“You’re quite safe,” said Vestné. “She died of a broken heart long since. Try to remember that, and think you’re suffering from a dream.”
“She didn’t die. No, no. She never died. And here she haunts me, and there she haunts him too; and oftentimes she clutches at my breast with her strong fingers, and some day she will tear my heart away and suck my life blood. Oh! if you have any mercy take me home.”
But even as she spoke her voice and hands had lost their power and she fell backwards.
“She had no mercy herself, yet would solicit yours. She is not yet cured,” my companion remarked.
The light flickered on the wall beside the crucifix, and stretched upon it I saw the woman’s figure; but as I looked I saw the crucifix had turned from wood into the shape of a man, and the woman hung upon his body, nailed to it as if it had been lifeless wood.
We went away and there was utter silence in the cell.
From there Vestné guided me into a low, darkened chamber, rather different in shape from the others I had seen. A long low table stood in the midst, and instead of the pale light which flickered through the other dreary cells strange, curious flames and darts of fire floated and danced from side to side.
I cannot tell whether it was owing to the lurid, unreal glare these lights cast, but the ghastly sight that met us horrified me more than any I had seen yet.
There on the table lay the form of the woman I had watched drawn thither when I was with Plucritus.
She lay insensible, and it was well, since about her crowded many fearful demons, and they were all gnawing the flesh away, or rather, to those who can understand it better, the spirit.