1. No lower jaw in a face that was largely bone and some apologetic gray skin.

2. One completely empty eye socket and one eye socket that was filled by the business end of an arrow, and last but most certainly not least . . .

3. Most of an ax buried in the top of his skull.

In his right hand the unwanted visitor held not a stick, but a spear, a spear that still looked useful in a potentially fatal way despite having spent over a thousand years in the ground alongside its owner.

Mr. Karloff had worked long enough at the museum to recognize a Viking when he saw one, especially a dead one. Under other circumstances, such as encountering the dead Viking laid out in a thick glass case, he might even have been pleased. He was slightly less pleased to find a dead Viking standing upright on his doorstep and apparently giving serious thought to abandoning the whole business of being dead and trying out being undead for a while.

The spearhead moved. Instead of pointing straight up in the air, it was now moving in a direction that suggested it fancied making friends with Mr. Karloff’s insides, although it wasn’t planning on staying long because it would very soon pop out of his back, possibly with some of Mr. Karloff’s insides still attached to it.

“Oh dear,” said Mr. Karloff.

Those might have been the last words that he ever said, and they wouldn’t have been very memorable, as last words go. He was saved by a whistling sound from the embarrassment of dying without having something witty to say. The whistling sound was followed by a very solid thunk, and suddenly the Viking was relieved of the difficulties posed by the ax in his skull and the arrow in his eye by the removal of his head at the neck. His body remained vertical for a second or two, then appeared to think, Actually, why bother?, and collapsed on the doorstep.

Mr. Karloff was now staring into the undead face of a Saxon who was holding a sword almost as big as he was. Behind him, Mr. Karloff could see more undead Vikings and Saxons digging themselves out of their graves. Those that were aboveground were already fighting among themselves.

Mr. Karloff gave the undead Saxon his biggest and best smile.

“I’m on your side,” he said. “Keep up the good work.”

He closed the front door, grabbed his hat, and ran to the back door. That one he didn’t bother closing after him. After all, as soon as he heard the front door explode behind him, there really didn’t seem to be much point.

XXI

In Which the Dwarfs Make a New Friend. Sort of.

DAN AND THE DWARFS had discovered that getting out of the basement was harder than it looked. To begin with, the basement now seemed much bigger than it had when they arrived, which couldn’t be right yet somehow was. They had been walking around for half an hour and still hadn’t found the stairs. This development might have worried ordinary people, but the dwarfs were far from ordinary. They were seasoned drinkers of Spiggit’s Old Peculiar, and so were well used to walking around small spaces for long periods of time without being able to find the door, often while singing loudly and seeing small multicolored elephants flying around their heads.