"Guy N. Smith - Accursed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

 The scene which greeted the vicar brought a grunt of amazement from his bearded lips, dying away to a
moan of terror. It was impossible, it could not be! A waking nightmare in the midst of some desert fever,
an hallucination brought about by his mind dwelling on Suma's superstitions, the fact that the natives
would not come near this place after nightfall. He stared, again tried to reassure himself that what he saw
was a figment of the imagination, the mental meanderings of an old man.



The cave had magnified many times, or perhaps it had always been this size but hidden by the shadows.
But it was no longer a cave, more of a huge chamber with plain walls, a tomb such as the one which
might lie behind that heavy door in the adjacent excavations. The whole scene was lit by some radiating
golden light as though the rays of a setting sun penetrated this gloomy place. The Reverend Mason
continued to stare, saw that in the centre of the floor stood a small plain sarcophagus. A child's coffin, a
thing of sadness that misted his eyes and blurred his vision, held his gaze as though it had some kind of
hypnotic power.



The temperature had dropped several degrees and the light seemed to die, bringing back the surrounding
shadows. And even as he watched the tiny coffin lid began to raise as though the infant occupant had
suddenly come to life or else had not been dead in the first place.



The Reverend Mason wanted to tear his gaze away, to scream, to rush headlong from this place of
inexplicable death into the world outside. But it seemed that all bodily functions were denied him; that
some unknown power commanded that he must be a spectator to the happenings in this place, the
horrors of some unearthly resurrection.



The sarcophagus lid was flung aside, a white robed figure sitting up, disrobing itself so that its features
and its nakedness were revealed in its full beauty. It was no child but a woman of exquisite beauty, so
petite in every feature, her full red lips moving as she uttered mute words which the watcher did not hear
yet understood. A plea, looking about her fearfully even as she spoke. 'Take me from this place, O
stranger, and the one who loves me and is entombed back there. Take us back to your land and free us
from the curse which has been put upon us. I beseech you!'



Mason thought that he could make out another sarcophagus some distance away, a larger one from
which there was no movement, but it could just have been a trick of the shadows. Like this one!



'It is no trick, stranger.' She seemed to read his confused thoughts which were still searching for a logical
explanation. 'For I am Dalukah, an enslaved high priestess of one whose name even now I dare not utter.
And there lies my lover, Aba-aner the soldier, and our crime is that we love each other. Free us, I
beseech you, take us away from this tomb to another land while there is still time and before we are yet
again put to the sword and entombed for eternity.'