The Revenants E-Book

Geoffrey Farrington

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A vampire with a conscience in a gothic outsider classic. The Revenants is a masterpiece of classic Gothic horror.

Das E-Book The Revenants wird angeboten von Dedalus und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback

THE REVENANTS

Geoffrey Farrington was born in London in 1955. He has combined a career in the theatre with helping run the family business.

Geoffrey Farrington is also the author of The Acts of the Apostates (Dedalus 1990), a historical novel about the emperor Nero’s last days and the editor of The Dedalus Book of Roman Decadence: Emperors of Debauchery.

He is currently working on his third novel.

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Epilogue

There the manuscript ended. With trembling hands he gathered it up, then placed it in a drawer, shutting it out of sight.

He was very tired. He rose, but felt that his legs would not even carry him upstairs, and slumped into the armchair. The narrative had completely unnerved him, plunged his mind deeper into darkness. The night silence and his own sense of lonely isolation obstructed his efforts to convince himself that it must be some elaborate, deranged hoax.

Sleep was bearing down on him gradually. He felt afraid, knowing that it would bring no peace, just restless insane nightmares; yet slowly he began to imagine that he might not escape those nightmares by remaining awake. His eyes closed. Before he knew it his thoughts were floating away.

Sleep crept over him like a pall, and somewhere deep in his drowsiness he felt a vague sense of panic, as if he were being smothered. Far away, beyond the reach of his near dormant mind, he could hear something. A rattling, a scratching, as if something outside was trying to reach him. He felt himself stir and cry out faintly. There was another sound. Something animal and frightening. A rasping breath that rose above the faint persistent scratchings. There came then the overwhelming sense of something pained and mad: a shadowy thing deformed and driven by nothing more than a mindless instinct to survive. Desperately he tried to will himself awake.

And as he began to emerge from sleep, the noise seemed to die mercifully away. And yet the sense remained, the stifling sense that he was no longer alone. Until at last, on the brink of consciousness, despite his fear of the memory, his wish to shut it out, his thoughts drifted back to when he had stood by the smouldering shell of the old house. It had been as he finished reading that first page of the manuscript that he was startled by a sudden crash from inside the ruin. The picture formed vividly in his mind. A pile of fallen masonry, lying far away, had suddenly collapsed. And as he pictured it he saw more clearly that which at the time he had dismissed as a trick of the dull light amongst the many blackened shapes in all the burned debris. Now he knew better. Now he knew his eyes had not deceived him. That what he had glimpsed, propped between the fallen rubble, really had been a horribly charred and twisted body, its head sliding down with the rest of the toppling remains. But then rolling upward, contorting at an unnatural angle, coming to face him as the black burned skin on one side of the face appeared to disintegrate, revealing greyish bone and a single discoloured eye that seemed to stare at him as he turned and hurried away into the gathering daylight.

THE END

Contents

Title

Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback

Epilogue

Introduction

Prologue

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

Copyright

Introduction

The sub-genre of vampire fiction, though it’s such a vast field that it’s hard to think of it as a sub-genre these days, has been dominated for a century by one book, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Almost every vampire novel, film, TV show, opera, play, commercial or breakfast cereal is either an adaptation, imitation or mutation of Dracula, or defines itself by the way in which it differs from the Stoker uber-text. Even Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1975), which plays a radically different game and created what might be classed as another school of vampire fiction, is compelled to keep referring to Stoker’s rules of the undead even as it establishes its own, and draws at least as much – the key notion that vampirism is passed not merely by the vampire drinking the blood of the victim but the victim responding by tasting the blood of Dracula – from the book it tries to replace as it jettisons.

But there were vampire stories in English before Dracula, from which Stoker drew his own inspiration, most notably Dr John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) and J. Sheridan leFanu’s Carmilla (1871). In the novel you are about to read (or re-read), we are back in that world before Bram Stoker, before Nosferatu, before Bela Lugosi, before Hammer Films, before Dark Shadows, before Louis and Lestat, before Blade and Buffy. As the title establishes, the vampires of The Revenants haven’t even decided what they should be called yet, and their practices aren’t yet set in the sort of stone required by a TV series Bible. Like the protagonist/narrator, we must feel our way in this world, never quite understanding all the ramifications of his post-death situation, apart from the rush of human history, always questioning not only what has happened but also what it might mean.

