Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 by Tristram Rolph

and scattered apart and now joined and
     made to live by words of power, they'd wake up hungry. They'd be starved
     for food. If they got food, maybe they'd put flesh back on themselves, be
     themselves as they'd been once before. What food was closer to hand than I
     was?
    Man-eaters—such things were told of by old Indians, wise men who'd
     sworn to them. The wendigo, up in Northern parts. The anisgina,
     recollected in Cherokee tales to make you shiver. Supposed to be all died
     out and gone these days, but when bones rise up …
    The bones came a-slaunching close. I heard them click.
    I hiked up the shovel with both my hands, and held the blade edge forward
     like an axe. I'd chop with that. The bones stood a second, the whole
     skeleton of them, tall over me. In the glow of the moon those bones looked
     like frosty silver. My head wouldn't have come put to those big cliffs of
     shoulders. The jaws opened and shut. They made a snapping sound.
    Because they wanted to bite a chunk out of me. Those teeth in the jaws,
     they were as long and sharp as knives. They could break a man's arm off if
     they jammed into it.
    But I didn't run. To run nair had helped me much in such a case. I'd stand
     my ground, fight. If I lost the fight, maybe Hallcott could get away and
     tell the tale. I bent my knees and made my legs springly. I hoped I could
     move faster and surer than those big, lumbering bones.
    Preacher Melick had said the Bible words to make them live, had said them
     without a-thinking. And that song, I'd have been better off if I'd nair
     sung it. I watched the thick, bony arms rise up and fetch the club down to
     bust my head.
    That quick, I sidestepped and danced clear, and down came the big hunk of
     tree, so hard on the ground it boomed there like a slamming door. I made a
     swing with my own shovel, but the club was up again and in the way. My
     blade bounced off. Again the club hiked up over me; it made a dark blotch
     against the moon. I set myself to dodge again.
    Then it was that Embro Hallcott, come back up just behind me, started in
     to sing in his husky voice:
The toe bone's connected from the foot bone,
The foot bone's
     connected from the heel bone …
    And quick on from there, about the shin and thigh and hip bones, about the
     back bone and the shoulder bone. I stood with my shovel held up in both
     hands, and watched the thing come apart before my eyes.
    It had dropped that club that would have driven me into the ground like a
     nail. It swayed in broken-up moonlight that shone through tree branches.
     It fell to pieces while I watched.
    I looked at the bones, down and scattered out now. The skull stared up at
     me, and one more time it gave a hungry snap of those jaws. I heard:
The neck bone's connected from the jaw bone,
The jaw bone's
     connected from the head bone,
Hear the word of the Lord.
    The jaw bone snapped no more. It rolled free from the skull.
    Hallcott was up beside me. I could feel him shake all over.
    "It worked," he said, in the tiredest voice you could call for.
    "That song built him up," I said back. "And that song, sung different,
     took him back down again. Though it appears to me the word should be
     'disconnected.'"
    "Sure enough?" he wondered me. "I don't know that word, that disconnected.
     But I thought on an old tale, how a man read in a magic book and devilish
     things came all 'round him, so he read the book backward and made them go
     away." His eyes bugged as he looked at a big thigh bone, dropped clear of
     its kneecap and shin. "What if it hadn't worked, John?"
    "Point is, it did work and thank the good Lord for that," I told him.
     "Now, how you say for us to put him back in his coffin again, and not sing
     air note to him this time?"
    Hallcott didn't relish to touch the bones, and, gentlemen, neither did I.
     I scooped them in the shovel, all the way along to where the grave was
     open and the coffin lid flung back. In I shoved them, one by one, in a
     heap on top of