The Frighteners by Michael Jahn Page B

existence. Chief among the innocents was Janet King, who had made a quick assessment of the coffin and finally worked up the nerve to touch it. She bent and gave the sarcophagus a little shove, then straightened back up. “I think it will be all right,” she told Osborne.
    “What do you supposed happened?” the curator asked.
    “Well, if this were California, I’d blame an earthquake, but you don’t get many of them in Maine, do you?”
    “Not many, no,” Osborne confirmed, finally prying his fingers away from Frank’s card, which had become clammy with perspiration.
    The Reaper closed in on Janet and then stretched a handful of spikelike fingers in her direction. Suddenly a pattern of raised welts appeared on her forehead—it was the number thirty-nine.
    Stuart found his voice. “He’s going to kill her,” he said.
    The Reaper’s fingers, at first pointed at Janet’s forehead, lowered to point at her chest. He was about to plunge his hand into her chest when Cyrus yelled, “Don’t mess with her, man!”
    Stuart whipped his head in the direction of his friend, who he had considered until that moment to be no more than an aging disco nut with no backbone or interest in anyone but himself.
    Acting more like a linebacker, Cyrus charged forward, moving swiftly through the crowd of dignitaries and tackling the Reaper, knocking the creature off balance. Locked together, they slid along the polished museum floor right through the crowd, which had begun to move away in any case, the coffin episode having ended.
    Then with incredible grace, the Reaper rose, towering above Cyrus like a dark angel, its slitlike yellow eyes blazing with fury. In one fluid movement, the Reaper produced a long, wooden staff from beneath his cloak. He raised it, then thumped the base on the floor. A huge, jagged blade swung out of the staff and locked into place with a metallic click. The blade shimmered with an ethereal glow. The Reaper had his scythe.
    Cyrus leaped to his feet, ready to make another lunge at the huge, looming menace. He had no chance. The Reaper swung his scythe in a smooth and deadly gesture that sliced Cyrus across the chest, cutting through his suit and shirt and into his ectoplasmic body. Cyrus dropped to his knees, holding his middle, ectoplasm spilling out of the slice across his chest.
    “He cut me!” Cyrus said, shocked. “I don’t believe it!”
    Cyrus and the Judge watched fearfully from where they had taken shelter, inside a huge statue of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld.
    Leaving Cyrus, the Reaper glided toward Janet, who was shaken by the sarcophagus episode but seemed happy it was over. She stood tall, smiling at the crowd.
    “I can’t tell you what happened here, ladies and gentlemen, but there appears to be no serious damage to the coffin. Shall we move on?”
    But she winced as the Reaper thrust its hand into her chest and breathed its hellish breath on her cheek. The hooded cowl nuzzled her neck as the creature buried its arm deeper and deeper into her chest.
    “Don’t fear the Reaper,” it said silkily.
    Janet gasped as the creature clutched her heart and squeezed the life out of it.

Nine
    F rank ran down the quiet and deserted streets of Fairwater, moving in the direction of the museum, hoping beyond hope that the creature had chosen to go somewhere else—preferably another planet. He stopped to catch his breath and looked around him, searching for any sign of life; even a rat or a police car would have been welcome. But life itself seemed to be missing from the streets. It was like finding yourself in a rock quarry at midnight with no breeze. Nothing stirred, nothing at all.
    Then Bannister heard the sound of distant yelling and cries for help. He turned in the direction of the sound and saw the museum, and at that moment the night sky rumbled and crackled. What had been a star-filled canopy was suddenly filled with black and angry clouds. The fabric of the dark sky seemed to rip