Last week my work took me back to Monschau again. I dreaded it, lovely though that little town in the German Eiffel may be, because I was sure it would bring back memories of that strange evening in October, three years ago, when Gilbert Alandale re-entered my life for a short and ominous spell.
My fears proved true. After I had handled my affairs with the Landwirtschaftlicher Auskunfstdienst I found myself walking the narrow cobblestone streets in profound misery; the past had returned in cruel sharpness.
Everything still looked the same. The rain was as incessant as it had been then; the river Rur thundered with the same primordial force through the medieval village, its swirling waters kept in check by the steep-walled embankments that bore the picturesque timber-framed houses with their jutting balconies and overhanging stories. I still loved the place but the association with the dreadful fate of Alandale cast a melancholy shadow over my enjoyment.
On that now distant night I had been the only guest of Hotel Zur Post, a massive five-story building on the water front. The proprietress, Frau Ulrich, lived next door, over a weinstube that was also run by her. On my way to dinner I had gone in there to make an inquiry and I was just leaving again by way of the gloomy vestibule, when I was startled by a perfect imitation of Groucho Marx's sinewy voice twanging:
"Say the secret word and divide one hundred dollars. It's a common word, something you see every day."
I swirled round and there he stood, Gilbert Alandale, large as life. We both uttered a joyous shout, slapped hands basketball style and embraced. As we drew apart my friend punched me gently in the stomach.
"John, you old son of a gun,"
"Gilbert, for chrissakes, how did you get here?"
"Sheer skill, cunning and perseverance, I guess."
Despite the poor lighting in the vestibule I could see that he had changed a lot in the eight or nine years that had parted us since graduation: he was bulkier, paler and more stooped than I remembered him. We had been buddies throughout college, great buddies, even though Alandale was a difficult person to be friends with, not because he was unlikable but because he was a latter-day casanova. His power over women was uncanny; they went completely ga-ga over him, attracted by his charm like birds of passage by the glare of a lighthouse and usually with the same crippling results, for he was utterly callous in his dealings with women. Like some spoiled rodent he just nibbled at them and then went on to the next. Most guys begrudged him his success but they also admired him for it and took a fiendish pleasure in the way he brought down the femmes fatales of this world. Still, when all was said and done he had few friends apart from me. This bothered him terribly. He desperately wanted to be one of the boys, so he went out of his way to please them and many a guy got sweet revenge on a stone-hearted lover by asking Alandale to "take care" of her. He never refused and never failed. He went, conquered and shattered each and every faithless heart. For that they loved him.
He was really the ultimate male, a great horseman, sportsman, drinker, gambler, stunningly handsome with the finest head of dark, wavy hair that a woman could ever hope to run her fingers through. The combination of his splendid physique, disarming smile and cheerful disposition made him irresistible.
Our friendship had been genuine despite the vast difference in our characters. Being rather dull and colorless myself I revered Alandale for his flamboyance, while he liked me for what he called my "solid, sober dependability". I had always regretted losing touch. So I was understandably delighted to see him again.
"C'mon, Johnnyboy," he said, "This calls for some plain, hard drinking." He threw an arm round my shoulder and led me out into the streets. It rained. Hard. Darkness had already fallen, and autumn darkness in Monschau is very dark indeed; hardly a window illuminated and the streetlamps few and far apart. In the surrounding blackness each lamppost stood alone in its own small pyramid of shimmering rain, turning the water into liquid light that slithered towards us snakelike across the cobblestones. The air was alive with the patter, splash and gurgle of running water.
Alandale held on to me like an anxious father.
"Ah, it's good to see you again, my old pal, my old buddy," he said over and over again as he dragged me along through the rain.
We crossed one of the bridges over the Rur. Alandale stopped in the middle to look down. The fury of the water, roaring and foaming like some rabid black beast underneath us, forced him to raise his voice to a shout.
"Magnificent, not? Is it a wonder that suicide tempts when you've got a grand old river like this to leap into?"
"I don't think suicide tempting at all," I shouted back.
He gave me a thoughtful look, then grinned, shrugged his shoulders and dragged me on again. On the other side of the river he led the way into an old German tavern, complete with smoke-stained wood paneling, massive beams, plastered walls adorned with antlers and boars' heads. We retired to a small window bay that overhung the river. The window stood ajar and the boisterous sound of the waters all but drowned out the steady rattle of raindrops against the leaded panes.
Alandale called out for four glasses of schnapps and the menu with much of his old bravado and beamed at me happily. I had some trouble responding in the same vein, because only now - in the clear yellow light of numerous lamps - did I see the full extent of the changes in his appearance. He had put on a lot of weight and it marred him. His muscular body had ballooned to the point where his paunch almost suggested pregnancy. Fleshiness blurred his once so finely carved, angular features. Shadowy bags swelled under his eyes and his Miami Beach tan had faded to a deathly pallor, offset by black stubbles of several days' standing. Even his hair, bedraggled by rain and much too long, had suffered: dulled by streaks of gray. The only thing that had remained unchanged was his smile. His proudest asset, irresistible as ever. I doubt there was ever another smile like it. Such guileless, childlike innocence, unfolding so free and easy and with such spontaneous eagerness that it always made you feel good and important and convinced of his rapture at seeing you.
He displayed it to me then.
"All right," he said. "Let me guess. You're married, of course. To the girl next door, as likely as not. You have somewhere between one and three kids and you are very solidly though unspectacularly happy. Right?"
Having become a staunch bachelor I had to laugh at this.
"Yeah, something like that. But how are you?"
Strangely, this question seemed to take him by surprise. He looked bemused for a moment, then uttered a rasping, guttural sound.
"Me? I'm fine. Just fine. That's to say...." His left eyelid quivered a few times. "...all things considered."
The arrival of the innkeeper shuffling up to the table with the drinks and two giant menus interrupted us. Alandale greeted the man jovially.
"Good work, Fritz," he said, "You're in luck, us Amerikaner are very thirsty tonight. How's business? A bit slow, huh?"
