A Classics Archive
The idea behind this section is a simple one:
each issue will feature a short story painstakingly selected for your reading pleasure
from the vast archives of the 12-Gauge library (or taken from public domain, one or the
other). We call this section ‘Shaking Hands with the Past’ because though we
want to be as current as possible, we also want to connect readers with previous
generations. Not because things were so different in the past; instead we want you to
appreciate that all the joy and heartache, fears and frustrations you face in life are
ancient and universal—no one is an island. To this end, we’ll always try to pick
authors who are dead (which is only fair since all our other authors are alive).
Otherwise, there’s no particular agenda governing how stories are picked: expect a
real hodgepodge. We hope the stories aren’t dulled by over-familiarity, so we’ll
stay from anything you might have read in college. We’ll also try to keep
introductions as short as possible and promise that no matter how hip we get, we’ll
never spoil the story by giving away the end. -- Erik Seadale
Archived Pieces: Gogol's "The
Overcoat"
Dracula's Guest
by Bram Stoker
"Dracula's Guest" was originally a part of Dracula, but was cut
from the novel at the request of Stoker's publishers. Stoker's wife published it two years
after his death as part of a short story collection titled Dracula's Guest and Other
Weird Stories (1914). --Editors
When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full
of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbrück (the
maître d'hôtel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down, bareheaded, to the
carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his
hand on the handle of the carriage door:
"Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in
the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be
late." Here he smiled, and added, "for you know what night it is."
Johann answered with an emphatic, "Ja, mein Herr," and, touching his hat, drove
off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after signalling to him to stop:
"Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?"
He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: "Walpurgisnacht." Then he took
out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing as big as a turnip, and looked
at it, with his eyebrows gathered together and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders.
I realised that this was his way of respectfully protesting against the unnecessary delay,
and sank back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. He started off rapidly, as
if to make up for lost time. Every now and then the horses seemed to throw up their heads
and sniffed the air suspiciously. On such occasions I often looked round in alarm. The
road was pretty bleak, for we were traversing a sort of high, windswept plateau. As we
drove, I saw a road that looked but little used, and which seemed to dip through a little,
winding valley. It looked so inviting that, even at the risk of offending him, I
called Johann to stop—and when he had pulled up, I told him I would like to drive
down that road. He made all sorts of excuses, and frequently crossed himself as he spoke.
This somewhat piqued my curiosity, so I asked him various questions. He answered
fencingly, and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest. Finally I said:
"Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not ask you to come unless you
like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is all I ask." For answer he seemed
to throw himself off the box, so quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out
his hands appealingly to me, and implored me not to go. There was just enough of English
mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his talk. He seemed always just
about to tell me something—the very idea of which evidently frightened him; but each
time he pulled himself up, saying, as he crossed himself: "Walpurgisnacht!"
I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know
his language. The advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in
English, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native
tongue—and every time he did so, he looked at his watch. Then the horses became
restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking around in a
frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by the bridles and led them on some
twenty feet. I followed, and asked why he had done this. For answer he crossed himself,
pointed to the spot we had left and drew his carriage in the direction of the other road,
indicating a cross, and said, first in German, then in English: "Buried him—him
what killed themselves."
I remembered the old custom of burying suicides at crossroads: "Ah! I see, a suicide.
How interesting!" But for the life of me I could not make out why the horses were
frightened.
While we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a bark. It was far
away; but the horses got very restless, and it took Johann all his time to quiet them. He
was pale, and said: "It sounds like a wolf—but yet there are no wolves here
now."
"No?" I said, questioning him; "isn't it long since the wolves were so near
the city?"
"Long, long," he answered, "in the spring and summer; but with the snow the
wolves have been here not so long."
While he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds drifted rapidly
across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath of cold wind seemed to drift past
us. It was only a breath, however, and more in the nature of a warning than a fact, for
the sun came out brightly again. Johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and
said:
"The storm of snow, he comes before long time." Then he looked at his watch
again, and, straightway holding his reins firmly—for the horses were still pawing the
ground restlessly and shaking their heads—he climbed to his box as though the time
had come for proceeding on our journey.
I felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage.
"Tell me," I said, "about this place where the road leads," and I
pointed down.
Again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer, before he answered: "It is
unholy."
"What is unholy?" I enquired.
"The village."
