“The Woman With the Oily Eyes” by Dick Donovan is one of the few vampire tales that hasn’t been anthologized to death. It appeared in only two collections (so far): Mike Ashley’s Vampires: Classic Tales (2011) and Conner and Klinger’s In the Shadow of Dracula (2011). Its neglect isn’t because the story is a poorly done example worthy of being forgotten. I am surprised Hugh Lamb never used it. (He did use “A Night of Horror”, one of the most effective horror tales ever, in my opinion, so he was aware of Muddock.) The story was followed by “Sequel to The Woman With the ‘Oily Eyes'”.
Dick Donovan was actually J. E. Preston Muddock (1843-1934), who wrote detective novels about Dick Donovan. The character became so popular, Muddock pulled an Ellery Queen and combined author and detective into one. Muddock had two horror collections, Stories, Weird and Wonderful (1889) under his real name, and Tales of Terror (1899) as Dick Donovan. “The Woman With the Oily Eyes” appeared in the second volume. Muddock is also worthy of note as the author of The Sunless City (1905), a lost race novel whose main character gave the Canadian city of Flin Flon, Manitoba its name.
“The Woman With the Oily Eyes” begins with a wedding. Dr. Peter Haslar recounts how perfectly suited his best friend, Jack Redcar and his bride, Maude, are. The couple go off to spend their perfect life together while Haslar goes to Australia. When he returns three years later, all is not well. He goes to the Redcar home to be let in my a miserable old woman. He insists on seeing Mrs. Redcar, who breaks down and tells him the terrible news. Jack has run off with another woman, a terrible creature with strange “oily” eyes. (They are described as looking like the eyes of a seal, large, flat and black.) The power of those orbs is hypnotic and Maude was powerless before them. After their first encounter by accident, the woman slowly wormed her way into their lives and took control. The old woman is her servant and Maude is at the end of her rope. Haslar promises to intervene.
To do this he goes to Paris and then Homburg in search of the couple. Haslar meets his old friend. Jack begs him to take him away before “Annette” (as she is called) returns. Unfortunately the woman comes in and Haslar sees her strange powers first hand. She sets Jack on Haslar, breaking his arm. The doctor spends a terrible time convalescing. While in a drugged stupor, Annette comes into his room and pours poison into his throat. Haslar rallies. The couple escape to Spain, Annette’s home country.
Again Haslar tracks them down to a sleepy village in the Spanish mountains. The game of cat and mouse continues as he learns more about Annette and her background. In the past, Annette has taken control of men, draining them unto death. By this time Jack Redcar is looking sicker and sicker. Annette takes him off into the mountains. Haslar follows, finding her drinking his blood. Jack dies. The doctor chases Annette down a steep slope and she falls over a cliff into a river. She is never seen again, assumed dead. Haslar returns to London and marries Maude.
Muddock ends the story with this note, which gives a good idea of what his influences were:
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.
Conner and Klinger selected the story for In the Shadow of Dracula but I’m not getting a big Stoker vibe here. Tales of Terror did appear two years after Dracula but the story may have been written earlier.
The inconclusive ending made me think that Annette would be back in “The Sequel to The Woman With the Oily Eyes”. After all, that was a perfectly Fu Manchu-style death scene. The villain always returns somehow. But this isn’t the case. “The Sequel” really should have been called “The History”. It goes back to Annette’s birth and life before the first story. Annette’s real name is Isabella Ribera. She was born with her eyes sealed. Doctors were consulted to open them but ultimately did not. A year later they opened on their own and immediately showed that strange seal-like look. We hear about how at five years old, while a pig was being slaughtered, the girl screamed in delight and proceeded to suck the spurting blood into her mouth. As you can imagine that didn’t make her popular.
The locals want to kill her so Isabella is taken to a convent to be raised but runs away at fourteen. She has a succession of different names: Madame Ducoudert, Marie Tailleux, Mademoiselle Sassetti, Isabella Rodino and she begins feeding off the men in her life. When they die, the police are suspicious but can’t prove anything. She travels to America and across Europe, leaving a trail of death behind her. The account ends with her meeting Jack Redcar. I use the word “account” purposefully here because this piece isn’t really a story but background to the previous story. I don’t know if Muddock ever thought to bring her back for a real tale but he never did.
But we aren’t quite done yet with J. E. Preston Muddock and vampires. The writer had a daughter named Evangeline Hope Muddock, born in 1872. She would change her name to the Italian-sounding Eva Mudocci. She was a violinist who toured Europe and became the lover of the artist, Edvard Munch when they met in 1903. Munch is famous for his painting “The Scream” (1893) but he also did another known as “The Vampire” (1895) though Munch called it “Love and Pain”. He did six different versions of the image. This image was done before Eva and Ed met and even before Tales of Terror appeared but it is interesting because the vampire is female. The imagery was current even if they did not inspire each other.