The innkeeper, a droopy scarecrow of a man, shrugged his shoulders, mumbled something about the season and shuffled off again.
Alandale winked at me, pointing over his shoulder with a thumb.
"Now there's a man with problems. Here." He shoved two glasses my way. "Let's drown our sorrows."
"Sorrows?"
He smiled vaguely.
"Ach....just a figure of speech." He fell silent, opened the menu and gazed at it with an expression I had never seen on his face before, a tight little barbed-wire twist to his lips. Then his old smile broke through again. He looked up at me. "Hell, Johnnyboy, am I overjoyed to see you. Here, a toast to the days of yore." He raised his glass. I followed his example, a bit worried.
"You in trouble, Gilbert?"
A trace of embarrassment crept into his face. He quickly looked down at the menu again. "Hell no," he mumbled, "I'm all right. Whaddya say to a big heap of Sauerbraten? It's first-class here. Takes them ages to prepare, though."
"I don't mind."
"Right, Sauerbraten it shall be." He turned round and shouted his order towards the twilight rear of the room. The invisible innkeeper replied with a grunt. When Alandale returned his gaze to me, a nervous twitch fluttered about his left eyelid again.
"Tell me, John," he said with forced airiness, "Are you still the same old, dull, unimaginative dummy you always were?"
This stung me. No man likes to be called dull and unimaginative, however true it may be. Seeing my annoyance Alandale broke into a wistful smile, reached across the table and placed his hand on mine.
"Don't take offense, old pal. This is no time for trifles. I lied to you just now. I AM in trouble. In fact I'm in one hell of a mess. I'm not going to tell you everything because I know you'd just think I was insane and maybe, in the goodness of your heart, have me strapped to this table here." He looked away brusquely, biting his lower lip, obviously very agitated. "Maybe that would be just as well, but no, it can wait. Even if I am truly insane, there is little danger. I'm not violent. Never was. There's this woman, you see. Got me on a string, lifts me up, drops me in a heap. What am I to do?"
"I honestly don't know what you're talking about, Gilbert. Can't you be more explicit?"
He looked at me pensively, as if he were trying to remember who I was.
"Ah, yes," he said and lowered his eyes to stare at his glass, fingering it nervously. While he sat brooding, I began to feel sorry for him. He had always been such a happy-go-lucky fellow. Something terrible had to be behind all this. He sat up with a start, smiling broadly.
"Explicit, yes, by all means, let's be explicit. Calm, cool and collected. You find me changed, don't you?"
"Yes, I must say I do."
"I look a wreck."
"I wouldn't say that."
"No that would be unlike you. But all the same, I do look a wreck and let me tell you that it is just a faint reflection of the shambles inside. And yet....I'm proud of it. Yes, indeed. You see before you a man redeemed. A Prometheus unbound. My visible mutilations are only scars of confinement, pangs of birth. I was a sleepwalker before, a blustering, good-for-nothing maniac."
"You weren't that bad."
"Oh, but I was," he said, looking past me with the satisfied smile of a man grown older and wiser and being very smug about it. "I was despicable and I knew it but...life is just a single throw of the dice, so I went for what I could get and the one thing I could get was women."
"Yeah, that's for sure,"
"So what? It gave me no happiness. Satisfaction, sure; contentment, never. Every night spent in the arms of one woman meant dozens of better chances missed. The more sluts I bedded, the worse this feeling became. Forever in fruitless pursuit. Utter hopelessness, eternal repetition. It was a drug. To me women became a sedative, nothing more, just a laudanum to deaden the ache between my legs. There were times I felt I was draining the marrow from my very soul. Nothing moved me, nothing ever touched that great big chunk of numbness inside. Night after night in the clutch of tepid enjoyment. I had bad dreams in which I waded, chestdeep, through lukewarm waters filled with jellyfish women. And still I hungered and craved for more. I even spent some time behind bars for the rape of one. Can you imagine that...me raping a woman? Ach...." He uttered a mirthless chuckle and whisked his hand at imaginary flies.
"I was besotted, but now...."
He straightened himself and looked at me with straining eyes, mad dark suns in the vagueness of his fleshy features.
"That spell has been broken. I've found what I didn't even know I was looking for. The absolute female. Can you imagine? After all those worthless pieces of..."
He groped about his person, digging into several pockets before bringing out a photograph. As he looked at it, the expression on his face, which had become feverish, changed, almost as if the flesh were melting.
"This is why. Look for yourself."
He handed me the photograph with some solemnity. I took it and almost broke into a guffaw when I saw that it was a postcard showing a 17th-century painting of a woman. Fortunately I managed to hide my amusement, because the intent, expectant look on my friend's face made it clear that to him this was anything but a laughing matter.
"Isn't she perfection itself?" he asked.
I studied the postcard. The woman was, to be sure, a very beautiful and imposing creature, gazing with the cool disdain of conscious superiority upon the commoner painting her and upon all the commoners like myself who would gape at her likeness through the ages to come. She wore a dark green dress, richly embroidered with gold thread, studded with jewels, its rich material fanning out below a tight bodice, broad-shouldered with bulging, slashed and lace-cuffed sleeves, a smooth white collar spread over her shoulders and chest. She had wispy, reddish hair in a thin fringe upon her pale brow and frizzed on both sides of her head. Her face was delicately carved, with deep-set, piercing eyes, a sharp nose, lips rather thin, set in a tight little smile that was haughty and disdainful.
"Maria Theresia von Waldorf zu Badenheim," said Alandale, in an awed tone. "Born on the fifteenth of September 1621, died on the tenth of October 1644."
My initial amusement was rapidly giving way to uneasy wonder.
"I love her, John. With every fiber of my being. She has made me a martyr and a saint. Since the moment I laid eyes on her I've not known a single lecherous thought. She has solved the riddles of my life."
The way he spoke made it hard to believe he was talking about someone who had been dead for more than three centuries. My uneasiness grew and grew. Something was obviously very wrong here
He noticed my discomfort and chuckled.
