But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and struck myself heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furniture. I have a vague memory of battering myself thus, to and fro in the darkness, of a cramped struggle, and of my own wild crying as I darted to and fro, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my footing, and then I remember no more.
I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man with the withered arm was watching my face. I looked about me, trying to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner, and saw the old woman, no longer abstracted, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. “Where am I?” I asked. “I seem to remember you, and yet I cannot remember who you are.”
They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who hears a tale. “We found you at dawn,” said he, “and there was blood on your forehead and lips.”
It was very slowly I recovered my memory of my experience. “You believe now,” said the old man, “that the room is haunted?” He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who grieves for a broken friend.
“Yes,” said I; “the room is haunted.”
“And you have seen it. And we, who have lived here all our lives, have never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared.... Tell us, is it truly the old earl who”—
“No,” said I; “it is not.”
“I told you so,” said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. “It is his poor young countess who was frightened”—
“It is not,” I said. “There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess in that room, there is no ghost there at all; but worse, far worse”—