Coffin Ed caught himself, but Grave Digger reeled into the hanging table with such force that he overturned the sepulcher and the ghost of Christ went sailing across the room as though the devil had grabbed at it.

The uniformed cops followed, looking from one to the other with wide-eyed consternation.

Someone started hammering on the back door. Another bell starting ringing.

“Pipe down!” Grave Digger shouted.

The noise ceased.

The walls of the room were papered with faded blue skies packed with constellations. Across from the entrance was a double doorway closed by a faded red curtain containing the gilded signs of the zodiac.

Coffin Ed stepped over the ghost of Christ and parted the zodiac.

They found themselves in the seance chamber. A crystal ball sat on a draped table. All four walls were curtained in some kind of dark satiny material covered with luminescent figures of stars, moons, suns, ghosts, griffins, animals, angels, devils and faces of African witch doctors,

The room was lit by a faint glow from the crystal ball. Their sudden entrance stirred the curtain to fluttering, and the luminescent figures flickered in and out of sight.

“Where the hell’s the light?” Grave Digger roared. “I’m getting seasick.”

A cop flashed on his torch. They didn’t see another light.

“Let’s find the doors,” he said, tearing the curtains aside.

Behind the curtains there were doors everywhere.

He opened the first one that gave. It led to a dining room. A chandelier with four bulbs lit a square dining room table covered with a black-and-silver checked plastic cloth. Two chairs were drawn up to two dirty plates and the skeleton of a roasted opossum, lying one-sided in congealed possum grease and the remains of baked yellow yams, like the ribs of a derelict ship in shallow surf.

“Possum and taters,” Coffin Ed said, unconsciously licking his lips.

“That’s what they ate, but where are they?” Grave Digger said.

“Ain’t nobody here but us ghosts,” a cop said.

“Don’t forget us possums,” another added.

Coffin Ed opened another door and found himself in a kitchen. He heard movement on the outside open-air stairs.

“Hey, let us in,” a voice called from without.

A cop pushed past Coffin Ed to open the back door.

Grave Bigger had opened another door, which led to a bedroom.

“In here,” he called.

Coffin Ed went in, and six cops followed.

A fat, light-complexioned colored man with a flabby, sensual face and a shining, bald head lay across the bed, breathing heavily with his eyes closed. He wore a big, old-fashioned faded-yellow brassiere, holding his lopping breasts, and a pair of purple-and-golden striped boxer shorts, from which extended the fasteners of a worn garter belt attached to the tops of purple silk stockings. He was fat, but his flesh was so flabby it spread out beside his bones like melted tallow.

Another bald-headed man lay face down on the floor beside the bed. He wore a red-and-gray striped rayon bathrobe over white-dotted blue rayon pyjamas. His face was unseen, but the fringe of hair beneath his bald dome was silky white.