The nausea was now leaving me. A sense of relief, of triumph that I was not ill, possessed me. With every alert faculty I determined to remark my sensations.
The vibration within me grew stronger, though to my ears it was unaltered. And then, abruptly the change began. My whole being was quivering. Not my muscles, my flesh, my nerves, but the very matter which composed them suddenly made sensible to my consciousness. The essence of me, trembling, quivering, vibrating—a tiny force, rapid beyond conception. It swept me with a tingling; grew stronger, possessed me until for a moment nothing of my consciousness remained but the knowledge of it.
Frightening, horrible. But the horror passed. Again my brain and vision cleared. My whole being was humming; and then I realized that I could no longer hear the hum, merely felt it. The knowledge of sound, not the sound itself. And an exhilaration was coming to me. A sense of lightness. My body growing lighter, less ponderable. But it was far more than that. An exhilaration of spirit, as though from me shackles of which I was newly conscious, were melting away. A lightness of being. A freedom.... A new sense of freedom, frightening with the vague wild triumph it brought.... Frightening too, for in the background of my mind was the realization that all my physical perceptions were dulling. My elbow was resting sharp against the rough mattress. I dragged my arm a trifle; and dull, far away as though detached from me, I could faintly feel it. I moved my leg. It was not numb. The reverse, it was thrilling in its every fibre. It moved, but I could only feel it move as in a dream. I even wondered if I felt it move at all. Was it not, perhaps, only my knowledge that it moved?
Abruptly I became aware that the table across the room had changed. My mental faculties, with all this morbid change of the physical taking place about them, were still alert. I had vaguely expected the table, the room, the visible, material objects of the realm I was leaving, to remain unaltered of aspect. But they did not. The table had lost its color; a monochrome of greyness possessed it. The table, the chairs, the whole room, had turned flat and grey. Flat of tone; and flat of dimensions as well. The flat printed picture of a room.
But in a moment even that had changed. The grey outlines of the table were dim and blurred; the grey substance of it, no longer dull and opaque, seemed growing luminous. Faintly phosphorescent. Translucent, then transparent. Through the table leg, through the wavering grey image of the room-wall, I saw opening up to me the vast darkness of an abyss of distance. A phantom room in which I lay. The shadow of a room hovering in empty space.
There was no horror within me now. That thrilling sense of lightness, that vague unreasoning triumph of loosened shackles had no thought of horror; and to me came a faint contempt for this phantom room, these imponderable shadows which once had been solid chairs and walls.
Then I heard Will's voice. "The battery! Turn off your current, Rob!"
Heard his voice? I believe I barely heard it—physically a thin wraith of human voice striking my ear-drums. Yet, mingled with that realization, was the sense that he was speaking quite normally. With my mind's ear, the memory of his normal voice made me hear his hurried, anxious admonition. "Turn off your battery. Rob! Rob!"
My battery. Of course, the moment had arrived when I must turn it off. I glanced down at it. A shadowy, unreal, phantom battery lying beside me; my grey hand resting upon it seemed to my vision far more ponderable. And then I received my first real perception as to the nature of this change. My fingers groped for the switch, found it. But this shadow battery, of which even then I was dimly contemptuous, was solid beyond all solidity of which I had ever formed conception. My fingers fumbling with it—dulled as were my physical sensations, I could feel those fingers groping as though the adamant steel of that switch were penetrating them. A feeling indescribable—uncanny, morbidly horrible, though the incident was so brief the horror scarce had time to reach my confused consciousness. My fingers, not the battery, were shadow—half-ponderable fingers, feeling their way within the solid steel of that tiny switch. For a terrifying instant I thought I could not move it. Then—it moved; the current was off. I sank back, exhausted of spirit with the effort. But at once Will's voice aroused me.