The Mummy (25 page)

Daniels stepped forward, gesturing with his revolver at the curator. “I don’t need this clown in a Masonic cap to tell me how this creep is doin’ that! He’s killing everybody who opened that chest! He’s sucking all of us dry!”

“A very astute observation,” the curator said, “from so unlearned a man.”

O’Connell glanced sharply at Henderson, who nodded, and went over to settle his friend down.

Evelyn approached the throne-perched curator. “At Hamanaptra, Imhotep addressed me by an ancient name.”

Alarmed, the curator asked, “What was that name?”

“Anck-su-namun.”

The curator and the Med-jai chief exchanged dire looks.

O’Connell said, “I think the slimy bastard was about to try to kiss her, when that cat spooked him.”

Nodding, absorbing this, Dr. Bey said, “That is the name of the mistress for the love of whom He Who Shall Not Be Named was cursed. Could it be, even after these three thousand years, even after suffering unending death, flesh eaten away by scarab beetles . . . that even now he loves her?”

“A love that spans the ages,” Evelyn said. “How sad . . . how romantic . . .”

“Are you kidding?” O’Connell said, wide-eyed.

Her brother was shaking his head, smirking at her.

Embarrassed, she looked away.

Ardeth Bay said, “He Who Shall Not Be Named will try to raise Anck-su-namun from the dead.”

“Yeah,” O’Connell said, “and how the hell will he manage that, exactly?”

“With a human sacrifice,” the curator said. Then he nodded toward Evelyn. “And it would appear He Who Shall Not Be Named has chosen a subject.”

Evelyn felt a sudden chill—and every eye in the room, including those of the dead pharaohs, upon her.

Jonathan made a clicking sound in his cheek. “Bad luck, Sis. Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be popular.”

“Jesus,” O’Connell breathed. “Just when I figured things couldn’t get any worse . . .”

“On the contrary,” Dr. Bey said. “This may give us the time we need to find a way to kill this evil creature.”

“That’s why we’re here, doc,” O’Connell said. “You’re the expert—can we read some other incantation from that
Book of the Dead?”

“Possibly—if it could be retrieved. But I know of nothing, either in ancient writings or modern scholarship, to confirm that assumption.”

The gallery, lighted only by gas torches, had grown dark.

Looking upward, Ardeth Bay said, “His powers are growing.”

Evelyn, and everyone else, looked at the ceiling, toward the skylights that until moments ago had been slanting rays of sun down into the gallery.

And they saw the sun as it moved into full eclipse, afternoon becoming midnight.

Driving through the streets of a confused Cairo, Jonathan, behind the wheel of his Dusenberg, said, “ ‘And he stretched forth his hands toward the heavens, and there was darkness throughout the land of Egypt.’ ”

“You must have learned more in Sunday school than you thought,” O’Connell said, sitting at the rider’s front-seat window, Evelyn squeezed between him and her brother, Henderson and an increasingly agitated Daniels in the backseat.

“There must be a way to stop him from regenerating,” Evelyn said.

O’Connell sighed. “You heard what your old boss said. Once Imhotep’s fully back in his prime, there’s no stopping him.”

As they drew up to the fort, they could see British soldiers marching along the parapets under a black sun.

“Days are getting shorter,” Jonathan observed.

Soon they were assembled in the foyer of Evelyn’s two-room guest quarters. Henderson and Daniels were slumped in chairs. She and her brother were pacing. O’Connell had gone out to do “a little snooping,” he’d said. The door opened and the adventurer from Chicago stepped back inside.

Shutting the door behind him, O’Connell said, “My ol’ buddy Beni was seen here today, with a tall stranger in Arab robes. According to Burns’s servant, Beni and this stranger—who wore some kind of mask . . . went in there to talk ‘business’ with Burns.”

“Beni was with the mummy?” Jonathan asked. “What would that little scoundrel be doing with—”

“Who exactly opened that chest?” Evelyn asked suddenly. “I want a precise list.”

Henderson shrugged wearily. “Me and Daniels here—and poor Burns, of course, and, uh . . . Dr. Chamberlin. That’s it.”

“But not Beni?” O’Connell asked.

“Naw,” Daniels said. “He ran out of there like a scared rabbit, ’fore we even opened the goddamned thing.”

