Entering the vault, since there was no other place where he could have hidden himself, I looked about for him, but the room was empty. At least, I deemed it empty till I looked again at the richly carven sarcophagus and saw that it was now tenanted, for a cadaver lay within, shrouded in a winding sheet of a sort that has not been used for centuries in Ptolemides.
I drew nigh to the sarcophagus, and peering into the face of the cadaver, I saw that it bore a fearful and strange resemblance to the face of Tomeron, though it was bloated and puffed with the adipocere of death and was purple with the shadows of decay, as after long ages in a charnel air. And looking again, I saw that it was indeed Tomeron.
I would have screamed aloud with the horror that came upon me; but my lips were benumbed and frozen, and I could only whisper Tomeron's name. But as I whispered it, the lips of the cadaver seemed to part, and the tip of its tongue protruded between them. And I thought that the tip trembled, as if Tomeron were about to speak and answer me. But gazing more closely I saw that the trembling was merely the movement of worms as they twisted up and down and to and fro, and sought to crowd each other from Tomeron's tongue.
SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE
(A True Experience)
by Kenneth B. Pritchard
I chanced to be alone at the time. I was just about to enter the kitchen of the house. I opened the door and went in.
I glanced over toward the gas stove near a window. Close to it a cloud of smoke streamed upward. It had the appearance of an easy rolling mass just expelled from the lungs of a smoker. I also compared it to a match that had just been extinguished. In fact, I thought that a mouse had lit one.
I went to the stove, which had not been used for some hours, and looked for a match recently ignited, or even for some oily substance which the sun might have caused to smoke.