"A scream rang out as he
approached, followed by a metallic crash. Quickening his pace, he entered upon
a bizarre scene: there were four beds in the room, two of them occupied by
alarmed and bandaged patients; a nurse cowered in the far corner, her hand to
her mouth, a metal tray and scattered pill-boxes around her feet. A doctor and
the two policemen stood by the bed in which the Chinese man lay, restraining
him while he jabbered with spittle-flecked intensity at the reverend. The
priest stood with bowed head and solemnly crossed himself.
But Henshaw’s gaze was
drawn to the screaming man. The shock of his injury was written large upon his
features: he was pale and clammy-looking, sheened with sweat; the ruin of his
hand was screened by a red-seeping bandage, hastily-applied. His shirt had been
undone revealing a lean, muscular torso of sallow flesh, marked strangely with
curious black-ink blotches. However it was his face which drew Henshaw’s
scrutiny: the man’s delirium-filled eyes bulged from their sockets, red-rimmed
and whites yellowed, filled with a startling hatred. Cruel lines of savage fury
creased his features as he spat rapid-fire invective from snarling lips and
snapped with point-filed teeth at the hands that sought to restrain him. Most
alarmingly though, was his tongue, flicking electrically like an eel amid the
deadly spikes of his teeth, a pale translucent member of gelatinous texture
that resembled no human organ as much as it did some limb of an obscure
pelagean creature.
'My God! What is that?'
cried one of the constables..."
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