Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/92

 the Americans fixed upon the eyes of the Ancient. In shocked silence they watched one another.

The Egyptian sat up slowly, as if painfully. His features moved not a bit; his body moved slowly and jerkily.

The Ancient's eyes roved over the assembly. They caught Severus full in the face. For an instant they gazed at one another, the Vermont man looking into pain-swept ages, into grim depths of agony and sorrow, into the Aeons of old Past Time itself.

The Egyptian suddenly wrinkled up his features, swept up an arm and opened his mouth to speak.

And Severus fled from the room in frightful terror, the others closely following. Behind them rang out a terrible, hoarse bellow, cut off by a gurgling which they barely heard. The entire company, to a man. fought each other like terrified animals, each struggling to be the first out of that Museum, out the doors into the black streets and away.

For there are parts of the human body which, never having been alive, cannot be preserved in suspended life. They are the bones, the teeth—strong in death, but unable to defy the crushing millenia.

And when the Egyptian had moved his body and opened his mouth to speak, his face had fallen in like termite-infested wood, the splinters of fragile, age-crumbled bones tearing through the flesh. His whole body had shaken, and, with the swing of the arm, smashed itself into a shapeless mass of heaving flesh and blood through which projected innumerable jagged fragments of dark grey, pitted bones. 



A lonely graveyard lies, between high walk, Death’s quiet eddy off the roaring mart, An oasis of peace, forgot, apart, With muted strings the clamor on it falls; And ghostly mists at dawn drop down like palls, Lithe bodies creep and slip into its heart; Half-seen; half-hid; across the mounds they dart. Behold! On Beauty’s grave a gaunt cat sprawls! Beside some sage’s stone their lusts are fed— They stalk each other through the ragged grass; Snakelike they crawl where heroes long have lain; With playful paw they pat the mouldering dead. Grotesques that writhe and wail a devilish Mass— Thoughts, life-clothed; sent forth by some dead brain!