Chapter 28 Mrs Amworth

The village of Maxley is in the Sussex Downs, an area of ​​heather and pine.Last summer and autumn, those strange events happened in this village.You won't find a lovelier and healthier place in all England than this village.If the wind comes from the south, it blows laden with the breath of the sea, and blows to the eastern highlands, where it is protected from the bitter cold of March; to the village.The village itself is negligible in terms of population, but it is beautiful and comfortable.There was only one street in the village, wide, with large green areas on both sides, and in the middle of the street stood a small Norman church and an ancient cemetery long abandoned.For the rest, there were a dozen small, quiet Georgian houses in the village, with red brick walls and long windows, each with a garden in front and a larger open space behind.A dozen or so shops, and dozens of thatched-roofed wooden huts, where workers from nearby estates lived, made up the whole of this quiet little village.Sadly, though, the general tranquility of the village was shattered on Saturday and Sunday.Because the village is on the main road between London and Brighton, the quiet streets of the village have become racing tracks for speeding cars and bicycles.People had put up a sign outside the village asking them to slow down, but it seemed to only encourage them to speed up, because the road was wide and straight, and there was really no reason for them not to speed up.The ladies of Maxley covered their noses and mouths with handkerchiefs whenever they saw an approaching car, to keep out the dust.However, since the streets are asphalted, they really don't need to take such dust protection measures.But, late Sunday night, after the bikers had passed, we were able to live another five days of happy, leisurely seclusion.The rail strike shook the country so hard, but we were not affected at all because most of the people in Maxley never left.

I'm lucky enough to have a small, Georgian house in the village, and even luckier to have a very funny, very uplifting neighbor named Francis Woolcombe, who is The staunchest Maxley resident, whose house stood on the village street opposite mine.For nearly two years, he never lived outside.Although still in middle age, he resigned his professorship of physiology at the University of Cambridge to devote himself entirely to the study of paranormal and strange phenomena which seemed to be related not only to the physical but also the spiritual characteristics of man.Indeed, his retirement was not unrelated to his fascination with the unknown and the strange at the fringes of the scientific landscape.Some of the more materialistic minds steadfastly deny their existence.Woolcombe believed that all medical students should pass some kind of examination in hypnotism, and that the Cambridge baccalaureate examination should test students' knowledge of subjects such as appearance at death, haunted houses, vampires, automatic writing and Ghost possession phenomena and the like.

"Of course they didn't listen to me," he recounted the incident, "because there is nothing more terrifying than the methods used and the knowledge gained in such studies. The functions of the human body, in a broad sense, are known. .In any case, they are areas that have been studied and concluded. But beyond them there is a wider undiscovered area, which does exist. The true pioneers of knowledge are those who are willing to be ridiculed For gullible and superstitious people who want to go into places that are unclear and potentially dangerous, thereby expanding the realm of human knowledge. I don't think it's better to be a canary than to go into the unknown without a compass and a rucksack. In the cage, chirping that the known knowledge is more useful to humans. Besides, teaching is a very, very bad job for a person who knows that he is only an academic; A donkey will do."

