ore
distinct; a dark and sexless face appeared, surmounted with a straggling
mass of black hair, the ends of which melted away into mist. I saw no
trunk, but I descried two long and bony arms, ebony as the chair, with
crooked, spidery, misty fingers. As I watched its development with
increasing horror, hoping and praying for the arrival of the
never-again-to-be-despised waits, I suddenly realised with a fresh grip
of terror that the chair had moved out of the corner, and that the Thing
behind it was slowly creeping towards me.

"As it approached, the outlines of its face and limbs became clearer. I
knew that it was something repulsively, diabolically grotesque, but
whether the phantasm of man, or woman, or hellish elemental, I couldn't
for the life of me say; and this uncertainty, making my fear all the
more poignant, added to my already sublime sufferings, those of the
damned.

"It passed the chair on which my dress-shirt flashed whiter than the
snow in the moonlight; it passed the tomb-like structure constituting
the foot-board of the bed; and as in my frantic madness I strained and
strained at the cruel cords that held me paralytic, it crept on to the
counterpane and wriggled noiselessly towards me.

"Even then, though its long, pale eyes were close to mine, and the ends
of its tangled hair curled around me, and its icy corpse-tainted breath
scoured my cheeks, even then--I could not see its body nor give it a
name.

"Clawing at my throat with its sable fingers, it thrust me backwards,
and I sank gasping, retching, choking on to the pillow, where I
underwent all the excruciating torments of strangulation; strangulation
by something tangible, yet intangible, something that could create
sensation without being itself sensitive; something detestably,
abominably wicked and wholly hostile, madly hostile in its attitude
towards mankind.

"What I suffered is indescribable, and it was to me interminable. Days,
months, years, seemed to pass, and I was still being suffocated, still
feeling the inexorable crunch of those fingers, still peering into the
livid depths of those gloating, fiendish eyes. And then--then, as I was
on the eve of abandoning all hope, a thousand and one tumultuous noises
buzzed in my ears, my eyes swam blood, and I lost consciousness. When I
recovered, the dawn was breaking and all evidences of the superphysical
had disappeared.

"I did not tell Achrow what I had experienced, but expressed, instead