Black Light by Talbot Mundy — Read

Then weird things happened. Faculties, which Joe did not know that he had, possessed him, as they do in dreams, where time and space imblend into a new dimension that unites them both and transcends both. Nevertheless, he knew he was not dreaming. He could smell, for instance, the sour smoke of the night-light wick that the Yogi had extinguished. He could feel the sharp pain below his shoulder-blade that always tortured him unless he leaned his weight to one side. He could hear Annie Weems nervously moving a foot inside her slipper, where she sat on the floor beside Amal's body. He could taste the salt sweat on his own hand when he pressed his lips against it. He could count the buttons on his pajama jacket. But for a length of time that he guessed was sixty seconds, he could not see.

Then, however, he saw Rita very clearly, although there was no light. She emerged out of the darkness like the image on a photographic plate, only in color, life-size and in relief, not flat. She was sitting near the Yogi's feet, quite motionless except that he could see her breathing. Her outline, it appeared to Joe, was silver, but her head and body were of the color of fiery opal and the colors were not motionless, although it would be equally incorrect to say that they were moving. The strangest part of all was, that he could see her also in her natural color. There was a small red flame, brighter than blood, that seemed to leap from the crown of her head, and there was another one over her heart. He could see her white dress quite distinctly.