“You think those floundering things wiped Out the servants? Fool, they are harmless! But the servants are gone, aren’t they? You tried to stop me; you discouraged me when I needed every drop of encouragement I could get; you were afraid of the cosmic truth, you damned coward, but now I’ve got you! What swept up the servants? What made them scream so loud? . . . Don’t know, ehl You’ll know soon enough. Look at me — listen to what I say – – do you suppose there are really any such things as time and magnitude? Do you fancy there are such things as form or matter? I tell you, I have struck depths that your little brain can’t picture. I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars . . . I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness. . . . Space belongs to me, do you hear? Things are hunting me now – – the things that devour and dissolve – – but I know how to elude them. It is you they will get, as they got the servants. . . . Stirring. dear sir? I told you it was dangerous to move, I have saved you so far by telling you to keep still – – saved you to see more sights and to listen to me. If you had moved, they would have been at you long ago. Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you. They didn’t hurt the servants – – it was the seeing that made the poor devils scream so. My pets are not pretty, for they come out of places where aes-thetic standards are very different. Disintegration is quite painless, I assure you – – but I want you to see them. I almost saw them, but I knew how to stop. You are curious? I always knew you were no scientist Trembling, eh. Trembling with anxiety to see the ultimate things I have discovered. Why don’t you move, then? Tired? Well, don’t worry, my friend, for they are coming . . . Look, look, curse you, look . . . it’s just over your left shoulder. . . . ”
What remains to be told is very brief, and may be familiar to you from the newspaper accounts. The police heard a shot in the old Tillinghast house and found us there – – Tillinghast dead and me unconscious They arrested me because the revolver was in my hand, but released me in three hours, after they found it was apoplexy which had finished Tillinghast and saw that my shot had been directed at the noxious machine which now lay hopelessly shattered on the laboratory floor. I did not tell very much of what I had seen, for I feared the coroner would be skeptical; but from the evasive outline I did give, the doctor told me that I had undoubtedly been hypnotized by the vindictive and homicidal madman.
I wish I could believe that doctor. It would help my shaky nerves if I
could dismiss what I now have to think of the air and the sky about and
above me. I never feel alone or comfortable, and a hideous sense of pursuit
sometimes comes chillingly on me when I am weary. What prevents me from
never’ g the doctor is this simple fact – – that the police never found the
bodies of those servants whom they say Crawford Tillinghast murdered.