Geoffrey Farrington’s novel begins in the mid-19th Century, and its style remains close to that of leFanu or Wilkie Collins, so that the mentions of white feathers in the First World War or motorcars as we near the present come as niggles that show how estranged from progress the revenant John LePerrowne has become. But this is not a comforting pastiche novel, an evocation of bygone sensational or gothic fiction designed to evoke a safer world bordered by oak panelling and the tidiness of the traditional fireside ghost story. The style is there to show how frozen the character is, and the incidents are more disturbing than exciting. Expectations that this might explore a vampire society as decadently attractive as the goth nightworld of Rice are interestingly frustrated by the thrust of the story, which keeps holding up exemplars of inhuman behaviour.

This slim, sharp novel is a major achievement in its field. And a welcome reprint.

Kim Newman, Islington, 2001

Prologue

As he drew the curtains he looked out into the dark and shivered slightly. He was unusually cold. The silence outside, the absolute stillness which normally he found so pleasant, put his nerves on edge. He almost felt that the night itself was watching him. Then he switched on the light in the kitchen, and the lamp on the table, though the main light was already on. The brightness gave some comfort.

He lit a cigarette, then turning around realised that he had one already burning in the ashtray. Tonight for the first time he did not care for the solitude he had come to this isolated cottage to find. It was making him morbid. It seemed he could not trust his own mind anymore. Perhaps it was time to leave this place.

He sat at the table staring at the bundle of papers that lay before him. He had found the manuscript that morning. It had been he who discovered that the old house had burned down. He was walking across the fields to visit the local village, when he had seen the smoke rising above the trees in the distance. He made his way to it as quickly as possible. There had been no one else around. There was no reason why anyone should be. It was early. And anyway, the old house was very remote, and to all certain knowledge had been locked up and deserted for years. Local people stayed clear of it.

When he had reached it the house was no more than a smouldering shell. Most of the walls had collapsed, and what remained looked as if it would not stand long. It was all a chaos of charred scattered debris. It had been a large house, but nothing had escaped the fire.

He had stood there staring at it for a time, in the dull light of a cloudy autumn dawn, unable to imagine how the fire could have started in this lonely tranquil spot, amongst the tall trees, over-grown grass and bushes that had virtually hidden the house from all outside notice. In a more superstitious age it would probably have been supposed that the place was blasted by the hand of divine wrath, for some past unexpiated evil, for it had suffered a bad reputation locally, as old deserted houses often do. At last he had thought he should best go on to the village, where he could telephone the local police and inform them.

It was as he turned to walk away that it caught his eye. It lay on the cracked face of an ancient sundial that jutted above the forest of weeds which he supposed had once been a lawn, when the house had been inhabitated, and a very fine residence, long ago. An old black leather bag. Going to it, he found it did not seem very damp or weather beaten. He assumed it could not have been there long. Inside the bag he had found the manuscript, wrapped in a large cloth. At once it had struck him as odd. The pages were flimsy and yellow with age, the paper an odd assortment of different types and sizes, bound together, as if someone had ransacked a dozen old drawers or cupboards in a frantic, constant search for something more to write on. Yet the writing itself, a small precise hand, was quite clear, unfaded as if written only yesterday. He sensed at once he had stumbled upon something very strange.

Standing there by the ruin he had read the first page, which he re-read now.

Narrative of John Richard LePerrowne

Here follows my story. If it is ever read I know it is unlikely to be believed. But that is nothing to me. I am alone now, as I have often been; alone with my thoughts and memories, and I would give these ancient companions some concrete form. I do not know what to do next, though I know what I should do and fear it is inevitable. But for now I shall write. Perhaps the past has yet some wisdom or strength to give me. And then when this document is completed perhaps I will leave it to be found and read. Why not? It shall be my legacy to mankind.

Let men make of it what they will!

And what happened then, as he had looked up from the manuscript, back at the blackened remains of the house; what he had seen – rather what he had imagined – he preferred not to think about. But he told himself again that it was time for him to leave this place.

In spite of his unease his curiosity had been aroused enough to say nothing about his discovery of the manuscript to the police, or to anyone in the village, but to bring it home with him.

And now, as he prepared to read on, he grew suddenly more aware than ever how he was cut off from the world outside – as at first he had wished to be – his lonely cottage a single speck of light surrounded by several miles of black, wild and virtually uninhabited countryside.

He shivered again as he looked back to the manuscript, and read.

