The Eye of the Moon (2 page)

This figure was wearing a long, hooded robe of rich scarlet cloth. With the hood pulled up over its owner’s head, it looked like the kind of thing a boxer heading into ring might wear. The cloaked individual with the hooded face was passionately moving from side to side, swaying its head like Stevie Wonder as it played its terribly-out-of-tune piece of music. There was no sign of Rockwell’s colleague, Buckley, although, rather worryingly, a trail of blood spatters led across the floor to the hooded figure at the piano.

Keeping his distance, Rockwell decided to call out and hope to get a look at the face of the mysterious pianist. If he didn’t like what he saw, he had at least a twenty-yard head start if he had to take the ‘run-like-fuck’ option.

‘Hey, you!’ he called out. ‘Do you know we’re closed? You shouldn’t be here! Time to go, buddy.’

The figure stopped playing, its bony fingers quivering almost imperceptibly above the gleaming black and white keys. Then it spoke.

‘You hum it, and I’ll pick it up!’ a rusty-sounding voice
crackled from beneath the scarlet cowl. A loud guffaw followed; then the hands dropped as the figure took up the tune again.

‘What? Hey, where’s Carterton?’ Rockwell called out taking a step closer, his hand sweating on the nightstick he was gripping so very tightly.

Again the figure stopped playing, and turned its head to look directly at him. Since Rockwell was not exactly walking briskly towards it, stopping dead in his tracks was not a problem. There followed an awkward moment during which he seriously considered pissing his pants.

Within the hood, the figure had only half a face. In the shadow beneath the cowl, the terrified security guard could make out what looked mostly like a yellow skull. Foul remnants of flesh still clung in places to the cheeks, jaw and brow, and there was one rather odd-looking green eye, but the other eye socket was empty, and the face appeared to have no lips or nose. Revolted, Rockwell looked away, only to realize that the bony fingers that had been tapping away at the piano keys were exactly that.
Bones.
Fingers with no fucking skin on them.
Oh Christ.

Before he had time to turn and run, the cloaked figure rose from its stool. It stood well over six feet tall, seeming to dominate the vast gallery, its bony fingers reaching out in his direction. Then it did something strange. It waved one of its hands through the air as if it were manipulating the strings of an invisible puppet. All the while its expressionless face somehow managed to look as though it was smirking at him.

To Joel Rockwell, even though he was twenty or so yards away, those bony hands looked like they were gonna start coming his way pretty goddam soon. As he turned on his heel with the intention of running like fuck out of the hall – hell, something that dead couldn’t be much of a sprinter – he received the second massive shock of the past few moments.

The mannequin of Ludwig van Beethoven had climbed to its feet, somehow animated by the waving hands of the –
the thing –
at the piano. Now it was right in front of Rockwell,
its glass eyes staring vacantly at him from beneath a great mane of hair, its arms extended and wooden hands thrust out to grab him by the throat. The stunned security guard swiped at it with his nightstick, but the effect was only a loud thudding noise as the dummy’s wooden head absorbed the blow, although part of one ear splintered. Fingers stinging, Joel dropped the useless weapon, pulled the cell phone from his breast pocket and held it to his ear, even as the mannequin took a grip on his neck. As he fell to the ground with the wooden assassin on top of him, squeezing his neck tightly and driving the breath from his lungs, he managed one brief cry for help into the phone, hoping above hope that Cromwell might hear it and, somehow, come to his rescue, or at least send a rescue party.

‘Bernard, fer Chrissakes! You gotta help me!’ he gasped. ‘I’m bein’ attacked by fuckin’ Barry Manilow!’

Whether the Professor replied, or even heard, Rockwell was never to know. Dropping the cell phone, he battled with every ounce of his fading strength to escape his attacker, but to no avail. The mannequin was too strong, as well as impervious to his weakening attempts to fight it off. It simply kept him pinned to the floor, its hands around his throat.

Rockwell struggled on despairingly until eventually a figure loomed over him and he found himself staring up into the hideous face of the mummy. The undead Egyptian needed to gorge on yet more human flesh to help replenish his decayed body, and Rockwell’s would serve that purpose admirably.

During the next ten minutes the terrified security guard was ripped apart and devoured by the barbarous creature. It took some minutes for Joel Rockwell to die in unbearable agony. It had taken only three days for him to follow his father into the afterlife.

Having feasted on the flesh of the two dead security guards, the mummy – the immortal, formerly embalmed remains of the pharaoh once better known as Rameses Gaius – felt just about ready to re-enter the world of the living. He would seek – indeed, demand – two things. Revenge on the
descendants of those who had incarcerated him for so long, and the return of his most prized possession during his days as ruler of Egypt:
the Eye of the Moon.

Santa Mondega High School’s annual Halloween fancy-dress ball was, to the students, the highlight of the year’s social calendar. Fifteen-year-old Beth Lansbury had waited patiently since the beginning of term for this night. This was her great chance – probably her only chance, she thought – to catch the eye of a certain boy in the year above her. She didn’t know his name, and she would have been way too embarrassed to ask anyone else, in case they realized that she had this big crush on him and teased her for it. Which they would certainly have done.

Beth had no friends at the school. She was still fairly new there, and being extremely pretty didn’t exactly help matters. This was one of the principal reasons why all the other girls seemed to resent her. More to the point, Ulrika Price didn’t like her, and had made it clear to all the other girls that Beth was not to be spoken to, unless it was to say something spiteful to her.

