Adapted From:
Source: Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston
Note: This story is sometimes just referred to as “The Coffin Lid” or “The Coffin-Lid”
Once upon a time a Russian peasant named Peter was traveling along an empty road. The night was cool, the scent of autumn fires was in the air, and the load of pots Peter carried in his cart clanged and rattled, waking all the sleeping creatures in the quiet forest beside the road.
Peter had been traveling for days, and his poor hungry horse was growing weary. Suddenly, just as they passed a graveyard, the horse stopped in his tracks. Peter reached forward and stroked his mane. “You must be tired, poor fellow,” he said, and he set the horse free to roam awhile and to rest if he wished.
Then Peter yawned. “I’m tired, too,” he said aloud, his words echoing back to him. He lay down on one of the graves and closed his eyes, but no matter how he tried, he could not fall asleep. He turned this way and that, struggling toward slumber, but as the hours passed, he realized he would not sleep that night. “Perhaps I’ll go for a walk,” he thought, but just then he felt a rumbling beneath him and the grave upon which he had been lying split wide open.
Peter leaped up as a corpse rose out of the grave. Wrapped in a tattered white shroud, the corpse held in his arms the lid to his coffin, and Peter gasped in fright at the sight. But the dead man seemed uninterested in Peter. He simply walked as in a trance between the tombstones over to the church that stood at the edge of the graveyard. There he laid his coffin lid against the door, then set off toward the village.
Now Peter was no coward, and so, waiting until the corpse was safely out of sight, he hurried to the church, picked up the coffin lid and carried it back to his cart. Then he called to his horse. “Come now, we’ll be off.” He thought this lid would probably earn him a penny or two, but just as he was about to harness his horse to the cart, he heard footsteps behind him. The dead man had returned and was walking back to the church!
When he saw the coffin lid was gone, the corpse turned and moaned in a voice so terrible, it made Peter’s blood ran cold. “Who took my coffin lid?”
Then he saw Peter and the coffin lid lying amid the pots and pans in the cart, and he shrieked, “Give me back my lid or you’ll regret it!”
The shroud had fallen from the corpse’s face, and Peter saw his wide-open eyes, his pale skin, his long nails and hair, and blood streaking his face. Peter realized with a shiver of fear that this was a vampire.
But Peter was a bold young man, and he confronted the corpse. “You’re the one who shall be sorry,” Peter said with as much authority as he could muster. “Come closer and I shall hack you into tiny pieces!” With these words he raised his hatchet high into the air.
Now the vampire advanced menacingly toward Peter. But then he stopped, and in a quiet voice said, “Give it back to me, good man.” The sun would rise very soon, and the vampire knew he must return to his grave before dawn or he would be destroyed.
“I shall give it back on one condition,” Peter said. “Tell me what you’ve just done in the village.”
“I have drunk the blood of two young boys,” the corpse intoned.
Still Peter did not flinch. “Then tell me how to bring them back to life, and you shall have your lid.”
As a hint of light appeared just beneath the horizon, the vampire tore a piece from his shroud and thrust it into Peter’s hands. “Go to the house where the boys live, pour live coals into a pot, and place this piece of my shroud in the pot. Then lock the door, and the boys will revive with the smoke.”
With that Peter returned the coffin lid, and the vampire climbed back into his grave, pulling the lid down upon him. Just as he did, a cock crowed, and one end of the coffin lid remained sticking up out of the ground.
Peter mounted his horse and galloped into the village, where he heard weeping and moaning coming from one of the houses. In he went, and there saw the family gathered round the lifeless forms of the two boys, with fresh puncture wounds in their necks. “Don’t cry,” Peter said to his family. “I will bring them back to life — quick, bring me a pot!”
Peter followed the vampire’s instructions, filling the pot with coals from the fire. When smoke began to swirl out of the pot, Peter locked the door. Moments later, the two boys began to stir, and then sat up, groggy but clearly alive.
At once the family seized Peter. “How can this be?” they cried. “You must be the one who killed them if you can bring them back to life.”
Peter struggled to free himself, and as he struggled, he told the tale of all that had happened to him at the graveyard at the edge of the forest.
When word spread through the village, the people understood a vampire lived among them. With brave Peter leading the way, they marched to the graveyard, and when they saw the coffin lid sticking out of the ground, they swarmed around it and dug up the body buried there.
“Stake him through the heart!” they cried. This they did, and people say that vampire never again disturbed those villagers. Ah, but there are always other villages …