"Then there is a village?"
"No, no. No one lives there hundreds of years." My curiosity was piqued:
"But you said there was a village."
"There was."
"Where is it now?"
Whereupon he burst out into a long story in German and English, so mixed up that I could
not quite understand exactly what he said, but roughly I gathered that long ago, hundreds
of years, men had died there and been buried in their graves; and sounds were heard under
the clay, and when the graves were opened, men and women were found rosy with life, and
their mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save their lives (aye, and their
souls!—and here he crossed himself) those who were left fled away to other places,
where the living died, and the dead were dead and not—not something. He was evidently
afraid to speak the last words. As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and more
excited. It seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and he ended in a perfect
paroxysm of fear—white-faced, perspiring,
trembling and looking round him, as if expecting that some dreadful presence would
manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open plain. Finally, in an agony of
desperation, he cried:
"Walpurgisnacht!" and pointed to the carriage for me to get in. All my English
blood rose at this, and, standing back, I said:
"You are afraid, Johann—you are afraid. Go home; I shall return alone; the walk
will do me good." The carriage door was open. I took from the seat my oak walking
stick—which I always carry on my holiday excursions—and closed the door,
pointing back to Munich, and said, "Go home, Johann—Walpurgisnacht doesn't
concern Englishmen."
The horses were now more restive than ever, and Johann was trying to hold them in while
excitedly imploring me not to do anything so foolish. I pitied the poor fellow, he was so
deeply in earnest; but all the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone
now. In his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me understand was to
talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native German. It began to be a little
tedious. After giving the direction, "Home!" I turned to go down the cross-road
into the valley.
With a despairing gesture, Johann turned his horses towards Munich. I leaned on my stick
and looked after him. He went slowly along the road for a while; then there came over the
crest of the hill a man tall and thin. I could see so much in the distance. When he drew
near the horses, they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror. Johann
could not hold them in; they bolted down the road, running away madly. I watched them out
of sight, then looked for the stranger, but I found that he, too, was gone.
With a light heart I turned down the side road through the deepening valley to which
Johann had objected. There was not the slightest reason, that I could see, for his
objection; and I daresay I tramped for a couple of hours without thinking of time or
distance, and certainly without seeing a person or a house. So far as the place was
concerned, it was desolation itself. But I did not notice this particularly till, on
turning a bend in the road, I came upon a scattered fringe of wood; then I recognised that
I had been impressed unconsciously by the desolation of the region through which I had
passed.
I sat down to rest myself, and began to look around. It struck me that it was considerably
colder than it had been at the commencement of my walk—a sort of sighing sound seemed
to be around me, with, now and then, high overhead, a sort of muffled roar. Looking
upwards I noticed that great thick clouds were drifting rapidly across the sky from North
to South at a great height. There were signs of a coming storm in some lofty stratum of
the air. I was a little chilly, and, thinking that it was the sitting still after the
exercise of walking, I resumed my journey.
The ground I passed over was now much more picturesque. There were no striking objects
that the eye might single out; but in all there was a charm of beauty. I took little heed
of time and it was only when the deepening twilight forced itself upon me that I began to
think of how I should find my way home. The brightness of the day had gone. The air was
cold, and the drifting of clouds high overhead was more marked. They were accompanied by a
sort of far-away rushing sound, through which seemed to come at intervals that mysterious
cry which the driver had said came from a wolf. For a while I hesitated. I had said I
would see the deserted village, so on I went, and presently came on a wide stretch of open
country, shut in by hills all around. Their sides were covered with trees which spread
down to the plain, dotting, in clumps, the gentler slopes and hollows which showed here
and there. I followed with my eye the winding of the road, and saw that it curved close to
one of the densest of these clumps and was lost behind it.
As I looked there came a cold shiver in the air, and the snow began to fall. I thought of
the miles and miles of bleak country I had passed, and then hurried on to seek the shelter
of the wood in front. Darker and darker grew the sky, and faster and heavier fell the
snow, till the earth before and around me was a glistening white carpet the further edge
of which was lost in misty vagueness. The road was here but crude, and when on the level
its boundaries were not so marked, as when it passed through the cuttings; and in a little
while I found that I must have strayed from it, for I missed underfoot the hard surface,
and my feet sank deeper in the grass and moss. Then the wind grew stronger and blew with
ever increasing force, till I was fain to run before it. The air became icy cold, and in
spite of my exercise I began to suffer. The snow was now falling so thickly and whirling
around me in such rapid eddies that I could hardly keep my eyes open. Every now and then
the heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning, and in the flashes I could see ahead of
me a great mass of trees, chiefly yew and cypress all heavily coated with snow.
