.. and then,
one day when it's got us nicely all on top of it, down it will bring us
all, houses and the rest. Damned funny idea, what? Do for a cartoon-fellow
or some one--"
The disease developed; he had it very badly, but at first his friends did
not know. He lay awake at night hearing things--one heard much more at
night--sometimes he fancied that the ground shook under his feet--but most
terrible of all was it when there was perfect silence. The traffic ceased,
the trees and windows and doors were still ... the Creature was listening.
Sometimes he read in papers that buildings had suddenly collapsed. He
smiled to himself. "When we are all nicely gathered together," he said,
"when there are enough people ... then--"
His friends said that he had a nervous breakdown; they sent him to a
rest-cure. He came back. The Creature was fascinating--he was terrified,
but he could not leave it.
He knew more and more about it; he knew now what it was like, and he saw
its eyes and he sometimes could picture its grey scaly back with churches
and theatres and government buildings and the little houses of Mr. Smith
and Mr. Jones perched upon it--and the noises that it made now were so
many and so threatening that he never slept at all. Then he began to run,
shouting, down Piccadilly, so they put him--very reluctantly--into a nice
Private Asylum, and there he died, screaming.
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