About This Book
As in a dream I swayed to the gilded coffin. I tore away the paneling and lifted the lid, and then I knew it was no dream, for dreams cannot approach the horror that was the creature lying within, with eyes like a midnight demon's and a face of loathesome delirium. It was smiling, too, as it lay there, and my soul shrieked in the tortured realization that it was alive! Even as I gazed it spoke, in a voice like the hissing of a black slug. I (it breathed) would be the next to die, and in my heart I knew that it was so.
I could not avert my eyes from its accursed gaze, nor free my soul from its hypnotic bondage. The thing on the bier cackled with unholy laughter. My blood froze, for I saw two long, lean arms, like the rotted limbs of a corpse, steal slowly toward me. Two claws, cold as flames of icy hell, fastened around my throat, two eyes bored like maggots through my frenzied being. The bony fingers tore at my eyes and nostrils, held me helpless while yellow fangs champed nearer and nearer to my throat. The world spun, wrapped in a mist of fiery death....
from THE SECRET IN THE TOMB
