VARNEY, THE VAMPYRE;
                                    OR,
                             THE FEAST OF BLOOD.

                                Chapter XLV.

THE OPEN GRAVES. -- THE DEAD BODIES. -- A SCENE OF TERROR.


     We have said Waggles spoilt everything, and so he did, for before Mr.
Leigh could utter a word more, or advance a few steps towards the rioters,
Waggles charged them staff in hand, and there soon ensued a riot of a most
formidable description.

     A kind of desperation seemed to have seized the beadle, and certainly, by
his sudden and unexpected attack, he achieved wonders.  When, however, a dozen
hands got hold of the staff, and it was wrenched from him, and he was knocked
down, and half- a-dozen people rolled over him, Waggles was not near the man
he had been, and he would have been very well content to have lain quiet where
he was; this however, he was not permitted to do for two or three, who had
felt what a weighty instrument of warfare a parochial staff was, lifted him
bodily from the ground, and canted him over the wall, without much regard to
whether he fell on a hard or a soft place on the other side.

     This feat accomplished, no further attention was paid to Mr. Leigh, who,
finding that his exhortations were quite unheeded, retired into the church
with an appearance of deep affliction about him, and locked himself in the
vestry.

     The crowd now had entire possession -- without even the sort of control
that an exhortation assumed over them -- of the burying-ground, and soon in a
dense mass were these desperate and excited people collected round the well-
known spot where lay the mortal remains of Miles, the butcher.

     "Silence!" cried a loud voice, and every one obeyed the mandate, looking
towards the speaker, who was a tall, gaunt- looking man, attired in a suit of
faded black, and who now pressed forward to the front of the throng.

     "Oh!" cried one, "it's Fletcher, the ranter.  What does he do here?"

     "Hear him! hear him!" cried others; "he won't stop us."

     "Yes, hear him," cried the tall man, waving his arms about like the sails
of a windmill.  "Yes, hear him.  Sons of darkness; you're all vampyres, and
are continually sucking the life-blood from each other.  No wonder that the
evil one has power over you all.  You're as men who walk in the darkness when
the sunlight invites you, and you listen often to the words of humanity when
those of a diviner origin are offered to your acceptance.  But there shall be
miracles in the land, and even in this place, set apart with a pretended piety
that is in itself most damnable, you shall find an evidence of the true light;
and the proof that those who will follow me the true path to glory shall be
found here within this grave.  Dig up Miles, the butcher!"

     "Hear, hear, hear, hurra!" said everybody.  "Mr. Fletcher's not such a
fool, after all.  He means well."

     "Yes, you sinners," said the ranter, "and if you find Miles, the butcher,
decaying -- even as men are expected to decay whose mortal tabernacles are
placed within the bowels of the earth -- you shall gather from that a great
omen, and a sign that if you follow me you seek the Lord; but if you find him
looking fresh and healthy, as if the warm blood was still within his veins,
you shall take that likewise as a signification that what I say to you shall
be as the Gospel, and that by coming to the chapel of the Little Boozlehum, ye
shall achieve great salvation."

     "Very good," said a brawny fellow, advancing with a spade in his hand;
"you get out of the way, and I'll soon have him up. Here goes like blue
blazes!"

     The first shovelful of earth he took up, he cast over his head into the
air, so that it fell in a shower among the mob, which of course raised a shout
of indignation; and, as he continued so to dispose of the superfluous earth, a
general row seemed likely to ensue.  Mr. Fletcher opened his mouth to make a
remark, and, as that feature of his face was rather a capacious one, a
descending lump of mould, of a clayey consistency, fell into it, and got so
wedged among his teeth, that in the process of extracting it he nearly brought
some of those essential portions of his anatomy with it.

     This was a state of things that could not last long, and he who had been
so liberal with his spadesful of mould was speedily disarmed, and yet he was a
popular favourite, and had done the thing so good-humouredly, that nobody
touched him.  Six or eight others, who had brought spades and pickaxes, now
pushed forward to the work, and in an incredibly short space of time the grave
of Miles, the butcher, seemed to be very nearly excavated.

