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staggered backward, holding her gnarled hands up to ward off the feeble, telltale light. She was crying. |
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Freeman began rummaging through the debris of the vigil, frantically searching for the flashlight. He located it, turned it on and ran across the room toward the still sleeping Gladys Ann. He shined the light in her face and realized that she wasn't sleeping; she was dead. Her sightless brown eyes were hauntingly fixed on some unseen thing in another time and place. Her bloodless, bleached white skin was stretched tautly over a skeletal face, laced with a chaotic pattern of tiny fissures and crowned with a tangled net of dull brown hair. |
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Instinctively, he reached down and tried to pick up her hand. It was rigid and clammy to the touch. Again instinctively, he released it, stepped back and felt his labored breathing coming in harsh gulps. He turned and looked helplessly at Linda, his face betraying the feeling of confusion and panic. Like him, she too had caught a brief glimpse of Gladys Ann, and the scream was still lodged in her throat. |
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Freeman staggered away from the old woman's lifeless body to the middle of the room. |
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"Is she dead?" Linda finally quaked, her voice thinly audible. |
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The harried doctor stood in the middle of |
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