"Where you leave um?" asked Li Ho briefly. He had already set down the bag he was carrying.
"In my own bed."
"Me go get!" said Li Ho.
But I had not waited. I had started to "go get" myself. The sense of breathless hurry was on me again. I did not pause to argue that the child was perfectly safe. I forgot that I had ever been lame. Perhaps that sciatic nerve is only mortal mind anyway. When I came out into the clearing the cottage was turning silver in the first rays of the full moon. Very peaceful and secure it looked. And yet I hurried!
I made no noise. To myself I explained this by a desire not to waken the youngster. No use frightening him. I stole, as quietly as one of his own ancestors, to the foot of the stairs. The door of Desire's room was open. I could see a moonlit bar across the dark landing....
I think I went straight up that stair. I hope so. You know that one of my worst nervous troubles has been a dread that I might fail in some emergency? I dread a sort of nerve paralysis.... But I got up the stair. The fear that seemed to push me back wasn't personal, or physical—one might call it psychic fear, only that the word explains nothing.... I looked in at the open door. There seemed to be nothing there but the moonlight. The room must have been almost as bare as my own. But over on the far side, beyond the zone of the window, was the dim whiteness of a bed. I could see nothing clearly—but the Fear was there. I dragged, actually dragged, my feet across the floor—my sight growing clearer, until at last—I saw!
I think I shouted, but it was so like a nightmare that I may not have made a sound.... The dragging weight must have left my feet as I sprang forward ... but it is all confused! And the whole thing lasted only a minute.
In that minute I had seen what I would have sworn was not human. Even while I knew It for the little old man with the umbrella, I had no sense of its humanness. Something bent above the bed—the old man's face was there, the thin figure, the white hair, and yet it seemed the wildest absurdity to call the Fury who wore them by any human name.
The eyes looked at me—eyes without depth or meaning—eyes like bits of blue steel reflecting the light of Tophet—, incarnate evil, blazing, peering ... I caught a glimpse of long, thin hands, like claws, around the folded umbrella, a flash of something bright at the ferrule ... and then the picture dissolved like an image passing from a dimly lighted screen. Before I could skirt the bed, whatever had been upon the other side of it had melted into the darkness beyond the moon. I bent over the bed. Sami was there—Sami, rolled shapelessly in the concealing bedclothes, his round face hidden in the pillow, his black hair just a blot of darkness on the white.... It might have been Desire lying there! ...
I found the door through which the Thing had slipped. But it was useless to try to follow. There was no one in the house nor in the moonlit clearing. And Desire and Li Ho were waiting on the trail. I picked up the still sleeping child and blundered down to them.