NOTE BY THE AUTHOR.--The foregoing story was suggested by a tradition
current in the Pyrenees, where a belief in ghouls and vampires is
still common. The same belief is no less common throughout Styria,
in some parts of Turkey, in Russia, and in India. Sir Richard Burton
deals with the subject in his ‘Vikram and the Vampire.’ Years ago,
when the author was in India, a poor woman was beaten to death one
night in the village by a number of young men armed with cudgels.
Their excuse for the crime was that the woman was a vampire, and had
sucked the blood of many of their companions, whom she had first
lured to her by depriving them of their will power by mesmeric
influence.
II
SEQUEL TO THE WOMAN WITH THE ‘OILY EYES’
THE STORY OF ANNETTE
FROM OFFICIAL RECORDS
At the time the inquiry was held into the circumstances of Jack
Redcar’s death, the authorities deemed it their duty to find out
something of Annette’s past history. In this they were aided by certain
documents discovered amongst her belongings, and, by dint of astute and
patient investigation, they elicited the following remarkable facts.
Her real name was Isabella Ribera, and she was born in a little village
in the Sierra Nevada, of Andalusia. Her mother was a highly respectable
peasantwoman, of a peculiarly romantic disposition, and fond of
listening to and reading weird and supernatural stories. Her father
was also a peasant, but intellectual beyond his class. By dint of hard
work, he acquired a considerable amount of land and large numbers of
cattle, and ultimately became the mayor of his village.
There were two peculiarities noticed about Isabella Ribera when she was
born. She had an extraordinary amount of back hair, and the lids of
her eyes remained fast sealed until she was a year old. An operation
was at first talked about, but the child was examined by a doctor of
some repute in the nearest town, and he advised against the operation,
saying that it was better to let nature take her course. When the girl
was in her thirteenth month she one day suddenly opened her eyes, and
those who saw them were frightened. Some people said that they were
seal’s eyes, others that they were the eyes of a snake, and others,
again, that ‘the devil looked through them.’ The superstitious people
in the village urged the parents to consult the priest, and this was
done, with the result that the infant was subjected to a religious
ceremony, with a view to exorcising the demon which was supposed to
have taken possession of her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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