Jeremiah

I was not immediately alert. The realization that it was suddenly midnight, coupled with a vague movement beyond the front room window, caused me to stand abruptly from where I'd napped. The sudden motion made my head swim. A black cloud swirled around me. The brittle paper fan had fallen from my lap onto the floor. I bent to pick it up and nearly lost consciousness. I forced my mind to be more fully awake, slowly realizing my dizziness wasn't the natural cause of standing too quickly, but was imposed upon me by something other.

As I picked up the fan and moved toward the window, I was brought up short by Jeremiah's sudden appearance there. His black gums were bared, revealing a lack of teeth and reminding me of a lamprey. His eyes were fogged white, as though he were able to see only what he imagined and not what was. It was a complete materialization and he might easily have been taken for a mad Peeping Tom. He raised both his hands, which were bony claws, and shoved them writhing toward the glass. I expected it to shatter, but instead, the specter vanished.

By the increasing chill, I knew he was in the house.

I hurried toward the kitchen, recovering my senses more than not, holding the paper fan before me. I was shaking frightfully, beginning to comprehend the depth of his malignancy.

He was in the kitchen, bent down, scrabbling wildly but noiselessly at the door under the sink. The cupboard opened under his insistence, and he tried to grasp a little faded blue carton, but his clawed hands only passed through it.

Then he stiffened and slowly stood, his back to me. He sensed my presence, and his very awareness gave me shivers. His shoulders stiffened. He began slowly to turn. I took a strong posture and held the paper fan in front of me, so that it would be the first thing he saw.

He fumed and, for a moment, was no longer a spidery old man. He was a young soldier, and he looked at me with sharp but unseeing eyes. I can only describe it thus because, although his gaze fell directly on me and was no longer clouded white, he seemed to see something infinitely more pleasing to him than I could have been. I supposed he thought I was Gretta, and he was imposing upon my form his memory of her when she was as young as he himself now appeared to be.

He came forward with such a look of love and devotion that in spite of my persisting alarm, and due I'm sure to some occult influence rather than my own nature, I was momentarily terribly aroused. He reached outward to clasp his youthful hands at the sides of my shoulders. I held my ground, certain that my humane exorcism was having its intended effect. When his ghostly fingers touched me, I felt a warming vibration, as though my whole upper body were encased in fine electrical wire, the voltage slowly increasing. The fan began to shine so brightly that I felt I risked blindness if I failed to close my eyes, but close them I could not.