living human face. A lifeless, misty phantom, a shade, . . . and this deadly horror. . . .
'Alice, what is it?' I said at last.
'She . . . she . . .' she answered with an effort. 'She.'
'She? Who is she?'
'Do not utter her name, not her name,' Alice faltered hurriedly. 'We must escape, or there will be an end to everything, and for ever. . . . Look, over there!'
I turned my head in the direction in which her trembling hand was pointing, and discerned something . . . something horrible indeed.
This something was the more horrible that it had no definite shape. Something bulky, dark, yellowish-black, spotted like a lizard's belly, not a storm-cloud, and not smoke, was crawling with a snake-like motion over the earth. A wide rhythmic undulating movement from above downwards, and from below upwards, an undulation recalling the malignant sweep of the wings of a vulture seeking its prey; at times an indescribably revolting grovelling on the earth, as of a spider stooping over its captured fly. . . . Who are you, what are you, menacing mass? Under her influence, I saw it, I felt it — all sank into nothingness, all was dumb. . . . A putrefying, pestilential chill came from it. At this chill breath the heart turned sick, and
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