he said to Van Helsing:--
Is this really Lucy s body, or only a demon in her shape?
It is her body, and yet not it. But wait a while, and you all see her
as she was, and is.
She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there; the pointed teeth,
the bloodstained, voluptuous mouth--which it made one shudder to
see--the whole carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a
devilish mockery of Lucy s sweet purity. Van Helsing, with his usual
methodicalness, began taking the various contents from his bag and
placing them ready for use. First he took out a soldering iron and some
plumbing solder, and then a small oil-lamp, which gave out, when lit in
a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at fierce heat with a blue
flame; then his operating knives, which he placed to hand; and last a
round wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick and about
three feet long. One end of it was hardened by charring in the fire, and
was sharpened to a fine point. With this stake came a heavy hammer, such
as in households is used in the coal-cellar for breaking the lumps. To
me, a doctor s preparations for work of any kind are stimulating and
bracing, but the effect of these things on both Arthur and Quincey was
to cause them a sort of consternation. They both, however, kept their
courage, and remained silent and quiet.
When all was ready, Van Helsing said:--
Before we do anything, let me tell you this; it is out of the lore and
experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers
of the Un-Dead. When they become such, there comes with the change the
curse of immortality; they cannot die, but must go on age after age
adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world; for all that
die from the preying of the Un-Dead becomes themselves Un-Dead, and prey
on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the
ripples from a stone thrown in the water. Friend Arthur, if you had met
that kiss which you know of before poor Lucy die; or again, last night
when you open your arms to her, you would in time, when you had died,
have become _nosferatu_, as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would
all time make more of those Un-Deads that so have fill us with horror.
The career of this so unhappy dear lady is but just begun. Those
219