Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12 — page 71: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“You think it might injure the furniture or damage the building? For the preliminary trial I shall rotate it only for an instant and turn it back instantly.” She clung to his arm nervously while he grasped the black handle of the switch and threw it down, waited a few seconds, and pulled it out again. They saw nothing, There was a crash, instantaneously loud, and fading almost instantly to a distant, muffled ramble, and ceasing sud- denly. There was a heavy thud and a pounding on the floor. Sheila gave a little scream. There in front of them was a rapidly moving object; it bounced up and down off the floor to a height of three feet about once a second. It did not have the harmonic motion of a bouncing body, however; it stopped abruptly in the air and shot downward at high speed, hit the floor, stopped a moment and shot back wpward. Then it stopped suddenly and hung in the air. It was about the size of a large watermelon, and looked for all the world like human skin: smooth, Uniform, wobroken all around. The two stared at it amazed. Heagey walked up and touched it with the tip of a finger. It grew smaller. And suddenly it decreased to about one-half its former size, retaining its surface smoothness and uniformity unchanged. It had felt soft and warm, like human flesh. Now it was increasing in size again, while they stared gasping, speechless, at it. When it stopped growing suddenly, it was the size of a big barrel, with rounded ends. There was a bulging ridge around the middle, on each side of which was a dark brown strap of some- thing like leather. The rest of it was just naked skin, Sheila and Heagey stood rooted to the spot, staring at it and at each other. What was the thing? Where had it come from? The Thing began thumping up and down off the floor again, with great, thudding shocks. After a while it desisted and lay still. It was a most uncouth, hideous looking thing: a great limp of naked flesh with two straps around it, It looked for all the world like some huge tumor in a medical museum, or like some monstrosity of birth. Could it be alive? Both of them approached it cautiously. Heagey pricked it with a pin. The skin was tough and he jabbed hard. A drop of blood appeared. Then there was a terrible commotion. The object decreased in size to a small! sphere like a baseball. In fact, there were several baseball- sized Jumps of flesh all around; just naked flesh. They moved rapidly, and two of them were between inn and Sheila. Two or three were on the far side of her. He counted ten of them altogether, Five of thenz closed. swiftly around her. Then she was gone] 69 comicbooks.com