I was soon amongst the shelter of the trees, and there, in comparative silence, I could
hear the rush of the wind high overhead. Presently the blackness of the storm had become
merged in the darkness of the night. By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away: it now
only came in fierce puffs and blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the wolf appeared
to be echoed by many similar sounds around me.
Now and again, through the black mass of drifting cloud came a straggling ray of
moonlight, which lit up the expanse, and showed me that I was at the edge of a dense mass
of cypress and yew trees. As the snow had ceased to fall, I walked out from the shelter
and began to investigate more closely. It appeared to me that, amongst so many old
foundations as I had passed, there might be still standing a house in which, though in
ruins, I could find some sort of shelter for a while. As I skirted the edge of the copse,
I found that a low wall encircled it, and following this I presently found an opening.
Here the cypresses formed an alley leading up to a square mass of some kind of building.
Just as I caught sight of this, however, the drifting clouds obscured the moon, and I
passed up the path in darkness. The wind must have grown colder, for I felt myself shiver
as I walked; but there was hope of shelter, and I groped my way blindly on.
I stopped, for there was a sudden stillness. The storm had passed; and, perhaps in
sympathy with nature's silence, my heart seemed to cease to beat. But this was only
momentarily; for suddenly the moonlight broke through the clouds, showing me that I was in
a graveyard, and that the square object before me was a great massive tomb of marble, as
white as the snow that lay on and all around it. With the moonlight there came a fierce
sigh of the storm, which appeared to resume its course with a long, low howl, as of many
dogs or wolves. I was awed and shocked, and felt the cold perceptibly grow upon me till it
seemed to grip me by the heart. Then while the flood of moonlight still fell on the marble
tomb, the storm gave further evidence of renewing, as though it was returning on its
track. Impelled by some sort of fascination, I
approached the sepulchre to see what it was, and why such a thing stood alone in such a
place. I walked around it, and read over the Doric door, in German—
COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ
IN STYRIA
SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH
1801
On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble—for the structure
was composed of a few vast blocks of stone—was a great iron spike or stake. On going
to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters:
"The dead travel fast."
There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it gave me a turn and
made me feel quite faint. I began to wish, for the first time, that I had taken Johann's
advice. Here a thought struck me, which came under almost mysterious circumstances and
with a terrible shock. This was Walpurgis Night!
Walpurgis Night, when, according to the belief of millions of people, the devil was
abroad—when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil
things of earth and air and water held revel. This very place the driver had specially
shunned. This was the depopulated village of centuries ago. This was where the suicide
lay; and this was the place where I was alone—unmanned, shivering with cold in a
shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again upon me! It took all my philosophy, all
the religion I had been taught, all my courage, not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.
And now a perfect tornado burst upon me. The ground shook as though thousands of horses
thundered across it; and this time the storm bore on its icy wings, not snow, but great
hailstones which drove with such violence that they might have come from the thongs of
Balearic slingers—hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the shelter of
the cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were standing corn. At the first I
had rushed to the nearest tree; but I was soon fain to leave it and seek the only spot
that seemed to afford refuge, the deep Doric doorway of the marble tomb. There, crouching
against the massive bronze door, I gained a certain amount of protection from the beating
of the hailstones, for now they only drove against me as they ricocheted from the ground
and the side of the marble.
As I leaned against the door, it moved slightly and opened inwards. The shelter of even a
tomb was welcome in that pitiless tempest, and I was about to enter it when there came a
flash of forked lightning that lit up the whole expanse of the heavens. In the instant, as
I am a living man, I saw, as my eyes were turned into the darkness of the tomb, a
beautiful woman, with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier. As the
thunder broke overhead, I was grasped as by the hand of a giant and hurled out into the
storm. The whole thing was so sudden that, before I could realise the shock, moral as well
as physical, I found the hailstones beating me down. At the same time I had a strange,
dominating feeling that I was not alone. I looked towards the tomb. Just then there came
another blinding flash, which
seemed to strike the iron stake that surmounted the tomb and to pour through to the earth,
blasting and crumbling the marble, as in a burst of flame. The dead woman rose for a
moment of agony, while she was lapped in the flame, and her bitter scream of pain was
drowned in the thundercrash. The last thing I heard was this mingling of dreadful sound,
as again I was seized in the giant grasp and dragged away, while the hailstones beat on
me, and the air around seemed reverberant with the howling of wolves. The last sight that
I remembered was a vague, white moving mass, as if all the graves around me had sent out
the phantoms of their sheeted dead, and that they were closing in on me through the white
cloudiness of the driving hail.
