Free The Vampire of Ropraz by Jacques Chessex Page A

the loft? Who walked on the roof? Look to pitchfork and powder, before secrets of the abyss!

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    February 1903. The year started out very cold; the snow is lying on Ropraz, which seems more huddled down and neglected than ever on its wind-beaten plateau. Since the first of February the snow has been falling without end. A heavy, damp snow against the dark sky, and for some time the village has had no relief. Blocked roads, fevers, several cows miscarried, and on the seventeenth, which fell on a Tuesday, young Rosa, a big fresh flower, twenty years old, clear skin, big eyes and long chestnut hair, died of meningitis on the farm of her father, M. Emile Gilliéron, Justice of the Peace, and member of the Grand Council. He is a man of some stature,
severe, sensible and generous. He is wealthy, owns quite a lot of land hereabouts, and his daughter’s supple beauty had aroused powerful emotions. She also sang well, was devoted to the sick and was an active parishioner in the mother church in Mézières… Folk out of the ordinary, as you can see. Surprisingly, given the ugliness, vice and meanness all around…
    The news of Rosa’s death moved the whole countryside terribly. They came to the funeral, in the Ropraz graveyard on Thursday the 19th of February, from distant villages, towns, hamlets and far-off ridges. By cart, on horseback and on snow-shoes they came, men and women in such numbers – several hundred – that despite the cold the chapel doors were left open throughout the entire service, and the procession from chapel to graveyard took over an hour, to the constant tolling of the death-knell.
    To make room for his newest lodger, Cosandey the sexton had to dig down into the frozen earth. Job done. In the middle of Thursday afternoon, Rosa Gilliéron was buried on the south-east
slope, two thirds of the way down the graveyard, which stretches, solitary, between the thickest of the forest and a wide, deserted hilly area over which crows fly, cawing. Once the coffin was closed and the last handful of frozen soil had dully thudded down on its wooden lid, there was no need for Cosandey to spread snow back over the little plot. After the interlude that had allowed the procession to follow the hearse, just as the final prayer was being said, and the children had sung for the last time, and Pastor Béranger, come specially from Mézières, had given the blessing, the snow began to fall again, the snow that cloaks the black earth of old winter and gently lulls the dead – we are assured – in their eternal rest.
    After his daughter’s burial, Gilliéron had arranged for refreshments in the Grande Salle. That is the name given to the hall where festivities and official events are held. Then evening brought parting handshakes and embraces; the roads and unpaved tracks were deserted, and a long night descended on the desolate landscape.

    Friday the 20th; snow and immobility. One would almost have thought that Rosa’s death and the prolonged ritual in the graveyard had dulled spirits and stunned the countryside into stupefied silence.

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    But now it is Saturday the 21st. This morning very early at first light, François Rod, who lives above Ropraz in a locality called Vers-chez-les-Rod, has decided to “go wooding” in the hilly forest that borders the graveyard lower down. His son Hermann is with him, leading the heavy ox-cart used by dairy farmers and woodcutters. It is half-past seven. The sun is rising slowly over the snow-covered countryside. The lane to Tailles Wood runs beside the graveyard. Coming to the gate in the railings, François stops the team, tells his son to wait for him, and makes his way into the graveyard, intending to say a prayer over Rosa’s fresh grave. He takes a few steps down the
path and immediately cries out: Rosa’s grave lies open, her coffin laid bare. Seventy years later the aged Hermann still remembers his father’s cry, “as if he’d seen the devil himself ” he would say, trembling,