     Work of any kind or nature whatever, is speedily executed when done with
a wish to get through it; and never, perhaps, within the memory of man, was a
grave opened in that churchyard with such a wonderful celerity.  The
excitement of the crowd grew intense -- every available spot from which a view
of the grave could he got, was occupied; for the last few minutes scarcely a
remark had been uttered, and when, at last, the spade of one of whose who were
digging, struck upon something that sounded like wood, you might have heard a
pin drop, and each one there present drew his breath more shortly than before.

     "There he is," said the man, whose spade struck upon the coffin.

     Those few words broke the spell, and there was a general murmur, while
every individual present seemed to shift his position in his anxiety to obtain
a better view of what was about to ensue.

     The coffin now having been once found, there seemed to be an increased
impetus given to the work; the earth was thrown out with a rapidity that
seemed almost the quick result of the working of some machine; and those
closest to the grave's brink crouched down, and, intent as they were upon the
progress of events, heeded not the damp earth that fell upon them, nor the
frail brittle and humid remains of humanity that occasionally rolled to their
feet  It was, indeed, a scene of intense excitement -- a scene which only
wanted a few prominent features in its foreground of a more intellectual and
higher cast than composed the mob, to make it a fit theme for a painter of the
highest talent.

     And now the last few shovelfuls of earth that hid the top of the coffin
were cast from the grave, and that narrow house which contained the mortal
remains of him who was so well known, while in life, to almost every one then
present, was brought to the gaze of eyes which never had seemed likely to have
looked upon him again.

     The cry was now for ropes, with which to raise the cumbrous mass; but
these were not to be had, no one thought of providing himself with such
appliances, so that by main strength, only, could the coffin be raised to the
brink.

     The difficulty of doing this was immense, for there was nothing tangible
to stand upon; and even when the mould from the sides was sufficiently cleared
away, that the handles of the coffin could be laid hold of, they came away
immediately in the grasp of those who did so.

     But the more trouble that presented itself to the accomplishment of the
designs of the mob, the more intent that body seemed upon carrying out to the
full extent their original designs.

     Finding it quite impossible by bodily strength to raise the coffin of the
butcher from the position in which it had got embedded by excessive rains, a
boy was hastily despatched to the village for ropes, and never did boy run
with such speed before, for all his own curiosity was excited in the issue of
an adventure, that to his young imagination was appallingly interesting.

     As impatient as mobs usually are, they had not time, in this case, for
the exercise of that quality of mind before the boy came back with the
necessary means of exerting quite a different species of power against the
butcher's coffin.

     Strong ropes were slid under the inert mass, and twenty hands at once
plied the task of raising that receptacle of the dead from what had been
presumed to be its last resting-place. The ropes strained and creaked, and
many thought that they would burst asunder sooner than raise the coffin of the
defunct butcher.

     It is singular what reasons people find for backing their opinion.

     "You may depend he's a vampyre," said one, "or it wouldn't be so
difficult to get him out of the grave."

     "Oh, there can be no mistake about that," said one; "when did a natural
Christian's coffin stick in the mud in that way?"

     "Ah, to be sure," said another; "I knew no good would come of his goings
on; he never was a decent sort of man like his neighbours, and many queer
things have been said of him that I have no doubt are true enough, if we did
but know the rights of them."

     "Ah, but," said a young lad, thrusting his head between the two who were
talking, "if he is a vampyre, how does he get out of his coffin of a night
with all that weight of mould a top of him?"

     One of the men considered for a moment, and then finding no rational
answer occur to him, he gave the boy a box on the ear, saying,--

     "I should like to know what business that is of yours? Boys, now-a-days,
ain't like the boys in my time; they think nothing now of putting their spoke
in grown-up people's wheels, just as if their opinions were of any
consequence."

