Comfortably installed in an armchair the man of medicine stared into the
glowing coals and thought deeply and long, but apparently to little
purpose, for he frequently rose and opening a door leading to the
staircase, listened intently; then resumed his seat. Presently, however,
he fell asleep, and when he woke it was past midnight. He stirred the
failing fire, lifted a book from the table at his side and looked at the
title. It was Denneker’s “Meditations.” He opened it at random and
began to read:
“Forasmuch as it is ordained of God that all flesh hath spirit and
thereby taketh on spiritual powers, so, also, the spirit hath powers of
the flesh, even when it is gone out of the flesh and liveth as a thing
apart, as many a violence performed by wraith and lemure sheweth. And
there be who say that man is not single in this, but the beasts have the
like evil inducement, and—”
The reading was interrupted by a shaking of the house, as by the fall of
a heavy object. The reader flung down the book, rushed from the room and
mounted the stairs to Fleming’s bed-chamber. He tried the door, but
contrary to his instructions it was locked. He set his shoulder against
it with such force that it gave way. On the floor near the disordered
bed, in his night clothes, lay Fleming gasping away his life.
The physician raised the dying man’s head from the floor and observed a
wound in the throat. “I should have thought of this,” he said, believing
it suicide.
When the man was dead an examination disclosed the unmistakable marks of
an animal’s fangs deeply sunken into the jugular vein.
But there was no animal.
A RESUMED IDENTITY
I
THE REVIEW AS A FORM OF WELCOME
ONE summer night a man stood on a low hill overlooking a wide expanse of
forest and field. By the full moon hanging low in the west he knew what
he might not have known otherwise: that it was near the hour of dawn. A
light mist lay along the earth, partly veiling the lower features of the
landscape, but above it the taller trees showed in well-defined masses
against a clear sky. Two or three farmhouses were visible through the
haze, but in none of them, naturally, was a light. Nowhere, indeed, was
any sign or suggestion of life except the barking of a distant dog,
which, repeated with mechanical iteration, served rather to accentuate
than dispel the loneliness of the scene.
The man looked curiously about him on all sides, as one who among
familiar surroundings is unable to determine his exact place and part in
the scheme of things. It is so, perhaps, that we shall act when, risen
from the dead, we await the call to judgment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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