The Tomb

Nellie didn't scream.

The dark shape moving toward her couldn't be real. It was a nightmare, a hallucination. Nothing real could be that big and move that smoothly.

Then it came closer and she was suddenly terrified. This was no dream. She opened her mouth and a cold hand sealed itself across her face.

The hand was huge, it was foul… And it was not human.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Abe's neon sign originally appeared in The Weapon Shops of Isher by A. E. van Vogt, © 1951 by A. E. van Vogt. Used here by permission of the author.

Knowingly and unknowingly, the following individuals have aided me in ways large and small during the course of writing this book: Betsy Bang and Molly Garrett Bang (The Demons of Rajpur), Richard Collier (The Great Indian Rebellion), Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre (Freedom at Midnight), Harlan Ellison (with the last line of "Crotoan"), Ken Follett, L. Neil Smith, Steven Spruill, Al Zuckerman, and, most of all, the old-time tellers of Weird Menace/Yellow Peril tales.

To my own Vickies: Jennifer and Meggan