Nightmare-Touch 242 



loud cry would save me. But not even by the 

 most frantic effort could I raise my voice above 

 a whisper. . . . And all this signified only that 

 the Nameless was coming, was nearing, was 

 mounting the stairs. I could hear the step, 

 booming like the sound of a muffled drum, 

 and I wondered why nobody else heard it. A 

 long, long time the haunter would take to come, 

 malevolently pausing after each ghastly foot- 

 fall. Then, without a creak, the bolted door 

 would open, slowly, slowly, and the thing 

 would enter, gibbering soundlessly, and put 

 out hands, and clutch me, and toss me to 

 the black ceiling, and catch me descending to 

 toss me up again, and again, and again. ... In 

 those moments the feeling was not fear: fear 

 itself had been torpified by the first seizure. It 

 was a sensation that has no name in the language 

 of the living. For every touch brought a shock 

 of something infinitely worse than pain, some- 

 thing that thrilled into the innermost secret being 

 of me, a sort of abominable electricity, dis- 

 covering unimagined capacities of suffering in 

 totally unfamiliar regions of sentiency. . . . This 

 was commonly the work of a single tormentor ; 

 but I can also remember having been caught by 



