The point touched the ceiling. There was a crash of thunder, accompanied by a blinding flash of lightning which illuminated the room through the sides of the ill-fitting window shades, and I found myself staring at the bare ceiling.
Walking dazedly to the fireplace, I poked the logs until they blazed, and then sat down to collect my thoughts. Torrents of rain were beating against the window panes. Thunder roared and lightning flashed incessantly.
I took up my pipe and was about to light it when a strange sight interrupted me. Something round and flat, about six inches in diameter, and of a grayish color, was moving along the floor from the casket toward the center of the room. I watched it, fascinated, while the blood seemed to congeal in my veins. It did not roll or slide along the floor, but seemed rather to flow forward.
It reminded me, more than anything else, of an amœba, one of those microscopic, unicellular animalcule which I had examined in the study of zoology: an amœba magnified, perhaps, several million diameters. I could plainly see it put forth projections, resembling pseudopods, from time to time, and again withdraw them quickly into the body mass.
The lighted match burned my fingers, and I dropped it on the hearth. In the meantime the creature had reached the center of the room and stopped. A metamorphosis was now taking place before my eyes. To my surprise, I beheld, in place of a magnified amœba, a gigantic trilobite, larger, it is true, than any specimen which has ever been found, but, nevertheless, true to form in every detail.
The trilobite, in turn, changed to a brilliantly-hued star-fish with active, wriggling tentacles. The star-fish became a crab, and the crab, a porpoise swimming about in the air as if it had been water. The porpoise then became a huge green lizard that crawled about the floor.
Soon the lizard grew large webbed wings, its tail shortened, its jaws lengthened out with a pelicanlike pouch beneath them, and its body seemed partially covered with scales of a rusty black color. I afterward learned that this was a phantasmic representation of a pterodactyl, or prehistoric flying reptile. To me, in my terrified condition, it looked like a creature from hell.
The thing stood erect, stretched its wings and beat the air as if to try them; then rose and circled twice about the room, flapping lazily like a heron, and once more alighted in the middle of the floor.
It folded its wings carefully, and I noticed many new changes taking place. The scales were becoming feathers—the legs lengthened out and were encased in a thick, scaly skin. The claws thickened into two-toed feet, like those of an ostrich. The head also looked ostrich-like, while the wings were shortened and feathered, but not plumed. The bird was much larger than any ostrich or emu I have ever seen, and stalked about majestically, its head nearly touching the ceiling.
Soon it, too, stopped in the center of the room—the neck grew shorter and shorter—the feathers became fur—the wings lengthened into arms which reached below the knees, and I was face to face with a huge, gorilla-like creature. It roared horribly, casting quick glances about the room, its deep-set eyes glowing like coals of fire.