Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 2 (1925-02).djvu/191

 tiful and lithe. The thumbs were slender, and the fingers, each of which was separately bandaged, were long and tapering. The neck was full, and the chin displayed that firmness which is seen only in very beautiful women. While I was raptly admiring the beauty of the long departed princess, the glow on the face grew whiter, and the imitation lips, brows, and eyes on the wrappings grew weirder in the phosphorescent glare.

"Gradually I became aware of an eery stillness. Intermixed with this was something strangely indescribable, something that reminded me of the atmosphere of the catacombs of the primitive Christians. Fascinated, I continued to gaze at the mummy, when suddenly from out of the deathlike stillness came a sob—low, weird, gentle. There was something uncanny and yet familiar in that sob. Several minutes dragged by, and again I heard it—low, weird, gentle.

"Was the mummy alive? I strained my vision to detect any movements in its limbs. I lay down, strangely wearied by this uncanny experience, and I turned my face to the opposite wall. But some strange impulse caused me to look back. My soul became convulsed with fear, and every fiber in me trembled. The mummy lived! Its bosom began to rise and fall!

"My terror was now supreme. I wanted to shriek, to scream, to cry out; but the sounds froze in my throat. Then out of the awful silence came that sigh—soft and low. A tremor ran through the mummy from head to foot. Then one of its hands moved, and the fingers clutched the air convulsively, as if the pain from awaking from a sleep of twenty-five centuries was great and unbearable. Quickly the bandages from the fingers began to fall away. Still held in great terror, I lay and watched. Finally the fingers were free from their wrappings, and in the phosphorescent glare I beheld them. They were long and slender, but there was something about them that struck me as strangely familiar. They possessed an individuality that I had known somewhere before.

"Gradually the hands moved upward, and reaching the throat, the fingers set to work slowly and painfully to remove the bandages. Soon I beheld a glimmer of skin as pale as beautiful marble. The nose was then unveiled; then the upper lip, exquisitely and delicately cut; then the teeth. And among them I saw a gold tooth—a gleaming gold tooth, newly fashioned, it seemed, by the hands of a modern dentist! The uncasing continued. The chin became exposed to view; then the upper part of the head—hair, long and black and luxuriant—the forehead low and white—the brows raven black. And the eyes! It was Fleurette!

"I sprang from my bed with a madness that knew no bounds. Slowly she was advancing toward me. I flung out my arms to embrace her, the woman I loved best in the world. But something black and hideous loomed up suddenly before me, and I fell to the floor.

"For several minutes I lay stunned and bruised by the sudden fall. Then I looked up, and there, bending over and peering into my eyes, was the fleshless, moldering face of a foul and barely recognizable corpse!" [sic]

"With a shriek of terror I rolled back. I glanced at the mummy. It was lying on the floor, stiff and still, every bandage in its place; while standing over it was the figure of Anubis, lurid and menacing in the fiery gleams of the early dawn."