Psychic

36. Undead

Rai walked down the stairs carefully, staying close to the stone wall since there was no rail or wall on the other side. It was open and overlooking the room where the bodies are normally mummified. There were several stone tables covered in candles, dried herbs and bottles of oil, just like the catacombs beneath the grand obelisk Rai had visited with Debra in Morrisuke.

She approached the stone tables and started checking the bottles of oil, looking for the marjoram. She kept looking back up at the halls leading further into the catacombs before her, checking for anything approaching.

"Looking for the marjoram?" a male voice asked her. It sounded as though it were all around her. Rai turned her eyes up slowly so she would not be surprised if it was close but there was no one around her. She kept herself calm, telling herself that the owner of the voice would reveal himself soon.

"I was but I suppose you have it already, right?"

"You suppose correctly."

"Why are you telling me?"

"So you know how pointless this all is."

"Why don't you come to me and then say it?"

"If you're so sure of yourself why don't you come to me?"

"Fine." Rai started forward into halls.

Right at the beginning of the halls, there were pockets built into the walls with embalmed bodies decaying slowly. She hesitantly took a sniff of the air as she followed the stone hall but there was no bad scent, only a woody one she guessed was from the oils or candles lighting the path.

A few minutes later, she came to a round room at the end of the hall. In the middle of it was a stone sarcophagus and its heavy lid was on the floor leaning against it. Rai snorted, "well, that's not respecting the dead," and walked around it to continue down the hall. She stopped inside the next arch, staring into the hall before her. She knocked on the stone wall beside her. "So where are you, huh?" She heard a cracking sound behind her and turned quickly, expecting to see someone behind her but the room was unchanged. "Well?" She threw her hands up as she was beginning to get irritated. "I don't have all day. I'm just as busy as you are."

"I'm here." The voice sounded as though it was coming from inside her ear and her face twisted with discomfort as she rubbed her ear. "In front of you."

"Yeah, I see you," Rai said calmly when she noticed fingers gripping at the edge of the open sarcophagus before her. She took a few steps forward then stopped, crossing her arms and tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for something to happen. A round skin colored mound rose from the sarcophagus slowly, making occasional cracking sounds as it moved. Rai sighed and raised her hand as though she was lifting something and the sarcophagus tore itself up from the floor and stood on its shortest side. She made a quick flicking gesture, rotating the opening to face her.

A pale face with greenish skin, sunken in cheeks and eyes bulging from its skull stared out at her. Its jaw was broken and hanging loosely by the remaining skin on its face. The body seemed to have been jammed into the sarcophagus with another. Its neck was hanging completely sideways and was twisted backwards so that the back of its chest was facing Rai. One of its legs was bent up toward its shoulder. The knee was bent over its head. The other leg was folded up its back and its left arm was folded unnaturally across the back of its shoulders.

It fell out of the sarcophagus onto the stone floor in its contorted shape. Before Rai could react to that, the head whipped back quickly with a loud snap into its correct position on the body. The bulging eyes were now facing the ceiling of the catacombs and they rolled backwards slowly to look at her. She forced herself not to look disgusted as it was watching her.