The Inner Life

I thought it was being most successful in its attempt to absorb the man’s mind into its own, or vice versa, and I felt that if the man happened to awake and see that monstrous face with its evil leering literally against his face, he would go raving mad.

I hesitated in speaking to the monster, though I could hardly refrain from doing so, sensing the man’s danger—though fear of its attacking me caused me to stand in indecision a moment or two after sensing the situation. But the urge to attempt to help the man was the stronger, and I spoke out sharply to the evil shape, which immediately let go its contact and slithered down under the bed at my very feet.

Then fear did grip me horribly and I almost jumped in bed to draw its protecting covers over my head, even when the determination not to yield to such an ignoble fear held me rooted to the spot, though I was almost in a convulsion of repulsion toward the evil thing and the thought of its meanness to my feet.

To steel my own determination I spoke aloud some declaration of standing in unyielding strength “in the name of Almighty God,” and immediately I felt crowding up against my body, which then felt entirely naked, literally thousands of similar shapes. They all seemed lighter than air—phantom shapes, or rather astral, or something less than our dense physical composition, though they had a horrible, evil-seeming, slimy feel to my body; and there seemed to be a mass of them like a school of eels in water, and all that came past me slithered against me—seemingly dozens having contact with my body in passing and every instant of the time they were passing.

All this seemed to be a thousand times more horrifying than the other fear, but I gasped and held up my arms in that much effort to avoid them, but kept my feet firmly planted on the ground, and only seemed to in-breathe sufficient God-strength to keep from going under and to retain dominion over my own fears; for I seemed to have no actual fear of these things hurting me—merely my revulsion of feeling at having the slime of their evil vile substance in contact with my naked body.

It was over in almost a twinkling—seemingly as soon as it was apparent to my own consciousness that I would be able to stand the situation. Then they were instantly all gone. But I was having some difficulty in getting back my usual equilibrium, when I