horror and revolting nausea rose up within me, and an odour of
corruption choked my breath, I remained firm. I was then privileged or
accursed, I dare not say which, to see that which was on the bed, lying
there black like ink, transformed before my eyes. The skin, and the
flesh, and the muscles, and the bones, and the firm structure of the
human body that I had thought to be unchangeable, and permanent as
adamant, began to melt and dissolve.

"I know that the body may be separated into its elements by external
agencies, but I should have refused to believe what I saw. For here
there was some internal force, of which I knew nothing, that caused
dissolution and change.

"Here too was all the work by which man had been made repeated before
my eyes. I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from
itself, and then again reunited. Then I saw the body descend to the
beasts whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to
the depths, even to the abyss of all being. The principle of life,
which makes organism, always remained, while the outward form changed.

"The light within the room had turned to blackness, not the darkness of
night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I could see clearly and
without difficulty. But it was the negation of light; objects were
presented to my eyes, if I may say so, without any medium, in such a
manner that if there had been a prism in the room I should have seen no
colours represented in it.

"I watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. Then
the ladder was ascended again... [here the MS. is illegible] ...for one
instance I saw a Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will not
farther describe. But the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient
sculptures, and in paintings which survived beneath the lava, too foul
to be spoken of... as a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor
beast, was changed into human form, there came finally death.

"I who saw all this, not without great horror and loathing of soul,
here write my name, declaring all that I have set on this paper to be
true.

"ROBERT MATHESON, Med. Dr."

* * * * *

...Such, Raymond, is the story of what I know and what I have seen.
The burden of it was too heavy for me to bear alone, and yet I could
tell it to none but you. Villiers, who was with me at the last, knows
nothing of that awful secret of the wood, of how what we both saw die,