“Understandably, I spent the rest of the night in an extremely fitful state. When I did dream, my dreams were interspersed with visions of my early-morning visitor. Except this time my subconscious had somehow managed to twist and obscure her angelic features, so that now when she appeared to me, instead of being the beautiful young girl I had met all so briefly, she resembled some kind of hideous hag. Her mouth was now full of broken and crooked teeth which were stretched taut in a rictus grin. Her skin, so pure and perfect when we had met, now looked completely gaunt and seemed to have the texture of rough sandpaper, although it was bleached a sickly shade of pale off-white. Even her fingers no longer looked like those of a beautiful woman, and now resembled long, talon-like claws instea
