Yet, admitting this, what could be wrong? Not surely anything to do with Sir Charles's case, which was a straightforward affair? The patient was progressing well, with every reasonable hope of recovery. To the outward eye, at least, everything was smooth and normal….
Why was it she suddenly recalled an incident of many years back, dating from her childhood in Manitoba? One of her sisters had played a trick on her. On going to bed one night, she had turned back the smooth, white counterpane of her bed to find, to her horror, a whole nest of young garden-snakes curled up together between the sheets. The exterior of the bed had given not the slightest inkling of the loathsome contents, so carefully had her sister tidied the clothes. Perverse that this particular incident should have come to her now out of the past!
Esther was not psychic, she was not even given to premonitions. Yet she knew that she was sensitive to the emotional states and conflicts of those about her. She had always been able, on entering a room full of people, to tell instinctively if anything was amiss, though whether her faculty was purely intuitional or merely the delicate functioning of a mental process she was unable to say, any more than a person suffering from "cat-fear" can tell how he detects the presence of the hidden cat, whether the warning comes out of the blue, or is the result of finely developed olfactory nerves.
In the present instance, having no tangible grounds for her conviction, she became exasperated and made repeated resolutions to put the entire thing out of mind. It was no use; she was wide awake, over-excited, the room felt hot, the cover got in her way. Why on earth were French sheets so many yards long? This one kept coming up about her neck and stifling her. Again and again she flung it back, until a final gesture of fury brought her hand in contact with a hard object, which fell with a clatter to the floor. It was her small alarm-clock. She picked it up and set it on the table beside her, where it ticked busily away.
How long it was before the welcome tide of drowsiness engulfed her she did not know. She hardly realised she had been asleep when gradually she became aware of something heavy lying across her body, pressing down upon her with an inert weight. The unpleasant consciousness grew, she wanted to rid herself of the incubus, but she felt curiously drugged, impotent. The weight increased; at the same time it seemed to have life of a certain sort, slow-moving and lethargic; it crept upward slowly, always pressing heavily upon her. She was cramped, her body ached, her breath came with difficulty, she turned and twisted, tried to free her arms, but they were pinioned close to her sides. What was the Thing thus crushing her? She strained to see, but the darkness was like black velvet; she could see nothing, only feel, breathlessly, chokingly. A horrible idea assailed her. Whatever it was, it was striving to suffocate her—yes, and it was going to succeed, unless she could muster the strength to cast it off.
Panic seized her. She struggled, possessed by a mad terror; she opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came, her voice was paralysed like the rest of her. Up and up crept the weight, it reached her throat, she felt it graze her chin. Its touch was cold and scaly; she shuddered at the contact. At the same dreadful moment she realised what the Thing was. Instantly her vision cleared as if an inky cloud had rolled away, and she stared with starting eyes into the small, cold eyes of a python!
The flat head was drawing slowly nearer, the mouth opened, she saw the darting tongue—the creature was going to bite. Then with a rush her voice came back; she screamed aloud…
CHAPTER XVI
She heard her own voice, muffled and unnatural. It seemed to work a sort of magic, for the python vanished, melted away like mist; she drew a great shuddering breath and found she was lying on her bed, unharmed, but with the sheet muffled about her throat and the thick eiderdown quilt resting in a roll across her. Her heart was still pounding, perspiration streamed from her while she laughed hysterically and repeated to herself:
"But pythons don't bite! Pythons don't bite!"