Prologue
Adela Greyshaw's diary 26th May 1888. Night
Darkness surrounding; something there chases and grasps for me. Dreadful paralyse seizes me as the dark figure comes…
Pierced.
I start awake in a sweat of fear; half still sleeping between the dreaming world and conscious reality. The sudden, sharp jab to my neck – oppressive as though a weight bearing down upon me as if to suffocate… Or as though struck by a bullet fired by some unseen assassin in the gloom of night. But not only this. My flesh, so tender upon the vulnerable jugular, feels… is stabbed; pierced by cruel incision by some unknown force.
Hazy memories of the moments before. A dream surely, yet I seem awake. I lay still in fear and alarm for the suffocating penetration, which feels very much real, to begin again. Blood, I am sure seeps from the wound. The warm damp fluid flows upon soft flesh. Yet there is no one here. No one but the darkness of the night, and its uncertain deceit of shadows. My eyes wide with terror roam the shadowy gloom, trying to see though they were not made for nocturnal sight. Only my eyes move, while the rest remains still and my breath shallow while I curse the wild beating of my heart lest some unwholesome force hear it; sense it; desire the life it gives and wish to end it.
It is unbearably real. The sharp incision; pressing down till blood runs red and strong across my throat. I cower into the bed-sheets as though so foolish an action could be my salvation.
Still dazed in mind and vision, faint light-headedness wells up – the loss of blood… What fear and distress is evoked by attack – of penetration by blade, by bullet, or by fangs against so vulnerable a place as the tender throat. How mankind is humbled by his own mortality when faced with the sweet and sudden loss. Yes, the prospect of life's blood flushed out. The irony of the hearts fearful beating hastening one's doom…
But I am half still dreaming. With courage, I touch the place, carefully moving my hand upwards beneath the covers as if a predator would not see… will he - it let me?
Yet there was nothing. Not the wound or blood there, though my mind feels to the contrary. Fading now, yet still the piecing shard of ice twisting sudden into the nape of my neck.
With trepidation, I slipped out of bed and relief comes as light returns to chase away the shadows – the phantoms of the night. The lamp casts only a dim circle of light and throws weird shadows across walls, emerging from the unlit gloom. It is enough.
Outside, the wind howls heavy and rain is cast down from the heavens. Still, moving through darkened corridors, I reached the bathroom and closed myself inside. My eyes reject the harsh light, tired and grown accustomed to darkness as they are though unable to peer through its obscure, misleading mists. They adjust.
I cannot see the blood I expected to be dripping; running down my neck and chest from a hideous wound. Both so vivid in my waking mind are altogether absent.
There is nothing.
And so, relief rising, I return to bed. It is four in the morning; the lightening skies cast dull light through muffling curtains.
Sleep beckons.
My nightmare - my shadowy phantom of the night –a figment of imagination?