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Humphrey saw the folded sheet of paper and the envelope next to it. He reached for the table—his strength was leaving him and his body wouldn’t obey. ‘I have seconds,’ he thought. Fingers from which the warmth was fading, but in which the memory of touch still lived, hugged the pen. He looked at the portrait one last time and, realizing that he wouldn’t have time to explain anything, wrote letter by letter: CANDLES. And the letter slowly, with weak, awkward gusts crawled into the narrow gap of the envelope which had been given the attributes of a personal postal message in advance.
Excerpt:
Evelyn was sitting on the bed, knees to her bosom and hugged by her hands. Her nightshirt drenched with sweat, she was cold. She hunched up but would not bundle herself up with her blanket: she needed the cold feeling that swept her skin, like the air itself. It was there to tell her that she’d come to, she was there, that the horror of her dream hadn’t torn her soul to pieces. Evelyn remembered the dream very well, but the horror was gone: it had escaped with her frenzied scream. She thought she had once had that dream as a child. But the fleeting shadow of her past had dissipated with time, and she had dismissed it mentally: ‘What of it? Childhood scares have a way of coming back. What you do is dismiss them and go on with… the business of life.’
The sudden sensation of being watched made Evelyn start.
‘Who’s there?’ she said out loud and looked about the room. ‘Ahem, will be
