As I had feared, his health has broken -Dear God, our Father Who art in Heaven!
Cannot bear to think of it; yet it is planted, burned on my brain like a tin-type; that horror in the cellar -!
Alone now; half-past eight o'clock; house silent but -Found him swooned over his writing table; he still sleeps; yet for those few moments how nobly he acquitted himself while I stood paralyzed and shattered!
His skin is waxy, cool. Not the fever again, God be thanked. I daren't move him or leave him to go to the village. And if I did go, who would return with me to aid him? Who would come to this cursed house?
O, the cellar! The things in the cellar that have haunted our walls!
22 October 1850
DEAR BONES,
I am myself again, although weak, after thirty-six hours of unconsciousness. Myself again . . . what a grim and bitter joke! I shall never be myself again, never. I have come face to face with an insanity and a horror beyond the limits of human expression. And the end is not yet.
If it were not for Cal, I believe I should end my life this minute. He is one island of sanity in all this madness.
You shall know it all.
We had equipped ourselves with candles for our cellar exploration, and they threw a strong glow that was quite adequate - hellishly adequate! Calvin tried to dissuade me, citing my recent illness, saying that the most we should probably find would be some healthy rats to mark for poisoning.
I remained determined, however; Calvin fetched a sigh and answered: 'Have it as you must, then, Mr Boone.'
The entrance to the cellar is by means of a trap in the kitchen floor [which Cal assures me he has since stoutly boarded over], and we raised it only with a great deal of straining and lifting.
A fetid, overpowering smell came up out of the darkness, not unlike that which pervaded the deserted town across the Royal River. The candle I held shed its glow on a steeply-slanting flight of stairs leading down into darkness. They were in a terrible state of repair - in one place an entire riser missing, leaving only a black hole - and it was easy enough to see how the unfortunate Marcella might have come to her end there.
'Be careful, Mr Boone!' Cal said; I told him I had no intention of being anything but, and we made the descent.
The floor was earthen, the walls of stout granite, and hardly wet. The place did not look like a rat haven at all, for there were none of the things rats like to make their nests in, such as old boxes, discarded furniture, piles of paper, and the like. We lifted our candles, gaining a small circle of light, but still able to see little. The floor had a gradual slope which seemed to run beneath the main living-room and the dining-room - i.e., to the west. It was in this direction we walked. All was in utter silence. The stench in the air grew steadily stronger, and the dark about us seemed to press like wool, as if jealous of the light which had temporarily deposed it after so many years of undisputed dominion.
At the far end, the granite walls gave way to a polished wood which seemed totally black and without reflective properties. Here the cellar ended, leaving what seemed to be an alcove off the main chamber. It was positioned at an angle which made inspection impossible without stepping around the corner.
Calvin and I did so.
It was as if a rotten spectre of this dwelling's sinister past had risen before us. A single chair stood in this alcove, and above it, fastened from a hook in one of the stout overhead beams, was a decayed noose of hemp.
'Then it was here that he hung himself,' Cal muttered. 'God!'
'Yes. . . with the corpse of his daughter lying at the foot of the stairs behind him.'
Cal began to speak; then I saw his eyes jerked to a spot behind me; then his words became a scream.
How, Bones, can I describe the sight which fell upon our eyes? How can I tell you of the hideous tenants within our walls?
The far wall swung back, and from that darkness a face leered - a face with eyes as ebon as the Styx itself. Its mouth yawned in a toothless, agonized grin; one yellow, rotted hand stretched itself out to us. It made a hideous, mewling sound and took a shambling step forward. The light from my candle fell upon it -And I saw the livid rope-burn about its neck!
From beyond it something else moved, something I shall dream of until the day when all dreams cease: a girl with a pallid, mouldering face and a corpse-grin; a girl whose head lolled at a lunatic angle.
They wanted us; I know it. And I know they would have drawn us into that darkness and made us their own, had I not thrown my candle directly at the thing in the partition, and followed it with the chair beneath that noose.