The poet Vadim, whose verses of late had turned from the mundane to the outre, wandered beneath a pendant moon on a night of approaching autumn.
His footfalls conveyed him gradually outside the city of Roweh toward the low lying hills and darkened regions beyond.
As he walked, Vadim's senses drank liberally of all that surrounded him, the sights and sounds and scents of the night. On either side of the pathway, he imagined the tall and black-limbed trees to be rows of Titan sentinels, guiding him unerringly along to his destination.
Somewheres, a bat floated effortlessly upon its ebon wings, for its sound drifted to Vadim's ears like the soft rustle of wind blown ashes. Glancing around he spied the creature hovering slightly above him, returning his gaze, or so he fancied. It seemed to beckon him, entreat him. But then, as if sensing something in the distance, some sound unheard to Vadim, it darted around. And like a shadow merging into the darkness of others, it vanished into the thickening woodlands.
Vadim made conscious effort to recall every detail of the bat's brief visitation, its fat, rat-plump body, its flaring nostrils, and its tiny but bulbous eyes. The creature had stared at him almost like a sentient being. Vadim was pleased.
About him, the air was assuming a slightly chillier character, as if the coldness of the tombs to which he wended was somehow being transferred to the atmosphere.
But Vadim did not shiver. Instead he breathed deeply of its coldness, filling his lungs as with luxurious perfumes, or intoxicating essences. He felt refreshed, invigorated, by the perfumery of fumatory growths, the odors of leaves, and the rich earthy smells of decaying vegetations that lay thickly bedded upon the ground. He imagined the worms and maggots attending to their activities beneath him, unregarded by human eyes.
Wholly preoccupied with these sensations, Vadim scarcely noticed that he was nearing the very gates of the ancient cemetery. But familiar sights now recalled his attention to more immediate matters, and he quickened his pace. The low stone wall ahead of him was broken down in places, mottledand covered with vines bulging like veins on arms of ancient men.
The gate itself, hanging loosely upon but one of its hinges, was open as Vadim passed into the city of the dead.
Vadim thrilled anew each time he entered the graveyard. Its otherworldliness and mystery and inviolability held forth attractions to him that the outer world could not equal. But more than that, it provided him with a solitude and inspiration for his poetry that was attainable no where else.
He readjusted the leathern pouch he carried slung under one arm. Within resided a stoppered ink bottle, scraps of bleached parchment and quill, along with various other articles he felt requisite.
Weaving his way between rows of headstones and ancient grave-markers, he proceeded like a homing serpent to a great hulking construction which occupied one of the higher cemetery mounds.
At a touch, the prodigious metal doors opened to admit Vadim into the shadow-shrouded interior. Once within, a row of rough hewn steps carried him to the sunken chamber of the mausoleum, the family vault of some time forgotten household of Roweh.
SIGEL AND CALLA
Now it so occurred that Vadim was not the only wanderer abroad at that hour of the night, an hour when others in Roweh were abed and soundly engulfed in their dreamings.
For two other figures, remaining ever out of Vadim's perception, had been silently following the poet, parrotting his every turn and step through the grim forest to the graveyard.
The two were Sigel and Calla, two of Vadim's longtime acquaintances. But of late, as Vadim's poetry had undergone a morbid transformation, their companionship with him had steadily dwindled. For the poet no longer frequented the lupercalian and wine-saturated gatherings that the young nobles of Roweh were wont to attend. Vadim had scarce even seen his once-constant companions for many fortnights.
And so, of a mind to play a little trickery upon their former compatriot, Sigel and Calla had trailed Vadim to his cemetery recluse. It was not without a great deal of effort that they had contained their laughter and jesting until after Vadim had descended into the great windowless vault.
Coming forth now, from behind grotesque funeral statuary, where they had ensconced themselves, the pair stood contemplating the vault with sly grins.
Now heretofore, within their minds had been born a scheme to pounce upon Vadim unawares, after the manner of the night-fiends of his poetry, thereby frightening their friend witless, and providing themselves with great sport and amusement.
But upon seeing the youth enter the vault, another scheme was engendered. And so, with infinitudes of caution, and as noiselessly as the fogmist, Sigel and Calla neared the Mausoleum's sole entranceway, the prodigious twin metal doors.
Taking position upon either side like posted door-guards, the two nodded their heads in a silent, bemused signal to one another, their thoughts shared as one.
With slow grating noises, like grinding of restless corpse teeth, the doors swung inward, closing, now, with an ominous final peal.
Quickly bolting the doors from without, and even now restraining their mousey laughter, Sigel and Calla drew back to await what might next occur.
"Splendid," Calla chuckled as he sat down upon the ground, folding his legs beneath him, with Sigel following suit.
If they expected or thought, however, that Vadim would cry out at the sudden noise, and rush to the door only to find it locked and himself entombed, Sigel and Calla were sorely disappointed. For instead of ferocious poundings and outcries from within, their ears were greeted only by silence.
"Perhaps," offered Sigel, "Vadim somehow detected our presence upon the road, and now, wise to us, is returning the jest with his silence?"