     Now by a vigorous effort, those who were tugging at the ropes succeeded
in moving the coffin a little, and that first step was all the difficulty, for
it was loosened from that adhesive soil in which it lay, and now came up with
considerable facility.

     There was a half shout of satisfaction at this result, while some of the
congregation turned pale, and trembled at the prospect of the sight which was
about to present itself; the coffin was dragged from the grave's brink fairly
among the long rank grass that flourished in the churchyard, and then they all
looked at it for a time, and the men who had been most earnest in raising it
wiped the perspiration from their brows, and seemed to shrink from the task of
opening that receptacle of the dead now that it was fairly in their power so
to do.

     Each man looked anxiously in his neighbours' face, and several audibly
wondered why somebody else didn't open the coffin.

     "There's no harm in it," said one; "if he's a vampyre, we ought to know
it; and, if he ain't, we can't do any hurt to a dead man."

     "Oughten't we to have the service for the dead?" said one.

     "Yes," said the impertinent boy who had before received the knock on the
head, "I think we ought to have that read, back- wards."

     This ingenious idea was recompensed by a great many kicks and cuffs,
which ought to have been sufficient to have warned him of the great danger of
being a little before his age in wit.

     "Where's the use of shirking the job?" cried he who had been so active in
shoveling the mud upon the multitude; "why, you cowardly sneaking set of
humbugs, you're half afraid, now."

     "Afraid -- afraid!" cried everybody; "who's afraid?"

     "Ah, who's afraid?" said a little man, advancing, and assuming an heroic
attitude; "I always notice, if anybody's afraid, it's some big fellow, with
more bones than brains."

     At this moment, the man to whom this reproach was more particularly
leveled, raised a horrible shout of terror, and cried out, in frantic accents,
--

     "He's a-coming -- he's a-coming!"

     The little man fell at once into the grave, while the mob, with one
accord, turned tail, and fled in all directions, leaving him alone with the
coffin.  Such a fighting, and kicking, and scrambling ensued to get over the
wall of the grave-yard, that this great fellow, who had caused all the
mischief, burst into such peals of laughter that the majority of the people
became aware that it was a joke, and came creeping back, looking as sheepish
as possible.

     Some got up very faint sorts of laugh, and said "very good," and swore
they saw what big Dick meant from the first, and only ran to make the others
run.

     "Very good," said Dick.  "I'm glad you enjoyed it, that's all.  My eye,
what a scampering there was among you.  Where's my little friend, who was so
infernally cunning about bones and brains?"

     With some difficulty the little man was extricated from the grave, and
then, oh, for the consistency of a mob! they all laughed at him; those very
people who, heedless of all the amenities of existence, had been trampling
upon each other and roaring with terror, actually had the impudence to laugh
at him, and call him a cowardly little rascal, and say it served him right.

     But such is popularity!

     "Well, if nobody won't open the coffin," said big Dick, "I will, so here
goes.  I knowed the old fellow when he was alive and many a time he's d----d
me and I d----d him, so I ain't a- going to be afraid of him now he's dead. 
We was very intimate you see, 'cos we was the two heaviest men in the parish;
there's a reason for every thing."

     "Ah, Dick's the fellow to do it," cried a number of persons; "there's
nobody like Dick for opening a coffin; he's the man as don't care for
nothing."

     "Ah, you snivelling curs," said Dick, "I hate you.  If it warn't for my
own satisfaction, and all for to prove why my old friend, the butcher, as
weighed seventeen stone, and stood six feet two and-a-half on his own sole,
l'd see you all jolly well -- "

     "D----d first," said the boy; "open the lid, Dick, let's have a look."

     "Ah, you're a rum un," said Dick, "arter my own heart.  I sometimes
thinks as you must be a nevy, or some sort of relation of mine.  Howsomdever,
here goes.  Who'd thought that I should ever had a look at old fat and thunder
again? -- that's what I used to call him; and then he used to request me to go
down below, where I needn't turn round to light my blessed pipe."

