t we should
make room for him. A moment later he edged sullenly into the pew.
Instinctively I had sat tight back, drawing my knees aside, in a shudder
of revulsion against contact. But Braxton did not push past me. What he
did was to sit slowly and fully down on me.

'No, not down ON me. Down THROUGH me--and around me. What befell me
was not mere ghastly contact with the intangible. It was inclusion,
envelopment, eclipse. What Braxton sat down on was not I, but the seat
of the pew; and what he sat back against was not my face and chest, but
the back of the pew. I didn't realise this at the moment. All I knew was
a sudden black blotting-out of all things; an infinite and impenetrable
darkness. I dimly conjectured that I was dead. What was wrong with me,
in point of fact, was that my eyes, with the rest of me, were inside
Braxton. You remember what a great hulking fellow Braxton was. I
calculate that as we sat there my eyes were just beneath the roof of his
mouth. Horrible!

'Out of the unfathomable depths of that pitch darkness, I could yet hear
the "voluntary" swelling and dwindling, just as before. It was by this
I knew now that I wasn't dead. And I suppose I must have craned my head
forward, for I had a sudden glimpse of things--a close quick downward
glimpse of a pepper-and-salt waistcoat and of two great hairy hands
clasped across it. Then darkness again. Either I had drawn back my head,
or Braxton had thrust his forward; I don't know which. "Are you all
right?" the Duchess' voice whispered, and no doubt my face was ashen.
"Quite," whispered my voice. But this pathetic monosyllable was the last
gasp of the social instinct in me. Suddenly, as the "voluntary" swelled
to its close, there was a great sharp shuffling noise. The congregation
had risen to its feet, at the entry of choir and vicar. Braxton had
risen, leaving me in daylight. I beheld his towering back. The Duchess,
beside him, glanced round at me. But I could not, dared not, stand up
into that presented back, into that great waiting darkness. I did but
clutch my hat from beneath the seat and hurry distraught down the aisle,
out through the porch, into the open air.

'Whither? To what goal? I didn't reason. I merely fled--like Orestes;
fled like an automaton along the path we had come by. And was followed?
Yes, yes. Glancing back across my shoulder, I saw that brute some
twenty yards behind me, gaining on me. I broke into a sharper run. A few
sickening mom