"I can feel your brain throbbing, old pal," he said. "You think I've gone over the rim, don't you?"
"Well...er..."
He broke into a hearty laugh, emptied his second glass of schnapps at a gulp and shouted over his shoulder for more.
"Don't alarm yourself, Johnny. I'm not mad...not yet, at any rate. I know she has been dead for these last three centuries. But...." He paused and stared at me with mesmerizing intensity. "The mere fact that a path has not yet been trodden need not mean that it can never be passed, does it?"
I did not know what to say. All this was far beyond me. I looked at the photo again, at the strange smile that played on the thin, tight-lipped mouth of Maria Theresia. There was something about her that unsettled me. Something in that smile and in those deep-set, dark eyes. A smoldering akin to Alandale's passion. Her disdain was not that of someone who has seen too much but rather of someone who can never see enough. She seemed capable of almost anything. Alandale reached across the table and took the postcard back, almost snatching it from my hands.
"She was a power-packed woman," he said, casting a mournful look upon the photo, "An amazone, a goddess marooned among dense mortals. She died a virgin. Nobody was good enough for her and when her father made the mistake of wedding her against her will, she flung herself from the old tower on her wedding night."
He lifted his eyes to me. They were tear-logged.
"Ah, Johnny, what a wife died there."
My confusion and dread were growing by the minute. My friend was obviously under the spell of some morbid delusion. I wondered how I might persuade him to see a doctor. He read my thoughts.
"Damn you, John Magruder," he said, "Must you panic at the slightest sign of the extraordinary? Must every dazzling color be dimmed to a shade of gray?"
He folded his arms tightly against his chest and sat huddling himself for a moment as if chilled, though it was rather mild for the time of the year, with just an occasional waft of soggy night air drifting in through the open window. He rested his elbows on the table and looked at me from the shade of his eyebrows.
"Tell me, John, did you ever love in earnest? I don't mean the gosh-aren't- you-nice stuff but the real, terrible thing?"
"I think so."
"HA! If you only think so, you most certainly did not. You no more think that you have loved than you think you've lost a limb. These are things you know. But it doesn't matter. Just try to imagine. These surges of feeling that lift you beyond the clouds like an eagle and drop you into the sewers like a turd. Your heart out of control, swollen to ludicrous proportions, like a jet engine in some silly little rust-corroded Volkswagen, wrecking the body by mere vibration....Christ! what am I talking about....?" He laid a trembling hand on his third glass of schnapps and downed it. Turning his attention to me again, he brushed his wet locks from his forehead and grinned ruefully. "I'm sorry, John, I will now become explicit. As you may or may not know I've become a historian, don't ask how, it just happened. As such I came to Furchtesheim Castle, where I now live, to study the generations that inhabited it. That's how I came to know Maria Theresia. I was given her room as a study. The very room where she had sat, dreamed, laughed, wept, wrung her hands and cursed her fate. I sat at her desk facing her portrait. Ah, it did not take more than a few glances to lose my soul, surrounded as I was by her belongings, her clothes, her jewels, her books. I read her diaries and her delightful letters and read them over and over again. Would you believe that she never wrote a single word that did not thrill me? She broke the silence that had surrounded me all my life. A true kindred soul. Is that really so odd? Is it strange that a perfect communion of souls is so rare that it occurs only once in three centuries? I think not. But it doesn't matter. I fell in love with her. And then she started to come to me during the night, in dreams. God!" He paused to rub his eyes. He shook his head brusquely, as if to shake something from it. "I know I'm going insane. I know. Anyway, as I was saying, I fell in love with her. Not with her portrait, mind you. No, with her being, as I pieced it together from all the little relics surrounding me. She was a mighty female, strong, energetic, wilful and at the same time sweet and gentle, brimming with tenderness and passion and no outlet for it. You may imagine what it meant to me, never having loved before, now so desperately in love with one who had been dead for 337 years. And then she started coming to me, in my dreams. Sheer heaven! Their clarity was incredible. Did you ever read "The Beautiful Vampire" by Theophile Gautier? No you wouldn't. Well, he describes the fate of a priest who was visited by a beautiful dead woman in his dreams too, and as time went by he began to think that he was actually her lover in reality while he only dreamt that he was a priest in the daytime. So it was with me. Wakefulness meant death, sleep was life. I even went to bed early to prolong those dreams. But some nights she would not come." He paused, looked away, working the muscles of his jaws, blinking.
"Can you picture the misery of waking the morning after? I so needed those dreams. The hollow despair of a world without her was bad enough as it was, but without the illusion of her nocturnal company it was unbearable. Oh, I know every damned loser thinks his own fate the worst, but my case seems to have a pretty legitimate claim." He paused again, looking at me sternly and raising his right hand as though to stop me from interrupting him, which I did not intend to do, utterly stupefied by his wild and rambling talk.
"I know," he said, "Be explicit. Well, the pure fact is that she, Maria Theresia is precisely the woman for me and that I began to realize - without a shadow of doubt - that I would have been precisely the man for her. In vulgar speech: we were made for each other, only, we were made 337 years apart. What to do?"
He gave me a mournful, pleading look.
"What, for chrissakes, could I do? There was nothing. Nothing. I might have gone into her tomb and stabbed myself to death on her coffin. And yes, the thought crossed my mind more than once, but...." Here he straightened himself and a sudden flash brightened his eyes. "I just could not believe that her radiant presence in my dreams, her potent tangibility was only the result of my feverish imagination. There was more to it. This I felt distinctly. I sensed her presence, close to me, very close, despite the centuries. Haha." His laugh, so sudden and unexpected as to startle me, was black and raucous like the scream of a carrion crow.
"Here sanity and myself began to part company. I got the impression and later the conviction that she, Maria Theresia, was also reaching out to me across that wasteland that separates the living from the dead. Somehow she had escaped total annihilation. Somehow. This idea put fire and brimstone into my blood. I learned to scorn every human notion of death. My Maria was still abroad, somewhere, somehow...."