     "Hell -- we know," said the boy; "why don't you open the lid, Dick?"

     "I'm a going," said Dick; "kim up."

     He introduced the corner of a shovel between the lid and the coffin, and
giving it a sudden wrench, he loosened it all down one side.

     A shudder pervaded the multitude, and, popularly speaking, you might have
heard a pin drop in that crowded churchyard at that eventful moment.

     Dick then proceeded to the other side, and executed the same manoeuvre.

     "Now for it," he said; "we shall see him in a moment, and we'll think; we
seed him still."

     "What a lark!" said the boy.

     "You hold yer jaw, will yer?  Who axed you for a remark, blow yer?  What
do you mean by squatting down there, like a cock-sparrow, with a pain in his
tail, hanging yer head, too, right over the coffin?  Did you never hear of
what they call a fluvifium, coming from the dead, yer ignorant beast, as is
enough to send nobody to blazes in a minute?  Get out of the way of the cold
meat, will yer!"

     "A what, do you say, Dick?"

     "Request information from the extreme point of my elbow."

     Dick threw down the spade, and laying hold of the coffin- lid with both
hands, he lifted it off, and flung it on one side.

     There was a visible movement and an exclamation among the multitude. 
Some were pushed down, in the eager desire of those behind to obtain a sight
of the ghastly remains of the butcher; those at a distance were frantic, and
the excitement was momentarily increasing.

     They might all have spared themselves the trouble, for the coffin was
empty -- there was no dead butcher, nor any evidence of one ever having been
there, not even the grave-clothes; the only thing in all in the receptacle of
the dead was a brick. Dick's astonishment was so intense that his eyes and
mouth kept opening together to such an extent, that it seemed doubtful when
they would reach their extreme point of elongation.  He then took up the brick
and looked at it curiously, and turned it over and over, examined the ends and
the sides with a critical eye, and at length he said, --

     "Well, I'm blowed, here's a transmogrification; he's consolidified
himself into a blessed brick -- my eye, here's a curiosity."

     "But you don't mean to say that's the butcher, Dick ?" said the boy.

     Dick reached over, and gave him a tap on the head with the brick.

     "There!" he said, "that's what I calls occular demonstration.  Do you
believe it now, you blessed infidel? What's more natural?  He was an out-and-
out brick while he was alive; and he's turned to a brick now he's dead."

     "Give it to me, Dick," said the boy; "I should like to have that brick,
just for the fun of the thing."

     "I'll see you turned into a pantile first.  I sha'n't part with this
here, it looks too blessed sensible; it's gaining on me every minute as a most
remarkable likeness, d----d if it ain't."

     By this time the bewilderment of the mob had subsided; now that there was
no dead butcher to look upon, they fancied themselves most grievously injured;
and; somehow or other, Dick, notwithstanding all his exertions in their
service, was looked upon in the light of a showman, who had promised some
startling exhibition and then had disappointed his auditors.

     The first intimations he had of popular vengeance was a stone thrown at
him, but Dick's eye happened to be upon the fellow who threw it, and collaring
him in a moment, he dealt him a cuff on the side of the head, which confused
his faculties for a week.

     "Hark ye," he then cried, with a loud voice, "don't interfere with me; it
won't go down.  There's something wrong here; and, as one of yourselves, I'm
as much interested in finding out what it is as any of you can possibly be.  
There seems to be some truth in this business; our old friend, the butcher,
you see, is not in his grave; where is he then?"

     The mob, looked at each other and none attempted to answer the question.

     "Why, of course, he's the vampyre," said Dick, "and you may all of you
expect to see him, in turn, come into your bed-room windows with a burst, and
lay hold of you like a million and a half of leeches rolled into one."

     There was a general expression of horror, and then Dick continued, --

     "You'd better all of you go home; I shall have no hand in pulling up any
more of the coffins -- this is a dose for me.  Of course you can do what you
like."