Gradually there came a sort of vague beginning of consciousness; then a sense of weariness
that was dreadful. For a time I remembered nothing; but slowly my senses returned. My feet
seemed positively racked with pain, yet I could not move them. They seemed to be numbed.
There was an icy feeling at the back of my neck and all down my spine, and my ears, like
my feet, were dead, yet in torment; but there was in my breast a sense of warmth which
was, by comparison, delicious. It was as a nightmare, if one may use such an expression;
for some heavy weight on my chest made it difficult for me to breathe.
This period of semi-lethargy seemed to remain a long time, and as it faded away I must
have slept or swooned. Then came a sort of loathing, like the first stage of sea-sickness,
and a wild desire to be free from something—I knew not what. A vast stillness
enveloped me, as though all the world were asleep or dead—only broken by the low
panting as of some animal close to me. I felt a warm rasping at my throat, then came a
consciousness of the awful truth, which chilled me to the heart and sent the blood surging
up through my brain. Some great animal was lying on me and now licking my throat. I feared
to stir, for some instinct of prudence bade me lie still; but the brute seemed to realise
that there was now some change in me, for it raised its head. Through my eyelashes I saw
above me the two great flaming eyes of a gigantic wolf. Its sharp white teeth gleamed in
the gaping red mouth, and I could feel its hot breath fierce and acrid upon me.
For another spell of time I remembered no more. Then I became conscious of a low growl,
followed by a yelp, renewed again and again. Then, seemingly very far away, I heard a
"Holloa! holloa!" as of many voices calling in unison. Cautiously I raised my
head and looked in the direction whence the sound came; but the cemetery blocked my view.
The wolf still continued to yelp in a strange way, and a red glare began to move round the
grove of cypresses, as though following the sound. As the voices drew closer, the wolf
yelped faster and louder. I feared to make either sound or motion. Nearer came the red
glow, over the white pall which stretched into the darkness around me. Then all at once
from beyond the trees there came at a trot a troop of horsemen bearing torches. The wolf
rose from my breast and made for the cemetery.
I saw one of the horsemen (soldiers by their caps and their long military cloaks) raise
his carbine and take aim. A companion knocked up his arm, and I heard the ball whizz over
my head. He had evidently taken my body for that of the wolf. Another sighted the animal
as it slunk away, and a shot followed. Then, at a gallop, the troop rode forward—some
towards me, others following the wolf as it disappeared amongst the snow-clad cypresses.
As they drew nearer I tried to move, but was powerless, although I could see and hear all
that went on around me. Two or three of the soldiers jumped from their horses and knelt
beside me. One of them raised my head, and placed his hand over my heart.
"Good news, comrades!" he cried. "His heart still beats!"
Then some brandy was poured down my throat; it put vigour into me, and I was able to open
my eyes fully and look around. Lights and shadows were moving among the trees, and I heard
men call to one another. They drew together, uttering frightened exclamations; and the
lights flashed as the others came pouring out of the cemetery pell-mell, like men
possessed. When the further ones came close to us, those who were around me asked them
eagerly:
"Well, have you found him?"
The reply rang out hurriedly:
"No! no! Come away quick—quick! This is no place to stay, and on this of all
nights!"
"What was it?" was the question, asked in all manner of keys. The answer came
variously and all indefinitely as though the men were moved by some common impulse to
speak, yet were restrained by some common fear from giving their thoughts.
"It—it—indeed!" gibbered one, whose wits had plainly given out for the
moment.
"A wolf—and yet not a wolf!" another put in shudderingly.
"No use trying for him without the sacred bullet," a third remarked in a more
ordinary manner.
