The heavens were all aglow with stars, the waxing moon their sovereign. I studied the firmament, bitterly regretting the loss of my telescope, abandoned with so many other things upon my abrupt departure from Germany.
For a while I watched the stars until my neck began to ache, then turned my gaze down to the mist. It was rising, steady as an incoming tide, toward me and I formed the conceit that I was some demigod who floated above these clouds which seemed solid enough for me to walk on.
I did not hear any footsteps in the mist until, with a shiver of surprise, I saw a hooded head rise from the cloudy mass, at first seeming to be curiously disembodied before the rest of the figure became visible, gliding through the grey air as though floating.
So uncanny was this apparition that my heart beat fast, but I recognized the woman who had emerged from the alley below by her cowl-like hood. The surprise of her appearance, with wraiths of mist still clinging to her body as if feeding, robbed me of speech and when, after walking a few paces in the clear air she stopped to boldly return my stare, I, who had lectured before congregations of the most learned men, blushed like a boy.
“Pardon me, miss,” I said stupidly, “but can I be of assistance to you?”
“You are not English?” she said. Her voice, the contralto purr of some great cat, issued strangely from beneath the shadow of the hood, where her face was invisible.
“I am of German birth. Dr Axel Crescentius at your service.”
The hood fell back to reveal full and sensual lips, eyes dark as night, face sharp and high-boned as a vixen’s.
“I have no need of a doctor, or of your service, but if you wish to walk a little way with me then come.”
Without waiting for a reply, she set off along the crest of the moonlit hill and I found myself following after.
“Do you live by here?” I asked, after catching up with her.
“Beneath the hill,” she replied, pointing to a fork in the pathway.
The way that she indicated led down the far side of Mabbs Hill, a path untrod by me.
“Would you accompany me, down to my dwelling place?”
Her face glowed silver in the moonlight as she spoke these words and the mask it became dazzled my eyes. A wave of desire, the like of which I had never before felt, filled me as I closed my eyes to clear them of the uncanny glow that lit the woman’s face.
“Yes, let me come with you.”
She was, I told myself, but a streetwalker who, for a few pennies, I could slake my aroused passion upon. I reached out a hand to take her, but with a slight movement she evaded me.
“You think,” she said, “that no honest woman would be out on such a night. But consider, I ask you, what good man would be abroad?”
The woman possessed a lively wit. Then again, without waiting for me, or another word, she walked down the path into the mist. I hesitated for but a second, then followed before she could be lost to me.
As we walked down and the mist covered us again I kept a firm hold on my swordstick, for I entertained a suspicion that there might lurk, somewhere in the obscurity, a bully in league with her to waylay and rob me.
The path fell sharply as the mist became icy, chilling with its touch. She turned a smile on my shivering, and I wondered at how she could show no apparent discomfort at the cold.
“I never feel the cold,” she told me. “Once, long ago I did, but a fever of the blood took me, so now ice and fog are nothing to me.” The woman smiled and her teeth showed sharp and white. “I am of those in whom blood turns to fire in their veins.”
“Such conditions are not unknown,” said I, nodding sagely. “I am, however, a doctor of philology, not medicine.” “Studying words and languages must be interesting. Though I have found” (she smiled knowingly) “that certain things can be understood by all, no matter what tongue they speak. You must be a clever man to know so much about words. My name is Mara.”
I was surprised that she knew the meaning of the word “philology”, and as the woman Mara spoke her name I thought to see, through the mist, a gleam as of smoky embers in her eyes.
“That,” I said foolishly, “is a nice name.”
“It is a terrible name.”
Desire was strong within me, and I thought to take her there on the path, where she had stopped and smiled upon me. None would see us. In this place, concealed by the mist, we could do as we — as I — wished.
“Here is where I must leave you.”
With a swift movement, her head darted forward and her lips sought mine. For a long moment we kissed, and the breath was drawn from my body as my head became peculiarly dizzy. I would have clipped her close to kiss again but she had gone, swallowed by the mist, leaving me alone and baffled at her abrupt disappearance.
My lips felt numb and I tasted blood — she had bitten me during our cold and foggy kiss. It had been long since I had been given a true and good love-kiss, one not bought and paid for. I held a hand before my eyes to see blood, black in the mist, stain the fingers. For she had bitten me on places other than my lips, though I could not exactly recall the bites, and I wondered what the price of her love and kisses might be.
All seemed unreal to me, the boundaries between worlds weak, but I took a resolute step forward, my swordstick held before me like a blind man’s cane and I felt it strike and sound against metal.
Barely inches from my eyes I saw an iron gate, its tall bars vanishing up into the murky air. Padlocks secured it, three of them, rusty and obviously not opened for many a year. The strange sensation of being beneath the earth, in a vault, gripped me. The triple-locked gate the entrance to a place deeper yet.
“Mara!”
My voice was muffled in the foggy shroud but I heard and saw one of the locks open with a dry click and fall to the ground. I listened, but nothing else broke the stillness and silence.
The mist stifled me, choking my throat, and I made my way up the path, hurrying along its length like a grave-robber fleeing a necropolis until, after but a few minutes, not nearly so long as my descent had taken, I found myself once more on the crest of Mabbs Hill and in the clear air.
Through the icy moonlight I hurried to my lodgings, shivering as one possessed by an ague. I was soon abed, but it took a long while for sleep to claim me.
Strange thoughts flitted batlike through my brain, night-frights rising to vex and nag at me. When at last I fell into a restless slumber, my dreams were all of tomb and sepulchre, dreadful hollow vaults beneath the earth, in which I was lost. Something had me in a smothering embrace, pressing down on my chest. I thought myself to be immured in a grave, and that which lay atop me was feeding horribly upon my still-living corpse.
With the first light of dawn I lay awake, weak as one sucked dry, the woman Mara haunting my burning thoughts as my drained yet unappeased body hungered for her.
The day dawned bright and chill, and I resolved to explore the pathway that I had walked with Mara. The mist had gone, and I looked from the crest of Mabbs Hill toward London and wondered at how long it would be before the metropolis engulfed this quiet place and its environs.
Swinging my cane at the weeds by the side of the path, my night-fears forgotten, I made a way down. After but a minute the trees closed in above to turn the morning into twilight. I soon found the gate, set in a high wall that ran to either side for some distance. Thick spider webs, glistening with dew and long undisturbed, clung to the bars. With my cane I tore at them and looked within to see gravestones and broken tombs, all much worn by time.