"For chrissakes, Gilbert!...." I exclaimed, finally reaching the end of my patience. "This is pure...."
"Madness," he interposed softly, lapsing into a kind of demureness that ill suited him. "Yes, I know. Of course it is madness and yet...." He fell silent, lowered his head; slight tremors passed through his body.
I wanted to speak but did not know how to begin. He seemed so deranged, so utterly out of reach. Slowly he lifted his head again. His eyes were awash with tears and when he spoke he sounded like a plaintive child.
"Now I've said too much. I knew I would. I've startled you. Now you may not want to help me."
"Of course I want to help. But what the hell with? She's dead and gone, Gilbert. Nothing's going to bring her back."
He did not seem to hear me. His glance wandered away from my face, out of the window.
"I just could not give her up without having tried everything. Everything. So I started to search in every obscure nook and cranny of human experience. I had come across enough weird books during my studies and across even weirder people, oddities, dreamers, mystics, self-proclaimed sorcerers, gropers all at the fabric of the unexplained, lunatics mostly, sages sometimes. I met a man at Bad Lammergeier. Called himself an alchemist. Also maintained he was a nephew of Rasputin. It doesn't matter. He was no fool. He achieved things, even reproduced Maria's perfume. A single droplet on my pillow ensures her presence during the night. Suggestion perhaps, but it works and I depend on those dreams like no addict can depend on his drugs. And he told me more. Ways, means, but also dangers...awesome dangers...."
"What kind of dangers?"
He shot me a furtive, uneasy look.
"Can't you guess?"
"Don't tell me you're talking necromancy here."
He winced.
"Well...er...yes, sort of."
"Jesus! Gilbert, I don't believe this. I mean..., for heaven's sake, Gilbert, you can't be serious. I can understand that this Maria has taken hold of you but there are limits. Necromancy, for heaven's sake. It's pathetic."
Alandale sagged back into his chair, defeated, staring at the table, looking so lost and forlorn and so utterly washed up that I swallowed my anger.
"Gilbert, you've got to snap out of this."
Without looking up he nodded.
"I know. I'm driving myself mad with this whole business. But it can't be helped. Life without her is mere agony. I've got to try the very last, no matter how ridiculous. I had hoped you would help me. As a sobering influence, like." He cast a hungry, haunting look at my face.
"Will you help me?" he asked.
"On one condition."
"Being?"
"That you come to see a friend of mine as soon as this business is over."
"A shrink, no doubt."
"An analyst, yes, but a decent guy as well."
"Okay, it's a deal. Come to the castle with me. You'll be my guest."
"Yours?"
He grinned.
"The present chatelaine is a widow, Countess Frohl. I can do no wrong as far as she is concerned."
"All right, I'll come, but not until next week. I've some business to attend to first."
"Fine. Come whenever you want, day or night, as long as it's before the tenth. That's the decisive night. It will be either then or..." He cut himself short and gazed out of the window in sudden gloom. "You will really come, won't you?" he added, softly.
"Hey, I said so, didn't I?"
"Yeah, of course. It's just that I desperately need someone I can trust by my side. The thing is that I not only love her, I dread her, too. She has a frightening quality sometimes. A way of observing me, of stealing up on me."
"All this in your dreams, of course?"
"Yes, my dreams. Only, they are unlike any dreams I ever had before." He looked at his watch. "Gosh, look at the time. I must be going."
"But we haven't even had our meal yet."
"It doesn't matter. I must go. Here. This is on me." He pulled a few banknote from his pocket and flung them on the table. "No, I insist. Don't forget, now. Be at the castle before the tenth whatever you do." He jumped up, shook my hand and dashed off.
I was left badly shaken. I did not doubt that he had become unhinged by his fascination for that woman, but there was also much system in his madness. I wondered whether I should not have made a greater effort to get him to see an analyst, but realized that it would have been useless. At any rate I had made him promise he would see one eventually.
The landlord brought me my dinner, grumbling about Alandale's sudden departure and the waste of a perfectly good Sauerbraten. I advised him to eat it himself and began on mine with reluctance, not feeling much like eating. I tried to make light of the matter. Necromancy indeed. I managed a cynical little smile as I pictured the two of us wandering through a graveyard in dismal moonlight, mumbling all kinds of hocus pocus. All in all, I saw little harm in playing along with him, if that was what it took to get him to accept treatment.
After I had struggled through my meal I stayed at the tavern for quite a while, drinking more than was good for me, brooding about Gilbert. I only left when the landlord asked me to because he wanted to close up. When I got to my feet I discovered I was almost too drunk too walk.
It was good to step out into the cool and watery night. The rain had stopped. The overcast sky had broken and a crescent moon hung among the grey and bulbous clouds. It was almost full, in another week it would be. I grinned. It was altogether in style that the moon should be full when we went ghost hunting. My smile broadened. No matter what poor old Gilbert believed, I was darned sure that the dead were just that - dead, harmless, objects of grief or relief, distaste at worst, but nothing more. I made up my mind to humor him and coax him into treatment. It was a pleasant thought to be able to do him a good turn for a change.
I returned to the hotel, let myself into the big, empty and hushed lobby and staggered to the elevator, which was so small that it reminded me of a coffin and made me feel uncomfortable during the ride. I got out on the third floor. Why Frau Ulrich found it necessary to put her only guest there was beyond me, but I could not be bothered to think about it. Silent and dark the building enclosed me. The corridors were faintly illuminated by softly glowing night lamps at intervals of several yards, some out of order, so that the overall impression was that of a deserted mine. Not a sound anywhere. I was glad to reach my room. Sleep proved impossible because closing my eyes made the room tilt. I lay awake staring at the blue rectangle of the window and suddenly the woman entered my mind. It was uncanny. I tried to think of other things, but every time she came back, as if deliberately. Finally I got so fed up by her unwanted intrusion that I switched on the light to do some reading. Just as I was getting a book from my suitcase, I heard a noise at the door. A rustling sound, like an autumn breeze passing through a stand of dry poplars. I held my breath. What could that be? A slight chill moved down my spine. I don't scare easily, Vietnam took care of that, but weird sounds in the middle of the night when I'm alone in a deserted building, were just a bit too much. I looked at the door and started, for I saw the doorhandle move just a little. No mistake. There was someone out there. I looked about for some means of defense, if the need should arise.
