varmint that is get loose in my office,” Tanna said. A bell rang throughout the building signaling the end of a class period. “I have my Elements of Parapsychology class right now. Can you take care of this for me?” She came around her desk, kissed me and went out the door. She carried a collapsible white cane, but it was more to alert everyone else than to help her. She knew this building better than the janitors who cleaned it, and with her natural grace and psychic senses, never ran in to anyone.
I read some more about the basilisk until the second bell, announcing the beginning of classes, rang out, followed by relative silence as the classroom doors closed.
Basilisks arose from an unlik ely series of events, namely a rooster incubating and h atching the egg of a snake. At least, this is the lege nd. Although there are several notable histories of encounte rs with the animal, no one has seemingly ever witnessed their development.
That didn’t surprise me. But then again, in Tanna’s company I’d already encountered ghosts, giant frogs, and monsters literally from Hell itself. All of those had been in Tennessee as well. Should I really discount the idea that a basilisk might be found here, too?
I looked closely at the box. Masking tape crossed on the top, and a strip wrapped each side all the way under the bottom. Three air holes were punched close together. On one end someone had written, Beware! Basilisk Inside! and under that the price, $9.99 . On the other end, a different handwriting said, Do NOT Open! Seriously!
The animal inside again skitched against the cardboard. It did sound vaguely reptilian, in that it only moved in bursts, not steadily like a mammal. As a boy I’d caught plenty of lizards and often kept them in shoebox terrariums; their movements had been identical.
The book still lay open in front of me. I read:
Although most accounts pla ce the basilisk’s power in its gaze, some say it is instead its ‘air of corruption,’ or deadly breath, that does the damage. Frequently, condemned criminals would be sent to dispatch the basilisk, often meeting their ends as pieces of statuary rather than victims of the hangman ’s rope. Certain graveyards in Europe and the Near East con tain these unfortunate bodies, often mistaken for buried st atues. Many of the doomed were disbelievers, convinced that the basilisk could do them no harm.
The creature struck the side of the box hard enough to move it, which made me jump and let out a cry. The department secretary, Jane, called out, “Are you okay, Ry?”
“I’m fine,” I assured her.
I eased the door shut and sat back in the chair. Of course it was just an animal, a lizard or something. It couldn’t be a basilisk because basilisks didn’t exist, not now, not ever. I don’t care what this Francis Colby said, even if he was “the first man knighted for studying the paranormal,” as the blurb on the cover claimed.
I don’t know how long I sat there thinking, but at last I picked up the box. Whatever was inside slid from one end to the other, claws scraping for purchase. I picked at the masking tape until one end came loose.
My gaze again fell on the book. The drawing of a basilisk depicted it as a weird little reptile with multiple spikes on its head like a crown and a long, lolling forked tongue. It used its deadly vision on a man frozen in mid-scream. There were even little lines drawn from the creature’s eyes to those of the dying man. There was a certain pathos to the image, as if the long-ago woodcut artist had been determined to show just how truly horrible it was to be exposed to the basilisk.
The creature in the box shifted again and tapped hard against the lid. With only one piece of tape now holding it down, it opened slightly and a rank odor leaked out. It smelled like a whiff of corruption, all right; or, I suppose, lizard shit. I pressed it down tight.
Okay, what the hell was I worried about? It was a
I read some more about the basilisk until the second bell, announcing the beginning of classes, rang out, followed by relative silence as the classroom doors closed.
Basilisks arose from an unlik ely series of events, namely a rooster incubating and h atching the egg of a snake. At least, this is the lege nd. Although there are several notable histories of encounte rs with the animal, no one has seemingly ever witnessed their development.
That didn’t surprise me. But then again, in Tanna’s company I’d already encountered ghosts, giant frogs, and monsters literally from Hell itself. All of those had been in Tennessee as well. Should I really discount the idea that a basilisk might be found here, too?
I looked closely at the box. Masking tape crossed on the top, and a strip wrapped each side all the way under the bottom. Three air holes were punched close together. On one end someone had written, Beware! Basilisk Inside! and under that the price, $9.99 . On the other end, a different handwriting said, Do NOT Open! Seriously!
The animal inside again skitched against the cardboard. It did sound vaguely reptilian, in that it only moved in bursts, not steadily like a mammal. As a boy I’d caught plenty of lizards and often kept them in shoebox terrariums; their movements had been identical.
The book still lay open in front of me. I read:
Although most accounts pla ce the basilisk’s power in its gaze, some say it is instead its ‘air of corruption,’ or deadly breath, that does the damage. Frequently, condemned criminals would be sent to dispatch the basilisk, often meeting their ends as pieces of statuary rather than victims of the hangman ’s rope. Certain graveyards in Europe and the Near East con tain these unfortunate bodies, often mistaken for buried st atues. Many of the doomed were disbelievers, convinced that the basilisk could do them no harm.
The creature struck the side of the box hard enough to move it, which made me jump and let out a cry. The department secretary, Jane, called out, “Are you okay, Ry?”
“I’m fine,” I assured her.
I eased the door shut and sat back in the chair. Of course it was just an animal, a lizard or something. It couldn’t be a basilisk because basilisks didn’t exist, not now, not ever. I don’t care what this Francis Colby said, even if he was “the first man knighted for studying the paranormal,” as the blurb on the cover claimed.
I don’t know how long I sat there thinking, but at last I picked up the box. Whatever was inside slid from one end to the other, claws scraping for purchase. I picked at the masking tape until one end came loose.
My gaze again fell on the book. The drawing of a basilisk depicted it as a weird little reptile with multiple spikes on its head like a crown and a long, lolling forked tongue. It used its deadly vision on a man frozen in mid-scream. There were even little lines drawn from the creature’s eyes to those of the dying man. There was a certain pathos to the image, as if the long-ago woodcut artist had been determined to show just how truly horrible it was to be exposed to the basilisk.
The creature in the box shifted again and tapped hard against the lid. With only one piece of tape now holding it down, it opened slightly and a rank odor leaked out. It smelled like a whiff of corruption, all right; or, I suppose, lizard shit. I pressed it down tight.
Okay, what the hell was I worried about? It was a
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