As was the vogue in these parts, the school’s gym hall was the venue for the ball. Earlier in the day Beth had helped Miss Hinds, her English teacher, to decorate the place. It hadn’t looked all that great when they had finished, but now, on the night, with the flashing lights and the music, it took on a whole new vibe. Beth was pleased to see that despite the spasmodic flashing of the disco lights, the hall was for the most part very
dark – perfect cover for outsiders and loners like her.

There was another cause of Beth’s anguish. Her overly controlling stepmother had insisted on choosing her costume, and, typically, had picked a hideously unsuitable outfit. While everyone else was dressed appropriately in Halloween attire (such as ghosts, zombies, witches, vampires, skeletons – even a rather unconvincing bat and at least four Freddy Kruegers), Beth was dressed as Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz,
right down to the shitty red shoes. She had convinced herself she would have a good time in spite of it, but she was still upset that her stepmother had picked such an inappropriate and stupid outfit.

To say that Olivia Jane Lansbury was extremely domineering was akin to saying that Hitler could sometimes be a bit naughty. Worse, she seemed to be hell bent on preventing her stepdaughter from ever meeting any boys. This may have stemmed from a certain degree of bitterness she felt at having been widowed shortly after she had married Beth’s father. Beth’s real mother had died giving birth to her, so Olivia Jane had been her only parent for most of her life. Growing up had been pretty tough for Beth so far.
And tonight wasn’t going to be a bed of roses either,
she reflected.

So there she was on the evening of Halloween, dressed like the Dweeb That Time Forgot and without a friend in the world, a prime candidate for a stream of bitchy comments from Ulrika Price and her circle of cronies. Ulrika and her three closest followers had come to the ball dressed as cats. The latter were all in black panther costumes, whereas Ulrika was wearing a Bengal tiger outfit, complete with sharp claws attached to the ends of her fingers.

The cats had spotted Beth where she sat in a plastic chair at the edge of the dance floor along with a few other rejects, each desperately hoping a boy would ask her to join him on the floor for a dance. That the butt of their scorn was dressed as Dorothy meant that a situation like this didn’t require any bitchy comments – Ulrika and her friends merely pointed at Beth and laughed loudly and ostentatiously. This drew
sufficient attention to the wretched girl for everyone else who, until then, had been ignoring her, to join in the laughter and sniggering too. If Ulrika and her friends were laughing, then everyone else wanted to be seen to be appreciating the joke. Social acceptance was important at Santa Mondega High, and if Ulrika Price the bottle-blonde cheerleader thought you weren’t laughing along with her, then you might as well pack up and head home. Beth’s only crumb of comfort was that she hadn’t been forced by her stepmother to dye her hair ginger for added authenticity. At least she was lucky enough to have kept her beautiful long brown mane.

It was small consolation, as it turned out, for her humiliation was just about completed shortly after eleven o’clock when one of the black panthers convinced the guy in charge of the lighting to train a spotlight on Beth. As the harsh beam illuminated the forlorn figure the deejay (another of Ulrika’s friends) announced that, yep, ol’ Dorothy over there in the spotlight was the ‘yoo-NANNY-muss’ winner of the award for lamest costume. The horribly amplified announcement brought yet more howls of laughter from what was rapidly turning into a baying mob of teenagers high on drink and drugs.

Beth sat in dignified silence, waiting desperately for the spotlight to move away as she struggled to hold back the ocean of tears she could feel building up. But the spotlight stayed. Not wanting to miss out on a photo opportunity, Ulrika sauntered over and patted her on the head.

‘You know what, honey?’ she smirked. ‘If there was a contest to find the world’s biggest loser, you’d come second.’

That was the end for Beth. Tears began to stream down her face, and a great pent-up sob caught at her throat. The only thing left to do was get up and run out of the hall. As she fled he could hear the laughter behind her from everyone there. Even the other outsiders would join in – to be seen not laughing might make one of them the next victim. And nobody wanted to be lumped into the same loser category as the girl who had come dressed as Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz.

As Beth burst through the double doors at the end of the hall and out into the corridor she felt she had reached an all-time low. She had pleaded with her stepmother not to pick a shitty costume for her. But her pleas had fallen on deaf ears, as she had known they would. Even so, the bitch had cackled in pleasure when Beth begged to be allowed to change the costume. Everything – her public humiliation, her tear-stained flight from the hall – was her stepmother’s fault. Yet she knew that when she got home and told her about her humiliation, the bitch would smile with satisfaction and gloat over how she had warned her stepdaughter that it was a mistake to expect others to accept her. Since her father’s death, Beth’s stepmother had delighted in telling her she was worthless. Now she was really feeling it. She was actually beginning to understand why people took their own lives. Sometimes living was just too hard.

As she staggered down the corridor to the front entrance of the gym, desperate to be free of the place and far enough away to rid herself of the echoes of laughter from the hall, she heard someone call out behind her. It was the voice she had longed to hear all night. The boy from the year above. She had only heard him speak once before, when he had asked her if she was all right that time she had been tripped up in the schoolyard by one of Ulrika’s cronies. He had helped her to her feet, asked her if she was okay, and when she didn’t respond – because she was too dumbstruck – had merely smiled and gone on his way. Ever since, she had regretted not having thanked him at the time, and had vowed to find a way to speak to him and show her gratitude for helping her up. And now it was his voice that had asked, ‘Your mother too, huh?’