The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales by Mark Samuels Page A

explained, I have a guest in another part of the house. We are engaged in a séance. My wife is a medium.”
    Kugel crossed the room and slumped down into a chair. He rested his rifle against the arm, keeping it close at hand in case he had to deal sharply with this lunatic. He had read that such persons could become violent in an instant, a state often triggered by an individual who questioned their manias, rather than humouring them.
    “ Guest?” Kugel said. “So, you are entertaining someone with this séance? Only one other?”
    “ Yes, besides my wife and I.”
    “ Then,” Kugel replied, trying hard to conceal the smirk he felt taking possession of his face, “you must have ample provisions. I trust I make myself plain?”
    “ Stay right where you are Private Kugel. I will bring bread and cheese. Somewhere, too, I have a bottle of wine.”
    Once Kugel had greedily consumed his repast and drank most of the wine, he extracted his packet of cigarettes from inside his jacket, lit one with the candle on the table, drew on it, paused, and then blew out deep blue smoke into the air. The wine had made his thoughts hazy and tobacco aided his concentration.
    He flicked ash from the tip and addressed Steinberger again.
    “ So,” he said, “now I should like to observe this séance of yours.”
    Kugel had no interest in superstitious rubbish, but he knew that, in his own interests, he had to verify that what Steinberger had told him was true.
    Steinberger’s gaze flickered to the rifle at Kugel’s side. The soldier had not failed to notice this reaction. He was grateful for the weapon’s power of persuasion. He shouldered the rifle by its leather strap, got up and waved its gun barrel towards the hallway door.
    “ Lead on, Herr Steinberger,” he chuckled, stubbing out his cigarette on the floor with his boot, “and introduce me to your wife and guest.”
    Kugel wondered if she was as crazy as her husband.
    Steinberger bowed. Kugel followed the old man through a door into a narrow corridor until they reached another door at the end.
    “ Claudia my dear,” Steinberger said as he opened it, “we have another visitor.”
    Steinberger’s wife lay on a four-poster bed. She was an emaciated young woman with long black hair that fanned out across the white pillows beneath her head. There was something lupine about her long, bony face. But the strangeness of her features paled instantly in comparison with the sight of the guest seated on one side of the bed. Kugel almost reeled with shock. The “guest” was a black-suited corpse in a high-backed chair. Its face had been eaten away by worms and decay, leaving little more than a skull remaining. The Steinbergers are grave robbers, thought Kugel.
    He had seen a great deal, far too much, of the dead. He had been in close quarters with corpses before, both Germans and Russians, lying in battlefields. He was familiar with them. He knew their smell, the stomach-turning stench of decay, syrupy and cloying.
    Yes, he knew the dead. But he knew them only as victims of battle, as inert objects. To see one of those things turn towards him, to see it start at the unexpected appearance of the living—that was a sight he had never thought to experience. He had heard the local legends of corpses who came back to haunt the living and to feed off them. Vampyr, they were called, and he had laughed at the idea, nothing more than fairy tales to frighten children.
    Kugel recovered his composure and managed to get off a shot only when the corpse was halfway across the room and heading for the broken-open casement. He hit it square in its back, but the thing did not stop. It shuddered momentarily as if caught in a chilly draught and then kept going, crawling across the window ledge and out into the night air on all fours.
    Kugel went after it in pursuit. He looked back once, as he climbed through the window, and saw Steinberger framed in the doorway, leaning against the jamb for support. His