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.When he again lifted the lid off Lucy’s coffin we all looked—Arthur trembling like an aspen—and saw that the body lay there in all its death-beauty.But there was no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy’s shape without her soul.I could see even Arthur’s face grow hard as he looked.Presently 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 shall 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 become 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 ,em 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 children whose blood she suck are not as yet so much the worse; but if she live on, Un-Dead, more and more they lose their blood, and by her power over them they come to her; and so she draw their blood with that so wicked mouth.But if she die in truth, then all cease; the tiny wounds of the throats disappear, and they go back to their plays unknowing ever of what has been.But of the most blessed of all, when this now Un-Dead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free.Instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilation of it by day, she shall take her place with the other Angels.So that, my friend, it will be a blessed hand for her that shall strike the blow that sets her free.To this I am willing; but is there none amongst us who has a better right? Will it be no joy to think of hereafter in the silence of the night when sleep is not: “It was my hand that sent her to the stars; it was the hand of him that loved her best; the hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose”? Tell me if there be such a one amongst us?’We all looked at Arthur.He saw, too, what we all did, the infinite kindness which suggested that his should be the hand which would restore Lucy to us as a holy, and not an unholy, memory; he stepped forward and said bravely, though his hand trembled, and his face was as pale as snow:—‘My true friend, from the bottom of my broken heart I thank you.Tell me what I am to do, and I shall not falter!’ Van Helsing laid a hand on his shoulder, and said:—‘Brave lad! A moment’s courage, and it is done.This stake must be driven through her.It will be a fearful ordeal—be not deceived in that—but it will be only a short time, and you will then rejoice more than your pain was great; from this grim tomb you will emerge as though you tread on air.But you must not falter when once you have begun.Only think that we, your true friends, are round you, and that we pray for you all the time.’‘Go on,’ said Arthur hoarsely.‘Tell me what I am to do.’‘Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place the point over the heart, and the hammer in your right.Then when we begin our prayer for the dead—I shall read him, I have here the book, and the others shall follow—strike in God’s name, that so all may be well with the dead that we love, and that the Un-Dead pass away.’Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered.Van Helsing opened his missal and began to read, and Quincey and I followed as well as we could.Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh.Then he struck with all his might [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]