ery room with them.
Suddenly they became aware of a strange fog emanating from one wall.
It swept closer drawing them into its greasy folds. The voice seemed
to come from the very heart of this fog:

"... Well, perhaps things will be different soon...?"

Then the fog enveloped them completely, and their senses fled from
them....

* * * * *

It was an odd sort of voice, mellow, fluid, yet holding accents of
anger in its even flow:

"Both of you complained you couldn't imagine this. So we brought you
here to prove its existence."

The writer and artist opened their eyes and the fog in which they'd
been bound was no longer there. They were in an immense chamber whose
vaulted ceiling extended for a full hundred feet in the air and seemed
suspended by slender strings, so tenuous were the web-like supports,
so fragile were the arches. They were standing before a tremendous
table whose semi-circular length might have been fifty feet from one
end to the other. And seated at the table were the most horrifying
monsters they had ever seen.

There was one, a huge beetle-like thing with two heads and a scaly
body and four pairs of pincers extending from the line of jaw. There
was, another, somewhat like a spider, but with dozens of legs. A third
was half-man, half alligator; a fourth was all snake, but with three
human heads; and another was all head without body. They were, the two
men realized, the most terrible _things_ they had ever imagined.

"... And there is the rub," the voice went on. "We are all as you have
imagined us. We exist only in your imagination."

"But how can that be?" Harry Zmilch asked. "We are here. We can see
you...."

"Only because your imaginations have been developed to such a degree,"
the voice replied. "Were you able to you would imagine us as something
altogether different. But since there are limits to your imagination
we are as we are. Now you must pay the penalty of that imagination.

"Torture will be the price we will exact from you...."

In an instant they were transported to the torture chamber. They saw
the horrible machines, the Copper Conker, the Pallid Pulley, and the
rest. And up on the platform they saw Sally Patica in all her glory,
her seven pairs of eyes watering so great was her excitement.

The monsters got in each other's way so hurried were they to tie and
make fast the two humans to the torture machines. And despite Harry's
and Jack's s