Alas for the sorceress, misguided by legend and fantasy! She had evoked no phantom, but a fact actual as nature always is even if nature is not humanly understood. The Thing was real.
The awe of the magician became the stricken panic of the woman. She had unloosed what she could not bind. She had called a servant, and gained a master. Gone forever were the dreams of power and splendor and triumph. Now she learned that only pure magic can discharge the spirits it has summoned, nor could a murderess attain that lofty art.
We were given a glimpse of a frantic girl crouched in the useless pentagram traced on the floor for her protection, covering her beauty with the cloak of her hair against the eyes that burned upon her between the overturned silver lamps.
A deepening horror gathered about the house of Mistress Desire Michell. The old dame who had been the girl's nurse and caretaker fled the place and fell into mumbling dotage in a night. No child would come near the garden, though fruit and nuts rotted away where they dropped from overripeness. No neighbor crossed the doorstep where Sir Austin had died. She lived in utter solitude by day. By night she waged hideous battle against her Visitor; using woman's cunning, essaying every expedient and art her books suggested to her desperate need.
With each conflict, her strength and resource waned, while That which she held at bay knew no weariness. Time was not, for it, nor change of purpose.
"I faint, I fail!" she wrote. "The Sea of Dread breaks about my feet. It is midnight. The pentagram fades from the floor—the nine lamps die—the breath of the One at the casement is upon me——"
"A handful of pages have been torn out here," he stated. "The next entry that I can read is in the middle of a stained page, and must be considerably later on."
Phillida made an odd little noise like a whimper, clutching at his sleeve. The third shock for which I had been waiting shuddered through the house, this time distinctly enough for all to feel. A gust of wind went through the wet trees outside like a gasp.
"Ethan, what was that?" she stammered. "Oh, I'm afraid! Cousin Roger——?"