Francis Woolcombe, therefore, was a pleasant neighbor to a man like myself, for I had an agitated and intense curiosity about what he called "places of ambiguity and danger."Last spring, a favorite addition to our little group was Mrs. Amworth, a widow whose husband had been a civil servant in India and a judge in the North-West Province. After Watt's death, she returned to England and stayed in London for a year. She found that she couldn't stand the fog and filth in the city, and longed for more air and sunshine in the countryside.She settled in Maxley for a more special reason, because her ancestors had been residents of this place a hundred years ago. In the old churchyard that has now been abandoned, there are many tombstones of her natal Surname: Chastain.She was tall, full of life, brisk and genial, a personality that soon enlivened Maxley and socialized more than ever.Most of us here are bachelors or old ladies, or are very old, and are not inclined to spend money and effort to show our hospitality.A little merry tea party followed by a game of bridge and then going home in galoshes (if the floor is wet) for a lonely dinner is probably the pinnacle of our festive feasting so far .But Mrs. Amworth showed us a more boisterous way of doing it. She pioneered lunches and small dinners, and set an example, which we all followed.Other nights, when there was no such entertainment and I had to go out, if I called Mrs. Amworth's house, which was not a hundred yards from mine, and asked her if I could come over to play poker after dinner. cards, to while away the time before bedtime, the answer was about always the host's welcome, which a single man like myself found pleasant.She was always at home, eager for the company of others with the eagerness of a companion, always entertained with a glass of great claret, a cup of coffee, a cigar, and of course a game of poker.She also plays the piano, her style is free and dynamic, she has a charming voice and can play and sing by herself.We played a game of cards in her garden when the days got longer and the lights were delayed, and in a matter of months she transformed it from a playground for snails and snails to a place where flowers flourished .She is always jovial and is interested in everything from music to gardening to an all-around gamer.Everyone (with one exception) likes her, everyone feels she brings sunshine.That one exception was Francis Woolcomber.He, although he confessed that he didn't like her, admitted that he was very interested in her.It always seemed a little strange to me, for being so jovial and cheerful as she was, I saw nothing about her that would invite speculation or inspire suspicion in others.Her image is so healthy and candid, without a sense of mystery.But Woolcombe's interest in her was really unquestionable, and one could see him watching her, examining her.In terms of age, she frankly unsolicited, saying forty-five.But her quickness, her vivacity, her unwrinkled skin, and her jet-black hair make it hard to believe that she hadn't adopted a different strategy, adding ten years to her age instead of losing it.

When our unromantic friendship took hold, Mrs. Amworth would often call me to say she was coming over.If I'm busy writing, I have to give her (we've bargained for that, of course) a frank no, answering with a gleeful laugh and wishing me a good night's work.Sometimes, before she was going to come, Woolcombe would have come in from his house across the way to smoke a cigarette and chat. When he heard that she was going to come to my place, he always urged me to let her come.She plays poker with me, and he himself, if we don't object, watches and learns a little.But I suspect that he did not give much thought to the game, for it was all too clear that, under his forehead and thick eyebrows, his eyes were not on the cards but on the player.But he seemed to like letting an hour go by like that, and often watched her as if confronted with some profound problem, while she played her cards with gusto, seemingly oblivious to his scrutiny.This continued until one particular evening in July.

That night, as it turned out later, was the first time the horrific secret was unveiled before my eyes.I didn't know it then, though I've since noticed that if she called to say she was coming, she would always ask not only if I was free but if Mr Woolcomber was with me.If so, she said she would not spoil the chatter of two old bachelors, and wished me good night with a smile.Woolcomber, who had been with me for half an hour or so this time before Mrs Amworth showed up, had been talking to me about medieval beliefs about vampires, an issue he declared to be a broken one in the medical profession. Superstitious and understudied before being tossed in the trash is one of those fringe issues.There he sat, with a sullen and earnest expression, tracing the history of that mysterious catastrophe, and explaining it intelligibly, on which he had given an admirable lecture at Cambridge.All of those catastrophes have the same general feature: one such vampiric ghost possesses the body of a living person, imparts supernatural powers, namely the ability to fly like a bat, to the living person, and feasts on blood at night.After its host dies, it continues to cling to the corpse, so the corpse does not rot.During the day it rests, and at night it leaves the grave and begins its dreadful work.No European country in the Middle Ages seems to have escaped their peril, and in earlier years similar things were found in Roman, Greek, and Jewish history.

"Take all these examples together, and that's a pretty impressive list, but they're all dismissed as nonsense," he said. However, I don't yet know of an explanation that accounts for all the facts. If you say 'oh well, if these are facts, would we still meet now?' I can give you two answers. One case is: Diseases that are known to be medieval, such as the Black Death, did exist then and have since disappeared, but we cannot conclude that the disease never existed. Before the Black Death hit England, it took When the population of Norfolk was large, it was in this area, about two hundred years ago, that there was indeed an outbreak of blood-sucking, and Maxley was the center of it. My second answer is more positive, because I tell you Blood sucking is by no means gone now. It did explode in India a year or two ago."

Then I heard my knocker ring in the cheerful, eager manner Mrs Amworth was wont to announce her arrival.I went to open the door. "Come in," I said, "before my blood freezes. Mr Woolcomber is trying to frighten me." Her vibrant, voluptuous figure seemed to fill the room instantly. "Oh, but what fun!" she said. "I like to make my blood freeze. Go on with your ghost stories, Mr. Woolcomber. I like ghost stories." I saw, as he was used to, watching her intently. "It's not exactly a ghost story," he said. "I'm just telling our host that vampirism isn't dead. I'm talking about an outbreak in India just a few years ago."

