at she instinctively felt was
near at hand. At present, however, she could not locate it, she could
only speculate on its whereabouts--it was somewhere in the direction
of the cupboard. And each time the stench came to her, the conviction
that its origin was in the cupboard grew. At last, unable to sustain
the suspense any longer, and urged on by an irresistible fascination,
she got softly out of bed, and, creeping stealthily forward, found her
way with surprisingly little difficulty (considering it was pitch dark
and the room was unfamiliar to her) to the cupboard.

With every step she took the stink increased, and by the time she had
reached the cupboard she was almost suffocated. For some seconds she
toyed irresolutely with the door handle, longing to be back again in
bed, but unable to tear herself away from the cupboard. At last,
yielding to the demands of some pitilessly exacting unknown influence,
she held her breath and swung open the door. The moment she did so the
room filled with the faint, phosphorescent glow of decay, and she
saw, exactly opposite her, a head--a human head--floating in mid-air.
Petrified with terror, she lost every atom of strength, and, entirely
bereft of the power to move or articulate a sound, she stood
stock-still staring at it. That it was the head of a man, she could
only guess from the matted crop of short red hair that fell in a
disordered entanglement over the upper part of the forehead and ears.
All else was lost in a loathsome, disgusting mass of detestable
decomposition, too utterly vile and foul to describe. On the abnormal
thing beginning to move forward, the spell that bound Mrs. Murphy to
the floor was broken, and, with a cry of horror, she fled to the bed
and awoke her husband.

The head was by this time close to them, and had not Mrs. Murphy
dragged her husband forcibly out of its way, it would have touched
him.

His terror was even greater than hers; but for the moment neither
could speak. They stood clutching one another in an awful silence.
Mrs. Murphy at length gasped out, "Pray, John, pray! Command the thing
in the name of God to depart." Mr. Murphy made a desperate effort to
do so, but not a syllable would come. The head now veered round and
was moving swiftly towards them, its awful stench causing them both to
retch and vomit. Mr. Murphy, seizing his stick, lashed at it with all
his might. The result was one they might well have expected. The stick
met with no r