For one thing, the dead woman's hands were wrong. They were bent back at the wrist, with stubby fingers and sharp, carving fingernails. Mark had heard that a dead person's fingernails kept growing sometimes- but not like these. These were the claws of an animal.
But weirder still was her face.
Madame Thornhill's nose-well, it wasn't really a nose, it was more like a snout, stretching her dry cheeks like taffy. Huge canine teeth poked between papery lips.
"Rudy, let's get out of here", said Mark. "Now".
But Rudy hadn't seen the face and didn't notice the claws. His attention was on a necklace glimmering with jewels."Those are diamonds", said Rudy."I knew it!"
Mark didn't care about the diamonds, the Sport-Kwest Trainers, or anything anymore. He just wanted to get as far from Perpetual Rest as he could.
"Rudy!"
"Shut up! I've almost got the clasp."
The clasp came undone, but the moment it did, the heavy necklace slid right into a hole in the centre of Madame Thornhill's chest.
Mark could only shudder.
"Gross!" said Rudy. But it didn't stop him from reaching into her shattered rib cage to fish the thing out. He found it quickly and lifted it up. The diamonds glimmered in the moonlight.
"Okay, you got it", said Mark."Now can we get out of here?"
"Wait", said Rudy, frowning. "I think there's other stuff in there.... Whatever it is, it's shiny." Then he reached back into the dead woman's dry, dusty rib cage.
Mark realized what the shiny stuff must have been even before Rudy pulled it out.
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