There was a noticeable pause in the conversation, and I saw Woolcombe watching her, and she was watching him, eyes still, lips parted.Then her cheerful laugh broke the tense silence. "Oh, what a pity!" she said, "you can't make my blood coagulate at all. Where did you hear such a story, Mr. Woolcomber? I lived in India for many years, and I never heard a A rumor like that. It must have been made up by some story-tellers in the fair, who are famous for it." I saw Woolcombe was going to say something further, but he stopped himself. "Ah! that may well be so," said he.

But something disturbed our usually peaceful society that night, something took away Mrs Amworth's usual good humor.She lost her enthusiasm for poker and left after playing a few rounds.Woolcombe was also silent, in fact he didn't speak again until she left. "Unfortunately," he said, "because this outbreak, let's call it a very mysterious disease, was in Peshawar, where she and her husband were, and..." "What?" I asked. "He's a victim," he said. "Naturally, I almost forgot when I said it." It's been a surprisingly hot summer and there's been no rain.Maxley suffers from drought and is bothered by a large, black nocturnal insect.Its bite is very annoying and poisonous.They fly in at night and land on people's skin without a sound, and people don't notice anything until the sharp sting announces that people have been bitten by it.They do not bite hands and faces, but always choose the neck and throat as their eating places.Most of us, while this virus spread, thought it was a temporary goiter.Then, about mid-August, there was the first mysterious case, which our local physicians believed was due to persistent fever coupled with the bite of this poisonous insect.The patient, a boy of sixteen or seventeen, the son of Mrs. Amworth's gardener, was anemic, pale, listless, and feeble, accompanied by extreme lethargy and an abnormal appetite.He also had two small holes in his throat, and Dr. Ross guessed that one of those huge insects had bit him.But the strange thing is that the area around the bite wound is neither swollen nor inflamed.The fever had subsided by now, but the cool weather had failed to revive him, and the boy, despite all the food he had wolfed down, was thinning to skin and bones.

