But in modern astrophysics and mathematics we gain an insight into the possibility … yes probability … that there are other dimensions, other brackets of time and space impinging on the one we occupy.
If a pin is thrust into a shadow, would that shadow have any knowledge of the pin? It would not, for in this case the shadow is two dimensional, the pin three dimensional. Yet both occupy the same space.
Granting then that the power of men’s minds alone holds this universe, or at least this world in its present form, may we not go farther and envision other minds in some other plane watching us, waiting, waiting craftily for the time they can take over the domination of matter? Such a concept is not impossible. It is a natural conclusion if we accept the double hypothesis: that mind does control the formation of all matter; and that other worlds lie in juxtaposition with ours.
Perhaps we shall come upon a day, far distant, when our plane, our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes as some stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensional shadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us the matter which we know to be our own.
He stood astounded beside the bookcase, his eyes staring unseeing into the fire upon the hearth.
He had written that. And because of those words he had been called a heretic, had been compelled to resign his position at the university, had been forced into this hermit life.
A tumultuous idea hammered at him. Men had died by the millions all over the world. Where there had been thousands of minds there now were one or two. A feeble force to hold the form of matter intact.
The plague had swept Europe and Asia almost clean of life, had blighted Africa, had reached South America … might even have come to the United States. He remembered the whispers he had heard, the words of the men at the drugstore corner, the buildings disappearing. Something scientists could not explain. But those were merely scraps of information. He did not know the whole story … he could not know. He never listened to the radio, never read a newspaper.
But abruptly the whole thing fitted together in his brain like the missing piece of a puzzle into its slot. The significance of it all gripped him with damning clarity.
There were not sufficient minds in existence to retain the material world in its mundane form. Some other power from another dimension was fighting to supersede man’s control and take his universe into its own plane!
Abruptly Mr. Chambers closed the book, shoved it back in the case and picked up his hat and coat.
He had to know more. He had to find someone who could tell him.
He moved through the hall to the door, emerged into the street. On the walk he looked skyward, trying to make out the sun. But there wasn’t any sun … only an all pervading grayness that shrouded everything … not a gray fog, but a gray emptiness that seemed devoid of life, of any movement.
The walk led to his gate and there it ended, but as he moved forward the sidewalk came into view and the house ahead loomed out of the gray, but a house with differences.
He moved forward rapidly. Visibility extended only a few feet and as he approached them the houses materialized like two dimensional pictures without perspective, like twisted cardboard soldiers lining up for review on a misty morning.
Once he stopped and looked back and saw that the grayness had closed in behind him. The houses were wiped out, the sidewalk faded into nothing.
He shouted, hoping to attract attention. But his voice frightened him. It seemed to ricochet up and into the higher levels of the sky, as if a giant door had been opened to a mighty room high above him.
He went on until he came to the corner of Lexington. There, on the curb, he stopped and stared. The gray wall was thicker there but he did not realize how close it was until he glanced down at his feet and saw there was nothing, nothing at all beyond the curbstone. No dull gleam of wet asphalt, no sign of a street. It was as if all eternity ended here at the corner of Maple and Lexington.
With a wild cry, Mr. Chambers turned and ran. Back down the street he raced, coat streaming after him in the wind, bowler hat bouncing on his head.
Panting, he reached the gate and stumbled up the walk, thankful that it still was there.
On the stoop he stood for a moment, breathing hard. He glanced back over his shoulder and a queer feeling of inner numbness seemed to well over him. At that moment the gray nothingness appeared to thin … the enveloping curtain fell away, and he saw. …
Vague and indistinct, yet cast in stereoscopic outline, a gigantic city was limned against the darkling sky. It was a city fantastic with cubed domes, spires, and aerial bridges and flying buttresses. Tunnel-like streets, flanked on either side by shining metallic ramps and runways, stretched endlessly to the vanishing point. Great shafts of multicolored light probed huge streamers and ellipses above the higher levels.
And beyond, like a final backdrop, rose a titanic wall. It was from that wall … from its crenelated parapets and battlements that Mr. Chambers felt the eyes peering at him.
Thousands of eyes glaring down with but a single purpose.
And as he continued to look, something else seemed to take form above that wall. A design this time, that swirled and writhed in the ribbons of radiance and rapidly coalesced into strange geometric features, without definite line or detail. A colossal face, a face of indescribable power and evil, it was, staring down with malevolent composure.
Then the city and the face slid out of focus; the vision faded like a darkened magic-lantern, and the grayness moved in again.
Mr. Chambers pushed open the door of his house. But he did not lock it. There was no need of locks … not any more.
A few coals of fire still smouldered in the grate and going there, he stirred them up, raked away the ash, piled on more wood. The flames leaped merrily, dancing in the chimney’s throat.
Without removing his hat and coat, he sank exhausted in his favorite chair, closed his eyes, then opened them again.
He sighed with relief as he saw the room was unchanged. Everything in its accustomed place: the clock, the lamp, the elephant ash tray, the marine print on the wall.
Everything was as it should be. The clock measured the silence with its measured ticking; it chimed abruptly and the vase sent up its usual sympathetic vibration.
This was his room, he thought. Rooms acquire the personality of the person who lives in them, become a part of him. This was his world, his own private world, and as such it would be the last to go.
But how long could he … his brain … maintain its existence?
Mr. Chambers stared at the marine print and for a moment a little breath of reassurance returned to him. They couldn’t take this away. The rest of the world might dissolve because there was insufficient power of thought to retain its outward form.
But this room was his. He alone had furnished it. He alone, since he had first planned the house’s building, had lived here.
This room would stay. It must stay on … it must. …
He rose from his chair and walked across the room to the book case, stood staring at the second shelf with its single volume. His eyes shifted to the top shelf and swift terror gripped him.
For all the books weren’t there. A lot of books weren’t there! Only the most beloved, the most familiar ones.
So the change already had started here! The unfamiliar books were gone and that fitted in the pattern … for it would be the least familiar things that would go first.