“A smart scared rabbit,” Henderson said bitterly.

Evelyn planted her feet and faced the men. “We should include Dr. Chamberlin in our group. We need to all stay together . . . we’re safer that way.”

“I checked,” O’Connell said. “He’s not in his room. Servant said our resident Egyptologist didn’t sleep in his bed last night.”

“Dr. Chamberlin had
The Book of the Dead!”
Evelyn said. “We need it, desperately!”

O’Connell shook his head “no.” “I looked everywhere in his quarters. All of his things—cleared out.”

“We have to find him,” Evelyn said, “and bring him here, to the safety of this fort . . .”

“It was real safe for Burns, wasn’t it?” Daniels snorted.

“If the mummy finds him,” Evelyn said, “and . . . does to him what he did to your friend, Mr. Burns . . . Imhotep will be that much closer to full regeneration.”

“Chamberlin has an office in Cairo,” Henderson said. “In the alleys of the bazaar section. Maybe he went back there.”

“Okay,” O’Connell said. He nodded toward the Americans. “You two come with me. Jonathan, you stay here with Evelyn, protect your sister.”

“The hell with that!” Henderson said. “I’ll give you the address—you go, if you want to! I’m not going anywhere.”

Daniels said, “I’m not leaving this fort.”

Evelyn charged right up to O’Connell, who it appeared
did
have an unhealthy dose of masculine pride after all, and said to him,
“I
am leading this expedition, thank you! I’m not some child whose well-being you consign to the nearest
male
adult!”

O’Connell shook his head, sighing, as if he were a poor, put-upon soul just trying to help.

Then he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her toward the open doorway to her bedroom, tossed her in, and slammed the door.

“You can’t manhandle me like that!” she shouted, pulling on the doorknob. “You brute!”

On the other side of the door, she could hear O’Connell saying, “Jonathan—you have a key?”

“I believe so, old boy.”

She yelled, “Jonathan, you traitor! Don’t you dare help this—”

But then she heard the click of the lock.

And on the other side of the door, O’Connell was saying, “This door is never to be opened—understood? Nobody in, nobody out.”

“Understood,” Daniels said.

“Stand watch over her, or I’ll come back and suck out your spleens myself, got it?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Henderson said. “Here’s that address . . .”

“Come on, Jonathan,” O’Connell said.

She was trying the knob; it was locked, firmly locked, all right.

Jonathan’s voice beyond the door was saying, “You know, I liked your first plan much better, old sod. Where I stayed here at the fort? I could, uh . . . reconnoiter . . . that is, should anyone be able to explain to me what that is, exactly.”

“Come on,” O’Connell said, and then their voices were gone as, so, presumably, were they.

She pounded and banged on the door for a while, yelling, but it did no good whatsoever, and she stomped over to the bed, threw herself onto it, folding her arms, cursing Rick O’Connell, fighting the fondness for him flowing through her.

The bazaars of Cairo consisted of winding narrow streets crowded with stores, every store a factory for the goods offered therein. O’Connell and Jonathan navigated the turbaned vendors, veiled women in black bombazine, naked children, donkey boys, and even the occasional tourist, and found their way to the glassmaker’s shop above which Dr. Chamberlin kept his tiny office.

The door was unlocked; in fact, it was ajar. The Egyptologist wasn’t in, but someone else was: Beni, in the process of ransacking the place, desk drawers emptied, bookcases asunder, piles of photos and files everywhere.

The skinny little knave had just slipped a silver watch into a black pajama pocket when O’Connell, followed by Jonathan, stepped inside the office to say, “Let me guess, Beni—misplace your principles?”

Beni bolted for an open window facing onto the street: It was only a one-story drop. O’Connell almost casually picked up the Egyptologist’s desk chair, which had been flung over near the door, and pitched it into Beni’s path.

Beni tripped and slammed into a wall, knocking off several framed pictures of Chamberlin at various desert digs.

“I’ll be glad to help you look,” O’Connell said cheerfully, walking over, picking up Beni by the back of the neck and lifting him, pushing him up against the wall.

Feet dangling, Beni smiled sickly and said, “Rick! I didn’t notice it was you—my old friend!”

