Demons

Though he was reading and admiring the wording, he still kept listening every moment with tormenting alarm and—suddenly got furious. He glanced worriedly at his watch; it was a bit late; and it was a good ten minutes since the man had gone out... Grabbing the candle, he made for the door of the room where Kirillov had shut himself up. Just at the door it occurred to him that the candle was also burning down and in another twenty minutes would go out entirely, and there was no other. He put his hand on the latch and listened cautiously; not the slightest sound could be heard; he suddenly opened the door and raised the candle: something bellowed and rushed at him. He slammed the door with all his might and leaned on it again, but everything was already quiet—again dead silence.

For a long time he stood indecisively, candle in hand. In that second as he had opened the door, he had been able to make out very little, and yet there had been a flash of the face of Kirillov standing at the back of the room by the window, and of the beastly rage with which the man had suddenly flown at him. Pyotr Stepanovich gave a start, quickly placed the candle on the table, readied his revolver, and sprang on tiptoe to the opposite corner, so that if Kirillov were to open the door and rush at the table with his revolver, he would still have time to aim and pull the trigger ahead of him.

Pyotr Stepanovich had now lost all belief in the suicide! "He was standing in the middle of the room and thinking," went like a whirlwind through Pyotr Stepanovich's mind. "A dark, horrible room, besides... He bellowed and rushed—two possibilities here: either I hindered him the very second he was pulling the trigger, or ... or he was standing and thinking about how to kill me. Yes, right, he was thinking about it. . . He knows I won't leave without killing him, if he turns coward himself—so he must kill me first, to keep me from killing him ... And again, again the silence in there! It's even frightening: he may suddenly open the door... The swinishness is that he believes in God worse than any priest. . . He won't shoot himself for anything! ... These ones that 'reason it out for themselves' have been multiplying lately! Scum! Pah, devil take it, the candle, the candle! It'll certainly burn out in a quarter of an hour... This has got to be finished; finished at all costs ... Well, so I could kill him now ... With this paper, they'll never think I killed him. I could arrange him and adjust him on the floor with the discharged revolver in his hand so they'd certainly think he himself... Ahh, the devil, how am I going to kill him? I'll open the door, and he'll rush again and shoot first. Eh, the devil, he's bound to miss!"

So he agonized, trembling at the necessity of the plan and at his own indecision. Finally, he took the candle and again went up to the door, his revolver raised and ready; with his left hand, in which he was holding the candle, he pressed down on the handle of the latch. But the result was clumsy: the handle clicked, there was a noise and a creak. "He'll just go ahead and shoot!" flashed in Pyotr Stepanovich. He shoved the door as hard as he could with his foot, raised the candle, and thrust out the revolver; but there was no shot, no cry... No one was in the room.

He gave a start. It was an end room, there was no other door, no way of escape. He raised the candle higher and peered more attentively: exactly no one. He called Kirillov in a low voice, then once more, louder; no one answered.

"Can he have escaped through the window?"

Indeed, the vent pane was open in one window. "Absurd, he couldn't have escaped through the vent." Pyotr Stepanovich walked all the way across the room right to the window: "He simply couldn't have." All at once he turned quickly, and something extraordinary jolted him.

Against the wall opposite the windows, to the right of the door, stood a wardrobe. To the right of this wardrobe, in the corner formed by the wardrobe and the wall, Kirillov was standing, and standing very strangely—motionless, drawn up, his arms flat at his sides, his head raised, the back of his head pressed hard to the wall, in the very corner, as if he wished to conceal and efface all of himself. By all tokens, he was hiding, yet it was somehow not possible to believe it. Pyotr Stepanovich was standing slightly at an angle to the corner and could observe only the protruding parts of the figure. He did not yet dare move to the left so as to make out the whole of Kirillov and understand the riddle. His heart began to pound... And suddenly he was possessed by utter fury: he tore from his place, shouted, and, stamping his feet, rushed fiercely at the dreadful place.

But, coming close, he stopped again as if rooted, still more struck with horror. What struck him, above all, was that the figure, despite his shout and furious lunge, did not even move, did not even stir one of its members—as if it were made of stone or wax. The pallor of its face was u

Then there occurred something so hideous and quick that afterwards Pyotr Stepanovich could never bring his recollections into any kind of order. The moment he touched Kirillov, the man quickly bent his head down, and with his head knocked the candle from his hands; the candlestick fell to the floor with a clang, and the candle went out. At the same instant, he felt a terrible pain in the little finger of his left hand. He cried out, and all he could remember was that, beside himself, he had struck as hard as he could three times with the revolver on the head of Kirillov, who had leaned to him and bitten his finger. He finally tore the finger free and rushed headlong to get out of the house, feeling his way in the darkness. Terrible shouts came flying after him from the room:

"Now, now, now, now..."

Ten times or so. But he kept ru