I could feel
its slimy body writhe and squirm in my hands, and in trying to hold it to
keep it from biting me, every finger-nail cut like a knife into the palm of
my hand, and the blood streamed down over that stick, that to me was a
living snake. Hell is a heaven compared to what I suffered at that time.
At last I dashed the cursed thing from me, and ran for my life. I got to
some depot, I don't know what one, and took the cars. I didn't know or care
where I went; at about ten miles above Cincinnati I left the cars. At
times, for a little while, I could reason and understand my condition. I
found, on looking around, that I was in a little town, where a young man
lived who had been a college mate of mine. I went and told him my
condition, and he did for me everything that one friend can do for another.
But as night came on my tormentors returned in ten thousand hideous forms,
and drove me raving mad. I went to a hotel, and there they persuaded me to
lie down. Just as soon as I got to bed I reached my hand over, and it
touched a cold, dead corpse. The room lighted up with a hundred bright
lights, and that corpse, that now appeared to me like nothing that had ever
been visible in human shape, opened its large, glassy, dead eyes, and
stared me in the face.
Pages:
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182