He hadnât quite realized how exhausted he had beÂcome. He spoke softly, âSheila.â But she wouldnât answer; her body didnât respond to his voice even by a movement of aversion. It was no good trying to talk to her now. Wearily he began to wonder exactly what there was between them that he had to patch up; he honestly couldnât say what the quarrel was about. And he abruptly put it out of his mind, just shrugged it away, and fell asleep.
A bitter sleep, immediately shot through with yellow sick dreaming. He was still himself, but somehow impersonally so, huge, monolithic. There was no one else, but there were momenÂtary impressions of great deserted cities which flashed through his consciousness, gleaming white cities with geometrics so queer and dizzyÂing as to cause nausea. And when the cities remained stationary they were immediately enÂgulfed by a milky-white odorous ocean. This same smelly chalky sea water was attacking him also and he began to dissolve away; he was becoming transparent, he was a mere threadÂlike wraith, merely a long nerve, excruciatingly alive. Somehow he perceived a voice in the milky substance, talking clearly and with imÂmense resonance. âIä, iä. Yogg Sothoth. NephÂreu. Cthulhu.â
â¦And all that, flashing away. Still dreaming, but now the next dream came to him lucid and so immediate he could taste its pattern. Sheila lay by him, still, absolute, still as rock. His limbs had gathered a terrible energy, felt too light, moved too easily and quickly under his great dry hunger for her. He murdered her. He was confused, the whole time he was killing her he imagined he was making love. And she never spoke, never uttered a sound.⦠The night had increased, it was much later; a shred of moon had driven into the gabled window. The moon looked thin and cheap, like something made of plastic. He was talking, kept murmuring monotonously, his voice thick and deep and full of words he could not distinguish, could not hear. Light poured into the room webby and grimy. It clung to all objects like a gritty gray ash. He kept speaking to her and she would not answer, but in the bed lay a tangle of blood, dark, bluish, in the cheap moonlight. It was streaked, blue, on his forearm and shoulder and chest. It lay tangled with his sperm in the bed; and his body was trembling, evanescent as steam from coffee. He wanted to rise but he kept floundering back; it was like bathing or drowning. The tall headboard stood over him, a black threshold. Every fiber of him was sinuous, but frenzied and impotent. His body suffered agony in the detestable light.
He opened his eyes. Cold with sweat, he stared above him at the black threshold of the headboard. Sheila lay by him unmoving but breathing easily and deeply; sighed once in her warm sleep. He lay for a while thinking, then turned on his side and went back to sleep, to dream even more bitterly and heavily.
SIX
The succeeding days widened the strangeness between them. Sheila would hardly speak to him, even averting her eyes as he passed. And he merely passed, going by thoughtlessly, caught up in himself once more, preoccupied with the house. His books and the notes for the monograph on Puritanism lay unused, asprawl after a halfhearted opening of boxes. The house had claimed him, he examined the corners and the walls, finding or seeming to find that the geometry was awry, windows and doors slightly misplaced. He went back to the letters. Peering intently at faint markings under their coatings of dust.
â¦that pece of Land wch boarders on the MackÂintosh prop. and probable worth about 500 dols. more or lessâ¦shamefull incidents talkedâ¦all the time they talk, one would not think so many idel tongesâ¦and even if his religiun is as you clame, no resoun to believe that he woânt break down and come underâ¦Sothoth, Nephreu, maybeâ¦all in whispersâ¦This day I walked the seven miles
A bitter sleep, immediately shot through with yellow sick dreaming. He was still himself, but somehow impersonally so, huge, monolithic. There was no one else, but there were momenÂtary impressions of great deserted cities which flashed through his consciousness, gleaming white cities with geometrics so queer and dizzyÂing as to cause nausea. And when the cities remained stationary they were immediately enÂgulfed by a milky-white odorous ocean. This same smelly chalky sea water was attacking him also and he began to dissolve away; he was becoming transparent, he was a mere threadÂlike wraith, merely a long nerve, excruciatingly alive. Somehow he perceived a voice in the milky substance, talking clearly and with imÂmense resonance. âIä, iä. Yogg Sothoth. NephÂreu. Cthulhu.â
â¦And all that, flashing away. Still dreaming, but now the next dream came to him lucid and so immediate he could taste its pattern. Sheila lay by him, still, absolute, still as rock. His limbs had gathered a terrible energy, felt too light, moved too easily and quickly under his great dry hunger for her. He murdered her. He was confused, the whole time he was killing her he imagined he was making love. And she never spoke, never uttered a sound.⦠The night had increased, it was much later; a shred of moon had driven into the gabled window. The moon looked thin and cheap, like something made of plastic. He was talking, kept murmuring monotonously, his voice thick and deep and full of words he could not distinguish, could not hear. Light poured into the room webby and grimy. It clung to all objects like a gritty gray ash. He kept speaking to her and she would not answer, but in the bed lay a tangle of blood, dark, bluish, in the cheap moonlight. It was streaked, blue, on his forearm and shoulder and chest. It lay tangled with his sperm in the bed; and his body was trembling, evanescent as steam from coffee. He wanted to rise but he kept floundering back; it was like bathing or drowning. The tall headboard stood over him, a black threshold. Every fiber of him was sinuous, but frenzied and impotent. His body suffered agony in the detestable light.
He opened his eyes. Cold with sweat, he stared above him at the black threshold of the headboard. Sheila lay by him unmoving but breathing easily and deeply; sighed once in her warm sleep. He lay for a while thinking, then turned on his side and went back to sleep, to dream even more bitterly and heavily.
SIX
The succeeding days widened the strangeness between them. Sheila would hardly speak to him, even averting her eyes as he passed. And he merely passed, going by thoughtlessly, caught up in himself once more, preoccupied with the house. His books and the notes for the monograph on Puritanism lay unused, asprawl after a halfhearted opening of boxes. The house had claimed him, he examined the corners and the walls, finding or seeming to find that the geometry was awry, windows and doors slightly misplaced. He went back to the letters. Peering intently at faint markings under their coatings of dust.
â¦that pece of Land wch boarders on the MackÂintosh prop. and probable worth about 500 dols. more or lessâ¦shamefull incidents talkedâ¦all the time they talk, one would not think so many idel tongesâ¦and even if his religiun is as you clame, no resoun to believe that he woânt break down and come underâ¦Sothoth, Nephreu, maybeâ¦all in whispersâ¦This day I walked the seven miles
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