Calla grinned. And with this thought in mind, he sought to elicit another sort of response from their friend within the tomb. Throwing his cape about his shoulders and making attempt to portray as grim a countenance as possible, Calla began recitation of one of Vadim's latest pieces of poetical writing --- verses about a dark vampire of the night.
Let me roam through graveyards where head-stones blossom like flowers pale from cold dark ground.
Let the cloud framed moon caress me gently with dove white beams, as lily fingers of a young maid's hand.
Let it beckon me forth
to midnight trysts,
and a lamie's kiss.
Even as he intoned the words, Calla had to admit of a certain intuition, or even genius, in the penned lines of Vadim. For Vadim's poetry, strange as it was, had been greeted not without enthusiasm by the populace of Roweh, due to the poet's uncanny ability to evoke the most shuddersome of visions in the minds of his readers.
And this was no less true of Sigel and Calla, themselves.
Anon, however, Calla's soliloquizing about vampire embraces trailed into nothingness.
For, contrary to his previous expectations, there was, as yet, no sound from within the tomb, no voice, no laughter at his jesting, no response of any sort.
Sigel, too, quieted his laughter, feeling his lightheartedness pass like the luminance of fading suns. Minute by minute dragged by with an unbelievable slowness, with the solitude broken only by the sounds of night winds weaving amongst the gravestones, and sifting through the cypresses.
After seeming eternities of such silence, Calla and Sigel moved simultaneously towards the mausoleum doors. But even with cheeks and ears pressed tightly against the reaper-cold metal, still no sound could be detected issuing from the vault --- no sound of nervous or labored breathing, or even of pen-scratching, if somehow Vadim had been so absorbed in his work as to be oblivious to all about him.
So, after many additional moments and irritated pauses, Calla and Sigel determined to unbolt the doors and present themselves to their companion.
"Perhaps," Sigel had reasoned, "these doors are so thick that they admit no sound, and even now Vadim is busy scribbling down the script of some new verse."
Once having unbolted the doors, Sigel and Calla grasped the rings, which were set in the mouths of carven dragon heads, and pulled upon them slightly. With the same creaking as before, the portal was opened the space of a fingerbreadth. They now realized that the candlelight, which had burnt previously within, was now as outblown as their joviality, smothered as by the breath of shades.
Upon venturing to further open the doors, straining eyes could detect nothing save blackness within, a blackness as thick and deep as velvet morasses or murky midnight pools.
Having no torch or taper of their own to illume, and thrust inside, they now swung the doors wide apart, in hopes that the weak-thrown moonlight might penetrate somewhat inside. Naught but grey steps were visible, leading downward into the ebon depths.
Confronted by the darkness, whose arms coldly beckoned, Sigel and Calla descended the stairway into the vault chamber.
Even now, naught but cryptic stillness met their ears, no sound of drawn breath, nor even that of rats busying about in the house of shade. Perhaps, they worried, Vadim had indeed been frightened by their prankish closing of the mausoleum doors. Perhaps he had been frightened so much that he had swooned in a fainting heap upon the floor, somehow knocking his candle off its holder in so doing.
As moments passed slowly and nervously, and their eyes accommodated somewhat to the gloom, Sigel and Calla perceived dimly the bulky sepulchers and slab-sealed furnishings that housed the dissolution within.
"Vadim?" Sigel managed to call out weakly, in a voice that betrayed his tension and nervousness. He began to repeat the word when the pair heard a faint sound behind them. With a start, they turned to see the mausoleum doors closing slowly, as if of their own accord, or pushed by unseen hands. Before they could move, or even speak out, the doorway was wholly sealed.
Rushing back up the short stairway, with fevered steps matching the furious beating of their hearts, they found the doors to be either locked and bolted from without or rust-frozen upon their hinges.
"He has locked us in," Calla whispered fearfully, standing still and holding onto Sigel's arm to avoid stumbling in the dark.
They began to implore Vadim in a loud voice to release them, pounding their fists against the door in so doing. But, as before, the sepulchral silence pervaded all.
Then, like the rising of a sudden poisoned dawn, a yellow luminosity dispread through the burial chamber. And there, in a far corner of the room, silent and tall, stood Vadim, holding a candle thin as a funeral taper aloft in the air.
An unnerving smile played across the lips of their friend. And his eyes seemed agleam with a strangeness that went unnoticed before, as though fathomless secrets darted behind those eyes.
"Come in", he said, glancing afterwards towards a dark black coffin amiddlemost the chamber.
No sooner had the words fallen heavily from his mouth when the coffin quivered slightly as a lily white hand thrust itself out, slowly raising the lid back on its hinges.
Sigel and Calla's eyes began to bulge forth from their sockets as the scene was repeated with several more sepulchers about the vault.
Soon, a half dozen women sat erect in their caskets, their eyes aglow and their purple lips moist with anticipation.
"Come in, dear friends," Vadim repeated.
"You shall never know what a great inspiration you two will provide for my verses. "
Darkly, the import of the words seeped into them, and mutely Sigel and Calla looked to Vadim for some signal, some indication that Vadim, too, was engaged in a little graveyard jestering.
The poet , regarding the astonished and horror-stricken features of his friends, merely mirrored the smiles of the women with his own.
Copyright © 1977 by James William Hjort. Minor text changes © 1998 by James William Hjort
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