It was about this time that I met Dr. Ross one afternoon in the street, and when I asked him how his patient was doing, he said that I was afraid the boy was going to die.He confessed frankly that the case left him bewildered and helpless.The only cause he could think of was some unnamed fatal anemia.But he wondered whether Mr. Woolcomber would consent to see the boy, in the hope that he might gain some new insight into the case.As Mr. Woolcomber was to dine with me that evening, I proposed that Dr. Ross dine with us.He couldn't come to dinner, but he said he would drop by later.On his arrival, Mr. Woolcomber at once agreed to use his expertise to assist him in the treatment of his patients, and they departed together at once.My social gatherings this evening were in vain.I called Mrs. Amworth to see if I could disturb her for an hour.Her answer was yes, and it was very welcome.With playing cards and music, one hour was extended to two hours.She spoke of the boy, who lay hopeless and mysterious about his illness, and she told me that she often visited him and brought him delicious, nutritious food.But today——she said, her kind eyes were moist, and it might be the last time she saw him.I knew that she and Wu Ercombe had a bad feeling for each other, so I didn't tell her that the doctor invited him for a consultation.When I got home, she walked me to the door because she wanted some evening air and wanted to borrow me a magazine that had an article on gardening that she wanted to read. "Oh, how fresh the night air is!" she said, sucking in the cool air to her heart's content. "Evening air and gardening are the most invigorating. There is nothing more exhilarating than being naked with the bountiful Mother Earth. After digging, you'll feel fresher than ever - black hands, Black nails, dirt all over the boots." She laughed out loud and gleefully. "I love air and earth," she said, "and I do look forward to death, for then I'll be buried with all the lovely earth around me. Don't put me in a heavy coffin—I've already Clear instructions were given. But what about the air? Oh, I don't think one can want everything. Magazines? Thanks. I'll be sure to return them. Good night! Keep your garden and your windows open, you You won't get anemia." "I always sleep with the window open," I said. I went straight to the bedroom, which had a window overlooking the street.While undressing, I seemed to hear voices not far outside.But I paid no particular attention, turned out the light, fell asleep, and fell into the abyss of a most terrifying nightmare.No doubt it was caused by the last words I had uttered to Mrs Amworth, but distorted.I dreamed that I woke up and found that both windows of my bedroom were closed.Half suffocated, so I jumped out of bed and went over to open them.The curtain of the first window was drawn, and I pushed it up, when I saw Mrs Amworth's face hovering in the darkness outside, close to the pane.It was the beginning of a nightmare, of unspeakable terror.She nodded and smiled at me.I drew the curtains again, shutting out the dreadful sight, and rushed to the second window on the other side of the room, where Mrs Amworth's face reappeared.And then the terror came over me: I was stifled dead in the airless house, and no matter which window I opened, Mrs Amworth's face would float in like those big silent black insects , they bite people before they realize it.The horror of this nightmare reached the point of screaming.I was choking and screaming when I awoke to find my room cool and quiet, both windows open, the curtains drawn, and the half-moon high in the sky, casting an elliptical cloud on the floor. The serene radiance of the shape.But even when I woke up, the terror continued, and I lay, tossing and turning.I must have been asleep for a long time before the nightmare seized me, for it was almost daylight, and soon the first rays of morning began to break out over the silent eastern sky. I hadn't come down the next morning—because I slept late after dawn, and Woolcombe called to see if he could see me right away.He came in, sullen and absorbed, and I noticed that he had drawn out his half-filled pipe. "I need your help," he said, "so I must first tell you what happened last night. The doctor and I went to see his little patient and found him alive, but not long. I The immediate diagnosis came to me, this anemia, which no other explanation could explain. The boy was the victim of a vampire." He put his empty pipe on the breakfast table, at which I had not sat down for a long time.He folded his arms and looked at me intently from under his protruding eyebrows. "And about last night," he said, "I insisted that he should be moved from his father's cabin to my house. When we put him on the stretcher, who do you think we met? Except Amwo Mrs. Sth had no one else. She expressed extreme shock at our removal of him: Now, come to think of it, why did she do that?" I suddenly felt terrible, because I remembered the dream I had the night before, and a thought occurred to me, so absurd and unbelievable, that I immediately shook it out of my mind. "I can't think of anything," I said. "Listen, then, and I'll tell you what happened afterwards. I turned off all the lights in the room where the boy lay, and watched. One window was opened a little, because I forgot to close it. About midnight I heard something outside, and obviously wanted to push the window wider. I guessed who it was--yes, it was twenty feet above the ground. Outside the window was Mrs Amworth's face, with her hand on the frame. I tiptoed over, and slammed the window down, and I think I just pressed the tip of one of her fingers." "But that's impossible," I yelled. "How could she be floating in the air like that? What is she