My organs of vocalization still paralyzed by fright, I lifted my trembling right hand and pointed wildly in the direction of the doorway. Responding to my frantic gesticulations, Mrs. Nicodemus—her brow contracted in perplexity—turned to look behind her. At that instant, the gruesome spectre raised the scythe high over its left shoulder and—bringing it down in one fierce, sweeping motion—struck the elderly matron directly across the throat!

Had Mrs. Nicodemus been a woman of more slender constitution—or had her attacker been of more formidable strength—the poor widow’s head would certainly have come flying off. As it was, a great spray of blood issued from her severed throat, and her head tilted sideways at a ghastly angle. Raising the lethal implement high above its head—like a hooded executioner, poised to deliver the coup de grâce to a condemned prisoner—the implacable fiend brought the gleaming blade down upon the widow’s neck once again. This time, Mrs. Nicodemus’ entire head—eyes bulging, mouth agape—fell from the shoulders; while the decapitated body—after remaining grotesquely upright for a brief but unspeakable moment—tottered and collapsed to the floor.

The sheer overwhelming horror of this atrocity—occurring so close to the bed that a shower of arterial blood gushed from the stump of the poor victim’s neck and bespattered my costume—caused a shriek of the purest terror to erupt from my fear-constricted throat. As I cringed—and quailed—and cowered on the mattress, the hideous spectre dropped its scythe upon the floor, stepped over the prone and headless body of the butchered widow, and drew close to my side. Reaching up one slender, white hand, it plucked the death-mask from its visage, causing a shudder of absolute dread to course through my frame as I gazed upward at the same appalling countenance I had witnessed on two prior occasions: a countenance whose features, though possessed of a distinctly feminine cast, bore an uncanny resemblance to … my own!

The room swam—a swirling fog of inky blackness began to becloud my vision—my consciousness commenced to dim. In the instant before I lapsed into utter insensibility, the spectre bent towards me, and—placing its pallid lips in exceptionally close proximity to my right ear—whispered a single, portentous, and ineffably sinister word.

Quoth my double: “Nevermore!”

Part Three

CHAPTER 24