The man couldn’t sleep that night or during the next day. Little of the food he brought up from the cellar was eaten. He spent most of the day sitting in the stables, drinking water and thinking about what had happened the night before.

He briefly entertained the idea that it had all been a hallucination brought on by the heat, or that maybe it was madness, but he knew better. He just wanted it to have been madness. Every time he came near to sleeping he could see that yellow eye, looking out at him from inside the wall. It hadn’t done anything threatening, but it scared him all the same. That crazy voice too.

For that matter it seemed like it was trying to help him. That didn’t make any sense.

How does it know who I am?

After thinking about that for a moment he supposed it wasn’t beyond the realm of a crazy yellow eye in the wall to know who he was.

All he knew was that he didn’t like what that eye had said one bit. There had been to many bewares and he distinctly remembered something about help from the dead. That didn’t sound pleasant. Conjured up pictures of shambling corpses.

The sun rose and set long before he ran out of such thoughts. He fell asleep from exhaustion while looking at the stars.

The next day was much the same, but he ate some and fell asleep that night without effort.

When he got up in the morning he felt restless and wanted more then anything to be away from the old inn. Before the place had seemed merely worn down, but now it seemed ominous, its windows preternaturally dark.

The sun had hardly made it over the horizon before he was off, walking briskly down the west bound trail.