The Lurking Fear by H.P. Lovecraft

For days after that hideous experience in the forest-swathed mansion I lay nervously exhausted in my hotel room at Lefferts Corners. I do not remember exactly how I managed to reach the motor-car, start it, and slip unobserved back to the village; for I retain no distinct impression save of wild-armed titan trees, demoniac mutterings of thunder, and Charonian shadows athwart the low mounds that dotted and streaked the region.

As I shivered and brooded on the casting of that brain-blasting shadow, I knew that I had at last pried out one of earth's supreme horrors -- one of those nameless blights of outer voids whose faint demon scratchings we sometimes hear on the farthest rim of space, yet from which our own finite vision has given us a merciful immunity. The shadow I had seen, I hardly dared to analyze or identify. Something had lain between me and the window that night, but I shuddered whenever I could not cast off the instinct to classify it. If it had only snarled, or bayed, or laughed titteringly -- even that would have relieved the abysmal hideousness. But it was so silent. It had rested a heavy arm or foreleg on my chest. Obviously it was organic, or had once been organic. Jan Martense, whose room I had invaded, was buried in the graveyard near the mansion. I must find Bennett and Tobey, if they lived. why had it picked them, and left me for the last? .