Slowly, very slowly, the thing, whatever it was, took shape.
Legs--crooked, misshapen, human legs. A body--tawny and hunched.
Arms--long and spidery, with crooked, knotted fingers. A head--large
and bestial, and covered with a tangled mass of grey hair that hung
around its protruding forehead and pointed ears in ghastly mockery of
curls. A face--and herein was the realisation of all my direst
expectations--a face--white and staring, piglike in formation,
malevolent in expression; a hellish combination of all things foul and
animal, and yet withal not without a touch of pathos.
As I stared at it aghast, it reared itself on its haunches after the
manner of an ape, and leered piteously at me. Then, shuffling forward,
it rolled over, and lay sprawled out like some ungainly turtle--and
wallowed, as for warmth, in the cold grey beams of early dawn.
At this juncture the handle of the chamber door turned, some one
entered, there was a loud cry--and I awoke--awoke to find the whole
tower, walls and rafters, ringing with the most appalling screams I
have ever heard,--screams of some thing or of some one--for there was
in them a strong element of what was human as well as animal--in the
greatest distress.
Wondering what it meant, and more than ever terrified, I sat up in bed
and listened,--listened whilst a conviction--the result of intuition,
suggestion, or what you will, but a conviction all the same--forced me
to associate the sounds with the thing in my dream.
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