doing here? Don't tell me so..." Once again, the memory of the nightmare gripped me even more tightly. "I'm telling you what I saw," he said, "all night, until near dawn, she was floating outside, like some horrible bat, trying to get into people's houses. Now take my Put all the things I told you together and think about it." He started counting on his fingers. "First," said he, "there was an outbreak in Peshawar of a disease like the one the boy had, from which her husband died. Second, Mrs. Amworth objected to my removal of the boy to my house. .Thirdly, she, or the demon that possessed her body, is a powerful and deadly animal that wants to enter people's homes. Besides, in the middle ages, here in Maxley, the blood-sucking incident Spread. That vampire, for the record, was Elizabeth Chastain... I see you remembered Mrs. Amworth's maiden name. Finally, the boy was stronger this morning. If the vampire had sucked him again yesterday He certainly wouldn't be alive now if he hadn't got his blood. How do you explain that?" After a long silence, I discovered that the unbelievable horror was real. "I've got something to add," I said, "which may or may not have something to do with it. You say that—that ghost comes out briefly before dawn." "yes." I told him about my dream and he smiled darkly. "Yes, you are awake," he said, "and that warning comes from your subconscious mind, which is never quite asleep, and which loudly warns you of mortal danger. You must help me, then, for two reasons: The first is to save others, and the second is to save yourself." "What do you want me to do?" I asked. "First, I want you to help me guard the boy and keep her out of his way. Finally, I want you to help me find that thing, expose it, and destroy it. It's not human: it's a demon in human form. I It’s not clear yet what steps we’re going to take.” It is now eleven o'clock at noon, and soon I will cross the street to his house, and he will sleep, and I will keep watch for twelve hours, and then go to watch again that night.So for the next twenty-four hours either I or Woolcombe was always in the house where lay the boy, stronger by the hour now.The next day was Saturday, and the morning was fine and sunny, and when I crossed the street to go to his house for duty, the Brighton-bound traffic was already roaring away.I saw Woolcomber come out of the house with a cheerful countenance, which portended good news for his patient, and at the same time I saw Mrs Amworth coming across the wide lawn beside the road, and she greeted me. , holding a basket in his hand.The three of us met.I noticed (and I saw Woolcombe noticed too) that one of the fingers of her left hand was bandaged. "Good morning you two," she said, "I hear your patient is doing well, Mr Woolcomber. I brought him a bowl of jelly and wanted to sit with him for an hour. He and I are good friends." Friend. I am very happy with his recovery." Woolcombe paused for a moment, as if making up his mind, then pointed a finger at her. "I forbid you to do that," he said. "You can't sit with him or look at him. You know as well as I do why." I have never seen such a terrible change in the face of a person, as if her face suddenly lost its color and became a gray color.She raised her hand as if to fend off the finger that was pointing at her, which formed a sign of disapproval in the air.She backed away coweringly toward the road.Suddenly there was the screeching of car horns, the screeching of brakes and shouts—it was a passing car.Too late, a long scream was cut off halfway.Her body bounced off the road after the first wheel and then the second.Her body lay there, trembling, twitching, then motionless. Three days later, she was buried in the cemetery outside the village of Maxley, following a burial of her own design, which she had told me.The shock of her sudden and horrific death in our small community gradually subsided.Only two, Woolcombe and I, felt from the first less appalled by the relief of her death.However, of course, we were only two people discussing in private, and we did not imply at all to others that because of her death, a greater terrorist incident was avoided.Strangely enough, however, it seemed to me that Woolcombe was not satisfied with something about her, and did not answer my queries on the matter.As the calm, warm days of September and the following October passed and the trees began to turn yellow and their leaves fall, his restlessness eased.However, before November, the apparent tranquility suddenly turned into a hurricane. One evening I was eating at the far end of the village, and at about eleven o'clock I walked home.The moonlight was so unnaturally bright that everything was as clear as an etching.I was walking across the street from the house where Mrs. Amworth used to live, and there was a sign on it saying Let it be, when suddenly I heard her front door click, and then I saw her standing there, and I All of a sudden, I shuddered and trembled all over.Her profile, vivid in the moonlight, was turning towards me, and I could not have mistaken her.She didn't seem to see me (the shadow of the yew hedge in front of her garden did), and she quickly crossed the road and entered the gate of the house directly opposite.There she disappeared from my sight. My breathing became a gasp, as if I had just run - and I was running now, looking back with horror, across the hundred yards that separated my house from Woolcombe's. A few yards away, my flying steps brought me to his house, and the next minute I was already in his house. "You're going to tell me what?" he asked, "or I'll take a guess." "You can't guess," I said. "No, don't guess. She's back, you saw her. Tell me what happened." I told him what happened. "That's Major Purso's