default
increase
decrease13 July, 1905 – The Lanna Hospital, Chaing Mai, about 3 pm
I am suffering from shock – no worse – though from a horror that few human souls ever experience! However, as I am feeling a little better, I will try to catch up with my journal.
When she came to bed, Dau continued her dance, but in the horizontal position, and she writhed, wriggled and moaned as never before. It was as though she was doubly intoxicated – with the rhythm of her dance and the rhythm of her sexuality. She turned me on my back and straddled me, stretching out her arms with the baroque gestures of Thai dance, while shaking her breasts in my face. Then she leaned forward and started that Kama-Sutra inspired sequence of love-scratches, love cries, and love bites, but this time with an abandon that was almost frightening. It was as if the wildness of her dance had brought out something of the primeval in her – an echo from the time when Siam was covered in jungle and nature was red in tooth and claw – literally, because her long nails raked my back so hard that I am sure she must have drawn blood! I would have cried out, but she suddenly turned round and stifled my cry with bush. I was beginning to warm to her wild mood, and willingly explored that wild undergrowth with my tongue. The savage in me was aroused, and my spear was ready for the plunge into the forest, when the mood was shattered by a loud hammering at the door.
“Open! Open!” shouted a commanding voice – the voice of the Chao Muang.
My blood froze. I sat up in bed. Dau covered herself with her sabai.
“Open! Or I will break the door down!” the Chao Muang insisted.
But even if I had wanted to obey, I could not, for I was frozen to the spot with fear. Suddenly, I saw the door lurch as the lock broke, then stop again as it hit the teak chest. Then, as the door was pushed with even greater force, the chest slid slowly back from the door and an armoured hand reached in – one of the Chao Muang’s guards! Moments later the three of them were in the room. The Chao Muang strode towards the bed, grabbed me and pulled me towards him. The guards were looking for Dau, who seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
I wanted to fight back, but I was too weak – partly from the after-effects of my illness, partly from fear, but mainly because I knew it was useless. The Chao Muang had the strength of demon – and two guards to back him up.
Just when I thought my end had come, I heard another voice.
“Jonathan!”
I turned to look and saw – Van Helsing.
“But how…?” I stammered.
“Never mind that now,” he said, “Thank God I am in time!”
At that moment, Dau emerged from the antechamber where she had run to hide in the first confusing moments of the break in. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Van Helsing. Then her face contorted with rage, her eyes flashed red, and she threw herself at him.
“Kao kawng di-chan!”1 she screamed.
A split second later, the room was filled with the deafening report of Van Helsing’s Webley Automatic. The impact of the .45 round sent her reeling backwards and she slumped to the floor, the life draining out of her.
“Are you mad!” I screamed at Van Helsing. “You have shot the wrong one…”
Here I turned and pointed to the Chao Muang.
“He is the vampire! She is – was – my lover…”
I then knelt down to embrace the body of the woman who had come to mean so much to me…but I can write no more now – the memory is too painful…
Van Helsing’s Memorandum
Jonathan is too upset and confused to give a coherent account of the night of the 13th July, so it incumbent upon me to record the events as clearly as I can remember them
I arrived at the Palace at Sukothai in the early hours of the morning. I was dog tired – not just from riding, but from thinking. Throughout that weary journey I had been trying to relate my notes to the incidents described by Jonathan. By the time I arrived, there was no doubt left in my mind, and I thanked God that I had had the foresight to bring my Webley revolver – though my only thought at the time was that it would provide an insurance policy against bandits.
I was directed by two maidservants to Jonathan’s quarters. As I turned the corner, I saw three men breaking into Jonathan’s room, and feared that it might already be too late. Imagine my relief when I saw that Jonathan was alive – though he looked half-dead with terror. I knew what was in his mind, but I also knew that nothing was to be feared from the Chao Muang.
At that moment a woman came out of the ante-chamber. She was so sweet and beautiful that, for a moment, I thought she posed no danger, but then a change came over her. Realising that I had come to rob her of her prey, the vampire – for such she was – charged at me in a fury. Thank God my reactions are still fast! I saw the red in the eyes, the elongated nails and the bared fangs, and within a second had drawn my Webley and got off the fatal round.
In fact, the creature was not a vampire as we in the West understand it. I use that word now because it will be the term with which my readers will be most familiar – and I used it later when I tried to explain these strange events to Jonathan. With the Chao Muang, and in my Ethnological notes, I use the correct term. Perhaps the best thing I can do now, is to refer the reader to those notes:
Dr Van Helsing’s Ethnological Notebook, page 153
Phii Krasue
The Phii Krasue is a phenomenon which has some similarities to the vampires of Eastern Europe in that it is an ‘undead’ creature that exists by drinking the blood of the living. Its form is that of a flying head with parts of a rotting carcass below it. It has sharp fangs to tear flesh and a long flicking tongue to lap the blood. It often takes the shape of a handsome man or beautiful woman in order to lure its victims.
There is no way to kill a Phii Krasue, though it may be temporarily disabled by wounds to its physical body. Even destruction of its carcass is ineffectual, since its spirit will transmigrate to another body. The only way to be permanently rid of a Phii Krasue is to appease the spirit that inhabits it. Since a Phii Krasue is created by an intense desire for revenge at the moment of death, the way to appease it is to find out what wrong has been done, and to right it. If this can be achieved, the spirit will be free to be reborn to a new life in the natural cycle of reincarnation.
Van Helsing’s Memorandumzw
Jonathan was weeping over the body, and the Chao Muang was looking at me aghast, waiting for an explanation. However, before I could give one, I had more pressing business to attend to. I knew that when the Phii Krasue ‘died’ it would revert to its true shape – a charred corpse – a sight that could damage Jonathan’s mind forever. Accordingly, I instructed the guards to take Jonathan to another room (in fact, on the instructions of the Chao Muang’s doctor, he was taken to hospital), and covered the body with my cloak. Then I turned my mind to the hardest part of the whole business – somehow, I had to find a way to lay the spirit of that Phii Krasue forever.
1. “Kao kawng chan!” = “He is mine!”
© Bangkok Byron, 2007. All rights reserved by the author.
Print Article
Send to a friend
Save as PDF
March 18, 2007, 12:13
Fascinating and very well researched. I was right there in the room...especially when Jonathan was exploring the jungle!