Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

eyes, but nothing could I see save what I might describe as an intensification of the black shadow in that corner near the door, vaguely formed like a slim human figure, though grossly out of all human proportion. The vague shadow looked purple apainst the black. It was about ten fect high, and otherwise as though cast by an incredibly tall, thin human being. I made nothing of it then; and again, despite all this cumulative experience with the strange shadows of my bedrcom, attributed this last phenomenon to my eyes. It was too vayue to be at that time accounted otherwise than as a mere subjective effect. But the night following, | watched for it at the proper moment in the sequcnce of Old Morris’ movements as he got into bed, and this time it was distinctly clearer. The shadow, it was, of sorne monstrous shape, ten feet tall, long, angular, of vaguely human appearance, though even in its merely shadowed form, somchow cruelly, strangely inhuman! I can not describe the - cold horror of iis realization, I'he head-part was, rclatively to the proportions of the body, short and broad, like a pumpkin head of a “man” made of sticks by boys, to frighten passers-by on Hallowe'en. The next evening I was out again to an entertainment at the residence of one of my hospitable friends, and arrived home after midnight. There stood the ghostly furniture, there on the bed was the form of the apparently sleeping Old Morris, and there in the corner stood the shadow, little changed from last night's appearance. The next night would be pretty close to the date of Old Morris’ death. It would be that night, or the next at latest, according to Mr. Bonestecl’s state- ment. The next day 1 could not avoid the sensation of something impending! I entered my room and turned off the light a little before cleven, seated myself, and waited. The furniture tonight was, to niy vision, absolutely indistinguishable from reality. This statement may sound somewhat strange, for it will be remem- bered that I was siting in the dark. Approximating terms again, [ may say, however, that the furniture was visible in a light of its own, a kind of “phosphorescence,” which apparently emanated trom it. Certainly there was no natural source of light. Perhaps [ may express the matter thus: that light and darkness were reversed in the case of this ghostly bed, bureau, wardrobe, and chairs. When actual light was turned on, they disappeared. In darkness, which, of course, is the absence of physical light, they emerged. That is the nearest I can get to it. At any rate, tonight the furniture was entirely, per- _fectly, visible to me. Old Morris came in at the usual time. I could see him with a clarity exactly comparable to what | have said about the furniture. He made his slight pause, his arrested motion of the right hand, and then, as usual, cast from him, ac- cording to his expression, the desire for that protective gesture, and reached a hard-looking, gnarled fist out to take hold of the mosquito-nctting. As he did so, a fearful thing leaped upon him, a thing out of the corner by the high doorway,—the dreadiul, purntish shadow-thing. I had not been looking tn that direction, and whiic 1 .:id not forgotten this newesc of the strange items in this fantasmagoria which had been repeating itself before 121 comicbooks.com