The Factor sighed again and then he spoke once more in that low sepulchral voice.
"You see before you," he told us, "Lady Susan Glanville. She was carried into this chamber and fettered to the wall in 1473."
A thrill of horror coursed through me; I felt that we were in the presence of malign forces from the Pit itself.
To me the hideous thing had appeared sexless, but at the sound of its name, the ghastly mockery of a grin contorted the puckered red-smeared mouth.
I noticed now for the first time that monster actually was secured to the wall. The great double shackles were so blackened with age, I had not noticed them before.
The Factor went on, as if he spoke by rote. "Lady Glanville was a maternal ancestor of the Chilton-Paynes. She had commerce with the Devil. She was condemned as a witch but escaped the stake. Finally her own people forcibly overcame her. She was brought in here, fettered and left to die."
He was silent a moment and then continued. "It was too late. She had already made a pact with the Powers of Darkness. It was an unspeakably evil thing and it has condemned her issue to a life of torment and nightmare, a lifetime of terror and dread."
He swung his torch toward the blackened red-eyed thing. "She was a beauty once. She hated death. She feared death. And so she finally bartered her own immortal soul—and the bodies of her issue—for eternal earthly life."
I heard his voice as in a nightmare; it seemed to be coming from an infinite distance.
He went on. "The consequences of breaking the pact are too terrible to describe. No descendant of hers has ever dared do so, once the forfeit is known. And so she had bided here for these nearly five hundred years."