You must be brave and strong, and
help me through the horrible task. If you only knew what an effort it
is to me to tell of this fearful thing at all, you would understand
how much I need your help. Well, I saw I must try to help the
medicine to its work with my will, if it was to do me any good, so I
resolutely set myself to sleep. Sure enough sleep must soon have come
to me, for I remember no more. Jonathan coming in had not waked me,
for he lay by my side when next I remember. There was in the room the
same thin white mist that I had before noticed. But I forget now if
you know of this. You will find it in my diary which I shall show you
later. I felt the same vague terror which had come to me before and
the same sense of some presence. I turned to wake Jonathan, but found
that he slept so soundly that it seemed as if it was he who had taken
the sleeping draught, and not I. I tried, but I could not wake him.
This caused me a great fear, and I looked around terrified. Then
indeed, my heart sank within me. Beside the bed, as if he had stepped
out of the mist, or rather as if the mist had turned into his figure,
for it had entirely disappeared, stood a tall, thin man, all in
black. I knew him at once from the description of the others. The
waxen face, the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin
white line, the parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing
between, and the red eyes that I had seemed to see in the sunset on
the windows of St. Mary's Church at Whitby. I knew, too, the red scar
on his forehead where Jonathan had struck him. For an instant my
heart stood still, and I would have screamed out, only that I was
paralyzed. In the pause he spoke in a sort of keen, cutting whisper,
pointing as he spoke to Jonathan.

"'Silence! If you make a sound I shall take him and dash his brains
out before your very eyes.' I was appalled and was too bewildered to
do or say anything. With a mocking smile, he placed one hand upon my
shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other, saying
as he did so, 'First, a little refreshment to reward my exertions.
You may as well be quiet. It is not the first time, or the second,
that your veins have appeased my thirst!' I was bewildered, and
strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him. I suppose it is a
part of the horrible curse that such is, when his touch is on his
victim. And oh, my God, my God, pity me! He placed his reeki