"Look here! if this goes on much longer I shall begin to think
I'm going mad. I have had enough, and more than enough, of magic
mirrors for one night--it's high time I got into bed." He strove to
rise from his chair--to move; he was unable to do either; some
strange, tyrannical force held him a prisoner.
A change now took place in the shadow; the blurr dissipated, and the
clearly defined outlines of an object--an object that made Mr. Vance
perfectly sick with apprehension--slowly disclosed themselves. His
suspicions were verified--it was the HAND!--the hand--no longer
skeleton, but covered with green, mouldering flesh--feeling its way
slyly and stealthily towards him--towards the back of his chair! He
noted the murderous twitching of its short, flat finger-tips, the
monstrous muscles of its hideous thumb, and the great, clumsy hollows
of its clammy palm. It closed in upon him; its cold, slimy, detestable
skin touched his coat--his shoulder--his neck--his head! It pressed
him down, squashed, suffocated him! He saw it all in the glass--and
then an extraordinary thing happened. Mr. Vance suddenly became
animated. He got up and peeped furtively round. Chairs, bed, wardrobe,
had all disappeared--so had the bedroom--and he found himself in a
small, bare, comfortless, queerly constructed apartment without a
door, and with only a narrow slit of a window somewhere near the
ceiling.
He had in one of his hands a knife with a long, keen blade, and his
whole mind was bent on murder.
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