Maybe this is an hallucination. Perhaps I am mad. How else can this be explained?
I sit here alone and helpless! So utterly alone! Alone in an age which is not mine, in a body which is not mine. Oh God! I am slowly being killed—or worse! Yet what is worse than death? That terrifying limbo that is the borderland of Hell, that state that is neither the restful sleep of death nor the perplexities of life but is the nightmare of undeath.
He is draining me of life and yet, yet is it me who is the victim? How can I tell him that the person he thinks I am, the person whose body my mind inhabits, is no longer in that body? How can I tell him that / am in the body of his victim? I… a. person from another time, another age, another place!
God help me! He is draining me of life and I cannot prevent him!
When did this nightmare begin? An age away. I suppose it began when my wife and I saw the chair.
We were driving back to London one hot July Sunday afternoon, having been picnicking in Essex. We were returning about mid-afternoon down the Al 1, through the village of Newport, when my wife suddenly called upon me to pull over and stop.
"I've just seen the most exquisite chair in the window of an antique shop."
I was somewhat annoyed because I wanted to get home early that evening to see a vintage Humphrey Bogart film on the television, one I'd never seen before even though I have been a Bogart fan for years.
"What's the point?" I muttered grumpily, getting out of the car and trailing after her. "The shop's shut anyway."
But the shop wasn't shut. Passing trade on a Sunday from Londoners was apparently very lucrative and most antique shops in the area opened during the afternoons.
The chair stood like a lone sentinel in the window. It was square in shape, a wooden straight-backed chair with sturdy arms. It was of a plain and simple design, dark oak wood yet with none of the ornate woodwork that is commonly associated with such items. The seat was upholstered in a faded tapestry work which was obviously the original. It was a very unattractive upholstery for it was in a faded black with a number of once white exotic dragon's heads. The same upholstery was reflected in a piece which provided a narrow back rest—a strip a foot deep thrust across the middle of the frame. My impression of the chair was hardly "exquisite"—it was a squat, ugly and aggressive piece. Certainly it did not seem worth the £100 price ticket which was attached by string to one arm.
My wife had contrary ideas. It was, she felt, exactly the right piece to fill a corner in my study and provide a spare chair for extra guests. It could, she assured me, easily be re-upholstered to fit in with our general colour scheme of greens and golds. What was wanted, she said, was a functional chair and this was it. She was adamant and so I resigned myself to a minimum of grumbling, one eye on my watch to ensure I would not miss the Bogart film. The transaction was concluded fairly quickly by comparison with my wife's usual standard of detailed questioning and examination. Perhaps the vendor was rather more loquacious than the average antique dealer.
"It's a very nice chair," said the dealer with summoned enthusiasm. "It's a Victorian piece of eastern European origin. Look, on the back you can actually see a date of manufacture and the place of origin." He pointed to the back of the chair where, carved into the wood with small letters was the word "Bistritz" and the date "1887." The dealer smiled in the surety of knowledge. "That makes it Romanian in origin. Actually, I purchased the piece from the old Purfleet Art Gallery."
"The Purfleet Art Gallery?" said I, thinking it time to make some contribution to the conservation. "Isn't that the old gallery and museum over which there were some protests a few months ago?"
"Yes, do you know the place? Purfleet in Essex? The gallery was housed in an ancient building, a manor house called Carfax, which was said to date back to medieval times. The old gallery had been there since the late Victorian period but had to close through lack of government subsidies, and the building is being carved up into apartments."
I nodded, feeling I had, perhaps, made too much of a contribution.
The antique dealer went on obliviously.
"When the gallery closed, a lot of its objets d'art were auctioned and I bought this chair. According to the auctioneer's catalogue it had been in the old house when the gallery first opened and had belonged to the previous owner. He was said to have been a foreign nobleman… probably a Romanian by the workmanship of the chair."
Finally, having had her fears assuaged over matters of woodworm, methods of upholstery and the like, the purchase was concluded by my wife. The chair was strapped to the roofrack of my car and we headed homewards.
The next day was Monday. My wife, who is in research, had gone to her office while I spent the morning in my study doodling on pieces of paper and vainly waiting for a new plot to mature for the television soap-opera that I was scripting at the time. At mid-day my wife telephoned to remind me to check around for some price quotations for re-upholstering our purchase. I had forgotten all about the chair, still strapped to the roofrack of my car. Feeling a little guilty, I went down to the garage and untied it, carrying it up to my study and placing it in the alloted corner with a critical eye. I confess, I did not like the thing; it was so square and seemed to somehow challenge me. It is hard to define what I mean but you have, I suppose, seen certain types of people with thrust out jaws, square and aggressive? Well, the chair gave the same impression.
