Varney the Vampire | Page 7

curdles the very blood in my veins to hear
it."
The man took the crow-bar, and with some difficulty succeeded in
introducing it between the door and the side of the wall--still it required

great strength to move it, but it did move, with a harsh, crackling
sound.
"Push it!" cried he who was using the bar, "push the door at the same
time."
The younger man did so. For a few moments the massive door resisted.
Then, suddenly, something gave way with a loud snap--it was a part of
the lock,--and the door at once swung wide open.
How true it is that we measure time by the events which happen within
a given space of it, rather than by its actual duration.
To those who were engaged in forcing open the door of the antique
chamber, where slept the young girl whom they named Flora, each
moment was swelled into an hour of agony; but, in reality, from the
first moment of the alarm to that when the loud cracking noise heralded
the destruction of the fastenings of the door, there had elapsed but very
few minutes indeed.
"It opens--it opens," cried the young man.
"Another moment," said the stranger, as he still plied the
crowbar--"another moment, and we shall have free ingress to the
chamber. Be patient."
This stranger's name was Marchdale; and even as he spoke, he
succeeded in throwing the massive door wide open, and clearing the
passage to the chamber.
To rush in with a light in his hand was the work of a moment to the
young man named Henry; but the very rapid progress he made into the
apartment prevented him from observing accurately what it contained,
for the wind that came in from the open window caught the flame of
the candle, and although it did not actually extinguish it, it blew it so
much on one side, that it was comparatively useless as a light.
"Flora--Flora!" he cried.
Then with a sudden bound something dashed from off the bed. The
concussion against him was so sudden and so utterly unexpected, as
well as so tremendously violent, that he was thrown down, and, in his
fall, the light was fairly extinguished.
All was darkness, save a dull, reddish kind of light that now and then,
from the nearly consumed mill in the immediate vicinity, came into the
room. But by that light, dim, uncertain, and flickering as it was, some
one was seen to make for the window.

Henry, although nearly stunned by his fall, saw a figure, gigantic in
height, which nearly reached from the floor to the ceiling. The other
young man, George, saw it, and Mr. Marchdale likewise saw it, as did
the lady who had spoken to the two young men in the corridor when
first the screams of the young girl awakened alarm in the breasts of all
the inhabitants of that house.
The figure was about to pass out at the window which led to a kind of
balcony, from whence there was an easy descent to a garden.
Before it passed out they each and all caught a glance of the side-face,
and they saw that the lower part of it and the lips were dabbled in blood.
They saw, too, one of those fearful-looking, shining, metallic eyes
which presented so terrible an appearance of unearthly ferocity.
No wonder that for a moment a panic seized them all, which paralysed
any exertions they might otherwise have made to detain that hideous
form.
But Mr. Marchdale was a man of mature years; he had seen much of
life, both in this and in foreign lands; and he, although astonished to the
extent of being frightened, was much more likely to recover sooner
than his younger companions, which, indeed, he did, and acted
promptly enough.
"Don't rise, Henry," he cried. "Lie still."
Almost at the moment he uttered these words, he fired at the figure,
which then occupied the window, as if it were a gigantic figure set in a
frame.
The report was tremendous in that chamber, for the pistol was no toy
weapon, but one made for actual service, and of sufficient length and
bore of barrel to carry destruction along with the bullets that came from
it.
"If that has missed its aim," said Mr. Marchdale, "I'll never pull a
trigger again."
As he spoke he dashed forward, and made a clutch at the figure he felt
convinced he had shot.
The tall form turned upon him, and when he got a full view of the face,
which he did at that moment, from the opportune circumstance of the
lady returning at the instant with a light she had been to her own
chamber to procure, even he, Marchdale, with all his courage, and that