And he would go to picture galleries they said and he would ask one, did one like his tie? God knows, said Rose, one did not.
To the Lighthouse
Name:
Anonymous2006-08-29 21:07
"Then in the dead of the night, as he lay wondering what the thing was up to, for it had been so quiet, he heard suddenly a great pounding at his door. He was in terror. He knew he shouldn't answer, that the knocking didn't come from a human hand. But finally he could bear it no longer. He said his prayers; he threw open the door. And what he beheld was the horror of horrors - the rotted mummy of his father, the filthy wrappings in tatters, propped against the garden wall.
"Of course, he knew there was no life in the shruken face or dead eyes that stared at him. Someone or something had unearthed the corpse from its desert mastaba and brought it there. And this was the body of his father, putrid, stinking; the body of his father, which by all things holy, should have been consumed in a proper funeral feast by Khayman and his brothers and sisters.
"Khayman sank to his knees weeping, half screaming. And then, before his unbelieving eyes, the thing moved! The thing began to dance! Its limbs were jerked hither and thither, the wrappings breaking to bits and pieces, until Khayman ran into the house and shut the door against it. And then the corpse was flung, pounding its fist it seemed, upon the door, demanding entrance.
- Ann Rice's Queen of the Damned (AKA Dance of the Mummies)