After a while, perhaps in response to its challenge, I decided to sit down in the chair, and as I sat, a sudden coldness spread up my spine and a weird feeling of unease came over me. So strong was it that I immediately jumped up. I stood there looking down at the chair and feeling a trifle self-conscious. I laughed nervously. Ridiculous! What would my friend Philip, who was a psychiatrist, say to such behaviour? I did not like the chair but there was no need to create physical illusions around my distaste.
I sat down again and, as expected, the cold feelings of unease were gone—a mere shadow in my mind. In fact, I was surprised at the comfort of the chair. I sat well back, arms and hands resting on the wooden arm rests, head leaning against the back, legs spread out. It was extremely comfortable.
So comfortable was it that a feeling of deep relaxation came over me, and with the relaxation came the desire to have a cat-nap. I must confess, I tend to enjoy a ten minute nap just after lunch. It relaxes me and stimulates the mind. I sat back, closed my drooping eyelids and gently let myself drift, drift…
It was dark when I awoke.
For an instant I struggled with the remnants of my dreams. Then my mind cleared and I looked about me. My first thought was the question—how long had I slept? I could see the dark hue of early evening through the tall windows. Then I started for there were no tall windows in my study nor anywhere in our housel
Blinking my eyes rapidly to focus them in the darkened room, I abruptly perceived that I was not in my study, nor was I in any room that I had even seen before. I tried to rise in my surprise and found that I could not move—some sluggish feeling in my body prevented me from coordinating my limbs. My mind had clarity and will but below my neck my whole body seemed numb. And so I just sat there, staring wildly at the unfamiliar room in a cold sweat of fear and panic. I tried to blink away the nightmare, tried to rationalize.
I could move my head around and doing so I found that I
was sitting in the same chair—that accursed chair! Yet it seemed strangely newer than I remembered it. I thought, perhaps it was a trick of the light. But I discovered that around my legs was tucked a woolen blanket while the top half of me was clad in a pajama jacket over which was a velvet smoking jacket, a garment that I knew I had never owned. My eyes wandered around the room from object to unfamiliar object, each unfamiliar item causing the terror to mount in my veins, now surging with adrenalin. I was in a lounge filled with some fine pieces of Victoriana. The chair in which I sat now stood before an open hearth in which a few coals faintly glimmered. In one corner stood a lean, tall grandfather clock, whose steady tick-tock added to the oppressiveness of the scene. There was, so far as I could see, nothing modern in the room at all.
But for me the greatest horror was the strange paralysis which kept me anchored in that chair. I tried to move until the sweat poured from my face with the effort. I even tried to shout, opening my mouth wide to emit strange choking-like noises. What in God's name had happened to me?
Suddenly a door opened. Into the room came a young girl of about seventeen holding aloft one of those old brass oil lamps, the sort you see converted into electric lamps these days by "trendy" people. Yet this was no converted lamp but a lamp from which a flame spluttered and emitted the odour of burning paraffin. And the girl! She wore a long black dress with a high button collar, with a white linen apron over it. Her fair hair was tucked inside a small white cap set at a jaunty angle on her head. In fact, she looked like a serving maid straight out of those Victorian drama serials we get so often on the television these days. She came forward and placed the lamp on a table near me, and then started, seeing my eyes wide open and upon her. I tried to speak to her, to demand, to exhort some explanation, to ask what the meaning of this trickery was, but only a strangled gasp came from my throat.
The girl was clearly frightened and bobbed what was supposed to be a curtsy in my direction before turning to the door.
"Ma'am! Ma'am!" her strong Cockney accent made the word sound like "Mum!"
"Master's awake, ma'am. What'll I do?"
Another figure moved into the room, tall, graceful, wearing an elegant Victorian dress hung low at the shoulders, and leaving very little of her bust to the imagination. A black ribbon with a cameo was fastened to her pale throat. Her raven black hair was done up in a bun at the back of her head. Her face was small, heart-shaped, and pretty. The lips were naturally red though a trifle sullen for her features. The eyes were deep green and seemed a little sad. She came towards me, bent over me and gave a wan smile. There was a strange, almost unnatural pallor to her complexion.
"That's all, Fanny," she said. "I'll see to him now."
"Yes, ma'am," the girl bobbed another curtsy and was gone through the door.
"Poor Upton," whispered the woman before me. "Poor Upton. I wish I knew whether you hurt at all? No one seems to know from what strange malady you suffer."
She stood back and sighed sorrowfully and deeply.
