I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water, the dried, shrivelled,
black head of a native baby--open eyes, open mouth and shaved scalp. It was
worse, being so very sudden, than the crawling exhibition. We had no time to
say anything before it began to speak.
Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized dying man, and
you will realize less than one-half of the horror of that head's voice.
There was an interval of a second or two between each word, and a sort of
"ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice, like the timbre of a bell. It
pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for several minutes before I got rid
of my cold sweat. Then the blessed solution struck me. I looked at the body
lying near the doorway, and saw, just where the hollow of the throat joins on
the shoulders, a muscle that had nothing to do with any man's regular
breathing, twitching away steadily. The whole thing was a careful reproduction
of the Egyptian teraphin that one read about sometimes and the voice was as
clever and as appalling a piece of ventriloquism as one could wish to hear.
All this time the head was "lip-lip-lapping" against the side of the basin,
and speaking. It told Suddhoo, on his face again whining, of his son's illness
and of the state of the illness up to the evening of that very night.
Pages:
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685