now it was laura deloessian he saw in that coffin - and the coffin itself was no longer a smoothly anonymous funeral parlor special , but something that looked as if it had been hacked with rude fury from an old log - a viking 's coffin , if there had ever been such a thing ; it was easier to imagine this coffin being torched alight on a bier of oiled logs than it was to imagine it being lowered into the unprotesting earth .