Was I mad? drunk? dreaming?
giddy again? or was the top of the bed really moving
down--sinking slowly, regularly, silently, horribly, right down
throughout the whole of its length and breadth--right down upon
me, as I lay underneath?
My blood seemed to stand still. A deadly paralysing coldness
stole all over me as I turned my head round on the pillow and
determined to test whether the bed-top was really moving or not,
by keeping my eye on the man in the picture.
The next look in that direction was enough. The dull, black,
frowzy outline of the valance above me was within an inch of
being parallel with his waist. I still looked breathlessly. And
steadily and slowly--very slowly--I saw the figure, and the line
of frame below the figure, vanish, as the valance moved down
before it.
I am, constitutionally, anything but timid. I have been on more
than one occasion in peril of my life, and have not lost my
self-possession for an instant; but when the conviction first
settled on my mind that the bed-top was really moving, was
steadily and continuously sinking down upon me, I looked up
shuddering, helpless, panic-stricken, beneath the hideous
machinery for murder, which was advancing closer and closer to
suffocate me where I lay.
I looked up, motionless, speechless, breathless. The candle,
fully spent, went out; but the moonlight still brightened the
room.
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