CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Doctor John Polidori
Villa Diodoti, Cologny
Geneva July 1816
Dearest John,
The demon entered my chambers again last night. He sat on the edge of my bed, compressing the feathers of my eiderdown, and told me that someone dear to my own heart had been murdered. “Strangled” was the word he used, though he refused to tell me the name of my acquaintance or where I should go to confirm his utterance.
He sat there, staring at me as I pulled the covers close and moved the pillows between myself and he who invaded my dreams.
And yet I knew I was not dreaming as I observed the smear of dead flesh left upon my sheets and smelt his stench, much stronger than any time I had known previously.
He just stared at me in the candle-lit darkness of my room, and then he smiled—