I

It started with a dream. A haunting recurring vision that pervaded the sleep of my youth.

I was a weak and sickly boy. It was thought remarkable that I ever survived to adulthood. My parents were wealthy, and I their only child, for they married late, my father having been married previously to a woman who bore him no issue and who died in middle age. When, in the year 1830, he and my mother discovered they were to have a child they were naturally delighted, for they both had long since resigned themselves to childlessness. But I gave my mother a troublesome pregnancy and an awkward painful birth – worsened by the fact that I was born feet first – from which she never truly recovered. The solitary child of elderly doting parents, feeble and much prone to all sorts of illness, I was kept sheltered and protected through my young days like some fragile, priceless piece of glass, and I grew up a lonely, withdrawn and rather sullen boy in the large and remote old house where we lived, in Cornwall, to the west of Bodmin Moor.

I was not sent to school. My parents considered me too delicate for the rigours of a public school education, and I daresay they were right. Instead they employed a tutor for me, an elderly and rather seedy looking man called Soame. He, and my nurse-maid, Sally, a plump jolly old woman with sparkling eyes, a thick Cornish accent, and perfectly white hair which she wore in a huge bun, were the only real companions of my youth. But they were good companions, kindly and well meaning, and I found much in common with them both. Mr. Soame was a keen historian and classicist. He would sit for hours on winter nights and relate with relish countless exciting, abstruse or absurd anecdotes regarding great figures of the past. He must have told me hundreds upon hundreds of these stories – spanning the entire course of human history – but over a period of ten years I do not recall him ever repeating the same one twice.

But where Soame confined himself to the documented records of the history books for his stories of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Constantine, Charlemagne and innumerable others, Sally would delight in telling me of those wonderful antique legends in which Cornwall is so rich, and all its simple inhabitants apparently so well versed. Tales of the ancient King Arthur and his knights, who sleep somewhere in a deep and hidden cavern, ready to rise again at the time of England’s greatest need; of Woden, the pagan demon among whose descendants on earth was the great Christian King, Alfred, and who sometimes still rides by night in deep forests and over dark moors accompanied by a fearsome pack of devil dogs, pursuing the wretched spirits of those who were sinners in life. Like the notorious Jan Tregeagle, a Cornishman who, more than two centuries earlier, it was said, had sold his soul to the Devil, and whose ghost was now pursued relentlessly across the lonely wastes of nearby Bodmin Moor. Stories of warriors and spectres, giants, heroes, faeries, changelings and kings; more stories than I could ever remember.

All this had a potent effect on the fertile mind of a bored young recluse such as myself. I grew to see the past as a rich tapestry of romance and excitement. I had little love for the world of the present, which to me consisted of my home, the countryside and the few villages surrounding it, and the bed to which I was so often confined. In childish simplicity I grew to love the ideals of heroism and justice, and to despise treachery and tyranny; to exalt virtue and disdain wickedness, although of course, I had not the remotest real knowledge of either. It became my delight to imagine that I had lived back in distant days: to suppose that I was with Alexander, defeating the Great King Darius at the battle of Guagamela; or alongside Arthur, locked in mortal combat with the villainous Mordred. Fantasies of this or a similar nature must be common enough in the young, but to me they were of special importance, for the strength of my imagination was my only defence against the weakness of my body. And the more I grew to love and admire those great and mighty men of history and legend, the more I grew to despise my own feebleness, and the dreariness of my existence.

I was twelve years old, and all the feelings I have described were still growing in me, when I first had the dream. From that time onwards it came to me at least once, sometimes twice a year. It was always identical in detail, and immensely vivid. But let me describe it.

At the start I found myself standing in a large, crowded room – I had no idea how I came to be there – decorated all about with candles and the branches, leaves and berries of evergreens, hung from the ceiling and walls. There was a big table to one side, upon it dishes filled with all sorts of pies, cakes and comfits, and in the centre there was a huge silver punch bowl, filled with steaming mulled wine. A blazing log burned in the vast fireplace, and I was standing close to it, keeping warm. Outside the windows I could hear the shrill, chanting voices of children singing a Christmas wassail.

We’ve been a long while wassailing,

In the leaves so green-o,

Now here we came a-wandering,

Where we can be seen-o,

For ’tis Christmas time,

And we wander far and near,

May God keep you and send you

A happy New Year.

