There followed a long drowsy time of stillness and shadow.

I seemed to have fallen in some deep well of delicious oblivion and obscurity.
Dream-like images still flitted before my fancy--these were at first undefinable, but after awhile they took more certain shapes.

Strange fluttering creatures hovered about me--lonely eyes stared at me from a visible deep gloom; long white bony fingers grasping at nothing made signs to me of warning or menace.

Then--very gradually, there dawned upon my sense of vision a cloudy red mist like a stormy sunset, and from the middle of the blood-like haze a huge black hand descended toward me.

It pounced upon my chest--it grasped my throat in its monstrous clutch, and held me down with a weight of iron.