vampires 3

Croglin continued...

"As it bit her, her voice was released, and she screamed with all her
might and main. Her brothers rushed out of their rooms, but the door was
locked on the inside. A moment was lost while they got a poker and broke
it open. Then the creature had already escaped through the window, and
the sister, bleeding violently from a wound in the throat, was lying
unconscious over the side of the bed. One brother pursued the creature,
which fled before him through the moonlight with gigantic strides, and
eventually seemed to disappear over the wall into the churchyard. Then
he rejoined his brother by the sister's bedside. She was dreadfully hurt
and her wound was a very definite one, but she was of strong
disposition, not given either to romance or superstition, and when she
came to herself she said, 'What has happened is most extraordinary and I
am very much hurt. It seems inexplicable, but of course there is an
explanation, and we must wait for it. It will turn out that a lunatic
has escaped from some asylum and found his way here.' The wound healed
and she appeared to get well, but the doctor who was sent for to her
would not believe that she could bear so terrible a shock so easily, and
insisted that she must have change, mental and physical; so her
brothers took her to Switzerland.

"Being a sensible girl, when she went abroad, she threw herself at once
into the interests of the country she was in. She dried plants, she made
sketches, she went up mountains, and, as autumn came on, she was the
person who urged that they should return to Croglin Grange. 'We have
taken it,' she said, 'for seven years, and we have only been there one;
and we shall always find it difficult to let a house which is only one
story high, so we had better return there; lunatics do not escape every
day.' As she urged it, her brothers wished nothing better, and the
family returned to Cumberland. From there being no upstairs in the
house, it was impossible to make any great change in their arrangements.
The sister occupied the same room, but it is unnecessary to say she
always closed her shutters, which, however, as in many old houses,
always left one top pane of the window uncovered. The brothers moved,
and occupied a room together exactly opposite that of their sister, and
they always kept loaded pistols in their room.

"The winter passed most peacefully and happily. In the following March
the sister was suddenly awakened by a sound she remembered only too
well--scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and looking up, she
saw, climbed up to the topmost pane of the window, the same hideous
brown shrivelled face, with glaring eyes, looking in at her. This time
she screamed as loud as she could. Her brothers rushed out of their room
with pistols, and out of the front door. The creature was already
scudding away across the lawn. One of the brothers fired and hit it in
the leg, but still with the other leg it continued to make way,
scrambled over the wall into the churchyard, and seemed to disappear
into a vault which belonged to a family long extinct.

"The next day the brothers summoned all the tenants of Croglin Grange,
and in their presence the vault was opened. A horrible scene revealed
itself. The vault was full of coffins; they had been broken open, and
their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were scattered over the
floor. One coffin alone remained intact. Of that the lid had been
lifted, but still lay loose upon the coffin. They raised it, and there,
brown, withered, shrivelled, mummified, but quite entire, was the same
hideous figure which had looked in at the windows of Croglin Grange,
with the marks of a recent pistol-shot in the leg; and they did--the
only thing that can lay a vampire--they burnt it."