"It's time for your medication."
She picked up a bottle and a spoon, pouring a bitter smelling amber liquid which she forced down my throat. I felt a numbing bitterness searing down my gullet.
"Poor Upton," she sighed again. "It's bitter I know but the doctor says it will take away any pain."
I tried to speak; tried to tell her that I was not Upton, that I did not want her medicine, that I wanted this play-acting to cease. I succeeded only in gnashing my teeth and making inarticulate cries like some wild beast at bay. The woman took a step backwards, her eyes widening in fright. Then she seemed to regain her composure.
"Come, Upton," she chidded. "This won't do at all. Try to relax."
The girl, Fanny, reappeared.
"Doctor Seward is here, ma'am."
A stocky man in a brown tweed suit, looking like some character out of a Dickens novel, stepped into the room and bowed over the woman's profferred hand.
"John," smiled the woman. "I'm so glad you've come."
"How are you, Clara," smiled the man. "You look a trifle weary, a little pale."
"I'm alright, John. But I worry about Upton."
The man turned to me.
"Yes, how is the patient? I swear he looks a little more alert today."
The woman, Clara, spread her hands and shrugged.
"To me he seems little better, John. Even when he seems more alert physically he can only growl like a beast. I try my best but I fear… I fear that…"
The man called John patted her hand and gestured her to silence. Then he came and bent over me with a friendly smile.
"Strange," he murmured. "Indeed, a strange affliction. And yet… yet I do detect a more intelligent gleam in the eyes today. Hello, old friend, do you know me. It's John… John Seward? Do you recognise me?"
He leaned close to my face, so close I could smell the scent of oranges on his breath.
I struggled to break the paralysis which gripped me and only succeeded in issuing a number of snarls and grunts. The man drew back.
"Upon my word, Clara, has he been violent at all?"
"Not really, John. He does excite himself so with visitors. But perhaps it is his way of trying to communicate with us."
The man grunted and nodded.
"Well, the only remedy for pain is to keep dosing him with the laudanum as I prescribed it. I think he is a little better. However, I shall call again tomorrow to see if there is a Significant improvement. If not, I will ask your permission to consult a specialist, perhaps a doctor from Harley Street. There are a number of factors that still puzzle me—the anaemia, the apparent lack of red blood corpuscles or hemoglobin. His paleness and languor. And these strange wounds on his neck do not seem to be healing at all."
The woman bit her lip and lowered her voice.
"You may be frank with me, John. You have known Upton and me for some years now. I am resigned to the fact that there can only be a worsening of his condition. I do fear for his life."
The man glanced at me nervously.
"Should you talk like this in front of him?"
The woman sighed. "He cannot understand, of that I am sure. Poor Upton. Just to think that a few short days ago he was so full of life, so active, and now this strange disease has cut him down…"
The man nodded.
"You have been a veritable goddess, Clara, charity herself, nursing him constantly day and night. I shall look in again tomorrow, but if there is no improvement I shall seek permission to call in a specialist."
Clara lowered her head as if in resignation.
The man turned to me and forced a smile.
"So long, old fellow…"
I tried to call, desperately tried to plead for help. Then he was gone.
The minutes dragged into hours as the woman, Clara, who was supposed to be my wife, sat gazing into the fire, while I sat pinioned in my accursed chair opposite to her. How long we sat thus I do not truly know. From time to time I felt her gaze, sad and thoughtful, upon me. Then I became aware, somewhere in the house, of a clock commencing to strike. A few seconds later it was followed by the resonant and hollow sounds of the grandfather clock. Without raising my head I counted slowly to twelve. Midnight.
The woman Clara abruptly sprung from her chair and stood upright before the fire.
As 1 looked up she seemed to change slightly—it is hard to explain. Her face seemed to grow coarser, more bloated. Her tongue, a red glistening object, darted nervously over her lips making them moist and of a deeper red than before, contrasting starkly to the sharp whiteness of her teeth. A strange lustre began to sparkle in her eyes. She raised a languid hand and began to massage her neck slowly, sensually.
Then, abruptly, she laughed—a low voluptuous chuckle that made the hairs on my neck bristle.
She gazed down at me with a wanton expression, a lascivious smile.
"Poor Upton," her tone was a gloating caress. "He'll be coming soon. You'll like that won't you? Yet why he takes you first, I cannot understand. Why you? Am I not full of the warmth of life—does not warm, rich young blood flow in my veins? Why you?"
She made an obscene, seductive gesture with her body.
