He had been standing before the gate, in a condition of mounting fear, when he realised that just above his gaze was an equestrian figure bearing aloft a mighty axe. The axe was poised right above his head. It occurred to him to move backwards, or step sideways, but he couldn’t.
His panic grew worse. He started to quiver. He felt something strange all around him; he felt presences and vague forms encompassing him, pressing down on him in the darkness.
Unable to master his incomprehension, unable to breathe, unable to think, he started to tremble. It seemed that the whole world was trembling with him.
A grey mist covered his eyes. His whole being was atremble now with an uncontrollable horror at once beautiful and humbling. He was all dissolved within. He felt like a child abandoned on the highest peak of a mountain, or on the edge of an endless sea, or in a deep night with no illumination anywhere in the universe. Tears poured down his face and he wept like a child, trembling without knowing why, and quivering under the mystery of the wind blowing through the negative spaces of the great gate.