|
|
|
|
|
|
|
up at them, assessing them through dried, long dead hollow sockets in a mask composed of shards of flesh and rotting teeth. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It wasn't until the grotesque specter began to move again that Betty Elizabeth felt the first stabbing sensation of unfettered panic slam into her chest. She was frozen in horror, unable to move, mouth agape, eyes fixed on the decaying remains in the bottom of the yawning hole. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Oh, my God," she muttered. Her knees had already given way from under her. She was dizzy and nauseous. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Theodore wasn't faring much better. His legs were like stone, and the horror of the moment had all but overwhelmed him. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The ravages of time had rendered what they knew to be in the tomb into something wholly unrecognizable. If they hadn't been there to validate each other's experience, neither would have been able to describe what they were witnessing. There, transfixed, they saw the thing move again, one hand reaching up and out of the abyss, fingers symbolically locked on the edge of the earth as it tried to reenter the realm of the living. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The dirt shifted and crumbled. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Betty Elizabeth staggered clumsily backward, trying to extricate herself from the horror of the moment. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What was left of the earthly remains of one Malcolm Frazier actually moved. Theodore |
|
|
|
|
|