rom fear, and yet composed of fear itself. It was the space,
the nameless, bottomless SOMETHING spreading limitless all around me,
that, filling me with vague apprehensions, confused me with its terrors.
What was it? Whence came it? I threw out my arms and Something,
Something which I intuitively knew to be there, but which I cannot
explain, receded. I drew them in again, and the same SOMETHING instantly
oppressed me with its close--its very close proximity.

"I gasped for breath and tried to move my arms again--I could not. A
sudden rigor held me spellbound, and fixed my eyes on the darkness
directly ahead of me. Then, from somewhere in my rear, came a
laugh--hoarse, malignant, and bestial, and I was conscious that the
SOMETHING had materialised and was creeping stealthily towards me.
Nearer, nearer and nearer it came, and all the time I wondered what,
WHAT in the name of God it was like! My anticipations became unbearable,
the pulsations of my heart and the feverish throbbing of my temples
warning me that, if the climax were postponed much longer, I should
either die where I sat, or go mad. That I did neither, was due to a
divine inspiration which made me suddenly think of a device that I had
once seen on a Druidical stone in Brittany--the sun, a hand with the
index and little fingers pointing downwards, and a sprig of mistletoe.
The instant I saw them in my mind's eye, the cords that held me
paralytic slackened.

"I sprang up, and there, within a yard of where I had sat, was a
figure--the luminous nude figure of a creature, half man and half ape.
Standing some six feet high, it had a clumsy, thick-set body, covered in
places with coarse, bristly hair, arms of abnormal length and girth,
legs swelling with huge muscles and much bowed, and a very large and
long dark head. The face was DREADFUL!--it was the face of something
long since dead; and out of the mass of peeling, yellow skin and
mouldering tissues gleamed two lurid and wholly malevolent eyes. Our
glances met, and, as they did so, a smile of hellish glee suffused its
countenance. Then, crouching down in cat-like fashion on its disgusting
hands, it made ready to spring. Again the device of the sun and
mistletoe arose before me. My fingers instinctively closed on my pocket
flashlight. I pressed the button and, as the brilliant, white ray shot
forth, the satanical object before me VANISHED. Then I turned tail, and
never ceased running till I had arrived at the spo