That was just what the phantom wished, to hurt him, and not satisfied with this, he snatched from him with his glance alone his rags and bandages, and afterward sank his cruel nails into the deep wound, and pulled apart the edges, making him scream with pain.
"Ay! Ay!... Pimentó, pardon me!"
Such was his pain that his tremblings, surging up from the shoulder to his head, made his cropped hair bristle, and stand erect, and then it began to curl with the contraction of the pain until it turned into a horrible tangle of serpents.
Then a horrible thing happened. The ghost, seizing him by his strange hair, finally spoke.
"Come ... come...." it said, pulling him along.
It dragged him along with superhuman swiftness, led him flying or swimming, he did not know which, across a space both light and slippery; dizzily they seemed to float toward a red spot which stood out in the far, far distance.
The stain grew larger, it looked in shape like the door of his bedroom, and after it poured out a dense, nauseating smoke, a stench of burning straw which prevented him from breathing.
It must be the mouth of hell: Pimentó would hurl him into it, into the immense fire whose splendour lit up the door. Fear conquered his paralysis. He gave a fearful cry, finally moved his arms, and with a back stroke of his hand, hurled Pimentó and the strange hair away from him.
Now he had his eyes well opened; the phantom had disappeared. He had been dreaming: it was doubtless a feverish nightmare: now he found himself again in bed with poor Teresa, who, still dressed, was snoring laboriously at his side.
But no; the delirium continued. What strange light was illumining his bedroom? He still saw the mouth of hell, which was like the door of his room, ejecting smoke and ruddy splendour. Was he asleep? He rubbed his eyes, moved his arms, and sat up in bed.