Mrs.
Murphy caught herself--why, she could not say--waiting for some
definite auditory manifestation of what she instinctively felt was
near at hand. At present, however, she could not locate it, she could
only speculate on its whereabouts--it was somewhere in the direction
of the cupboard. And each time the stench came to her, the conviction
that its origin was in the cupboard grew. At last, unable to sustain
the suspense any longer, and urged on by an irresistible fascination,
she got softly out of bed, and, creeping stealthily forward, found her
way with surprisingly little difficulty (considering it was pitch dark
and the room was unfamiliar to her) to the cupboard.
With every step she took the stink increased, and by the time she had
reached the cupboard she was almost suffocated. For some seconds she
toyed irresolutely with the door handle, longing to be back again in
bed, but unable to tear herself away from the cupboard. At last,
yielding to the demands of some pitilessly exacting unknown influence,
she held her breath and swung open the door. The moment she did so the
room filled with the faint, phosphorescent glow of decay, and she
saw, exactly opposite her, a head--a human head--floating in mid-air.
Petrified with terror, she lost every atom of strength, and, entirely
bereft of the power to move or articulate a sound, she stood
stock-still staring at it. That it was the head of a man, she could
only guess from the matted crop of short red hair that fell in a
disordered entanglement over the upper part of the forehead and ears.
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