There was a sharp rap on the door.
"Yes?" I shouted, "Who's there?"
No reply.
"Frau Ulrich?"
Again, no reply.
My flesh began to crawl, but I decided I was a brave fellow after all, rose, walked to the door and drew it open, recoiling instantly. There, with a defiant grin, stood the woman from the portrait, Maria Theresia, in full 17th-century attire. As I drew back, I stumbled over some piece of furniture and fell over backwards. When I looked up again, she had gone. Imagination? A ghost? Delirium tremens? But even as these thoughts raced through my head I distinctly heard the dry rustle of her dress fading in the corridor. Then it struck me: a joke. Of course. This whole evening was nothing but some elaborate practical joke of Alandale's. He could be a prankster at times. But he was not getting away with it. I sprang to my feet, out of the room, in pursuit of the receding sound of rushing silk and lace. She was fast, faster than seemed normal, because I could not catch up with her even though I was running at full speed, pounding the wooden floor with my feet.
I reached the stairway. There I stopped out of breath, a bit dizzy from the combined effects of exertion and liquor. Not much light about. Then another sound behind me. I turned and came face to face with the woman, ghastly pale, her smile more than defiant now, taunting, malignant even, dispelling any thought of a joke. This was not funny. I stepped back. For the first time I noticed that one of her hands, with slender, white, wormlike fingers, was upon the hilt of a small ornamental poniard suspended from a gold chain at her waist. She started to draw it out; a slick, metallic sound.
I lost my nerve, turned and bolted, into one of the gloomy corridors. She followed. Blending with the heavy tromp of my own feet I heard her much lighter and much quicker footfall and the swoosh of her dress, which sounded as if a foaming wave of water were chasing me. I became frantic, running in and out of corridors, trying doors here and there and finding them all locked, while every time I looked round I saw her coming at me, in a strange floating movement, knife in hand, smiling, smiling.
Finally I reached a blind corridor. Nowhere to go but a single door at the other end. I ran for it, pushed, pulled and pushed again and then, with a heartleap of joy, felt it give way. My joy was brief. As I stepped out, I sickened at the realization that I was stepping into thin air. Before me, about 30 feet down, thundered the wild waters of the Rur, swirling and foaming madly among the rocks. I did what I could to check my forward momentum, but it was no use. During a tantalizing moment my body seemed suspended in mid air and then plunged down, into the rock-teethed maw of the river. I went limp, closed my eyes and braced myself for the agony.
When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a strange bed, facing a white wall patterned only by a slanting diamond of sunlight. The room was bare as a cell and scrupulously clean. Apart from the bed - a brass monstrosity that creaked at my slightest movement - there was only a small cabinet beside the bed, marble-topped, bearing an antique jug and basin. The sunlight beamed in through a small, open casement that framed a harsh blue sky full of puffy white clouds. Outside children's voices rang out noisily.
Before I had time to do any thinking, the door opened and Frau Ulrich stepped into the room. She carried my clothes in a small bundle, washed and freshly ironed. She greeted me warmly, greatly excited, almost exhausting herself in apologies for the accident. She told me that my fall had been broken by a kind of pontoon, conveniently moored at the side of the hotel. Heinrich, her husband, who suffered from insomnia among other things, had seen me lying there and brought me out. Frau Ulrich was terribly shaken by the affair and pampered me throughout the day, while I tried to make up my mind as to what to do about my adventure. The obvious thing seemed to report it to the police, but I was reluctant to do so. It would cause Frau Ulrich untold distress and in fact I was not sure I had not imagined the whole thing. In the end I did nothing about it. I enjoyed the Ulrichs' hospitality for one more day and then set off to Mayen, where I had some business.
Back in the sober routine of every day life I could make even less sense of my nocturnal encounter. It just seemed a mad dream. In fact I tried to put it down as such, but in vain. The incident had been too real to believe that. But what then? Someone dressed up like Maria Theresia? What on earth for? Her ghost? That was too thick. I did not believe in ghosts. I never had.
On the ninth I decided to go to the castle. This would give me enough time to talk to Gilbert and perhaps get him to accept treatment before going through any mumbojumbo.
It was a Friday when I left Mayen for Schloss Furchtesheim. A dull day with lowering clouds that released one battering shower after another.
I was perhaps ten miles out of Mayen, driving along a heavily wooded mountain road, when some fool woman suddenly stepped in front of my car. I kicked the brakes, janked at the wheel and swerved past her, skidding out of control and sliding sideways towards a red-and-white fence that formed the only barrier between road and ravine. With the greatest possible effort and luck I managed to get out of the skid just as my left rear fender cracked the wooden fence. With squealing tires I pulled back to the middle of the road and stopped, shaking with fright. It took me a few seconds to recover, but then I was out of my car like a maniac and ran back to give that darned female a piece of my mind.
To my surprise she was gone. More surprisingly still, there seemed to be no place she could have gone. The road was hewn into a pretty steep mountain slope and there seemed no way anyone but a mountaineer could have gone either up or down. I shouted, but only succeeded in flushing some jackdaws that flew off uttering angry squawks. I checked the roadsides, tensing briefly with the fear that I might come across her broken body, but she had vanished. I was reminded of the hotel. This was the second incident in which a woman had almost got me killed. What the hell was going on? What was happening to me? More imagination? I wandered about aimlessly for a while and then returned to the car, thinking that perhaps I should go and see a shrink myself.
