Owing to a singular combination of circumstances, however—the incapacitated state of my arm, an instinctive reluctance to injure a female, and the highly uneven surface of the stone cellar floor, which rendered me somewhat off-balance—I immediately found myself sprawled upon my back, my demoniacal half-sibling kneeling upon my chest and assaulting me with the ferocity of a hell-cat. While I vainly attempted to fend her off with my flailing left arm, she scratched at my face with her long, claw-like fingernails, then grabbed me by the hair and viciously pounded my head against the floor. As an involuntary moan of capitulation escaped from my lips, she sprang to her feet—snatched the oil lamp from its place atop the wooden crate—and dashed from the chamber.

Struggling groggily to my feet, I stumbled through the partially open doorway and staggered off in pursuit of my sister, following the receding glow of her lamp as she hurried through the labyrinthine passageways towards the stairwell.

“Stay!” I yelled as I made my way half-blindly through the subterranean gloom.

All at once—as if in obedience to my command—she stopped, swivelled, and slowly glided back in my direction.

Somewhat startled by this unexpected turn, I froze in place and waited until she had come to a halt several yards in front of me. The lurid glow of her lamp, shining upward upon her countenance, endowed her features with a ghastly, mask-like quality.

“Sister,” I declared. “I urge you to abandon your implacable scheme and consign yourself to the merciful judgment of the law, which may well see fit—in view of your youth, sex, and manifestly deranged frame of mind—to spare your life for the atrocities you have already committed.”

Emitting a sharp, disdainful snort, my half-sibling replied: “I might have slain you before this—on the evening I struck the head off the fat cow, Nicodemus, or encountered you in old Montague’s sty. I spared you, however, because we share the same blood. But I shall not allow such foolish sentimentality to deter me now.”

“You are unarmed,” I coolly replied, feigning a bravado I did not entirely feel. “You cannot do me harm.”

“No?” she sneered, elevating her eyebrows. Then—extending the lamp in my direction—she said: “Look down at your feet, dear brother.”

I did as she commanded—and my heart instantly grew clammy with fear. I was standing upon a wooden trapdoor!

“Look there, brother,” said Lenore. “Over your head.”

I glanced upward and emitted a gasp of sheer, thunderstridken horror. Depending from the ceiling was a long, metal chain, terminating in an iron hook that dangled just inches above my head.

“Do you understand?” said she, as she took a step to one side and placed her hand upon a long wooden lever that had been concealed by the gloom but that now stood revealed in the dull glimmer of her lamp.