     "Pull them all up!" cried a voice; "pull them all up!  Let's see how many
vampyres there are in the churchyard."

     "Well, it's no business of mine," said Dick; "but I wouldn't, if I was
you."

      "You may depend," said one, "that Dick knows something about it, or he
wouldn't take it so easy."

     "Ah! down with him," said the man who had received the box on the ears;
"he's perhaps a vampyre himself."

     The mob made a demonstration towards him, but Dick stood his ground, and
they paused again.

     "Now, you're a cowardly set," he said; "because you're disappointed, you
want to come upon me.  Now, I'll just show what a little thing will frighten
you all again and I warn beforehand it will, so you sha'n't say you didn't
know it, and were taken by surprise."

     The mob looked at him, wondering what he was going to do. "Once! twice!
thrice!" he said, and then he flung the brick up into the air an immense
height, and shouted "heads," in a loud tone.

     A general dispersion of the crowd ensued, and the brick fell in the
centre of a very large circle indeed.

     "There you are again," said Dick; "why, what a nice set you are!"

     "What fun!" said the boy.  "It's a famous coffin, this, Dick," and he
laid himself down in the butcher's last resting place.  "I never was in a
coffin before -- it's snug enough."

     "Ah, you are a rum 'un," said Dick; "you're such a inquiring genius, you
is; you'll get your head in a some hole one day, and not be able to get it out
again and then I shall see you a kicking.  Hush! lay still -- don't say
anything."

     "Good again," said the boy; "what shall I do?"

     "Give a sort of a howl and a squeak, when they all come back again."

     "Won't I!" said the boy; "a pop on the lid."

     "There you we," said Dick; "d----d if I don't adopt you, and bring you up
to the science of nothing."

     "Now, listen to me, good people all," added Dick; "I have really got
something to say to you."

     At this intimation the people slowly gathered again round the grave. 
"Listen," said Dick, solemnly; "it strikes me there's some tremendous do going
on."

     "Yes, there is," said several who were foremost.

     "It won't be long before you'll all of you be most d--nably astonished;
but let me beg of all you not to accuse me of having anything to do with it,
provided I tell you all I know."

     "No, Dick; we won't -- we won't -- we won't."

     "Good; then, listen.  I don't know anything, but I'll tell you what I
think, and that's as good.  I don't think that this brick is the butcher; but
I think, that when you least expect it -- hush! come it little closer."

     "Yes, yes; we are closer."

     "Well, then, I say, when you least expect it, and when you ain't dreaming
of such a thing, you'll hear something of my old friend as is dead and gone,
that will astonish you all."

     Dick paused, and he gave the coffin a slight kick, as intimation to the
boy that he might as well be doing his part in the drama, upon which that
ingenious young gentleman set up such a howl, that even Dick jumped, so
unearthly did if sound within the confines of that receptacle of the dead.

     But if the effect upon him was great, what must it have been upon those
whom it took completely unaware?  For a moment or two they seemed completely
paralysed, and then they frightened the boy, for the shout of terror that rose
from so many throats at once was positively alarming.

     This jest of Dick's was final, for, before three minutes had elapsed, the
churchyard was clear of all human occupants save himself and the boy, who had
played his part so well in the coffin.

     "Get out," said Dick; "it's all right -- we've done 'em at last; and now
you may depend upon it they won't be in a hurry to come here again.  You keep
you own counsel, or else somebody will serve you out for this.  I don't think
you're altogether averse to a bit of fun, and if you keep yourself quiet
you'll have the satisfaction of hearing what's said about this affair in every
pothouse in the village, and no mistake."

                                     -+-

 Next Time: The Preparations for Leaving Bannerworth Hall, and the Mysterious
 Conduct of the Admiral and Mr. Chillingworth.

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The Varney Project                Chapter  45             Ver 1.00  02/19/1996
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