It was at this moment that I would glance about at the others in the room. They were all faceless. That is, their faces looked to me blurred and distorted, so that I could distinguish nothing about them; and their voices, although loud, were no more than strange indistinct mumbles. In such a homely setting this was disturbing, although for some reason I did not find it particularly frightening. My feelings were rather those of isolation and despair than fear. Desperately I would look all about for a normal human face somewhere in the room.

And then at last the doors would open and a figure would enter that was more strange and macabre even than the rest. It appeared to be no more than a shadow. A ghostly form shrouded in black, framed in the glowing firelight. I could make out nothing about it. I could not tell its size or shape, whether it was male or female: whether it was human at all, for mostly it seemed a shapeless mass. And yet its presence was overwhelming. It shone with a strange force that wholly entranced me. It stood on the opposite side of the room, surrounded by the others, who did not appear to see it, while it in its turn took no notice of them. And I gazed at the black mask that I believed to be its face, unable to see any eyes, yet in some way aware that its attention was focused on me. Until at last I was affected by a most strange sensation. The feeling that I was becoming somehow absorbed and lost in the blank, black depths of that face. And gradually a creeping numbness would start to spread through my body – and the singular thing was that although this always happened in exactly the same way, and I grew to expect it, it nevertheless startled and shocked me anew every time – until finally it left me paralysed. Rooted to the spot, unable to move or speak through the power of this dark presence.

Next there was a voice. It came from nowhere in particular, but would float gently into my head. It was very soft, a breathless whisper, and yet always I heard it quite clearly above the incoherent dronings of the faceless ones; as if someone spoke into my ear. And it said simply:

“Come to me, John LePerrowne!”

No sooner were these words spoken than I would feel myself begin to move slowly towards the figure – not through any effort of my own, for I was still incapable of controlling my actions – and I was drawn forward by some invisible and immensely powerful force. Frightened now, I tried to fight against it, to pull free first by struggling, and then by the exertion of my will. I attempted to recite the 23rd Psalm, because at the time it was all I could think of as a means to oppose the power that held me. But it was never any use, for I found that, try as I might, I could not speak. My jaw stayed shut and my tongue seemed swollen and rigid. Desperately I strove to speak the first line of the psalm, but all that came were slurred and frantic noises. As I came closer to the figure it moved forward and seemed to reach out, as if to embrace me.

Now I would stop fighting. It seemed at once inevitable that I should go to the figure. It was intriguing. It was mysterious and strangely powerful. And it called to me! Also, something else would suddenly occur to me. That if I did not go to it then I would be left alone, stranded amongst those mumbling, distorted figures. This thought filled me with horror, for the room about me at once grew dark, and its occupants now seemed to become somehow fearsome and hellish. So I reached out my arms and clung to the figure as it came to me, wrapping itself about me, engulfing me, so that my head grew light, and began to spin, and the room in which I stood along with its awful inhabitants faded from sight to be replaced by a mist of inky blackness that crept all about me and entirely blotted out my vision.

Now I would be overcome by another remarkable sensation; a feeling of incredible energy and strength passing through me; a feeling that I, with my perennial bad health, had certainly never experienced in a conscious state. And when this sense of power attained its zenith I would feel myself begin to sink down and down; a slow, pleasant floating sensation. And it was at this moment always I awoke in my bed.

I never minded having this dream, though much of it was so disquieting. For me all its bad and frightening aspects were more than compensated by that enormous flood of power that came at the end. To feel strength and vigour was for me a remarkable and exhilarating experience. When young I dreamed often: many dreams other than the one I have just described; but none were remotely as vivid or had such a profound effect on me. In no other dream do I ever recall having known any real sense of physical feeling. Once I dreamed that my arm had been lopped off – I cannot remember how – and I stood, moaning in shock and horror as I watched the blood spurt in gushes from the ragged stump. But in spite of my very real fear, I felt no pain from the wound whatsoever. My recurrent dream was the only one where my senses operated as in consciousness. Indeed, even more so.

When I was fifteen my dear old nursemaid Sally died, which grieved me greatly; and then the following year my father suffered a stroke which left him partly paralysed. My mother was so shocked by the suddenness of his attack that her own poor health deteriorated and she was henceforth confined to her bed for much of the time. Mine had always been an old and melancholy house. Now it seemed oppressed by an atmosphere of decay and death.

