Poor Tony chased up Prospect (p. 720)
But now the black Creature had closed to within mm., and now it had real hold of the boa as they careered breathing at full speed on their toes, and Krause unlooped the thing from his neck with a flourish and sacrificed the boa to the Thing, but the loathsome Creature’s hand came right back, clutching at the air just over his leather collar, its ragged breath in his ear, cursing him.
Context
The chase narrated as creature-feature: Ruth van Cleve is "the Creature"/"the Thing"/"It" throughout, Kate Gompert "the other Thing" — while, Carlisle notes, Gompert's own POV had seen Poor Tony as "the apparition." Predator and prey each perceive the other as grotesque and neither as person; the deformity here is done by the gaze, in both directions at once.