Only his eyes stayed whole, and they glared with a
propulsive, dilated incandescence which grew as the face around them
charred and dwindled. The rapping was now repeated with greater insistence, and this time
bore a hint of metal. The black thing facing me had become only a head
with eyes, impotently trying to wriggle across the sinking floor in my
direction, and occasionally emitting feeble little spits of immortal
malice. Now swift and splintering blows assailed the sickly panels,
and I saw the gleam of a tomahawk as it cleft the rending wood. I did
not move, for I could not; but watched dazedly as the door fell in
pieces to admit a colossal, shapeless influx of inky substance starred
with shining, malevolent eyes. It poured thickly, like a flood of oil
bursting a rotten bulkhead, overturned a chair as it spread, and
finally flowed under the table and across the room to where the
blackened head with the eyes still glared at me. Around that head it
closed, totally swallowing it up, and in another moment it had begun
to recede; bearing away its invisible burden without touching me, and
flowing again out of that black doorway and down the unseen stairs,
which creaked as before, though in reverse order. Then the floor gave way at last, and I slid gaspingly down into the
nighted chamber below, choking with cobwebs and half-swooning with
terror. The green moon, shining through broken windows, showed me the
hall door half open; and as I rose from the plaster-strewn floor and
twisted myself free from the sagged ceiling, I saw sweep past it an
awful torrent of blackness, with scores of baleful eyes glowing in it. It was seeking the door to the cellar, and when it found it, it
vanished therein. I now felt the floor of this lower room giving as
that of the upper chamber had done, and once a crashing above had been
followed by the fall past the west window of something which must have
been the cupola. Now liberated for the instant from the wreckage, I
rushed through the hall to the front door; and finding myself unable
to open it, seized a chair and broke a window, climbing frenziedly out
upon the unkempt lawn where moonlight danced over yard-high grass and
weeds. The wall was high, and all the gates were locked; but moving a
pile of boxes in a corner I managed to gain the top and cling to the
great stone urn set there. About me in my exhaustion I could see only strange walls and windows
and old gambrel roofs. The steep street of my approach was nowhere
visible, and the little I did see succumbed rapidly to a mist that
rolled in from the river despite the glaring moonlight. Suddenly the
urn to which I clung began to tremble, as if sharing my own lethal
dizziness; and in another instant my body was plunging downward to I
knew not what fate. The man who found me said that I must have crawled a long way despite
my broken bones, for a trail of blood stretched off as far as he dared
look. The gathering rain soon effaced this link with the scene of my
ordeal, and reports could state no more than that I had appeared from
a place unknown, at the entrance of a little black court off Perry
Street. I never sought to return to those tenebrous labyrinths, nor would I
direct any sane man thither if I could. Of who or what that ancient
creature was, I have no idea; but I repeat that the city is dead and
full of unsuspected horrors. Whither _he_ has gone, I do not know; but
I have gone home to the pure New England lanes up which fragrant
sea-winds sweep at evening. [Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the September 1926 issue