“Oh, but you have a new friend, don’t you, Beni? You came back from the desert with him, right?”

Blinking, smiling desperately, Beni asked, “What friend? You’re my only friend, Rick. You know I’ve always been picky about my associations.”

O’Connell allowed Beni to slide down the wall to his feet; the little man sighed in relief, smoothing out his black shirt, then his eyes widened as a knife blade suddenly appeared in the hand of his “only friend.”

Holding the sharp edge of the blade against Beni’s neck, O’Connell said, softly, menacingly, “Why, Beni? What’s in it for you? Why are you helping this monster?”

“I . . . I serve him only to save myself. Better to stand at the devil’s right hand than to be in his path.”

O’Connell sighed; that sounded like Beni, all right. “What are you doing in this office? What are you looking for?”

Even with a blade at his throat, Beni managed a single, harsh laugh. “Do you really think your small threats compare to what Imhotep could do?”

“Imhotep isn’t here right now. Do you really think I won’t slit your lying throat? What are you looking for, Beni?”

O’Connell pressed the blade harder, flesh whitening.

“The book, the book! That black book they found at the City of the Dead . . . Chamberlin had it. Imhotep wants it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know! All I know is, he said it was worth its weight in gold!”

“Gold?” Jonathan said, interested in the sound of that.

“Spill, Beni,” O’Connell said, applying more pressure to the blade. “What does he want with the thing?”

“I don’t know, I tell you! Rick—come on. Don’t do this . . .”

“Spill what you know, or I’ll spill your blood. Choose.”

“It’s . . . it’s something about bringing ‘her’ back from the dead . . . whoever ‘her’ is.”

“And he needs the book to do that.”

“The book, yes, the book, and, uh . . .”

“ ‘And, uh’ what, Beni?”

“The girl. He needs your girl.” Beni looked toward Jonathan. “His sister.”

Jonathan frowned. “I say—he’ll have to kill me first.”

Beni shrugged. “He won’t mind.”

Outside, in the night that was afternoon, a shrill scream rose above the chatter of the bazaar like the howl of a wounded animal. O’Connell’s eyes went to the window and he took just enough pressure off the blade at Beni’s throat for the little bastard to knee him in the groin.

O’Connell doubled over as Beni scrambled past him, leaping out the window, sliding down an awning to freedom.

Jonathan helped O’Connell to his feet.

“Anybody ever tell you you’re bad luck?” O’Connell asked Jonathan through gritted teeth.

“Almost everyone, old man . . . Shall we see what the commotion is about?”

Down in the bazaar, the scream had been followed by shouts and cries and murmurs of horror and concern.

At the window, O’Connell and Jonathan could see down the narrow street, not far, where the crowd had parted and a body lay sprawled. Though barely recognizable, and mostly so only by the pith helmet and khaki clothing, the shriveled corpse was clearly Dr. Chamberlin, on its side, another human husk.

And over the body hovered the robed figure of Imhotep, the black
Book of the Dead
already tucked under an arm like a big heavy schoolbook. He Who Shall Not Be Named was plucking the jewel-encrusted canopic jar from the withered fingers of the dead Egyptologist.

Somehow the mummy sensed the eyes that were upon him, and the creature looked suddenly, sharply up at O’Connell and Jonathan poised in the window. Imhotep had regenerated further, and the infectionlike wounds O’Connell had inflicted earlier had healed perfectly.

And the mummy stood, jaw seeming to unhinge, mouth opening to an impossible, inhuman size, and from within him, as if disgorging himself of them, a swarm of flies emerged, more like angry hornets, a black buzzing mass racing right at the window where O’Connell and Jonathan watched, stupefied spectators.

O’Connell slammed shut the shutter, Jonathan closing the one on his side of the window, too, and the flies flew into it, pummeling the wood. The two men could not see the flies, deflected at the window, turn as a group like precision fighter pilots and swoop down on the confused, frightened crowd in the bazaar below, sending them running, screaming, pawing and clawing at their hair.

Breathing hard, O’Connell asked, “That’s another one of the plagues, right?”

“Right. But there’s a few left.”

“Oh that’s nice to know.”

“He has the book, old chum.”

“Yes. Now all he needs is . . .”

“Evy!”

And they ran from the office.

 
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