It began with an operation—I took gas as an anesthetic and while under the influence of it my heart must have stopped beating, as in my terror I knew I was slipping through the Curtain and into the land of shades. It was like sliding helter-skelter down into a vortex of scarlet and it was knowing that one was dying and that the process of dying was far from pleasant.
For a long time after I knew that “Death is eight inches below life.”
It was terrible work, climbing up out of the cone again, for something did not want to let me back through the wall, and then, when I willed my going, I determined it against all opposition.
And something began to cry out, “Don’t let him know!” and then fainter, “Don’t let him know.”
Though badly shaken I was quite rational when I was restored. The people around me looked frightened—more frightened than I. I was not thinking about what I had been through nearly so much as what I knew. I had not yet fully returned to life. I was still in contact with something. And in that state I remained for some days, all the while puzzling over what I knew. It was clear that if I could but remember I would have the secret of life. This in itself was enough to drive one mad, so illusive was that just-beyond-reach information. And then one morning, just as I awoke, it came to me. I climbed out of my tall ship’s bunk and made my way to my typewriter. I began to hammer out that secret and when I had written ten thousand words, then I knew even more clearly. I destroyed the ten thousand and began to write again.
