I had been ready to leave, and there was no reason for me to turn back. I think it was simply the part of me that has died a great many times, and knows the face of death better than anyone, that urged me to look back, and when I did, nothing had changed.
I had expected the dead figure behind me to have vanished, or something, but it was still there, and I could feel no life inside it… but it was smiling.
The mouth under the mask had opened in a grin so wide that the mask could not hold it. The blank white face had cracked from the corners of the mouth up towards the eyes, two long jagged lines that split the mask like the shell of an egg, and through the cracks I could see the blue lips pulled back and back, much too far, over teeth that were very white and very even and much too many.
It was as if it was grinning at the rows of the dead, and was not looking at me.
It did not need to, because I knew that smile… even in the past, Death had found me.
