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Page 43
But she was awakened about midnight by a strange sensation in her
throat. She had dreamed that some one with long white fingers was
strangling her, and she saw bending over her the face of an old
woman in a white cap. When she waked there was no old woman, the
room was almost as light as day in the full moonlight, and looked
very peaceful; but the strangling sensation at her throat
continued, and besides that, her face and ears felt muffled. She
put up her hand and felt that her head was covered with a ruffled
nightcap tied under her chin so tightly that it was exceedingly
uncomfortable. A great qualm of horror shot over her. She tore
the thing off frantically and flung it from her with a convulsive
effort as if it had been a spider. She gave, as she did so, a
quick, short scream of terror. She sprang out of bed and was going
toward the door, when she stopped.
It had suddenly occurred to her that Eliza Lippincott might have
entered the room and tied on the cap while she was asleep. She had
not locked her door. She looked in the closet, under the bed;
there was no one there. Then she tried to open the door, but to
her astonishment found that it was locked--bolted on the inside.
"I must have locked it, after all," she reflected with wonder, for
she never locked her door. Then she could scarcely conceal from
herself that there was something out of the usual about it all.
Certainly no one could have entered the room and departed locking
the door on the inside. She could not control the long shiver of
horror that crept over her, but she was still resolute. She
resolved that she would throw the cap out of the window. "I'll see
if I have tricks like that played on me, I don't care who does it,"
said she quite aloud. She was still unable to believe wholly in
the supernatural. The idea of some human agency was still in her
mind, filling her with anger.
She went toward the spot where she had thrown the cap--she had
stepped over it on her way to the door--but it was not there. She
searched the whole room, lighting her lamp, but she could not find
the cap. Finally she gave it up. She extinguished her lamp and
went back to bed. She fell asleep again, to be again awakened in
the same fashion. That time she tore off the cap as before, but
she did not fling it on the floor as before. Instead she held to
it with a fierce grip. Her blood was up.
Holding fast to the white flimsy thing, she sprang out of bed, ran
to the window which was open, slipped the screen, and flung it out;
but a sudden gust of wind, though the night was calm, arose and it
floated back in her face. She brushed it aside like a cobweb and
she clutched at it. She was actually furious. It eluded her
clutching fingers. Then she did not see it at all. She examined
the floor, she lighted her lamp again and searched, but there was
no sign of it.
Mrs. Simmons was then in such a rage that all terror had
disappeared for the time. She did not know with what she was
angry, but she had a sense of some mocking presence which was
silently proving too strong against her weakness, and she was
aroused to the utmost power of resistance. To be baffled like this
and resisted by something which was as nothing to her straining
senses filled her with intensest resentment.
Finally she got back into bed again; she did not go to sleep. She
felt strangely drowsy, but she fought against it. She was wide
awake, staring at the moonlight, when she suddenly felt the soft
white strings of the thing tighten around her throat and realized
that her enemy was again upon her. She seized the strings, untied
them, twitched off the cap, ran with it to the table where her
scissors lay and furiously cut it into small bits. She cut and
tore, feeling an insane fury of gratification.
"There!" said she quite aloud. "I guess I sha'n't have any more
trouble with this old cap."
She tossed the bits of muslin into a basket and went back to bed.
Almost immediately she felt the soft strings tighten around her
throat. Then at last she yielded, vanquished. This new refutal of
all laws of reason by which she had learned, as it were, to spell
her theory of life, was too much for her equilibrium. She pulled
off the clinging strings feebly, drew the thing from her head, slid
weakly out of bed, caught up her wrapper and hastened out of the
room. She went noiselessly along the hall to her own old room: she
entered, got into her familiar bed, and lay there the rest of the
night shuddering and listening, and if she dozed, waking with a
start at the feeling of the pressure upon her throat to find that
it was not there, yet still to be unable to shake off entirely the
horror.
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