when some clumsy guest bumps into him and steps on his toe, Erik tries to recede further into shadow. A lightning flash reveals to him a face that his mind, on reflection, recognizes only after it has gone. He looks up the stairs at the ascending figure of the good Dr. Scylding. A vague and troubling feeling that his senses have been sluggish all night is interrupted by a thought, and then a glimmer of hope. Even if Aelfwine doesn't know what's going on, he will surely know how to find out.

Silently he follows his scholarly acquaintance upstairs in the hope of information and, more importantly, a course of action. During the ascent, lights begin to eat away at the safety of the shadows in the house.

"Forgive my rudeness, ma'am..." Aelfwine begins at the top of the stairs. The prospect of another person irrationally halts Erik where he stands. After his trek to the estate this night, his dealings with others may never be the same. He waits.

Before long, light from lanterns and candles begins to reclaim the house. Erik presses himself against the wall of the stairway, his breaths coming faster in the diminishing dark.

One light from below floats slowly toward him, and this time it is the lack of footsteps that steals his breath. What means this light? Is it meant for me? or Aelfwine? or some other poor victim? His thoughts come in a whirl. Do something, Erik! THINK!

It is at this moment that Erik does one of the bravest things that he'd ever done. Turning around, he takes one step down. Many other things in his life, before and after, might be deemed objectively more dangerous, but none would take more courage from him than that one step towards the light in that instant.

It is also at this moment that two things happen as if of one will. A metallic sound like a great door clanging shut fills the air, while a great icy wind or breath blows, impossibly, sideways in the stairwell, knocking him off his feet and through a crack in the wall he had not noticed before.

"Aelfwine!..." he calls out, but his words die on his lips. The blackness around him is palpable. His senses, having no object to rest on, begin to trick him with half-sounds and darker blacks, but in the end they give up. Great, Erik thinks to himself (or maybe he speaks it aloud--he cannot tell). Nothing to haunt me but internal demons now.

And then sleep takes him.