—ay, even a world-wide scourge.”

“Yet he was not of a low type of intellect?”

“Too low to flee to the grander conceptions of crime. What he has accomplished we shall never know, for he wielded powers that enabled him to laugh at human justice, as your friend Detective Mainspray understands it.”

“I have heard you say that the development of these occult powers depends on entire purity of thought and deed?”

“The full development—yes. You have seen how easily my master (who is himself only a disciple as yet) overcame by force of will the etheric resistance which Calthorpe was able to interpose between my sword and his precious neck.Yes, occult powers are, at their highest, united with great loftiness of character and nobility of aim; sometimes they are associated, in a limited form, with a grovelling and sordid nature; and, again, as in Calthorpe's case, they are seen in combination with positive malevolence and tendencies of an altogether evil kind. The so-called ‘black magicians' of the middle ages were, no doubt, men of the stamp of Calthorpe. Such beings, gifted with powers which, though limited on their own plane, are superior to the workings of physical science as commonly known, must possess, as you will see, potentialities for active evil before which the imagination may well stand appalled.”

“And this power—whatever it may be—how could this wretch carry it with him to the next world?”

“The power really belongs to the ‘next world,' as you call it, and can be more readily exerted there. But let me explain. This man had literally thrown away the immortal part of himself, since be was all evil, and nothing that is evil can live. He was doomed to a sort of slow disintegration—the gradual conscious decay and death of the animal personality that had wilfully wrenched itself away from its immortal essence.”

“You mean the soul? And what becomes of that?”

“It rests on its own plane, so to speak, till the time arrives for its next incarnation on earth.”

“Very well. Go on.”

“We know that Calthorpe was killed. Having some occult knowledge, he was aware that a soulless entity, deprived or its physical vehicle, was doomed to perish. The ordinary man, after the death of the body, remains for a time in a state the Hindus call ‘Pretaloka' until his thoughts are entirely freed from earthly concerns. Pretaloka is the scientific fact behind the dogma of purgatory.While living, Calthorpe could, in trance, visit the lower levels of Pretaloka, and roam about there at will—that is, his thought could vibrate in unison with the vibrations of the spirit-matter of those levels, and thus function there.”

“But this was only on condition, I understand, that he had a living body to return to?”

“Exactly. Being without a soul to which he could cling, he needed a body as a sort of point of support. Losing his physical life utterly, he would sink by a natural and inevitable law to a lower state even than Pretaloka, there to suffer, as I have said, the horrors of disintegration and decay, ending in the complete annihilation of the human personality.”