Serve us right for coming out on this night! Truly we have earned our thousand
marks!" were the ejaculations of a fourth.
"There was blood on the broken marble," another said after a pause—the
lightning never brought that there. And for him—is he safe? Look at his throat! See,
comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his blood warm."
The officer looked at my throat and replied:
"He is all right; the skin is not pierced. What does it all mean? We should never
have found him but for the yelping of the wolf."
"What became of it?" asked the man who was holding up my head, and who seemed
the least panic-stricken of the party, for his hands were steady and without tremor.
On his sleeve was the chevron of a petty officer.
"It went to its home," answered the man, whose long face was pallid, and who
actually shook with terror as he glanced around him fearfully. "There are graves
enough there in which it may lie. Come, comrades—come quickly! Let us leave this
cursed spot."
The officer raised me to a sitting posture, as he uttered a word of command; then several
men placed me upon a horse. He sprang to the saddle behind me, took me in his arms, gave
the word to advance; and, turning our faces away from the cypresses, we rode away in
swift, military order.
As yet my tongue refused its office, and I was perforce silent. I must have fallen asleep;
for the next thing I remembered was finding myself standing up, supported by a soldier on
each side of me. It was almost broad daylight, and to the north a red streak of sunlight
was reflected, like a path of blood, over the waste of snow. The officer was telling the
men to say nothing of what they had seen, except that they found an English stranger,
guarded by a large dog.
"Dog! that was no dog," cut in the man who had exhibited such fear. "I
think I know a wolf when I see one."
The young officer answered calmly: "I said a dog."
"Dog!" reiterated the other ironically. It was evident that his courage was
rising with the sun; and, pointing to me, he said, "Look at his throat. Is that the
work of a dog, master?"
Instinctively I raised my hand to my throat, and as I touched it I cried out in pain. The
men crowded round to look, some stooping down from their saddles; and again there came the
calm voice of the young officer:
"A dog, as I said. If aught else were said we should only be laughed at."
I was then mounted behind a trooper, and we rode on into the suburbs of Munich. Here we
came across a stray carriage, into which I was lifted, and it was driven off to the Quatre
Saisons—the young officer accompanying me, while a trooper followed with his horse,
and the others rode off to their barracks.
When we arrived, Herr Delbrück rushed so quickly down the steps to meet me, that it was
apparent he had been watching within. Taking me by both hands he solicitously led me in.
The officer saluted me and was turning to withdraw, when I recognised his purpose, and
insisted that he should come to my rooms. Over a glass of wine I warmly thanked him and
his brave comrades for saving me. He replied simply that he was more than glad, and that
Herr Delbrück had at the first taken steps to make all the searching party pleased; at
which ambiguous utterance the maître d'hôtel smiled, while the officer pleaded duty and
withdrew.
"But Herr Delbrück," I inquired, "how and why was it that the soldiers
searched for me?"
He shrugged his shoulders, as if in depreciation of his own deed, as he replied:
"I was so fortunate as to obtain leave from the commander of the regiment in which I
served, to ask for volunteers."
"But how did you know I was lost?" I asked.
"The driver came hither with the remains of his carriage, which had been upset when
the horses ran away."
"But surely you would not send a search-party of soldiers merely on this
account?"
"Oh, no!" he answered; "but even before the coachman arrived, I had this
telegram from the Boyar whose guest you are," and he took from his pocket a telegram
which he handed to me, and I read:
Bistritz
Be careful of my guest—his
safety is most precious to me. Should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare
nothing to find him and
ensure his safety. He is English
and therefore adventurous. There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose
not a moment if
you suspect harm to him. I answer
your zeal with my fortune.—Dracula.
As I held the telegram in my hand, the room seemed to whirl around me; and, if the
attentive maître d'hôtel had not caught me, I think I should have fallen. There was
something so strange in all this, something so weird and impossible to imagine, that there
grew on me a sense of my being in some way the sport of opposite forces—the mere
vague idea of which seemed in a way to paralyse me. I was certainly under some form of
mysterious protection. From a distant country had come, in the very nick of time, a
message that took me out of the danger of the snow-sleep and the jaws of the wolf.
Back to the top
Back to the Past Archive or to the Most Recent Archive Post your comments to the Bulletin Board
About Us 9.11.01 Hardcopy Letters Writers Group Links + Staff Legal Statements
|