The way she crooned, the saliva trickling from a corner of those red—oh, so red—lips, made my heart beat faster yet at the same time, the blood seemed to deny its very warmth and pump like some ice-cold liquid in my veins.
What new nightmare was this?
How he appeared I do not know.
One minute there was just the woman and myself in the room. Then he was standing there.
A tall man, apparently elderly although his pale face held no aging of the skin, only the long white moustache which drooped over his otherwise clean-shaven face gave the impression of age. His face was strong—extremely strong, aquiline with a high-bridged nose and peculiarly arched nostrils. His forehead was loftily domed and hair grew scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. The eyebrows were massive and nearly met across the bridge of the nose.
It was his mouth which captured my attention—a mouth set in the long pale face, fixed and cruel looking, with teeth that protruded over the remarkably ruddy lips whose redness had the effect of highlighting his white skin and giving the impression of an extraordinary pallor. And where the teeth protruded over the lips, they were white and sharp.
His eyes seemed a ghastly red in the glow of the flickering fire.
The woman, Clara, took a step toward him, hands out as if imploring, a glad cry on her red wanton lips, her breasts heaving as if with some wild ectasy.
"My Lord," she cried, "you have come!"
The tall man ignored her. His red eyes were upon mine, seeming to devour me.
The woman raised a hand to massage her throat.
"Lord, take me first! Take me now!"
The tall man took a stride towards me, drawing back an arm and pushing her roughly aside.
"It is he that I shall take first," he said sibilantly, with a strange accent to his English. "You shall wait youf turn which shall be in a little while."
The woman made to protest but he stopped her with an upraised hand.
"Dare you question me?" he said mildly. "Have no fear. You shall be my bountiful wine press in a while. But first I shall slake my thirst with him."
He towered over me as I remained helpless in that chair, that accursed chair. A smile edged his face.
"Is it not just?" whispered the tall man. "Is it not just that having thwarted me, you Upton Welsford, now become everything that you abhorred and feared?"
And while part of my mind was witnessing this obscene hallucination, another part of it began to experience a strange excitement—almost a sexual excitement as the man lowered his face to mine… closer came those awful red eyes to gaze deep into my soul. His mouth was open slightly, I could smell a vile reek of corruption. There was a deliberate voluptuousness about his movements that was both thrilling and appalling—he licked his lips like some animal, the scarlet tongue flickering over the white sharp teeth.
Lower came his head, lower, until it passed from my sight and I could hear the churning sound of his tongue against his teeth and could feel his hot breath on my neck. The skin of my throat began to tingle. Then I felt the soft shivering touch of his cold lips on my throat, the hard indent of two sharp white teeth!
For a while, how long I could not measure, I seemed to fall into a languorous ectasy.
Then he was standing above me, smiling down sardonically, a trickle of blood on his chin. My blood!
"There is one more night to feast with him," he said softly. "One night more and then, Upton Welford, you shall be my brother."
The woman exclaimed in anger.
"But you promised! You promised! When am I to be called?"
The tall man turned and laughed.
"Aye, I promised, my slender vine. You already bear my mark. You belong to me. You shall be one with me, never fear. Immortality will soon be yours and we shall share in the drinking. You will provide me with the wine of life. Have patience, for the greatest wines are long in the savouring. I shall return."
Then to my horror the man was gone. Simply gone, as if he had dissolved into elemental dust.
For some time I sat in horror staring at the woman who seemed to have retreated into a strange trance. Then the grandfather clock began to chime and the woman started, as if waking from a deep sleep. She stared in amazement at the clock and then towards the window where the faint light of early dawn was beginning to show.
"Good Lord, Upton," she exclaimed, "we seemed to have been up all night. I must have fallen asleep, I'm sorry."
She shook herself.
"I've had a strange dream. Ah well, no matter. I'd better get you up to bed. I'll go and wake poor Fanny to help me."
She smiled softly at me as she left the room; there was no trace of the wanton seductress left on her delicate features.
She left me sitting alone, alone in my prison of a chair.
I sit here alone and helpless. So utterly alone! Alone in an age which is not mine, in a body which is not mine. Oh God! I am slowly being killed—or worse! Yet what is worse than death? That terrifying limbo that is the borderland of Hell, that state that is neither the restful sleep of death nor the perplexities of life but is the nightmare of undeath.
And where is this person… the Upton Welsford whose body I now inhabit? Where is he? Has he, by some great effort of will, exchanged his body with mine? Is he even now awakening from that cat-nap sometime in the future? Awakening in my body, in my study, to resume my life? Is he doing even as I have done? What does it all mean?
Maybe this is an hallucination. Perhaps I am mad. How else can all this be explained?
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