I tried to open my eyes. The lids seemed to be weighted down. All the force of my will could only slightly open them. Through this slight opening, I saw my wife bending over me, and the eyes that looked at me were the inscrutable eyes of Toi Wah!
VI.
Slowly she bent down—I could sense the delicate fragrance of her hair—and applied her sweet, soft lips to mine. Again I felt that I was suffocating, that the very breath of my life was being drawn from me.
I concentrated all my will in the effort to struggle, and with tremendous effort I was able feebly to move an arm. My wife hastily took her lips from mine and looked at me closely, with the cruel amber eyes of the great Tartar cat, whose bones lay in my garret.
Once more she leaned over and applied her lips to mine. I lay there in helpless lethargy, unable to move, but with an active mind that leaped back into the past, bringing to my memory all the old nursery tales of childhood of cats sucking the breath of sleeping children, of the folklore tales that I had heard of helpless invalids done to death by cruel cats who stole their breath from them.
I began to be aroused at last. Was my breath to be sucked from me by this half-human, half-cat that was bending over me? With a final despairing effort of my wine-sodden will, I raised my arms and pushed this soft sweet vampire from my breast and from the bed.
And then, as the cold sweat of fear poured from my trembling body, I shouted for help. At last my servant came running up the stairs and pounded on the door.
“What is it?” he called. “What is wrong, sir? Shall I go for the police?”
“Nothing is wrong,” answered my wife calmly. She had risen from where I had thrown her and was arranging her disheveled hair. “Your master has had a terrible dream, that is all.”
“It is a lie!” I shouted. “Do not leave me alone with this vampire!”