A Sharpness on the Neck

finally come loose somewhere.

… then there was no getting away from it. Crazy or not, it had really happened. Or most of it, the key parts. He had survived the guillotine. He was a vampire now. Brother to Legrand, and sister, no longer lover (the thought brought a pang of sharp regret) of Constantia the gypsy.

At last finding a gate that he could climb, he trudged away from the cemetery, moving in the direction where the city lights glowed brightest. Putting a finger in his mouth, he tested the sharpness of his teeth. Still one missing, ever since that brawl years ago in Philadelphia. The others' shape had not changed one iota, as far as he could tell. Not a bit pointier than they had ever been.

As he stumbled into a puddle it occurred to him to wonder why, if he had really undergone the tremendous transformation, he could not see better in the darkness?

He had walked a quarter of a mile from the cemetery, through darkened and almost completely deserted streets, before he found water in a drinkable form. Rainwater standing in a barrel, beside one of the outbuildings of a small church.

He drank and drank, slaking a terrible thirst, then plunged his whole head into the water, and pulled it out. Now, for the first time in days, it seemed, he began to feel completely awake. Brandy and vampire blood were slowly being purged from his system.

The rain had stopped again, and the unaccustomed shortness of his hair gave him a sense of coolness, and of liberation. Where his bandage had fallen off he could feel a tender scar.

But he had seen the bandage on that detached head, his own head, as it was held up by its hair…

Another sensation was finally becoming identifiable. He was desperately hungry.

So, I am one of them now. Or am I? Still he could not settle the matter, one way or the other, with any degree of satisfaction. He raised his arms, feeling his head with his fingers, testing its connection to his body. He seemed to be as totally in one piece as he had ever been. With tongue and fingers he once more tested the sharpness of his teeth. His skin flowed without interruption, smoothly from jaw to throat to chest—except for Constantia's tiny fang-marks—and save that he once more badly needed a shave; Marie's visit to his cell had been days ago.

The aftermath of brandy, seasoned with a few drops of genuine vampire-blood, was still throbbing in his head. Yesterday's unsurpassable delight still lay as this morning's cold nausea in the stomach.

There, for an hour or two, he had known beyond all doubt that he was a vampire…

With the directions for reaching Dr. Curtius's museum fixed in his mind, Radcliffe plodded doggedly on his way.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Radcliffe, moving with a strange sense of freedom, even a growing (and dangerous) perception of his own invulnerability, found his way to the Boulevard du Temple with only a couple of wrong turnings. Once he asked directions from a streetcleaner, and the man, assured by his provincial accent that he was from out of town, gave him directions willingly. Fortunately no one bothered him about papers.

Philip had never before visited the House of Wax. In prison he had heard from Marie Grosholtz herself that she expected soon to inherit the property and the business from Dr. Curtius. It stood on a broad street that must be briskly busy in the daytime.

A prominent signboard, and now just above that a painted banner, faced the street, each declaring that this place was the Salon de Cire.

The sun was not yet quite up when Radcliffe arrived, but every minute more people were stirring in the streets, and soon traffic would be heavy. Not wishing to be conspicuous, he paused outside the first side door he came to in the big building and uncertainly experimented, half-willing himself to pass through the narrow crevice. He was not really surprised to find himself unable to pass through knife-edge cracks beside doors, or melt his body into mist. But maybe, he thought, this whole structure counted as a dwelling.

In keeping with a growing sense that things were being made easy for him this morning, his way somehow smoothed, Philip found a door toward the rear of the main building standing slightly ajar, as though someone had forgotten to close it.

Listening, he could hear faint snores from open windows in the upper stories, where he thought there must be living quarters.

He entered through the door he had found open and quietly pulled it shut behind him. He was standing in a dim, drab corridor, more closed doors on either side. The first one he tried showed him a broom closet. The second, a kind of storeroom, very much larger.

Led by his instincts, and a growing curiosity, he went in.

Working his way silently into the large storeroom, Radcliffe moved among the silent and unmoving shapes of lifeless kings and queens, prelates and murderers, admirals and generals.

The first bright glow of the morning's daylight caught his eye, entering the room through a high window. Looking where that light fell upon a set of shelves, Philip Radcliffe came face to face with his own severed, lifeless head.

When the world had righted itself again, he approached the shelf and helped himself to another, closer look. He had needed only a second to realize that this must be the model made by Marie Grosholtz. Now he could appreciate her artistry.

There was the white bandage, stuck on amid the short, dark hair which was indistinguishable from his own hair… because, Radcliffe realized with sudden insight, raising a hand to his scalp, it was his own, trimmed from his head in his prison cell by Marie herself on the day when she had made her plaster cast.

Other details besides the bandage distinguished his simulacrum from all the others present in the room. The glassy eyes were half open, the coloring a muddy pallor. Shading on cheeks and chin suggested the growth of a few days' beard.

With an effort he put out a hand and seized the thing by its—no, by his own hair— and tilted it. The raw neck-surface now exposed was mottled red, and from it protruded narrow tubes of rubber, their ends stained brightly in the color of fresh blood.

Radcliffe was still pondering his discovery, when some subtle sound, a change in atmosphere, informed him that he was not alone.

He turned to confront a figure, which was much more than a mere image, though it was standing as motionless as the surrounding shapes of wax and wood and cloth.

Monsieur Legrand, smiling faintly, bowed to his young friend in silent greeting.

Radcliffe felt a sudden surge of anger, born of the memory of terror and despair that could never be forgotten. 'So, the sentence has been carried out, has it?' he blurted. 'Perhaps you didn't notice. I've been beheaded!' The young man spoke through his teeth in a strained voice.

Legrand, blinking, seemed utterly taken aback. At last, his own anger stirred, he got out: 'What is this idiocy?'

The young man took half a step toward him. 'Have you forgotten that I was taken to the guillotine?… My head has been…' Radcliffe's hands flew through a sequence of shaky and elaborate gestures. Meanwhile he continued to glare at Legrand, as if daring him to confirm or disprove his claim. 'The gypsy told me. She told me what you were going to do! To change me into a—a—' He struggled and failed to name the object of his scorn, but it was plain from his tone that the idea now aroused his disgust.

* * *

Upset at what seemed to me a profound lack of gratitude, I glared back at him without sympathy, but rather with a full measure of contempt. 'I shall tell you what has happened to your head: It has been filled with brandy and with nonsense!' After venting my annoyance in a string of oaths in antique languages, I seized him by the shirt-front and shook him—still rather gently.