Read Speaking From Among The Bones for Free Online

that, in spite of Marmaduke, whoever he may be, the work was going ahead.
    The vicar was now gnawing distractedly at his lower lip.
    “Where’s your friend, then?” Mr. Haskins asked suddenly, turning from his work, his words echoing oddly from the crypt’s curved arches. “I thought he wanted to be here for the main event?”
    “Mr. Sowerby?” the vicar said. “I don’t know. It’s most unlike him to be tardy. Perhaps we should wait a while.”
    “This here stone’s waitin’ on nobody,” Mr. Haskins said. “This here stone’s got a mind of her own, and she’s comin’ out whether we likes it or not.”
    He gave the heavy block a familiar pat, and it made a most awful groan, as if it were in pain.
    “She’s hangin’ by her toenails, and no more. Besides, Norman and Tommy need to get back to Malden Fenwick, don’t you, lads? They’re here to work, and work they shall.”
    He waved grandly toward his workers, one exceedingly tall, the other quite unremarkable.
    Down here, in the depths of the crypt, Mr. Haskins was the ruler of his own dark kingdom, and nobody dared raise a voice against him.
    “Besides,” he added. “This here’s only the wall. We won’t get to the sarcophagus till we’re through it. Fetch the rope, Tommy.”
    As Tommy worked the rope up and round an overhanging shelf of masonry, Mr. Haskins turned his attention full upon me. For an awful moment, I thought he was going to tell me to leave. But he had his audience.
    “Sarcophagus,” he said. “Sar-coph-a-gus. Now there’s a rare old word for you. Bet you don’t know what it means, do you, miss?”
    “It comes from two Greek words meaning ‘eater of flesh,’ ” I said. “The ancient Greeks used to make them of a special stone brought from Assos, in Turkey, because it was said to consume the entire body, except the teeth, in forty days.”
    Although I didn’t do it often, I offered up a little prayer of thanks to my sister Daffy, who had read this fascinating snippet aloud to me from one of the volumes of a coffin-black encyclopedia in Buckshaw’s library.
    “Aha!” said Mr. Haskins, as if he had known it all along. “Well, there we have it then, straight from the horse’s mouth,” he said, meaning me.
    Before I could protest what I took to be an insult, he had given the rope a fierce tug.
    Nothing happened.
    “Lend a hand, Norman. Tommy, give the other end a nudge—see if we can swing ’er out.”
    But in spite of their hauling and pushing, the stone wouldn’t budge.
    “Seems to be stuck fast,” the vicar said.
    “Stuck ain’t the word for it,” Mr. Haskins said. “Well and truly bloody—”
    “Little pitchers, Mr. Haskins, little pitchers,” the vicar said, putting a forefinger to his lips and giving an almost imperceptible nod in my direction.
    “Something jammin’ it up, like. Let’s have a dekko.”
    Mr. Haskins dropped the end of the rope and snatched the torch away from Tommy.
    Holding the lamp just behind its lens, he shoved his face against the crack.
    “No good,” he announced at last. “Wants more of an opening.”
    “Here—let me,” I said, taking the torch from his hands. “My head’s smaller than yours. I’ll tell you what I can see.”
    They were all so astonished, I think, that nobody tried to stop me.
    My head went easily in through the gaping crack, and, like a contortionist, I maneuvered the light until it was beaming into the tomb from over my head.
    A cold, dank draft brushed at my face, and I wrinkled my nose at the sharp, brackish stink of ancient decay.
    I was looking into a small stone chamber of perhaps seven feet long and three wide. The first thing I saw was a human hand, its dried fingers tightly clutching a bit of broken glass tubing. And then the face—a ghastly, inhuman mask with enormous, staring acetate eyes and a piggish rubber snout.
    Beneath it was a white ruffle, not quite covering the ink-black vessels of the neck and throat. Above the eyes was a shock of