Hello! I've not made a proper introduction on Hive.blog and I hope it's OK to post this here in Writers Inc
As an avid reader of ancient tomes, my interests run to obscure stories from times long gone. I enjoy re-working out of copyright novels and stories and I'd like to share some for your enjoyment.
I find the language and writing techniques have become old-fashioned and dated and I'd like to bring them back to life - to resurrect them for your viewing pleasure.
I found this one in an old anthology of Vampire stories. The original story was published as a 'Penny Dreadful' in the 19th Century and is celebrated as the first Vampire story published by a woman. After doing a little more research, it would seem that the accolade is a dubious one. Elizabeth Grey, the alleged Author of this story has a little more background. You can read it Here - I shan't bore you with the details.
The original story can be seen in the pictures as I don't want to chance plagiarism. I think you'll be able to read it.
The Skeleton Count and The Vampire Mistress
Count Rodolph, after his pact with the Prince of Darkness, ended his study of alchemy and abandoned the search for the elixir of life. He no longer had need of either. Not only was he certain of a long life, the Devil told him how vain he was to try. The Count didn’t give up on all the occult sciences of magic, he continued to dabble. He frequently passed day after day studying the writings of Aristotle, Pliny, Lucretius, Josephus, Iamblicus, Sprenger, Cardan, and the learned Michael Psellus. Unsatisfied, he was as far as ever from the knowledge he desired. The writings of ancient philosophers only plunged him into deeper doubt, and at last, he decided to move on to experimentation, and put his half-formed theories to the test.
After study of human anatomy, and many operations, the Count experimented on the corpse of a man hanged for robbery and murder. He stole the body from the gibbet in the dead of night, and took it to Ravensburg Castle, with the assistance of two ressurectionists. The Count decided to exhume the corpse of someone recently dead, and attempt its reanimation.
The formula of necromancers for raising the dead were not sufficient for their restoration to life, but only for a temporary revivification. However, in the library of the castle, he found an old Greek manuscript. A recipe for a miraculous distilled liquid gave him hope for success in his experiment.
Count Rodolph gathered the herbs at midnight, exactly as the Greek manuscript prescribed and distilled a clear gold-coloured liquid of very little taste, but powerful and pleasant aroma. He decanted the liquid into a phial for use immediately. A peasant’s daughter, a beautiful girl, about sixteen years old, had died suddenly, and was to be buried the next day. He set out to Heidelberg to find the men who had helped him in removing the corpse from the gibbet, and the Count returned to Ravensburg Castle, to prepare his experiment.
At midnight, he slunk from the castle and made his way to the church-yard of the neighbouring village.
It was a fine night, but all the villagers were asleep, unsuspecting, and the would-be Ressurectionist entered the church-yard unnoticed. He found his hired grave-robbers waiting for him in the shadow of the wall. They clambered over the wall, armed with shovels and a sack to contain the corpse, they set to work. The fresh broken earth was soon thrown off from the lid of the coffin, which was easily removed, and the dead girl lay at what should have been her final rest.
The corpse of the girl was lifted from the coffin and deposited on the side of the grave, which they hastily filled up. They put the girl’s corpse in the sack and once they removed every trace of the theft, one of them took the sack on his shoulders. When he was tired, his comrade relieved him, and in that manner, they reached the castle. Count Rodolph led the way up the narrow stairs leading to his study chamber in the eastern turret, and deposited the corpse on the floor. They stood nervously waiting for the Count to give them the money he promised and were glad to make a speedy exit from a place which rumour began to associate with deeds of darkness and horror.
The Count lit an oil lamp, which cast a livid and flickering light upon the many strange and mysterious objects in the chamber, and made the pale expression of the corpse appear more ghastly and horrible. Count Rodolph proceeded to strip the body of its grave-clothes, which he carefully folded and hid away. He was mindful that the sight of them, when the girl returned to life, might strike her with a sudden horror which could prove fatal to the success of his experiment. He then placed the corpse in the centre of a magic circle drawn on the floor of the study, and covered it with a sheet. He had some clothes ready for her, and he placed them on the table.
The girl had been a maiden of unsurpassed loveliness. No painter or sculptor could have desired a finer study, no poet a more inspiring theme. As she lay stretched out on the floor of the study, she looked like some beautiful carving in alabaster, or rather like a waxen figure. Her long black hair was shaded with a purple gloss, like the plumage of the raven, but her angelic face was discoloured with the pallid hue of death.
