that which I had done, and ended with the moment when I saw him leap the gap, a fugitive. I know he understood, for after a few seconds of silence, just outside the wall there arose the blood-chilling howl of a wolf. Higher and higher it rose, a long sobbing wail of hate, an undulating crescendo of sound; it thinned to a thread whose throaty murmur was drowned in the rushing trample of heavy feet overhead and the crash of exploding powder. Flash after flash tore the velvet night, mingling with the shouts of the soldiers who were firing from the windows, and at some time in the tumult the master turned his back on Ponkert for the last time, I trust.[1]
Utterly alone in the world, friendless and forlorn, I quit tomorrow this mortal form that has known such strange changes.
I go with no reluctance whatever, for I have nothing to live for, and the sooner gone, the sooner I shall expiate my sins, and at last win through to where I am expected. For I cannot believe that I shall suffer in torment forever.
Yet, I would even forego that bliss for the greater one of being a beast again and the master a man, so that I might feel my fangs sink into his black wrinkled throat, and feel the blood spurt warm into my mouth. Oh, to rip, to tear, to slash at that fiend, and have him utterly in my power! To feel his bones crunch beneath my powerful jaws, and to tear his flesh with them!
Yet—sometimes I think perhaps he was once as I, was tempted, fell, sinking lower and lower. Perhaps he, too, was not wholly to blame, but even as I, was weak and doomed from the beginning. Is it the fault of the pot that it is misshapen in the making?
They tell me that every pang I suffer now will shorten my punishment in the future. What my pains on earth shall be I know not. I may be broken on the wheel or stretched upon the rack, but I am resigned and fortified against my fate.
But there is one thing of which I am positive, for they have told me, to add pang upon pang, that I shall be flayed alive, my hide tanned like a beast's, and my dark and gloomy history written upon it for all to read who can!
I have never heard of these things being done before, but I have no doubt that they will be done to me. However, I care not. So much have I suffered in heart and thought that no bodily discomfort can surpass my other torments. I am resigned. May he who reads take warning. Farewell to all whom I know and have known. Farewell!
***
When the manuscript was finished I sat thinking for a little time. So this book was written on a human hide, which when occupied had enclosed Pierre’s ancestor.
"I thought," said I to the old man, "that you told me that the person described in the narrative was your grandpére many times removed. But here it relates that his only child was murdered by himself. How do you explain that?" I asked.
"You will remember perhaps that he told how, after the flight from the cottage, immediately succeeding the act was a blank, save for a vague remembrance of shots. What is more probable than that someone aroused by the howling in the night should fire blindly at the noise, not once but several times. Granted that, it is probable that, frightened by the unexpected noise, the beasts would leave their prey. Such is the legend that has accompanied the book for cen-
(Continued on page 143)
- ↑ Here there was a marginal note on the old parchment in a differntly colored ink, and apparently at a much later period of time, for it is this: "Never since that bygone day has this town been troubled by either vampire or werewolf."
