Franz stood speechless, horror-bound. He felt his blood actually freezing, and his hair moving and standing erect on his head....
“It’s but a dream, an empty dream!” he attempted to formulate in his mind.
“I have tried my best, Franzchen.... I have tried my best to sever myself from these accursed strings, without pulling them to pieces ...” pleaded the same shrill, familiar voice. “Wilt thou help me to do so?...”
Another twang, still more prolonged and dismal, resounded within the case, now dragged about the table in every direction, by some interior power, like some living wriggling thing, the twangs becoming sharper and more jerky with every new pull.
It was not for the first time that Stenio heard those sounds. He had often remarked them before—indeed, ever since he had used his master’s viscera as a footstool for his own ambition. But on every occasion a feeling of creeping horror had prevented him from investigating their cause, and he had tried to assure himself that the sounds were only a hallucination.
But now he stood face to face with the terrible fact, whether in dream or in reality he knew not, nor did he care, since the hallucination—if hallucination it were—was far more real and vivid than any reality. He tried to speak, to take a step forward; but, as often happens in nightmares, he could neither utter a word nor move a finger.... He felt hopelessly paralyzed.
The pulls and jerks were becoming more desperate with each moment, and at last something inside the case snapped violently. The vision of his Stradivarius, devoid of its magical strings, flashed before his eyes, throwing him into a cold sweat of mute and unspeakable terror.
He made a superhuman effort to rid himself of the incubus that held him spell-bound. But as the last supplicating whisper of the invisible Presence repeated:
“Do, oh, do ... help me to cut myself off——”
Franz sprang to the case with one bound, like an enraged tiger defending its prey, and with one frantic effort breaking the spell.