The two men didn’t reply; simply went on
watching. And the hooded figure remained motionless. Its
coarse habit, bound at the waist with cord, had a tawny
hue like the hide of a fox. She noticed this
inconsequentially. Felt more apprehensive about a set of
chains coiled on the stone floor, attached to the slab.
‘Bollocks to this,’ she said with synthetic defiance.
‘You’re pissing about with the wrong sort of bitch here,
guys. I’m not some wilting violet who’ll pass out with
fright at your dumb-arse tricks.’
She strode forward, intending to snatch off the
hood of her club-footed tormentor.
Drag it off, wrap it around his neck and choke the
repulsive little shit with it.
The figure may have heard her coming. At any rate
it wheeled to confront her.
Wilting violet she may not have been, but Elsa
would have screamed at that point if her throat hadn’t
constricted and forced back the sound so that it almost
tore her lungs. She halted, jerked a pace in retreat, reached
for support that didn’t exist.
It wasn’t Conrad after all. Wasn’t a ghost either. Or
at least, not any ghost conceived of in even her most
baleful nightmares. From deep inside the cowl, a pair of
living eyes glittered with a malevolence that could only
have come from the open vaults of Hell. And the eyes
weren’t contained in a face but in the contorted
hideousness of the death mask. Only now the mask had
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