The Tomb

Jervas Dudley is a dreamer, and for years he has been fixed on a padlocked mausoleum near the home of his childhood. It is the tomb of the Hyde family, whose mansion burned down decades earlier. He is drawn to it again and again.

After one long sleep beside the tomb, Jervas wakes to find the padlock broken and the door standing open. Inside he finds a coffin with his own name on the lid. From then on he sleeps in it each night, sure that he lies within the vault, though anyone passing sees him on the grass outside.

Fear grows in him. Fire and thunder unsettle him, and so do the eyes he feels watching from the nearby house. During a storm he walks toward the tomb and sees the Hyde mansion whole again, crowded with revelers. He joins them as flames take the house.

He wakes in his own bed with his mind shattered and is sent to an asylum. There he asks his servant Hiram to go and examine the tomb. This is a short, eerie horror tale told in the first person, and the question it turns on is what Hiram will find below.