And how were they passed? Hideous visions
passed before the aching eyes that I dared not close, but which
gazed ever into the dumb darkness where It lay--my dread companion
through the watches of the night. I pictured It in every abhorrent
form which an excited fancy could summon up: now as a skeleton;
with hollow eye-holes and grinning, fleshless jaws; now as a
vampire, with livid face and bloated form, and dripping mouth wet
with blood. Would it never be light! And yet, when day should
dawn I should be forced to see It face to face. I had heard that
specter and fiend were compelled to fade as morning brightened, but
this creature was too real, too foul a thing of earth, to vanish at
cock-crow. No! I should see it--the Horror--face to face! And
then the cold prevailed, and my teeth chattered, and shiverings ran
through me, and yet there was the damp of agony on my bursting
brow. Some instinct made me snatch at a shawl or cloak that lay on
a chair within reach, and wrap it round me. The moan was renewed,
and the chain just stirred. Then I sank into apathy, like an
Indian at the stake, in the intervals of torture.
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