once. He walked onto it, turned around once, lay down, and closed
his eyes.

I took up my vigil. I had been the victim of a fear I was
determined to conquer. The house was quiet. Maggie had retired
shriveled to bed. The cat slept on the shawl.

And then--I felt the fear returning. It welled up through my
tranquillity like a flood, and swept me with it. I wanted to shriek.
I was afraid to shriek. I longed to escape. I dared not move.
There had been no sound, no motion. Things were as they had been.

It may have been one minute or five that I sat there. I do not
know. I only know that I sat with fixed eyes, not even blinking,
for fear of even for a second shutting out the sane and visible
world about me. A sense of deadness commenced in my hands and
worked up my arms. My chest seemed flattened.

Then the telephone bell rang.

The cat leaped to his feet. Somehow I reached forward and took
down the receiver.

"Who is it?" I cried, in a voice that was thin, I knew, and
unnatural.

The telephone is not a perfect medium. It loses much that we wish
to register but, also, it registers much that we may wish to lose.
Therefore when I say that I distinctly heard a gasp, followed by
heavy difficult breathing, over the telephone, I must beg for