The Vampires of London
Sebastian Alexander
Vampires of London
Copyright © Sebastian Alexander 2011
Woodcut by Pieter van der Borcht (1577)
The priest addressed Unas with these words: “O Unas, you have not departed dead, you have departed alive to sit upon the throne of the underworld."
Pyramid text south wall.
So you found my letter in this old chair! I placed it here for you! Is this fate you may ask?-Take a seat, make yourself comfortable, and read my tale, but let us wait a while to talk of such things as fate.
Since the death of my only living relative my beloved grandmother, who cared for and nourished me up until the age of eighteen; whose heart contained only love and kindness; and who was pursued relentlessly to her death by that hellhound consumption. I had fallen on the hardest of times, such that the last few years had been quiet wretched to me, leaving me homeless and utterly destitute. Only by begging was I able to acquire the money for food, and at nightfall I slept wherever I could find shelter.
I was damp, cold and desperately in need of a place to stay on that late October evening in Deptford, a place of great age that carries on its body all the tell tale scars and scabs of squalor and depravation. The more time I spent looking for a place to stay the damper and more chilled I was becoming; Rainwater tumbled down the cobbled streets, overpowering the capacity of the drains, where the water bubbled, heaved and swirled into mini maelstroms. I tramped the cobbled twisting lanes around the back streets, through and around puddles I staggered, lurching from one side to the other like a drunk, as random guttering sprayed forth water in great fountains. I felt I was witness to the great flood itself, and imagined Deptford struck down below the ocean like Atlantis. My overcoat was soaking through to my skin, and the holes in my shoes into which previously I had placed cardboard, in a vain attempt to stem the flood had now let in the cold rainwater; saturating my feet and leaving them numb.
So as not to add further complication to my situation, by adding sickness of body to my already fragile state of mind, I concluded that it had become quiet urgent, as daylight was drawing to a close to find a place to stay; where I could get warm and dry.
After much weary trudging through desperate areas I found myself within Norway Street overlooking Deptford Creek; where ships once unloaded wares brought from around the world down the artery of the Thames. Buildings in this street were mostly of impressive grandeur, merchant properties that appeared to have elbowed their way out from amongst the surrounding hovels.
One Building stood massive with its frontage jutting forward like the prow of some great dark ship; I imagined that once fine wares from the four corners of the world would have passing through its great oak doors, but alas no more, this place had long been passed over and forgotten; boarded up like so many others, as trade passing down the Thames had turned from a broad healthy flow into a meandering sickly trickle; then becoming as the Creek itself, disused, silted up and hemmed in.
The façade of this dark place was bristling with rotting ornamentation; marble phoenix like birds whose wings spanned the bay of each window appeared caught by their feet mid flight in what appeared to be their frantic attempt at escaping from the rotting edifice; the building had a thick set mausoleum like quality to its exterior, with the front of the house being covered in red and black marble; stars, lozenges and squares ran around the building, and all was executed in a hotchpotch style, with bits and pieces that seemed washed up from various parts of the world. The marble was shot through with ragged streaks giving me the impression that at one stage this place had displeased some deity and had been duly struck with a punishing bolt of lightning; great black granite steps marked out the entrance, where a porch with stained glass marked out the words Osiris House.
No entrance was available from the front as planks of wood and cages of metalwork covered the front door and windows, so I took the first turning around the side of the house, and made my way around the back along a narrow dirt path trapped between the exterior wall and a dense thicket. The path was uneven and had me sliding on mud, as wild and dirty branches and twigs scraped my face and tore at my clothes, a high wall topped with ornate iron fencing provided an impenetrable barrier, but part of the way around subsidence had claimed a small section of the wall, that enabled me to get into what once may have been described as a garden.
Compared to the green and vibrant thicket that grew outside of the wall, within the enclosure, an all consuming blanket of dead scrub suffocated the court to its very extremity. The excess hinted at a once vigorous, wild and unkempt growth, but now everything appeared damp, moulding and lifeless; ancient stone antiquities haunted the scene in vine entangled poses, some displaying only a limb here a head there through the mass of dead foliage. The whole scene appeared darkly enchanted as if once living creatures had been strangled by briars, turned to stone and there entombed.
There was a muddy and well-worn path forming a tunnel through the briars leading to an entrance at the side of the house. The door was old and lay misshapen and half drunk in its frame; it was only the fall of the door which kept it shut, so with nothing more than a gentle pull, I found myself within a narrow damp service passage below ground. Ahead of me a small flight of irregular steps had me stumbling in the dark; they climbed steeply opened up into what appeared to be the main hallway landing.
The whole affair was lit from the world outside, with garish coloured light that pierced through the dirty stained glass of the front door. The colours were not fresh but gave the hallway a sickly look with unearthly highlights upon an interior of stagnant decrepitude. A dismal vision came upon me filling me with angst, triggered by the sickly sweet dank smell of the hallway, and the appalling light cast like that of a funerary chapel. I tried to pull my thoughts away but this place cast my thoughts dark and brooding, I was transported for a few nauseating moments to the sick room of my beloved dying grandmothers bed chamber; where I paid witness to her final agonies of dying ; Such was the atmosphere and condition of this house, driven to live on beyond what was seemly or kind ,and as a consequence had become stricken with some form of creeping paralysis and putrefaction ,that was causing it to fall apart and rot in slow motion.
Pictures still hung in the hallway but were now overgrown with black slime; they appeared as though struck by some awful pestilence, turning what once may have been pleasant portraits into a ghastly gallery of ghouls. I leaned forward so as to gain a better view of one of the portraits, only to be assaulted by the stifling vapours of mould and decay. I choked out a cough, and the sound echoed through all the dark and dismal passageways and rooms that made up this place; my minds eye flew with the reverberation, conjuring images of rot and abandon; I felt my flesh creep, for I felt I had inadvertently announced to the entire house – Awaken! Something living moves within you!
The main hallway extended at some considerable distance away from the front door, off into the dark, where chinks of light from some external source, pierced through the blackness, casting jaundiced sulphurous pools upon the floor. As I walked the dim passageway, the floor felt quiet uneven and mushy in texture, the containment of the corridor providing no vent for the fearful putrefying slurry that carpeted the area; bringing to my mind the vision of a lead lined coffin sluiced with black and festering liquor most often found within. As my eyes adjusted to the lighting I was able to make out at the end of the hallway a large room to the right, and on the left stairs rose off into the tar like blackness, my nerves would not let me explore upstairs as further exploration might see me plummeting to my death through some unseen hole in the floor, such was the condition of the house.
Within the poorly
lit room I could make out some oddments of furniture and a fireplace, the room seemed dry and habitable, so I set about breaking up some of the smaller pieces of furniture to use as kindling for the fire; and so with the assistance of some dry paper from my tobacco tin I soon had a little fire going; it’s surprising how a fire can lift ones spirits even in the most pitiable of circumstance. As the fire took hold I was able to survey the room in slightly more detail, light being thrown up high onto the walls and ceiling. The ceiling was very high and cavernous, with ornate plaster work around its edge; framing a spectacular oval painting at its centre. The painting as far as I could make out was a well executed painting of an ancient Egyptian theme,