The Beast Within

For the length of one second, a lit compartment flashes past on the night express, and a man beside the track sees inside it: one figure holding a knife over another, and a pale shape pressed against the door. The man who sees it is Jacques Lantier, and the glimpse fixes him, because he carries in his own blood the thing he has just watched done, a hunger to kill that rises in him exactly when he wants a woman, inherited through generations of drink and damage.