The yellow light spilled out of the small rear alcove. The guard was slumped in the chair, snoring blissfully. The rear door was open.
Elliott slowly entered the museum. He passed quickly through the empty chambers of the ground floor, past towering gods and goddesses. At last he reached the grand stairs and, clutching the railing, moved up step by step, hoisting his weight off his painful leg, trying not to make a sound in the thinning darkness.
A gray murky light filled the corridor. The window at the far end was paling visibly. And there stood Ramsey beside the low shallow display case, in which the mass of the dead woman in her petrified rags gleamed like black coal. Ramsey bowed his head in the gray light, like a man praying.
It seemed he whispered something in the dark. Or was he weeping? His profile was sharply clear, and so was the movement of his hand as he reached into his coat and drew out something that sparkled in the shadows. A glass vial full of luminescent liquid. Dear God, he cannot mean to do this. What is this potion that he would even attempt it? Elliott almost cried out. He almost went to Ramsey and tried to stay his hand. But when Ramsey opened the vial, when Elliott heard the faint grinding of the metal cap, he shrank to the far side of the corridor, and concealed himself from view behind a tall glass cabinet.
How eloquent of suffering the distant figure was, poised there over the case, the open vial in his hand, the other hand rising to wipe his hair out of his forehead.
Then Ramsey turned as if to go and came down the corridor towards Elliott without seeing him.
Something changed in the light. It was the first palpable glow of the sun, a dull steel-grey radiance; a soft grey shimmer firing all the glass cases and cabinets of the long corridor.
Ramsey turned. Elliott could hear him sigh. He could feel his torment. Ah, but this is madness; this is unspeakable.
Helplessly, he watched as Ramsey approached the case again and broke loose the light wood-framed glass lid, and folded it silently backwards and away like the cover of a book, so that he might touch the dead thing inside.
With sudden speed, he produced the vial again. The gleaming white liquid flowed in droplets down on the corpse as Ramsey passed the vial back and forth above it.
"It's vain, it cannot possibly work," Elliott whispered halfaloud. He found himself shrinking even closer to the wall, peering now through the glass sides of the cabinet.
In horror and fascination, he watched Ramsey smooth the fluid over the dead woman's limbs. He saw him bend tenderly, as if placing the glittering vial to her mouth.
A hiss echoed through the darkness. Elliott let out a silent gasp. Ramsey stumbled back, pressing himself to the wall. The vial fell from his hand and rolled on the stone floor, a tiny bit of fluid still shimmering inside it. Ramsey stared down at the thing in front of him.
Movement of the dark mass in the low shallow bed of the case. Elliott saw it. He heard a low raw sound like breath.
Dear God, man, what have you done! What have you awakened!
The wood of the case gave a violent creak; the thin wooden legs appeared to shudder. The thing inside the case was stirring, rising.
Ramsey backed away into the corridor. A muffled cry escaped his lips. Beyond him, Elliott saw the figure sit up. The wooden case shattered and then collapsed, the noise echoing loudly throughout the museum. The thing stood square on its feet! Its great head of shaggy black hair poured down like thick smoke over its shoulders. The blackened skin was lightening, changing. A ghastly moan came out of the being. It raised its skeletal hands.
Ramsey moved backward away from it. A desperate prayer escaped him, full of the old Egyptian names of the gods. Elliott clamped a hand over his mouth.
Moving forward, its bare feet scratching the stones with the rough, dry sound of rats in the walls, the figure lowered its arms and reached out towards Ramsey.
The light shone in its huge staring eyes, the eyelids eaten away, the hair thickening and writhing as it grew sleeker and blacker and tumbled down longer over the bony shoulders.
But dear God, what were the patches of white all over it? They were the bones of the thing, the bare bones where the flesh had