It was at this time, when I felt more bewildered and lonely than ever, that I had a most strange experience. It was on a very hot night in August, and I lay on my bed in my nightshirt, covered only by a single sheet; dozing but unable to sleep properly for the stifling atmosphere. Suddenly my drowsiness was dispelled by a faint scratching sound from somewhere nearby. I sat up slowly, rubbing my eyes, and looked across the room to where a shaft of moonlight flooded through the window and glowed on the floor. Rising, I stumbled to the window and saw that the latch was rusty and loose, and rattled occasionally in the faint breeze. Because of the heat that night I had left the window ajar, which was not my usual custom, even in summer, because of my weak chest. But now, in sheer annoyance, I just undid the latch and threw the window wide open. Then I returned to bed and dropped back into a light sleep.

I have no idea how long it was before I woke again with a loud gasp. I was shivering violently. The temperature inside the room had dropped considerably. Somewhere in the back of my half conscious mind I realised that I must get up and close the window; but for some reason I was unable to stir myself. My mind was now quite awake, but my body it seemed was still asleep; unable to move, as though a great weight was upon me, pinning me to the bed.

And then from the corners of my half-closed eyes I fancied that I saw some movement, swift and silent, in the shadows over by the wall. Eventually, with a great effort, I managed to turn my head and stared hard for what seemed like several minutes into the gloom. But I saw nothing. And at last, in spite of this strange and alarming situation and my intense physical discomfort I must have closed my eyes and fallen asleep again, for I next remember awakening with another start to see a figure standing over me. By this time the moonlight had faded and my room was in almost total darkness, so I could distinguish very little about the figure, even when very slowly it leaned over me, sinking down until its face was a few inches above mine and I felt the swish of long silk hair brush against my cheek. Gently now the figure placed its hand upon my chest as it moved closer still, and I was startled to discover that the intruder’s body was deathly cold. I tried to speak, to cry out, but could not.

At once my head was filled with the forms and images of my dream; yet whether I dreamed the murky figure that loomed above me, I was not sure. Asleep or awake – dream or reality – I was certain of nothing.

Now my body grew tense, my temples began to pound and my heart raced uncontrollably. And suddenly I felt hot once more; unendurably hot. A great burning rose up inside me, so that my blood seemed as though it were boiling, and I felt streams of sticky sweat running down my face. The heat became so great I began to toss and writhe as if in the grip of a mighty fever. It grew and spread rapidly through my limbs, affecting my whole body; overcoming me, smothering me, so that I lay, barely able to breathe; gasping, choking, and utterly helpless.

But now I became aware of a body pressed up against mine, soft breasts beneath a thin gown; strong, slender arms that encircled me, firm thighs that clung to me, and gentle lips that brushed against my brow, cheek and mouth. And the body was still cold: as cold as ice, only now its touch had become entirely pleasing to me, and I threw my arms about it and pressed it to me with all my strength; as if to immerse myself in its coldness and so extinguish the fire that raged inside me. Then I cried out softly and my strength dissolved as there came a burst of indescribable sensual pleasure: a thrilling, biting chill that raced and quivered through my veins, killing the heat inside me, overwhelming me with a feeling of immense strength and satisfaction. I lay, squirming and fighting for breath, until at last the sensation died and the coldness against me was no more. Again I felt myself sinking deeper into sleep. With a feeling close to panic I fought to wake myself. At last, with immense effort, I opened my eyes. The figure sat on the bed beside me, its features still lost in the darkness, looking more than ever like the shadow form in my dream. And it was as I lay staring that suddenly the room was lit once more, for just a few fleeting moments, by a faint beam of moonlight. Just enough, however, for me to glimpse for a second or two the face of the intruder. To my utter astonishment I saw it was that of a very beautiful young woman. Her skin was so fair it seemed to shine, her eyes wide and extremely dark, and her hair long, lustrous and raven black, hanging down loose about her slender neck and shoulders. I saw no more. Darkness closed in again, and my vision faded as all feeling ebbed gradually away, leaving only a comfortable numbness that soon subsided into dark oblivion.

When I awoke next morning my knowledge of all this was cloudy – total recall has come in gradual stages over the years – but I was aware of much of it. After some brief reflection I concluded it must all have been a series of incredible, half-sleeping, half-waking imaginings; although the fact that my window was wide open proved that part of it, at least, had been real. But in future, whenever I had my dream, I would instinctively associate the shady, anonymous figure with that strange and lovely face I had seen that night, in the silver shroud of moonlight.