and compressing me, and the sudden frightening image of myself being forced through the very top of my head!
Why was this happening? I shuddered as I had done on that lonely dark Florida beach when it happened before. And at once the feeling was dissipated. I was myself again and vaguely annoyed.
Was something going wrong with my handsome, godlike anatomy? Impossible. I didn’t need the old ones to assure me of such a truth. And I had not made up my mind whether I should worry about this or forget it, or indeed, try to induce it again myself, when I was brought out of my preoccupation by a knock at the door.
Most irritating.
“A message for you, sir. The gentleman requested I put it in your hands.”
Had to be some mistake. Nevertheless I opened the door.
The young man gave me an envelope. Fat, bulky. For one second I could only stare at it. I had a one-pound note still in my pocket, from the little thief I’d chomped on earlier, and I gave this to the boy, and locked the door again.
This was exactly the same kind of envelope I’d been given in Miami by that lunatic mortal who’d come running towards me across the sand. And the sensation! I’d experienced that bizarre sensation right at the moment my eyes had fallen on that creature. Oh, but this was not possible …
I tore open the envelope. My hands were suddenly shaking. It was another little printed short story, clipped out of a book exactly as the first one had been, and stapled at the upper-left-hand corner in precisely the same way!
I was dumbfounded! How in the hell had this being tracked me here? No one knew I was here! David didn’t even know I was here! Oh, there were the credit card numbers involved, but dear God, it would have taken hours for any mortal to locate me that way, even if such a thing were possible, which it really was not.
And what had the sensation to do with it—the curious vibratory feeling and the pressure which seemed to be inside my own limbs?
But there was no time to consider any of this. It was almost morning!
The danger in the situation made itself immediately apparent to me. Why the hell hadn’t I seen it before? This being did most definitely have some means of knowing where I was—even where I chose to conceal myself during daylight! I had to get out of these rooms. How perfectly outrageous!
Trembling with annoyance, I forced myself to scan this story, which was only a few pages in length. “Eyes of the Mummy” was the title, author Robert Bloch. A clever little tale, but what could it possibly mean to me? I thought of the Lovecraft, which had been much longer and seemed wholly different. What on earth could all this signify? The seeming idiocy of it further maddened me.
But it was too late to think about it anymore. I gathered up David’s manuscripts, and left the rooms, rushing out of a fire exit and going up to the roof. I scanned the night in all directions. I couldn’t find the little bastard! Lucky for him. I would surely have destroyed him on sight. When it comes to protecting my daylight lair, I have little patience or restraint.
I moved upwards, covering the miles with the greatest speed I could attain. At last I descended in a snow-covered wood far, far north of London and there I dug my own grave in the frozen earth as I had done so many times before.
I was in a fury for having to do so. A positive fury. I’m going to kill this son of a bitch, I thought, whoever the hell he is. How dare he come stalking me, and shoving these stories in my face! Yes, I shall do that, kill him as soon as I catch him.
But then the drowsiness came, the numbness, and very soon nothing mattered …
Once again I was dreaming, and she was there, lighting the oil lamp, and saying, “Ah, the flame doesn’t frighten you anymore … ”
“You’re mocking me,” I said, miserably. I’d been weeping.
“Ah, but, Lestat, you do have a way of recovering from these cosmic fits of despair awfully fast. There you were dancing under the street lamps in London. Really!”
I wanted to protest, but I was crying, and I couldn’t talk …
In one last jolt of consciousness, I saw that mortal in Venice—under the arches of San Marco—where