“Well, I’ll be out in a minute.”
The stone lifted itself from the grave, the earth burst open, and a skeleton came out of it. It was a very common skeleton, just the kind that students study anatomy by: only it was dirty, had no wire connections, and in the empty sockets there shone a blue phosphoric light instead of eyes. It crawled out of the ground, shook its bones in order to throw off the earth that stuck to them, making a dry, rattling noise with them, and raising up its skull, looked with its cold, blue eyes at the murky, cloud-covered sky. “I hope you are well!” said the devil.
“How can I be?” curtly answered the author. He spoke in a strange, low voice, as if two bones were grating against each other.
“Oh, excuse my greeting!” the devil said pleasantly.
“Never mind!... But why have you raised me?”
“I just wanted to take a walk with you, though the weather is very bad.
“I suppose you are not afraid of catching a cold?” asked the devil.
“Not at all, I got used to catching colds during my lifetime.”
“Yes, I remember, you died pretty cold.”