Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/40

28 events of the evening. I saw Isaac Rudd, and the creature in the canvas cloth, and the two short men, and the person in the long black coat. They kept popping in and out, always in full enjoyment of my tortures. There were Emily and I, standing at the top of an enormous flight of steps, in pitch-black darkness, in frightful weather, outside the door of some dreadful place, and there were those dreadful creatures jeering at us because no one would let us in. And Tom—I knew that somewhere near Tom was crying. And the thing which was in the scrap of paper was with me all the night. It was always on me somewhere; now on my throat, biting through the skin; now on my breast, drawing the life right out of me; now on my toes, hampering my feet, so that I could scarcely lift them up and down; now inside my mouth, filling me with a horrible choking sense of nausea.

But perhaps the strangest part of it all was that, when I awoke, there actually was something on my forehead. I felt it against my chin. Giving my head a sudden shake it slipped off on to the pillow at my side. I sat up. It was broad day. I saw it as plain as could be. A little painted thing, tricked out in ridiculously contrasting shades of green, and pink, and yellow. As Miss Ashton had said, it might have been a toy. I had seen things not unlike it in the shop, among the Japanese and Chinese curiosities. Or it might have been a tiny representation of some preposterous heathen god, with beads for eyes.