I got into my car and drove on. A few miles passed underwheel. I was just beginning to recover, humming a bit and smiling at my fears, when a casual glance in my rear mirror showed me not the road but the pale grinning face of Maria Theresia. I let out the most godawful scream, swirled round and stared, horror-struck, at a perfectly empty back seat. For a split second I was stunned. Then I remembered where I was and turned back only just in time to avoid a tree alongside the road. Once again I stopped the car. I had broken into a sweat and my heart was pounding. I was definitively seeing things. Hallucinations. Christ! I wiped my forehead with a handkerchief. This was dangerous. A few more of these shocks and I'd end up at the bottom of some ravine. I smoked a nervous cigarette. What was I to do? I did not know. At any rate it was some comfort that this woman only existed in my mind. Somehow Alandale's tale had short-circuited a few wires in my brain.
After I had finished my cigarette I got underway again. The rain was coming down in gray curtains, veiling the scenery, washing across my windscreen faster than the wipers could handle. I parked the car and waited for the worst to pass. It lasted for more than half an hour. By then dusk was approaching.
I decided to call it a day and stopped at the first hotel I could find. There I spent a bad night. I was hounded by dreams, terrible, paranoid confusions in which that maliciously grinning woman pursued me. I awoke with a start several times, hastily switching on the light like a frightened child.
At the break of dawn I finally found some restful sleep that took me through the morning. It was noon before I left the hotel. I drove slowly, apprehensive, nervous, reluctant to look into my rear view mirror for fear of seeing that wicked face again. I had the feeling I used to have for years in American motel showers after seeing Psycho. Those endless seconds when I had shampooed my hair and stood with eyes closed under the running water, deaf and blind, a helpless prey to any murderous hands reaching out to me.
As I drove along, chills kept creeping over my skin, forcing me to look in the mirror, if only to reassure myself. Then, just as I was beginning to think I was in the clear, it happened again. The stark horror of meeting her eyes in the mirror, her grin like a vicious travesty of Mona Lisa's smile. This time I did not turn my head, I just closed my eyes for a second. When I reopened them she was still there, splitting her lips into a carnivorous snarl. I shuddered violently, slowed down and pulled up alongside the road. Needless to say that the back seat was empty again. I was sweating like a horse. I felt like crying. How could this be happening to me? Hadn't I always been, like Alandale said, one of the dullest, most unimaginative kids on the block? I even thought about leaving my car where I stood and going to the castle by some means of public transport but rejected the idea as silly.
I resumed my journey. After a mile or so I came to a road sign that read Schloss Furchtesheim. Obediently I turned into the narrow road. Somehow it did not feel right. I stopped to check my map. The road was not on it. So I reversed to take another look at the sign. Sure enough: Schloss Furchtesheim.
No mistake. So on I went.
The road was narrow and in a bad state of repair. Dense woodland massed on both sides, the luxuriant trees often touching overhead, so that I drove through a dusky green tunnel. The raindrops struck the windshield like bullets. As I proceeded, the road surface became worse and worse, ragged at the edges, riddled with potholes in the middle, such large branches strewn about that I had to get out now and then to drag them out of the way. Occasionally I came to stretches that were wholly unpaved, just a dirt track scattered with loose stones.
Before long one of my tires went flat. I got out and changed the wheel in a clammy drizzle. I was almost desperate with misery, tired, nervous and becoming worried that I would not reach the castle in time. After changing the wheel I decided to go back. Another flat would leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere. It took me more than an hour to back up all the way to the main road. The afternoon had largely gone by the time I reached it. There I was in for another shock. The sign had disappeared. I almost became hysterical at that discovery. What the hell was going on? I searched every inch of the roadside. In vain. The sign was definitely gone. Of course it was possible that someone had removed it during my futile drive up that mountain road, but it seemed pretty far-fetched. More likely I had suffered another hallucination.
Onward again. After one uneventful hour, I reached the valley of the Nette. At its upper end the castle was supposed to be. About fifty kilometers. A good hour's drive. The rain was coming down in veils again.
After twenty kilometers or so I saw someone hitchhiking. I don't usually stop but this time I thought it might not be a bad idea, get my mind off things. I pulled up. The hitchhiker was dressed in bright orange rainwear, hood up. It turned out to be a girl, quite young and pretty, with light blue eyes, blonde hair in a thick braid. She did not say much, only smiled and gave one-syllable answers to my questions. Still, I was glad to have her.
When I asked her where she was going, she shrugged her shoulders.
"I'm going to the castle," I said.
"That's nice," she said.
A bit disappointed by her unsociability I concentrated on the road, which was just as well, because it wound a treacherous way up and down rises and in and out of curves. I almost forgot about her presence until a sharp, powerful click beside me made me look her way. I screamed. The blonde girl had changed into a dark-eyed redhead, grinning, holding up a flick-knife. I struck out at her with my right arm. She evaporated. The next moment my car dipped from the road into thick underwood, groaning, shattering its headlamps, puncturing a tire, banging and bouncing down a gentle slope until it came to a standstill against a massive oak. My seatbelt had kept me from grievous harm, but I was out of my mind with fright. I sat huddled in my seat, hiding my face in my hands, paralyzed with fear. I don't know how long I remained like that but eventually I calmed down a little. The engine had stopped running. Silence but for the wipers, which were still on, broken, just two little arms swinging senselessly from side to side. I looked round. Nobody. I switched off the ignition. The wipers stopped. Rain pattered on the roof. Steam escaped sizzling from the crumpled hood. Dusk was setting in. I looked at my watch. Its glass was broken and it had stopped at 7 p.m. I'd never reach the castle in time. It was at least another 20 kilometers. That meant a four hours' walk and I was in no shape for anything like that. I struggled out of the car and stood in the gloom a while. Despondent. A frightful shadow over my mind. Even if the appearances of that dreadful woman were only hallucinations, I realized that their origin was something inconceivable. There were black forces at work here. Around me the woods stood dripping noisily in the dark. Gusts of wind came and went, shaking the trees and bringing avalanches of water. I got back into the car. I still dreaded the reappearance of my female phantom. She did not come. Exhaustion overcame me. I fell asleep, strangely untroubled.
