Once I had an idea of not going to the hotel that night at all. But of

what use could such an avoidance be? The apparition was bound by no

fetters to that terrible sitting-room of mine. I might be put to the

ordeal anywhere, even here in the thoroughfares of the city, and upon

the whole I preferred to return to my lodging. Nay, I was the victim

of a positive desire for that scene of my torture.

I returned. It was eleven o'clock. The apparition awaited me. But this

time it was not seated in the chair. It stood with its back to the

window, and its gaze met mine as I entered the room. I did not close

the door, and my eyes never left its face. The sneer on its thin lips

was bitterer, more devilishly triumphant, than before. Erect,

motionless, and inexorable, the ghost stood there, and it seemed to

say: "What is the use of leaving the door open? You dare not escape.

You cannot keep away from me. To-night you shall die of sheer terror."

With a wild audacity I sat down in the very chair which it had

occupied, and drummed my fingers on the writing-table. Then I took off

my hat, and with elaborate aim pitched it on to a neighboring sofa. I

was making a rare pretence of carelessness. But moment by moment,

exactly as before, my courage and resolution oozed out of me, drawn

away by that mystic presence.

Once I got up filled with a brilliant notion. I would approach the

apparition; I would try to touch it. Could I but do so, it would

vanish; I felt convinced it would vanish. I got up, as I say, but I

did not approach the ghost. I was unable to move forward, held by a

nameless dread. I dropped limply back into the chair. The phenomena of

the first night repeated themselves, but more intensely, with a more

frightful torture. Once again I sought relief from the agony of that

gaze by retreating into the bedroom; once again I was compelled by the

same indescribable fear to return, and once again I fell down, smitten

by a new and more awful menace, a kind of incredible blasphemy which

no human thought can convey.

And now the ghost moved mysteriously and ominously towards me. With an

instinct of defence, cowed as I was upon the floor, I raised my hand

to ward it off. Useless attempt! It came near and nearer,

imperceptibly moving.

"Let me die in peace," I said within my brain.

But it would not. Not only must I die, but in order to die I must

traverse all the hideous tortures of the soul which that lost spirit

had learnt in its dire wanderings.




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