bedclothes from the shape beneath. And there I beheld an apparition so ghastly that my senses reeled, and I did swoon against the bedpost, blotting out the vision with my two trembling hands.
A moment later I bared my eyes, and beheld— merely the body of a strangled man. Black and hideous of countenance it was, yes, with staring eyes and distended tongue. And yet not what I had seen—or imagined I had seen—at first impression.
It had been a false vision, my first impression, the product of my overwrought condition, and of my brother's hysterical utterance—of that I am now convinced. For what I had thought to be a coarse leathery, greenish, reptilian hide was indeed only a man's flesh ravaged by the elements and the unnatural manner of his death; and what in horror I had perceived against all reason as some invertebrate organism, gelatinous, sluglike, protruding from the cracked, blackened lips, that in my swoon had appeared actually to writhe in a most grisly and somehow beckoning manner—I quail now at the very memory—was in truth merely his deformed and swollen tongue; and most ghastly of all, the third eye, the yet living eye, that had appeared to wink from the folds of his forehead, yellow and filmed with slime—'twas not but a bruise, a swollen contusion of the struggle, partially obscured by matted hair. Nothing, nothing but that.
"The Devil, Tobias, can you not see? It was fate that brought him to me, and I could only do what I have done," gasped my brother, weeping.
"It is not only fate, my dear Ethan, but how a man responds to the blows dealt him by fate, that determines his true destiny," 1 spoke, my rage abated, my grief only commencing to flower.
And though to kneelhaul a man is indeed a cruel and unusual punishment if any there be, yet it could not be by my hand that my own flesh and blood should actually be put to death. And so it was done. Yet even as Ethan was pushed from the bow, he continued to maintain, with the utmost conviction, that the false vision was in fact the truth.
And, taking pity, I did not give orders to wrest from him the trinket, which it appeared he had taken from his victim's garment and which seemed to give him some comfort. I could see no harm in it, an ornament perhaps, to which he clung so desperately, to which he clung even as he was pulled from the water, to which he still clings. . . .
I let the papers fall from my hand, staring at the marks around the windows.
It was just about the grimmest thing I had ever read. And it felt very odd to be lying in the very room in which Ethan had spent the rest of his life. What had it been like to be locked in this room for twenty years?
I got up, feeling like an idiot, and checked the door to make sure I wasn't locked in.
The strangest thing about the document was the captain's hallucination. For a moment, he had seen what his simpleminded brother had imagined—a three-eyed creature with a greenish hide and a slug in his mouth. What did the captain's vision really mean? I couldn't figure it out.
There was one thing I was sure about: Despite the relaxed impression Zena was trying to make, the neighbors' interest in the captain's story wasn't trivial at all. But what were the three of them looking for? Whatever it was, they hadn't found it in the house this morning. And where else was there to look?
I was a little drowsy from all the sun that afternoon. As I lay there, my eyes kept returning to the markings on the wall. And perhaps they did form a sort of pattern after all, like the spokes of a lopsided wheel. The lines were spaced in such a way that they did seem to radiate from some point within one of the windows. Yet the generalized halo they formed around the rectangle of glass was not symmetrical. The angles between the lines varied, as though the point from which they sprang was not in the exact middle of the window, but toward the bottom and off to the side. And perhaps they were not shooting out from this off-center
A moment later I bared my eyes, and beheld— merely the body of a strangled man. Black and hideous of countenance it was, yes, with staring eyes and distended tongue. And yet not what I had seen—or imagined I had seen—at first impression.
It had been a false vision, my first impression, the product of my overwrought condition, and of my brother's hysterical utterance—of that I am now convinced. For what I had thought to be a coarse leathery, greenish, reptilian hide was indeed only a man's flesh ravaged by the elements and the unnatural manner of his death; and what in horror I had perceived against all reason as some invertebrate organism, gelatinous, sluglike, protruding from the cracked, blackened lips, that in my swoon had appeared actually to writhe in a most grisly and somehow beckoning manner—I quail now at the very memory—was in truth merely his deformed and swollen tongue; and most ghastly of all, the third eye, the yet living eye, that had appeared to wink from the folds of his forehead, yellow and filmed with slime—'twas not but a bruise, a swollen contusion of the struggle, partially obscured by matted hair. Nothing, nothing but that.
"The Devil, Tobias, can you not see? It was fate that brought him to me, and I could only do what I have done," gasped my brother, weeping.
"It is not only fate, my dear Ethan, but how a man responds to the blows dealt him by fate, that determines his true destiny," 1 spoke, my rage abated, my grief only commencing to flower.
And though to kneelhaul a man is indeed a cruel and unusual punishment if any there be, yet it could not be by my hand that my own flesh and blood should actually be put to death. And so it was done. Yet even as Ethan was pushed from the bow, he continued to maintain, with the utmost conviction, that the false vision was in fact the truth.
And, taking pity, I did not give orders to wrest from him the trinket, which it appeared he had taken from his victim's garment and which seemed to give him some comfort. I could see no harm in it, an ornament perhaps, to which he clung so desperately, to which he clung even as he was pulled from the water, to which he still clings. . . .
I let the papers fall from my hand, staring at the marks around the windows.
It was just about the grimmest thing I had ever read. And it felt very odd to be lying in the very room in which Ethan had spent the rest of his life. What had it been like to be locked in this room for twenty years?
I got up, feeling like an idiot, and checked the door to make sure I wasn't locked in.
The strangest thing about the document was the captain's hallucination. For a moment, he had seen what his simpleminded brother had imagined—a three-eyed creature with a greenish hide and a slug in his mouth. What did the captain's vision really mean? I couldn't figure it out.
There was one thing I was sure about: Despite the relaxed impression Zena was trying to make, the neighbors' interest in the captain's story wasn't trivial at all. But what were the three of them looking for? Whatever it was, they hadn't found it in the house this morning. And where else was there to look?
I was a little drowsy from all the sun that afternoon. As I lay there, my eyes kept returning to the markings on the wall. And perhaps they did form a sort of pattern after all, like the spokes of a lopsided wheel. The lines were spaced in such a way that they did seem to radiate from some point within one of the windows. Yet the generalized halo they formed around the rectangle of glass was not symmetrical. The angles between the lines varied, as though the point from which they sprang was not in the exact middle of the window, but toward the bottom and off to the side. And perhaps they were not shooting out from this off-center
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