When I awoke again it was pitch-dark. I checked my watch. Seven o'clock. This puzzled me a bit until I remembered that it no longer worked. There seemed only one thing to do: walk to the castle. I got my long leather raincoat from the trunk and set off into the wet and boisterous night. I walked like an automaton, just plodding along, footsore and weary, too tired for thought or fear. Lightning ripped the sky, thunder rolled into the valley like mountains collapsing, showers drenched the earth and the wind was a howling beast turned loose in the woods. The many mountains streams were swollen with water and raced noisily through their beds; at some places they flooded the road. The only thing that kept me going was my concern for Alandale. God only knew what madness he was up to.
After I had gone for what seemed a lifetime but must have been about three hours, dawn began to break. The sky paled from inky black to slate blue. The trees slowly materialized out of the receding darkness. I took some heart. About half an hour later the castle leapt into view, startling me by its sudden closeness and size. Perhaps it was only my uneasy state of mind but my first sight of it filled me with dread.
Pale and bleak it stood out in the gray gloom. A breathtaking structure. On the left a sturdy, round tower, rising dozens of feet from the ground, its upper story half-timbered, its conical roof adorned by small turrets. The tower was set into the corner of a massive sheet of masonry that appeared to be the sidewall of the main building. A small turret, similar to those on the tower, clung to its right-hand corner. Above the main building's saddle roof a confusion of other towers and roofs loomed up. The walls had apparently once been covered with white plaster but it had turned into a pale buffish color and was worn away in places to reveal the brickwork. An enormous patch of thick, bottlegreen ivy blended tower and wall.
I walked on and came to a muddy parking lot and a sign informing me that the castle was closed to the public between September and April.
The rain had stopped but the steady patter of water dripping from the trees cluttered the air. The sky was rapidly clearing to leave a dome of spotless blue. The sun had not yet risen above the hills, which were steaming with morning mists. Birds warbled near and far. The whole scenery breathed a desolate splendor.
I tramped through the mud towards the castle. A few low outbuildings blocked my way, but I soon found an arched gate unlocked. As I came to the castle walls their height was dizzying. Behind the tower a high wall with shuttered windows stretched to the rear, with another, slimmer tower halfway. Not a door in sight. I continued along the wall and when I turned the far corner I finally came to a large wooden gate with a small wicket door. No bell or anything. I tried the wicket. It opened easily. I went in, entering a bailey, a narrow passage flanked by the outer wall on my right and by naked rock on my left. The ground was paved with large cobblestones and fringed with ferns and weeds and led rather steeply upwards. Water clattered down on all sides. It was cold as in a vault.
I ascended the incline and came to a vaulted passage that swung abruptly left and up, into a delightful courtyard, surrounded by lovely little houses with brightly painted shutters and half-timbered gables. It looked like a small-scale medieval market square. The scene was further enlivened by lots of flower boxes with burning red geraniums. As I stood looking about in admiration, my glance chanced on a ruin just behind the main building. A very tall rectangular tower was part of it, the roof fallen in and its blackened beams skeletal. It reminded me of the grim reason for my presence. I walked up to a big, ornately carved door, dwarfed by its lavastone frame. Just then it opened and an elderly woman, dressed in a tweed coat with riding breeches and jodhpurs came out. She was somewhere in her fifties, still very attractive, trim figure, regal bearing, skin warmly tanned, eyes tired and hooded yet bright. She wore her hair bound up loosely upon her head, a few strands trailing along her cheeks. I assumed she was the countess. She looked annoyed.
"Polizei?" she asked sharply.
I told her who I was and her stern attitude melted into one of mournful anguish.
"Oh, Herr Magruder, have you seen him? Gilbert, I mean."
"No, I'm afraid I haven't."
"Oh, mein Gott!" she exclaimed, breaking her voice and turning away.
My shock can be imagined. I knew instantly that some terrible ill had befallen my friend. Dumbly I stood and stared at the woman. After a few moments she turned back. Tears had gathered in her eyes.
"He is verschwunden. Since last night. I...er..." she blushed, "Well...er.. I went to his room to ask him something and he was not there. I waited. One hour. Zwei. He did not return. We have searched the castle itself, from turret to dungeon. He is not here. I have phoned the police to send over men to search the grounds. But perhaps you have any idea where he might be?" She looked intently at my lips, as if he might appear there. Her eyes were beautiful, kaleidoscopes of pale blues and greens flecked with chips of gold.
I hesitated. Not knowing whether I should tell her about Alandale's fascination with Maria Theresia, but her pleading look overcame my reluctance.
"Well, he did mention the tomb of Baroness Maria Theresia..."
Her face turned ashen.
"Nein!" she cried. "It cannot be. He promised...." She hid her face in her hands, began to sob, while I just stood there stupidly. What was there to say or do? Fortunately she recovered soon and shook her head briskly.
"We shall go and see," she said. "Come." Without waiting for a reply she marched down the slope into the bailey. I followed, wearily, too exhausted to do anything else. As we emerged from the castle the sun rose like a glittering diamond above the eastern mountains, drenching the scenery in a cold wet light. The countess went ahead to a graveyard behind the castle. A wild, luxuriant place, neglected for ages, the sagging headstones smothered in nettles and ferns, heavily scented with autumn decay.
The tomb had the shape of a monstrous coffin, black, about ten feet high and wide and several times as long. It was covered with ivy that was turning red in places, as if some old, bleeding dragon had slithered across it. A rusty, wrought-iron gate shut off a narrow passage that led into complete darkness. Without hesitation the countess dragged open the gate and went in. From a niche in the wall she took a lantern, lighted it and went on to open another door. It stuck. She looked at me questioningly. By now the sinister quality of my surroundings was getting to me. My heartbeat became slow and heavy. What would we find? Had Gilbert's madness finally driven him to some desperate deed?
