I have a distant notion of de Fouquier somewhere near me, of fading away into a world vaguer and colder than dreams....
There is a door that leads to happiness. Revenge cannot force the lock.
CHAPTER XXXV: WAY OF A SERPENT UPON A ROCK
Everywhere there was a cold and mistlike darkness. Shapes emerged. Billows of whiter mist loomed nearer through the darkness, came from every corner of utmost space. The dark heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; the white billows poured in on every side, engulphed me, choked me with icy fumes. Was I dead, and awake in cold Eternity?
The mists turned into molten suns who scorched my body till only the soul was left, naked against the burning heat.
I died again, to wake once more in a new causeless Eternity of terror. Always there was a menace, everywhere a fear. I knew I was dreaming, in a dream within a dream; this gave me no ease, as I knew that dreams were true. Rather were the pain, the terror, the pursuit, more real, more awful, than waking ills. My agony of soul was unsearchable; there was no God even to cry to, for soon I was God, in His loneliness without help or escape, without beginning and without end.
Human shapes, with a horror and a power to do me evil far beyond their real stature in my past, pursued, reached, assailed, slew me. Always I died, and always I woke to a new universe of more sickening fear. Aunt Jael, Benamuckee—every evil face and evil fact from the old days of the life I had once dreamt on the earth, invested now with infinite power and unimaginable horror—menaced me, dogged my piteous flight along the unending pathway of Eternity. Uncle Simeon was there. The most horrible fear of my childhood, he was the most horrible now: an Evil more ghastly than human memory or imagination. "Twelve years ago, twelve years ago!" I whispered. He saw, rushed to the door, while I rushed madlier across the roof-room to my attic. This time he would outrun me. No, I was in time. I tore through the aperture and just had time, shivering in fright, to huddle down upon the floor before the key turned and he was in upon me, over me, peering at me with unpitying cruelty and hate, I lay numbly staring at the yellow-pale face, the savage blue eyes, the wet thin lips, the honey-coloured beard—now tinged with grey—just as it would be now in "real" life, I had enough reason in my dream to be able (in a frightening lapse from feeling to thought) to reflect. The face came nearer, gleamed physically its hate, seemed to breathe at me.
"Oh, God!" I prayed wildly, "Where am I? Tell me, oh tell me! If a dream, of thy pity awaken me: if life after death, slay me for ever!"