as sitting in a coffin in a
mausoleum! I had been buried alive!

_"What am I?" I shrieked. "Where am I and what have You done? I'm out of
my mind; stark, staring mad!"_

_Eve's lips parted, showing the even white teeth--those slightly pointed
teeth._

_"You're quite sane, my dear," She said calmly. "You are now one of us;
a revenant, even as I, and to live you must feed on the living."_

_"It's not true!" I shouted. "This is all a crazy nightmare, part of my
illness! You're not real! Nothing is real!"_

_"I'm quite real, Tod. To be trite, I am what I am, and have accepted it
calmly, as you shall in time. I have told you of my life. You have been
a student of legends. Legends are often--more often than you
think--reality. When one has been murdered, if one has lived a so-called
wicked life, he is doomed to walk the earth battening on the living. My
fate was sealed as I lay in my coffin. But that wasn't enough. As I lay
there, my pet cat, Suma, slunk into the room and leapt over me. That was
a double insurance of my life after death. Those whom I mark for my own
must, too, live on. Accept it, my dear. You have no other choice."_

_"No!" I cried. "I'm an American! Things like this don't happen to us!
It's only in stories, and then to foreigners!"_

_She chuckled drily. "I'm afraid these things do happen, and in this
case, you're it, my dear. Make the best of it."_

_But I wouldn't; I refused to--for a while. I would not feast on the
blood of the living. Something within me fought. For a time._

_Then, the awful hunger began. The tearing pangs of hunger that ordinary
food wouldn't arrest. I fought it as long as I could. I lost._

_First it was small animals; animals that I loved. It was my life or
theirs. Then there was a little girl; a dear little creature who might
have been my child under different circumstances._

_After the episode of the little girl, Eve left me. She had no further
use for me; she had wanted the child, too, and I had got it. I was now
competition to be shunned. I was alone once again alone and thoroughly
miserable. I couldn't understand myself, my motives, so how could I
expect someone else to understand?_

_I only knew what I was; nor could I rationalize on why I had become
this way. I could only presume it had happened to others equally as
innocent as myself of wrong-doing. In the daytime, when I was like
others, I reproached myself; goodness knows I loathed myself and what I
had to do