The entity which rested on that stone bench was like something that had crawled up out of hell. Piercing malignant red eyes proclaimed that it had a terrible life, and yet that life sustained itself in a black, shrunken half-mummified body which resembled a disinterred corpse. A few mouldy rags clung to the cadaver-like frame. Wisps of white hair sprouted out of its ghastly grey-white skull. A red smear or blotch of some sort covered the wizened slit which served it as a mouth. It surveyed us with a malignancy which was beyond anything merely human. It was impossible to stare back into those monstrous red eyes. They were so inexpressibly evil, one felt that one's soul would be consumed in the fires of their malevolence. Glancing aside, I saw that the Factor was now supporting Earl Frederick. The young heir had sagged against him. The Earl stared fixedly at the fearful apparition with terror-glazed eyes. In spite of my own sense of horror, I pitied him. The Factor sighed again and then he spoke once more in that low sepulchral voice. "You see before you," he told us, "Lady Susan Glanville. She was carried into this chamber and fettered to the wall in 1473." A thrill of horror coursed through me; I felt that we were in the presence of malign forces from the Pit itself. To me the hideous thing had appeared sexless, but at the sound of its name, the ghastly mockery of a grin contorted the puckered red-smeared mouth. I noticed now for the first time that monster actually was secured to the wall. The great double shackles were so blackened with age, I had not noticed them before. The Factor went on, as if he spoke by rote. "Lady Glanville was a maternal ancestor of the Chilton-Paynes. She had commerce with the Devil. She was condemned as a witch but escaped the stake. Finally her own people forcibly overcame her. She was brought in here, fettered and left to die." He was silent a moment and then continued. "It was too late. She had already made a pact with the Powers of Darkness. It was an unspeakably evil thing and it has condemned her issue to a life of torment and nightmare, a lifetime of terror and dread." He swung his torch toward the blackened red-eyed thing. "She was a beauty once. She hated death. She feared death. And so she finally bartered her own immortal soul--and the bodies of her issue--for eternal earthly life." I heard his voice as in a nightmare; it seemed to be coming from an infinite distance. He went on. "The consequences of breaking the pact are too terrible to describe. No descendant of hers has ever dared do so, once the forfeit is known. And so she had bided here for these nearly five hundred years."