Count Rodolph took a magic wand. He placed one end on the breast of the corpse, and proceeded to recite the words by which necromancers call to life the recently dead. When he had finished, an awful silence reigned in the turret. He took a gasp of anticipation as he watched the sheet gently stirred by the quivering of the limbs. Then a shudder encompassed his frame in spite of himself, as he saw the eyes of the corpse slowly open, and the dark dilated pupils fix their gaze on him with a strange and indifferent glare.
The limbs moved, at first erratically, but soon with a stronger and more natural motion, and then the young girl raised herself to a sitting position on the floor of the study and stared about her in a wild manner. For a moment, Rodolph feared the object of his experiment would prove a wretched idiot or a raving lunatic.
Suddenly, he thought of the restorative liquid, and snatching the phial from a shelf, he poured a hefty dose of the contents down the throat of the resuscitated girl. Then a portion of the intellect which allies man to the angels seemed to infuse into her mind, and it beamed from her dark and lustrous eyes. Her gaze rested with a soft and tender expression on the handsome face of the young count. Her snowy bosom, from which the sheet had fallen when she sat up from the floor, heaved with the returning warmth of renewed life. The Count of Ravensburg gazed upon her with mingled sensations of wonder and delight.
As the current of life was restored, and rushed along her veins with tingling warmth, the blush of instinctive modesty flushed her skin, and she pulled the sheet to cover her bosom. She rose to her feet, with her long black hair hanging about her shoulders, and her dark eyes cast to the floor. Count Rodolph directed her attention to the clothing and he withdrew from the study while the lovely object of his scientific experiment dressed herself.
When the Count of Ravensburg returned to his study, the girl was sitting before the fire, dressed in the clothes he had provided for her, and he thought that he had never seen a lovelier specimen of womanhood. She rose when he entered, and kissed his hand, as though he were a superior being. She would have remained standing, with head bowed as if in the presence of a being from another world, if he had not gently forced her to resume her seat. He asked about the state of her feelings since her return to life, but he found she had no memory of her previous existence. All her feelings were new and strange, like those of Eve bursting from the rib of Adam. In her mysterious journey from life to death, and from death to new life, she had lost all her previous ideas and beliefs. All her experience of the past, all knowledge she had ever acquired were gone and she had become a child of nature, simple and unsophisticated as a creature of the woods; with all the keen perceptions and untrained instincts of the untutored savage.
The young girl had braided her glossy black hair, and her cheeks blushed with a colour that might test a painter’s skill, so rich yet delicate its hue. The young count felt himself irresistibly attracted towards the girl, despite the knowledge that it was his science that had endowed her with such a mysterious and preternatural existence. She regarded the handsome Rodolph with the wild, yet tender passion of frail humanity, mingled with the gratitude and devotion which she thought due to one who stood before her as her creator.
The feelings which had so rapidly sprung up in her heart towards the only human of whom she had any knowledge, became akin to religious idolatry, mingled with more coarse, base, and instinctive urges.
‘Thou art gloriously beautiful, my Bertha!’ said the count, passionately taking her in his arms. ‘Say that thou wilt be mine, and make me thy happy slave; thou should’st be loving as thou art lovable, beautiful child of mystery!’
‘Love thee!’ Bertha said, a soft and tender expression in the clear depths of her dark eyes. ‘I adore thee, my creator; my soul bows itself before thee, yet my heart leaps at thy glance, though I fear it is presumptuous for the work of thy hands to look on thee with eyes of love.’
‘Sweet, ingenuous creature!’ cried the Count of Ravensburg, kissing her lips and glowing cheeks. ‘It is I who should worship thee! Thou art mine, Bertha, now and forever. Henceforth I live only in thy smile!’
‘Forever! Shall I remain with thee forever? Oh, joy incomparable! My heart’s idol, I adore thee!’ and the beautiful Bertha wound her white arms about his neck, and pressed her lips to his. In the new existence which she now enjoyed, her feelings knew no restraint, and she yielded to every impulse of her passionate nature.
‘Come, my Bertha,’ Rodolph said, enraptured. ‘This solitary turret must not be thy world; come with me, thy Rodolph, and be the mistress of Ravensburg Castle, as thou art already of its owner’s heart.’
Putting his arm around the waist of the mysterious maiden, Rodolph took the lamp, and they proceeded with noiseless steps to his bedroom, where the first faint blush of day witnessed the consummation of their desires.
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