The room swung in wide circles about Carson, and a frightful nausea clutched him. He made a tremendous effort to get to his feet, and then the light faded swiftly and was gone. Darkness took him. * * * * * Carson’s novel was never finished. He burned it, but continued to write, although none of his later work was ever published. His publishers shook their heads and wondered why such a brilliant writer of popular fiction had suddenly become infatuated with the weird and ghastly. “It’s powerful stuff,” one man told Carson, as he handed back his novel, _Black God of Madness_. “It’s remarkable in its way, but it’s morbid and horrible. Nobody would read it. Carson, why don’t you write the type of novel you used to do, the kind that made you famous?” It was then that Carson broke his vow never to speak of the Witch Room, and he poured out the entire story, hoping for understanding and belief. But as he finished, his heart sank as he saw the other’s face, sympathetic but skeptical. “You dreamed it, didn’t you?” the man asked, and Carson laughed bitterly. “Yes—I dreamed it.” “It must have made a terribly vivid impression on your mind. Some dreams do. But you’ll forget about it in time,” he predicted, and Carson nodded. And because he knew that he would only be arousing doubts of his sanity, he did not mention the thing that was burned indelibly on his brain, the horror he had seen in the Witch Room after awakening from his faint. Before he and Leigh had hurried, white-faced and trembling, from the chamber, Carson had cast a quick glance behind him. The shriveled and corroded patches that he had seen slough off from that being of insane blasphemy had unaccountably disappeared, although they had left black stains upon the stones. Abbie Prinn, perhaps, had returned to the hell she had served, and her inhuman god had withdrawn to hidden abysses beyond man’s comprehension, routed by powerful forces of elder magic which the occultist had commanded. But the witch had left a memento behind her, a hideous thing which Carson, in that last backward glance, had seen protruding from the edge of the iron disk, as though raised in ironic salute—_a withered, claw-like hand_!