Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/81

 thing became endowed with life and speech—ventriloquial power of speech—and it shrieked into my startled ears these terrible, these ominous words: 'Wretch, look upon the work of thy hands! Here didst thou place me in the years now gone, and here have I hung and swung; here must I hang and swing during many and many a coming age! Gaze upon this cord—look on it; think of it—placed around my neck by you—by you! The flesh once with these bones which now rattle in your ears—your ears!—has, by the elements, been changed and dissolved into atoms—do you hear?—into atoms finer than the flecks of light in a sunbeam—aye, finer than the scintillations of yonder star, the point of the buckle of Orion's belt; and that star is an eye, and it watches you—watches you; and, as you see, is the only one in your horizon from zenith to nadir. That star is the sentinel appointed by Him to see to it that you escape not the doom—the doom! Ha! ha! ho! ho! Yes, it was I—I who burnt your ball, in revenge for which you burnt your soul!—you burnt your soul! Ha! ha! ho! ho! And that soul must burn, and keep on burning, in its own self-kindled flames, until their fiery tongues shall have licked your joints—your joints, your marrow—your very marrow, and keep licking them until—' 'In God's name, what and when?' I tremblingly inquired. And from between the chattering, clattering, horrible jaws of that ghastly thing there hissed back this answer: 'Atom by atom, the elements whereof my body was formed shall once again cleave to these bare bones; and, of their own volition, persuaded thereto by the spectacle of thy agony, softened by thy prayers,