house," said he. "Follow me there at once." "But what can we do?" I asked. "I don't know. That's what we have to find out." A minute later, we were across the house.It was all dark inside when I passed by, but now there are lights on in several rooms upstairs.When we got to the house the front door opened and Major Purcell came through the door.He saw us and stopped. "I was going to see Dr. Ross," he said hastily, "my wife was suddenly ill. When I went upstairs, she had been lying in bed for an hour, and I found her pale as a ghost and exhausted. Then She seemed to be sleeping before - sorry, I have to go." "Wait a minute, Major," said Woolcomber, "does she have a mark on her throat?" "How did you guess?" he said. "Yes, one of those nasty insects seems to have bit her twice. She was bleeding profusely." "Is anyone with her?" Woolcombe asked. "Yes, I called her maid." He was gone and Woolcombe turned to me. "I know what we're going to do now," he said. "Change your clothes, and I'll meet you at your house." "What's going on?" I asked. "I told you on the way. We're going to the graveyard." He came to meet me with a pick, a shovel, and a screwdriver, and a long coil of rope around his shoulder.As we walked, he told me what a terrible moment we were about to face. "What I have to tell you," he said, "is unbelievable to you right now, but we'll see before dawn whether it's true. It's very unexpected, and very fortunate, that you see The spectre, whose surreal form, whatever you will call it, is Mrs Amworth's, doing its grisly deeds, so there can be no doubt that she possessed her while she was alive. The vampire who lived on her body after her death. There are no exceptions - indeed, I have been waiting for weeks after her death. If I am right, we will find her body No rot, no erosion." "But she's been dead for nearly two months," I said. "She would have been dead for two years, if a vampire had taken hold of her body. So remember: whatever you saw me do, it wasn't done to her, and by the natural course of events, her body should now be Feeds the grass on her grave. What I'm about to do is against that very evil ghost that gave her body an illusion of life." "I'll see what you do?" I said. "I'll tell you. We know that right now, at this very moment, that vampire in her guise is out there; sucking blood. But it has to come back before dawn, and it's going into that physical form that lies in the tomb Go. We must wait, and then, with your help, I will dig up her body. If I am right, you will see her just as she was alive, fed by evil, she The blood in the veins flowed alive. When the dawn came, and the vampire couldn't leave her body, I'd hit her with this," he pointed to his pick, "through her heart, as the demon gave her life, she will be revived briefly. Then she and the demon attached to her will really die. We have to bury her again, and she is finally free." When we got to the cemetery, the moon was shining brightly, so it was not difficult to find her grave.It was about twenty yards from the chapel, and we took refuge in the shadow of the chapel porch.From there, we had a clear view of the cemetery with a wide view.Now we have to wait for the demon resident of the cemetery to return.It was a warm night with no wind, but if there was a cold wind I would feel nothing, because my mind was on what was going to happen during the night and the dawn.The clock in the chapel tower chimed the quarters, and I was startled to see how quickly time passed. When the clock struck five o'clock in the morning from the tower, the moon had long since set, and the clear sky was full of stars.After a few more minutes, I felt Woolcomb's hand touch me lightly, following the direction of his finger, I saw a tall woman's figure coming from the right.She made no sound, and that movement was not walking, but gliding and floating.She walked across the cemetery to the grave that we were raptly watching.She turned around it as if to check, then stood facing us straight for a moment.My eyes are now adjusted to the grayness, and it's easy to see her face and make out her features. She ran her hand over her mouth, as if wiping it, and burst into a giggle that made my hair stand on end.Then she jumped onto the grave, and with her hands raised above her head, she disappeared inch by inch into the dirt.Woolcombe kept his hand on my arm, motioning for me to be quiet, but now he moved his arm away. "Come on," he said. We went to the grave with picks, shovels and ropes.The soil was light and sandy, and after six digs we soon reached the coffin lid.He used a pick to loosen the surrounding soil, and threaded a rope around the handle of the coffin, and we tried to lift it up.It was hard work, and it took a long time, and the daylight had dawned in the east, heralding day, and we finally got the coffin out, and put it on the side of the grave.Woolcombe used a screwdriver to unscrew the latch on the coffin lid, and set the lid aside.We stood looking into Mrs Amworth's face.The eyes, once closed by death, were now wide open, the cheeks were rosy, and the mouth, red and full, seemed to smile. "One tap and it's all over," said Woolcombe. "Don't look." As he spoke, he picked up the pickaxe again, and placed the pickaxe on her left chest, measuring the distance.Even though I knew what was going to happen, I still couldn't look away. He took the pick with both hands, lifted it an inch or two, and with all his strength in his arms, he slammed the pick down on her chest with all his strength.虽然她已经死了这么久，但是一股鲜血还是高高地喷向空中，“哗啦”一声重重地落在裹尸布上，与此同时，从那鲜红的双唇中发出一声长长的、骇人的喊叫，那叫声像汽笛一样升高，又渐渐消失。随之快如闪电似的，她脸上出现了腐烂的迹象，红润的肤色也消退了，成了死灰色，丰满的双颊陷了下去，嘴也垂了下来。 “感谢上帝，终于完结了。”伍尔康伯说着，一刻不停地把棺材盖推回原位。 白天很快到来了，我们就像着了魔似地干着，把棺材又放进坟墓中去，铲土把它盖上……当我们走回马克斯利的时候，鸟儿正发出第一阵啁啾的鸣叫。