I felt it would be better not to tell her how it had really happened;
though, to be sure, I scarcely knew myself; but this I did know, that
the thing I had seen run into the bushes was no wildcat. It was much too
big, and had, so far as I had observed, a skin like a hog's, only of a
dead, unhealthy white color. And then--it had run upright, or nearly so,
upon its hind feet, with a motion somewhat resembling that of a human
being. This much I had noticed in my brief glimpse, and, truth to tell,
I felt a good deal of uneasiness, besides curiosity as I turned the
matter over in my mind.
It was in the morning that the above incident had occurred.
Then, it would be after dinner, as I sat reading, that, happening to
look up suddenly, I saw something peering in over the window ledge the
eyes and ears alone showing.
'A pig, by Jove!' I said, and rose to my feet. Thus, I saw the thing
more completely; but it was no pig--God alone knows what it was. It
reminded me, vaguely, of the hideous Thing that had haunted the great
arena. It had a grotesquely human mouth and jaw; but with no chin of
which to speak. The nose was prolonged into a snout; thus it was that
with the little eyes and queer ears, gave it such an extraordinarily
swinelike appearance. Of forehead there was little, and the whole face
was of an unwholesome white color.
For perhaps a minute, I stood looking at the thing with an ever growing
feeling of disgust, and some fear. The mouth kept jabbering, inanely,
and once emitted a half-swinish grunt. I think it was the eyes that
attracted me the most; they seemed to glow, at times, with a horribly
human intelligence, and kept flickering away from my face, over the
details of the room, as though my stare disturbed it.
It appeared to be supporting itself by two clawlike hands upon the
windowsill. These claws, unlike the face, were of a clayey brown hue,
and bore an indistinct resemblance to human hands, in that they had four
fingers and a thumb; though these were webbed up to the first joint,
much as are a duck's. Nails it had also, but so long and powerful that
they were more like the talons of an eagle than aught else.
As I have said, before, I felt some fear; though almost of an
impersonal kind. I may explain my feeling better by saying that it was
more a sensation of abhorrence; such as one might expect to feel, if
brought in contact with something superhumanly foul; something
unholy--belonging to some hitherto undreamt of state of existence.
I cannot say that I grasped these various details of the brute at the
time. I think they seemed to come back to me, afterward, as though
imprinted upon my brain. I imagined more than I saw as I looked at the
thing, and the material details grew upon me later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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