Lemuel Darrow woke with a start. The room was silent, with nothing to suggest anything out of the ordinary, but he couldn't get rid of the feeling that there was some presence with him in the room. He turned over and looked at the glowing numbers of the clock on the wall; it was a little after two. He felt a cool breeze on his face and realized the window was open. But I know I closed that, he thought. He sat in silence, pondering the situation and listening for noise, for several minutes. He heard not a sound.
Deciding that his imagination was playing tricks on him, Lemuel rolled back over and shut his eyes, trying in vain to fall back into the sweet slumber he had been jerked from prematurely. Sadly, insomnia prevented him from dreaming. He stood up to close the window.
As he slid the window shut, a sound startled him, and he turned. There was nothing -- only a shadow. But such a shadow! This strange form made it appear as though there was someone standing in front of the moonlit window beside Lem, a ghostly fluid figure, like a human, but twisted and deformed as though years of hatred and malice had manifested themselves as instruments of torture. He stared at the shadow and thought surely he was dreaming. Surely he could wake himself up. He blinked furiously, trying to clear his vision from this horrible sight but no, the shape would not disappear.
There was a hiss. The shadow was moving. Lemuel looked at the air beside him where the figure should have stood, but there was only air there, nothing more. The shadow raised a hand, and Lem felt icy fingers close round his throat.
To this day, none but I knows what happened to Lemuel Darrow, for no one else was there to witness it.