The body is stirred. Slowly, with agonizing reluctance, it began to rise — not like a human, more like a marionette being pulled by invisible strings: jerkily, brokenly, with a crunching of joints. Getting on all fours, it turned to him. But there was no face. In its place was a flat, smooth, dark surface — like a screen onto which an image had not yet been projected. No eyes, no mouth. Just skin stretched over the skull, and beneath it — a faint, barely perceptible pulsation
