"I know not what else it could have been: a voice spoke to me out of the darkness, speaking terrible things, things about a friend who had vanished of late," he says. "Then of a sudden, my right hand moved as if it had taken a mind of its own and tried to cut my left hand with a paper knife. I have read of such things, but I did not think them possible. There are neither gods nor demons in Gormenghast."