The Specter at the Feast chapter 1

Aquoted Bob Sanderson, as we stood LAS, poor Yorick. I knew him well,”
with a group of fellow students gazing at the grinning ghastly thing of bones. It had arrived at the studio that morning and was already mounted in its corner terribly still, it stood, and with an air of serene dignity. But it might have shrieked through its clenched teeth, so compelling was its presence.
I sought the eyes desperately as a man does when he is shaken and needs assurance or understanding. Empty sockets! Unbelievable that inert cavities could hold such an expression of sardonic misery! I cringed before them. Eyes that were more hideous for not being there at all!
And there was that incongruous, eternal grin that seemed to say: “Look at me. Once I was like you, fellows. Once I could join in your merry banter and gossip o’ mornings. I, too, stood working before a clay figure, pressing, molding, making beauty with my hands. Poor mortal hands that found courage to fashion imperishable things, when they themselves must come to this decay. Andrews, my pal and confidant, why do you stare at them so? Why don’t you clasp them as you used to in your morning greeting?”
I stepped forward under the spell of an anguished memory to grasp those fearful, bony joints and recoiled, chilled with horror.
“But why?” The relentless grin seemed to say when I looked up again. “They used to warm your heart and set your day right.
Yours, too, will be like this, some day——”
Involuntarily, I looked at my own hands and shuddered.
“Andy!” A voice startled me, soft-spoken as
it had been, and I turned to Bob, who had called me. He, too, had stood staring a long moment, after quoting the Melancholy Dane, and as I looked into his darkened eyes under the familiar scowl, I knew he had meant no derision.
“Come away, old fellow,” he said. “This- this thing is getting us. Mustn’t be maudlin, but damned if I want any work and its consequent study of anatomy to make me as cold-blooded as some of the fellows here.
“Did you hear them jesting’ and making clever, derisive quips about life, inspired by that poor thing? Damn it, Andy, I knew that men of science, doctors, sculptors and the rest, get so familiar with our mortal machines that they have no illusions about the so-called souls that go with them. Atheists in their hearts, to the last man! It’s not for me to say whether that’s a blind spot from too much looking; but until they’re able to give me better proof of where consciousness goes when it leaves the body even temporarily, I’ll be
on the fence—with a periscope.”