A week after arriving the narrator realizes that it is Midsummer Night and makes his way to the stone. He falls asleep an hour before midnight but wakes to find the chanting and dancing people around the stone. After much dancing, during which the narrator is unable to move or do anything but observe, a baby is killed in sacrifice. Shortly a giant toad-like monster appears at the top of the stone and a second sacrifice, a young girl, is offered to it. The narrator faints at this point and decides that it was a dream when he wakes again. But slowly, he realizes that it was no dream. He remembers that Selim Bahadur's case was still with the Count's bones which hadn't been disturbed. The narrator digs out the nobleman's bones and with them, the case belonging to the Turk Selim Bahadur. He translates the account written by the historian and is horrified by his account of what happened near the Black Stone, how the monstrous creature killed at least ten men before being killed by steel weapons blessed by Muhammad. He realizes that the cultist worshipers are ghosts who're bowing before a ghost. He flings the contents of the case into a river.