Beyond question, it was in Edward's script. But why had he written when he was close enough to ring--and why was the script so awkward, coarse and shaky? I could make out nothing in the dim half-light, so edged back into the hall, the dwarf figure clumping mechanically after but pausing on the inner door's threshold. The odor of this singular messenger was really appalling, and I hoped (not in vain, thank God!) that my wife would not wake and confront it. Then, as I read the paper, I felt my knees give under me and my vision go black. I was lying on the floor when I came to, that accursed sheet still clutched in my fear-rigid hand. This is what it said: "Dan--go to the sanitarium and kill it. Exterminate it. It isn't Edward Derby any more. She got me--it's Asenath--_and she has been dead three months and a half_. I lied when I said she had gone away. I killed her. I had to. It was sudden, but we were alone and I was in my right body. I saw a candlestick and smashed her head in. She would have got me for good at Hallowmass. "I buried her in the farther cellar storeroom under some old boxes and cleaned up all the traces. The servants suspected next morning, but they have such secrets that they dare not tell the police. I sent them off, but God knows what they--and others of the cult--will do. "I thought for a while I was all right, and then I felt the tugging at my brain. I knew what it was--I ought to have remembered. A soul like hers--or Ephraim's--is half detached, and keeps right on after death as long as the body lasts. She was getting me--making me change bodies with her--_seizing my body and putting me in that corpse of hers buried in the cellar_. "I knew what was coming--that's why I snapped and had to go to the asylum. Then it came--I found myself choked in the dark--in Asenath's rotting carcass down there in the cellar under the boxes where I put it. And I knew she must be in my body at the sanitarium--permanently, for it was after Hallowmass, and the sacrifice would work even without her being there--sane, and ready for release as a menace to the world. I was desperate, _and in spite of everything I clawed my way out_. "I'm too far gone to talk--I couldn't manage to telephone--but I can still write. I'll get fixed up somehow and bring this last word and warning. _Kill that fiend_ if you value the peace and comfort of the world. _See that it is cremated._ If you don't, it will live on and on, body to body for ever, and I can't tell you what it will do. Keep clear of black magic, Dan--it's the devil's business. Good-bye--you've been a great friend. Tell the police whatever they'll believe--and I'm damnably sorry to drag all this on you. I'll be at peace before long--this thing won't hold together much more. Hope you can read this. _And kill that thing--kill it._