EMMA WATTLES, THE VAMPIRE

On that cold winter night at Highgate Cemetery in north London, the corpse of a woman inside a grave inside a family maussoleum seemed to como back to life. The grey marble lid covering the coffin inside the burial pavilion, in a tomb at half height on a ledge on thewall, moved a few centimeters, hetween the sullen and sepulchral surrounding silence. A sharp hand, with long, fine fingers, peeked out for a moment. The he continued to push the heavy stone slab, which he squeaked a little, to make room for the rest of the dead body.

The deceased young woman, suddenly returning to life, slowly sat down for few seconds on what would be her last abode. His lifeless eyes, in which the iris and pupils were not seen, of a terrifying milky white, as from another world, seemed to look in all directions, slowly, without any haste, as to make sure and recognize the place where he was.

A slight clarity, arising from a gigantic, ghostly full moon, filtered through the lattice door, whose bars were half-oxidized by moisture and over the years guarded the skulls of deceased relatives. Long forgotten inside the funeral pantheon. The dead woman sketched a sardonic, macabre smile, and then slowly came out of her grave.

The one in life had been a young woman with beautiful features of long black hair and shiny like the wing of a crow, had been gagged with a long white winter nighgown of soft cloth curdied with small and artistic bown and toe ornaments.

He laid his little, bare Ivorian feet, and still delicate, on the cold grayish marble floor that covered the interior of the mausoleum. Then he took a few short, insecure, flatering steps like a baby's when he learns to walk, to the lattice door of half-rusty iron through whose oores the faint rays of light of the full moon filtered, iluminating that night scene.

The door rusted by moisture and carelessness squaked and creaked slightly as it moved over its filthy goznes, allowing the passage of the spectral figure. The deceased young woman stepped on the dried, withered leaves scattered here and there by the fury of the wind that mercilessly whipped the trees and crosses of the fields. The dead woman walked along the narrow dirt road that connected the burial pavilion with other places in the dreary cemetery.

The spectral and ghostly figures of several deceased seemed to insinuate themselves, peeking out of the graves of their eternal rest, enviously watching the return to the life of that young and beautiful uncorrupted body. The woman, oblivious to everything, continued to walk with gentle steps, but already more agile and determined by the narrow path that meandered between the tombs that would lead her to the exit of the dark cemetery.

The stone angels who crowned some of the mortuary tombstones of immaculate white marble gazed at her in her wake. Some with a concerned gesture and some with the complicity they showed in their beautiful smiling faces.

(Author: Francisco R. Delgado)