"Um gotteswil," she said, "Help me. Don't just stand there."
I came forward gingerly and began to push against the door. It gave way with surprising ease, revealing only darkness. An abyss. My flesh tightened.
I hesitated to enter. With a disgusted grunt the countess brushed past me and froze.
"What's wrong?" I asked, my voice faltering.
"He's been here. Someone, at any rate." She held up the lamp. In the feeble light I saw a large stone coffin in the middle of the floor; its covering stone had been removed and stood leaning against it. The countess went in. I lingered at the door, marveling at the lady's courage. Holding up the light she went up to the coffin and looked in. I could not see her expression but saw her start. She returned hurriedly, her face a sullen mask of misery.
"The corpse is gone," she said.
"Jesus! What now?"
She gave me a withering look.
"You're not much help are you?" she said acidly.
"I'm sorry."
"Ja, so am I," She uttered a sigh, "I guess we'll just have to wait till the police gets here."
Slowly, without speaking, we returned to the castle. The bright autumn sun had cleared the mountains and was shining down with crystal splendor. As we approached the gate, she stopped and turned towards me.
"Are you sure you don't know something that might be of any help. Didn't
he say anything?"
I searched my memory.
"He spoke about the tomb....and about some tower from which Maria had jumped."
Her face lit up.
"The tower! Of course. We did not look there." She broke into a trot. I followed. We came to the ruin, a teeming jungle of stone and vegetation. A few pigeons flew up with clapping wings as we entered the shady courtyard. The tower loomed up awesomely. We entered. Part of the lower walls had fallen in and admitted shafts of white light. The hall had been gutted by fire. The ceiling was black and charred. The winding stairs along one of the walls had collapsed. The baroness looked about anxiously. No sign of Alandale anywhere. She hung her head and started to move out again, when I suddenly heard something. Music.
"Listen!" I whispered.
She halted.
Faintly, drifting down like snow, strange, ancient notes could be heard. They reminded me of John Dowland's haunting melancholy.
We both looked up at the ceiling. The countess shone her lantern up. There was only one opening, at the place where the stairs had once connected. The countess sprang into action.
"Come, schnell. We must get a ladder. Vielleicht we are not too late."
We raced each other to the main castle. She rounded up some servants and after they had gotten ropes and ladders we returned to the old tower. There the
the music seemed to have become louder. Strains of lute and viol, counterpoint.
Before long the servants had set up a ramshackle contraption that shuddered under our weight but served well enough to get the countess and myself to the first floor. A rope ladder lay on the floor. The countess rushed to the winding stairs, which were still intact here, and ascended them at a furious pace. I had trouble keeping up with her. After a lung-aching climb we reached the top floor. With its caved-in roof it resembled the empty rib cage of a dead whale. The purity of the blue sky seemed a sarcastic sneer under the circumstances.
This part of the building was largely in ruins, but one section appeared to have been spared and a massive, wooden door barred our way to it. The music was distinctly audible behind it. The countess flung herself against the woodwork, pummeling it with her fists.
"Gilbert, liebling," she cried, "Gilbert. Komm raus. Ich bitte dich."
There was no reaction. After a while she turned away from the door sobbing. I walked up to it, sinking to my knees to look through the keyhole. My heart faltered. Sure enough, there he was, Gilbert Alandale, my friend, and he was not alone. He was dancing with a female form wearing a dress that I remembered from the picture he had shown me. She had her back to me and her loosely frizzed hair had the unmistakable chestnut color of Maria Theresia. Alandale's face was haggard and deathly pale, but adorned by an ecstatic grin. I, too, banged on the door and shouted. To no avail. He gave not the slightest indication that he heard me. Although he did not seem in to be in any any immediate danger, there was something about that weird scene that filled me with agonizing terror. Perhaps because I did not understand what I was seeing. Had he really raised that fearful woman from the dead? Or was he performing this dance macabre with a dressed-up corpse? I banged and shouted some more, with the same result. Sick with anxiety I stared through the keyhole. The music stopped. Alandale set the woman in a high-backed chair, where she remained motionless. He moved out of my line of vision. The woman did not move, convincing me that she was really lifeless. I shuddered. The music started again. The same morbid, melancholy tune. Alandale returned. He looked down at the woman with a sickly smile. Then, under my horrified gaze, the woman rose, woodenly like a puppet but of her own accord. The expression on Alandale's face changed. His ecstasy vanished. Fear took its place. The woman advanced. They moved out of view. Above the music I heard him cry out.
"What is it, my love? Why do you look at me like this? What's wrong?"
Then his scream. It still rings in my ears during lonely nights. An outrageous, voice-renting howl, followed by noises of destruction and sudden, total silence.
The countess became hysterical. She flung herself against the door and clawed at the wood with her nails. I looked about for some means of breaking down the door. Among the rubble I found an iron bar. My concern for Gilbert gave me the strength I needed. I wrenched the door open. The countess rushed in. Me at her heels. Horror awaited us. Alandale was gone. The shutters that had closed the window hung open. Across the window sill, half inside, half out, lay the woman. The baroness went up to her, bent over, gasped and recoiled, hands before her face.
"What is it?" I yelled.
She could not speak. Her eyes were pools of horror. I walked to the window, placed my hands on the woman's shoulders to draw her back. My stomach turned as my fingers felt the emptiness under the thick fabric of her dress and I sprang back screaming, when she fell backwards and a white, gleaming skull parted from the rest of her body and went clattering across the floor, shedding its elaborate wig.
I fainted. It shames me, I know, but the exertions of the night and the dramatic turn of events had simply proved too much. When I came round again I was on a stretcher in the castle courtyard. I only stayed long enough to answer some formal questions of the police.
Explanations? I can't think of any that satisfy. Perhaps I only imagined the movement of the corpse. Perhaps he was only playing with the skeleton like some men play with inflatable dolls, but the fact remains that somehow it caused him to fall from the tower to his death in exactly the same way as Maria Theresia had three hundred and thirty-seven years before.