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

He drew a deep breath and stepped over the debris, aware that this was the moment when he went
back in time, trespassed in the kingdom of the dead. Hollow shuffling footfalls, a torch beam that shook
crazily penetrating the dust of aeons kicked up by his every movement.



The Reverend Mason recoiled, almost fled before fear deprived him of the use of his limbs. The interior,
the simple undecorated chamber with the small sarcophagus in the centre, so familiar that he recognised it
instantly. This was the place of which he had dreamed, the tomb of his vision!



Strangely his terror subsided as he stood there in the centre swinging the torch beam around him in an
arc. The chamber was no more than twenty yards square, humble in comparison with others he had seen,
simplicity as opposed to grandeur, a place where the dead could rest in peace. Or could they?



He had expected to find a second coffin. It stood there on a raised stone platform, a casket that was
much larger than the first one with neither carvings nor paintings on its surface.



He swung the beam to his left, started involuntarily as it reflected two pairs of glowing eyes set closely
together, an amulet depicting that double-headed serpent again. Set's malevolence glinting evilly. Beside it
on the single shelf was an obsidian head the size of a cricket ball, finely carved features, nobility that eyed
him proudly yet not hatefully.



'Strange.' He spoke aloud, grateful for the sound of his own voice. 'A tomb of this size and yet it is
empty of treasures, with no signs of robbers having been here before. No food to sustain the kas on their
long journey, no wealth stored here, although surely the dead were of a wealthy line.'



He found himself approaching the smaller of the two coffins as though some force drew him, as if his
actions were not his own. His fingers smoothed along the lid but found no fastenings of any kind, merely a
hinge which moved as easily as if it had been oiled yesterday. It lifted noiselessly, swung back. And in
that moment his terror returned! For here lay Dalukah who had pleaded with him only last night!



He didn't want to look, wanted to slam it back, leave this place and flee just as Suma and the natives
had done because now he sensed the oppressive evil, the cold cloying unseen force, those double eyes
boring malignantly into him like laser beams. The dust was thicker, his torch beam fainter as he shone it
down on the still form inside the sarcophagus, saw her features staring up at him from amidst a mass of
loose swathings as though somehow she had torn them from her because she was not really dead and
needed to breathe.