“What is the matter with me? Am I going mad? This is the room, and yet, although I know it, I can’t think what room it is. Something happened to me here which haunts me; and though I’m afraid to try to think what it was, I can’t help trying. Why did I come here? It was very silly. It was because he—he told me that—Edwin Lawrence was killed here.
“Edwin Lawrence? What had that man to do with me? Lawrence? I feel as if I ought to know the name. There were two of them, and one—one was killed. Oh, I remember all! I can hear that horrid noise. I can see the knives—the knives! And I can see the blood, as he falls right down upon his face, and the hack, hack, hacking! I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it! Did I—do it?”
She looked about her with an agony of appeal which it was terrible to witness. My heart sank within my breast. At that moment I could not have gone to her even had I tried.
“Let me see—how did it happen? He stood here, and—the other laughed; and then there came the knife—the long, gleaming knife—and struck him in the back; and he looked round, and—I saw his face. His face! What a face! It was as if he were looking into hell. Don’t look at me—not like that. I can’t help you! It’s too late! Turn your face away; don’t let me see it; it isn’t fair. It was the devil did it—the devil! It wasn’t I. And then it took him by the throat with a dozen hands, and with a hundred knives cut at his face, until, before my eyes, I saw him losing his likeness to a man. And then it loosed him, and the great knife struck him from the back, and he fell on his face—what was his face, and then the hack, hack, hacking! And all the time that horrid noise.”
She held up her arms in an anguish of supplication.
“Oh Lord, in what have I offended that this thing should come upon me? If I have sinned, surely my punishment is greater than my sin. That you should lay this burden on me, to bear for ever, and for ever, and for ever! Take it from me, let me wake to find it is a dream—the nightmare of a haunted night! For if it should be true, if it should be true, what is there for me but the torture fires of an eternal hell? Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy!”
She broke into a paroxysm of sobbing. She shed no tears, hers were dry sobs; but it seemed as if they were tearing her to pieces. Then they ceased. Again a shudder went all over her, and again she seemed to come back to a curious wakefulness, out of a fevered dream.
“I’m not well; I can’t be; I wish I were. It is as if I were two persons, and each keeps losing the other. Can there be two persons in one body? My brain seems blurred—as if it were in two parts. When I am using one part, the other—the other’s all confused. It’s not as it should be. I feel sure that I haven’t always been like this; something must have happened to make me so. When I try to think what it is, I’m afraid; and yet I can’t help trying. I know—I know it was in this room it happened; but what could it have been? What brought me to this room at all? When was it that I came?
“There’s something in my head that I can’t catch hold of—it keeps eluding me. If I only could get hold of it, I’d understand—I’m sure I should.—What would it be that I should understand? I’m afraid to think! It’s awful that I should be afraid of what would come to me if understanding came, especially as I want it so much to come. I seem to be haunted; is it by a vision, or by something which really happened? I wish I could sit down and quietly think it out. If I could put the pieces of the puzzle together I might know what it means. But I can’t; I’m all restless; I can’t keep still.
“Why is it that I am always seeing this man lying dead upon the floor? Why do I seem to be striking at his back? It is so strange. It is not a knife I’m striking with, not a common knife; it is something different—and worse. It comes out of nothing; and, all the time, there’s the noise. It is not I who make the noise, no, I don’t speak—I can’t—I daren’t—it’s It. But it keeps on strike, strike, striking, and the blood all comes upon my cloak. I know I had a cloak on, I remember how it kept getting in my way. And then—he falls. And that’s all—until it begins all over again, and I am standing in a room, in the moonlight, and he sits up in bed and looks at me—he, my friend.”