Chapter 13 13

I'm dreaming, I think.It really does feel like a dream right now.Oh thank goodness it was like a dream. It opened the case towards her.The chest was full of bones and jewels.She saw fingerbones, rings, teeth, bracelets, ulnas, and pendants.She saw a diamond big enough to suffocate a rhinoceros, its trapezoids gleaming in opalescent moonlight in the stiff but delicate curves of a baby's chest.She saw these things and hoped they were dreams.Yes, hopefully they are dreams.But if it was a dream, she had never done this before.This is the dream--handcuffed to a bed, a madman silently showing off its treasures--it's like a dream.However, that feeling...

It feels real.Can't avoid it.Feeling is reality. The thing standing in the corner held the open box for her to examine.It held the bottom of the box with one hand, and with the other hand dug into the tangle of bones and jewels, making a clicking and rustling noise that sounded like dusty castanets.As it did so, it stared at her.For some reason, the stunted features of that strange face were piled upwards because of a smirk, it grinned silently, dumbfounded, asked triumphantly, and bent its shoulders up and down. No!Jesse screamed.But she couldn't make a sound. Suddenly she felt someone—probably Mrs. Burlingame.God!She actually underestimated the lady's inner fortitude-running to the switch in her head that governed the machine.The wife saw the wisps of smoke begin to come out through the closed door, and she understood the meaning, and finally made a desperate effort to turn off the machine before the motor overheated and the bearings stalled.

The grinning figure in front of him reached for the bottom of the box, and in the moonlight it stretched out a hand full of bones and gold to Jesse. Jessie couldn't take it anymore, a flash of light flashed through her mind, and then the light went out.Instead of passing out gracefully like the heroine of a gorgeous stage play, she fell backwards suddenly, like a murderer bound to the electric chair and electrified for the first time.At any rate her terror was over.For the time being, yes.Jesse Burlingame plunged into the darkness without a protest.