I must not waste my strength in wondering, but prepare for the assault that must surely come again. In a sudden flash of illumination I knew that I must hold on — just a little longer — hold on until twelve o’clock. That’s why he had watched the clock there on the mantel, over my shoulder! It must be very near the hour now, and if I could but hold on — stay away from that table — avoid those eyes — not be caught off guard again!
But how futile a thought! In that very instant the huge swimming blackness of those eyes again caught me with that fierce tenacity, again swept me up and away beyond all suns and stars, out into that vast darkness which cradles the universe. I was like a man drowning, who in a few brief seconds sees his entire past unfolded; but saw instead my future, a future of dark terror and torture amid the vague forms and fears of that outer place. Even as I floated serenely in that terrible darkness I could seem to see those forms, those Outer Ones, indescribably repulsive for all their vagueness, peering past me with malicious glee at some drama being enacted for them as it had been how many times before! And this time I was a part of that drama.
And yet there seemed to be another part of me, far away and unimportant — a part of me that tried to make me see that this darkness was the illusion, not the reality — that struggled with a feeble sort of intensity to thrust this darkness away… how foolish!.. how useless!.. Now that other part of me was trying to remember — something — that had seemed important a long time ago — something to do with… but no — it was useless….
Wait! Had not that darkness all about me suddenly shivered, like water whose smooth surface is disturbed? Again! Now fading, receding!..
Had not something brushed my cheek just then? Was that a whisper in my ear? A number of whispers now, eager, urgent….
The blackness around me receded rapidly, dissolved into two ebony pools that fled far away into space, becoming tinier, tinier, until they stopped to peer back at me.
With a shock, I was once again back in the familiar room, felt the floor under me, stood close against the table and was gazing at the twin ebony pools that were the tiny man’s eyes. But in those eyes was now something of consternation and distress! Dismay in those eyes!
As before, with no volition of mine, my hand was gliding smoothly across the table-top toward the Book. As before, that surging of unseen forces was all about me — but now there was no confusion, no haste, no panic; there was instead a kind of unseen jubilation and pulsing of triumph!
But still those flitting little voices past my ear, faint and not quite heard, but seeming to urge me in something that I could not quite grasp.
I must try to be ready for whatever would come.
My hand touched the Book! It moved over the opened page….
“Now! Act now, act, act!”
The hand, which before had tried to betray me, now acted in a flash. I seized the Book, whirled, and cast it straight into the blazing fire behind me.
Immediately everything about me was a wild joy of triumph, but this lasted only a moment, and then all was quiet and still. Those forces, or beings, or whatever they were, had once more triumphed, and now were gone back to whatever realm they had come from.
But as I look back at it all now, it seems a nightmare and I cannot be sure. I am not even sure whether those words “Act now, act!” were whispered in my ear, or whether they came screaming from my own throat in the tenseness of that moment. I am not sure whether some force entirely outside of myself caused me to seize and fling that book, or whether it was a purely reflex action on my part. I had no intention of doing it.
As for that tiny man beyond the table — he did not even leap to intercept. He did not move. He seemed to become even smaller. His eyes were once more very black, but somehow pitiable, not even reflecting the fire into which he gazed. For a few seconds he stood there, the very aspect of infinite sorrow and utter hopelessness. Then, very slowly, he walked over to the fireplace and reached a thin hand, as it seemed to me, into the very flames — and from those flames picked out the Book, the age-old parchment like pages of which had not even burned!
Of what happened next, I hesitate to write; for I can never be sure how much of it was real and how much hallucination. In my fall to the floor I must have struck my head a pretty hard wallop, for I was several days in the care of a doctor who for a while feared for my mind.
As I said, the tiny man had picked out the Book from the flames. I am sure no word was spoken. But the next thing that happened was a sound, and it was a chuckling sound of such portentous diabolism as I hope never to hear again, seeming to come from far away but approaching nearer and nearer until it seemed to emanate from the four walls of the room. Then came a blinding glare of light. That sounds trite, somehow, but it was exactly that; “blinding” hardly describes it, but I know of no stronger word. And it’s at this point that I am not certain: I may have fallen and struck my head and become unconscious right after that glare of light, or I may really have seen what I seemed to see. I’m rather inclined to the latter belief, so vivid did it seem at the time.
How often I have read stories in which the author, attempting to describe some particularly awful thing or scene, has said: “It is beyond the power of my pen to describe” — or words to that effect. And how often I have scoffed! But I will never scoff again. There before me in that moment was the indescribable in reality!
I will, however, make a feeble attempt. What I saw or seemed to see must have been that same thing from Outside which Tlaviir described in the Preface of the Book. One moment it was there. I suppose the glare of light occurred in that interval between the wasn’t and the was. But there it was.
I can look back upon it now with a sort of grim humor.
It was pretty big, and seemed to be sticking through from some other space or dimension, just as the fellow had said in the Preface. It wasn’t an arm, or a face, or a tentacle, or a limb of any sort, nothing but a part, and I wouldn’t want to say what part. It was all colors and colorless, all shapes and shapeless, for the simple reason that it changed color and shape very rapidly and continually, always disappearing at the edges, not touching the floor or any part of the room.
More than that I cannot say; I had looked upon it for barely the count of one-two-three, when everything was suddenly black and I could not feel the floor under me at all.
But just before my mind slipped entirely away into the abyss, I heard a monstrous Word, a Name, shrieked in that shrill voice that belonged to the tiny man with the Book… and once again that Name shrieked in agony, shrill, faint, floating down along the star path, fainter… fainter….
The first thing I did when able to leave my bed was to pay another visit to that bookstore.
As I approached the narrow frame building, its air of utter desolation dawned upon me. I tried the door, but it was locked, and peering through a grimy window I perceived the books piled around haphazardly on the floor and on the shelves, everything covered with a gray depth of dust. That was peculiar. A curious apprehension seized me. I was sure this was the right bookstore; there could be no mistaking it.