I had had a tiring day and I fell asleep soon afterwards. About three
hours later I was awakened by a hair-raising scream. I sat up and
stared around in the blackness. My heart was pounding. I thought that a
bushmaster or some other deadly kind of snake had gotten into the shack. Cecil Hubbers moaned in the nearby darkness. "The vampire!" he cried. "It's been at me again!" He began to whimper like a sick child. I felt sure that he had merely experienced a recurrent nightmare, but
nevertheless I got up and lit the kerosene lantern. When I brought it
to his cot, I gasped. He was staring down at a tiny circular incision
on the top of his foot where the blood was still flowing. I was more shaken by the sight of blood trickling out of that little
hole than I have been at the sight of gory accidents. I suggested that we both undertake an immediate search of the shack. If
the bat was still inside, we would find it and kill it. He shook his head and moaned again. "It's no use. They can't stand
light. As soon as you lit the lantern, it got out." He finally arose, bathed and bandaged the puncture on his foot and sank
back on his cot. He left the lantern lit and he lay there with his
eyes wide open. He looked so haunted and unhappy I wished I could say
something to cheer him up, but for the life of me I couldn't think of
anything that made sense. I stayed awake for a while trying to figure out how the bat had
gotten in. But I had watched Hubbers inspect the interior of the
closely-screened building inch by inch a few hours before and I
couldn't think of a single corner or chink that he might have missed. Finally sleep overcame me again. When I got up the next morning, my host was sitting on the veranda. He
looked even worse than he had the night before. His face was ghastly,
really grey and drawn, and his eyes appeared feverish. I knew without
asking that he hadn't slept again after the vampire's attack. After breakfast I suggested that he ask the pharmaceutical company to
transfer him to some other locality. "I haven't enough strength left to go out in the jungle with the
gathering parties," he said. "And there isn't anything else." He said nothing more. His tense agitation of the previous day appeared
to be changing into a sort of fatalistic apathy. I felt seriously
concerned about him and I wished I might help, but I didn't know what I
could do. The party I was to accompany arrived by mid-morning and soon afterwards
I bid Cecil Hubbers goodbye. He wished me good luck and shook hands in
a perfunctory manner. At the edge of the jungle I turned around. He was slumped down in his
chair on the veranda. All I could see of him was his pinched white face
under the brim of his immense cone-shaped hat. He didn't bother to wave. Nearly two months passed before I returned to the settlement on my way
back to Cuyaba. I had separated from the government party several days
before and I arrived with my own Indian guides. I immediately crossed to Cecil Hubbers' shack. He was not on the
veranda. I went up the three steps and rapped on the screen door. A
short swarthy man who looked part Indian and part Portuguese got up
from a cot inside and came to the screen. I asked for Mr. Hubbers. "He's dead," the dark man said in good English. Somehow I had expected it, but still I was startled. "What happened?" I inquired bluntly. The man rolled his thick shoulders as if explanations were distasteful
to him. "The little bat took too much blood," he said. "One morning
they found him dead on his bed." "How horrible! I'm very sorry," I said. And I meant it. There was something more I wanted to know. "Did they ever find out how
the bat got in?" I asked. The man rolled his shoulders again. "It didn't get in," he said. "It
_was_ in--all the time. It was living in his hat." I stared at him and I suspect my mouth fell open. He nodded. "The bat clung by day in the top of Mr. Hubbers' funny big
hat. He never took his hat off except at bedtime; it was always dark
inside. At night the vampire came out and fed on him. After he was
dead, we found the bat asleep in the top of his hat, on the shelf. It
was a very fat bat and we killed it." I stood there on the porch remembering Cecil Hubbers' huge
high-crowned, cone-shaped straw hat--the hat that left his head only
just before he crawled under his mosquito net at night. In spite of the close moist warmth of that clearing, I felt myself
enveloped by an eerie chill. "It's--unbelievable!" I murmured, half to myself. The dark man turned from the door with a shrug. "He's dead!" he
grumbled. THE SEVENTH INCANTATION


"Of these black prayers or incantations there be seven, three for
ordinarie charmes and aides, and the like numbere for the unholie and
compleat destruction of alle enemie. But of the seventh the curious in
alle these partes are warned. Let not the last incantation be recited,
unlesse ye desire the sight of moste aweful deamon. Although it be
said the deamon shews not unlesse the wordes be spake by the bloodie
altar of the Olde Ones, yet it were well to beware. For it be knowne
that the Saracen sorcerer, Mal Lazal, dide wantonlie chante the dire
wordes and the deamon dide come--and not finding a bloodie offering
did rage at the wizard and rende him exceedinglie. The life bloode of
a childe or chaste maid be best, yet a beaste, a goode ox or sheep, is
said sufficient. But beware lest the beaste be dead when the bloode be
taken, for then shall the deamon's rage be dire. If the offering be
well, the deamon shall give unholie power, so that the servant grow
riche and reache above alle his neighbors." For the third time, and with growing excitement, Emmet Telquist read
the faded words. They were contained in a crumbling and curious and
probably unique bound manuscript book which he had discovered quite
by accident some days before while shuffling through the dust-laden
packing crates which held his deceased uncle's library. The book was entitled simply "True Magik", and the writer signed
himself "Theophilis Wenn." Quite possibly the name was a pseudonym;
certainly, judging by the contents, the rash author must have had
reason to keep secret his real identity. The book was a veritable encyclopedia of devils' lore. There was
everywhere manifest a genuine and erudite scholarship which had been
lavished on a vast variety of esoteric and forbidden subjects. There
were detailed discussions on enchantments and possession, paragraphs on
vampirism and ghoul legend, pages devoted to demonology, witch worship,
and eldrich idols, notes on holocaust rites, unspeakable maculations
and fearsome full-moon sacrifices to the powers of pristine darkness. Evidently the writer had been a necromancer of note. The style in
general was arbitrary and assured, betraying egoism and not a little
arrogance. There was no faint note of humor. Theophilis Wenn--or
whoever it was that disguised his true identity under that name--had
written in dire earnest. Of that there could be no doubt.