To my astonishment, it seemed now to
come from behind me, and I whipped 'round, with a hideous quake of fear.
The wind met me in the face. It was blowing up from the floor close to
me. I stared down, in a sickening maze of new frights. What on earth had
I done now! The ring was there, close beside me, where I had put it.
Suddenly, as I stared, bewildered, I was aware that there was something
queer about the ring--funny shadowy movements and convolutions. I looked
at them, stupidly. And then, abruptly, I knew that the wind was blowing
up at me from the ring. A queer indistinct smoke became visible to me,
seeming to pour upward through the ring, and mix with the moving shadows.
Suddenly, I realized that I was in more than any mortal danger; for the
convoluting shadows about the ring were taking shape, and the death-hand
was forming _within_ the Pentacle. My Goodness! do you realize it! I had
brought the 'gateway' into the pentacles, and the brute was coming
through--pouring into the material world, as gas might pour out from the
mouth of a pipe.
"I should think that I knelt for a moment in a sort of stunned fright.
Then, with a mad, awkward movement, I snatched at the ring, intending to
hurl it out of the Pentacle. Yet it eluded me, as though some invisible,
living thing jerked it hither and thither. At last, I gripped it; yet,
in the same instant, it was torn from my grasp with incredible and brutal
force.
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